Love 4 Laney (l)

In a perfect world, sweet little children would not get seriously sick or require organ transplants.

Wednesdays are a busy day in our house.  Our oldest two kids have gymnastics classes back to back.  Due to the timing of those classes, I go straight from work to daycare to class.  Dinner is a hastily made batch of PB&J, cheese sticks, and juice boxes – most of which is eaten during the drive across town.

My three-year old son’s class is first, and it is a “parent and me” class where I follow him around to make sure he’s listening and following instructions.  When he’s done, our six-year-old daughter (who comes with my wife, direct from a different activity) has her class.  It’s usually 7:45 or later when we get home, which leaves just a few minutes for homework or unwinding before we start into the bedtime routine.

Basically, Wednesdays are controlled chaos, but it’s worth it because our kids love the classes, the teachers, and the other kids in the class.  My son’s class is rather small – it’s just him and two little girls.  As such, we know the other kids in the class pretty well – or so I thought…

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Recently, I saw a link to an article about the family of Curtis Ledbetter, the Director of Operations for the University of Nebraska baseball team.  Ledbetter is a former Husker player – a big, strong first baseman who usually led the team in home runs.  But the main reason I read the article (which can be found here) is because I know Ledbetter as the dad of one of the little girls in my son’s gymnastics class.  Truth be told, it was the article’s title – “Huskers Excited to Show Their ‘Love 4 Laney’” – that stopped me in my tracks.

I had no idea Laney was sick.

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Reading the article, these two sentences punched me right in the gut:

“Laney was diagnosed with Progressive Familial Intrahepatic Cholestasis Type 2, which means her liver doesn’t produce and move bile the way it should, so Laney’s body can absorb all the nutrients it needs. Nebraska Medicine doctors in Omaha told Curtis and Monica that their daughter eventually will need a transplant.”

I’ve been around little Laney an hour a week for most of the last six months, and I had zero idea she is sick.  She’s always struck me as a perfectly normal two-year old.  She’s active, energetic, and cute as a button.  You’d never know that she gets “seven to eight doses of medicine” every day and will someday require a new liver.

As a parent, I simply cannot imagine having a child fighting a disease with six words and almost 20 syllables in the name.  Our kids went through a bout of 24-hour stomach flu a few weeks ago, and it was exhausting.  The stress of seeing your babies miserable and weak is heartbreaking.  But a few days later they were completely back to normal.  I cannot imagine having that as my daily norm.  The love and strength parents like the Ledbetters and Hoffmans show is amazing and inspiring.

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At the Nebraska – Minnesota baseball game on April, 12, the Huskers honored the 2005 team that made the College World Series.  Curtis Ledbetter was a key cog in that great team.  At the same game, the team held a “Love 4 Laney” day raising awareness for organ donation.  The team traded their traditional red hats for green ones, and fans wore neon green awareness shirts.

A clip from the local news can be found here.

Nebraskans, you can learn how to sign up to become an organ donor here.  For those who live outside The Good Life, here are some resources for you.  I’m proud to be a registered organ and tissue donor, and I hope you will join me.

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(Author’s note:  Wondering why there is a random letter in parentheses in the title of this post?  Not sure how this post corresponds to the daily letter in the April A to Z Challenge?  Like clicking on links?  These questions are all answered here.)

Thought of the Day – 5/31/2014 – Kid Math

Question:  If I have two kids asleep, and can get the third one asleep, how many people will be sleeping?

Answer:  Four.

Daddy gets to nap too.

Night night

Quiet (Q)

The older I get*, the more I appreciate and desire quiet.

*My next birthday will have a zero in it.  I get closer to grumpy old man status every day.

Partially, this is due to having three kids ages five and under, all of whom fail to grasp the concept of “indoor voice”.  At any given moment, one of them is yelling/talking very loudly, another is crying or whining, and the third is trying to rest.  So.  Much.  Noise.

I spend such a significant portion of my day shushing them that I’m afraid they’ll grow up thinking Daddy has a slow leak.  I’m also very much afraid that during some contentious work meeting, I’m going to break in with a twenty second long “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”.

I may install this floor in one of the rooms of my house. (Photo credit: Rochelle, just rochelle)

In my life, it often feels like quiet trails only “sleep” and “money” on the list of Things I Don’t Get Enough Of.

Certainly, much of this is self-inflicted.  I love the big personalities my kids have, and I don’t want to discourage them from expressing themselves – or try to shut them up with a movie* whenever they start getting too loud.

*Especially since the movie of choice in our house is Frozen, which leads to two guarantees:  1) my five year old daughter live-performing the movie line-by-line and song-by-song, 2) I end up with one of the songs (usually “Let it Go” or “Love is an Open Door”) wedged in my skull for the next five hours.  Heck, just typing the words “let it go” has been enough to put that song in my head on a continual loop.

Gone are the days when I looked forward to going out with friends to a noisy bar or when I would crank the volume when a favorite song came on.  Now, I find myself looking for ways to have a few blessed minutes of peace and quiet – even if it means making a last minute run to the grocery store, washing bottles, or some other chore that I would otherwise like to avoid.

