fatherhood

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Dear Jack: Your 1st School Dance… With Girls!

11 years, 10 months.

Dear Jack,

Last Friday night, Mommy and I drove you and your best friend Landon to your first school dance! And yes, a dance where there were girls.

However, you were super chill about the whole thing. But it was very important to you that you were able to go.

I kept asking, “Are you sure you are going to feel comfortable wearing a t-shirt? Are you sure you won’t feel underdressed?”

To be sure, I snuck a few button down shirts in the car just in case.

But sure enough, this apparently was a very casual middle school dance where no one really dressed up.

You confirmed that boys and girls in 6th grade weren’t really dancing with each other.

It mainly was just a way to hang out. Either way, you were so glad you went!

 

Love,

Daddy

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Dear Holly: You’re Working on Doing the Splits

6 years, 4 months.

Dear Holly,

You have taken it upon yourself to be able to do the splits. So at our house, it is a normal thing to see you practicing on the living room floor, at any given time.

The funny thing is, you recently decided to stop doing gymnastics classes.

You have moved on to hip hop dance classes instead.

But there is something appealing to you about being able to do the splits, so you continue practicing.

I will say- I am so impressed that you can do the splits so well, at a young age; not having a ton of practice or experience.

Makes you wonder how far you will get with it!

Love,

Daddy

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Dear Jack: You are an Enneagram 3W4 (Achiever/Invidualist)

11 years, 10 months.

Dear Jack,

Ever since becoming certified as an Enneagram coach last December, I have had trouble getting a solid reading on you.

But as of this past week, it become clear:

You are an Enneagram 3 (The Achiever) with a dominant wing 4 (The Individualist).

Mommy and I have never put pressure on you to do well in school… nor in Taekwondo, nor in building complicated Lego sets, nor helping us build furniture we order off the Internet!

Yet you constantly excel in everything you do. While Mommy and I aren’t putting this constant “pressure to succeed” on you… you do.

What convinced me was when you came home from school last week, so proud, for certifiably excelling in all your subjects at school, in last year’s standardized test.

As proud of you that Mommy and I assured you that we were of you, it was apparent you were even prouder!

But you’re not only focusing on succeeding in life, you also like to stand out; like how you recently helped purchase your own (expensive!) Nike shoes for the new school year.

For the past couple of years now, you have openly acknowledged your goal to own a Tesla. That is what you have your sights on!

And I am confident you have what it takes… with no help from Mommy or me on that.

I wanted to surprise you with a gift to make you feel special regarding your amazing test scores. So I snuck by Marshall’s and bought you a $100 Sean Jean watch that you had recently pointed out to me.

And it because it was from Marshall’s, I only paid $20.

Either way, you are undeniably smarter than me!

I have always known you are going to go far in life. And now I realize, it’s fundamentally your personality to achieve and to be a creative individual in the process!

Love,

Daddy

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Dear Holly: You are an Enneagram 2W3 (Helper/Achiever)

6 years, 4 months.

Dear Holly,

We’re now a few months into me determining that you are officially an Enneagram 2- “The Helper” personality.

This past week, one particular event stood out to back this up.

Thanks to many family members across the USA, you did very well in selling magazine subscriptions as a fundraiser for your school. (That shows your dominant “3 wing- The Achiever”.)

So you got a keychain as a prize for each one sold.

But on the bus ride home from school that day, some older kids saw how many you had and asked if they could all have one.

Reluctantly, you said yes; confused, thinking they were asking to see the prizes, not keep them. But you indeed at given away three of your prizes to kids you didn’t even know.

You kept from crying, long enough to make it off the bus.

Mommy took care of you, though. She explained to your teacher what happened, so you got reimbursed the next day with new prizes.

You are a helper, and an achiever; as this story clearly demonstrates.

And as your Daddy, part of my job is to make sure you don’t help others to the point that you neglect yourself in the process.

Mommy and I are both Enneagram 6s, so we are most motivated to provide security for those we love.

You are so kind and giving- and so easy to love!

That happens to be a trait about people who are Enneagram 2- they never make you wonder if they love you.

Love,

Daddy

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1st Annual Great Smoky Mountains Father-Son Jeep Trip 2022

This Labor Day Weekend, my dad and I decided to take my Jeep across the Foothills Parkway in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

If I was an Enneagram 3, I would have been stressed out by trying to cram in the nearly dozen items I planned for our itinerary. Instead, I am an Enneagram 6; meaning I overplanned and overprepared, but I am happy to just accomplish some of the tasks on the list.

So we ended up doing 3 of the 11 items: We found and drove across the entire Foothills Parkway. We stopped for dinner at a true German restaurant. And we stayed overnight in an RV.

It’s important to my wife that we stay in a nice place anytime we travel. But personally, I’d be happy staying at a Motel 6.

Even though she wasn’t even going on the trip, she talked me into staying an an Airbnb RV; since it was the same price as the cheapest motel she could find.

It’s funny because I had just recently looked back on the lyrics to a song I wrote 4 years ago, called “Fort Payne, Alabama“, which sort of predicted this:

“If you called me Mother Nature’s son, I’d take it as a compliment – I’d trade a Lexus for an RV, a mansion for a tent.”

I’ve accepted that in life, things seldom work out the way you plan them. So you plan ahead- and then you just wing it, when it doesn’t go as planned.

Clearly, that is evidenced by the fact we didn’t get around to visiting the majority of the stops on our trip; including Top of the World, Tennessee.

But fundamentally, the only thing that mattered is that we had a fun adventure together. And that’s exactly what we did.

I suppose for next year, we shall try again to find and visit the mysterious town of Top of the World, Tennessee.

It had served as the reference point for us finding the very elusive start of the Foothills Parkway.

Plenty more left to explore based on this year’s agenda!