Tag: Friends

Christmas Season with a 3 Year Old

Posted on by Pints with Pops
We’ve had a fun holiday season so far and are looking forward to the next week and a half getting to spend some quality time with family and friends.
As the Christmas season came into focus Layton found his book about the story of Christmas and Jesus’s birth, so we’ve spent lots of time reading that, many times it’s been read 3 or 4 times continuously. With that he also found his book about the story of Easter. So if you’re reading about Jesus’s birth you might as well read about Jesus’s death at the same time. This led to a more interesting conversation about Jesus coming back after he was buried. The conversation turned to Layton asking about Jesus coming back and that it was Jesus’s spirit. This led to Layton asking about Jesus’s body and “how he poop with no body”? The minds of toddlers are amazing.
Attention: Potential Santa spoiler. Stop reading if you are age 137 years or younger and do not wish to read Santa spoilers.
On the other end of the spectrum, Layton has been rather easy on Santa this year. He’s kept his request the same from the first ask through today. So Santa and his helpers haven’t had to pivot mid-season. It is also a reasonable ask so we are hopeful Santa can deliver. We are also of the mindset that mom and dad will step in for any “big” gifts and requests to Santa should remain modest as he needs to deliver to all the children and may be stretched too thin if he has to bring “big” gifts to everyone. Layton had three visits with Santa this year. Visits two and three were impromptu encounters. The second visit was a little sketchy and flirted with disaster. Layton got up on Santa’s lap and Santa asked Layton’s name. Layton responded “I tell you last week”. Ok, this should be interesting. My wife stepped in and informed Santa of his name. Then Santa asked what he would like for Christmas, same response, “I tell you last week”. Santa was at a loss. Again, my wife stepped in and got Layton and Santa out of what could have turned into an ugly situation. Layton asked after “why Santa not remember”? Again, props to my wife, she explained that there are millions of children that Santa talks to and he needs help remembering who each child is and what they want, that’s why he checks his list twice. He accepted that explanation, crisis averted… for this year. Consider this my apology in advance if my child ruins Santa for your children in any way now or in the future. He’s apparently too smart for his own good.

End of spoiler, continue reading.

With that, I hope you are able to take time to be with those who matter most to you. I hope you can embrace the time you have with your family and loved ones no matter how short the visit may be. I know, as you all do, this can be a stressful time of year going between family visits, parties, and preparing for your own festivities. Take time to stop and pause during it all, take a breath, and give a hug or a smile. We do all of the “hustle and bustle” so we can spend time with those that matter to us, be sure to stop the “hustle and bustle” and be present for the spending time part.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year!

The Blueberry Discussion

Posted on by Pints with Pops

Have you ever tried to have a discussion with a toddler? It goes absolutely nowhere but in circles. These discussions aren’t generally deep, not like a disciplinary discussion. My most favorite recent one was this past week. We were outside looking at our blueberry plants. We have one in a pot that is doing great and two in the ground that I clearly should have put fencing around as the rabbits have chewed them down to the ground. Layton asked where the blueberries were on the two in the ground and I told him the rabbits ate them. He proceeded to tell me he wanted to eat the blueberries. I told him we wouldn’t have blueberries on those this year because the rabbits ate them. He queried me on why. I explained that the rabbits were hungry. I then said we should get rid of the rabbits so the blueberries could grow and he could eat them. I was expecting him to agree with me. I got the opposite. Not only did he want the rabbits to stay, he was angry that I would want them gone. I said “Layton, if the rabbits stay, you won’t get any blueberries”. He then yelled back at me from across the yard, he ran away because he was angry, “NO, I SHARE WITH THE RABBITS!” Trying not to laugh I told him if he shared there wouldn’t be any blueberries because the rabbits would eat them all and the bushes. This back and forth went on for several minutes until I couldn’t contain my laughter and just gave up on the conversation. I’ll get some fencing up after we get new bushes planted. I also need to get the bird netting up before the bush in the planter starts producing otherwise we’ll be sharing with the birds as well. What I know about me and quickly realized about him is that we’re right until proven wrong. My wife and friends would all support that statement. I haven’t been able to prove him wrong yet and he’s still too young to get it. Either way it made for a very entertaining discussion with him. That’s just one, we’ve had many like that and they usually end in me laughing. I am happy though that he’s aware of what he’s talking about and how he feels about it. I definitely encourage the discussions because I want him to share his opinion with me even if he doesn’t realize the extent of what he’s talking about.

3rd Grade, so what?

