My family has been impacted by a cold over the last two weeks. We're all congested and coughing. My kids are so congested that when I hold them on my shoulder, it sounds like they're purring. I jokingly said "Babies aren't supposed to purr."
The other day, my wife called me at work. She was so sick that she couldn't handle the kids. Thankfully, her sister stays with us, so she was helping but had to go to work. I decided to come home and watch the kids for the day.
By the end of the day, I was utterly exhuasted. I got home at about 1000 and took the kids from my sister in law so she could get ready for work. Because they've been sick, the baby has been sleeping a lot, which really helped. When he was awake, I needed to hold him. When he was asleep, I was down on the floor playing with Joshua, our 15 month old toddler. Joshua climbs on and get into everything, and even more so when the baby is occupying the attention. I find it easier to stand with the baby so I can follow Joshua around the room, but then he wants to be picked up. That left me with a 13 pound baby on one arm and a 26 pound toddler on the other.
For lunch, I threw the kids in the car and hit the drive thru window that my sister in law works. That's what daddies do.
My wife likes educational TV left on during the day. It's not quite as mindless and brainwashing as I had been told. I was happy to see that "Reading Rainbow" is still on. I enjoyed that show when I was a kid. It's sure outlasted "Star Trek- The Next Generation", and Levar Burton is still going.
I'm going to write in my other blog about how my sick wife still managed to drag herself out to vote. I was smart and voted on my way into work, since the polls open right when I'm leaving anyway, and the firehall we vote at is just a couple of streets over.
Though the day was exhuasting, it was a lot of fun to spend the time with my kids. Joshua laughs when I get down on my hands and knees and charge him. He also likes to be sat on my shoulders while I run around. Caleb, at 3 months, is all smiles. It's fun to lay him down and get him to smile. Unlike his big brother, he actually will sit still. I can sit him on my lap and hold him up and he's been content up to an hour so far. I have a newfound respect for what full time moms do, and a new found appreciate for the role I've been created for.
10 November 2005
21 October 2005
Random Musings for New Dads
For a while now, I have wanted to write something for my blog that is geared toward new dads. I found out barely two years ago that I would be a dad. Now I’ve done it twice. As a computer geek, I went to the internet to seek advice, and at the time I did not find very much. I’m not sure if anything useful has been added in that time, as I have mostly figured things out for myself. You may find the same thing to be helpful, but just in case, here are some random musings from my own experience.
First off, children can be hard. My oldest, Joshua, is barely 15 months and he is in to everything. Any cord in the open he will find. He will climb behind objects to find cords. I don’t know why he has such a thing for cords. If you want to know whether or not your house has been adequately baby proofed, I would be happy to bring him over and turn him loose. He’ll let you know in a hurry. My youngest, Caleb, is going to be eating applesauce way ahead of schedule. He is always hungry. At barely 10 weeks old, he’s already taking more than 30 ounces of formula a day and 2 bowls of rice cereal. I guess he’ll grow up to be a hungry man. As I write this, I’m on a plane bound for Charleston, SC, and I miss the guys.
The best piece of advice I believe that I could give a new dad is that no baby has ever died from crying. You want the best for your children, but you can only do so much. There will be times when a baby will want to cry for hours and nothing is apparently wrong. Your frustrations may grow. At times like these, if you have no one else to pass the baby off to for a time, it is all right to lay him down gently and step away for a few minutes. I have found that I liked it better when I was out of the room and my children were crying. That means I know where they are and they are all right. It’s when they aren’t making noise that you want to rush back in every few minutes to make sure that they are all right.
Babies are much more durable than you might think. With Joshua, I knew nothing about babies. I thought that they had to be lying down or held. I didn’t realize that you could do more. A lot of the crying that he did may have been simply from boredom rather than pain or hunger. Hey, women grow up around babies and dolls. We grow up around things we can build of destroy. I just didn’t know. The other night at dinner, we had Caleb lying on the couch when he started crying. I went in to get him, thinking he was hungry. He wasn’t hungry at all, and was perfectly happy to have me hold him upright on my lap while we ate. He just wanted to be with everyone else apparently. Sometimes he likes it when we lay him down or hold him so that he can see what’s going on. Babies can be much smarter than you think.
