Category: Homefront

Dawn of a New Day

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This week my wife received a rare gift – freedom.  For the first time in at least 4 years my wife had the benefit of time in a day without a kid in tow or a phone-call away from needing to be picked up.   You see when we discovered we were having a second child, it quickly became evident that daycare costs strongly outweighed the benefits of a second income (at least at the level of income we were accustomed to earning).  So my wife drew the short straw of being the stay-at-home parent and has subsisted at some level of harried-ness ever since (I could often gauge that level by how early in the day I’d get the IM asking when I’d be coming home – 5:00=relatively good day, 2:30=pick up gin on the way home).  But this week that all changed.  This week both children started a new school year – Cricket in first grade and Grasshopper in pre-school.

Tuesday was Cricket’s first day.  The night before seemed to require a number of pep talks due to nerves and fears over the changes to her routine (new teacher, new room, some new classmates).  After my wife’s pep talk seemed to leave her more skittish, I gave her a relate-able story from my own youth that got her not only out of her funk, but looking forward to school.  She was all set in the morning in her pink flowery outfit and sporting her new princess backpack (the pink fedora got nixed in favor of pigtails despite her pleading).  As a family we all walked to her school (it is only a few blocks away within our neighborhood), got her in the right line into the school, and made the trek back home where I hopped in the car and headed to work and my wife and Grasshopper got to some fun mommy-son time (probably involving sword-fighting).

Wednesday was Grasshopper’s first day.  Though his was somewhat abbreviated as it was an orientation day and he insisted that I be the one to go with him to it (good thing my office is fairly flexible about when I get in).  So he and I got to play in his new classroom with all his classmates and their moms.  Since it is the same pre-school that Cricket went to, several of the teachers and administrators came and fawned over him as the young male version of his sister (it won’t take them long to figure out how different they are from each other).  He played at almost every station in the room with the possible exception of the dress-up station (which I took with relief as I knew he would likely have put on a cape and possibly started to refer to himself as Captain Cockwarts – I have no explanation for this one, he seemed to just make up this persona this weekend).  At the end of the day, mommy came to pick him up so I could jet on to work from there.

So going forward, my wife will have Tuesdays and Thursdays with just Grasshopper, and the rest of the weekdays to herself until after lunch.  I’m sure she is already planning how these slots of time will be filled.  I’m also sure she is bittersweet about it as it is time she will miss spending with her babies (I almost said angels, but that would be grossly inaccurate).  I’m fairly certain that I won’t get nearly as many 2:30 pleas as to when I’ll be coming home, but I’d also be willing to bet I’ll get a lot more IMs from her before lunch (if I worked closer to home, maybe I’d go home for … lunch).  The point is that she will finally have a share of personal freedom in her life to do with as she pleases.  My calendar, however, already seems to be filling up with more items (e.g., back-to-school nights, parent events, taking the kids to YMCA classes).  Ah well.

Managing Expectations

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After nearly four years at my current job working for ‘the man’ and over a year acting as the lead dog in my team, I’ve been officially promoted to management … though of a different team than I had recently been leading.  I’m very happy with the transition, I agree with the changes that were made, and I feel that I will rise to the challenge.  But it is impossible to avoid having some level of trepidation when taking on a new role.

I’m a tech geek.  And every job I’ve had has required me to be a creative problem-solver.  In many of them I’ve been an army of one, so while I often became accustomed to being the go-to guy, the things that I flubbed on or that slipped through the cracks often were glaringly obvious and sometimes led to breaking points (usually by my choosing, but not always).  I’ve never had a job where I could blend in.  And even if I did, I don’t know that I could.  In even the more recent roles where I have had a team, I’ve managed to stand out (in a good way, of course).  But this shift has come with some hesitancy – some of which came from me.

You see, in my last job I had become a rock star in my role.  So the powers that be felt I could easily rise to the challenge of managing something bigger.  And not knowing fully what I’d be getting myself into I leaped forward with confidence and optimism.  Unfortunately, my new role was equal parts avoiding doing the things I used to do so well and being a scapegoat for anything that didn’t go well as a result.  It wasn’t a good experience.  I was fortunate enough not to get canned and ended up stepping back to my previous role after a lack-luster 90-day run as a Project Manager (they realized that the title of Scapegoat would generally be unappealing to most comers).  But as they say, with some things there is no going back – while I certainly climbed back up to rock-star performance levels and was greatly appreciated by most, some members of management didn’t know how to drop a grudge.  So I looked for my next opportunity.

