Fitness

One of my goals as a potential father is to instill a desire for physical fitness in the kids. It was never really discussed around our house; my brother and I participated in a few sports in Jr. High, but neither of us were very good at it. The term "athlete" was not in the top 10 words one would think of to describe us. But we were teenage boys, fairly active anyway, and not getting fat on our own, so the subject of fitness was sort of taken for granted.

That's why it came as a surprise to me at the time (but shouldn't have) when I woke up one day at 25 years of age and 50+ pounds overweight. I didn't really do anything about it for another 10 years, and now I deeply regret all that time I wasted as a fat guy, especially during my 20's. So among other things, I'd like to give our kids some pro-fitness ideals; not in the idea that they're going to be participating in varsity-level sports (though it's fine if they do), but with the idea that physical fitness is a thing worth pursuing for its own sake.

I work out regularly (5-6 times a week) doing the P90X and similar workouts, but I've never been much of a runner. I do like getting on the bicycle though, something for which I haven't had any time since moving into our current house 2 years ago. So this past weekend, with the wife-unit off shopping, I decided to dig out the ol' WalMart special and put 10 or 20 miles on it (wound up being 20 -- /flex).

After pumping up the tires and packing all my essentials into a little handlebar bag, I took off in a random direction with no real plan except "go that way until I get tired of it, then turn". It was 95 degrees out, but I'm used to that kind of weather, so that wasn't a big deal. All my time in the gym ensured that the effort didn't really bother me either.

What did bother me though, was my rear end. I didn't realize it was possible to get saddle sores from a bicycle. By the end of the ride I felt like I'd been whacked in the crotch with a 4x4, repeatedly, for the last 2 hours.

Does not make a good seat

I always kind of smirked at my dad's insistence on a big cushy bicycle seat, figuring I was tough enough to handle the bar of hard plastic that comes with the average WalMart special, but I'll be darned if I didn't wave the white flag right then and there. I ran off to the local sporting goods store and found a nice cushy seat and mounted it on the bike straightaway. Apparently my butt has aged less gracefully than the rest of me (in just the last 2 years!), because that new seat is the bee's knees. And after the wife-unit tried it out, she bought one for herself.

As a result of my little adventure though, she's gotten a renewed interest in going for bike rides as a way to spend time together, and I think it will carry forward into the kid-future. I'm still working on just how much I want to play "father as gym coach" and force the little rugrats (well, at least the teens) to get off the couch and do some P90X with the old man. That aside, I can definitely see bicycling -- especially with the distances and difficulty we have in our local area -- as being a good start to communicating the fitness ideal.

Somethin' for Dinner

One day back when I was about 10 or 11 years old, my Uncle Jack was babysitting, and he pulled out the blender to make himself a protein shake. We asked what he was making, but he didn't have a name for it (and he always liked messing with our heads), so he said "Somethin'".

After whipping himself up a batch of Somethin', he made some for us. To help the taste, he put Hershey's Chocolate Syrup in it, and called it Chocolate Somethin'. To this day, every time I make a dish with no real goal or list of ingredients, I call it Somethin', and remember Uncle Jack's protein shake. I hear his voice in my head every time I do it.

The wife-unit and I have been rather unmotivated lately in the grocery shopping department, so we've been getting really light on the vittles in stock. Last night, after looking in the fridge, the freezer, and the pantry for about the fourth time, I just started pulling stuff out at random.

I figured I might as well get used to doing some improvisational cooking, because apparently kids expect to be fed on a daily basis. Who knew?

One serving's worth of Hot & Sour Soup mix... check

A cup or so of whole wheat noodles... check

Pound of hamburger... check

Unopened jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce... check

I had the pans out and on the stove when the wife-unit piped up: "What are you making?"

"Somethin'"

I imagined a group of kids working on their homework at the dining room table, or arguing, or talking on the phone, and saying "dad, what's for dinner?"

And in my head, Uncle Jack said, "Somethin'"

Then there was my brother's version... "A great big plate of Eat What Yo Papa Fix!"

The noodles and soup mix went into one pan, the burger into another, and 15 minutes later it was all drained and tossed together. I don't know if it was a good dish, but it didn't taste horrible, and with a little salt was fine by me.

Which of course means my wife won't touch it and our kids might need some chocolate syrup to help it go down. But for me and the dogs, it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Except the dogs aren't getting any.