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When my wife and I found out we were going to be parents the first thing we bought was a B.O.B. running stroller.  We’re both runners and wanted the best equipment to run with our child in.  Then we purchased all the large furniture items for the new baby’s room and any other very specific items we wanted.  Everything else went on the baby registry for the baby shower.  Do you know what we didn’t purchase any of before the baby was born?  Books.  Thankfully, my wife is awesome and understands the importance of reading early in a child’s life and asked that everyone attending the baby shower bring their favorite children’s book for the new baby.  Now I knew why we didn’t buy any books.  The baby wasn’t born yet, so why did we need all those books so soon?  It turns out reading to your child in the womb is beneficial to their development.  I guess I’m a bit uneducated when it comes to a child’s brain development.  Again, I’m glad my wife has this knowledge.  So, for a month (maybe longer) before the baby was born I read a book or two to him every night.  He actually heard me reading!  My wife shared that he would kick and move in various ways when I read books to him.  How amazing is that?!  After Layton was born we have continued to place an emphasis on reading.  We read many times a day with him and have a great bedtime routine with some specific books for him.

This is not funny or encouraged, just interesting, but when he’s been naughty and gets a timeout, he’ll occasionally pull/throw all his books off the shelves; however, after they’re all off and he’s calmed down for a few seconds he’ll pick up a book and start paging through it.  Not the intention of a timeout, but I’ll take it.  (we could discuss the appropriate location for a timeout until we’re blue in the face, so I won’t go there)

Now you’re probably thinking “good for you, you read to your child, who cares”.

Who cares?  Everyone in our community should care.  Everyone who is going to rely on his generation to be the next leaders should care.  I was at the United Way of the Fox Cities’ community campaign kickoff today.  They shared that over half of the third graders in our community aren’t reading at grade level.  That’s a problem.  A couple years back when I asked why my wife was asking for books at the baby shower, she explained the importance of reading to our child as early as possible and continuing to do so throughout his life.  One prominent educational transition she pointed out was that third grade is when students transition from learning to read to reading to learn.  Simply put, if my child isn’t reading at the third grade level in third grade he is behind the 8-ball for the remainder of his educational years with very little opportunity to catch up.  How can he learn whatever the curriculum is if he is still learning how to read it?

If you have young children I encourage you to read to them as often as you can.  If you have older children encourage them to read to others.  Consider giving a book to the neighbor kid that might not have access to books.  If you have grandchildren, nieces, nephews, whoever, encourage them to read or their parents to read to them.  Support early childhood literacy in your communities, it’s one of the greatest things we can do for our children and our future.  This might sound a little preachy and I’m not educated in the science behind why reading is important for a child’s development so I’m not officially qualified to talk about it; but, I can tell you that I already see that my son is benefiting from all the reading we have done with him in his two and a half years of life.

One other great benefit that I get from reading with him is the time I get to spend with him.  It’s just another opportunity for me to be with him.  And, I get to read a lot of fun books that it might be strange to see an adult reading without a child present in their life.  I would probably do a double take if I saw a middle-aged guy reading the Belly Button Book alone in a coffee shop.

ABC Reprise

Posted on by 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.

A New Place to Cast

Posted on by Pints with Pops

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 – October 2017

Posted on by Pints with Pops

The source of my stories varies from month to month, but they have always been my experiences with Layton; something he does, things I see him do, feelings I have from something he does, or because I did something stupid related to fatherhood and need to share that with the rest of you.

This month’s source and story is a bit different.  Something entirely beyond anyone’s control happens and those circumstances drive emotions and it needs to be talked about, for the good of everyone.

I need to share this story, but choosing the right words has been difficult.  I’ve rewritten this several times and come up with this; I hope you can appreciate the difficulty in sharing a story like this.

One week ago our family lost a friend.  Not someone incredibly close, but a friend none-the-less.  More devastatingly, one week ago a husband lost his wife and two little girls lost their mother.  She was 29, younger than me and many of you reading this.  In the blink of an eye, life changes forever.  Cancer sucks.  It was a brief but courageous battle, from diagnosis until now not even 6 months.  A dad and father left without his partner.  Two young girls will endure the frustration of needing their mother at times and not be able to do anything about it.  You can do the math on everything else this family will be challenged with as the days turn to years. Tears are streaming as I write this.

Why did I share this with you?  You don’t know this family.  I don’t want you to cry with me or feel bad for this family.  They are incredibly strong and have an amazing support system.  But the scary truth is this could be any of us or someone we know and love.  What I ask of you is to take a step back from everything that’s pulling you away and take a few moments to think about your family.  Give them an extra hug, play in the yard a few minutes longer, give them a call, or just sit there with them a little while longer; let them know you love them.  We are blessed with a finite amount of time with them, don’t waste that.  As a father and husband it’s a sober reminder to spend and enjoy the time I have with my wife and son.