Adventures in Parenting

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Those of you who are parents already know that hardly any pursuit on earth can bring as much joy, passion, frustration, and despair as parenting. Sometimes you might get all four at the same time. Here are some of our latest adventures with Brenden and Jonathan.

The Mirror

When we moved into our house four years ago, two of the bedrooms had those 80s-style mirrored closet doors that slide open. Sometime in 2011, Brenden broke one of the mirrors on his closet door by either kicking it or rolling hard into it. Concerned that he might get cut by the glass, I completely removed and threw away the entire door assembly, leaving his closet open.

Jonathan’s room had the other set of mirrored closet doors, which we kept closed with a safety strap to keep him from tossing his clothes all over the room. Last week, Jonathan got bored one morning and decided he wanted to hide from us before we came to get him up. So he grabbed one side of the door and started pulling. Soon the brass edge piece came off, leaving the edge of the mirror exposed. Then he kept pulling, trying to open the sliding door outward like a regular swinging door. The mirror didn’t like that and shattered into several pieces held together only by the mirror backing. I still don’t see how he managed to do it without carving up his hands or stepping on glass shards. I donned the appropriate safety gear, removed the entire door assembly, and threw it away. So now neither boy has a closet door. We’ll replace them eventually…once they understand that destroying their house is generally a bad idea.

The Dog

I took the boys to the park to get some exercise. Soon after I sat down, a large, hyperactive dog ran up and jumped on me, dragging a leash behind it and chased by a little girl that probably weighed as much as the dog and obviously couldn’t control it. I shoved it away and looked around for the girl’s mother without success. Finally she showed up, and they all walked over to a nearby creekbed. I was already on edge but so far was resisting the temptation to go off on her. My boys were intrigued and watched the dog intently. Soon the dog bounded over to Brenden and started licking his face excitedly. As I hurried over to break them up, the mom tried to act friendly and gave me the typical line from such pet owners, “Oh, he’s fine, he won’t hurt anybody.”

No. You. Did. N’t.

I was nicer than I could have been and wanted to be, but I made it clear that I didn’t share her opinion and that she needed to keep her dog away from my children. She didn’t say anything but did finally grab the leash and lead the dog away.

Many pet people seem to make three bad assumptions:

  • Everyone else is an animal person, so surely everyone else loves their pets and won’t mind if those pets run around and get in everyone’s business.
  • Because their pets have never attacked anyone, they never will attack anyone.
  • Because they aren’t allergic to their pets, other people aren’t allergic to their pets, either.

Fortunately, even though Brenden is allergic to dogs, he suffered no ill effects from this incident. I didn’t shoot the dog or call the cops. I didn’t cuss out a stranger in front of my children. However, I did stand up for them. I hope that in the process, I gave the mom some things to think about.

Note to all pet owners: If your critter is threatening his kids, Papa Bear doesn’t give a bag of dog doo about your feelings or your pet.

The Battle

My children are stubborn just like me. They have no lack of self-esteem, don’t really get their feelings hurt even when they are in trouble, and tend to think their desires are the most important consideration for any given situation. For reasons I’m still unraveling, I want them to follow my directions exactly, much like a computer program or robot, and quickly get frustrated when (surprise!!) they don’t. Being far from a child care expert, my default response is to take a my-way-or-the-highway approach in which I quit listening to what they’re saying and browbeat them until they either comply or end up in time out.

That’s stupid. It’s based on the bad belief that their highest calling in life is to obey me. Please. Yes, they need to obey us, but they don’t need to be robots, either. The backbones that drive us crazy while they are kids will help them stand up for what’s right in the face of opposition when they are older.

So I’m trying to figure out a middle ground where they do what I ask by choice rather than by force. That means doing a better job of listening to them and understanding what they want rather than being too busy to consider their opinion. That means choosing my battles. That means fewer orders and more options, perhaps by setting a goal for them but letting them decide how to reach it instead of dictating exactly how I want it done.

Like everything in parenting, it’s a work in progress. Patience is not my strength, but I hope that changing my approach a bit will help it grow.

