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Hometown Weekend

6/23/19 – Sunday

It’s Sunday morning at 6am. I’m the only one up. I’m sitting at the kitchen table drinking a coffee. This has been a perfect weekend. Probably one of the last ones we’ll have here before we move across town. On Friday we went to our company picnic at the zoo. The weather was perfect. J spent the most time in the reptile room. H and I were outside balancing on rocks while J focused on the snakes.

Later on Friday, we walked to the dentist. Mom was out with friends so it was just us dudes. J had to get a cavity filled. His tooth brushing is subpar. From now on, I’m going to have to brush for him. I also just bought expensive plug-in brushes for both boys. J was nervous going into the appointment, but ended up handling it like a champ. The laughing gas definitely helped. I think he liked it because he was breathing it in like he was hyperventilating into a bag, really trying to take it all in. Doctor said he was the best five year old patient he’d ever had.

Yesterday after my morning OrangeTheory workout I took the boys to swimming class. Then we went and got donuts at the Donut Bar. After that we came home and chilled for a while. The boys watched some paw patrol and I packed some stuff up for the move. Then they played outside with the next door neighbor boy. I sold a couple things on FB Marketplace. When mom got home from her friend’s bridal shower we all walked into town to go to a carnival happening downtown. H was asleep for a while so J rode everything by himself at first. He was having a blast. His favorite thing was the funhouses. Harrison woke up in time to go on a few rides. After that we went to dinner at Bar Louie. Absolutely beautiful day and great time spent with the family.

It’s interesting to see your personalities develop. J is much more cautious than H. Any time H does anything I feel like it’s an emergency room visit waiting to happen. Absolute reckless abandon. Last night when mom was reading to the boys in J’ bed, H decides to try to flip over on his head and ends up bending his neck all out of wack. Probably a mild sprain. After donuts, H was running through the planters in front of the store like a crazy man. There were rose bushes throughout the planters and he got his legs totally scraped up. He didn’t even notice. I was putting him in the car to leave and saw all the scratches and was like “dude, those bushes had thorns.” He was like, “yeah, whatever.”.

So at five and three we’ve got ourselves an academic and a daredevil. It’s going to be so fun watching these boys grow.

Inhospitable Hospital

6/16/19 – Sunday

Happy Father’s day to me. It’s been a great day, but I haven’t written in a while so before getting to today, let’s catch up on the past week. Last Sunday Harrison had a fever. Mom called the Doctor and the doctor said, get that boy to a hospital bed. Since H was also complaining of knee pain the doc thought it’d be a good idea to go to the ER. H had a skinned knee get infected over Easter so they were worried perhaps the previous antibiotic hadn’t taken care of it entirely. They decided to admit him because he was dehydrated and there was a higher level of a bacteria and a low white blood cell count in his blood test. It was determined that he had herpangina (I remember this by saying “Herbie’s vagina”). They didn’t see any issue with the knee via X-ray, but wanted to check using an MRI. They couldn’t get an MRI until Monday so Mom spent the night in the hospital with H. J and I went up there for dinner. It was tough seeing my little guy hooked up to an IV, looking scared and sick. The docs were pretty certain the MRI would be fine, but they wanted to rule out a bone infection. Bone infection would have been really bad news, but treatable.

We took a backseat to emergency MRI’s, so we didn’t end up getting in on Monday. It was my turn to spend the night with you on Monday. We finally got you into the MRI on Tuesday evening. They had to give you general anesthesia before the procedure so you wouldn’t move around in the MRI tube. The MRI analyzers were gone for the day by the time they were done with yours. They said we might need to stay another night, but mom wasn’t having it. They let you go home Tuesday night and called in the morning with the results. And the winner is…Harrison’s knee! No problems with the MRI. We spent two days in the hospital for Herbie’s Vagina.

Yesterday afternoon we went out to Mimi and Poppa’s. The weather was rainy. We went out to dinner, then got some ice cream, then came home and watched some of the U.S. Open golf tournament. Sleeping out there is tough because you two are each in little cots on each side of the queen bed mom and I share. Since you two don’t usually share a room, you get all excited and it takes forever to calm you down. By the time we get you calmed down, mom and I are ready for bed too. This puts a crimp in our alone time.

