I realized the other day that there are three thoughts that pop into my head everyday when I'm home with Dillon.
1. How do single parents do this on their own?
2. I have no clue what I'm doing with this parenting gig
3. Dillon's such a cool guy - I love him so much
Staying at home with the little guy is such hard work. I meet parents all the time who say they work (or went back to work) because they couldn't handle being at home all day with their kids. Knowing that I'm not the only one who has tough days is comforting.
I always think about the size of the manual that we got with our HDTV over the summer. It was the size of a phone book, no kidding - FOR A SILLY TV! You need a manual for watching TV now, but there's no manual for how to parent a child. When I left Best Buy with my TV, I had two employees help me carry it to the car, along with a number of helpful pieces of advice for setting it up when I got home. When we took Dillon home, no one helped us get him to the car, and though all of the nurses were happy for us, there were no instructions about what to do when we got him home. I guess in a world where people live close to extended family, you get tons of advice about how to raise kids. But these days, when families are spread out all over the four corners of the globe, you're kinda on your own. I don't know what I'd do without the relationships we have at church, and meeting some other parents on the playground has been helpful too, but all families do things a little differently than you do. Nothing brings out differences between people than how they choose to raise their kids.
Finally, with all that said, raising Dillon has been such an awesome experience. He's such a great guy. As his own unique personality pops up, I find myself loving him more and more. And when I'm reminded of his crazy premature start, I think of just what a miracle and blessing he is to our lives. Thank you God for Dillon!
Despite the fact that winter is getting closer and closer these days, it's been nice enough the past couple of weeks to spend time with Dillon out on the playground. Dillon's a pretty active little guy, so it's a big relief to both of us when the weather permits a long trip to the playground. Recently, I've had some great conversations with other parents at the playground. Today I had a chance to chat with another stay-at-home dad. It was fun to talk about all the similar things we've been going through in life recently. It sounds like we've had a lot of the same experiences with our kids, and a lot of similar conversations with our wives. I just hope it continues to stay above freezing for a few more weeks so we can continue making trips to the playground.
I realized (again) this weekend just how important sleep really is. The amount of sleep you get affects everything you do - especially the older you get. When I was in college, I could operate effectively on much less sleep (at least for a few days). Now that I'm 30, I feel it much more the next day when I haven't slept as much the night before. Dillon and Erin are really the ones that suffer the consequences of my lack of sleep. I tend to have less patience and grace when I'm tired. So on that note, I'm heading to bed!
Man, I've been really tired the last couple of nights. Now that I can never sleep in anymore (my new alarm clock, Dillon, wakes up everyday at 7am, like it or not), I can no longer count on getting extra hours of rest in the morning. It's hard for me, however, to discipline myself to get to bed early in the evenings. Like last night - I was just about ready to head to bed at 9:45pm, but "The Departed" was on HBO and I ended up staying awake until almost 11:30pm (it's such a great movie though)! So let's see what time I get to bed tonight - if all goes well, I'll be under the covers before 10pm. I'm going to try and avoid TV altogether and continue reading my favorite book, "The Brothers Karamazov" - I'm nearly half way done with the 730 page novel.
Saturday, 25 October 2008
I had an awesome day with the family today. The three of us spent the whole day just having fun. We went to the park, returned some things at the mall, ordered some food from the Similans (our favorite Thai restaurant down the street), and even watched Toy Story on DVD - the original Pixar flick. The weather was great today - a nice change from the chilly week we had. Tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer, and I can't wait. Although, I'm planning on spending at least a little bit of time watching the Pats play in the afternoon.
Anyway, back to spending time with the family: it wasn't long ago that Erin and I had jobs that forced us to work on the weekends. In fact, I can't remember too many weekends last year where at least one of us wasn't working. It's so nice that we don't have that problem anymore. We all look forward to having extended times together once Friday evening rolls around. And especially now that Dillon is running around and blabbering about everything - he's a little boy now, which, for me at least, is so much more fun. He's a little more independent and is much more interactive.
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