Remember always that you are the parent. Babies have very strong opinions and preferences, but you have the big picture. Joshua hated to be swaddled (that’s when you wrap a baby up tightly in a blanket while he’s sleeping so his arms don’t move and wake him up), but we had to swaddle him or he would wake himself up constantly. He hated it, but we were the parents and knew that he would eventually stop screaming and sleep. Caleb doesn’t mind it as much, but is much less active and only needs swaddling for long periods of sleep.
Babies can sleep on their stomachs. They actually sleep better that way, although you should never allow this without being there to supervise. They also need to be held. There is a line between spoiling and giving what they need. If we’re busy and can’t hold Caleb, he won’t sleep well at night.
I found that I had a hard time with fatherhood at first. I have been told that it’s hard to go from 1 baby to 2, but from 2 children to 3 isn’t bad. Actually, I had the hardest time going from 0 to 1. Going from 1 to 2 wasn’t bad after the first couple of weeks. I’ve heard that the dad doesn’t always bond well at first. I think that’s true in my experience. The mother carries the baby for 9 months and has that instant bond. For the father, your life changes and you don’t always get much out of it. It’s hard to describe the change I felt toward Joshua all in one moment. When he was about 6 months old, I was really sick one weekend. He couldn’t sit up by himself yet, but could hold himself up if you put him in a sitting position. My wife sat him in bed next to me, and he looked at me. I feebly said “Hey, Joshua”, and he fell in my direction and reached out for me. In that one moment, everything in my relationship with him changed. It’s like he became real to me in that moment when I realized that he knew who I was and still liked me. It’s very hard to describe.
You’ll make a lot of mistakes, but believe me, you won’t screw your children’s’ lives up right away. That takes years of neglect. You’ll get frustrated, angry, impatient, busy, but there’s always a new day waiting for you. Some things take care of themselves. My wife and I fought a lot when she brought Joshua to bed. I didn’t agree that he should be in the bed at all, but it became one of those mother hood things that can’t be overridden without destroying your marriage. I gave her a hard time because he wouldn’t go to sleep by himself. For a long time there, he needed about 8 oz of milk before bed. Then, one day, it just stopped. He didn’t need the milk anymore. He still needs help getting to sleep sometimes, but for the most part it’s not a problem.
I rushed through things with Joshua. I was just in a hurry to get out of that phase of life. I don’t know why. Now that we’ve had Caleb, I’m just trying to sit back and enjoy this time with my children. Now that I know I can handle two of them at the same time, now that I have some experience and knowledge of children, it’s a lot different.
I hope that my random airborne musings on that last 15 months can provide somebody with help and inspiration. Never be too proud to ask for help and advice. Us “veterans” are just itching to give it anyway. And if you have older children, I’ll probably be looking for advice from you before too long.
First off, children can be hard. My oldest, Joshua, is barely 15 months and he is in to everything. Any cord in the open he will find. He will climb behind objects to find cords. I don’t know why he has such a thing for cords. If you want to know whether or not your house has been adequately baby proofed, I would be happy to bring him over and turn him loose. He’ll let you know in a hurry. My youngest, Caleb, is going to be eating applesauce way ahead of schedule. He is always hungry. At barely 10 weeks old, he’s already taking more than 30 ounces of formula a day and 2 bowls of rice cereal. I guess he’ll grow up to be a hungry man. As I write this, I’m on a plane bound for Charleston, SC, and I miss the guys.
The best piece of advice I believe that I could give a new dad is that no baby has ever died from crying. You want the best for your children, but you can only do so much. There will be times when a baby will want to cry for hours and nothing is apparently wrong. Your frustrations may grow. At times like these, if you have no one else to pass the baby off to for a time, it is all right to lay him down gently and step away for a few minutes. I have found that I liked it better when I was out of the room and my children were crying. That means I know where they are and they are all right. It’s when they aren’t making noise that you want to rush back in every few minutes to make sure that they are all right.
