Life & Times of a New Dad

Spider Man on Father's Day

Obviously, I haven’t written a whole hell of a lot in the last few months. The excuses for this blog silence range from the typical (busy) to the, well, more typical (tired). The truth is, however, that clichéd or not – being busy and tired are pretty much the reason why I haven’t put fingers to keyboard. I’ve been writing up a storm – it’s just been “work writing.” But, now, as I sit here on Father’s Day eve day (probably would have been easier just to say, “the day before Father’s Day,”), I can’t help but think about K-Man and fatherhood. It’s only natural, right?

K-Man is now Spider Man. The fire fighter thing was sooo 2008. And, the SCUBA diver thing was merely a phase – a rebound obsession, of sorts. He may have been in lust with SCUBA diving, but it was never love. Spider Man, though, might be here to stay for a while. K-Man is all things Spider Man…all the time.

Yes, an argument can be made for the fact that by getting him things like Spider Man toys, DVDs, shirts and stickers that we are merely pouring fuel on the super hero fire, but an argument can also be made that these Spider Man themed toys are also rewards for developments like the fact that K-Man is now potty trained. “I tell you what, K-Man, you crap in the toilet and you can have that Spider Man helicopter.” Diapers are WAY more expensive than a freaking helicopter. (And, a dirty helicopter, unlike the things K-Man left in his diaper, doesn’t smell like a rotting corpse, or have the consistency of a squished banana.)

And, truthfully, that’s what I find myself thinking about on this day before Father’s Day: What is it that I hope to pass along to the kid? Now that he’s old enough to be an actual “participatory cohort” in day-to-day life (as opposed to being luggage that is hauled from place to place), it feels like the teaching has really begun. (I used to say that you don’t become a parent until you start saying “no,” well, perhaps you don’t really start the heavy lifting until the conversation goes two ways.)

I’ve long said that my key goal was to support his passions, and I can honestly say that I’ve done that through his days as a fire fighter, SCUBA diver and now as Spider Man. But, then, there’s that subtle (or not subtle) struggle with the line between supporting and spoiling.

Call me crazy, but I like buying things for my kid. I like it when his eyes light up at me. I like it when he says, “Daddy, that’s cool! Thank you, Daddy.” I don’t love Spider Man, but K-Man does and that’s what matters. Then, there’s that line. Where is it? Have I crossed it? Am I damaging the kid by supporting these passions?

Obviously, the simple answer is to try to make sure that K-Man earns these rewards. Poop in the potty and Spider Man appears! (Magic poop?!?) Clean up all of your toys and get a sticker. Say please and thank you and get ice cream. Every once in a while, though, I want to buy him something because he’s my kid and I’m his dad. And, damn it, that’s okay too. It’s more than okay. He’s a great kid and for that alone he should be rewarded – not simply on a task-by-task basis.

I love the responsibility that comes with Fatherhood. The pressures are intense and, granted, it’s not always easy. (Insert Deity here) knows that there are plenty of times when we (parents) yearn for those simpler days B.K. (before kids). There are plenty of times when we’d trade our kid(s) for an hour of sleep. But, as they age, grow and learn, you have this great opportunity to teach and craft a mind and a life…what a great thing that can be. (Then they become teenagers and we’ll just want to trade them for…anything.)

I spend a great deal of time just watching K-Man. I watch him play. I watch him watch TV (WHAT? TV? Gasp!). And, I LOVE watching him with other kids. He’s so engaged. He’s passionate. He’s in the moment. I love that he starts every interaction with every kid with, “I’m Spider Man.”

That’s the joy in parenting, I think. That’s what I love about Fatherhood more than anything. Just knowing that K-Man, wearing his Spider Man mask and climbing the “web in the park,” feels secure enough to just go for it and own his passions.
And, frankly, that’s a lesson that I could probably stand to learn about myself.

Happy Father’s Day, kid. Thanks for being here.

My Turn with the aha moment

After spending the better part of the last year helping to create and launch Mutual of Omaha’s new aha moment campaign, I finally have some time to sit down and think of my own. (And, by “finally having time,” I mean it’s currently 12:30 in the morning and I’ve spent the last four hours writing a presentation, which has left me somewhat wired to say the least.) So, yes, I have a bit of time.

Since the very beginning of the campaign development, I’ve always said that the decision to have K-Man was my aha moment. G and I had spent a number of years trying to figure out if we were going to try to have a kid and the night that we finally decided, I thought, was the aha moment. It was that moment of clarity, as we (more or less) define it in the campaign. “Yes, let’s do this.” And, as we all know, having a child certainly changes your life, which is another part of the definition.

But, as I’ve spent more and more time thinking about the campaign (which coincides with the more and more time I’ve spent running in the last two months – including the most wonderfully relaxing 12+mile/two-hour trek last Saturday), I’m not so sure that K-Man is the aha moment. I think there’s something that’s even deeper. He’s certainly a gift (and more of one each day, it seems), but there’s something deeper. And, yes, while I’ve written about the kid for nearly four years now (sometimes more frequently than others), there’s another subject that I’ve written about quite a bit: Balance.

