Dad At Work

Daycare drawback #12: colds. Nasty, never-in-your-life have you felt this crappy colds.

Well... to tell the truth, I'm not sure my son gave me this one. It could have been the several family members and friends we visited over the past holiday week, or the multitude of people out and about with last minute holiday shopping. Son has been bringing colds home, but he really was mostly over this one over a week ago. And this one just hit me Tuesday night.

At least I made it through the holiday.

I'll take one more day of this, then I'll start to get paranoid about flu or something else. Wife got strep throat this summer - again NOT from day care, but most likely from the public arena of her job. My throat's not bad. Yet.

I'm usually a pretty healthy guy. Or I was until daycare. Even if my son didn't bring this one home directly, I think my immune system's been compromised fighting off everything else these past two years. Wife would get sick every fall/winter, right around Christmas. I would usually avoid it. But not the recent years.

So I'm refamiliarizing myself with herbal tea (lemon ginger's all I got - not sure it's working) and cough drops. I recommend Hall's menthol, though I kinda liked Ricola Original today. But now my tongue is numb and I can't taste anything.

Maybe I'll loose some weight. I had intended to start working out again this week... but maybe lack of intake will have some effect instead.

Wishing you a cold-free New Year!

Labels: cold, daycare drawback, new years, weight loss

Here we are, smack dab between Christmas and New Year's. Monday was a holiday, and the bosses and I took Tuesday off as well. I don't work Fridays, so I have two days to get work done, and then comes another three day weekend. How can I get anything done?

There are Christmas presents still lying around to be picked up and played with. There's a mound of laundry from the past week and the new sheets and clothes we received as presents. There are dishes from the big meals waiting to be put away. And the Christmas tree, which started to loose it's needles on day 2 this year, is more fire hazard than decoration right now.

Everything around me begs for my attention. Everything except my work - which is also at a slow pace for the past two weeks. I have about 20 minutes of things that need to get done, and then the rest of my day to fill with work if possible. If it's not possible, I don't get paid.

In many ways, though, this "week" is not unlike the rest of the weeks of the year. It's always a struggle to focus and produce the hours I need rather than look around me and do the thousands of other things I could and would rather be doing.

So I pop in my new David Bowie "Best of" CD set (actually, rip it and play it from iTunes) and then put my head down, stair straight ahead and plow into work. Right after this blog post, anyway.

Best wishes to all of you working through the No Work Zone on this between the Holidays week. If it helps, just think of the bills you have to cover to pay for the Christmas you just had.

Ah.... Tidings of comfort and joy. Comfort and Joy.

Labels: christmas, focus, holidays, music

There's a lot of myself here, and I don't think I want to hide my name, but I decided I shouldn't subject my son to being published without his consent. Seeing that he's only 2, he can't really give consent, so I'm no longer going to use his name. I'll probably come up with a pseudonym at some point (since saying "our son" all the time gets tedious), even though it'll be really easy to find out if someone wanted to.

There's lot of conversation out there about privacy, and even some good arguments about transparency in everyday life. If you want to start that conversation, that's what the comments are for.

Labels: blogging, privacy

Every morning, it pains me to leave my son at day care. I give him a kiss, tell him I love him and to "have a good day" (to which responds: "Bye!"), and trudge out the door back to the car focusing in front of me and not looking back.

I don't want to leave him with those people who can't love him as much as we do. I don't want to subject him to the inevitable hurts of the unknowing cruelty of other kids. I don't want to leave him vulnerable to those colds and coughs and runny noses.

But it's not as if we didn't think about this, my wife and I. We thought about our wants and desires. About our needs. About the potentialities of our child's life.

Ideally, one of us would be at home. No - Ideally we both would. We would all be spending every day getting up and breakfasting together. Learning and exploring the world together. Enjoying him growing up. We'd be pretty content to just do that. He's a pretty fascinating little guy.

At some point, however, we decided we wanted somethings like a house and career and food on the table. And my wife found a job she liked in the career she dreamed of since childhood. And to leave near it, and to pay the bills that made it possible, we have a mortgage that also has to be paid. And car payments that enable her to get there. And we have expenses for the house and things. And so my job helps pay for that.

And in order for us to work and provide for us all, our son gets relegated to the care of stranger in a school-like setting much too early for school.

We don't want to do it. But we took precautions. We made our studies. We follow-up on his care. And we feel he's doing well there. He likes it. They seem to care for him a great deal, too. And it's neat to go and see him interact with those people and those other kids.

So understand that we feel and will always feel some guilt for not being able to give him the life we had - staying home with our mothers to teach us and play with us and love us. And we really don't need you telling us how terrible it is that he's got to go "to that place".

It's not ideal. But it's working. He's happy and he's a growing up to be a great person. And we're doing our best.

Labels: day care, support, work

How much TV is too much for your kids? Or for yourself for that matter?

That's a great conundrum of the pundits and the culture warriors. Any concerned parent thinks about the issue. Before becoming a parent, I remember hearing many caveats about the dangers of letting the TV be your babysitter... and many self-righteous comments about never falling into that trap.

But what if you are a TV watcher yourself? What if you, or you and your spouse or partner, do that for fun? What if an evening of TV watching is entertainment for you - relaxation, together-time, recreation? Do you need to shun this activity to be a good example for your child(ren)?

Since having our son, it's certainly been a topic of discussion and thought in our house. We first started turning the TV on for our son on his own when we realized we really needed to get some housework done. He was still very young, so Baby Einstein was the DVD of choice, and for 30 minutes or so, he was occupied watching the toys and shapes and colors and we got done what was needed.