Luckily that next opportunity was where I am today and my only regret is that I hadn’t discovered this company sooner.  And after I got through that initial ‘learning the ropes’ phase, I quickly attained rock-star status once again.  But any time that management came up as a career path, I gave it pause.  This job was too good and too important for me to fail again as I had before.  And the last thing I wanted was to shift to a role where I didn’t get to do the trench-work that I so enjoy (seriously!).

But this shift now is different, and it’s better.  First, I’ve had a good stretch of time to adjust to being able to delegate to and manage other resources as a team.  And as such I’ve stretched my own skill-set to be able to think as a member and leader of a team rather than a single point of service.  So now as I make this transition, I know what I’m getting into, I know what is expected of me, and I know that I can rise to the challenges I’ll face in this role – most importantly I know the team that I’m leading and I know that they won’t let me down in this transition either.  Plus I know that even with this change, I will still be allowed and even expected to ford some trenches of my own.

Am I excited?  Yes.  Am I nervous?  Definitely.  Am I worried that I’ll go down in flames?  Not in the least.  I know where I stand, I know what is in store for me, and I know that I’m not walking this new path alone.  What will I do when shit starts hitting the fan?  I’ll manage.  I am now, in fact, ‘the man’ (well, one of them at least).

Big Hearts, Short Sleeves

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It is interesting how much emotion can be conveyed with a small amount of words.  For instance, this morning as I was getting ready to leave the house I called up the stairs to everyone to let them know that I was leaving for work.  Each of my family members replied in turn in their own unique ways:

Grasshopper: BYE DADDY, I LOVE YOU!

Cricket: I belong to you, Daddy!

My wife: The money is on the table.

The last sounds odd out of context, though in truth there was no immediate conversational context to it – my wife and I just have a very down-to-earth relationship and have a knack for picking up random long-dead conversation threads and/or answering each others unasked questions.  But the tone of each response reflects much greater depth of the emotions behind them than the words themselves convey.  My kids are full of exuberant, idealistic affection for the father that they only see in passing in the morning and for a few hours in the evening. My wife, already in the trenches of dealing with getting the kids ready for the day, sticks with purposeful messaging (the love we share is known, implied, and not in need of constant reinforcement).

I can’t help but wonder sometimes, when in my own life the level of emotional openness and heightened expression that my kids seem to exude had faded.  What are the factors that delay or expedite this process?  When should I expect my daughter to transition from her current puppy-dog phase to something more similar to the cynical teen that I’m sure she might become?  Should I try to stave it off or just accept what comes?

The oddity of it is that it is so dissimilar to my own attitude I find myself sometimes wondering if we are really related.  I wouldn’t necessarily call myself cynical (though I certainly maintain a healthy level of cynicism), but I’m definitely a picture of nonchalance.  A perfect example of my cool under pressure demeanor is one that is often cited by my in-laws – usually around Thanksgiving.

The event in question happened during a Thanksgiving about a decade ago at my wife’s aunt’s house.  While my aunt-in-law and several other of the matriarchs of the family were buzzing about the kitchen and the majority of the men and children where engrossed in whatever football game happened to be on, I walked through the dining room to grab a snack from the kitchen island on the other end of it.  As I did so, I noticed that one of the drip candles that were on the table seemed to have dropped a piece of wick and as a result a circle of the tablecloth about two inches across had been charred and was slowly edging wider by some very low flames.  I calmly walked into the kitchen and asked my aunt-in-law “Aunt Ann, your table is on fire.  Do you have a pot holder I can borrow?” to which she responded with a flabbergasted “What!?”.  While she wended through the people in the kitchen to get to the dining room and see what I was referring to, I grabbed the first thing I could find to handle the task – a damp dishrag.  By the time I got back there, she and two of my wife’s cousins were watching the now soda-can diameter ring of fire in abject shock.  I skirted around them and patted the fire out with the dishrag, blew out the candles to avoid any possible recurrence, and grabbed a couple of sweet gherkins from the pickle tray and went about my business.    The rest of the ladies seemed to bustle about it for a while before the table was retrimmed and the commotion reformed in the kitchen where it previously resided.  Many of the men didn’t even seem to notice anything had happened.  But my aunt-in-law tells the story of it almost every year.

Anyway, I know that I am somewhat unique in my lack of excitability.  But there are times when I wish a little of it would rub off on my kids (and perhaps at moments my wife as well).  While I appreciate the positive end of their heightened emotional state, the negative side of it is rarely much fun.  Cricket is a picture of indecisiveness – she can easily waste a half-hour trying to decide whether pink or yellow shorts go better with the brown shirt she is wearing (and then throw on leprechaun socks).  Grasshopper will have a 20-minute stand off over not liking green beans (including throwing silverware and having a tantrum across the house) before finally eating a forkful and realizing he loves them.  The trouble with family drama seems to be the balance – keeping the levels of comedy and tragedy in line and not pegged at 11.