Yeah, that

Blogs like this one are the reason I want to be a parent. It's entertaining to read the blogs about stress and the funny stuff kids do, but my absolute favorites are the ones where parents just talk about the kind of people their kids are.

I've always wanted to hear what people (not just my parents) say about me rather than to me. Even when someone's giving you a compliment, there's a bit of skew in the message because they're talking to you rather than to someone else. So when other parents talk about their kids in ways that their kids aren't really reading, I just find it fascinating.

Worries and Wonderings

One of my favorite people in the whole world is a Methodist minister named Richard. He's an expert in "family systems", which I take to mean the relational dynamics that occur within a family and also how it affects the individuals' relationships outside the family. He has a great ability to empathize and see things from another's point of view, and he is always a calming influence on me when I am troubled or agitated about something.

Richard once had a conversation with me about children. It was in the context of dealing with troubled children, but he phrased his main thought in such a way as to include all children. He said, "I almost believe that if each child has someone in their lives who values them just for being, whose relationship with the child communicates clearly 'you are valuable just because you are here', without putting expectations or judgments into the mix... that would almost be enough."

I don't know if it's appropriate for one attempting to parent to be that person or not. It seems that parenting necessarily involves some expectations and judgments, so it may be that only a grandparent or aunt or uncle can really be that person. But to the extent that I am able, this is what I want to communicate to our kids. "You are valuable just because you are here." It seems especially important to me when I consider the message that may have been communicated to them through the foster care system: "you are a burden and a lot of trouble to have around... so much so that we actually have to pay people to care for you."

I worry constantly about being able to forge a connection with our kids. My nephew knows instinctively who his parents are. He's never had to think about it, and he feels an attachment to them at a profound level. I have almost no hope of being able to reach that level with our kids, and I despair at being able to even approach it. I'm an introvert to begin with, and sometimes interaction with my wife is about all I can handle. How do I convince two or more strangers, who have likely been hurt by other adults, that I do actually care for them and want to have that same connection that my brother and his son obviously share?

Wow, suddenly my mind just shot over to the standard Christian narrative about God trying to convince us all that He loves us. I'm going to have to ruminate on that a bit.

Calling All Nerdlets

The wife sent me this article:

How "Dungeons & Dragons" changed my life

It outlines a lot of positive things that have come from the pencil-and-paper roleplaying genre of games. It passes up some of the family interaction upsides, which I was not fortunate enough to have as a kid, but I know people who did. One of my best friends gamed with his entire family, with his father usually running the game, and I find fascinating the potential for family bonding, shared creativity, and learning about one another.

I previously wrote that I'm torturing the wife with talk of running a game with the kids, but my interest is not solely fueled by my nerd-dom. I think it could be a wonderful way to allow kids to express themselves and provide launching points for conversation, not to mention being far more interactive and engaging than simply drooling in front of the TV together.

Things you can't do with (most) kids

One of our favorite vacation/long weekend activities is renting cabins, and this being the wife-unit's birthday, it's how she wanted to spend it. We have a rule that the birthday person gets to be king/queen for the day, so we're down at Beaver's Bend State Park in southeastern Oklahoma.

Since we started getting back in shape a couple of years ago, we've also started truly enjoying hikes and more adventurous activities. We used to "enjoy" "hikes", if by "hike" we meant a largely leisurely stroll through the woods on basically level ground, and by "enjoy" we meant "didn't break a sweat".

Things are much different now. We've been doing P90X and similar workouts for a couple of years, and my new approach to hiking is as follows:

1: go to park office/visitor center
2: find hiking brochure
3: locate longest or most difficult trail, and declare that this is the one we're taking
4: pack some snacks and water and get to it

This is how we wound up on Skyline Trail, which was both the longest AND the most difficult (a two for one deal!). It's an interesting trail because all of the brochures say it's 5 miles long, but the park people said it's actually either 6, 7, or 9 miles long (they couldn't make up their minds). There is cell phone service in the park, so they told us to call if we got into trouble. I wondered why everyone was so anxious to scare us off before we started.

The problem as I see it is this: most places that say "expert trail" or "experienced hikers" generally mean only that the trail is not wheelchair accessible. Or that you might have to climb a grade once or twice. The roughest trail in the Wichita Mountains at the other end of the state fits this description: it's only hard if you go on a 100-degree day and don't bring any water. So when they started waving the voodoo sticks and giving us last rites, I'm all "pfft. Yeah, whatever."

