FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATE, MON, MAR 16, 2009:

3:49pm Christian reports: Berkeley (7lbs, 7oz - 20 in - 9.9 Apgar Scale) sends her love to all. She’s now feeding for the 1st time like she’s been doing it her whole life!

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BACKSTORY:

Two and a half years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting my son, Beckett, for the first time.

As a first time father, Beckett’s arrival in our Ft. Worth, TX hospital delivery room — and his mother, Karla, who did all the heroic work that life-changing day — truly humbled me.  Trying to convey to my own mother on my cell phone a minutes later what it like to see him born and to hold him in my own arms was nearly impossible.  I simply lacked the words.  Tears replaced them as I fumbled to express myself.  Luckily, she understood and let me go back to my wife and son, telling me to give her a call later that night when time allowed me to fill her in more fully.

While photographs have allowed me to ‘remember’ those first few minutes/hours of Beckett’s young life, so much of what took place that afternoon has faded into the funky contours of the human brain, lost to the natural passing of time.  Even the entries I posted on our family blog only hit a few highlights, often written long after they took place.  The sense of the in-the-moment immediacy and wunderlust, however, was impossible to translate…

…until now.

FAST FORWARD:

Two and a half years later, my wife and I returned to the same hospital delivery unit to meet our first daughter, Berkeley.

Since Beckett’s birth, our family blog has magnified significantly from a tepid attempt to semi-privately ‘journal’ a few family moments here and there to the development of a robust hub of digital stories, photos, and videos that are now regularly shared with hundreds of family, friends, colleagues, and strangers around the world.  At last count, we’ve crossed the 2,250 blog post mark…and that was before our daughter’s birth.  We suspect a ‘few’ more will be added, too.

Additionally, we’ve added an iPhone to our tool set, not to mention dualing Facebook accounts for both parents. This means that just-in-time storytelling options have been magnified far beyond the boundaries of what a family blog can pull off.  Seems that blogging is so last status update.

It was only a matter of time before we’d put it all together, letting our family and friends grab a virtual real-time seat with us as we prepared to deliver our daughter via type-n-post Facebook status updates. something that would have been inconceivable not that long ago.

• Ever wondered how you’d tell the story of your child’s birth through the lens of 140-character Facebook status updates?
• Ever wondered what it’d be like to Facebook status update every step leading to, during, and after your child’s birth?
• Ever wonder how such a story would read, one status update at a time?

This is our story, told 140-characters (or less) at at time.

Continue Reading »

Damian Bariexca is a high school English teacher/school psychologist from Perkasie, PA.  He has blogged about education, technology, and psychology at Apace of Change since 2007, and has two children, Dylan and Kiera. Damian can be found on Twitter and Identi.ca as @damian613.

There’s this song by Ben Folds that brings me to tears whenever I hear it. “Still Fighting It” is essentially a love song to his son, and the line that hits a little too close to home for me is, “You’re so much like me… I’m sorry.”

I’m not shy about tooting my own horn when it comes to my strengths, and I’m always proud when I think I see them in my son. His love of books and puzzles, his problem-solving skills, his fairly early grasp of phonics - I’m proud to have helped laid the groundwork for this sort of thing, both through nature and nurture. Like any 3-year-old, of course, he has his moments - the temper tantrums, the irrationality, the occasional laser-like focus on certain elements to the exclusion of everything and everyone else around him - and we roll with the punches. I try to keep my cool and engage in all that positive behavior support that I learned about in grad school (and really, that many teachers learn simply from years of experience dealing with people). But there are some times when it’s even harder than usual to maintain that detachment - when I see him grunt or tic, when I see him whine incessantly about nothing, and when I see him terrified of the most benign things (e.g., soap bubbles). Those times, I feel like it’s 1980 and I’m looking at a 3-year-old version of myself.

I’m not sure if it’s more a sense of self-loathing or overprotection that makes me feel this way; moreover, I’m not sure which is worse. Maybe it’s the uncertainty of it all - for example, I had a variety of physical tics (including grunting and twitching) when I was young; and truth be told, I have never managed to completely kick them (I’ve just become an expert at masking them). When I see my son grunt for no apparent reason (like frustration) it scares me. I start to question myself - is he going to have to endure the teasing that I had to because of this? Is this my fault? Is he learning by watching me, or is this genetic?  What have I done? And I just go down the rabbit hole of anxiety and neuroses typically reserved for brand-new parents of infants.