This was the first Father’s Day that my dad hasn’t been alive. I was thinking about him a lot. I took a 10 mile bike ride in his honor. My dad liked to go on long bike rides. I took a rest at the Shiawasee river to sit on the river bank. My plan was to meditate but the skeeters were all up in my grill so that backfired. I’m not a super spiritual person so I wouldn’t say dad was with me on my ride or during the day, but I enjoyed thinking about him and imagining what would have been going through his head. Thoughts on the beauty of nature and the gratitude I have for my life dominated my mind.

The weather was rainy and cold, but we still bundled up and took a boat ride to go get ice cream. On the way there the three of us sat together under a big heavy blanket. I loved holding you close to me and looking across the boat to your mom. As Poppa would say, “it doesn’t get any better than this”. Even later when I was napping and you both started jumping on me and acting completely insane, nothing but love coming from me. That’s a retrospective love. At the time my exact words were, “What are you doing? Get off me!!”. Time for me to go to bed. Gary Woodland won the open over Brooks Koepka.

The Baby Girl that Wasn’t

6/7/2019 – Friday

I’m sitting in the surgical lounge on the 3rd floor at the hospital. Mom just had what’s called a D & C to clear up the area where a baby is supposed to grow. We found out a few days ago that the baby that was supposed to be 9 weeks along in her belly had stopped growing at 6 weeks and no longer had a heartbeat. The doctor just talked to me and said everything went well and I’ll be back to see her in a half-hour. So now we hit the reset button. 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage according to our doctor. It’s sad, but shit happens. We move forward. If we want to try again, we will. If we don’t or can’t, we won’t. It’s that simple.

This illuminates what a blessing life is. It doesn’t come easy and we’re already lucky enough to have two of the most awesome dudes around in you two. Your mom is the studliest of all the studmuffins. It’s her body that has to go through all this. I know it’s harder on her than anyone, but she’s tough, she’ll move on. I was thinking yesterday about how cool it is that mom cares so much. I remember when I first met her it was a little overwhelming. I couldn’t believe this fun, beautiful person wanted to be around me so much. Then I noticed that she always brings people together, which is so difficult. She cares about everyone and can always be counted on. This will hurt for a little bit, but we’ll take care of each other, and we’ll count the blessings we have. There’s always something to be thankful for when you’re lucky enough to be breathing air on this planet.

Whatever happens along our journey in life, good and bad, we keep going. Because we’re alive! And you boys are guaranteed unconditional love from Mom and I forever. That means no matter what you do that is shitty or great, you’ve got love from us two regardless. We’ll be home soon and we’ll chow down because Mom hasn’t eaten since last night so she is going to be one hungry hippo!

Why would a 5 Year Old Want to Die?

6/3/2019 – Monday

Last Thursday when I picked J up at daycare (H was home sick with Mimi) a teacher gave me an incident report stating that J said he wanted to kill himself earlier in the day. It went on to say, that when questioned, J clarified that he didn’t want to be there was all. I thanked the teacher and said I’d have a conversation with J. Inside me everything went fuzzy and I had to focus really hard on pretending to be unfazed. How did J ever hear about killing oneself as a thing? Was he depressed? Should I get him a therapist? What can I do differently to make him happy? When I talked to him on the car ride home he said he wanted to be alive and that he just didn’t want to be at school that day. I tried to tell him how great it is to be alive and that we’re so lucky to be blessed with life and how precious it is. But the dude is five, it’s not like these nuggets I tell myself everyday to stay upbeat are making him see the light. He doesn’t even understand what killing ones self is. But how the heck did he hear that to even say it? He probably caught it in a song or on a show and it registered. He remembers everything. He’s so smart. I worry about him being sad and scared in public settings. At home and with close friends he’s always having fun. I worry he secludes himself with the bigger groups. When I picked him up the other day, his class was outside and he was standing in the corner by himself picking dandelions. Then Friday evening at his graduation, he threw up and couldn’t go on stage with his classmates to sing. I don’t know how much was nerves and how much was the fact that he was running a fever and feeling sick. He did rally to accept the diploma when they called him. I know he has lots of good friends at school. I can’t expect everyone to think he’s as awesome as I think he is. I hope he’s strong enough to ignore the haters, love him for him, and be him always. There will be people that love him and people that don’t. There’s a lot of shitty and mean people in the world, I hope he stands up to them instead of trying to please them and be their friend. There’s plenty of good people to go around. I wasted way too much time growing up trying to be friends with jerks. I sacrificed my self-respect because I didn’t have any confidence.