It turns out that Skyline Trail is no joke. There are climbs that would require handholds if they were any steeper, and not just for 20 or 50 feet. Worse for me are the downhills of the same grade -- something about my right knee and ankle has hated a downhill slope since I was in my 20's.

I keep a mental list of my friends and acquaintances who are "outdoorsy", either in actuality or in their own minds. I like to pretend I know when they would drop off the excursion, and the crowd gets smaller and smaller. By the time we reached the 1/3 point marked by crossing a private road, I was down to my boss and his (adult) son. A couple of friends needed to be airlifted out. One fell to the ground and screamed "leave me! Save yourselves!"

The second third of the trip started really testing us. I remember at one point we were climbing a hill, and when we reached the top we found that someone had stacked another, longer, steeper hill on top of it. Just like life.

We were closing in on the 2/3 point when we came across some other hikers headed the opposite direction. We'd been on the trail for 2.5 hours at this point, and they said there was about an hour and a half behind them. By this time we'd gone through enough downhills that my right leg was starting to complain, although it was nothing compared to the imaginary children in my head.

("Daddy, I'm tired. Are we going to be done soon? How much longer is this?")

I've already got it in my head that the kids and I are going camping at some point, and that it's going to be real "roughing it" camping, not this nonsense at a park campsite where the electricity and modern conveniences are 50 yards away. But I had to admit to myself that Skyline Trail probably has a minimum age limit -- probably 16 years old unless the kid shows signs of some serious toughness earlier on.

The final third of the trail was an exercise in pain management. I got to the point where my right knee refused to bend on the downhills, my right ankle was producing this sickening grinding sensation, and I had to crab-step down like a 2-year-old learning to negotiate stairs. I probably would have done much better had I been wearing actual hiking boots instead of sneakers, but I was more enthusiastic than prepared. I remember at one point I said to myself "I can make it down this slope if this is the last one I have to do." Unfortunately I said that with 6 slopes left to go. Once again, kind of like life.

In the end though, through determination and as they say on TV, "a triumph of the human spirit", not to mention the desire to not wind up on the nightly news (or an episode of "I shouldn't be alive"), we finished the trail and limped back to the car. We immediately went for something to eat, then raced back to the cabin to soak our beaten bodies in the hot tub. My knee is still a little sore as I write this, but I'll survive, and we've got a great memory of the day we conquered Skyline Trail.

Today we're off to Texarkana to see what they've got to offer in the way of entertainment that doesn't require grinding bone against bone. It's her birthday, after all. I probably shouldn't death march her on her birthday. It might be seen as rude.

Kid Shoppin'

We like to look through AdoptUSKids.org at different sibling group profiles to see who draws our interest. There are some that we get a little attached to (the idea of), but then disappear. We know that the process will take several more months, and who knows who will be available at that time, but I think it's important to look and practice a sort of "empathy for strangers"... I need to know that I can feel attachment for kids that originated in another family, mostly because I'm usually not very good at the whole empathy thing. My brother once told me he thought I had borderline Asperger's because I'm so inwardly focused most of the time.

Anyway, there's a new crop of kids up, and we're flipping through them. Some are interesting for various reasons:

Nicholas, Jacob, and Kayla would be kind of funny because my cousin's kids are Kayla, Dustin, and Nicholas.

Ashley, Billy, and Aaron all state a preference for a family in the country, as well as horses. We live next to a horse farm.

Ethan and Athena have interesting variations of one another's names. I've always been interested in unusual names, and Athena certainly fits that description. Athena is also strikingly beautiful, even at 11, which already gives me nightmares about when she reaches dating age.

("Come with me, son... let me show you my gun collection. Have I mentioned how precious my daughter is to me?")

I'm also interested because for some reason I find boys who want to be Marines or other soldiers intriguing. I'm not really excited about the prospect of sending a kid off to the military, but if that's what they really want to do I certainly would support them. And my dad and uncle were both servicemen (Marines and Air Force, respectively), so it feels like there's some synergy there.

Brittany and Mark are intriguing because, well, just look at them. These two know how to have fun.

Harley, Sierra, and Phillip are apparently being placed seperately for some reason. My first instinct is to want to ask if there's some problem with taking all three. Also, a girl named Harley and another named Sierra? That just tickles my brain in the place that likes unusual names.