I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t impact how I react to these behaviors. Yes, I’ll typically react more harshly when I see these than when he does something that wasn’t problematic for me as a kid. Intellectually, I know it’s no good, but I’m so emotionally scarred invested in what I believe people’s reactions to those behaviors will be that I sometimes find it hard to treat the situation with the cool head that it requires.

Looking down the road for my son sometimes feels like looking back down my own well-trod path. In looking into his future, my greatest fear is that I’ll see the same pitfalls and traps I went through – being painfully socially awkward and withdrawn for much of adolescence, and the resultant bullying and teasing (or is it the other way around?). I’m not here to say my childhood was significantly worse than anyone else’s – hell, I probably got off easy compared to what could have been – but to look at the larger significance of my concerns, I guess I kind of want him to learn from my mistakes before he gets a chance to make them himself. Not too unreasonable, right? Right?

Makes me wonder if I’m more concerned about protecting him from having to experience them, or protecting myself from having to watch him experience them.

(Note to Kate, et al.: next one’ll be more uplifting, I promise!)

Today is all about the Dad side of the parenting equation and we’d like to mark the occasion by introducing you to the wonderful fathers who will be contributing to This Mommy Gig on a regular basis. We’ll have a daddy post about once per week to give you the OTHER side of the story - you can read the first dad post (by Christian) here: “Like Mowing the Lawn with a Weed Whacker“.

Now, let’s meet the daddy contributors! (More will be added soon)

Christian Long

Christian Long proudly claims the 3 greatest titles in the world: papa, husband, and teacher. On occasion, he also adds “think:lab” edu-blogger, consultant, speaker, school planner, and Red Sox Nation member to his list.

A few times a month at the break-of-dawn on Saturday mornings, Christian and his 2-ish kiddo Beckett can be found setting up their Cheerios, “whatever is strongest on brew” venti-sized coffee, yogurt, and sippy cup fort on a sidewalk table just outside of a Starbucks in Sundance Square located in the downtown center of Ft. Worth, Texas.

Started out as a chance to simply let Karla (lovely/hard-working wife, mama, and middle school principal) grab some much deserved weekend sleep-in time, this “boys only” adventure has evolved into precious time for the 2 fellas to enjoy breakfast and papa lap-bouncing, play “I spy” games with passing vehicles (”busz-busz” and “twuck-twuck” are current crowd favorites), stage “1-2-3-Go!” sidewalk sprinting contests, and roam around the city with camera in hand to re-populate the keep-grandparents–updated “Beckett-to-Be” blog.

When Beckett is rocking out at his amazing daycare (across the street from the middle school his mama runs), Christian teaches 10th grade English, coaches varsity soccer, oversees the student literary magazine, helps out with student council, is in the process of developing a student-led writing center, and tries to inspire his colleagues to dip their toes into web 2.0 waters at a college-prep independent school.

This is — as some have heard — a career re-discovery of sorts. Until the fall of 07, Christian was blessed to serve as President & CEO of DesignShare, an international school design consulting firm that worked closely with architects school leaders around the globe to develop innovative learning environments. Along the way, he keynoted and spoke at a wide array of design and education conferences that allowed him to see a lot of the world around us, not to mention was able to be part of some amazing projects that showed what communities could create when they re-imagined what ’school’ could look like.

The only catch was that as wonderful as it was to travel the globe, he grew a bit weary of keeping up with Beckett’s growth via his daycare internet video cam. Soul-searching and conversations with Karla led him to return to teaching in the fall of 07, a career he had done for 10 years before he went full-time in the school design world. Not only is he back doing what he loves best — working with kids/teachers daily — but he is also back on the same ’school’ calendar as his wife and son. Needless to say, having summer break again has made this proud papa even happier!

The only things left on his wish-list are to have a summer home on a lake in his boyhood state of Maine, take Beckett to see his Red Sox namesake pitch at Fenway Park, and re-add ’summer camp counselor’ (which he did for 17 summers before going ‘corporate’) to his list of titles in the years to come, especially if that means working at the same sleep-away camp as Beckett (and any other kiddos-to-come in the future).

You can find Christian on Twitter as @beckettsdad.

