Shallow Thinker

In my last post, I mentioned something about the emotions of little girls.  It was a complete understatement.  This past week has been an experience in how unqualified I am at being a comforter/teacher for my oldest daughter.

Butterfly turned six earlier this month and has expressed some interest in riding her bicycle without training wheels.  Going into this, I knew that Butterfly was my perfectionist, my crier, and a little ball of impatience.  These create a wonderfully volatile combination when teaching her new things. So, naturally, teaching her to ride her bicycle should be a pleasant bonding experience….right?

Bicycling lessons have not gone stellar.  Butterfly has done pretty well learning to compensate and balance a little.  Physically, she’s getting the hang of it.  Emotionally, she’s a wreck.  She cries when she wobbles.  She wants to stop trying if I have to catch her.  She’s more scared of falling than she is excited about riding.  I tried pushing her over in the grass so that she would realize that it doesn’t hurt that bad.  (For future reference, bad idea.)

I’m not impatient with her or upset that she isn’t learning at a certain speed. I just want her to be willing to give it another try without quitting or having a melt down.  And then I think back on when my dad was trying to teach me how to hit a baseball and how I reacted.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but I sure hope she does better with the bicycle than I did with a baseball.

I am not a wise man.  I do have a little experience when it comes to raising children.  Just over six years worth, as a matter-of-fact.  But I was still surprised and humbled to get a note from a friend who was asking for a little comfort on his new journey.  It seems that he and his wife are expecting their first child, which just so happens to be a girl.  I have no idea why he would consult me on such a serious issue, but I can’t fault him for choosing his friends poorly.  At any rate, I don’t know if my insight will be valuable to him, but perhaps it will provide some help to you, weary internet person that has happened to stumble upon my blog and just happens to need some insight on raising a young girl.

From A Friend:

As the Father of two girls tell me, how hard is it? It’s obvious to me that you love your daughters completely. I have no doubt that I will, too. Hell, I already do. But. But I don’t react well to feelings, emotions, etc. I’m a CHB, for crying out loud. That’s Cold Heartless Bastard, by the way. I dunno, I guess I just need some affirmation from a peer that I can do this, you know? That I’m not going to completely damage my daughter irreparably just by being me.

My Sage Advice:

Oh, the emotions. Yeah, there’s not much you can do with that. Butterfly is a crier. If I try to sit down and talk with her calmly about something so that she doesn’t get upset, she still bursts into tears. I don’t know if there is a way to handle them properly. I usually take the “give up and let Kelley handle it” approach.

From what I can tell in my general observations, girls are a lot easier at the start. Boys are wild, full of energy, and always bouncing off the walls. Girls tend to be a lot calmer, relaxed, and able to sit down and play quietly. The problem starts when the hormones and the emotions start to kick-in. I have solicited a lot of advice for the upcoming years and from what I can piece together, the key is to just always be there and keep loving them. Which is going to be tough because I had decided to move into the garage once puberty hit.

I think you’ll be a wonderful father. Having a girl will give your wife somebody to doll-up, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still have a buddy for weekend projects. Butterfly and Ladybug both accompany me to Lowes and love to “help” when I’m working on a project. (Helpful hint: always have some extra boards with holes, screws, bolts, and screwdrivers around when you’re working. That way they have something to mess around with instead of knocking holes in the sheet rock.)

Oh, and you’ll have to learn how to dress Barbies. Which is kind of cool because it’s permission to look at little naked ladies. WIN!

So there you have it.  Deep insight from a loving father.  I thought about writing a book about all this stuff so that everyone could learn from the patience and the devotion that I have for my family but those annoying little kids won’t leave me alone long enough to think straight.  So if you need advice, feel free to submit your questions.  I will answer them with all of the honesty and dignity that I can muster.

Last night my phone rang.  I walked through the house trying to find one of our cordless phones, but I knew what message would be on the other end.  I answered and my mother gave me the news that I had been expecting.  My paternal grandfather had passed away. (The one mentioned here.) In the past year, his health had taken a pretty steep turn for the worse.  Strokes, cancer, various illnesses, and time finally wore him down.

When I visited him in the hospital a few months ago, it was difficult to see him in that state.  I had my daughters with me and I wanted him to be able to enjoy their company, but the sterility of the environment kept them nervous and hiding behind their mother.  Though they did venture out to give him a big hug before we left.  I don’t know if my daughters will remember that day, but the man they saw and laughed with was just a shadow of the giant that I interacted with throughout my formative years.