Babies are much more durable than you might think. With Joshua, I knew nothing about babies. I thought that they had to be lying down or held. I didn’t realize that you could do more. A lot of the crying that he did may have been simply from boredom rather than pain or hunger. Hey, women grow up around babies and dolls. We grow up around things we can build of destroy. I just didn’t know. The other night at dinner, we had Caleb lying on the couch when he started crying. I went in to get him, thinking he was hungry. He wasn’t hungry at all, and was perfectly happy to have me hold him upright on my lap while we ate. He just wanted to be with everyone else apparently. Sometimes he likes it when we lay him down or hold him so that he can see what’s going on. Babies can be much smarter than you think.
Remember always that you are the parent. Babies have very strong opinions and preferences, but you have the big picture. Joshua hated to be swaddled (that’s when you wrap a baby up tightly in a blanket while he’s sleeping so his arms don’t move and wake him up), but we had to swaddle him or he would wake himself up constantly. He hated it, but we were the parents and knew that he would eventually stop screaming and sleep. Caleb doesn’t mind it as much, but is much less active and only needs swaddling for long periods of sleep.
Babies can sleep on their stomachs. They actually sleep better that way, although you should never allow this without being there to supervise. They also need to be held. There is a line between spoiling and giving what they need. If we’re busy and can’t hold Caleb, he won’t sleep well at night.
I found that I had a hard time with fatherhood at first. I have been told that it’s hard to go from 1 baby to 2, but from 2 children to 3 isn’t bad. Actually, I had the hardest time going from 0 to 1. Going from 1 to 2 wasn’t bad after the first couple of weeks. I’ve heard that the dad doesn’t always bond well at first. I think that’s true in my experience. The mother carries the baby for 9 months and has that instant bond. For the father, your life changes and you don’t always get much out of it. It’s hard to describe the change I felt toward Joshua all in one moment. When he was about 6 months old, I was really sick one weekend. He couldn’t sit up by himself yet, but could hold himself up if you put him in a sitting position. My wife sat him in bed next to me, and he looked at me. I feebly said “Hey, Joshua”, and he fell in my direction and reached out for me. In that one moment, everything in my relationship with him changed. It’s like he became real to me in that moment when I realized that he knew who I was and still liked me. It’s very hard to describe.
You’ll make a lot of mistakes, but believe me, you won’t screw your children’s’ lives up right away. That takes years of neglect. You’ll get frustrated, angry, impatient, busy, but there’s always a new day waiting for you. Some things take care of themselves. My wife and I fought a lot when she brought Joshua to bed. I didn’t agree that he should be in the bed at all, but it became one of those mother hood things that can’t be overridden without destroying your marriage. I gave her a hard time because he wouldn’t go to sleep by himself. For a long time there, he needed about 8 oz of milk before bed. Then, one day, it just stopped. He didn’t need the milk anymore. He still needs help getting to sleep sometimes, but for the most part it’s not a problem.
I rushed through things with Joshua. I was just in a hurry to get out of that phase of life. I don’t know why. Now that we’ve had Caleb, I’m just trying to sit back and enjoy this time with my children. Now that I know I can handle two of them at the same time, now that I have some experience and knowledge of children, it’s a lot different.
I hope that my random airborne musings on that last 15 months can provide somebody with help and inspiration. Never be too proud to ask for help and advice. Us “veterans” are just itching to give it anyway. And if you have older children, I’ll probably be looking for advice from you before too long.
09 August 2005
Reverse-Engineered Housekeeping
I'll start this post by saying that it's directed mainly at Chrisitan men.
I often have a hard time with Biblical mandates such as "loving my wife as Christ loved the church" (Eph 5:25) and "looking not on my own things, but on the things of others" (Phil 2:4) . And yet, I am currently at a place where doing so is vital. My wife is scheduled for a C-section in two days for our second child. There is a need for me to take care of a lot of the housework. I can't say I'm enthusiastically jumping into that. We both have our own ways of doing things, and if I don't do them her way she can let me know what she thinks very quickly.
The other night I had a lot of clothes to put away, most of which were either hers or our son's. I offerred to do it, and she quickly told me I'd do it wrong. I told her that if she is going to tell me that I need to help then she is going to have to stand back and let me help.