I immediately felt ashamed at having the TV "babysit" our son.

I myself battle what I've come to define as my "TV addiction". I grew up with a father very much interested in watching anything and everything on TV. It was always on. At his house, we watched TV while we ate dinner. When I married, we often did that ourselves. The living room was comfortable and the atmosphere more relaxed than our kitchen table and creaking antique dining chairs. I often stay up late trying to work but in front of the TV for "company" watching whatever reruns or old movies are on, even if I've seen them before. Cable is a great friend, offering countless classic movies, history lessons, and reruns for my consumption. And the Sci-Fi channel? My God. I was in heaven when I first found that on my lineup.

I even extended my TV watching into my other past-time, Trivia. For the success of our Trivia team, I took notes on TV shows and commercials, taped season premieres, and cataloged the tapes. Every spring, my TV watching time increased as I prepped for the World's Largest Trivia Contest. TV was a significant part of my life.

Even as I ramped up my TV watching for fun and team pride, I hated it. I felt I was wasting my time. I was a media junkie applying myself more to my entertainment than to my enrichment or personal improvement. There's a strong vein of hermetic thought in my personal philosophy, and I wondered if TV was damaging me spiritually. I nodded along with those who said TV was an evil that needed to be kept from our kids.

Today, I've tempered my views a bit. While I internally battle the competing tormentors of excess and abstinence, I seek the angel of moderation. I've removed extended cable. Our son occupies us until his bedtime. We tape two or three shows (House, The Office, Lost) during the week and watch them after he goes to bed, and one more show (ER) while it airs. I still watch the local news nearly every weekday morning, though I also use that time reading online. We're succeding without having to "Throw it all away".

Of course another media has moved in to corrupt us. My wife and I both enjoy our wireless internet on our laptops and spend many more hours online each week than we spend watching TV.

And our son? He gets to watch his "movies" several times a week, though not necessarily everyday. He rarely watches more than an hour of TV a day, and usually 30 minutes or less. We try to chose things that are somewhat education, interactive, or enriching. I value art in many forms, and feel that music should be a big part of his experiences, so I'm glad that he enjoys musical shows we've gotten for him.

Sometimes I worry that we're to cavalier about the use of the TV, but overall I think it's just another experience he's absorbing into that sponge-like brain of his. Just more nutrients for his growing self. As long as we choose (for now) and help him choose (as he gets older) the things he watches, and monitor the time he's spending in front of that box, I think it'll end up alright.

Undoubtedly, there are parents who are shaking their head at me and experts wagging their fingers in reproach. But hey - it could be worse (I've seen it), and so far, he's a pretty bright and personable kid as judged by many an outside source. I think we're going to be OK.

As for myself - I'm working on scheduling myself some evening projects to complete instead of vegging, and will try to just go to bed (and probably read) when I'm tired. But I don't think I need to cut back my prime time viewing more than I already have. I hear I'm a pretty bright and personable guy, too. Though that's from my wife (and my mom), so I guess I should seek outside opinions.

Labels: Baby Einstein, culture war, internet, trivia, tv

Today marked the final broadcast of Bob Reitman, Milwaukee DJ and morning show personality. For the last several decades, he's helmed the morning show (with partner/contributors Gene Mueller, Amy Taylor, and Gino Salomone) on WKTI. Today he starts his retirement.

That's the only capacity in which I've known him, since I only moved to the area in 2002. But I soon caught on to the entertainment of the morning show and the wit and style of Reitman. I'm not a constant listener, but when I do turn on the radio in the morning, more often than not, it's to listen to KTI and "Reitman and Mueller (and Amy Taylor, too)".

Today, during his final broadcast, we listened in to several personal calls from well wishers and some clips of a send-off party that was held last night. One friend called it "the funeral", but it really sounded like a good time. Reitman's farewell speech was heartfelt and raw and inspiring.

At the end of the broadcast (just concluded), Reitman played two songs (a rarity for the morning show). The first was Don Henley's "Boys of Summer". I'm sure he's told the tale of his affection for this song (one of the few regularly heard when the show does play a music break), but listeners hear Reitman speak the lines "Don't look back, you can never look back" along with Henley each time. Today, those words seem even more poignant.

The final song was Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man". A true rarity for the Top 40 station. Reitman spoke briefly before the song about it being a song about a journey, one that reflected his coming journey and wishes for his friends and family as he moves onto his next chapter.

It was a very moving send-off. Rare in the industry, as Reitman was rare himself - a Rock DJ, of the first generation of teenagers (as he said this morning), and one who had said he fought for radio for the way it ought to be. Most DJs disappear in format changes, takeovers, or staffing changes (or even sensational guffaws). It was refreshing to have this closure.

Best wishes to Bob Reitman in his retirement. Thanks for the entertainment!

Labels: bob dylan, bob reitman, don henley, milwaukee, radio

I'm going to expand the scope of Dad at Work. I find myself interested in too many topics to isolate the ones related to fatherhood, working at home, etc. I really want to write about politics and news sometimes. And I thought I'd use my other spaces to do that, but I don't think that'll work the way I want (since one is virtually dead, and the other is even more focused).

So I'll take a page from Althouse, and just write about what I want. I'll still try to get post on the topics I started this blog for, but I'll also use this as an outlet for everything else trapped in my head.

Thanks, Althouse, for freeing me from my own prison.