Category: Parenting

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Road Trip 2018 Recap

I pre­vi­ous­ly wrote that we were going on an impromp­tu road trip. I was plan­ning on doing updates here as our road trip pro­gressed. That did­n’t work out as planned. We kept so busy and I did­n’t end up pulling my lap­top out very much at all. The one mem­o­rable time that I did was to edit my wife’s first pod­cast episode! (I’m so proud of her.)

Kenieshiear and I were up the entire night before we left. We packed up for our­selves and the chil­dren, and then pack­ing up the car. We dri­ve a huge boat of an SUV, with three rows and a large car­go area (even with the third row up), and we also had a pod on the roof for more stuff. The car was packed to the brim. A crate for our dogs took up a lot of space in the back.

The plan was to get on the road around 5 am, but we were way too tired to leave that ear­ly. We end­ed up get­ting hit­ting the road clos­er to 10 or 11. The first leg of the trip was to Springfield, MO, where we had an Air BnB wait­ing for us. Total on-the-road time was just over 10 hours, but because we had to stop often, and every stop last­ed at least an hour, the dri­ve took much longer, and we arrived quite late.

The chil­dren were fan­tas­tic, though. They were so well-behaved, and they had a lot of fun lis­ten­ing to music, play­ing games and such. As it got lat­er, they all slept well in their car seats. The dogs did well, also; there were sev­er­al times that I for­got that they were even back there.

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We’re going on a road trip

Next week, we’re pack­ing up the chil­dren and the dogs. We are head­ing out on a grand adven­ture to see the win­ter.  To begin, we’re head­ing north into the plains.  We will spend a week at a house in Missouri.  I will be work­ing from there, because I don’t have any PTO left.  It is not the best sce­nario, but I will make it work!

It is the first extend­ed trip we’ll do as a fam­i­ly since my youngest was born, and it is the first ever with the dogs.  I’m still iffy about the dogs, to be hon­est.  My wife thinks it’ll work out just fine, though, and I trust her.

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Why no photos of my children?

You may have noticed that there are pho­tos of me on my posts, but there are not any of my chil­dren.  This is an inten­tion­al act on my part, and it is dif­fi­cult to accom­plish.  Most of my pho­tos these days fea­ture at least one of my children.

So, why no pic­tures?  The inter­net these days is awash with pho­tos of peo­ples’ chil­dren, and why not?  Parents are under­stand­ably proud of their lit­tle ones’ accom­plish­ments and want to show them off.  I do too, and I do post plen­ty of videos and pho­tos, but with access lim­it­ed to fam­i­ly.  I don’t even share with my friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it is right for every­body.  It is my per­son­al pref­er­ence to keep our chil­dren out of the pub­lic eye.  You may have noticed that I don’t even pub­licly post their names.  I feel that it is impor­tant that I give them the clean­est pos­si­ble slate as they grow up.  I believe post­ing their names and pho­tos pub­licly is not going to help them in the long run.

Continue read­ing “Why no pho­tos of my children?”
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Staying in a hotel with three little ones

“I was invit­ed to a con­ven­tion this week­end. It starts in 5 hours. Want to go?”

I looked up from my work com­put­er. “Um. OK. Do we have a room?” “Not yet, but I want­ed to check with you first.”

Fast-for­ward 5 and a half hours and we are pulling up to the hotel. The dri­ve was 1 hour, give or take, and it took us an hour to load up the car. Before that, we hasti­ly packed every­thing we thought we would need, but there was­n’t enough time to do that well.

We are on the sec­ond night of this trip, and this is going bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous night by far. I have learned a lot in these two days. Things to pack and things not to pack. How to get the lit­tle ones to go to sleep while shar­ing a cramped hotel room. How to keep them that way. (Hint: it involves hang­ing out in the hall­way, prefer­ably with a beer.)

Continue read­ing “Staying in a hotel with three lit­tle ones”
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The tablet experiment

Last week, we dug up the girls’ tablets from their hid­ing place.  I spent a hour adding time lim­its and lock­ing down the avail­able apps to just a few pre-screened, edu­ca­tion­al games.  They have Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablets, which I am extreme­ly hap­py with.  (I might do a post lat­er on how I have them set up.)

On the night before we revealed them, we told the girls that if they were well-behaved and went right to sleep, they would get tablet time the next day.  My wife and I both prayed real­ly hard that they would take it seri­ous­ly.  As it turned out, they did.  The next morn­ing, I hand­ed them the tablets, helped them get start­ed, and got my work done in rel­a­tive qui­et. Continue read­ing “The tablet experiment”

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Father’s Day 2018

Fathers day this year went great! Bacon on a stick at church, got two “Dad rocks!” rocks from each girl (they were in class for both ser­vices, so they got to do the project twice.) Got some stuff done around the house, and end­ed the day with a grilled rib-eye.  All in all, I felt loved and cherished.

I have been hav­ing a hard time late­ly, allow­ing the stress of my job and wor­ries about par­ent­ing to affect me more than it real­ly should.  This father’s day real­ly lift­ed my spir­its.  Praise the Lord for all the good He has placed in my life!

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Attempting to share a room

Our girls JR and E, are super cute, obe­di­ent, and sweet — most of the time.  During the day, they are great, but when bed­time comes around, it is dif­fi­cult.  They both would rather run around and play than go to bed.  I’m sure that this is total­ly nor­mal, espe­cial­ly since they are so close in age, but it can be real­ly infu­ri­at­ing at times.  My wife and I real­ly cher­ish our adult time and if they stay up late, then we don’t get so much of it.

Right now, they are in sep­a­rate rooms, across the hall from each oth­er.  At bed­time, they tend to treat their two rooms as a sin­gle play area.  So, a few nights ago, we tried some­thing new: we let them have a “sleep­over.”

We used it as an incen­tive.  If they both made hap­py plates, and if they were obe­di­ent dur­ing bath time and while get­ting ready for bed, then we’d let them share a room for the night.  We even let them have a half hour of “con­ver­sa­tion time” before lights out.  At first, it seemed like it was going to work… Continue read­ing “Attempting to share a room”