Oh shutup, J is a natural born leader that people want to be around. He knows what he wants and is able to convince other people what he wants is what they want. I feel like I’m projecting my rough time from 7th – 11th grade on to his pre-school experience. The dude was sick, he was having a bad day, take it easy. He’s fine.

Plant your Flag

5/29/19 – Wednesday

Well I guess we jumped the gun on getting H back to school today. We got a call around lunch saying H had a low grade fever, didn’t eat his food, and said his ear hurt. So I left work early again to pick him up and take him to the Doctors office. Mom will be picking up his prescription for the ear infection later. No soccer for him tonight. J has ice skating lessons.

I finished the “When Breath Becomes Air” audiobook today. Tough listen. It’s the memoir of a super smart Neurosurgeon who was just finishing up all the years of schooling it takes to become a stud Stanford doctor when he discovered he had lung cancer. He primarily wrote it during his last year of life as he came to grips with his impending death. 8 months before he died his daughter was born. I was crying like a baby on the way to work today. Part of me was thinking about my Dad and how he experienced almost the same last year of his life. I was also thinking of my Mom and how she cared for him during that time. I wondered what it was like in those intimate moments between the two of them when they talked about death and what was most important as he fought for that last year. I thought about how fragile life is and how lucky I am to be here and have such a great family that I love so much and loves me back. I want to protect the boys from anything bad ever happening to them. I worry about those life defining moments that set you down your path in life. I know I’ll feel whatever pain they feel so viscerally it might as well be happening to me. There’s much physical and emotional pain to come. That’s okay. We get to live! For a short time on this earth we are alive and your mom and I will do everything we can to facilitate the life you imagine for yourself. We’ll also expand your imagination so you understand you can do anything. No matter what you decide, no matter what you do wrong or where you end up, we are going to love you always. I’m going to be the sappy dad that cries a lot and tells you how much I love you and wants to give you hugs. I’ll have a hard time letting go when you’re trying to turn yourself loose on the world. I’ll do what I can to help you but just because you want something doesn’t mean the rest of the world is going to cooperate. The rest of the world can be a real dick and it might take a while to show it how amazing you are. I know you’ll wear it down, you’ll keep at it. Eventually the world will be begging for mercy as you plant your flag with a smile on your face, just happy to be alive and doing what you love.

Sold & Old!

5/28/19 – Tuesday

Tuesday after Memorial Day. I’m sitting at home with a sick kid at 3pm. H has a fever, cough, and runny nose. He’s watching Super Truck. We sold the house on Saturday. The thing sits on the market for 35 days with no offers, then we ended up getting a flurry of three between Friday and Saturday. A couple from Chicago was the winning bidder. They’re letting us live in the house until August 4th. On Saturday we were getting a lot of calls from the realtor when we were out at Mimi and Poppa’s. It was pretty exciting and a huge load off to get the house sold. Now we just need to pass the inspection.

Mom and I went out to dinner and a concert last Wednesday to celebrate her birthday. You two went to Mimi and Poppa’s because we had house showings. We ate at Mabel Gray and it was delicious. Then we saw Jim James (lead singer of My Morning Jacket). There were plenty of good seats still available. The show was good, but I was nodding off so we decided to leave early and go home to go to sleep. Not having you two bust into our room in the middle of the night to try to sleep in our bed was awesome. You stayed the night at Mimi and Poppa’s on Thursday night as well. By Friday, we were missing you and couldn’t wait to get out to the lake to give you big hugs.

The night before, J smashed Mimi’s ipad in frustration and ruined the glass cover. Extremely not cool dude. We’ve started a money jar for J to collect enough money by doing chores to pay for the repair for Mimi.

Aunt D came to the lake with her daughter on Saturday. You all had a fun time. We caught some fish in the net, went for a boat ride, got ice cream, and jumped off the raft.

You started coughing more on Sunday and then yesterday you had a fever. It didn’t stop you from playing outside though. You don’t want to miss out. On Sunday, H and mom caught a bass with a nightcrawler. It was pretty awesome. We think we’re going to get more into fishing this summer. I want to catch a pike off the dock. We’ll see how my patience holds up.

