Fishing – Pints with Pops

We were at our favorite Mexican restaurant this past Monday night, as we are every Monday night, and another couple came in with their new baby, 4 months old. We exchanged pleasantries as we both had small children and went on with our evening. It was interesting watching them interact with their child and I couldn’t help but think back 2 years ago when Layton was that tiny. Seriously, how do they grow so fast? I saw them getting so excited about the baby smiling and laughing, they were talking to each other about how big a milestone that was. That got me thinking back to how I felt when Layton was achieving all these various milestones. I have to be completely honest, I was nowhere near as excited as they were for their child or my wife was for Layton. It’s not just the smiles or the laughs, I wasn’t all that excited about a first word or crawling or rolling over. These are all huge things in a baby’s development and parents should rightfully be excited by it all. I got to see Layton’s first step, that was cool; however, still not the crazy excited most parents get, even though I would have been upset if I missed it. So at this point you’re probably thinking I’m a pretty emotionless dad (I was happy for all of these milestones, just not overly excited). Wow, this guy doesn’t get excited for any big developmental things his child does.

Here’s my mindset on it, and you can disagree as we’re all entitled to our opinions. As parents, as long as we’re doing our best to raise our children in a healthy, positive way, they are going to do all of those things, they need to in order to survive. I feel pretty damn proud as a dad that I was able to encourage and support him to get to all those things, but eventually he would have needed to figure it all out. I recently took the Real Colors personality assessment and “blue” was my lowest score so it explains my lack of emotion for this kind of stuff. (that’s how I’m justifying it in my mind)

So, all this stuff and I was only mildly excited about it. You know what put me through the roof with excitement? He sang his ABC’s and got past “Q” and made it to the end and sang “next time won’t you sing with me”. Wow! That was exciting! Yes, I’m being serious. In my mind it was a huge accomplishment. Yes, I know he needs to learn his ABC’s and 123’s and be able to sing about it like the Jackson 5, but it was different in my mind than all the other big/bigger stuff. He struggled to get past Q for so long (months that’s where he would end). Finally, Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z! Glorious! And he kept singing it! Yeah, I was that excited. I was also really disappointed and sad that I didn’t see him catch his first fish, or his second fish, or any of the fish he’s caught yet. One fish that wasn’t small either. I wasn’t there for any of them, I was/am definitely sad about that. If you didn’t know before, now you know I’m a little crazy. Learned to walk? Eh, that’s cool. YOU CAN SAY YOUR ABC’S???? THAT IS AMAZING!!! You smiled? No big whoop. You caught a fish and another fish and another fish? BEST DAY EVER!!!

Here’s the deal. Get excited about stuff your children do. It doesn’t matter what it is get excited about it, about them. Everything they do is new to them it should all be exciting. As parents we may see it a little different. Walking? We do that everyday. Walking to a 1 year old, that’s the most difficult thing in the world, be excited for them! They caught a little bluegill? Be excited! I’ve gone fishing for entire weekends and caught nothing, who cares how big or what kind of fish, it’s a fish! It’s all exciting and if we’re not excited about it for them they won’t be excited about it either. So they climbed up the playset steps and slid down the slide, that’s the point, isn’t it? To them that was the hardest thing they did that day, be excited about it. It took the ABC’s for me to realize all this stuff is a big deal.

What was the most memorable milestone you have of your child?

“A B C, It’s easy as, 1 2 3, As simple as, do re mi, A B C, 1 2 3, Baby, you and me” Jackson 5.

I was perusing my Facebook feed earlier today and came across a blog post from a Facebook friend. He’s your typical Facebook friend, you meet them once, connect on Facebook, and that’s the extent of your friendship. Regardless, his blog post stuck with me. He’s a journalist by trade so maybe his way with words intrigued me, especially because I coble together posts like a writer would a balance sheet (I am an accountant, so numbers are more my thing). The title was Life Lessons from a Great Blue Heron. It drew me in; I’m an outdoorsman, this title spoke to me. The context fit quite well with some recent experiences, particularly the second lesson he brings up “don’t let past successes keep you from trying to learn.”

His post was about a fishing trip he had recently taken. I immediately applied his lesson to a fishing trip I had recently been on as well. I was on my annual bass fishing trip with a good friend of mine and we had fished “our spot” all weekend. We covered every inch of the specific structure we like to fish over the course of 8 hours on the lake (not consecutive, we took a couple brakes throughout the day). It has always produced a significant number of bass for us and always one or two big ones for that lake. By the end of the day Saturday we had landed 8 fish, 7 large mouth (one good sized one) and 1 northern. We were happy, not ecstatic, but pleased with the day. We hit the same spot early the next morning. Three hours produced two fish and they were early. We needed a change. We talked about it for a little while, contemplated where we’d seen other boats, fish jumping, eagles diving, anything to come up with a new place. We were really stuck in our heads that the structure we’ve always fished was the best place to be. We decided to take a slow pass over some places we’d seen fish jumping. They didn’t hold the structure we were hoping for so we kept looking. We settled on a nice drop off with a solid weed line in the shallows, a lot of weeds. Not the area we would normally fish, actually we’d never seen anyone fishing this area. Within an hour my friend had landed two bass, one of them the biggest of the weekend.

After realizing I’d lived his lesson before reading it, I began thinking of other recent experiences that fall within that realm. Not surprisingly they’re Layton related, two of them this week. We’ve been dealing with some separation anxiety issues with Layton around bedtime. This is a new thing, within the last few weeks. Normally bedtime is good, we have a solid routine, but he’s been waking up in the middle of the nights screaming for momma and daddy. It’s not night terrors, we’ve talked with the doctor and explained the circumstances. Separation anxiety is quite common for his age. This past Monday night I was tired of the middle of the night wake-up call so I decided to talk with him before bedtime; we would read books, I would lay him down in bed, and then I would go to bed in my room across the hall. This did not sit well with him and we ended up making a routine bedtime last 2 hours. Mental note, sometimes the path to success should be repeated, not changed. We’ll stick with the normal bedtime routine and I won’t have anymore talks with him about sleeping through the night; at least not at this point in his life.

Fast forward two nights to Wednesday night/Thursday morning and we’re up at 2 am again. When it comes to the middle of the night wake-up call I’m not a pleasant person, my wife is the consoler and I’m the “GET BACK IN YOUR BED, LAY DOWN, and GO TO SLEEP!” person. Neither of our efforts had been fruitful over the past week and we’d resorted to letting him cry himself back to sleep. Wednesday night, for whatever reason, I changed my tactic. Aggression was not the historical answer, but it’s what I knew; however, I became the consoler early Thursday morning. He was crying in his bed, I came in and sat on the floor and gave him a hug. I talked to him for about 15 minutes, then calmly, yet directly, explained what I was going to do. He nodded in understanding. I left his room and went back to bed. It took about 20 minutes but he was back asleep without any further tears or cries for momma and daddy. I can’t tell you this is going to work again for me with future encounters, but I was happy with the outcome and very glad I changed my approach.

Whether you’re fishing, stuck wondering what to do next in life, or trying to get your child to sleep, consider casting someplace new; you won’t know what the outcome will be if you stick to the same old structure.

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Pints with Pops

Tag: Fishing

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