Fatherhood Tuesday

What a month this has been. My ten year wedding anniversery, my oldest childs birthday, increased obligations at church and more. Not complaining, but I am sorry for dropping the ball here. Time to pick it back up.

I posted the following on a forum I am quite active in The Fastlane To Millions. It illustrates one of my more proud moments as a dad. I hope you enjoy.

Post 1:
For the past few months I have been working out the details of an invention I have been working on. A couple weeks ago we were getting our kids ready for bed. Me in the bedroom getting some dressed, and my wife in the bathroom overseeing the teeth brushing.

I hear her say "that is a really good idea Jonah, you should tell daddy." So my 4.5 year old son comes and tells me his idea. He see his sister has a toy that does x, he said, "they should make a y toy that does the same thing."

I was blown away. Not only was this a good idea, it was infinetly more marketable than the idea I had been working on. Within a day, I had 2 companion product ideas as well.

Today I began working on the sketches to submit with the patent.

Next week file patent and create sales sheet.

end of next week, beginning of the following week, start calling manufacturers about licensing.

If all goes well, my son will be one of the youngest patent holders in the U.S.

All because my wife took the time to listen.


Post 2:
This was really cool as a dad on many levels, but the three best parts were-

1. he did not fuss and say "why don't I have something that does that" which is typical

2. he looked for a solution and thought outside the box, a little scary considering he is only 4.5, I am afraid he will be able to out reason me by 10 instead of 15 like I was hoping

3. when I showed him what I created on photoshop today and asked him what it was, he said "oh, that is y that does z" In his mind it is already a reality, it is just a matter of waiting for its arrival. That was cool. FYI, my photoshop skills are extremely limited, so his mind created the reality more so than my skills.

Fatherhood Tuesday

So far, after being a father for almost 5 years, I have two favorite books on parenting.

On Becoming Babywise by Gary Ezzo- This is the best book I have read for starting out as a parent. Through the recommendations in this book, all of our children slept through the night consistently by 8-9 weeks old. A must have book for any parent.

The Five Love Langueges of Children by Gary Chapman- A book about loving your child in the way the need loved which may or may not be the way you naturally love.

Hope you all get a chance to read them.

Fatherhood Tuesday

This past weekend, on three different occasions, I had to witness pain in my children and be able to do very little to fix it. As Dad's and men in general we tend to be fixers. That is our natural inclination. Show us a problem and we will fix it. However that is not always possible.

The first incident occurred after we came home from eating as a family at a restaurant. This particular restaurant gives this children balloons as they leave. For this reason alone, this is one of my kids favorite restaurants.

Balloons
As we got out of the minivan and were walking towards our steps, our littlest balloon came off the string bumped into the overhang of our garage roof, and all of sudden, Dad (me) with Mr. Myagi type reflexes, snatches the balloon out of the air and saves the day.

Then my oldest daughter's balloon bumped against the overhang and popped. Tears were forthcoming like lies from a politicians mouth. She was devastated, and there was nothing I could do to fix it.

As I watched my wife comfort her, I had climbed our stairs and was on our porch looking down at them. Out of the corner of my eye, I see our middle daughter right below me, loose her grip on her balloon. Once again, my Myagi like reflexes saved the day. I reached out a snatched to string right before it was too late. Thank you Karate Kid.

Bikes
At our family picnic on Sunday, my brother in law had brought bikes for his kids to ride. These bikes were kindly shared with my children as well. This was greatly appreciated since I had not thought to bring bikes for our kids.

I was sitting enjoying conversation with a relative when I noticed my daughter riding down a hill way too fast. Her fall at the bottom was brutal. There were about 20 years separating us, and I have not sprinted that fast since High School.

Upon reaching her, I scooped her up and held her. She was bleeding slightly from her knee and elbow. After bandaging her, the tears kept flowing. She kept telling me that her knee still hurt even after the band-aid was on. My children have a belief that band-aids relieve pain, so this was difficult for her to understand.