Blog Soup April 22, 2013

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Happy Earth Day! Lots going on this month. Here are some of the random thoughts running through my head:

  1. WE HAVE SARAH MCLACHLAN TICKETS FOR TONIGHT. I think I can safely say she is my favorite musician. (See, Alex? I can do it!) Ten of her albums sit in my iPhone. Jenny and I saw her once several years ago, and it was truly a spiritual experience, like we were connecting to something Other and Beautiful and The Way Things Could Be. That time we were way up high at AAC. Tonight, I think we’re near the front at the Meyerson. Breathe, Box, breathe.
  2. Like many of you, I was horrified by the fertilizer plant explosion in West, which was so powerful that two coworkers heard it from their houses in Cedar Hill. I bought kolaches from The Czech Stop several times, and I passed through the little town dozens of times driving to and from Baylor. Jenny bought her wedding dress from a little shop there. On top of our personal experiences there, most of the dead were firefighters who were fighting the initial fire when the plant exploded, and one of my best friends growing up now works as a firefighter in Axle. If he’d been on duty in the area when the fire broke out, he probably wouldn’t be here today.
  3. Apparently our friends at Westboro Baptist Church plan to protest some of the firefighters’ funerals and a big memorial service at Baylor this week. When they tried that for a funeral of a former Aggie who was killed in combat, about 600 Aggies showed up and built a human wall to keep them away. A group near West is organizing something similar, and I might go join them for the Baylor memorial. They want it to be a silent, arm-in-arm stand to protect the families rather than a shouting match. That seems like a better approach to me.
  4. Congratulations to Jenny for getting accepted to UTA Nursing School! She has been taking prereqs for six semesters now, and she finally got the official word (as if there were ever any doubt!) that she can start full-time nursing school this fall. She worked really hard to get ready to apply and did extremely well in her classes, and I have no doubt she will rock that school. The program lasts four semesters, so she expects to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) in May 2015. You better believe there will be a major graduation party.
  5. Due to sequestration, the FAA has imposed mandatory furlough days on the air traffic controllers, reducing the workforce on any given day by about 10 percent. As a result, SWA took some minor delays during the day on Sunday (a lighter than normal traffic day), but multi-hour delays yesterday evening into Los Angeles. One of my flights landed four hours late. For those who’ve been screaming for spending cuts and smaller government, was this what they had in mind? Probably not, but this is what’s happening, and it sucks.
  6. Something else that sucks is our yard! It turns out that ignoring your soil for four years, refusing to water or fertilize it, and hoping your grass won’t grow tends to produce poor soil that is more hospitable to weeds than to grass. So…I finally did something about it and bought some milorganite. It’s an organic fertilizer that adds nitrogen and lowers the soil’s pH a bit to make things less cozy for the weeds that form much of our yard. I’m trying hard to avoid poisons like Roundup and typical fertilizers that cause environmental problems (see West, TX for one example). This seems like a more effective and eco-friendly approach. We’ll how this organic stuff does.
  7. We’re also thinking about replacing the monkey grass out front with some different plants that like full shade. Texas Smartscape has a nice database of native plants that do well here without copious amounts of water.

Boston Thoughts for Nonrunners

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Boston Marathon runner Virginia Beard pauses in shock just after the bombs went off. She was half a mile from the finish line. Photo from CNN iReport.

I woke up early Monday morning to watch the Boston Marathon, mainly to watch two of my favorite distance runners, training partners Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher. They ran a great race and finished 4th and 6th, respectively. Happy for them, I ate lunch with the family and lay down for a nap.

Shortly thereafter, two bombs exploded near the Boston finish line, and distance running might never be the same.

You’ve probably read and seen many of the ugly details: at least three dead, over 130 injured. Let others discuss the terrorism angle and implications for national security. I want to share some perspective on what this means to me as a runner.

