Things You Forget About Babies

Thanks to everyone for their comments and emails about the new baby. Both Marathon Girl and Brennan are home and doing very well. From my point of view, even though it’s been just over two years since our previous child was born, it’s amazing how much I’ve forgotten about how much attention a baby needs.

Like getting up 2-3 times a night. After my third trip to retrieve the baby for Marathon Girl last night, I realized our other kids cried just as much during all hours of the night and we both had to get up just as much with them as we did with the new one. There’s probably a good reason those memories got pushed to the side when we decided to have another kid.

Other things I forgot: Babies need constant changing and care. They spit up a lot. And unlike our other kids, they can’t tell you what’s bothering them. There’s a lot of guesswork trying to figure it out why he’s crying.

But there are a lot of positive things too that also skipped my mind. Like taking a screaming baby into your arms and having him instantly calm down. That’s very rewarding. And being able to just hold him without all the wiggling or squirming. Having him open his eyes and sort of give a half smile and then go back to sleep. Seeing his brothers and sister become excited at the prospect of holding him.

All good stuff.

All worth it.

Now I just need to catch up on my sleep.

The Politics of Baby Names

Awhile back Lerin wrote the following about baby names:

I haven't even had the baby yet, and I am already hearing that there are concerns for what I may name my child, and controversy over whether there has been a previous "claim" to a name or not, both in my circle of friends and in my family.

In the nicest, most charitable way possible...I just want to say...the names we love are not original or unique, and we don't get to "claim" them. I honestly do not have an issue with anyone who wants to use one of "my" names, but I don't want that person to then be upset if I decide to still use it. I promise, I will have absolutely NO hard feelings if one of my friends or family members uses the names Madeleine, Sophie, Isabella, Clare, Benedict, Paul, or any variation thereof.

I never realized how political naming a baby could be until Marathon Girl became pregnant with our first child. Suddenly family members and friends were telling us names they wanted to use for their future kids. Though we weren’t asked not to use them, the implication was that they wanted to. (We didn’t use them but it had nothing to do with their requests. It came down to a fact that we didn’t want those names for our own children to begin with.)

A couple months back a member of the congregation Marathon Girl and I attend came up to us and said that she wanted to name her soon-to-be-born baby Molly and hoped that would be okay with us. Last time I checked there were thousands of people named Molly, including one of my cousins, and we certainly didn’t feel the need to ask any of them if it was okay to use their name. (For the record, she ended up giving the baby a different name.)

Last time I checked, you (thankfully) couldn’t trademark or copyright a person’s name. There are thousands of people with the name Emily. Emily’s a great name. Does it really matter if there's one more?

Unlike most celebrities, Marathon Girl and I actually take the task of naming our kids seriously. This usually means, to Marathon Girl’s chagrin, that we usually don’t narrow it down to two names – the name we like and an alternate in case we change our mind after we actually see what the kid looks like – until a week before the baby’s born.

I know in some families it’s a tradition to name their kids based on certain nationality (Irish, for example), have all their names start with the same letter, have the same middle name, etc. Marathon Girl and I have no such criteria.

In fact, when it comes to naming our kids, I will only object to names for four reasons:

1) I knew someone with that name who I disliked or had a bad experience with in the past. The last think I want is to have my kid remind me of him or her.

2) No gender neutral names. That means no Gene/Jean, Riley, Micah, Carson, Pat, Alex, Cameron, Emerson, Harley, Jaden, Jamie, Jordan, Morgan, Parker, Sklyer, Dakota, or anything like unto them –including alternate spellings

3) No weird Utah names. There’s a strange tendency to make up names in the Beehive state or give common names inventive spelling. I don’t know why. It’s a quirky Utah thing. Though quirky is sometimes good, most of the made up names are usually horrendous. So our kids will not be named BeVan, Alverta, Ra Vae, VaLoy, LaVaughn, Celsey, Kadon, or Earlette. (To generate your own, unique Utah name that will make you feel right at home in Utah, click here.)

4) I don’t want the kid named after me. Part of my reasoning is selfish. I like being the only Abel Keogh in the world. But the main reason is that I had two friends that were named after their dads. It caused a lot of identity confusion when making phone calls, receiving mail, etc. My life’s hectic and confusing enough as it is. The last thing I want to do is add to it.

Though I’m not going to reveal the five names Marathon Girl and I have on our short list for soon-to-be-born baby, I do promise that they meet the above standards and won’t upset any friends or family.

How Big Oil Killed Popeyes

My dad has some unexpected surgery last week, so I took the two boys on a quick two day trip to Casper, Wyoming over the weekend to see him. (He’s recovering quite nicely, for those who are curious.)