These are the moments when as a dad you wish you knew magic. You wish you could just take their pain away immediately. But alas we cannot. Within a few hours she was back on the bike again, so all was well.

Balls
I was trying to teach my four year old son to play catch. Things were going well and he decided to back up some. The first toss at this point hit him in the leg. He said ow, but that was the extent of it. The second toss was a repeat of the first.

A dad with more wisdom would have had him move closer at this point, but that would have made too much sense. So for a third time, I tossed him the ball. This time I tried to give it a little more loft so he would have more time to watch it a grab it. He watched it all right, right up until it hit him in the eye and nose.

Slight bleeding from the nose, and many tears from the eyes. Even more so when he saw the blood. The boy freaks out when he is bleeding and this was not exception. It took about 30 seconds for the nose to stop bleeding and about 10 minutes to calm him down. Not my brightest dad moment.

Conclusion
Even though our tendency is to be Mr. Fixit, being a great dad is not about that. Being dad is about being there. Being part of your kids lives. Kissing booboos, holding through the tears, and just being there. That is the key.

Fatherhood is trial and error. However, to try and error, you need to be present.

Fatherhood Tuesday

For this first issue of Fatherhood Tuesday, I want to take the time to give you my background as a father. This will be quite long, so get a cup of coffee.

Since I was young, I always enjoyed working with kids. Some might say I liked being around people on my maturity level, but those people are not worth listening to. Anyway, I usually took the time to volunteer helping to teach the kids at church when I was in High School. When I was in College, I regularly taught them on my own. It was always a joy.

When my wife and I got married, we both knew we wanted to have a large family. We waited 2 years to begin trying so I could graduate from college and find a stable job. Well we started trying and nothing happened. For two and half years we tried.

We went to the fertility doctors and there answer was that all the test came back good, they did not know what was wrong, so take these hormone pills. Whoever heard of prescribing something for something that you do not even know what it is? I found this totally maddening.

After one cycle of the pills we decided to stop. They were too emotionally difficult on my wife, so we quit. We decided to pursue other options.

We spent about a year trying to find babies to adopt. We sent the word out to everyone, we looked on our doorstep, we were even getting near considering kidnapping. Just kidding, but I wanted to give you an idea of the level desperation infertile parents achieve.

After no leads on any potentially adoptable babies, we decided to pursue foster to adoption. This required six classes with the county to certify we were able to parent.

After our first class we got a call from a friend of ours about a birth mother wanting to give her baby up for adoption. This was a perfect illustration of God at work. The birth mother was in the hospital visiting her father with a broken arm. Our friends great Aunts used to take her to Bible School when she was a child, and 'happened' to be at the hospital because one of them was ill. They 'happened' to pass each other in the hallway. The birth mother pointed to her stomach and said, "Do you know anyone who wants a baby?"

Wow, I still get a little teary eyed just typing this. There were some ups and downs in the whole ordeal until the adoption was final, but God saw us through.

To make matters better, about a month later we found out we were also expecting. So now the size of our family doubled within a year. Our oldest two children are six months apart in age. We took our daughter, our first child, home from the hospital the Saturday before Father's Day 2003. The next day, Father's Day, I spent laying on the couch with my baby on my chest. This is one of the best days of my life.

Our son was born six months later, 4 days before Christmas. To this day he is my best bud and pal. At four years of age, I am honored to be his father, and cannot imagine how our Father sent his Son to die for us.

God was not finished at this point. About a year later, we got a call from the birth mother, she was expecting again and wanted to know if we wanted to adopt this child as well. Of course we said yes. So in November of 2005, our second daughter was born. She is a lover and is so precious.

A week after we brought her home from the hospital, my wife went to the doctors to get a physical for the adoption process (mandated in Pennsylvania). Yep, you guessed it. Pregnant again. Our youngest is eight months younger than her sister. She is my little peanut. Born in July of 2006, she may be our last. We plan it that way, but who knows what God has planned.

So there you have it. Those are my credentials. Each week I will be bringing either a funny anecdote from my kids, or a lesson learned from fatherhood. I hope you enjoyed.