As I sat on the couch last night, I spent some time thinking about the man he was and I tried to solidify in my mind the kind of man that I thought he was.  The word that kept coming back to me was “history.”  As long as I could remember, Pop would tell us stories about everything imaginable.  He told about his mischievous childhood, his years of service to our country, his beautiful, young bride, his three boys, and anything else that was completely irrelevant to any other discussion at the time.  He even got so good at telling stories that he once fell asleep in the middle of telling me one.  But each story had a point.  And a lot of times, the underlying current was the pride that he had for his past and his present. He was proud of his father who had marched through Germany.  He was proud of his sons who had gone on to have families of their own.  But what struck me the most as I sat there on my couch thinking was the fact that he was proud of the life that he had lead and the wife who had walked by his side.

A part of me feels bad because I have accepted his death as an inevitable reality.  Pop lived a long, full life and he was able to see and hold several of his great-grandchildren.  I understand that his days were numbered and that he now rests with no pain.  But last night, the tears still fell as I recognized a void that cannot be filled.  My sense of loss comes from the stories and the history that passed on with my grandfather last night.  Only a handful of his tales will survive his passing and his part of history will slowly fade away.

Once again, I am reminded that our legacy is not the items we possess or the dollars that we spend.  Our legacy is defined by the relationships that we build and the lives that we touch. I am comforted to know that Pop’s legacy lives on in people that I have probably never met and through the stories that I will hand down to my girls. I can only hope to be so lucky.

Please join me in congratulating Alana and Xander on their good news.  In May (perhaps…maybe….hopefully), Alana and Xander will be bringing home two beautiful little children (twins!) to spoil and love.  Kelley and I are very excited for them and know that they will be wonderful parents.  I know that they have waited for months on end with no word and now they have a finish line in sight.  Now they have a bit more waiting and I’m pretty sure that Xander will have to use duct tape to keep Alana from grabbing the first plane to Ethiopia.  But, I think she’ll manage.

I noted on my previous post that Butterfly required a colonoscopy. I have contemplated how much or how little to detail here, but my wife has solved the problem for me. (She usually does.)  Check her post for a much more substantial, and well-written, account of the trying weekend and the pending results. (click here)

Note - This first part of this post was written two weeks ago, The latter was edited today. Maybe it took up until now for my words to make sense to me. They probably won’t make sense to you at all.

—-Two weeks ago—-
I got a call this weekend that my grandfather has been diagnosed with lung cancer.  Apparently, the prostate cancer has spread and the doctors gave him a time frame of 3-6 months.  Of course, you never know where they get those numbers from, but when they start doing calculations, it’s not a good sign.  My dad and his brothers are working through trying to get both of my grandparents into an assisted living facility.  A difficult transition, to say the least.

On Sunday, Butterfly was pretty sick and we ended up having to get blood tests done on Monday.  Though she is fine-and-dandy now, the doctors think that a colonoscopy will be best to rule out major complications based on some recurring problems that we’ve noticed.  It’s a “minor” procedure for the medical community, but it’s a huge weight on the shoulders of this over-protective father and her always caring mother.

In the past month, two couple friends have experienced the loss of their unborn children through miscarriages.  Another couple that we know experienced the delivery of a still born child on Christmas morning. A friend from high school is waiting anxiously for word regarding two children that she is trying to adopt from a foreign country.

Sickness. Death. Pain. Worry. Grief. Heartache. Tears. My mind is unable to comprehend the source, cause, or reason for such suffering.  What I can understand is the fact that there are a lot of people carrying around burdens and worries that intrude into their every action. Sometimes, I wonder how many people around me are using all the energy they have just to put a smile on and get through the day while their inside cries out for rest and peace.

—-Today—-
I have been amazed at the response that we have received from friends and family regarding Butterfly’s procedure. It is truly comforting to know that our daughter is loved so deeply by so many people. Her procedure was yesterday and she has recovered well enough to fight with her sister.

I am still troubled a bit, though. A mom was in the hospital with her son having a scope done, but she was by herself. After some complications with the IV, the mom needed a minute to compose herself. After three hours in the car to get there and waiting through the procedure, she was turning around to drive another three hours back home. Carrying this burden alone. I saw a few other single parents at the hospital. While these aren’t necessarily broken homes, it was difficult to see one parent struggle alone during this time while I knew that I was supported by so many.