It was interesting returning to a town I haven’t lived in for over a decade and haven’t visited for over five years. For the most part, it appears the town has changed for the better. There’s a lot of growth on the east side and there’s plenty of jobs thanks to the energy boom Wyoming is experiencing. (More on that in a minute.)

The first thing I noticed driving in was a Popeyes. Popeyes! I would have fallen over if I wasn’t already sitting down. Marathon Girl and I first had Popeyes back in Houston and loved it. When we find ourselves out of state, we always hope we see a Popeyes so we can eat there.

Of course my first thought was: How on earth did Wyoming get a Popeyes before Utah?

Then I thought: I get to take the boys to Popeyes! Marathon Girl’s going to be jealous!

Then I noticed the giant For Sale sign in front of the building. My hopes were crushed. There wasn’t going to be any Popeyes for me or the boys. How can the people of Casper not support a Popeyes? Don’t they know there’s not a chicken place in the entire state that’s better than this?

We arrived at the hospital a short time later. After taking to my dad for a bit, he asked if Casper had changed much. I mentioned the Popeyes I had seen on the drive in and said something about the people of Wyoming not being ready for such tasty food.

“It was getting plenty of business,” my dad said. “The reason it closed was because they couldn’t find enough people to staff it.”

I asked my dad what he meant and he explained that a lot of people were now working for the oil companies and making a lot of money doing it. As a result there was a shortage of workers in Casper. And despite paying about $10 an hour, the local fast food establishments can’t find enough people to work there.

Admittedly, I was a little skeptical. An abundance of jobs wasn’t something the Casper I lived in for two years had. Any job that could be found didn’t pay much higher than minimum wage.

An hour later, I took the boys out for dinner so my dad could rest. As I drove around town, it did seem that just about every fast food place I passed had a sign in the window or words on their marquee saying they were hiring – always a sign of a strong economy IMHO. Still, I remained skeptical.

Then on the way out of town the next day, I stopped at McDonalds (instead of Popeyes) to feed the boys before the long drive home. Since it was a Sunday afternoon about two, I was surprised to find a long line at the McDonalds. Had I been traveling alone, I would have skipped McDonalds entirely and eaten elsewhere. But the kids love McDonalds and since I actually wanted them to eat something before driving home, I opted to stand in line.

The McDonalds was understaffed. A total of four employees ran store. And though they were working hard and fast, there simply wasn’t enough of them to get the orders out fast enough. As a result, I stood in line for nearly 30 minutes before ordering. (Boys, know I must really love you to do that.)

Behind me in line stood a husband and wife dressed in camouflage. They had spent the morning in the mountains hunting and come to town to eat and got a kick out of watching my boys trying to behave while we waited in line. We started talking and I started asking them about the job market. They confirmed my dad’s observations about the shortage of labor and a lot of people going to work in the oil fields. When I brought up Popeyes, they too said that it had been a popular place to eat but the owner couldn’t find people to work there. The guy mentioned that there was no reason to be unemployed in Casper and, if you were, it was your own damn fault.

After feeding the kids, we headed back on the seven hour drive home. I was a little more observant on the way home and noticed a plethora of new oil wells and exits raps that dotted the sagebrush along I-80 as well as a huge open pit coal mine East of Rock Springs and two giant windmill farms East of Evanston. Apparently the Wyoming economy is doing quite well despite the economic problems the rest of the country is experiencing.

Observations aside, the trip was a great bonding experience for the three guys in the family. Despite 14 total hours of driving, the boys really enjoyed having time alone with dad in the car talking, singing along with whatever CDs dad put in the stereo, and learning the difference between cows, antelope, deer, and horses.

Though the circumstances of our unplanned trip weren’t optimal, I’d be up for another long drive with the boys anytime.

Going to See WALL*E

Took my four year old to the movie theatre for the first time on Saturday. We saw Pixar’s new film WALL*E, which was by far the best animation I’ve ever seen on the big screen and quite enjoyable overall. (I’d give it 3 ½ out of 4 stars.)

I was a little worried about whether or not he would have the attention span to sit through an entire movie. I know he can sit through a 90 minute movie at home without a problem but was a little worried whether or not he’d do it in for a movie he’d never seen before in an unfamiliar, dark theatre. Overall, he had a great time – especially since I bought him his favorite snack to eat: popcorn. It wasn’t until there was about 15 minutes left in the film that he asked if we could go home. (More on that in a minute.) I told him it was almost over and he sat through the rest of the movie without a problem.

On the drive home, when asked about his favorite moments he said, “The rabbit movie [a five minute short before the actual movie] and when the robot made trash.” Yeah, I think he could have watched WALL*E compact trash and build tall towers of garbage all day.

