We go through these phases in our home when songs are king. Just the other day my wife was picking up Ava from Pre-school when the teacher pulled her aside. Never a good sign.

Teacher: Do you know that Ava sings a lot?

Wife: Yes. She sings all the time.

Teacher: Today Ava was singing more of what she had to say than actually saying it.

Wife: Yes, that’s normal too. She and her Dad will have whole days where they don’t really talk to each other. Everything will be in song.

Teacher: Oh. Ok

It’s true. I use this tactic as much for an ornery 4 year old as I do to lighten my own mood. When she decides to be a bit difficult I’ll just start singing my demands to her and she can’t help but be disarmed. Feel free to use this yourself. The ability to carry a tune is entirely optional.

The following is a great standby for those days when everyone is feeling just a bit grumpy.

Ava is as full of life and imagination and wonder as you would expect a four year old child to be. She sings through most of her day and dances through the remainder. Her mind and mouth constantly moving as she weaves tales that Walt Disney himself would find engaging. While all of this continues to be true there is now something else. Something like confusion mixed with a bit of displacement I think.

I know this is normal. I know when a child is introduced into the family the older kids struggle with the change in attention and routine. The whole house works through a period of adjustment as we work to understand the puzzle we thought had been put together was really missing a piece. A piece that makes all the others fit that much more tightly.

Knowing the normalcy of all this doesn’t do much to lessen the pain I feel for Ava as she works through this new tightness. She has been doing more of the baby-talk lately. There have been some near misses as she dashes to the restroom. Evenings have become restless and on approximately twelve thousand four hundred and nine occasions she has ended up in bed with my wife and I just so we all could get some sleep. It’s just a season, we keep telling ourselves. Just a season.

You might think with her world having been shaken so much she would feel some animosity toward Tessa. None. Not one iota.

If Tessa’s arrival wasn’t enough we have been potty training Jada, the 2 year old, for the last few weeks. While Jada has done an awesome job of this, and hasn’t had an accident for more than a week, it’s been another thing to draw attention away from Ava. Interestingly, Jada hasn’t had issue with the adjustments around Tessa’s arrival. Such is the blissful life of a two year old.

I can’t stand to see my children struggle and if I can fix it I will. I’m going to work on spending more one on one time with Ava and Jada. I plan on setting aside an evening a week for each of them where we can just talk, play, create, read and laugh. It’ll probably just be an hour or so after dinner and before bedtime but I’m hoping it’ll help. I’m confident we’ll find ourselves on the other side of this in pretty short order.

I’ve been feeling a ton of weight lately to really focus on being the Dad I want to be. The Dad my wife expects me to be. The Dad my children need me to be. I imagine having a newborn in the house is what supercharged this. This fragile little girl looking to us for care, comfort and love shakes me to my core.

I look at Tessa’s sisters, Ava and Jada, and while they are still very young the evidence of how quickly the past several years has rushed by is displayed in their words, actions and hearts. I look past the little girls to their older sister and brother and marvel at the people they have become. A teenage girl that has thankfully not turned into one of those teens I can’t stand and a young man that has paved his own way toward the next season in his life when he will be starting college on a full ride athletic scholarship in the fall. Full ride athletic scholarship. I always knew he was THAT good.

There is simply this colliding of emotions and paths right now and its difficult to stay focused on any one thing for fear of missing something else, and they’re all good things. All good things. I believe that part of the weight to be Dad comes from a feeling that somehow I don’t deserve for things to be going as well as they are. That somehow I need to earn it, again and again. Five children. All happy. All healthy. The odds just seem to be against this. I’m grateful for what I have in my family every single day. Every single day.

~~~

I run through my reader when I can and a post on Daddy Brain caught my attention. It featured the following video which speaks 100% to where I am these days, the passion I wish I knew how to push forward, outward, upward. I need this feeling to be contagious.

Dude to Dad (Changing More Than Just Diapers) feat.

Hugh Weber at Dude to Dad put the video together. If you have it in you, click on through to YouTube and leave a note. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.

The boy happily accepted the stone and began to play with it. He would wrap and re-wrap ribbons around it for hours at a time. He would curl up into a quiet corner to listen to it’s sweet, sweet music. He would forsake his friends, family, and other toys to be with his beloved stone.

The boy’s parents would take the stone away from time to time and try to make him play with his friends, but the boy would scowl, and sit silently while his friends played around him. They would eventually leave him alone and play amongst themselves.

Time went by as the boy played with his stone. One day he looked up and was startled to see an old man peering at him through a window pane. The boy jumped up to run away and so did the old man. It was at that moment that the boy saw his stone in the old mans hand. He angrily reached out for it, but realized the stone was still in his own hand as well.

Puzzled, the boy looked closely at the old man and realized it was only his reflection. He looked around him and realized that the world around him had changed. Years had passed. His siblings had all grown up and left home. He was all alone.

He sadly looked down at his old, bony hands as they tightly clutched his beloved stone. As he looked at the stone the writing carved on it from long ago looked clearer to him in this light than it ever had before. It read “Do Something Else With Your Life”.

He sat and he cried, but there was no one to blame but himself. He could have spent more time with his family, but instead wasted his life playing with his stone. It became clear to him now that the carvings were meant as a warning to others who would be mesmerized by the stone’s iridescent beauty, and beckoning music. He furiously carved the words deeper into the stone’s surface so they would be more legible to someone else. He opened the window, and threw the stone as far as he could. He did not have the heart to destroy the stone, or bury it, but he needed to get rid of it. Alas, it was too late.

Time only moves forward, and the time wasted today in trivial pursuits can never be regained. Spend what time you have on earth wisely……… with the ones you love.

I wrote this short story yesterday for my son who is addicted to his Nintendo DS. The stone is a metaphor for that infernal machine.

His older sister, whom he adores dearly, only comes to visit us 2 weeks out of every year. He longs for her visits, but spends his time in his room and plays with his DS, even while she is here. We just put her on a plane bound back to her home last Sunday, and he’s been beside himself with grief that the time he spent with her was too short, yet he made little effort to be with the family while she was here. We frequently had to coax him to come spend time with us.

The DS has been an on-going battle in our household for quite a while. Against my wishes, and better judgment,  it was given to him by my ex-wife as a Christmas present two Christmases ago. I refused it at first, but to keep the peace between my daughter and her vindictive mother I begrudgingly allowed it.  It has been a problem for us ever since. Most of her children are video game zombies. It is her way of getting peace and quiet after a hard day’s work, and I think it might have been her parting shot at my new family. We’ve been divorced for 14 years, but the bad blood between us is ever present. I can hear her cackling in satisfaction as she flies off on her broom after reading this. Her mission completed.

I am struggling with just taking the DS away and letting him play with it for only limited amounts of time per week or letting him figure out for himself what is really important in life. In the meantime I am having to deal with the moping, sobbing and wallowing in self pity from him missing his sister. It might be time for some tough love.