This past weekend was a great weekend. You know the ones that you write home about. Nothing really big, it was just fun.

Saturday started with both kids coming into our room and climbing in bed for cuddle time. After a TV show and giggling and fun stuff it was time to get ready for Mom to go to a “make your own entree and bring home to freeze” place. Well we noticed that the time frame was not full. So my wife called the place and asked if our 5 year old could come and help. The answer was yes and our five year old was SO EXCITED! So out the door they went. That left me and the little one. She is 3 years old and a spitfire!

We get dressed and decide to visit the dinner place. I had to take pictures! We walk in and there is no one else there but my wife and my daughter. The two workers were ogling over our daughter. They kept saying that she is so good! You know it is just really nice to hear from strangers that your kids are really good! Very nice!

After a few quick pictures we were off to the local Starbucks for some Baba and kiddo time. After coffee we were off to the local pet store for cat food.
Now here is some more fun. We get to the pet store and it was training day for puppies.Yep, puppies and a cute little girl. Imagine the fun!

We walk around the store and get to the back. My little one is now the distraction for the puppies in training. The trainer asks if she would be willing to help. She says yes and we start walking in front of the puppies. They were supposed to stay and most of them did. Those that did were given a treat, from my daughter. She giggled up a storm. Fun! She had so much fun!

Now back home to meet the girls and see the joy on the older ones face from helping Mama! She also had a blast! Now off to CostCo! No joy here! Textbook case of, “Can we go to the books?” Over and over again! But it ends fine, with once again, “Your daughters are gorgeous!” Very nice to hear!

Sunday? That was a Dad and daughters day...at home! A great weekend! I am sure there are more of these to come!

I had a pretty good idea for my monthly post.  This isn’t it.

You see, I’ve been a little occupied this week.  It is March and there is madness in the air.  Today is the start of the NCAA basketball tournament and I’m so tickled I feel like a child on Christmas Eve.

Really.  I love this stuff.  The Cinderella stories, the agony of defeat and the beauty of the impossible becoming possible.  It is the Big Dance, and I’ve got my soft shoes on.

As I get ready for bed tonight, in my University of Arizona pajama bottoms and my Final Four t-shirt from their 2001 run to the championship game (you know, the one Duke fixed) I find myself lying awake with the types of thoughts that fathers tend to have at times like this.

What if my sons don’t like basketball?  Or worse, what if they do like it and they root for UCLA?  The thought makes my stomach hurt.

Of course, there are far more important things in life than whether or not my boys will be sports fans.  It’s not a requirement, but it would be a lot of fun. Personally, I wasn’t much of a fan until I hit high school, and if anything I’m less of one now than I was before we had kids.  It’s not that I like them any less, sports that is, it is just that I have other priorities, and Sportscenter doesn’t always make the cut.

That gets tested in March.  I put things on hold.  I even quit a job once when they refused to honor the promise of letting me leave early so that I could watch a tournament game. What? I didn’t like the job anyway.

Sports, the playing and supporting of them, is a pastime shared by father and child since the dawn of time, or at least since the first bloated goat bladder was kicked across a line in the mud, causing the first sportscaster to yell “Goooooooaaal!” for what must have felt like two turns of the sun.

Sports are a part of our society and part of the stereotype of what “makes” a man.  Are they really that important?  Of course not.

They’re just games.  Games that unite people and countries and bring tears and joy.  They are just games that will someday bring smiles and priceless moments to the popcorn and cotton-candy stained faces of my two little boys.  Unless they root for UCLA, then they’ll be smiling but treatless. I can’t support decisions like that.

There is madness in the air, and it’s making me dance. 

First, a disclaimer.  This post is not meant to impose my views on anyone, although I will mention some of them to illustrate my point.  And now, on to the show.

My son is two and a half.  I reluctantly add that “half” on there as he keeps making me forget the days of him being a baby.  He’s a little boy, now, complete with Buzz Lightyear pull-ups and friends that he talks about all the time.  He’s taking his steps in growing and I’m stepping backwards in… fear maybe?  Definitely apprehension at the least.  I’m supposed to raise this little man.  You know, that whole “Raise them up in the way that they should go and when they grow up they’re not going to go hog wild spending their college money in Vegas and plotting bank robberies and the like” (Brandon Revised Standard Edition).  Seriously, though, this is a daunting task.  And then there’s the looming task of teaching him a true tolerance and love of his fellow man without acceptance of immoral and/or destructive behavior.

