It is early in the morning, early enough you are not ready to get out of bed just yet. You roll over and attempt to drift back to sleep when you hear the sound you are always listening for as a parent. The little one in the next room over is making noise. So you focus and try to determine if this is “rustling around but still asleep” noise or “looking for those big people why aren’t they here” noise. The babbling tells you it is the second option so you hop out of bed and head to scoop up the little one. As you pick them up you realize if you play your cards just right you can snuggle up back in your bed and they will probably fall back asleep. You move swiftly, as to not lose that window of opportunity, and crawl back into bed with the little one tucked in your arm making sure you wrap up in the blankets to aid in putting them back to sleep.

For a while this works, but a little one is a ball of kinetic energy, they want to move. Still you can get away with letting them play in your arms. They laugh, poke at your face, and do only what a small one will do when confined to a small space. You decide it is time to wake up when they look at you with those little eyes and you smile and you know everything will, suddenly pain lights up your head. Your head falls back to your pillow and you see stars brighter than you have ever seen before. Faintly through all the pain and swirling stars you hear, laughing. The little one just firmly planted their forehead right between your eyes and they are laughing. As you regain your focus you see the smiling face and those bright little eyes looking at you and you can’t be upset so laugh along with them.

It is funny how painful parenting can really be. There are so many hazards you try to protect your children from throughout their lives, but you fail to see the hazards that lie ahead for you. I remember growing up seeing those videos on television where the kid hits the ball right back at the parent, or kicks the ball and hits the unsuspecting adult. What you don’t see are the times when you forget your kids are getting bigger and you pick them up the wrong way. You also don’t see it coming when you pick up your child and they spontaneously burst into a tantrum with their foot connecting with a body part that wasn’t meant to be kicked. I will recommend you pay close attention when you bend down to pick up your child as to where their head is in relation to your chin. If their head is under your chin there is a risk they will push off at the last second and your lower jaw will firmly be planted into the upper jaw. I would advise you not to lie down on the floor, face down after a meal. I know my kids have a tendency of thinking when I am face down on the floor that is a good time to jump on my back and play horse. I have managed not to throw up yet, but you will wish you didn’t eat as much as you had.

We all have seen that picture where the little one, son or daughter, is up on the shoulders of their parent and both are laughing. It’s is something we all want, that moment of pure joy between parent and child. So we hoist the little one up on our shoulders. Sure they are nervous at first and they wrap their arms around your head, but after a while they loosen up. You walk around and begin to feel like you are capturing that moment. Of course no matter what happens you have captured a special moment, but you are so excited you fail to feel the legs tense and suddenly your hair is in their hands and being yanked with all their might. I can’t help but laugh just thinking of how many times this has happened to me. At least in the summer time my head doesn’t get as hot any more since I am light a few dozen tufts of hair.

Discomfort is a natural part of life. Sure you have those times where you hold your child for so long that you back aches, or you try to stuff your self in a small space just to play hideout. The smile on their face makes all that temporary discomfort worthwhile. You also experience pain because you are laughing so hard your face hurts and you can’t stand up straight, but you experience moments so surreal you never want to let them go. We have heard parents say this will hurt me more than you, now I know what they meant.

Over the weekend my two oldest sons and I decided to have a little fun. You can see the results of what we created here. I am hoping I can incorporate my kids more on this sister site and we can create some fun content.

I will have a full post in the next few days, once I run it through my editor. Without my wife’s input you would have to bear through the randomness of my thoughts, and you wouldn’t want that. Until then, enjoy my sons creation.

Driving late at night when you have kids usually means a nice quiet ride. We were driving home after having spent the evening riding the Polar Express with the kids and other family. The good thing about keeping the kids up late when you are out is they usually fall asleep before you even leave the parking lot. Such was the case on this night. Having been on the road for 40 minutes, my wife was mostly asleep also. My two sons, at that time that is all we had, were snoring in the back of the van as I pulled off at our exit, only 15 minutes from home. “I have to go POTTY” suddenly came from the back of the van where my oldest son had been fast asleep only moments ago. My wife sat up straight and looked at me. At 11:00 on a sunday night we were faced with a critical parenting decision. We recently started potting training our oldest and he had been doing really good. The only thing we had to worry about was the night time. Before we left the parking lot from the train ride, we put his nighttime pants on knowing he should sleep until the morning. This sudden urge to go to the bathroom caught us off guard.

On one hand we thought about ignoring it since we were so close to home, we could just change him when we got home and let him go back to sleep. On the other hand we could stop and take him to the bathroom. The problem with ignoring his need was we could lose that window of opportunity for training his body to wake up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Stopping would not be easy since we would have to find a place that was open. Looking at my wife I knew what she was thinking and was glad we were on the same page. We pulled off at a fast food place known for being open until two in the morning. He and I ran inside, and he made it to the potty in the nick of time. His eyes were heavy, but he managed a “Woohoo” and gave me a high five. Leaving the restaurant he informed the cashier that he made it. She smiled and told him he did a nice job. By encouraging that behavior our son began waking up to go to the bathroom on his own fairly regularly.

That was the beginning of our log journey in the potty training arts. Yes I said arts, because for us none of our kids are the same. The motivations that get them on the potty, the process of getting them to wake up, all are different. We start with what worked before, but in the end we scramble to find a new method. Although we have found techniques we can recycle, each kid challenges us in new ways. The biggest challenge I think we face is actually getting the kids into the bathroom. Kids notice they have to go to the bathroom long before they need to go. Of course they can’t take time away from what they are doing to take care of a trivial task, so they dance around and tie their legs in knots in an effort to ignore the call. My youngest son will declare he has to go, will run to the bathroom then rushes back out yelling he doesn’t have to go. When I think of my kids dancing around I think about last Christmas. As we were leaving the mall we saw a Santa with a sign for a cell phone store, he was dancing around and when my sons asked what he was doing my wife said “The peepee dance.” That one comes back to haunt her all the time.

