Storytelling

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The Cross Gendered Roles of Modern Parents

October 10, 2011 at 10:25 pm , by 

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Interview with Parents.com’s Daddy Blogger, Nick Shell

October 9, 2011 at 11:56 pm , by 

Ten months.

Do you think it may be perceived as pretentious that you are interviewing yourself, since you yourself are the creator and author of The Dadabase?

“I do, actually. But I also believe that every time I publish a new Dadabase post, I am essentially interviewing myself; only in a different kind of format. See, I’m planning on starting a new blog series here where I interview non-famous people; since I don’t know any famous people who are willing to let me question them for free. To get in some good practice, I just figured interviewing myself is the best place to start.”

What has been your biggest challenge so far as a dad?

“My son Jack can get pretty clingy with my wife, so trying to distract him with something else can sometimes take a lot of energy and creativity. Leaving the room with him often is the best remedy. But part of the challenge for me is psychologically accepting the double standard of how he treats us both, regarding his clingyness.  I can pick him up; he cries. She picks him up; he’s happy. That’s annoying.”

What is the weirdest thing about your parenting style?

“Man, I feel everything I do as a dad is weird. I get it that ‘there is no normal’ when it comes to figuring this thing out. But if anything, maybe the weirdest thing about my parenting style is that I am so normal as a dad. Being a parent is the most normal thing about me!

The paradox is that you end up having to do strange stuff when you become a dad- like make up off-the-wall songs on the spot to pacify your infant’s attention and speak to them in strange Muppet voices. That’s not normal- but in parenting, it is. For once, in this one huge aspect of my life, I’m normal; and that’s pretty weird.”

What is your favorite quirk about your child’s personality so far?

“I just think that in general, he’s a cool baby. It’s not that he wants to be cool or tries to be cool- he just simply is. Like right now, he does this thing where he sticks his fist up in the air when he sees me. So I am trying to teach him to do the “exploding fist bump.” His attempt at making the explosion sound is hilarious! Instead of ‘pa-khooch-shh!’ like I do it, he does ‘rhhrr-ugghh-ahh.’

“The fact that it’s important to him to learn to do the exploding fist pump is just adorably awesome. I really like that kid. I really do.”

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Choosing to Love Unconditionally in Marriage

Ten months.

I can think of three universally recognizable examples of unconditional love: God and man, parent and child, and dog and owner. But what about whom you marry? Is that unconditional love?

Isn’t that sort of the whole concept of marrying someone? To choose to unconditionally love a person you wouldn’t otherwise love to the point of “no matter what?”  To me, that’s the most romantic thing a person can do. Even stripped of emotion and sentimentality, marriage is/should be mutual unconditional love at its finest.

And maybe that’s one of the reasons that marriage isn’t as easy as a lot of people may assume going into it. Instead, marriage is an ongoing process of mutual maturity. Marriage causes people to see how hard it can be to live with even themselves, from the perspective of someone who happens to love them unconditionally.

To love someone unconditionally means there is nothing that that person can do to cause them to fall out of ultimate favor with you. Sure, some days it’s easier than others, but that falls under the whole “for better or for worse” part of the wedding vows.

Actually, for a human being (outside of the parent/child relationship) to love another unconditionally is one of the biggest paradoxes I can think of. But it helps to put things in perspective by turning the tables: I, myself, want to be unconditionally loved.

I want to know there is a person who doesn’t judge me when I’m not in the room, but at the same time is brave enough to tell me directly and privately how I can improve as a person, in both big and small ways. I want to know there is a person who understands me, or at least puts up with me, when I’m being weird or simply not myself.

So maybe choosing to love another person is challenging, but for me, the bigger challenge was finding someone who would love me unconditionally. Thank God, that’s exactly who I found.

 

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Come Hell or High Water (or Both)

October 5, 2011 at 10:57 pm , by 

Ten months.

Exactly five years ago this very moment, on October 5th, 2006, I met my wife. And that’s exactly what I intended to write about today. I was going to explore how differently our lives would be today if that fateful night at a taping of a CMT show never brought us together and ultimately, how Jack would not be here today as the star of The Dadabase.

But instead, I’m psychologically processing the fact that this is a picture of our recently water damaged living room in our townhouse which we are supposed to be moving back into this weekend. God bless this mess:

And this is actually one of the tamest pictures. The rest are saved on a friend’s digital camera to send to our insurance company, State Farm. But I don’t have the right cord to upload them to my laptop tonight.