He also liked the popcorn.

Am I looking forward to taking him to another movie? You bet.

I also can’t wait until our other two kids are old enough to come too.

***

A quick note on WALL*E: I don’t know if this is the best movie for young kids. The movie has very little dialogue and when there is talking, most of it is between two robots that younger children might have a hard time understanding. I can see why Aidan grew restless toward the end. I’ll be interested to see if he asks Marathon Girl or me to buy it when he sees it at the store – the sign whether or not he really likes a movie.

Picture Perfect

As I parent, I know that one day one of my kids will leapfrog me when it comes to technology and understand how to work a computer, video game, or some device that hasn’t been invented yet better than their old man. However, I never thought that they’d be four years old when they did it.

Our oldest is fascinated by cameras. He loves taking pictures with my digital camera (gulp!) or my cell phone camera. And I like looking at the photographs he takes because it’s interesting to see how he views the world.

(This is what our kitchen sink looks like from his perspective.)

Usually he’ll take pictures with my cell phone camera until the memory is full. Later I’ll go through the pictures, save the one or two I like, and delete the rest.

On Saturday I was going through the latest round of photos and noticed that they some of them had some special effects added to them.

I called our oldest over and asked if he had taken that picture. With quite a bit of pride in his voice, he told me that he had done that.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“Push seven,” he said.

I pushed seven. Nothing happened.

“It’s not working,” I said.

“You have to start at the beginning,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Obviously frustrated with his old man’s inability to work a simple cell phone camera, our four-year-old took the camera from me and in a few moments was pushing the seven button and scrolling through a list of special effects.

“See?” he said.

“Wow. That’s amazing. How did you figure that out?”

“I just learned it,” he said.

He scrolled through the special effects and held the camera up so he could see me.

“Smile, Dad,” he said.

I smiled.

And he took a picture.

Boys and Baseball

While in Phoenix my friend Brent and I took his oldest boy and my two boys to a Diamondbacks/Tigers baseball game. Considering the ages of my boys (three and two) I was taking somewhat of a chance on whether or not they’d be able to sit through an entire game. A game typically lasts between two and a half and three hours and most of the actions takes place between the pitcher’s mound and the batter’s box – not exactly the most interesting thing to watch if you’re young, full of energy, and have a typical little boy attention span. Yet all three kids had fun time. And I really have to thank Brent who has done this enough times with his oldest boy that he knew exactly what to do to keep them occupied and entertained when they weren’t watching the game. Between learning how to shell peanuts, drinking root beer, watching the world’s largest HD television in center field, letting them take pictures with my digital camera (gulp!), looking at all the people in the stands, watching a few pitches each inning, and playing with each other they had a good time. Their favorite part of the game, however, was the 10 minute firework show at the end. (At least I know they’ll enjoy any fireworks shows I take them to this summer.)

As young as they are, a few years from now they probably won’t remember the game or the fact that Tigers lost a game they should have won. But seeing the smiles on their faces and how much fun they had, I’ll remember this day for the rest of my life.

I’m looking forward to taking them to more games in the future.

Things I Learned from Our Vacation

Before we left on our trip last week, I wasn’t sure how our first family vacation with three kids was going to turn out. We’ve taken kids on overnight trips before but they’ve usually been a three or four hour drive away and we’ve always stayed with a family. We’ve never taken them on a 1,300 mile round-trip, stayed in hotels, and had them meet people and kids they’ve never seen before. Thankfully, we couldn’t have asked for things to turn out any better.

Instead of making the drive to Phoenix in one day, we made it a two-day journey. We thought that the kids would do better with shorter drives. We were right. After about six hours in the car the kids were ready to run around. So it was nice to have a place to stop and let the kids expend all their energy. It was also nice to learn that the kids found the hotel an exciting, mysterious place with cool things like swimming pools, ice machines, and elevators – three things they couldn’t get enough of.

The second good decision we made was to buy a portable DVD player. Okay, the DVD player wasn’t just for the trip. Marathon Girl and I do like watching movies together on the weekends after the kids are asleep and my laptops a little too big to be comfortable in bed. But we thought that during long stretches of the drive the kids might like watching a movie and keep them out of mischief.

I should admit that until this trip I’ve been opposed to kids watching movies in the car. And there was no real reason for my opposition other than I just figured the kids would either sleep or find something to do themselves or enjoy whatever part of the country we were driving through. Of course that’s easy to say when you’re an adult and the one doing the driving. I remember talking long, family vacations when I was a kid and being bored out of my mind during the long drive. At the very least, this would give them something to do for a few hours.