End of the Line

SilentBen1 Comment

I wish I could say that I was sitting comfortably and at ease as I write this.  But that is, for the time being, not possible.  I currently feel generally like I’ve been kicked where it hurts, and the feeling is likely not going to go away for a while.

See, this morning I took action on a decision my wife and I have made regarding the growth of our family – namely that it is done growing.  So after having talked to my doctor and then a urologist, this morning I went under the knife (more like a needle, a scalpel, and a cauterizing gun).  The procedure was pretty simple (note the use of the word simple, not easy) – in less than an hour I was in and out and on my way home.  Unfortunately within that hour I had to be cleaned, shorn, injected with Novocaine, and have things pushed, pulled, and poked around (parts of which were performed by a nurse so burly that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see prison tattoos on her arms).  Of course, as the doctor is going through these steps he is also chatting with me about things like work, computers, etc.  While I appreciated the distraction, it is hard to concentrate on talking about what my company does while someone is trying to shift things into position by hand.

The good part of the aftermath is that my wife was kind enough to have the kids at her mom’s house for the day.  The last thing I need right now is Grasshopper being the Kamikaze ninja that he often seems to pretend to be all over me as I try to sit and relax on the couch.  The down side is that it is almost too quiet around here – I have a feeling the day will tend to drag out as a result.  Though I’m not really willing to sacrifice my safety and comfort in the name of making the time more interesting with the kids around.  I’m sure I’ll manage to keep myself occupied.

Another down side is that this is not the only medical concern I have to deal with right now.  I potentially have at least two more procedures to endure in the near future related to other issues.   For one, I seem to have a tooth that needs to be pulled and replaced with an implant (neither of which I’m looking forward to).  Secondly, I have a kidney stone that is about an inch in diameter that will need to be surgically removed (at least I won’t have to pass it).  If I were an optimist, perhaps I would feel good in the fact that I’ll have an excuse to use up some vacation days before the end of the year (though not really in forms that could be considered enjoyable).

So, barring any unforeseen complications with today’s events, I am highly unlikely to have to worry about having any more children.  While there is no doubt that I love the two I have, two is a fine number to have (and I’m not really up for another infant – I’m done with diapers).  In a world growing as rapidly as it is, I’ll stick with breaking even in my own contributions to it.  And now I can just sit back and enjoy what I have (aside from some temporary discomfort).

Night Shade

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Last night as I’m kneeling on my son’s floor waiting for his stuffy sniffling to transition to the stuffy mouth-breathing of sleep, I found myself pondering the number of times I’ve found myself in such a position – apparently enough to know that neither sitting nor lying down would have left me in a comfortable state when I left.  These moments are much fewer than they’d been in the past; at times my wife and I practically took turns sleeping on his floor.  Now it is once a month on average at most.

Grasshopper’s sleeping woes have typically been just what one would expect from a toddler:  afraid to be alone, afraid of the dark, afraid of the sound of the washing machine on the other side of the wall.  In the past few months he had resorted often to sleeping on his floor claiming he was scared of his bed.  His bed, mind you, is a happy, plastic fire engine, so I wasn’t really clear of what there was to be afraid.  But it was easier to setup a couple of comforters on the floor as a mattress than to delve into the motivations of a 3 year-old, so we accommodated him and went about our activities.

For the past few weeks it had escalated to the point that his mattress sat on the floor for him to sleep on and I was close to sliding his fire engine bed out to the back yard as play furniture.  But as I contemplated this plan, I realized that I should really address the root problem rather than work around it (after all he was running out of floor space).  So I put his bed back together and we attempted a return to relative normalcy.  Of course, that very night as I attempt to settle the troops, he starts to get anxious and claims that he is scared.  So I ask what it is that he is afraid of.  As it turns out, he is afraid of a shadow that his night light makes on the wall as a result of a hump on the side of the bed along the wall.  So I grabbed something firm and rectangular, wedged it alongside the mattress to block the dip where the hump shadow was visible and – voila! – problem solved.  Unfortunately the object I grabbed was a picture frame which I didn’t realize actually had glass in it, so yesterday there was a clean-up issue.  But now the frame has been replaced with a blanket and a pillow and all is generally leveling out nicely … until allergies kick in.  It is always something.

Seeing the bedtime drama I still experience with Cricket, I know that the end is not yet in sight.  But it is at least getting easier to diffuse.  And soon I may never have to sleep anywhere but my bed … unless my wife has something to say about it.