Over the past year, there’s been plenty of change in my life, both professionally and personally, that has contributed to me ending up in a place that I’m not overly comfortable with, proud of or even aware of (at times). I’ve shifted positions within my career, which has caused an entirely unforeseen tsunami of chaos. Suddenly I’m forgetful, distracted, scatterbrained. And while plenty of folks see these are extensions of their normal personality, to me they are regretful expressions of my time and attention being stretched thin, and my inability to control professional stress that is causing fractures in an otherwise composed personality. My entire life I’ve been “together,” and lately I feel as if things are quickly disintegrating. I keep searching for balance, for the middle ground that’s safe, but every time I feel like I’m making progress the variables change again.

I’m at a complete loss as to how fathers–or parents in general, but I can only speak from a father’s perspective–are able to maintain a balance of Mr. Professional (dedicated, trustworthy and loyal employee) with Dad (engaged parent able to spend time and nurture his children’s growth) and Husband (attentive, supportive teammate). I know the stakes. I am aware of what’s required. I know that I’m more than competent at succeeding at each role’s requirements. What I’m continually stumped at is how to fit it all in, how to keep all the proverbial juggling balls in the air concurrently.

Everything comes with a tradeoff, an opportunity cost. I get that. I’m willing to sacrifice bettering my own health and forgo an hour workout in favor of taking 60 minutes to fix healthy, nutritious dinners for my wife and children. But there aren’t enough hours in the day to keep the kitchen at a socially acceptable level of cleanliness, walk or groom the dog, mown the lawn, pay some bills and file receipts, prepare things for the next day and fix Liam’s toy that broke. A normal day in our household sees 90 minutes where we are all together, 90 minutes of frenetic movement, cleaning, crying jags, obnoxious musical baby toys blaring, appliances failing. And after that hour and a half when everything must occur, the clock resets and we start all over.

I desperately wish I could sit down and teach Liam familiarity with the piano more often than once every two months. I wish I could sit and draw with him several times a week, as he’s showing true talent. I’m fearful of good weather returning to Kentucky as it will undoubtedly bring about pleas for a backyard playmate each night…not because I don’t want to, but because essential, operational things what will be neglected in lieu of it. Maybe at the end of the day I’m simply bitter that I have to choose between my family and everything else. I know I’m not alone, and I know I’m lucky that I only have one job to work to support my family instead of two or three like many Americans.

This won’t be solved magically, or in an unexpected epiphany in the wee hours of the morning. I can only hope that my current rate of failure at balancing work and family will eventually course-correct itself after umpteenth times of sucking. Perhaps in five years I’ll have a better handle on how to contain the stress and chaos of work, the accountability to my employees and to my coworkers, as well as my familial obligations, desires and responsibilities.

I want nothing more than to be a good father. I just need more time to get there.

Six Months

This won’t be the typical, overwrought “where has the time gone?” post. Or maybe it will, because honestly I’m not sure how the ever-constant march of time seems to increase in velocity with every passing year. When I was younger, hearing adults grumble about how quickly times moves seemed like a generic conversational segue, something all big people could agree upon, like the weather or the sorry state of the local sports team. I suppose it’s just that I’m too wrapped up in career and family life to notice just how quickly this train is moving.

Six months ago, our family dynamic shifted dramatically. Liam never exhibited the expected whiplash, toddlerish behavior rooted in jealousy or frustration. It takes quite a bit to make me lose my words, but watching Liam come home from daycare at night and kiss his baby brother on the cheek, softly asking how his day was makes me mute. He’s the perfect big brother, dealing with constant nagging from us to be quiet or be more gentle. And Rory could not be more smitten with his older brother. All else ceases to exist when Liam wanders (or thunders) into the room. Truly, Liam could read the phonebook to Rory and he would just laugh and giggle and coo. I pray that this bond that seems so strong now will stand the test of time (and adolescence).

Bathtime buddies

So as the milestones tick by, first teeth, rolling over, first solid foods, it all feels so familiar, yet simultaneously so distinctly different. I still struggle with just how different the experiences of raising two kids can be. Shared genetic data, yet so fundamentally unique in demeanor and personality. It goes to show just how little I understand in this world.

I’m confident that in July I’ll have the same deer in headlight sentiments, confused at how he’s already turning one. I expect that. I just hope that I’m able to hold on to even a few of the yet uncreated memories between now and then.

That couch, my bed, was as uncomfortable as it is ugly.

