Just sleep.

Though this feeling was preceeded by a parenting “doh!” moment. (Some would call it “parenting fail” but I redeemed myself in the end, so I wouldn’t call it a fail)

For the last few nights Sprout hasn’t been sleeping very well. She whines and cries and fusses. She arches her back and squirms when we try and rock her to sleep, we put her down in our bed and she rolls around, kicking, squirming, and not sleeping. We’d finally get her to sleep around 1am only to wake up again at 6 (with multiple wakeups during the night). This made for lots of frustration and very tired parents.

We had no idea what was wrong. She’s teething, so we figured maybe it was that. She was gassy, so we thought maybe that was further compounding the issue. So we got some baby tylenol, and we gave her Oval and did tummy rubs, all to no avail.

Then at some point yesterday Mama Bean (or me? I can’t remember) said that maybe she is itchy because her skin is dry. It gets super dry in the winter here, and I often spend much of the night rolling around because my back and shoulders are so itchy (because I’m lazy and don’t want to get out of bed to get some lotion).

So after her bath last night we slathered her in lotion and lo and behold, she sleeps! All night. All glorious night long.

She went down about 8:30 last nightand slept until 8 this morning. Sweet glorious hallelujah!

So that’s all it was. Now I’m sure she was also utterly exhausted from a bunch of sleepless nights which helped with the sleeping, but still… She was probably thinking, “Finally, I can get comfortable.” Poor baby girl.

So yeah. We got so wrapped up in the frustration of the moment that we looked right past what should’ve been pretty obvious. Oops.

We live, we learn. And we screw up along the way. Good thing babies/children are so forgiving.

Happy #CommentDay!

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Social media is a big part of my life. I’m not just a consumer, I’m a participator and for me, social media is all about developing community. It’s about making connections and cultivating friendships. I don’t wan to just follow thousands of people in an attempt to extend my reach or increase my influence. And no, I’m not super close with everyone I interact with, but I try hard to make my interactions about relationships. I’m not there to sell them anything, I’m there to share my experiences, learn from theirs, and generally make friends.

You can find me on everything from Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn and use services like Pintrest, Foursquare, and various others. I read and comment on a wide variety of blogs, mostly in the parenting and Christianity realms, but with a liberal sprinkling of all manner of randomness that I come across.

When I started, Facebook was for those I knew in real-life, while Twitter was for those with shared interests or situations. As I became more involved and started establishing deeper relationships, the lines became blurred between the different social media sites. I now have a few people I know in real-life (IRL) on Twitter and quite a few of those I am closer with on Twitter now on Facebook.

A downside to developing friendships through social media is that those you meet are usually on the other side of the world, or at least on the other side of the continent, at least for those of us in the middle of nowhere in Canada. This isn’t conducive to offline friendships, which makes me sad as I’ve created so many amazing relationships with people I will probably never get the chance to meet IRL.

It’s with this in mind that I was very excited to meet someone on Twitter with whom I seemed to click. We share interests, work in the same field, and chatted lots about all sorts of things. And as an added bonus, we live in the same city. It was a relationship that was growing into something of a friendship that I was hoping could branch outside of the online world.

One morning I came online to find that this person was no longer following me. It made me realize that over the previous few days we’d talked less, and it was usually me responding to things he said. When I called him on it, I was told that he didn’t want to hear about my kids all the time. While married, he was not yet a parent and apparently had no interest in what I had to say about my kids; it didn’t matter that we talked about many other interests that we had in common.

Now, I have to admit, this hurt. I don’t have a very big community of friends IRL, so I was excited to be making a new friend. But it seemed like it was all for naught.

Now, a year or so later, his wife is pregnant and I’m sitting here feeling a little bitter. I mean, I sort of understand where he was coming from, I’m not as inclined to follow someone who is constantly talking about things that I have no interest in, and maybe I felt like I was connecting more than he did. There are any number of factors in play here, and it isn’t like we sat down and talked about it. The “friendship” just sort of dissipated.