Truly, I am the kind of person who avoids drama at all costs. Some people are wired for it, like the people on Facebook who seem to constantly attract romantic partners who are destined to cheat on them. But not me. I duck out every chance I get when it comes to the mindset “why does it always rain on me?”.

Is it “the blogger’s curse” that I am experiencing?

In a cosmic effort to make sure I always have something interesting and relevant to say, must I feel compelled to move back to my hometown in Alabama only to move back so that I can learn to manage my finances better, then literally on the move back to Nashville have one of our cars break down so that we have to buy a new car, only to find that a few days after our renters moved out of our townhouse, that there was a loose washer on the upstairs toilet, causing my thousands of dollars worth of water damage?

Thank God our insurance policy was written up right before this happened and that our deductible is only $500. That goes well with the unexpected $250 I had to pay for two new tires on my car last week because I evidently ran over two nails in the road and the day of work missed last week when my wife was sick.

I get it that that trying times like these only mold us into more mature versions of ourselves. And I totally I am obsessed now with budgeting and saving as much money as I possibly can in every way. So really, I’m over this whole “life lessons” thing for a while. I would love a mental break.

We (jokingly?) said to each other if only pot were legal, tonight would be the night to try it. But then again, we’ve said that inside joke to each other more times than we can remember, throughout all the other challenges we have faced during these past few months.

In this moment, I am not seeking life lessons of self improvement and maturity. I’ll settle for mediocre and immature. Maybe I should start watching reruns of Two and a Half Men.

We are strong and we will soldier on. We may be lost and holding hands, but we’ll find out way out of this mess. It helps that Tom Petty’s song “I Won’t Back Down” has been playing on repeat in my head all day. (“You can stand me up at the gates of Hell but I won’t back down.”) My wife is taking this so much better than she should and I think she’s dealing with it slightly better than me. I am so blessed to have her and our son.

Our house will be repaired with enough (insurance) money; hopefully. But my wife and son are beyond priceless. Thank God for them.

*Editor’s note: I am letting my wife sleep instead of making her correct today’s Dadabase post; considering the circumstances. So do me a favor, leave me a comment for any typos or punctuation errors that you find and I’ll take care of them. Thanks!

 

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Extreme Makeover: House Painting Edition

October 4, 2011 at 11:25 pm , by 

Ten months.

I think the best way to begin is to share a few things that I would rather do than paint two bedrooms with vaulted ceilings:

1) For the next three months, I would have to replace my bio picture here on The Dadabase (featured right) with one where I have an un-ironic mustache.

2) For three nights in a row, I would have to sleep on one of those inflatable alligator pool toys in the middle of a swimming pool in Wisconsin, where it’s colder. Also, I would have to sleep fully dressed so that when I regularly fell into the cold water, I would remain that much colder.

3) Fly to Sacramento and back with my infant son, again.

Some of our very good friends have been kind to take us in as we have waited for the renters in our townhouse to move out. This weekend, we will finally move back into it and make it our own.

For me, making our townhouse our own means the three of us moving ourselves and our stuff back into it. And the guest room officially becomes Jack’s bedroom. I would say that pretty much makes it our own.

But my wife helped me realized that in order to truly make our townhouse our own, we would need to paint the two bedrooms.

It didn’t matter that neither of us had ever actually painted the interior of a house before, nor did we have any painting supplies or equipment, or even someone to watch Jack on short notice. Painting had to be done to make this townhouse of ours our own.

On Saturday, I was able to recruit my highly experienced friend Jason to teach me how to tape off the walls and how to, basically, paint a room. He also had a ladder for me to get the job done with. Then the next day, our friends who we have been staying with watched Jack as Jill and I tackled his bedroom.

Ultimately, something I have realized about my wife and I is this: When we really want to get a job done, no matter how outlandish and impractical it may seem, we find a way to get it done.

We did it; painted both bedrooms (with vaulted ceilings) within a weekend. My preconceived ideas about painting were accurate: painting is a miserable experience. But we survived it!

I want to brag on my wife’s ability to pick out colors. For our bedroom, she chose a very light green named “River Reed,” which has a breezy Caribbean feel  to it. Jack’s bedroom is Ranch Mink; a chocolate brown. We’re calling Jack’s bedroom his “boy cave.”

Want to see finished pictures of our fine work? Wait until we move in this weekend and I will surely deliver.