Rather than rush though doing it my way, I tried somthing new. I reverse engineered her system of folding and storing clothes. I actually managed to get the baby clothes put away in a manner that she could be pleased with.
I know this will sound silly on the surface, and if it does to you then please continue on to other blogs. But if you're looking for a way to do something nice for your wife, and this idea resonates with you, then give it a shot.
I often have a hard time with Biblical mandates such as "loving my wife as Christ loved the church" (Eph 5:25) and "looking not on my own things, but on the things of others" (Phil 2:4) . And yet, I am currently at a place where doing so is vital. My wife is scheduled for a C-section in two days for our second child. There is a need for me to take care of a lot of the housework. I can't say I'm enthusiastically jumping into that. We both have our own ways of doing things, and if I don't do them her way she can let me know what she thinks very quickly.
The other night I had a lot of clothes to put away, most of which were either hers or our son's. I offerred to do it, and she quickly told me I'd do it wrong. I told her that if she is going to tell me that I need to help then she is going to have to stand back and let me help.
Rather than rush though doing it my way, I tried somthing new. I reverse engineered her system of folding and storing clothes. I actually managed to get the baby clothes put away in a manner that she could be pleased with.
I know this will sound silly on the surface, and if it does to you then please continue on to other blogs. But if you're looking for a way to do something nice for your wife, and this idea resonates with you, then give it a shot.
05 August 2005
Welcome to my new blog
I decided to start this blog in order to remain focused. I have another blog: http://emuelle1.blogspot.com, which is more of a socio/political commentary. I recently read an article about blogging, and realized that we all do have our own expertise that someone else might actually be interested in.
I thought about changing my theme to famliy life, or to technology, but then it hit me what I might want to concentrate on. As I write this, my wife and I have a one year old and another child due any moment now. My wife stays home and I have a full time job. I have a really big computer hobby, I'm active with church, and I have a few volunteer activities I enjoy. I don't get out much, but I have a few friends I like to get together with now and again. None of these things work together, and yet they're all pretty vital to who I am. I admit that I wouldn't miss work very much, but it is important at this time. On top of all this, my wife and I both have to deal with our respective families. I'm taking distance learning classes at a Bible college. I'm sure by now that you understand, I can't do it all and yet it all must get done.
Now, when all the elements of my life come together it is often like mixing matter and anti-matter. On top of it all, I am a Christian, and I'm trying to take my commitment to Jesus Christ seriously, yet all too often I realize too late that I've blown it.
I realized that someone else might be in the same boat. Maybe you have a new family, and you're having a hard time putting it all together, especially while you're trying to follow Christ. I haven't found much useful advice on the internet, so I figure maybe I'll start putting it up myself. I've also learned from teaching a class in church that placing yourself in the public eye presents you with accountability.
I pray that some fruitful information will make it onto this page, and that families will be blessed by it.
I thought about changing my theme to famliy life, or to technology, but then it hit me what I might want to concentrate on. As I write this, my wife and I have a one year old and another child due any moment now. My wife stays home and I have a full time job. I have a really big computer hobby, I'm active with church, and I have a few volunteer activities I enjoy. I don't get out much, but I have a few friends I like to get together with now and again. None of these things work together, and yet they're all pretty vital to who I am. I admit that I wouldn't miss work very much, but it is important at this time. On top of all this, my wife and I both have to deal with our respective families. I'm taking distance learning classes at a Bible college. I'm sure by now that you understand, I can't do it all and yet it all must get done.
Now, when all the elements of my life come together it is often like mixing matter and anti-matter. On top of it all, I am a Christian, and I'm trying to take my commitment to Jesus Christ seriously, yet all too often I realize too late that I've blown it.
I realized that someone else might be in the same boat. Maybe you have a new family, and you're having a hard time putting it all together, especially while you're trying to follow Christ. I haven't found much useful advice on the internet, so I figure maybe I'll start putting it up myself. I've also learned from teaching a class in church that placing yourself in the public eye presents you with accountability.
I pray that some fruitful information will make it onto this page, and that families will be blessed by it.
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