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It’s situations like these that make me wonder how online relationships are changing the definition of friendship. Can an online friendship be as meaningful as one that takes place strictly offline? What if face-to-face (via Skype) conversations take place, phone calls are exchanged, all alongside connecting via email and social media?

How are friendships changing with the dramatic increase in use of social media? Are friendships becoming more disposable? Because there are so many more people at our fingertips, are fair-weather friendships becoming the norm instead of the exception? Not even just the norm, but more acceptable as well?

I’ve made some pretty amazing friendships online, some that I’d say are closer than many I have IRL. While I don’t think online relationships can ever fully replace relationships where we have the person sitting next to us. Someone who can give a hug, a shoulder to cry on, a high five or fist-bump in celebration, or just provide that presence that comes from a physical being. That being said, I think online friendships are quicking changing the way build relationships and should not be discounted nor taken lightly. This does introduce new challenges, but they are things that come with the territory, and just like in real-life, communication is key.

“Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.” Proverbs 18:24 (The Message)

Me: (as we pull up to a stop sign) Stop.
Bean (2 years old): TOP!

Me: Right turn.
Bean: Turn turn.

Me: Read means stop.
Bean: mean top!

Me: Green means…
Bean: go!

Me: Left turn.
Bean: eft turn

Me: Train tracks, bump bump!
Bean: tracks. train. choo choo!

Me: More train tracks.
Bean: train, train. choo choo!

Me: Right turn.
Bean: turn.

Me: *string of expletives at the person in front of me that doesn’t know how to merge*
Bean: *attempt to imitate dad’s foul language*

Me: Shhh, don’t learn those words!
Bean: Words!

Me: Red means…
Bean: mean top!
Bean: Go go go!
Me: No, red means stop, we have to wait.
Bean: Go go go!
Me: Green means…
Bean: Mean go!

<repeat the stop and go conversation a few more times as we pass through 3 more sets of lights>

Bean: (as we go up the only incline in this city) Up, up, up!
Me: up, up, up!

Me: (as we go down the other side) down down down…
Bean: down down down… (repeat over and over)

<a couple more stop and go conversations>

Me: Left turn.
Bean: turn turn.

<even more stop and go conversations>

Me: Left turn.
Bean: home!

Yes, my son is a parrot.

As I return to full-time working dad and my kids start going to a dayhome on a daily basis, I really miss being with them. My son is making amazing progress with his words and language skills, so since I can’t talk with him during the day, I do it on the drive home. I don’t turn on the radio, and instead have a conversation with Bean. There is a constant stream of conversation and it makes for a fun drive home. It’s only 20 minutes or so, but it really helps me transition out of work mode to dad mode.

I’m finding it hard transitioning out of the house, so this is a nice way to extend my fairly short evenings with the kids and add some quality dad-son interaction to our day.

I wasn’t really surprised that he was excited to be there when I dropped him off, but I was expecting maybe a little bit of resistance. After all he has been home with us for the last 9 months, but this was just the first day. I do hope he maintains this attitude though, because despite the tiniest feelings of sadness that he doesn’t care about me (he’s only 2, he’ll have lots of time yet to figure out that he misses me sometimes), it’s a whole lot easier dropping off a child who is happy to be there than one that cries and screams.

To really show his enthusiasm for being there, when I went to pick him up this evening he didn’t want to leave. Didn’t even want to come to the door to see me. Life must be good there.

On one hand, I’m happy to be back at work. I really enjoy my job, and working part-time the last few months has been frustrating as I haven’t been able to be as productive as I would have liked.

On the other hand, being at home with the kids has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I’ve been home for about 18 months of my 2 year old son’s life, and almost all of my 9 month old daugther’s life. I’ve seen them grow and change so much in these first couple of years, and I’m going to miss being there as much now that I’m working again.