The DVD player worked just liked we hoped. About two hours into a drive, the kids would become bored and restless so we’d start a movie. This would keep them focused on something for another two hours. After we turned the movie off they’d sleep or play until we reached our destination. And while we won’t use this DVD player on short, every day trips, it’s nice to know that when we have to take a trip longer than two hours, the kids have multiple entertainment options – including the occasional movie.

The third good decision we made was not to pack the days with lots of events but small things that the kids would enjoy. (This was helped by the fact that the friends we visited had kids roughly the same age as ours.) Whether it be trips to a “train” park, a baseball game (more on that later), or swimming at the hotel, or eating at a place the kids would enjoy, we tried to make the trip as kid friendly as possible. We must have done a decent job of it because, much to our surprise, our two oldest kids expressed disappointment when we told them we were finally heading home.

It’s nice to know they enjoyed the trip just as much as the adults.

Satisfaction

Go_Go Yubari was recently approached by a large company that was interested in employing her. They whisked her off to a big city and wined and dined her in order to persuade her to come join their team. Despite their persuasive sales pitch, she decided to stay where she was at because, in part, the proposed employment reminded her of an old job and the long hours and stress that accompanied it.

After parting ways with a well-paying but highly stressful job back in November, I applaud her choice. There’s so much more to a job than money, fancy titles, and the strings those usually accompany those two things. It’s not that I don’t find compensation or what I do for a living isn’t important. I do have a family support and life’s more enjoyable knowing you can make a mortgage payment and put food on the table. And writing makes me happy. I would perform much better at a job that required lots of writing as opposed to doing something else.

In addition to the above, a good job has always had three other important elements: 1) One that allows me to come home in a relatively stress free 80 percent of the time, 2) one that allows me to spend time with Marathon Girl and the kids and 3) doesn’t deplete my (creative) energy so I can write books after the kids are in bed.

When I set off on a job hunt back in November, I hoped that I could find a job that met all the criteria. Five weeks into my search, I ended up with three solid job offers. All paid very well and involved writing. So the determining factor was how well the job would allow me to accomplish the things I wanted to do after I came for from work. Like Go_Go Yubari, one of the offers reminded me too much of my old job in all the wrong ways. I turned it down. Two jobs left. My gut kept telling me which one to take. And since my gut feelings have never turned out to be wrong, I took the one I felt good about the first time I interviewed with the company.

I’ve been at my new job about four months. The family is clothed, fed, and has a roof over their head. There’s no worries about finances. I’m doing more writing with this new company than I ever did with my previous employer and seeing more results from my efforts. I usually have a good two to three hours to spend with the kids after work. And despite all the writing I accomplish during business hours, I’ve managed to make tons of progress on my second book after I kiss the kids goodnight. In the last two weeks, I’ve complete four chapters – about the same amount I was able to accomplish in a previous year with at my old job. Last night I went on a writing tear and wrote two thirds of another chapter in just under two hours.

Yeah, I made the right choice.

Let it Snow

Last year I took our oldest son sledding and it terrified him. (He was two at the time.) For some reason sledding down the hill -- even with me on the sled with him -- scared him to death. I was a little disappointed because it was an activity I really wanted to do with him. What a difference a year makes.

Last week, when the first snow fell, he was so excited to play in it. After tromping around the yard for a bit I asked him if he wanted to go sledding. He said "YES!"

As we approached the hill, I could see that the concerns and fears that were with him last year were returning. When we reached the top, I sat on the sled and told him to sit on my lap. He took a step back and shaking his head.

"You go first," he said. "I'll watch."

Knowing that watching Dad sled wasn't going to do anything to encourage him to have fun, I grabbed him, sat him on my lap, and down the hill we went with him screaming all the way down.

When we reached the bottom and he must have finally realized that sledding wasn't going to kill him. He stood up, grabbed my hand, and told me we needed to do it again.

The second time he gladly sat on my lap and laughed as we raced down the hill.

We spent an hour sledding and I had to convince him that it was time to go home.

Right now he's napping. There is five inches of fresh snow on the ground. More is falling from the heavens. I know when he wakes up, he's going to look out his window, see the new snow, and watch all the kids sledding down the hill. He's going to run down the stairs and ask if we can go sledding.

I'm going to say "YES!"

Being a Dad

One of the things that make being a dad absolutely worth it is spending a fun weekend with your kids taking them places they want to go, doing things that they want to do, and having an great time just being with them and watching them have so much fun. The icing on the cake is when you tuck the oldest (and most talkative) kid into bed Sunday night, ask him what he enjoyed doing this weekend and he rattles off everything the two of you did together. Then he looks at you and tells you not to go to work the next day so he can do the same fun things all over again.

Moments like this make me so happy I choose to become a dad and are some of the happiest of my life.