The Tuesday before last, we added a fourth member to our little family. Rory Oliver Faust was brought into the world (with a shocking amount of hair for a Faust male), and a tongue wanting to taste food less than five minutes after birth. He’s the spitting image of his older brother, but with this mother’s complexion.

After several sleepless nights in the hospital remembering just how dizzying it all is, we bumbled our way home in record heat and collapsed in an exhausted heap on the couch. The entire experience thus far has been the complete opposite to our inaugural voyage into parenthood, with everything going smoothly. Eerily so. But don’t get me wrong, there is no room for complaint here. It’s just amazing how far a little experience will get you.

We’ve had our bumps and 2am arguments. We’ve had newborn meltdowns and toddler tantrums. But as a family unit, it just feels right. It feels complete. And most importantly, it feels much less intimidating and overwhelming.

Even after The Wife™ and I are long gone, they will still have one another.

On Sunday, while The Wife™ caught up on some much-deserved sleep, Liam sat on the couch with me to help feed Rory. Jonas threw himself dramatically at our feet, never wanting to be left out of anything. As we sat there in the early dawn sunlight, Liam crawled into my lap to get closer. He’s fascinated with Rory, the concept of being a baby and not knowing how to do things. He loves his little brother far more than I ever expected he would. And as he sat snuggled in my right arm, holding Rory’s bottle so that the little one could eat, he looked up and me and said in all earnestness, ” Daddy, when Rory gets bigger I’m going to show him how to watch a movie, and ride bikes outside, and play soccer!” It touched my heart. Instead of being the expected jealous, angry oldest sibling he is in love with his role as helping hand and big brother. Instead of rejecting the newest member of our family and attempting to earn love and attention from otherwise distracted parents, he is embracing him.  I feel an overall sense of peace in him–even if that doesn’t quite make sense. He has taken everything in perfect stride.

I know the newfound love will fade a bit with Liam, especially once Rory is old enough to steal toys or call him names or any of the other annoying things that little brothers do. But it gives me tremendous hope knowing that my sons might just grow up to be friends with one another, that they might be good people who focus less on what it’s cost them and more on what they’ve gained. Even after The Wife™ and I are long gone, they will still have one another. That counts for a lot.

We picked Liam up from daycare on Tuesday as a foursome for the first time. Upon learning that Rory was in the backseat riding next to him, Liam visibily cheered, jumping up and down. He was overcome with joy that he and Rory were going to ride together in the back of the car. And as we drove away towards home, Liam proclaimed, “Now we’re a square mommy! We make a square now!”

Yes, we do.

I woke in a panic last night, bolting upright and gasping in a way that is entirely uncharacteristic of me. The burning feeling of acid in my stomach–having become my constant companion these past few weeks–churned and kept me blearily awake for awhile. I had been dreaming of something that I couldn’t quite pin down, but really I know it was the familiar feeling of falling that had jolted me out of sleep. I’m not ready for this.

In a bit more than 24 hours from now we’ll be upping our baby quotient by one. Our small unit of three will now be four and the sleepless nights spent rocking and soothing will return, and the zombie-like days of panicking over college funds and daycare costs will set in. I’m really not ready for this.

Do most parents come apart this much before the arrival of their second? Gone is the giddiness and anticipation of the unexpected that accompanied Liam’s birth. Knowing what’s coming (and when it’s coming) this time is killing me. This is the split second after you lose control of the steering wheel, before you hit the guard rail, when you’re floating through space and time magically slows to a crawl. Having time to contemplate things makes it infinitesimally worse. Am I ready for this?

When Liam was a baby, with every new developmental milestone he would acquire it and file it away. He learned how to roll over and having mastered it, never did it much after that unless it was purposeful. I realize now that he’s like me. I bumbled my way through the rough parts of early fatherhood, figuring out just enough to keep things going and now I see that I packed all of these emotions and mindset away in my mental attic since Liam has graduated to toddlerhood. Dusting off these feelings is terrifying because I forgot just how scared I was when I first became a father, the apprehension of failure looming over my head. I didn’t think I was ready then, but things were fine in the end.

Last week after I had picked Liam up from daycare he was sitting at the table at home and announced, “When I grow up I’m going to cook food.” Stunned, I looked at him and asked if they had been talking about jobs at ’school’ and he said yes. The Wife™ chimed in and asked if he meant that he would be a chef and he said, “yea, I’ll cook food like Daddy does.” It was then when I realized just how much impact you have on your children, that they watch what you do for them even when you think that they don’t. The entire gravity of fatherhood came rushing in to smack me in the face, reminding me just how important this fatherhood thing is.

