kids birthday partys can be awkward

sometimes it's hard to celebrate something. take for example when your kids have a birthday party and you invite dad's, step dad's, moms, and step moms to spend some quality time with one another to celebrate their grandkids' milestones. Some choose to sidestep the invitation and celebrate seperately. Which sometimes leads to multiple celebrations for the same event, which leads to frustration and anxiety when it comes to trying to coordinate such events. This must be a pretty common occurrence in today's society. the concept of family has definitely changed in the last few decades.

I suppose it's not as awkward anymore as it used to be when I was younger to have these groups together. Time of course heals most wounds. But you can still feel a little unease in the room during those frequent silences that are quickly quelched with some banal banter. It's especially fun when you capture it on video and watch it later. It never seems as awkward when watching the playback as it was in reality. or perhaps it's just me that feels it? maybe I have a warped perception of the reality or am I overly sensitive? nah, I don't think so.

Parenting Tips-Be Lazy

"Words of wisdom: 'How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone' "

Being a parent is exhausting. Kids have a never ending amount of energy. Before I had kids I used to be out almost every night with friends whooping it up. Now when 9:00 rolls around and we finally get the kids to bed, I barely have enough energy to lift a beer.

I'm constantly trying to find easier ways to parent. It can't really be this hard can it? Is this how our grandparents did it? I don't think so. I don't think they freaked out about every little detail of the day. Nowadays we have to worry about lead paint, cutting up hot dogs and grapes (don't want to choke), car seats (I hate car seats, my mom used to just throw me in the front seat of the Duster and hope for the best), getting into a good pre-school, home schooling (what? now I have to educate them at home because the school system in this country sucks?). We are constantly on the go and it's so hard to relax because you are constantly bombarded with another reason to worry.

Well I came across a brilliant parenting technique that is just my style-BE LAZY! LEAVE THEM ALONE! What do you mean be lazy? That's crazy, madness. That goes against anything and everything we are taught today in America about being a parent. We are told we need to constantly monitor every move our children make and be sure they are constantly entertained and stimulated. Well guess what, that is a load of crap. Well at least according to this article which I think is a stroke of genius. The theory is if you leave your children alone, they will learn to entertain themselves. It will also give you more time to strengthen the bond between the parents if they aren't constantly doting over every move their kids make. Wow, such a simple concept, why didn't I think of that? I could've been sitting on my ass this whole time and my kids would've been better off for it and I'd have a better relationship. The path of least resistance could be the answer.

Well I thought this was just a fantastic idea, so I decided to give it a try. I'm not sure how long it will take for this technique to have an effect, it doesn't seem to be working very well yet. But I'm willing to try as long as it takes. If there's one thing I'm good at it's sitting on my ass. It's actually one of my favorite things to do, so this will work out perfect. Almost all last night I tried to let my kids play on their own to see what would happen. Most of the night was spent with them bouncing on my lap saying "daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy" (that goes on for about 15 minutes) "come play with us" "we're bored" "read me a book daddy" "let me watch a movie daddy" Then my son started doing swan dives into my lap to make sure he was getting my attention while my daughter pulled Anna's hair. After this went on for a while, they actually did start to play by themselves. So maybe this whole lazy thing is going to work. Please God, let the lazy thing work.

Maybe dreams do come true! Happy parenting!
peace:-)

relativity of time as a father

it's so crazy how time seems to speed up every year. Einstein was quoted as saying "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."

This can definitely be said about being a father too. Since I've had kids, time seems to be moving at full throttle. You're constantly on the move with no time to really relax and realize how much time has past. It's nice to sit back once in a while and reflect on life and slow it down a little. As a parent you really start to appreciate these rare moments. And in these moments of reflection, time tends to move even faster. How unfortunate that once you really start to live life to the fullest it passes by that much faster. Live in the present, enjoy your time on this earth. It seems to be both a gift and a tragedy all rolled into one.

If only we knew why we were here. Of course that is the big question, but too deep for this conversation. I've been reading a great book that my sister bought me for Christmas entitled A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. The author does a great job of describing complex physics and astronomy in a very romantic way that appeals to a layman like me. Whenever I read about the universe and it's creation and space/time it really starts to make me wonder about our place in the universe and how amazing our situation is and how lucky we are to be here. We seem to just be a big, unlikely, cosmic accident that was waiting to happen. "To be here now, alive in the twenty-first century and smart enough to know it, you also had to be the beneficiary of an extraordinary string of biological good fortune. Survival on earth is a surprisingly tricky business. Of the billions and billions of species of living things that have existed since the dawn of time, most-99.99%-are no longer around. Life on earth, you see, is not only brief but dismayingly tenuous. It is a curious feature of our existence that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it." "Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the earth's mountains and rivers, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enought to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result, eventually, asoundingly, and all too briefly,-in you. "

Apparently we are a miracle!