I went to take you boys for a canoe ride on Saturday and discovered a dead possum underneath where we had stored it for the winter. There were stinky guts all over it. Peeeeeee-youuuuuu! Or as H would say after I say that when I’m changing his diaper, “Peeeeee-meeeee!”.

Mundane Retelling of a Day

5/18/2019 – Saturday

House all cleaned. Ready for a showing at 12:45. Best buddy and his girls are on the way. When they get here we will go out to lunch then head to a nearby park. The boys are watching Justin Time and have been for the last 3 hours. I feel bad about all the screen time but really needed to clean the house. Plus it’s educational so they’re probably getting a leg up on the competition thanks to Justin.

Yesterday we closed on our new house. So now we officially own two houses, which puts a major strain on the wallet. So we need to sell the current house soon. The former owners of our new house are renting from us through the end of July. We didn’t do a good job keeping up our current house, which I think is why we’re having trouble selling it. At the new house we will stay on top of fixing everything as soon as it goes wrong.

The realtor got the boys nets, a bucket, spelunking lights, and a box for any critters they catch at the new house. He got me a book about bird watching so I can learn about all the pretty birds we’ll see out our back window.

I got mom a surprise night away in Detroit at the Foundation hotel with her friend yesterday. They ate at Takoi, a funky Thai restaurant in Corktown. Me and the boys got cheap Chinese then went to the park. They were pretty good, but I did have to take a book away from J for dumping sand out of the sand box after I had already told him not to. After the boys were asleep I watched a couple Game of Thrones episodes. J crawled into bed with me at 5:30, and although it’s a king size bed he wanted to use my shoulder as a pillow. Fine by me. You both don’t like to be left alone at night. I wonder if we’re meant to sleep in a pack like a family of bears would do. I hate to see you both get so sad and lonely when I close the door. Hope that’s not damaging your emotional growth or something.

No Discipline on a Wednesday

5/15/19 – Wednesday

Pretty standard Wednesday. In the morning H and I had bowls of granola and watermelon slices while J and Mom got a little extra shut eye. J & H ignored our requests to get your shoes and jackets on and get in the car as usual. (Sidebar: Why the fuck do the kids not do anything we tell them to do? I hate being the bad guy. I hate having to think of shit to take away from them. Lately we’ve been taking away books at night. Books are good for development so I need to come up with something else. I don’t like threatening to remove TV time in the morning because if I have to follow through on that then the alternative is they get a bunch of toys out that will then require an extra five minutes of cleanup I don’t have. When I do Google searches asking how to get kids to do what you want it says not to repeat yourself, use fewer words, see it from their point of view, don’t talk until you have their attention, and stay calm. It must be fun for the childless to write that bullshit. I hate losing my temper, but I don’t know what to do aside from working toward becoming a licensed hypnotist. Tomorrow I’ll try to get on their level and make it super fun then I’ll report back.) J cried the whole way to daycare because he meant to grab a third bag of fruit snacks and I wouldn’t let him go back in and grab them even though mommy had said he could. So bad daddy was in effect. Zero sympathy from me. I told him crying was pointless and turned up the music. Then I made up a song about J crying, which eventually made him laugh and stop crying.

We had a house showing tonight so we had to be elsewhere. After H’s soccer we went to McDonald’s because they have a play structure. It was so much better than last night when we went to a trendy new rooftop bar and spent 3.5X as much. The food was junk and we had the only kids in the place, big thumbs down. McDonald’s play structure had plenty of padding so we could let them go with limited supervision until the coast was clear to come home. As always the day ended with hugs, kisses, and I love you’s, as it should. I’ll now continue watching season 7 of Game of Thrones.

Mother’s Day

5/12/19 – Sunday – Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day. That’s the first thing I said to mom when she joined me and the kids in the basement a smidge after 8am. The boys and I were enjoying Clif bars and watching Vampire Weekend perform on Friday night’s Jimmy Kimmel. We had her presents and cards ready for her to open. She got a new band and battery for her Shinola and a fancy scale. Her weight has been inching upward so it was time for a not so gentle reminder to get that shit in check. Haha. Actually, the old scale has been giving some odd read outs lately and I’ve been telling her to stop freaking out about the scale and that it’s only a number and all that. It was the source of an argument earlier in the week so I thought the scale would be a good way to bury the hatchet. Plus she’s pregnant, so she’s going to want to monitor the upward poundage.