The Greatness of the Boston Marathon

Many runners view Boston as the Mecca of distance running. It’s the oldest annual marathon on the planet and probably the best known. It’s also one of the six major marathons each year that attract the world’s best runners, offer the most prestige, and award the most prize money to the winners. Even nonrunners have heard of Heartbreak Hill, the nasty climb at mile 20 that comes right about the time many runners are already hitting The Wall. Olympic runner Shalane Flanagan, a native of Massachusetts, said that if she could win Boston this year, it would be the highlight of her career. With a challenging and beautiful course, great support from the locals, and over a century of history, it’s a celebration of everything good about the sport.

You can’t just sign up for the Boston Marathon; you must qualify for it by running a very strong time in a prior event. To run Boston this year, I would have needed a time of 3 hours and 5 minutes in a previous marathon, a pace of 7:03 min/mile. At my best, I could barely hold that pace for 2 miles, much less 26.2. Many distance runners view making and finishing Boston as the crowning achievement of their running lives. Some work for years just trying to improve enough to qualify and never make it.

If you wanted to terrorize the running community, bombing the Boston Marathon would be a great way to do it.

Impact on This Year’s Runners

The bombs detonated at 2:45pm local time, over four hours after the last wave started. All the elites were done, so the bombs affected the more mortal runners. If I had the legs to run Boston and had been there, I could have been near the finish line when the bombs went off. I can only imagine what went through those runners’ minds at that moment. One man, a 78-year-old you’ve probably seen in the main video, fell over after the initial blast not far from the finish line. (If you’ve seen the video, he’s the guy in the reddish-orange tank top) Once he realized he was okay, he picked himself up and continued, finishing second in his division. That’s resilience, folks. But other runners weren’t so lucky and suffered serious injuries.

My friend’s sister was still on the course approaching the end when the bombs went off. She wasn’t harmed, but my friend was naturally quite worried until she finally heard that her sister was okay. Apparently, the race organizers let the remaining runners finish if they wanted to but diverted them to a slightly different course. So while they might have finished, they might not get an official finish time. I’m sure some runners simply chose to leave the course and head to safety without approaching the blast zone where other devices could be waiting.

A Dark Cloud at the Finish Line

At the end of a long race, many feelings can swirl around inside a runner: pain from pushing one’s body so hard for so long, relief and hope that the pain will end soon, joy and pride at having completed such an amazing feat, camaraderie with the nearby runners, sadness that the event that’s been so important for so long is about to end. At the end of my first half marathon, I was in severe pain and had nothing left, but I let out a war cry once I crossed the line. Approaching the end of my second, I teared up, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the experience.

For many, another source of hope awaits: seeing loved ones who are cheering at the finish line. I still remember my first organized race, the 2002 Cowtown 10k. Jenny and I had just started dating, but she came with me and waited for me at the end. My knee was killing me at the end, but knowing she was there waiting for me, cheering for me, helped me push through.

Yesterday’s bombing forever changed how runners will look at the finish line, especially when it comes to spectators. Many of the injured people were spectators, good people who had come out to cheer for someone they loved who was accomplishing a major life goal. From now on, we’ll get to wonder whether our loved ones at the finish line will still be alive when we get there.

The bombing also threw a major wrinkle into the plans for all large races to come, perhaps all races of any size. The London Marathon, another major, is this Sunday. Every person there will be on edge, wondering whether another bomb will explode. Race directors throughout the sport will be reevaluating security plans, debating how best to protect the runners, volunteers, and spectators. The larger races will probably add security, which will cost money and increase entry fees. Everyone involved will know, like with airport security or any other location with large crowds, that no situation can be made completely safe. Each of us will need to decide what level of risk we will accept.

Refusing to Cower

After the bombs went off, rather than fleeing, the first responders rushed in through the smoke to help. Hordes of Bostonians and visiting runners rushed to local hospitals to donate blood, so many that the hospitals finally had to start turning donors away. Locals opened their homes to runners who couldn’t return to their hotels. People around the world are sending support, prayer, and goodwill toward Boston. Like we did after September 11, we are refusing to cower in the presence of senseless evil. Good is flourishing in the midst of hatred and violence.