It has strengthened my resolve to be more present when I am around though, and to really focus on them in the evenings. One way I did that today was to turn off the radio when I picked my son up. Instead of listening to the news, or whatever music the radio station was playing, I sat and talked to my son for the 30 minute drive home. His vocabulary is exploding and it’s fun to teach him new words and listen to what he has to say. He’s just starting to put 2 (and the rare 3) word sentence together and it just blows my mind.

I’m looking forward to the change in my life and embracing it. I’m on a pretty awesome journey and I’m excited to see where the coming years take me.

So Christmas morning was a huge excitement and we really looked forward to opening all of our presents. As we got older, presents became more practical, especially when my brothers and I became adults and moved out.

I didn’t grow up with the Santa fairy tale, and that was okay. I’d love to know how my parents balanced the Santa that is such huge part of our Christmas culture with us not believing in him. Despite not believing in Santa, we still made lists of things that we wanted for Christmas.

This is something that has continued as we grew into adulthood. We write down the things we want and send that list to each other. This way we would always get the things we want. I never understood giving presents when you have no idea what the other person wants; no wonder re-gifting is such a common occurrence. Things don’t get regifted when you get what you want, and writing lists allows you to ask for things you want.

Like I mentioned earlier, as we’ve gotten older, presents have become more practical. My parents would buy us things for our house, kitchen things, stuff we would use in our every day life, not just gifts that fit our hobbies or whatnot. I always appreciated this. It meant that I could ask for things like a blender, shop vac, tools, or a dustbuster for Christmas, and that would be totally normal.

I like that presents have always been a big part of our Christmas tradition without feeling like they were the reason for Christmas. Growing up Christian, and a regular church attender, I knew that Christmas, for us, was the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Presents were just a bonus. Now, as a kid, I’m not sure how I would have felt had presents not been there one year, but I like to think that at some point in my childhood I came to the understanding that Christmas could happen without presents.

So as I establish traditions with my family, I wonder how I can still make presents part of Christmas without having them become the focus. As I get older I’m less and less of a fan of Christmas presents, but that’s mostly just me being anti-consumerist and hating the attitudes I see at Christmas when it comes to presents and shopping. I want my kids to look forward to presents on Christmas morning, but also to understand the reason we celebrate Christmas, and I want the birth of Jesus to remain the focus.

This will be something Mama Bean and I will work on in the coming years. As an event that only happens once a year, it isn’t really something that is talked about much outside of the month of December, exposure is limited, but we’ll work to instill these values in our kids.

Wake up before mom and dad and run out and check out what was in our stockings. My parents would be up about 8, and then we’d start opening presents. Presents were always a big part of our day, and there was never a shortage. Now we didn’t get a ton of expensive stuff, but looking back we were pretty blessed with toys. We didn’t really get them between birthday’s and Christmas, so this was one of two days a year we’d get presents and my parents made it amazing.

We’d usually open presents in a rotating fashion with only one person opening at a time so we could all see what they got. (i’ve never understood the mass simultaneousness opening of presents) After presents (10 or so) we’d usually fill up on chocolates, baking, and candy that we’d received and lunch didn’t really happen. The rest of the day would be spent playing with our new gifts and helping my parents get ready for dinner.

We’d always have a big Christmas dinner and sometimes have people over, but usually it was just the 5 of us. We lived way up north and all of our extended family lived 1000′s of km’s away, so we didn’t really see anyone at Christmas.

Every year was the same, and I loved it. There was only one year that was the exception to this. We travelled south to visit our extended family, I was 12 or so, and I look back as that being the worst Christmas. It kinda makes me laugh as it was no small expense for my family to fly all 5 of us across the country for that vacation, but for me, at the time, it totally messed with my Christmas. It didn’t feel right.

I loved our Christmas tradition, and I’ve been looking foward to making my own with our little family. Mama Bean and I don’t really have much in the way of Christmas traditions, despite being together for 10 years now. We buy each other presents, then we’d split our Christmas day between her parents and mine, having lunch at one place and dinner at the other. It was a decent way of doing things so that we got to spend time with both families, but it was always a little bit stressful.