There are certain acts and behaviors that I, for various reasons, find “wrong”.  I disagree with being a drunk, lying, homosexuality, complaining, gossiping, drug addiction, rudeness, disrespect, and a lot more things that just aren’t right to me.  I want my son to share these convictions, but how do I pass these thing along to him in the right way.  Even though you may not share my specific beliefs, I’m sure there are some that you want your son to hold to.  For example, maybe you want to endear to him that crazy conservative wackos (present company excluded, of course) should be locked up.

So, I’ve been thinking about this.  My first thought in looking at the above “discouraged” items is that I have, at one time or another, been guilty of most of them.  I still am guilty of some and more.  I want to be open and honest about the failures of my life and the successes.  I want him to understand that even the best can fall and even the worse can be good.  One conviction that lies at the head of my stack is that judging an individual is wrong.  An individual makes bad choices and good choices, wins and loses.  I want my son to know that you can’t judge, because we’re not qualified to judge.

Second, I’ve got to allow for him to make his own choices and decisions about right and wrong.  There are things that my parents taught me that I now disagree with.  There are some that I latched onto wholeheartedly, but only after several years (5, to be exact) of soul-searching.  I can’t be dogmatic.  I can’t be so hard that I’m not willing to bend a bit when he has to do some searching of his own.  And I’ve got to be willing to love him just the same if he chooses something totally against how I feel.  That will be very hard to do in some cases.

Third, I’ve got to truly believe my own convictions.  Not blindly, because the blind can’t lead the blind, but rather through living a deeper life.  Placing a real amount of thought into each belief that I have and allowing them to be questioned and tried.  Also, I’ve got to “walk the walk” and show him that I’m willing to live the ideals that I preach about, or at least try my best to live them. 

When Chase, our 21 month old, was born it didn’t take long to discover that there was something unique about him.  When we would leave him with a care giver who was not family, we would always get some comment like “We just love Chase.” Now, we didn’t think much about it at first, we just assumed people were being polite.  But the comments continued to be made and they even got to be a little uncomfortable for us.

On several occasions, while picking him up from church and being surrounded by several other parents, we were told “Chase is our favorite.” I would flash an uncomfortable smile and thank them, but I wanted to say “I’m sure that is just a figure of speech, you say that to all the parents.”

I know why he’s a favorite, though.  He can melt your heart with his infectious smile.  His steel blue eyes just sparkle, and with his smile, he just begs to be hugged.

Once he started walking he became a hugger himself.  He just loves to give hugs, and he gives them out freely.  He is also good at it.  He will come up to you and throw his whole body into it and does his very best to wrap his little arms around you.  He likes to give you a pat on the back as he hugs you.  It is just precious.

I know he didn’t get hugging from me because I am not a hugger and I don’t think many in my family are.  I don’t remember much hugging going on with my family but I remember being taken aback when I first met my wife’s family.  They all wanted to hug me when they met me and again on our way home.  My wife says it wasn’t always that way but her grandmother made a decision she didn’t want anyone leaving her house not feeling loved so she started hugging more.  The entire family has followed suit.

I think that is why everyone is drawn to Chase because he makes you feel loved and so you can’t help loving him.  It’s a lesson we all could learn from.

As a high school teacher I come across new books all of the time, and recently when I was reading Time magazine on my throne there was a column written by one of my favorite columnists (James Poniewozik). The topic of that article was about Gen-Xers growing up and having children, while trying to maintain their youth and ideals. Poniewozik mentioned a new book called Alternadad by Neal Pollack, whose most recent book is about coming to terms with marriage and having children while still maintaining his own identity.

My wife and I have read Dooce.com for years now, and we use to talk about Jon & Heather Armstrong like we knew them personally. Pollack, in Alternadad, writes like he could be the male version of Heather Armstrong. I began this book on a cross country flight and read over half of it before I landed. That weekend while I was at conference I finished the entire book. It began with Pollack dating various women and running around town to a plethora of concerts. It continued to him meeting his wife and her getting pregnant. And it culminated in the experiences of trying to raise a baby and toddler on the Austin city limits.

Pollack, who has written several non-fiction books, pours his own experiences as a stay-at-home father trying to raise his son and live his life with his family. It details the time they lived in Texas before moving to Los Angeles, and, as a father of a toddler, I found the book strikingly funny and sincere. From the travesties of day care to the in-laws brushing his kid’s teeth with Bordeaux’s butt paste, we should all read this book.