I’m not a soldier, police officer, paramedic, or politician. There isn’t much I can do to directly help the victims of yesterday’s attack. Yet I can do a few small things to push back against the darkness. I wore a race shirt to work last night, as many runners are planning to do today. I’m trying to focus on the upwelling of good that appeared in Boston to overwhelm the evil that appeared. And I’m going to run this afternoon. I haven’t really run in about 2 1/2 months due to my bum knee, but I’m going to give it a try in honor of the Boston victims, even if it’s only half a mile.

Pockets of darkness remain in our world and always will. I no longer bother trying to understand why evil exists or why God allowed such a horrible thing to happen. Ultimately, the whys don’t matter. What matters is how we respond. I refuse to live my life hiding behind a barricade and wondering what the terrorists will do next.

I hope to see you on the trail.

Backyard 2.0

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Although we’ve lived in our house for nearly four years, we haven’t spent much time relaxing in the backyard because we didn’t have any real patio furniture. That was one of those projects that was always on The List but never made it to the top. Last month, I found a table and chair set at Lowe’s that would work great and was much less expensive than the ones I’d been considering. So I jumped on it.

To give it some shade, I found a huge (11-foot!) patio umbrella at PatioShoppers.com. Finally, I picked up a big deck storage box to hold all the boys’ toys, a much better solution than the old method of leaving them loose in the backyard. We’re already enjoying our new backyard and had dinner on the patio Friday night. There’s something about being outside that makes me feel more alive and more connected to the world.

We have some other plans under consideration for down the road, such as a true cover for the porch, expanding and tiling the porch, removing the treehouse, replacing the old fences, and adding some landscaping. However, just adding the table and chairs is a huge improvement. Here are a few pictures:

The final product

The boys with the new table.

Us enjoying dinner before the umbrella arrived.

Recent Happenings

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We’ve been busy at the Box house. Here are some of the recent highlights.

  • I was off work all last week, and I was determined to be productive rather than good off the whole time. It worked. I polished the car, decluttered our bedroom, gathered clothes for Goodwill, mowed the yard, replaced two normal switches with fancy fan controls, dropped one of the fans and destroyed a fan blade, and completed my annual cockpit time.
  • I also de-babyfied the house, getting rid of Jonathan’s old crib and mattress, the high chair, the booster seat, several toys, and all our baby gates. The bottom floor of the house looks strangely different without all the gates, much more open. I dig it.
  • Last Saturday was Jenny’s birthday. My main present to her was watching the boys so she could go be alone and play for a while. She spent Friday shopping in Canton (I’ll take babysitting over Canton any day!), spent the night at a hotel in Farmers Branch, read a ton, got her nails done, and took a nap. The boys and I ate donuts, played, and went to the gym. Then the four of us went out to PF Chang’s for dinner Saturday night.
  • Another thing I love about my wife? She doesn’t whine on every birthday about how she’s getting older. Instead, she’s just thankful for another year.
  • We spent Easter with Jenny’s family. First, we went to their church for an egg hunt and worship. Their church is very small, which was odd for me, but has good people. The pastor is an old friend of Jenny’s, about my age, and one of the funniest pastors I’ve ever heard. After church, we enjoyed a tasty lunch at her parents’ house and celebrated Jenny’s birthday.
  • That afternoon, Jenny’s dad and I picked up a patio table and chairs from Lowe’s for our backyard. I’ll cover them in a later post with pictures after we get the patio umbrella set up.
  • I passed my annual competency check at work, so I get to keep my job. The big change this year is that designated check dispatchers are giving the checks rather than managers. My examiner started a few years after me but is really sharp and did a fine job. I didn’t apply to become a check dispatcher. It would have felt awkward to be in a position of authority over my peers. I already do that to a lesser degree when I’m training someone, and it’s something I tolerate rather than enjoy.
  • After spending over a week on normal person schedule, it was really hard to switch back to midnight schedule earlier this week when I had to return to work. My body just didn’t want to stay asleep during the day. It’s getting better now, though.
  • I’ve started lifting weights three times a week. Now that I’m getting into that habit, I’m enjoying it more and getting stronger. Our gym also has a core class that I hit once or twice a week to work my abs, lower back, glutes, and hamstrings. Plus I’m hitting the weight machines and even tried a barbell class. Don’t expect me to transform into Arnold, though. Ain’t nobody got time for dat.
  • Next month, we’re planning to take the boys down to South Padre to play on the beach for a couple days. Jenny will be taking a class this summer, and we wanted to go play somewhere between semesters. We might try some dolphin and/or sea turtle activities while we’re there as well. Southwest now has a nonstop from Dallas to Harlingen that looks wide open, so we’re all over it.