Jon Becker

Jon, when he’s not with his wife and/or 3 year old son, is usually an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University. There, he teaches courses on research methods and school law. He also studies and writes about educational technology and school leadership. Before their son Drew was born in June 2005, Jon’s wife Jacqui introduced him to the ideas behind attachment parenting (AP). Since these ideas are entirely consistent with Jon’s beliefs as an educator and Jacqui’s beliefs as a clinical psychologist, they have been practicing AP with Drew for three extraordinary and wonderful years. Having moved from New York in August 2007, despite moving a considerable distance from their immediate families, the Beckers are now happily situated in Richmond, VA where they have found great support for their parenting. You can find Jon on twitter as @jonbecker

Corey Smith

Eight months ago, Corey left a job in corporate America to start his own business. Overnight, Corey went from Vice President of Innovation at a local copier dealer to building websites for copier companies all over the country. He is the chief web architect for Dealer Marketing Systems and Prospect Builder. With 30 websites to his name now, he finally sort of understands the process.

In addition to Corey’s full time work as a web developer, he maintains a business and technology blog where he talks about what he views as simply a common sense approach to running a business. With his IT undergraduate degree and MBA, he has plenty of education plus 15 years of graphic arts, copier dealership, marketing and business experience he can usually make at least a little sense in his posts. He also maintains a news source for the office products industry at OfficeProductNews.net.

Without a doubt, the joys of Corey’s life are his children. Boy, girl, boy, girl… what a perfect pattern. Each one gets to be a favorite… the favorite big boy, big girl, little boy and little girl. Among the challenges presented by four children, Corey finds the blessings far outweigh the difficulties. With an opportunity to learn something new every day, the children provide an opportunity to remember what is important in life. With Corey’s strong focus on work, they provide a base of reality and a reason to live. Never a day goes by when he doesn’t learn as much from his children as he teaches them.

You can also find Corey on Twitter @corey_smith, on FriendFeed, LinkedIn or FaceBook.

~This is the first post by one of our dad contributors - Christian Long. We welcome these great guys willing to share their side of the parenting story once a week!~

“Beckett’s Dad” (aka Christian Long) still proudly calls himself a “new papa” even as Beckett nears his 2nd birthday this September.  Christian lives in Ft. Worth, TX with Beckett, his middle school principal wife named Karla, and 2 furry dogs named Tucker and Flaco.  Beyond being a daddy blogger, Christian’s “think:lab” blog explores the future of learning, emerging technology, and his passion for school architecture/design (which he did professionally before returning to life as a high school English teacher in the fall of 07). Read more about Christian on the Dads page………….

Standing on the front lawn of the house the other night after putting wee Beckett to bed, I stood proud in papa land one week before my 2nd Fathers Day. This was one of those moments. Adeptly shifting from reading Richard Scary segments to my toddler one minute to tackling the lawn before sunset the next, I felt the very definition of the father archetype. Something 50’s television would be challenged to improve.

Well, save for that pesky lawn. And an equally pesky lawn mower.

Grass blades – normally short enough to keep the neighborhood landscape police at bay – had run a bit wild as of late thanks to a lawn mower with a faulty starter. In other words, no matter how long I stared at the lawn, it wasn’t getting any shorter. And the neighbors certainly weren’t going to be able to play pretend much longer. Thank goodness my kid was too young and too asleep to be embarrassed.

At least for the time being.

Eventually, a solution whispered my name. Seemed only logical to dig out the electric weed whacker from some dark corner of the garage. Figured, hey, at least I could trim the walkway & garden edges. This would allow me to fake it for another few days, keep the neighbors from gawking, pretend the 6 inch high island of grass spanning the width of the lawn was merely a trick of the eye.

With the pathway edges trimmed crewcut tight, I began to sweep the weed whacker’s blade further and further into the inner circle of the wave of unmowed grass. With each pass, the impossible suddenly became possible: the lawn was in fact being ‘mowed’, although by a decidedly incorrect tool.

Since the ‘mowing’ took decidedly longer than normal – thanks to having to rely on 2 spinning plastic cords rather than the full-on power of a Honda multi-stroke engine – my mind had plenty of time to wander. And wonder who was watching.

And it struck me:

This act of mowing the lawn in broad daylight with an electric weed whacker – both front and back, mind you – seemed the perfect metaphor for being a parent.

Here’s my thinking:

1: The Neighbors Are (In Fact) Watching:

Being a parent means exposing our greatest mistakes/weaknesses in public.

Whether bared on our front lawn as the kiddo jumps naked in and out of the blue plastic kiddie pool or while trying to explain why the young one is eating sand-covered raisins after spilling their snack cup at the playground, we parents are nothing more than a mis-cut construction paper scrapbook of social foibles waiting to be gossiped about by best friends and strangers alike.