In terms of stress, things have just gone up in that department since moving halfway across the country, and especially since having kids. We try to balance our time between the two families, staying with one for half of our trip, and the other for the second half. We try and split our Christmas day between the two as well, but with one kid (never mind the two we’ll have this year) it was tough.

So we’ve decided that this will be our last year that we travel across the country to spend Christmas with our families. I want to start developing our own family traditions, and I don’t want one of them to be travelling for hours and hours. I don’t want our Christmas traditions to include the stress of splitting our time between places and rushing around trying to see everyone and make sure everything is split evenly. We do that every other time we go, I don’t want Christmas to be like that too.

So starting next year we will not be travelling at Christmas. We’ll go out for Easter or Thanksgiving and celebrate those holidays with them. In the grand scheme of traditions, those don’t rank as high in my books, so being home for them isn’t as important.

I’m excited and aprehensive for the changes. Being with my family and opening presents with my parents and brothers on Christmas morning has always been a very important part of my Christmas day. I am excited to see what new traditions we’ll be making as a new family, and what the future holds.

Since high school (and before), I’ve been a t-shirt, hoody, and cargo pants kinda guy. Loose fitting t-shirt, nothing too tight, big baggy hoody with a deep hood, and baggy pants with lots of pockets.

(it’s funny, I just found a half-written post about this from June of last year in my blog ideas folder)

Part of what prompted this change was my work situation.

I work at a university, and prior to this I worked at a high school. Being 28, and 10 years older than the youngest students, I still blend into the students pretty easily, even at the high school.

Being an IT Guy, the dress code is pretty casual most places, so my work attire doesn’t differ much from what I wear the rest of the time. You’ll typically find me in a button-up short-sleeve shirt, khaki-type pants with cargo pockets, black socks, merrell-style hiking shoes, and a sweater, sometimes a hoodie (yes, even at work).

I’m getting to the point in my life where I am wanting to move away from being a mistaken for one of the students and want to start dressing like a grownup.

Now I’m still not totally comfortable with my body. I’m down 35lbs to from just over 260 to 225. I’d still like to drop another 25lbs, but I just need to take the first step and start dressing like a grown-up.

I don’t think I own a single shirt that actually looks nice, and by nice I mean that has that tailored look. I’ve never owned a suit or a sport coat. Never. This needs to change. I want to start wearing clothes that fit. I want to wear clothes that help me look good. Clothes that hide

So I’m going to make the change and come January I’m going to start dressing better. I know I won’t have enough clothes to do it every day right away, but I’m going to start building a wardrobe of clothes that fit. I’m going to start dressing like a grownup.

I’m not sure how to make this change, so I’ve started researching and reading about fashion and style. Any tips, recommendations, and resources you have, I’d be happy for them.

So once a month we make it our mission to go out and leave encouraging comments on as many blogs as we can. I think Carl did 50 blogs one day! Now that’s just insane; I think I usually get 12-15. I try and leave a #CommentDay hash tag with my comment to let people know.

And that day just happens to be today. And today just happens to be the beginning of the Christmas season (in my mind anyway). So what better day to go out and spread some cheer? Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year so I’m happy to spread some love.

Now I have to admit, I’d actually forgotten today was Comment Day. My morning was off to a rough start with my son waking up 4 times crying last night and my daughter another 2 or 3 times, so when my 5:30 alarm went off I was a tad grumpy. After a quick breakfast with some guys from church, and 4 cups of coffee, I still wasn’t in a terribly happy mood and said as much on Twitter. But then all the wonderful people on there began to cheer me up. I received one great piece of advice, “do something nice for someone, hard not to be in better mood after!” Followed almost immediately by a reminded that today is #CommentDay. And with that I perked right up.

So I’m off to encourage some wonderful bloggers. Feel free to join us in the fun.