Colorblind Children

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One thing I love about suburban living is the amazing assortment of nearby public parks. I count at least seven parks with solid playgrounds within a five minute drive plus an awesome, huge one that’s maybe ten minutes away. Why spend $1000 or more, not to mention a weekend full of cussing and imposing on friends and family for assembly, to put a smaller playset in our backyard? We can visit a different park every day of the week virtually for free.

Another advantage of playing in all these public parks is the boys’ opportunity to play with other kids. My sons aren’t exactly shy. When we show up at a park where other kids are playing, they happily jump right in and assume they are now part of the group rather than awkwardly lingering on the fringe hoping to get an invitation. For this shy dad, it’s a joy and a relief to see how comfortable they are with complete strangers.

Last week we went to the “Blue Park” – we’ve given each park a name that’s easy for them to remember – that sits near the apartments where Jenny and I lived when we first got married. Lots of kids were playing at the playground that day, many of them connected to a large family gathering that was grilling at a nearby picnic area. As usual, Brenden and Jonathan jumped right in. As I watched them play, I noticed that they were the racial minority at the playground. Most of the kids were black, the ones from the family gathering, and a few might have been Latino or white. I was struck by how, for my boys and seemingly for the other kids as well, race was an absolute non-issue.

They didn’t care whether the other kids were white, black, brown, or any other color. They were just happy to have someone with whom to play superheroes and pile up on the slide and giggle and run around and swing. One of the black boys was older, apparently the leader of the group. He was very patient and helpful with the younger kids of all races. At one point he even pushed Brenden on the swing for a bit, and Brenden loved getting attention from a big kid.

This little experience reminded me of a truth I’ve known for years but sometimes forget: racism is learned, not natural.

Let me be clear and honest here. I’m not perfect in the prejudice department. I’m not completely colorblind, nor am I sure that’s even a good goal given that race is part of one’s identity and is often tied into one’s culture, values, and much more in ways that are difficult for an American white male to understand. I still jump to inappropriate conclusions sometimes based on someone’s race. I still laugh at some racial humor that I probably shouldn’t condone. I choose to live in a suburb with a good school district, and that district does happen to contain mostly white kids. But Jenny and I are trying not to taint our sons’ worldview with any inappropriate prejudices, generalizations, or stereotypes based on a person’s race. I think that’s the main reason why being around kids of other races isn’t a big deal to them. Since we don’t make race an issue, they haven’t gotten any notion that race is worth considering. I like that.

I also want to preserve that perspective in them for as long as I can. I don’t try to persuade them to go to the parks where mostly white kids hang out. (I do try to steer them toward parks that have actual bathrooms rather than Portapotties or secluded trees, but that’s another post) I try to keep them away from racist people so those people’s hatred and ignorance don’t taint my sons’ young minds. I try hard to avoid the subtle Texas racism of describing a white man simply as a guy but a black man as a black guy, even though the man’s race is completely irrelevant to the story. Using language that way reinforces the idea that race is a thing when most of the time, it isn’t.

I also don’t plan to hide my children from “the minorities” by enrolling them in a private school or homeschool them for their entire school careers to keep them away from kids who are different. Brenden starts public kindergarten this fall, and we plan to keep both of them in public school through their senior years, just like we were. I want them to be around different types of people – different races, languages, religions, genders, socioeconomic classes, cultures, and sexual orientations – so they will have a better understanding of how people really are.

I am convinced their lives will be richer as a result, and so will ours.