Category Archives: daughter

A Place For

Posted on November 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

Gifts from your kids.  A varied assortment of homemade, pieced together, and stuff they had under their beds. I’ve gotten homemade cards and macaroni jewelry, original pieces of artwork, glow sticks, a painted tree bark statue and things they grabbed from their closet. Things their mother and I bought for them to have (Which makes them very adorable and loving “regifters”, but “regifters” none the less).  My girls will then gift wrap whatever it is they have with more tape than a UPS package and deliver to me with a smile. I don’t really have a huge need for a Ziti bracelet, the glow stick will eventually run out of glow and I can’t keep every piece of artwork unless I’d like to end up on an episode of Hoarders. But it is nice to know that my children are as excited to give as they are when they receive and their excitement, outlined in their eyes, as I slice through the four rolls of tape used to wrap

the oversized pencil with a troll eraser is enough to make me hold on to the gifts as long as I can, even if I can’t find a place for an American Girl doll bottle (although you should see my cubicle at work).

This year for my birthday my oldest, Hannah, very proudly, gave me a bookmarker for my birthday.

The bookmarker is of our dog, Penny.  The wooden tongue depressor that makes up the body is as long as most books.  At the end of it, there is a Play-doh sculpture of Penny’s head.  The yellow Play-doh of the head is an oblong oval. To either side of the oval are Penny’s ears. One ear is missing its tip and the other ear is all but gone. It’s like the Venus De Milo of Play-doh dog sculptures.  In the middle of the head is a set of google eyes as well as an extra piece of Play-doh, colored with red marker, for the nose.  The entire head is stippled with black and brown marker.  Just underneath the head, on the wooden depressor, colored with marker, is what can only be Penny’s collar.

All around the sculpture there is evidence of where Hannah’s fingers kneaded the Play-doh together. Indents at the ears where her little fingers pressed pieces of Play-doh together. The bookmarker is heavy like the weighted arm on a metronome.  If I had trim work to do in the house, it may be the first thing I grab for the finishing nails.  Because of its weight, every time I open my book, Penny tumbles backward from its marked pages and on to the floor.  The size and weight make it tough to keep it in the back of the book while I’m reading too for fear it falls out.

I curse every time the damn thing hits the floor.  I think just how overly decorative a bookmarker it is (I’m used to either folding the corner of the page or using random slips of paper to mark pages).  Penny’s google eyes seem to look at me every time I grab my book.  I question whether or not I have a place for a book marker like this in my book or if I should go back to the gas receipt I was using.

Then I look at Penny again and I see the work my daughter put in to my present. I see her excited face when she gave it to me.  I see her stunned happiness, “He’s using it, it must mean he really likes it”, when she sees Penny’s head sticking out of the top of my book.  I see my little girl, who thought of her dad on his birthday.  So, just like the Ziti bracelets, glow sticks, original artwork on construction paper, and tree bark statue, I see a book marker that, regardless of whether or not I have a book to use it in, you can be sure I’m going to have a place for.

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Posted in daughter, gifts, kids

Riding the Rusted Bike

Posted on November 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

Thinking before we act.  Sometimes we forget.  We are known to volunteer for things that, at the moment, seem like a good idea.  When I was a teenager, my friends and I decided to use an old rusted bike to ride onto an old wooden door we fashioned in to a ramp in to a lake.  I have been known to blindly ‘okay’ requests from the kids only to find out they are painting the kitchen…with pudding.  Lots of times our rush to action doesn’t work out too well.  As if I needed to say it, the wooden door ramp turned out to be not so successful.  But sometimes, we can be pleasantly surprised by our impulse to act.  Sometimes we have to ride that rusted bike off the wooden door.

This fall I volunteered to help coach my 8-year-old daughter’s U9 Girl’s Soccer Team.  The head coach, a personal friend of mine, before the beginning of the season had sent a team wide plea for help email to the parents.  I think when he decided to coach he never thought about needed help until he realized he would be coaching 12 eight year old girls.  I responded to his plea that of course if he needed help, I would help.  Not only was my daughter on his team but he was my friend.  The gravity of my act of volunteerism didn’t sink in until after I hit the ‘SEND’ key. I was going to help coach 12 eight year old girls learn the game of soccer?

I really hadn’t thought this one through.  I had already been sucked in to coaching my five-year old daughter’s soccer team (which was more fun than instruction). Now I had committed to three more days a week to a sport I am not shy to admit I know very little about. There were higher expectations at this level.  The girls would need to learn more than ‘don’t use your hands’ and ‘kick it that way’ like my U6 team.

But, like when I rode the rusted bike off the wooden door, I took the leap.  I figured I could just follow my friend’s instructions and tag along with the girls.  So every Tuesday and Thursday, my two girls (the 5-year-old came too) and I grabbed our soccer balls and headed to practice.  On more than one occasion, I set up the cones the wrong way for drills.  I told the girls the wrong way to kick the ball, had to be taught what is and what is not offsides, and had the same lost look on my face as the girls did when our coach explained how to Cruyff.  Despite all of that, every Tuesday and Thursday, my kids and I grabbed our soccer balls and headed to practice.