I think when my birthday rolls around, I’m going to ask for noise-cancelling headphones…and wear them during most of my waking hours.

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(Author’s note:  Wondering why there is a random letter in parentheses in the title of this post?  Not sure how this post corresponds to the daily letter in the April A to Z Challenge?  Like clicking on links?  These questions are all answered here.)

Thought of the Day – 4/8/2014 – Goodnight Gorilla (G)

The watchman/security guard/zookeeper in the children’s book Goodnight Gorilla is one of the most oblivious characters in literary history.

A gorilla steals your keys, lets out all of the other animals, follows you home, gets in your bed (next to your wife), and you don’t notice?

I get being tired and wanting sleep (which, coincidentally, happens pretty much every time I read it), but seriously dude there is a lion on the floor in your bedroom.

Get it together.

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(Author’s note:  Wondering why there is a random letter in parentheses in the title of this post?  Not sure how this post corresponds to the daily letter in the April A to Z Challenge?  Like clicking on links?  These questions are all answered here.)

Is Four less than Three? (F)

Recently, Mrs. Feit Can Write and I enjoyed a very lovely date night.  We went out, ate some good food, had some drinks, and saw one of our favorite bands.  Best of all, it was a completely kid free evening.

I know that may come off a little crass, but nights out (of any kind) are kind of a big deal.  Part of the reality of having three kids ages five and under is not being able to go out whenever we want.

Dinner in a restaurant?  We would need to pack 15 pounds of stuff into the diaper bag, answer a million questions on the way there, strategically pick a place that is busy/loud enough so we don’t ruin the dining experience for others yet slow enough that we do not have to wait for a table or risk slow service*, and time the whole operation perfectly so the kids are not starving when we arrive, not hungry when their food gets there, or the baby doesn’t need a bottle while one of us is trying to eat.

*Although we have noticed that families with multiple young children tend to get exceptional service and/or hurried out of most places.

Assuming we pull that off, there is still the challenges of keeping young children entertained, quiet, and appearing as if they did not just escape from the zoo.  That’s a lot of work for the four crayons you get at most restaurants.  The odds are high that one of us will say “never again” at some point in the evening.

What about a date night for just the two of us, you ask?  Paying for a sitter is never cheap, but when you get past two kids, you end up spending more just to leave the house then you do while you’re out.  We used to have a pretty good system of date swaps where we would watch the kids of some friends while they went out and a few weeks later they would reciprocate.  But strangely, right about the time we brought home baby number three, those informal arrangements dried up.

I get it.  Watching more than two kids – even for a few hours – is not for the faint of heart.  Living with more than two has been an experience – so much so that we’ve joked about changing our phone numbers so the adoption agency we used can no longer find us.

But is it really that bad?

Well, according to this article, it is.  They cite a study that says that three kids is the most stressful number of kids to have.  In what seems to be counter-intuitive, parents with four (or more) children have less stress then parents of three.

Why?  The article lists two key factors:

The increased stress of being out-numbered makes the transition from two to three much more difficult than from one to two.  And once you get past three kids, parents tend to “let go” and trust their parenting instincts and experiences.

For the most part, I agree with this.

Going from one to two isn’t that bad.  You can divide and conquer or one parent can pretty easily take both kiddos and give the other a break.  But a big part of the challenge of three is being outnumbered.  You only have two arms to pick up crying kids, and one set of eyes to make sure your little explorers don’t wander off in the store.  The classic parenting joke is you switch from a man-to-man defense to a zone.  Even with your spouse* helping, somebody will always be facing a double team.

*This is as good of a place as any to give a serious shout-out to all of the single parents raising two, three, or more kids by themselves.  In your next life may you come back stranded on a remote tropical island with a spa, an open bar, and no screaming.

As for the “letting go”, I’m not completely sure I buy that.  Yes, with our youngest we have relaxed on a number of things that would never ever have happened with our oldest.  For example, when our oldest was about 9 or 10 months old, we were at Wal-Mart when her pacifier fell to the floor.  I’m pretty sure we threw it away, because neither of us could ever imagine it being clean again.  Since then, we’ve joked that with baby #2, that pacifier would have been run through the sterilizer and given back.  With baby #3, I probably would have popped that sucker in my mouth, given it a quick slurp and handed it back to my daughter.

But I’m just not sure that relaxing your standards necessarily equals a reduction in stress.  I totally get the concept of “survival mode” – doing what you have to do to make it through the day.  But I wonder if the guilt of knowing that you let the kids watch four movies just so you could get lunch picked up before bedtime doesn’t create its own stress.

If anything, I think the reduction in stress with child #4 comes with acceptance.  Acceptance in knowing that you’re never going to know a house that is clean or quiet.  Acceptance that you’re never going to go out for date night again – and probably wouldn’t be able to afford it if you could.  Acceptance that this is your life.

With three kids, we still hold on to the crazy notion that we can still do the things that families with one or two children do.  Like go out to eat, take vacations, drive a mid-size sedan, have friends and family offer to watch our kids, or pay for college and/or weddings.  And that can be stressful.

But as somebody who never wanted to have more than two kids, I absolutely cannot imagine life without all three of my beautiful babies; the loves of my life, the reasons I go to work, and the reasons that my heart is full of love.