I’m ready for this.

Here, Daddy. I got you this stick.

“I’m going to tell YOU a story!”

“Alright,” I said as we lay on the bed, “hit me with it.”

“Once ‘pon a time, land farfar ‘way there was a little boy named DADDY!”

“We’re off to a good start,” I encouraged. “Tell me more.”

“Daddy goes to work, comes home, goes to sleep, goes to work, goes to sleep…”

“This has to be the worst protagonist in literary history. But your insight into the main character is chillingly accurate. Five stars.”

Three years ago today I started down a path of self-realization that I had no clue I was traveling on. Despite all the cliched stories and advice passed along pre- and post-fatherhood, I never really understood it until now: Having a child is the closest thing to having your life videotaped and played back in real time. It’s life’s mirror that shows you every sad, hilarious, puzzling and embarrassing thing about yourself. Suddenly you realize you have a short fuse when you always thought you were even-tempered. Magically you start becoming aware of how much you curse or swat at marauding, food-stealing dogs. You watch as your own verbal tics and go-to conversational phrases become amplified in the mouth of a toddler. And you cringe when you realize they pick up on your bad habits, like fidgeting with fingernails or borderline OCD patterns. You realize that you’re imparting every small, minute detail of your personality to this little person without realizing it. It is simultaneously terrifying and awe-inspiring. But mostly terrifying.

In the past 12 months, Liam has become a full-fledged little person. While last year he was just starting to talk, now he (at times) won’t stop. He reads books to himself out-loud (having memorized the words), rambles on about every detail of his daily routine, sings Christmas carols to himself, and reprimands Jonas for barking too much. He wrote his name this week (granted backwards and upside down) and counts to 30. If you had told me this time last year that in a year’s time he would be standing up to go to the bathroom or asking if the people standing outside a restaurant are “customers” I would have been doubtful. I consistently underestimate the exponential growth of developmental skills and acquisition of knowledge that childhood seems to bring. I will never cease to be truly blown away by this.

As the past 12 months have rolled on and we’ve had our ups and downs, I’d have to say that all in all, Two wasn’t that terrible. We’ve learned limits about ourselves with regards to patience and expectations and he has learned that independence comes with responsibility. I love my son, despite the fact that all of my flaws are reflected back to me in him. I love that every night we go outside to collect water from the rain barrel and check on the garden, and that he asks endless (if not tiring) questions about everything in an effort to understand his world, and his place in it. In essence we are mirrors of each other because of this very thing.

Next month we’re all headed into a major life change with the arrival of Baby #2. The next year will likely prove challenging for all of us as we go without any sleep adapt and grow. I hope Liam will be as excited as we are, because I know he’ll be a heckuva good big brother to this next one.

I enjoy cooking. Sure I like food, but I enjoy the act of cooking much more. That seems weird to me, but perhaps it’s just the notion of “creating something” that I find satisfying.

I didn’t start cooking until a few weeks after The Wife™ and I got married. There was a feeling of duty to be domestic, and I wanted to cook for my wife, to be a good husband. Actually, I wanted us to cook together but after the first week as things progressed I realized that wasn’t going to happen. She just didn’t have the same sense of responsibility that I do about preparing food. We’re an odd match on this topic, as I’d be fine eating the same thing every day for a month but yet feel that if you’re going to cook, do it right. She gets bored with food easily but doesn’t like to put effort in to it. Neither of us is ‘right’ in any classic sense, but it certainly keeps the ritual of Sunday morning menu creation a lively event. We’re a divided house in that regard, and likely products of how we were raised.

The excuse that “cooking takes too much time”  is a cop-out.

My wife thinks I go over the top because I insist that everything be made from scratch. Everything. She’s correct in that it takes me a long time to do things in the kitchen because of this. Most Sunday’s I’ll easily spend six or seven hours cooking food for the week for dinners and lunches, and I always have a few projects going on in the background, like curing bacon or making beer or wine. It does take up a lot of my time. The difference is that she sees it as a waste, since there is a myriad of prepared foods available or simpler dishes to make. I see it as a familial obligation to not only choose healthier ingredients (sans the junk that comes in shelf-stable processed foods), but to also impart to my kid(s) the importance of home cooking.

