A Listening Chart?

Wow! I must be bad at this aspect of parenting. My wife and I decided to do listening charts to for our two older kids. They get a sticker for every time they listen immediately when we ask them to do something. If they fill up the chart they get a reward.

Yesterday, my wife started one for me too. Don't worry, it's not so that I listen immediately to her when she asks me to do something (I'm well trained at that already). It's a reminder to me to listen to the kids before reacting. It also lets the kids know we're in it together. In fact, I made sure my wife has one too--a kissing chart.

Basic Math for Dad

Math is not my forte, especially on workdays. My wife reminded me of the following equation after a typical evening of dinner messes, delays, messy baths, more delays, emotional outbursts (which can get messy with snot and tears), even more delays, and mutiny at bedtime (more snot and tears):

24 hours a day

-11 hours that kids are asleep

-8 hours of work

-2 hours of commuting

-------------------------

=3 hours with the kids (really a luxury at this point)

Sometimes I want to manage life at home like I do life at the office, stressing about having everything in its proper place. But if I make home another office, I'll feel the same at home as I do at work--stressed. I forget that at home there is no time card or billable hour keeping me from sitting back and enjoying the precious little time I have with the kids, even if it is all craziness.

Daddy is a Superhero

My wife had an interesting conversation with our 3-year old son today:

     "Mommy, you know what I wanna be when I grow up?"

"What?"

"A Superhero."

"What will your superhero name be?"

"Daddy."

"Why Daddy?"

"Because Daddy's a superhero."

"What super power does Daddy have?

"He tickles me."

I'm glad I'm doing something right.

Leave Your Degree at the Door

I worked and slaved for three years for my law degree. Somewhere along the line, I began to think that what I had to say was intelligent and important. But, while delivering a particularly stirring lecture to my three-year old son, I realized my delusion. Part way through lecturing him, he looked at me in frustration and said, "Daddy, can you please stop talking."

I think what he was saying in his three-year old way was, "Dad, I really appreciate what you have to say, but I just need you to listen first (and it wouldn't hurt if you stopped repeating yourself)." 

Year 1-Judicial Clerkship

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

-Robert Frost

I'm really only at the bottom rung of the corporate ladder.

With law degree in hand, I've begun work as a judicial clerk for a federal judge in Washington, DC for one year before I continue on to the firm.

Beginning a career as a family man feels like standing at the head of diverging roads. How do I want to define my career? I am struck by the response of a well-known business man when he was asked what he wanted to be known as in his career. He answered simply, "A good father."