fatherhood

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Dear Holly: You Said I Look Like Lionel Richie, and Surprisingly, Maybe You’re Sort of Right…

2 years, 3 months.

Dear Holly,

Our family faithfully watched the latest season of American Idol. A few episodes into it, you started pointing out something to Mommy, your brother, and me.

Any time it showed Lionel Richie, you would point to the screen and say, “That’s Daddy.”

It’s something we just sort of laughed about at the time.

But looking back on it, and comparing side by side pictures of Lionel and me, I have to admit…

I think I see it. I think I see what you were seeing in each episode of American Idol.

And by the way, that picture of me was taken before I was even thinking about this again this week. I didn’t take the picture of myself to match one of Lionel. It was simply the most recent picture I had taken of myself and found on my computer.

But even the casual smile I had looks the same as Lionel. It’s as if Lionel and I have the same default smile.

So today, I published a video on one of my YouTube channels telling the story of how you saw the resemblance. Most people who saw the video admitted they they definitely saw the facial similarities.

What’s interesting is that I’ve never been compared to Lionel Richie in my entire life. The only specific thing I have in common with him is that he and I both share the same home state of Alabama.

But leave it to the perspective of a 2 year-old little girl, and suddenly, it’s a different view.

What if this is a sign that you are an artistic genius? What if you are gifted in facial recognition?

What if your career as an adult ends up proving that this story was more that just a trivial coincidence?

I say it is possible.

Even when I force myself to assume it was just something random you kept saying each week during American Idol, I still can’t deny there is a similarity.

Maybe you’re a genius little girl!

Love,

Daddy

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Is Age 37 Too Young for a Midlife Crisis? 1st World Problems and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

I’m pretty sure that at age 37, I’m currently working my way through my midlife crisis. While at first mention, it might seem I’m getting mine out of the way a little early, consider that the average American man in Tennessee lives to be about 74 years old. So actually, I’m actually right on cue:

If I live that long, then my life is already halfway complete at this point.

Perhaps the biggest struggle I am sorting out is that, as of this year, I have officially found myself at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Self-Actualization.

The way I like to explain how Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs works is this:

If and when you are able to overcome needs in each stage of your life, they are simply replaced by new ones that you didn’t have the privilege of addressing before.

Things started progressing quickly on my journey up the pyramid, in my mid-30s, when I discovered that it was always my decision whether I allowed other people to emotionally affect me. During that same time in my life, my wife and I had become completely debt-free, other than our mortgage.

Now in our late 30s, we have found ourselves in a new income level bracket; having both progressed our ways up the corporate ladder, in addition to the aforementioned pyramid.

I think the identity crisis I am going through right now is that we both work full-time jobs in offices, in addition to side jobs online. The money simply goes to paying off our mortgage, our kids’ college funds, and our retirement.

It’s just sort of demotivating to consider how much of our time is spent working- and how little time is spent together as a family.

Plus, I really want a Jeep Wrangler. I’ve been dreaming about owning one for years. But having gone years without a car payment, and knowing that buying my dream car would only take away from our savings and our ability to pay extra each month on our mortgage, I just wouldn’t be able to enjoy it anyway.

Clearly, I have first world problems. Yet according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, they are still legitimate challenges that I am sorting out in my life.

This is my midlife crisis at age 37.

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Dear Jack: Maybe You’ve Grown Up a Bit More When I Wasn’t Looking

7 years, 8 months.

Dear Jack,

Whereas I don’t feel like your sister has grown up all of the sudden, like the way people feel who haven’t seen her in a while, I can’t say the same about you.

Raising your sister at age her requires so much of my attention, that I am aware that it sort of feels like I can’t focus as much on you as I did before your sister was born.

While I could feel guilty about that, I have to remind myself that when you were 2 years old, I probably spent even more time pouring my attention and care into you.

In the process, your role and identity has had to shift from the only child to the older brother.

Fortunately though, you’ve done a remarkable job with that transition. The 5 and a half year difference between you and sister definitely makes things easier, I believe.

I feel that we’re nearing a point where I’ll feel that my time will be a bit more balanced, as your sister is now gaining much independence. I look forward to us spending more time together.

At the same time though, somewhere between the fact you’ve been forced to be more independent of my attention because of your sister, and because you’re naturally becoming more dependent in your age anyway now that you are almost in 2nd grade, it’s like things are naturally gravitating towards a more balanced divide of my attention.

But I do feel like you’ve grown up more quickly here without my noticing it.

So hopefully, time will feel like it’s slowing down with you about more in the near future; whereas with your sister, it’s almost as if time has progressed slower than normal, because of how much time I’ve spent with her.

I look forward to things balancing out.

Love,

Daddy

Photo by Mohamad Alaw.

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Dear Holly: You’re at the Age Now Where People Think You Grew Up So Fast, But You Didn’t…

2 years, 3 months.

Dear Holly,

You are officially at the age now, to where if someone hasn’t seen you since you were a baby, they will react with, “Oh wow! Holly is all grown up now! She’s a girl!”

We have friends and family members that have haven’t seen you in about two years. So for them to you see now as a little girl, it can give the impression that time has just flown by since you were born.

However, it’s a different feeling for me; regarding my perception of time.

I definitely don’t feel like you grew up while I blinked. For me, I think it only reinforced a more natural passing of time in that I had 6 months to take care of you while I was a stay-at-home dad.

Through every night where I woke up at 3:00 AM to change your diaper and help you get back to sleep, it’s possible that it felt like time was actually passing by more slowly for me.

It’s like the way that sitcoms often skip the years between infancy and Kindergarten, I imagine that’s how it is to the outside world when they see you.

I suppose it’s also like the way if a person stares at the minute-hand of a clock in an attempt to watch it move, compared to someone who looks away from the clock.

This weekend we have a family reunion to go to. I am expecting many people to say, word for word, “Is this Holly? She’s gotten big. I remember seeing pictures of her when she was a baby. She grew up quickly!”

But for me, as a parent who has been heavily involved in so many waking hours of your life, you’ve grown up at normal speed.

I’ve survived enough sleepless nights to feel it.

Love,

Daddy

Photos by Mohamad Alaw.

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Dear Jack: You and Your Sister Have Turned Our Old Phones into Technology Corner

7 years, 8 months.

Dear Jack,

One night last week in attempt to keep your sister occupied as Mommy and I rushed to finish cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, I saw Mommy’s newly retired “old” phone on the shelf.

I pulled up the calculator app, and my plan proved itself to be successful. Your sister had become instantly lost in a sea of numbers. She was additionally mesmerized by the water drop sound effect Mommy’s phone made each time a new number was pressed.

So for the past several days now, it has not been uncommon for your sister to crunch numbers, while you play Survival Craft on the Kindle.

Eventually, your sister made her way over to you, from the coffee table which had been serving as her work station.

Then you had a really cool idea. You pulled up the camera on the phone and began taking selfies with her. She loved it!

It was such a big deal for her to get to see how each new picture turned out.

Before your sister’s 2nd birthday, it was rare for me to let your sister have any screen time. But now that she has proven she has reached certain milestones in her speech abilities, I’m okay with a reasonable amount of her watching Netflix with you… or playing with an old phone.

An “old” cell phone from 3 years ago is actually more like a mini home computer. And we have two of them lying around; both Mommy’s and mine. So really, I can imagine how cool of a toy it must seem to your sister.

I have a feeling that from now on, I will need to make sure that one of our old phones is fully charged before any upcoming road trip; like the next time we make the 2 and a half hour drive to Nonna and Papa’s house.

Love,

Daddy