Part of becoming comfortable as a parent of a little one, I’ve learned, lies in becoming Paris Hilton comfy with this public scrutiny. Sure, we may feel the hot gaze of a posse of strolling grandmothers when we fail to dress our sons/daughters in legitimate Sunday best as we rush out the door to church, but there’s a pretty fine chance that those same pursed lipped grannies long ago once handed their young charges rush-made mayonnaise sandwiches when they realized they had run out of lunch meat as the school bus pulled up.

Best thing we can do is to smile at our public watchers with something just shy of overt paparazzi-be-danged bravado, faked like a master thespian nailing well intended lines in front of a testy audience. Call it exhausted parent wishful thinking or a humble acceptance of our small part in the great human drama. Either way, our kids will do just fine if they head to daycare with their pants on inside out. It’s the nature of the new parenting beast.

And we might as well have an audience along the way.

2: Choosing The Wrong Tool for the Right Job:

Lately, my son has taken to calling butter (to be spread on his English muffins) as “mama cheese”. This grew out of a craving for more Laughing Cow cheese one recent morning when he demanded that my wife hand over the butter dish she was using. To his young eyes, her butter looked like his cheese. Logical. She merely shifted his attention by claiming it was “Mama’s”. He bought it. Butter has been known as cheese every since.

Like this odd on-the-fly rephrasing of basic dairy items, much of our 21 month experience as new parents can be described as using weed whackers to mow lawns.

Sure, we bought all the right new baby gear the books and endless baby shower guests suggested, from the odd Diaper Genie to to the silly intercom system we’ve never used to special pacifier clips ultra easy to re-attach in a pitch-black bedroom when infant cries robbed precious parent sleep. But we also have been faking it most days:

• Letting him use his sidewalk chalk on our lawn furniture rather than pull out the official Crayola paper.
• Reading Christmas storybooks in June because its easier than looking for something else.
• Calling all forms of water – whether a pool, a bath tub, a park fountain, or even cold toothbrushing faucets – “bubbles” because we’re too tired to figure out the language nuances he’ll grasp at this stage of the game.

It is, after all, our god given right as new parents to use the kids shirt sleeve to wipe his nose even if we could walk down the hall to get a fresh hankie.

And you ain’t gonna stop us, no matter what the perfect parenting books say.

3. Ingenuity is Everything:

There are 3 things we try to do every morning before tucking Becket into his car seat for the daily ride to daycare.:

1. Peek into his bedroom several times without interrupting the wee one throwing a mini-tantrum in his crib as he attempts to shake the effects of sleepyhead.
2. Ask Beckett to help feed the dogs, letting him pour the coffee cup full of dry kibbles into the bowls one by one before he goofy-walk carries them over to the official ‘spot’ where both furry ones settle in for mealtime.
3. Try to figure out what bowl – blue one, red one, white one? — he wants to pour “O’s, O’s, O’s” in (aka “Fruit-flavored Cheerios”) for the morning breakfast ritual with papa.

Lately, however, we’ve added a bit of a Vegas gamble to the picture:

Have kid stand on a ladder and play with a live blender.

What? Yup. Just ‘cause we like to keep our new parent selves on our toes. Gulp.

More accurately, with mindful eye, we have tried to integrate the tiny bugger into our quest for a healthy adult breakfast. You see, Beckett remains uber-fascinated by everything we do on the kitchen counter, which as you can imagine lies well beyond his convenient eye-scan given his sub-2 year old height. Cleverly, he figured out that the kitchen step stool could solve part of the problem. We thought it was well hidden between the fridge and another counter. He proved otherwise. And that meant that if mama/papa were going to make fruit smoothies, he was gonna fight to get his fingers on the blender buttons where the real action lay.

I’m not sure Dr. Spock had a when sharing the blender with junior chapter in his famed parenting texts.

I do, however, know that with safe mentoring and a teflon belief that there’s nothing with supporting the kid if he only wants to learn/mimick real world behaviors, there is no reason why Beckett can’t be part of the morning smoothie team. Not only does it ensure he willingly sips strawberry/banana concoctions, but it also means a potential tantrum morphs into a giddy-faced toddler raring to go to school. And if a bit of ingenuity at the kitchen counter is risky, the risk is IMHO worth it.

Unless someone has a nanny they’d like to donate!