There is no moral to this post or any ending tagline that I can conceive to make things better. This is just something that I’ve noticed recently. People are hurting. Families are broken. Burdens are heavy.

Is there a practical way to offer relief? I shall contemplate some more.

As life would have it, I am often the booming voice of discipline around our house.  Kelley does a wonderful job with the girls, but by the end of the day, they are all tired of each other and limits are being tested for everyone.  This is usually about the time that I come in the door from work.  Most times, I am able to quell the storms with calm assertiveness, but on occasion, I will raise my voice.  (The good thing about having two little girls is that the loud, deep voice usually does the trick.)

We’ve been having some trouble with our little Ladybug during the nights.  Her cough is finally starting to dissipate, but she is now in the habit of waking up during the middle of the night.  For the most part, she is able to go back to sleep, but around 5:00, she thinks that she is ready to face the day.

On Sunday morning, she came running into our room and made a bee-line for Kelley’s side of the bed.  Kelley picked her up, took her back to her room, put her in the bed, said sweet, motherly things to her, and then left her room.  I used my super-human sleeping skills to ignore the whole event.

At 5:15, I woke-up to see our bedroom door being pushed open by the little munchkin.  This time, she came over to me.  My mind was already trying to figure out just the right words to say and how to get her to stay in her bed for another couple of hours.  Should I go with the “mean daddy” routine or “comforting daddy”?  Do I promise her a wonderful tomorrow for being such a big girl, or do I make empty threats that I’ll never follow-up on?  But she spoke first:

“Daddy?  Will you cuddle with me?”

My daughter is almost 3, but she is far wiser than her father who sits happily at 30.  For the next hour and a half, I slept folded in her bed with her little body snuggled up as close as she could get to me.  I exercised neither firmness or discipline. I’m quite sure the rest of our lives will allow plenty of opportunities to practice those skills.  But in the wee hours of Sunday morning, my daughter appreciated me being there in silence.

My girls are young (Ladybug is almost 3 and Butterfly is 5.5).  They are also very truthful.  On Saturday morning, I was sitting in Butterfly’s room watching her and Ladybug play.  (Actually, I was refereeing their day-long fight, but that doesn’t sound as sweet.)  Then the refreshing honesty swept through the room.  Ladybug came over to me, and laid across my lap.  With the sweetest little eyes, she looked up an me and said:

“Daddy, you need a bath.”
“What?  Why do I need a bath?”
“Because you stink.  Blech.”

It was funny, but probably very true.  When I eventually bathed and got out of the shower, she proudly let me know that her opinion of me was unshaken.

“Go take another bath.  You stink some more.”

Long, long ago, I used my deep, intellectual skills to reflect upon a walk along the beach that I had with my oldest daughter.  Since then, she and I have walked numerous paths and had many adventures.  Back in November, Kelley and I took the girls back to Dauset Trails, one of their favorite hiking spots.  For the fun of it, I carried along my GPS to see how far we traveled.  As my brain tends to do, I forgot all about doing this.  Until today.

I plugged my watch into my computer to see where I have run recently and to analyze the statistics of my runs.  As I was going through the data, I came across the map of the Dauset Trails adventure.  It took me 15 minutes to figure out what in the world was going on.  I should have known by the shape of it that it involved me following a couple of Little Misses around.  It almost looks like one of those old cartoons from Family Circus.

For those who see this feed on facebook, you may already know about Virus Ham.  For the other 1.4 of my readers that see the blog, I will spin you a tale of sickness and family.  Grab the edge of your desk because you may just fall out of your seat.  It’s that riveting.  Or maybe it’s long enough to put you to sleep.  Either way…

We traveled around a bit during the holidays.  One of the fun events for my wife’s side of the family was jammed into the visit that we had with my parents.  On Saturday, we left my parents’ house in the afternoon and drove about an hour to Kelley’s uncle’s house.  When we arrived, we greeted her aunt, greeted a few other party guests, and then released our girls to run about with Kelley’s wonderfully-sweet cousin.  After a little while, I noticed that her other two cousins weren’t around.  I used my keen communication skills to ask “Hey, where are the other two?” The response started a wave of amazingly-awkward, hushed conversations around the house.

“They’re sick.”

