Posts

Posted on

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”
Posted on

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”

Posted on

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!

Posted on

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”

Posted on

New blog, old thoughts

I’m reboot­ing my blog, but not with­out import­ing some old posts from an old blog of mine that I let rot for years.  That one was pret­ty much 100% spir­i­tu­al­i­ty based, but I intend for this one to be more gen­er­al.  I expect that this is going to turn into a Dad blog before long.

Can’t wait to start post­ing stuff!

 

Posted on

I used to think…

I used to think that I should do any­thing to get what I want.  I fought, screamed, bit, kicked, what­ev­er it took.  I used to think that was a good thing; that it made me strong.  Logically, this does­n’t make any sense.  Emotionally, this atti­tude is drain­ing.  Physically, it is dan­ger­ous.  Socially, it is destruc­tive.  Personally, it has crushed my self worth.

Continue read­ing “I used to think…”

Posted on

What is the Trinity, anyway?

I’ve always had prob­lems under­stand­ing the con­cept of the Trinity.  From the peo­ple I’ve talked to, it seems to me that I’m not the only one.  One God, but three parts?  Doesn’t make sense at first, and even after it does, it’s hard to fig­ure out the divi­sion between the three.  (Perhaps there is no real divi­sion, but if that’s the case, why do we try to do it any­way?) Continue read­ing “What is the Trinity, anyway?”