Oh snap, I buried the lead. Yes kids, mom is pregnant. But you don’t know it yet. Today we told Mimi and Poppa and Nana. We’re going to wait to tell you until after the first doctors appointment. We’re doing this because if something bad were to happen we couldn’t bear to see your sadness. And we really couldn’t bear telling you. So, fingers crossed all goes well and we’ll be telling you in a few weeks. I’m excited and nervous to bring some more offspring to the world. You’ll be great big brothers.

I was ansty all day today. I’m blaming the second cup of coffee I had in the morning before we went to church. I couldn’t relax. I think no matter how much I did it would’ve felt like it wasn’t enough. As always it was a huge hassle getting the boys out of the house. Nobody was listening, I was running around with my hand in the air threatening spankings like I was doing a jazz dance number. Mom was annoyed I wasn’t moving fast enough. Plus with it being her day she shouldn’t be the one to have to kick it in to overdrive to get us in the car. I finally get you both on the front porch and H pisses his self. I’d been so pumped when H pooped on the potty earlier I decided it was no pull up time, even at church. Mom: “You sure?”. Me: “Yup. He’s a big boy now.” Cut to mom changing him while I cower off to get J in the van.

At church I was kind of paying attention, but not feeling it as much as I normally do. I got glassy eyed when the Pastor mentioned his dead mom and talked about the mother hen as enforcer, protector, and doer of the family. But I didn’t drop any discernible tears like I normally would. Then after church we went to the neighborhood bar for brunch. Usually it’s pretty good but it took an hour for the food and they kept forgetting stuff. H pooped on the potty at the restaurant though!

You both fell asleep on the way home and while you were sleeping mom showed mimi the positive pregnancy tests. I recorded it. It was pretty funny. Mimi said: “You peed on these?”. Then I got some chicken marinating and went outside to do a little yardwork after Facetiming Nana to tell her the good news.

The real question is what should I be doing when I’m feeling anxious like today. The new house is much bigger so the yardwork will take a lot longer. I think I’m going to hire someone to do the yardwork though. There are better uses for all this anxious energy. Like writing. That’s what I’ll do. I’m going to change the names and make this more generic, then I’m going to start a WordPress site. I’m going to write 4-5 times per week, allot money for marketing, and keep pushing until I have enough visitors to generate advertising on my page. I’ll also start a sister site where I’ll post my crazy stuff from college. Yikes. Gonna have to tone that stuff down a bit. It’s called a side hustle and I need one that doesn’t involve house projects. Right now I’m going to get started on season seven of Game of Thrones. The hardcore tenacity will have to wait. But it will be done!!

I’m Here for You

5/8/19 – Wednesday

Celtics season is over today. Bucks won in five. A Star is Born was pretty shitty. In the morning when I drop you boys off at daycare I always tell you to have fun and be nice to people. Lately I’ve been throwing in listen to your teachers and give everything 100% effort, but I don’t want to muddle the message too much. Have fun and be nice to people pretty much covers it.

I think a lot about how much I love you boys. Usually after I drop you off and I’m in the car on the way to work after the teachers have had to peel you off of me. I don’t want to leave you either. I want to take you out of there and go to the zoo. I imagine how your day might go. This morning I heard one of the kids tell J he liked his new haircut and that he looked handsome. You boys are out there in the world of daycare every day. I worry you get sad. The teachers say you get happy as soon as I leave, but I’m sure you have moments during the day when you wish you could just be with mom and dad instead of with all those people you don’t know as well. I have those moments too. I was always pretty sensitive. Like if my mom was the last one to pick me up I’d get sad. And I used to wish my Dad didn’t work so late. Sometimes he’d get home from work early on Friday and play HORSE with us. I want you to know that even if I’m not there all the time, you’re my number one priority in this world. I’ll take care of the expected stuff like food, clothes, and shelter, but I’ll also show you how to have fun, work hard, and be nice to people. Beyond that, it’s mostly up to you. I’ll get into whatever you’re into and help where I can. I hope you’re comfortable telling me how you’re feeling about things. I might not be able to help you, but I can always give you a hug. Tonight, I was staring into H’s eyes as he was laying in his bed. He kept his gaze right on me and we had a good old staring contest. You’re not a mind reader, but my eyes were telling you I love you and I’ve got you.