Yeah, it is crazy, stressful, and often crazy stressful, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

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(Author’s note:  Wondering why there is a random letter in parentheses in the title of this post?  Not sure how this post corresponds to the daily letter in the April A to Z Challenge?  Like clicking on links?  These questions are all answered here.)

What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?

As a parent, I often notice a recurring theme in conversations about my kids:  what our children are going to be when they grow up.  You know what I mean:  Jamie likes to role-play her doctor visits, so maybe she’ll be a doctor.  Of course, she’s so expressive and energetic that maybe she’ll be an actress or performer.  Cameron’s birth parents were 6’2″ and 5’10”, so maybe he’ll be a basketball player, but with his long fingers maybe he’ll be a concert or jazz pianist.

And so it goes.  Almost any time they show a new skill, role play something they’ve experienced, or display even a minor interest in something new, we want to map out their college and career plans.

Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing wrong with wanting your children to be happy and successful, finding careers that allow them to utilize their skills and passions.  And I’m all for encouraging kids to follow their dreams, even if they are unlikely to grow up to be an firefighting astronaut puppy doctor*.  No sane parent is going to lock their child into a career path before they lose their first tooth.

*I am often reminded by family members that when I was young (4 or 5?) I said I wanted to be a microphone when I grew up.  Not an announcer, actor, singer, DJ, performer, or game show host.  A microphone.  (Familial history is a little cloudy on if I wanted to be a normal microphone or one of the long skinny ones like on Price is Right or Match Game.)  While some may debate if I have grown up, I can assure you that I have let to become a microphone.

But I’m struck by the disparity in the future careers we identify for our kids.  When parents talk about their kids being something then they grow up, they usually talk about well-known jobs:  doctor, lawyer, veterinarian, soldier, cop, firefighter, athlete, artist, musician, etc.  I have yet to meet the parent who thinks their kid is going to be a janitor, cashier at Target, Starbucks barista, assistant to the regional manager, or any one of a thousand jobs that are vital to everyday life, but rank low on the glamour scale.

You said you wanted to be a farmer, right?

Why is that?  Do we look at ourselves – a collection of middle managers, analysts, technicians, laborers, and fillers of unglamorous and unrewarding jobs – and project our unfulfilled career ambitions on our children?  Or is it the simple fact that nobody under the age of 18 has ever aspired to be a project analyst, client services manager, or customer support representative (three job titles I’ve proudly owned, by the way)?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ll continue to think of my daughter as a future doctor every time she pretends to check my ears, and my son as an NBA all-star every time he out-grows another pair of pants.  And I’ll love them just as much if they end up in the most menial, dead-end job you can imagine – especially if it makes them happy.

But I won’t be disappointed if they aspire to be a microphone.

Thought of the Day – 12/18/2012

Tonight, the traditional holiday program A Charlie Brown Christmas will be shown on ABC.  I’m planning to watch this wholesome family favorite with my four-year old daughter – who will likely be holding the stuffed Santa Snoopy toy that is currently one of her favorites.

But once Charlie Brown is done providing his simple outlook on American life in the 1960s, as well as the true meaning of Christmas, I don’t think we’re going to stick around for ABC’s next two programs:  Happy Endings and Don’t Trust the B____ in Apartment 23.  Those seem like odd choices to follow one of the most beloved family specials of the Christmas season – even if both episodes are Christmas themed.

In fairness, I haven’t watch either Happy Endings or Don’t Trust the B____, but I’m guessing that neither are all that appropriate for young children who like to repeat things they hear on TV.

On second thought, maybe I’ll record Charlie Brown, and we’ll watch it tomorrow when we can fast forward through the commercials and promos for ABC’s other shows.

Thought of the Day – 12/14/12

Let’s be honest…with what has occurred in Connecticut today, I have a great many thoughts in my head.  I’m not sure how many of them will see the light of day – we’ll see how much I feel like addressing some of what I believe to be underlying issues with these shootings as Christmas nears.  So today’s thought is going to be borrowed.

Today I’m seeing a ton of Facebook posts, tweets, and the like saying something to the effect of “hug your kids tonight”.  That sentiment, while a natural reaction to the horror that was unleashed upon so many innocent souls today, reminds me of something a former co-worker is fond of saying:

“If you need something like this to happen to show love and affection to your family, something is wrong with you.”

By all means, hug your kids today and tell them you love ’em.  But be sure to do that on the days that aren’t scarred by senseless violence too

Thought of the Day – 9/22/2012

Of all of the reasons I am so happy and blessed to have a son (to go along with my almost 4-year-old daughter), few top this:

It (likely) means that I won’t have to endure this horrible Strawberry Shortcake video nearly as long as if I had a second daughter.

Baby Lessons

With a newborn in the house, I have been learning a lot over the two plus weeks we’ve been together.  For example, I learned three new lessons tonight:

1. The boy is three times more likely to spit up on me if I am wearing a black shirt.
2. If the boy spat up on a black canvas, we could sell the resulting modern art for thousands of dollars (assuming there was a way to mask the smell).
3. It is really tough to get the smell of spit up out of your goatee.