Apparently both had come down with a stomach bug earlier in the day.  Oh great.  There’s a stomach bug going around.  But at least the sick ones were quarantined.  Right?  About 15 minutes later, Kelley’s uncle got sick.  The same uncle that we all shook hands with and had been talking to earlier.  Oh boy.  Her aunt had spent all afternoon preparing a wonderful spread.  What should we do?

While I was piling my plate high with food, I reasoned to everyone that if we were going to get the virus, we probably already had it.  Kelley noted that having a stomach virus would help negate some of the bad eating that we had been doing.  While there was a slight uneasiness during the meal, I think that most of the family understood that we were all doomed.  Kelley’s dad noted that it would be better to be sick on a full stomach so that we didn’t get the dry heaves.  I was instructed by my wife that I should not compliment her aunt by saying “This food is excellent.  You can’t even taste the virus!”  (She doesn’t ever let me have any fun.)

We returned to my parents’ house for another night of sleep.  The next day, we were still fine and were rationalizing that maybe we were OK after all.  I even helped prepare some of the ham for lunch.  And then we got a call.  Kelley’s aunt had gotten sick after we left.  The same aunt that prepared all the food.  We’ve got everything that she’s got.  Like any good son would do, I informed my parents of the change in situation.  My dad had the nerve to accuse me that I was making it all up just so I could take home some of my mom’s ham.  I told him that it was all true and that it was up to him if he ate the Virus Ham* or not.  I also informed my mom that I would be more than willing to remove the offending food from her house.  Because I’m a good son.  Since I got my approach to food from my dad I knew that he wasn’t going to give up on it that easy.  So, for lunch we all ate virus ham.

I am happy to report that it has been more that 48 hours since we ate with the sick ones and we have shown no signs of sickness.  After hearing more from Kelley’s family, it’s starting to sound like they had some bad food the day before we arrived.  Yay food poisoning!  I’m also happy to report that I have a pile of Virus Ham that my mom sent home with me.  And no, you can’t have any.  Get your own sickness-laden meat.

*Virus Ham is a trademarked name and can only be used with the expressed, written consent of me.  Or if you can use it to get a laugh.  Or if you’re bored and need a conversation starter.  Or if you have a sad enough life to want to use a term that I created.

Ladybug is now two-and-a-half years old.  She has had a cough for the past few days which has required some parental assistance during the middle of the night and early morning hours.  This morning, I got up with her and rocked her for a while before she decided that she was ready to go play.  Before the sun came up, we sat in the den playing with some toys on the floor.  It was in this tender moment that she let me know how much she appreciated my sacrifice.

Ladybug: “Daddy” (she says this with a grin and the sweetest little eyes)
Me: “Yes, dear?”
Ladybug: “You don’t smell very well.”
Me: “I know.”
Ladybug: “You go play in the other room.”

The clock continues to move forward, but I’m not ready for the date that is circled on next year’s calendar.  Kelley and I are having to make decisions now about kindergarten for Butterfly for the upcoming summer.  The toughest part of the decision making process is that no matter what we choose, my daughter will be in the hands of someone else for large chunks of her day.  And that’s tough.

Kelley recently penned some thoughts regarding our school choices.  She and I grew up as products of public school systems and show few negative effects from the process.  (Doctors indicate that my issues are due more to my adverse personality.)  However, in our current location, the public school system has some deep, inherent problems.  Granted, the elementary schools receive rave reviews, but the middle and high schools have as many controversies as they do graduates.  With things in the shape that they are in now, there’s no way I’ll send my daughter to the public middle or high school.  Partly because of the system and partly because I’m over-protective.  Our choice then comes to either choose one of the many private schools in the area or to move into a different school district.  Both of these have their pros and cons.  And, since we’re fine with the local elementary school, this is a decision that can wait for another 5 years.  Which seems like an eternity until I stop to consider that our little cooing baby just turned five years old.  Wow…it’s not that far from here.

Over these past five years, we have loved Butterfly, babied her, taught her, disciplined her, marveled at her, and watched her grow into the wonderful young girl that she is now.  It is a very difficult reality to face that someone else will be handling a part of these duties for the next couple of decades.  We’ll evaluate and make the best decision for kindergarten.  Then we’ll look at schools and decide what is best for elementary and eventually middle and high.  I am confident that we’ll make the right decision regarding our girls and their school.  It most certainly won’t be an easy one, though.  It’s tough to give them wings.