During the few months that Mark was sick and for quite a while after he died, I was amazed at the goodness in people. At the people who sent me flowers, at the people who called, at the people who sent me nail polish when I couldn’t find my favorite color, at the people who cared. I was grateful in a way I had never been grateful before. I wasn’t taking anything for granted. Now, almost four years after Mark’s death, I’m working on getting that level of gratitude back in my life.

Obvious Gratitude

It’s easy to be grateful about the obvious things like a casserole someone has brought you or someone watching your baby for an hour so you can nap or take a bath by yourself. I’m pretty good about expressing that gratitude, and even though it’s a little fuzzy, I think I even wrote thank-you notes to people for different kindnesses after Mark died. Even if those notes were in the form of e-mail.

Now the things that I should be obviously grateful for are things like a colleague who makes a couple of calls for me when they see I’m swamped, or my husband making sure that I have an hour to myself to write a post. I’m usually pretty good at both expressing my gratitude for those things and reciprocating when the chance comes.

Obscure Gratitude

I think most of the not-so-obvious moments come when you aren’t aware of them. Or you are vaguely aware of them, and they hit you in hindsight. For example, I am immensely grateful to my former boss, Christie, for the work she had to do to pick up my slack while I was either physically or mentally gone from the office. And the part I am most grateful to Christie for is that she was never anything but worried for us as friends, and I never heard a word from her about where something was or when I might be coming back or why I was sitting at my desk crying.

I’m working to be more aware of the things people do for me so that I can thank them, or at least do the same for someone else some day. I’m also working on awareness of things around me that are going well so that I can be grateful for them (the weather, my car works well, air conditioning, air conditioning, and also air conditioning).

Struggling for Gratitude

The one place I always have to struggle for gratitude is my own health and my body. If I were truly grateful for it, I would take better care of it, it’s as simple as that. I can use all the excuses I can think of (I’m going to start exercising tomorrow, I’m not that overweight, I need this 837th can of diet soda to help me stay awake) but it all boils down to my lack of gratitude for my body. Right after Mark died, I hit panic mode, and tried to get healthy so that nothing would “happen” to me and Nicholas wouldn’t be a total orphan. That lasted a few months until the complacency kicked in again.

I thought I was a grateful person, but now I know how far I’ve got to go. I’ve got a few people I really love who are fighting cancer right now. Awesome, incredible, smart, tough, I-want-to-be-them-when-I-grow-up women. They are moms and wives and daughters and they are fighting harder than anyone I’ve ever known to live good lives and enjoy every minute of their lives while fighting the disease. I’m proud to know them and I’m trying to take their attitudes and apply it to my life.

I’m trying to be grateful that I can get up in the morning without being sick, that I can feel an ache in my hip and know it’s because I need to get fit and not because there may be a tumor in my bone, that I can pull my hair back in a clip. I’m also trying to be grateful for movies, music, books, blogs, art, friends, ripe nectarines, naps and time. And I’m trying to do it in the matter-of-fact way that those people I really respect do it. There is no show of “look how grateful and evolved I am!” They are just aware of all of their blessings (and yes, the crap they are going through too), and are happy to have them.

Forever Grateful

I hope I can say with some truthfulness that I don’t take the most important things for granted. I am aware of how spectacular my child, my husband, my family, my colleagues, my country are. I am also aware of and grateful for the time I had with Mark. I hope that I can use my own example and always be grateful for those people and things while trying my hardest to become more aware and grateful of all of the other spectacular things I am and I have.

This is a cross-post from Type-A Mom and Paper, Scissors, Keyboard

I’ve always felt more comfortable expressing myself in writing than I have speaking, and it looks like my girl is going to be the same way.

This tendency was first noticed one weekend when we were having a bad day. I can’t remember exactly what we were arguing over. Probably something like me telling her she couldn’t go play with her friend because her room needed to be cleaned up first, or something similar. She had stormed off to sulk in her room, and as is my practice, I was ignoring such behavior and going about my day doing laundry.

After a while I could hear her slipping around the house, careful to avoid being seen. And little notes started popping up on table tops and taped to walls. The first ones were angry and mean. I continued to ignore and quit reading them until she asked me to look at one in particular. When I saw it said she was having “werd fillins,” my heart had a few weird feelings of its own. So, I asked her if she wanted to talk about how she was feeling and we had a great discussion about what had happened.

Well, over her Spring Break and while I was attending SXSW Interactive, she and her dad got to spend quite a lot of time together. Evidently one of those days he too laid down some law that she didn’t like because she left him a note that I couldn’t help but laugh at; and, when I shared it with some friends at SXSW the next day, they all agreed I should share it with you:

Now before anyone gets worried and starts recommending we all go for family counseling, take a look at the note she left him the next day:

I’m definitely going to hold on to these and look forwarding to seeing how her writing evolves. Something tells me she won’t share it as openly in a few years and most of her “werd fillins” will be locked away in a private diary, so I’ll enjoy it while I can.

Corey Smith is the proud father of four wonderful children. They provide the foundation for everything that he does. Corey’s daytime job is that of a serial entrepreneur. In addition to developing websites for Dealer Marketing Systems as their Chief Web Architect, he maintains a business and technology blog, just launched CopierCatalog.com and is working on about 10 other projects. You can also find him on Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn.

I have been a father for almost 8 years now. With four children, life can get a little hectic. 

Like all the projects I take on, there is so much that I have to learn as I go. Although others have experienced fatherhood before, no one has experienced exactly what I am experiencing and so no one can really guide me through it.

I like to look at the positives more than the negatives because I think it helps to keep me centered. Here the top five reasons I love being a father.

1. Having the joy of four little children in my life everyday. They are my friends. I know that no matter how much I mess up, they will still love me. Well, at least now while they are little, but I hope that stays true for the next 60 years.
2. My little "helpers" for when I build shelves, mow the lawn and work in the garage. Okay they don’t really help, they actually make the project take longer, but it is still fun when they think that I couldn’t have completed a job without them.
3. Seeing the joy of learning on their faces. When they learn something new and apply some new bit of knowledge, it is a thrill to witness. How did we every lose that spirit of discovery?
4. I get to get on the floor and "rough-house" and be a kid myself. One of the favorite things my kids enjoy is getting on the floor and jumping on Dad. All I have to say is, "I think I am going to take a nap," and lay on the floor and four kids come from all over the house to play.
5. Striving to be a good Dad makes me a better man. Without my children teaching me things like how to be thankful or how to share, I don’t know that I would remember on my own. By teaching them the right things to do, I get to remind myself.

Being a Dad is hard work. It is not easy to give up what I want to do for their sake. The challenge is worth it. The time is worth it. But it is only worth it if I do it right. If I try to be a Dad half way, it would be a waste of effort and time.

This is something that has been eating at me for a few weeks. One of my good friends (and husband of my best friend) is a stay-at-home dad and an EXCELLENT father. I’d trust him with my kids wholeheartedly and know he’d probably do a better job of doing fun, creative activities than I would!

When I mentioned to another friend that this guy would do a great job at doing childcare, her immediate response was, “Well, no one would go to him, you know that.” Say WHAT? Her response to that was that no one would take their children to a guy doing in-home daycare. I seriously don’t believe this, but what do I know, I haven’t polled the world yet. It infuriates me that this may be the case as I know that this guy would do a MUCH better job at in-home childcare (as would my husband) than I would  - why should gender matter?

Weigh in - would you take your children to a full-time stay-at-home dad for in-home childcare? Thoughts? Reactions?