Argh... now I need to go do something else for awhile. Getting all misty-eyed over kids is never good for my state of mind in front of the compiler.

November 23, 2004

I was up late, reading a random mom blog (see list, bottom right), when it struck me:  My World of WarCraft account is older than your kids.  For some reason that amuses me.

I took the day off work when it launched (see date above) to buy it and start playing.  I got in about an hour or so of play time before the servers crashed and stayed down for pretty much the rest of the day.  It was worth every glorious minute.

Yes, I am a huge nerd (see photo).  I am already torturing my wife with talk of getting the kids to play Dungeons & Dragons with me.  I think she's planning to soundproof the living room so she doesn't have to listen to it.

I realize that there's a pretty solid probability that the kids won't dig D&D.  To my horror, they might actually be one of those other types... the kind of folks that I try to avoid.

You know...

Sports fans.

I'll hang myself from that bridge when I come to it.  But in the meantime, I'll sit and daydream about little Steve or John or Billy or Katie or Jen or Alicia or whatever their names are...

...sitting around a table laden with miniatures and maps and polyhedral dice...

("Dad!  Tell him to leave my dice alone!  He's gonna suck the luck right out of them.")

("Stop touching your sister's dice.  And would it kill you to print out a new character sheet from time to time?")

...being huge nerds with their dad.  Co-nerds.  Slaying dragons and fighting wizards and torturing mom with talk of experience points and trips to the game store.

Or if they're not into role-playing games, maybe I'll be able to build a rapport over comic books.  As long as they follow the house rules and only read Marvel, of course.  DC Comics will be cause for time-out.

("What is this?  Green Lantern?  Go to your room!")

("Aw, man!  Tired of reading about mutants...")

At the very least I should be able to rope them into Words with Friends.

Schrodinger's Kids

It's weird to me that we keep talking about "the kids" as though they are already here, when in fact to us they are mere hypotheticals, without a concrete number, names of their own, or even physical descriptions. It's weirder that somewhere out there in America, "our" kids do in fact already exist and possess all of these attributes and more. They're simply waiting for us to choose to be and be chosen as their parents.

It's a sort of quantum existence; they are here yet not here, and neither we nor they know when or how the matter will be resolved. And yet my faith leads me to believe that even now, God is already pulling the threads of our lives together, weaving them ever closer to the point where they will become intertwined.

Playing House

As we live out the preparation and anticipation of becoming parents, my wife and I find ourselves engaging in hypothetical daydreaming about our various activities, and how they would be changed with the addition of kids. I call this "playing house"... after the game almost everyone played as a kid.

We always sort of assume that we're talking about children between the ages of 4 and 12 or so. I think that might be because that's what we desire, but sometimes I find myself considering what would change with a teenager. Kids under the age of 3 or 4 would change everything so radically that I don't really have a way to easily grasp it, so I try not to think about it.

Yesterday brought a sobering example of the exercise. It was about 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and neither of us had slept well the night before, so we were both hitting a real low point in our energy levels. We were out running errands, but we agreed to skip a few and head home to take a nap instead.

That's when it hit us: how would the scenario play out with kids? Is it even possible to get a nap in on a Sunday afternoon with kids between the ages of 4 and 12? Sure, with a teenager handy you could always have them keep an eye on the younger ones, but what if we didn't have a teenager handy? I saw myself chugging 5-Hour Energy and Dr. Pepper in a desperate bid to stay awake long enough to buy my wife a nap, since if she doesn't nap when she's that tired, it's Migraine City.

My biggest worry though is how I'll react to kids when I'm dragging my rear end around. I'm capable of a fair amount of calm and serenity when I've had sleep and feel centered. I'm also capable of being a raging grizzly bear when I haven't. In some ways, it's good for kids to have a little fear of Dad, but I don't want that to be the normal state of affairs. Angry doesn't usually communicate love very well, and I'm already concerned about my ability to form and express that parental bond with my kids, especially if they come from a background that makes them mistrustful of such bonds. I'm also an introvert, which is already a hindrance to forming even new casual relationships, to say nothing of deeper ones.

I spent some time pondering all this as we drove home, and even though I got my nap, I think by the time we pulled into the garage, I had found some reserve of energy that said I could have made it through the next several hours if I'd needed to. That gives me a fair amount of hope and optimism for the future.