This morning I stumbled across an article by Michale Ruhlman essentially arguing the same thesis. While he takes aim at the “30 minute quick meal” culture, the idea is similar. The excuse that “cooking takes too much time”  is a cop-out. Saving money is a much more realistic excuse to stick with, as it is true that processed foods cost significantly less than fresh. But not having enough time to cook a decent meal even once a week like I do (we do leftovers during the week) or a few times a week is simply that: an excuse. I choose not to watch TV or become a workaholic as my tradeoff.

The point is not to be a great cook or even to make praise-worthy food. The reason I spend a large chunk of my non-working time in the kitchen is because it’s my duty as a parent to do so, to teach my kids about nutrition, to keep them healthier and to keep us around the kitchen table as a family unit. Learning how to cook is something I feel compelled to pass down. My mother taught me the ropes so that when I grew up  I wasn’t a complete idiot in the kitchen. I owe my children the same experience of learning self-sufficiency, so that they don’t feel like they have to rely on Lean Cuisine meals or fast food when they move out of the house. And since I derive some satisfaction from playing mad scientist in a lab and from learning new techniques and playing with new toys, it works.

Do I sometimes go overboard with my from-scratch mentality? Admittedly, yes. Will there be, and are there already times when it will be entirely unfeasible to cook amazing meals for a family? Undoubtedly. But if toasting and grinding my own curry powder makes the difference between someone liking a dish and being in love with good homemade food AND I have the time to do so…so be it. And like Ruhlman states, “we all have the same hours every day, and we all choose how to use them.” I know I want my kids to have memories of our family sitting around a homemade pizza with vegetables from our own garden, instead of our family going through the McDonald’s drive-thru. But maybe that’s just me.

(A small caveat, however. Liam is not entirely open to the wanderings of my own imagination. Every story must begin with “once upon a time in a land far, far away lived a little boy named Liam,” else the entire narrative is halted and corrected. I’m chalking this up to toddlerhood and trying valiantly not to be paranoid about a deep-seeded narcissism.)

When Liam was younger and his language processing skills were less acute, I confess to having lazily recycled plot lines from movies such as Back to the Future or The Lord of the Rings (changing the names of the characters, of course). I was not going to be outted, and it required less mental energy on my part at the end of a long day. Until once when I pushed a bit too far and tried to pass a rescripted version of Finding Nemo and got busted. “No Daddy. His name is Marlon!” Game over.

Since then I’ve taken to just making the stories up as I go–as my own father sometimes did–often attempting to weave in a topically-relevant plot into the story (little boys who don’t talk back to parents, first trip to the dentist, little boys who don’t pee on the floor and laugh about it, etc). The supporting characters are random, and sometimes are not even real names. Reading baby name books has my head swimming with combinations of odd names and occasionally Liam’s bedtime stories end up with character names that are bizarre. I never thought much of it until the past two weeks when it all took on a life of it’s own.

See, my other bedtime ritual with him is to ask him what he is going to dream about, and to tell him what I plan to dream about. My reported dreams are purposefully silly, and always follow the pattern of animal + random noun: “I’m going to dream about a zebra wearing suspenders, a hippo riding a bike and a spider with eight shoes on.” Liam always reciprocates with equally silly dream intentions. He really gets a kick out of it. Recently, though, my storytelling has collided with dream discussions and resulted in Liam telling me that he was going to dream about riding bikes with Narhoot and/or Bruce the Moose and Fernando, and all the hijinks they might do. It’s endless. Now we hear him most nights on the monitor laying in bed, instead of trying to fall asleep, rattling off to himself every character I’ve ever talked about, every animal + noun combination he can think of, entire children’s books (verbatim) and every family member in existence. It is a litany of names and stories that rambles on seemingly forever because the kid has a truly freakish memory. I’ve created a veritable story monster.

Maybe I should switch tactics again and recycle the plot of Anna Karenina just to see if he can hang. I’d pay good money to hear this kid say, “aaaaaand I’m gonna dream about Narhoot, and Bruce the Moose, and Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya, and…”.

“Hey daddy? I’m going to talk to Mommy now.” he said softly as he lowered his hand and began to talk directly to his mother.

“So the brown spider scared me. Aaaaaand (looking around) this should go to the beach (a bag of cough drops)…aaaaaand, uh, Scooby was scared of that king…aaaaand…”

“Wait,” I interjected, trying to stifle my laughter, “did you interrupt me just so that you could make up a story on the fly?”