A few minutes into that epic run on Saturday, something clicked. It wasn’t the proverbial runner’s high, but something else. It was contentment. Satisfaction. It was balance. I realized at that very moment that I was, perhaps for the first time in my entire life, managing to work in all of the important parts. Work was great. The family was great. I was running regularly. I was writing (yes, maybe sporadically, but writing, nonetheless). I felt like I had achieved some sort of balance. But that was just the first act of this aha moment.

What came next was more important, I think. Again, I’ve written this before, but I think I forgot about it almost as soon as my fingers danced on the keys. I realized that it’s not about doing everything, always. Finding balance is probably impossible with that kind of pressure. Instead, I think the key to balance is more in the averages than the always.

No, I’m not writing as much as I want to, but I am writing. And, that’s okay. That’s enough. In the past, my absence from the creative keyboard would have sent me into a funk. I wouldn’t have been satisfied that I wasn’t doing what I maybe loved more than anything else in the world (from a hobby perspective). But, I am writing quite a bit, actually, it’s just not here in this blog.

I think we, or never mind “we,” I’ll own this all for myself…I think I have (or maybe had is more like it) this incessant need to constantly be challenging myself to do every single thing at every single minute. And, because that’s impossible – I ended up wondering where I was going wrong. I ended up going wrong. I ended up being completely out of balance.

As I look back on “the trying decision,” without knowing it then, for me it probably had more to do with this idea of balance. I was already so out of balance, how would I possibly handle fatherhood? How would I possible handle LESS time to work in everything…all the time?

A number of people have said that aha moments happen when you least expect them. That may be true. But, what’s also true is that science supports the fact that they happen when you are, in fact, thinking about such things the most. You are ready for the aha moment.

Who knows? Maybe K-Man is the aha moment. After all this time, he may very well be the thing that weighed down the other side of the scale to bring me this much welcomed balance. I’ll take it.

The Birth of Competitiveness

Yes, it has been a very long time since I’ve written anything. Sue me. Wait. Don’t. We live in an overly litigious society and some reader might just take me up on it. (At least hire my dad if you decide to proceed with formal charges.) Anyway, it’s been a while. And I know why.

The truth is we reached a point where K-Man has a routine. I have a routine. We all have a routine. Yes, the kid is incredibly cute and I could be writing posts about how funny he is. Or how cut he is. Or how his teachers just think he’s the bomb. I could be writing more about his adventures in SCUBA diving. Or our efforts to get him to use the potty (which are going somewhat well – knock on porcelain).

But, frankly, each time I sat down to write about these things, I found myself losing interest. And, if there’s one reason for me to write – anything – it’s because, at the very least, I’m interested (for f****sake!). Whether or not anyone reads this stuff, I figure it’s important that I care about the letters that appear on the screen. (That’s all part of living with passion, vision and authentically, I think.) Anyway(2), the last couple of days, K-Man has thrown me a bit of a curve ball.

It’s no secret that the kid likes his parks. Despite his recent transition to SCUBA diver from firefighter, he still enjoys sliding down poles and pretending there are fires. (The difference is that now he’s a SCUBA diver fighting the fires. Don’t ask. I don’t really get it, either. And that’s okay.) Just as he dramatically shifted to the wet suit from fire suit, this week he has started on a quest to conquer the monkey bars. With this quest came something new for K-Man: competitiveness.

I was hyper-competitive as a kid. (Probably well-beyond being a kid.) Everything was a competition. I had to win. I’m not sure that I was the best winner – or loser for that matter. (Which is probably more realistic as I was likely on the losing side more often.) If my team lost a game – I could become somewhat despondent.

One summer, when I was a camp counselor, I vividly remember two kids fighting over a point during a ping-pong game. They were on the verge of tearing each other’s 10-year old heads off when I intervened. It was a real moment for me as I realized how insane that level of competitiveness could be. Did these kids really need to try to kill each other over a point? That was pretty much it for the crazy competitive insanity for me.

As K-Man tried and tried and tried to get across the monkey bars, he became equally despondent. I realize that part of his anger at failing was based on frustration. He’s not old enough to understand that he can’t be expected to make it across the bars just yet. He’s not big enough to understand the physics of making it across (despite my sad attempts to explain it to him). And. He. Lost. His. Shite. Total collapse.

I felt so badly for him. Sure, he’s been frustrated before. Anytime he doesn’t get exactly what he wants he’s frustrated. But, this was different. This was competitive. Here was this activity that he thought he should be able to do. I could see that he was visualizing himself making from one side to the other. He’s start, get a few bars in and fall. Let the waterworks begin.

I keep thinking about these lessons that I want to teach the kid as he gets older. I’ve written about dreams and passion over and over. But, this competition thing is an important beast to wrangle. It’s key that he learn how to deal with the frustrations that come from losing and winning.

No. It’s not all about how you play the game. I think that’s as much bullshite as anything else. Losing sucks. Learning how to deal with that is what’s important. It’s all part of the ongoing lessons surrounding perspective. Of course, kids don’t understand what the hell that means. It took me my entire life to figure that out. I’ve got my work cut out for me.