Practice got easier for me.  I got the hang of the drills (not so much the cone placement though).  I even started to run some of those drills I was asking about earlier in the year and would eventually demonstrate the Cruyff myself.  Things were good. I was having fun and enjoying my time with the team.  So much so, regardless of how rushed we all felt getting home from work, eating dinner, and doing homework before practice, we all got excited every Tuesday and Thursday when we grabbed our soccer balls and headed to practice.

Three quarters of the way through the season, coach asked me if I would be alright running every practice.  He had been asked to coach the boy’s team at his school.  He was going to change the days of practice to accommodate the extra responsibility but I liked our Tuesdays and Thursdays and so, without giving it a thought, I agreed to handle practices.  The gravity of this decision didn’t hit me until the first Tuesday when my daughters and I grabbed our soccer balls for practice. Again, I rode the rusty bike off the door.

The funny thing was, even though I hadn’t given much thought to the new responsibility I had agreed to, I still got excited and was totally invested every Tuesday and Thursday to go to practice.  So much so, one Thursday I had forgotten to pack my practice clothing.  With no time to get from the babysitters to my house to change and back in time to start, I went to practice in my suit (I’m still trying to clean the dirt off of my shoes).

Our season just got over this past weekend.  We had our pizza party.  We handed out trophies.  We hugged the girls.  We thanked the parents.  On the way home, my oldest admired her trophy and her little sister unsuccessfully jockeyed for position to grab hold of the trophy.  I smiled. We all made it through those practices till the end of the season.  Me.  The girls.  Their parents.  My shoes. It was a joy for me to go to practice and be apart of our team.  We laughed, we learned though I’m still a little fuzzy on offsides), and we all had fun, more fun than I had ever thought I would when I agreed to ride the rusted bike off of the wooden door this season.

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Posted in daughter, Emma, Hannah

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Second Punch

Posted on July 12, 2010 | Leave a comment
Taking a punch hurts. It can catch you off guard. Knock the wind out of you. Gets you seeing stars. The first time you get punched can really hurt.
The second time you take a punch you’re maybe a little more ready for it. It still hurts but maybe you braced yourself a little more. The wind isn’t as knocked out of your sails. The stars don’t sparkle quite the way they did the first time. The point I’m trying to get to is kids can be a lot like taking a punch (if this doesn’t lock my nomination for Father of the Year, I don’t know what will).
The first kid is a punch to the head. You’re dazed. The stars are circling your eyes. You smell as bad as they do and you’re exhausted. It took you 6 months to figure out when a cry means they’re hungry and when it means they’re dirty. Its amazing, knowing how tiring, expensive, and time consuming that it can be, we still continue having babies.
And yet, July 19th, 2005 this is exactly what my wife and I did (let me clarify what we did, happened in November, the results of that doing came in July). Emma Jo came to us after forty minutes of pushing and to much less fanfare as her older sister did three years earlier (speaking as a 2nd born, this is an affliction affecting all 2nd borns, the excitement is never as palpable as it was with the 1st).  The usual suspects were of course there, grandmothers and grandfathers. Sibling, aunts and uncle, and cousins lined the room for the chance to see our new baby, but gone were the vuvuzelas, friends of friends, co-workers, and the janitor someone grabbed to have see the baby.
Like getting ready to take that second punch, we all were a little more ready the second time around. I didn’t stay in the hospital this time because we had a three year old at home who thankfully did not know how to do much more than turn on the television and not choke on Cheerios that I had to take care of (thank you Hannah). Alicia had Emma in the room with her at night instead of in the nursery. We aced the tests given to us by the nurses to prove our competence before taking her home (and I almost grabbed that damn pacifier this time too). And when we got her home, it was done quietly.
It was easier to wrangle in her little arms and legs while we gave her a bath (kids…surprisingly agile while in their little fold up tub). Diaper changing was easier (that is it was easier after I remembered how to do it…what can I say, it had been a while, I forgot). We picked up on the meaning to her cries sooner even though all were deafening. We had her in a crib within 2 months (and I had the distinct pleasure of ridding our room of that cursed vibrating bassinet). We were still exhausted and irritable but our smell didn’t quite reek of sour formula and dirty diapers like it did with Hannah. All the things three years before we had struggled to understand or figure out we had a better grasp on for that second punch, for our Emma.

That was 5, what seems like very short, years ago. Since that time, I have had the pleasure of watching my little girl grow up beyond anything I could have imagined. I’ve seen her blossom in to a vibrant, loving, spastic, fun, bright, couch jumping big girl. Her little arms are capable of engulfing me with every hug. Her smile is infectious. The faces she makes can get me laughing even when I want to yell.  She is my Emma.
It might well be impossible, as a parent, to think we will have all the answers to all the questions and situations are kids will raise but experience can be a great teacher. Our first kid knocked us silly. It took a while before my wife or I stopped seeing stars. And after that first time we could have stopped altogether but I am so happy and so thankful, 5 years ago, I took that second punch.

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Posted in Alicia, daughter, Emma, punch