“These should go to the beach!” He squealed as he held up the bag of cough drops, glossing over my reproach. And then he continued to hold his mother captive in a conversation until I got up to clear the table.

This wasn’t what I had in mind when we told him last week that it wasn’t nice to rudely interrupt two people while they are talking. I suppose he decided non-directional, conversational hi-jacking was more gentlemanly. 

A few months ago I started clearing out the spare bedroom in the back of the house. I had some wallpaper to take down and bunch of drywall repair before I had a clean surface to work with.

Since The Wife™ is incredibly indecisive was unsure of the paint direction we should go, I mocked-up the room a few different ways before we chose a color direction. From that point we found a bunch of budget-friendly furniture from Ikea that we knew wouldn’t kill us if Liam decided to go Picasso on it. Some crude copying/pasting into Photoshop and skewing for perspective and shadows, I had a comp that we could work off of just to make sure the styles matched.

I wanted to go for something that was kid-friendly, but not cheesy or cartoony. His nursery had a sort of mod/art deco thing going so I wanted something that by the time he is 7 or 8 he isn’t embarrassed of. He loves animals and books, so we stuck to bedding that was animal-based and I decided to do some artwork for the walls on the cheap that I could customize for him and swap out easily as he gets older.

Overall I’m really happy with how it turned out, given how little money we wanted to spend. He hasn’t seen it yet because we know he’ll flip out in excitement at the thought of his “big boy room.”

He’s really into spelling his name and seeing his name on things, so I added nameplates to the alphabet and letter illustrations, along with some animal silhouettes. I printed them out on a laserjet on 11×17 cardstock, and since they weren’t big enough to fill the Ikea matted frames, I mounted them on scrapbook page backgrounds from the local craft store that matched the color scheme of the room. The total cost was less than $3 (minus frames) for all three pieces.

We added a little writing/drawing table for him to color at. I grew up with a full-size drafting table in my room, and I’m hoping he embraces a love for writing or drawing or using his hands to make things.

I figure that turned sideways, it’s a great height for him now to store books and toys, and when he’s older we can turn it upright to be a normal bookcase.

All the photos are here at Flickr in a larger format. 

While it’s odd to think of Liam sleeping in a ‘real’ bed, able to get up and wander around, I know he’s ready to do it. Besides, he needs to vacate his current room before July anyway.

We’re about to start this whole “baby thing” all over again.

I guess it would help to explain that my mother-in-law is thin. Very thin. My only reason for mentioning this is because this causes her to have a thermo-ocular deficiency, or Thermostat Blindness as I like to call it. In the winter, her heat is set as a cool 80F and in the summer, well, the airconditioner doesn’t kick on until around 87F. Inside the house. And given that family gatherings could have upwards of 40+ people in the house, it’s akin to celebrating Christmas on the surface of the sun. In July. In a sweater.

My brother-in-law has been a part of the family much longer than I, and learned early on to show up for a Sunday brunch in February in sandals and a T-shirt while the rest of us were futility stripping off whatever layers that decency would permit. 

In the past few years, I have learned from my early mistakes and have taken to (albeit rudely, but strictly out of self-preservation) walking in to the house and just setting the thermostat in the complete opposite direction. If I’m lucky, it drops 3 degrees by the time we have to leave, and I get to forgo shoving that final scoop of ice cubes down my pants.

I’ve even convinced The Wife to join the battle and either run interference so that I’m not caught, or else do the deed herself. Though admittedly there are still others in the family on the dark side who remain unconvinced that this thermal dysfunction is a threat to our well-being. But our army is growing.

What is most humorous is that, since he was born, Liam has hated riding in my mother-in-law’s car. Even as an infant, he would cry and wail when his grandmother would pick him up at daycare. It was a complete mystery as to why. As soon as they arrived home he was fine, there was just something about the car. Regardless of the day, time of year or phase of the moon. Seemingly no reason at all, and for two and a half years we’ve been in the dark.

Last week while The Wife was picking him up from his grandmother’s house, Liam confessed, “I don’t like Nana’s car.” Since it had been awhile since the issue had been raised (while egos were still sore and bruised), this came as a surprise. “Why don’t you like her car?” my wife asked. “It’s too hot!” he shot back.

Mystery solved. He’s on our side. At least now I don’t have to explain to him why Nana wears a winter jacket in Florida in July without insinuating that she’s crazy.

You think I’m joking…