Positive reinforcement, a.k.a. rewards and praise, can also backfire. After taking one of my sons to the bathroom in a fast food place during the dinner rush he walked through the restaurant declaring his success with going poopie. Another time I was in a mall restroom when one of my sons demanded his candy for going, to which I heard the guy in the stall next to us say he wanted his also. Taking them whenever they ask usually means you get a lot of false positives as well. To ignore these as such is a bad idea. You end up with a minimum of a wet kid, at the worst with your shirt soaking wet. So you take them when they ask. On a recent trip to the mall I think I took two of my sons to the bathroom in each store we went into over and hour span, and not just once at each store. The concept of getting it all out at once just hasn’t hit home yet.

I love being somewhere and hearing a kid, not mine, yell out “I have to go POTTY!” A simple look and you can tell the victim parent “I know how that goes.” Those five simple words start the clock ticking, the question is are you up to the challenge. By the way, if you had to think about your answer I hope you brought some extra clothes with you, looks like you might have an accident on your hands.

I enjoy looking at pictures when I am visiting people,or just standing in their office. Pictures give you a window into people’s lives, and they always provide an ice breaker to start a conversation. I didn’t fully appreciate pictures until I had kids. You see there is always a story around a picture, all you have to do is ask a few question and the stories begin. My desk is cluttered with pictures, and as such my mind is cluttered with the stories behind each one. While my wife was pregnant with our first child I was given a lesson in parenting and pictures. The first thing I learned is that you must have pictures done every three months for the first year of the baby’s life. I would later find that the those rules are more recommendations.

The first pictures you get as a parent are before the baby is born. I remember for each of my kids how excited I was going in to the doctor office for the ultrasound. You wait and watch as this fuzzy black and white picture flickers before your eyes and the suddenly there is a little tiny foot. My wife would challenge the size of the foot as it was grinding into her innards, but there it was a cute little foot. Pretty soon the technician is pointing out the rest of the body when you suddenly realize you are looking right into your baby’s eyes. I took copies of those pictures with me to work the next day for all four kids and showed them off, I was that annoying proud father you always fear if you don’t have kids. Baby’s first picture, and we didn’t even get to pick out the outfit.

Once your child arrives, your start snapping pictures to capture the first few moments in this new strange world. For all four kids we used one of those first pictures, you know with cute little warming cap on their heads, to decorate the nursery with. Those little penetrating eyes looking at you from the picture tell you there is a lifetime of love you will give to them. I would have to say that picture is one of my favorites, and I love it when we pull those out to share with the kids. Of course you capture a lot of great moments that you can cherish once you get home from the hospital, but in the meantime you take in the story without a thought. Once they come to take the baby to the nursery you begin the professional photography journey. Your child gets all “dressed” up in their little T-shirt and cap and smile big for the camera. As your kids grow up you will find these pictures and remember back to those first moments.

We made the decision with our first son and carried it out with the rest of our kids to take them out after four days to get their first studio pictures. For those first pictures we had them in sleepers and they laid in a bean bag. At three months we went back and had some great shots. We still used the bean bag, but instead of just laying in a little baby ball we captured them looking like they were crawling out. The funniest of these three month pictures was my second son, where his blanket ended up on his head and he appears to be playing peakaboo. We went back every three months and added to an ever growing collection of first year pictures. With each successive child we added more pictures to capture the siblings interactions. The one that sticks out in my mind is after my daughter was born and we wanted all four kids in the picture. My oldest son decided he wasn’t going to cooperate. He defied everything we asked him to do, and that picture will remind him when he is older just how much of pistol he was that day.

Of course you never just show up at the picture place and snap a photo. Some places always had certain poses they wanted to capture. Depending on the age, getting them to sit still is a chore let alone making them tilt their chin up and look right at the camera. It never fails that there is that perfect moment that is a picture you would proudly display in a magazine and the person taking the picture misses it because they don’t have all the elements. After all the work you do getting the kids out of the house, up to the studio, and deflect foreign objects from attaching to their faces or clothes the photographer just missed the perfect picture. Fortunately your kids are so cute, you still get some great shots.

The picture I am most proud of is one of my three boys just before my daughter was born. My wife was taking a course that met once a month for an entire weekend two hours from our house. She mentioned she would love a picture of the boys before our daughter arrived, so I set up the appointment. My wife picked out the outfits, all I had to do was get them dressed and in the car without a drop of food or drink on their clothes. We headed up to the mall and arrived at the studio just in time for our appointment. I had planned ahead and brought a comb and spritzer bottle to make sure the hair was in place. My youngest son’s hair tends to stick out all over the place, so I figured to hedge my bets. This proved to be a good idea as the walk in the stroller allowed him to get the bed head look. I am not sure how it all happened, but within a few minutes the boys were up in place and the pictures were taken. I was rewarded when my wife got home and declared those pictures the best we had of the boys.

Pick a picture and I can tell you a story. Most likely I can give you far more detail than you would care to hear, but I never get tired of telling them. So I try to take the time and hear other people’s stories when I ask them about their pictures. Usually the picture you see is a split second of a funny story. The story is why we get the picture, the story is why we keep pictures where we can see and share with others.