parenting is hard work

it was about a month ago that nothing i did could get jack to do what i wanted. i was on the edge and i needed to be reasoned with. patrick was a big help like always. he gave me time to be alone and collect myself. since then, i promised myself that i needed to change my behavior if i wanted jack's behavior to improve.

i can't argue that being a working mom is harder than being a stay at home mom or vice versa. being a mom is the most challenging work either way. although there are times that i give into the short term fixes, today i am reenergized to put in long hours to be the best mom i can. at work we talk about taking as much time with each customer interaction and not simply passing them on as quickly as possible. at home, i try to do the same thing with jack (yes, harder to do sometimes). for example, when jack has something to say, i let him know that it is important to me to understand him and let him know that i care about what he's talking about. i've learned to give him choices, ones that i can live with either of his decisions. i am in the middle of reading 4 parenting books. two of them are pretty extreme in views, which i think is great. for example, one book believes in time outs and one does not.

after reading a bit, i am very interested in how to apply the techniques. for the last month or so, jack has been wanting me to do EVERYTHING, not daddy. although patrick doesn't seem to be hurt by his words and actions, he does want me to have a break. so the challenge now is to get jack to make choices that involve help from daddy and not mommy.

parenting is not intuitive and it's okay to read as much as you can. and it's ok to take a break, sometimes it is mandatory.

getting bigger

26 weeks

This week our baby girl's ears are more developed and highly sensitive. i have noticed a lot more movement probably because she can hear jack's laughter and the dogs barks and cried. whenever i feel the baby, she stops moving as soon as jack or patrick try to feel her. jack's going to think it's pretty cool.

she's continuing to put on baby fat and now probably weighs about a pound and two-thirds and "measures the size of (an English hothouse cucumber) from head to heel." love the food reference.

23 weeks

i am feeling pretty good this week. even though i felt little tickles a month ago, it is now that i am able to feel the jabs of our baby girl. in a few weeks jack and patrick will be able to feel it too! this last week i got my first cold. during the last pregnancy i got sick A LOT. so i guess i can't complain too much about a week long cold. i am trying to take care of myself with xtra sleep, lots of water and intervals on the treadmill.

things that i've been craving: fruit, salad and of course pastry!

jack told all the kids at school that his baby sister is coming. it is going to be a magical day when the two meet and a day i won't forget like the day i met jack.

Titan Figure

I make a point to have my son watch me throw snowballs over our house. I assume in five to ten years he will remember tonight as the day his father launched truck sized snow boulders into the stratosphere.

my 33rd birthday

i love this family shot. it tells a lot about who we all are!

Doubling Down on Fatherhood

So we're going to do this again. I guess I was just that good the first time, it's a hard argument to against the proverbial 'why not?'.

A little girl! I'm intrigued by this sudden crystallization of our family thumbnail. Instead of the rock tumbler that is a male dominated clan like the one I experienced, we will have a more neopolitan family of poise and parity. And while I can name a handful of new parents with an elder son and junior daughter, we have none of reasonable comparison in either of our families.

With Jack it has been a rather simple plug and play strategy for me, as I am also a first born son. Basically I can provide and apportion with little more than intuition and timing. With a daughter ... I hesitate to say the same attitude is insufficient, but it's a road never traveled. A child tends to bond to the opposite sex parent, what can I utilize from that arrangement?

It was a bit of a surprise to thumb through a variety of bookstores when I was looking for books for dads about raising daughters. There appears to be a veritable library of information on raising sons, even a section on raising geeks, but fathers and daughters? I found three on my initial inspection.

The first one was written by a Dr. Meg Meeker, M.D., which initially drew me in, as I was expecting a tome steeped in rational thought and chock full of scientific studies. What I got was a Catholic conservative telling me unless I was a huge asshole my daughter would contract a STD by age 12, and that would make her RUINED FOREVER. Essentially she preached there was no such thing as being too overprotective, that my daughter will only think I love her if I'm a dark menacing shadow in her social world and that smoking is a better habit than sex, a topic the woman seemed obsessed with. Indeed, there seemed to be almost nothing in the book about years zero through twelve, it just warped ahead where every third page was a sobby anecdote about one of her patients blaming her herpes on daddy not cleaning his guns on the porch when boys came around.

The other books seemed better, but I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that we have exceptional parenting potential and coupled with the lessons we learned with Jack, I'm as well prepared as I can be.

Hey, I've got two girl dogs, that's at least worth the benefit of the doubt.

Hope she likes kibble.