parenthood

3 Comments Posted on People, Spirituality, Storytelling, Uncategorized

dad from day one: Jack’s First White Christmas

Week 6.

During my first summer teaching English in Thailand, I took a week-long vacation to the magical island of Koh Samui, as referenced in the movie Meet the Parents (“Jack speak-a Thai?”).  While there, I went to a highly promoted (via hand-painted street banners) Muay Thai boxing tournament.  Inside the dimly lit warehouse-style building on the outskirts of legitimate commerce, I felt like I was part of the movie Bloodsport staring Jean Claude Van Damme.  Afterwards, as a souvenir, I cut down one of the street banners advertising the event and hung it up in my college dorm at Liberty University the next Fall.  Everyone who saw it laughed at the poor English translation: “Super and Real Fight”.  I mean, it was a real fight, and I would say it was super as well, but for the fight to be super and real in the same adjective phrase just sounds funny.  And that is why I couldn’t title this entry as “Jack’s First and White Christmas”.

In preparing our move from Nashville, TN to Fort Payne, AL (which is located between Birmingham, Chattanooga, and Atlanta), my wife (who is from Sacramento, CA) had asked me if it ever snowed in Alabama.  Though the words “snow” and “Alabama” seem like they don’t go together at all, though do. Just like a lot of people don’t realize that Alabama actually borders the Gulf of Mexico and has several beaches, like Gulf Shores.  I told my wife to expect it to snow a few inches, up to three times a year.  And sure enough, as we woke up around 6 AM Christmas morning to feed and change Jack, we looked out the window to see large snowflakes falling steadily.

A couple of hours later, we drove 0.7 miles to my parents’ house to spend the day with them and my sister and her husband.  Turns out, the snow didn’t stop falling and the temperature remained low.  So the seven of us ending up staying the weekend together, being that the roads were iced over.  One of the gifts my parents bought for Jack was a really cool wagon; ideally for when he gets older. However, when we started getting ready for bed on Christmas night and we were deciding where Jack should sleep, since we hadn’t packed his travel crib, I said, “Well, what about his wagon?” Not many people can say that their first Christmas was a white Christmas and that on top of that, that they slept in a wagon.  But I guess it’s not all that strange, being that we were celebrating a holiday where a baby boy slept in a manger.  We didn’t have a manger for Jack, but we did have a wagon.

Jack is swinging Christmas morning before we left for my parents' house.

We got snowed in.

Jack's presents from his parents.

Jack's presents from the family.

The Four Generations of Shells: Baby Jack is the only Shell boy to carry on the family name.

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dad from day one: Playtime with an Infant

Week 1.

It doesn’t take being a full week into this to realize that there are predictable patterns of my baby: he eats, he poops/pees, he plays, and he sleeps.  Of course the word “plays”, when referring to a week-old infant, is somewhat limited being that he doesn’t really have active neck muscles yet.  I have to turn his head to show him where the action is, but that’s okay.

When he’s more awake, I like to box with Baby Jack.  He instinctively puts his hands out like a boxer- and because we keep mittens on his hands to keep him from scratching his face, it’s only natural that he makes for a perfect baby boxer.  Of course, it’s his fists versus my pointer fingers.  And I only push my fingers up against his “boxing gloves”.  We are in the beginning stages of “dad wrestles son”.

Another playtime activity is when I lay back against a wall or the bed headboard, placing him in my lap.  Then I use my legs as a sort of elevator/recliner, which serves as a fun ride for him.  Something else I can do in this position is to flex my stomach muscles very hard, straining hard enough to cause my stomach to vibrate or shake quickly.  That makes Jack vibrate and shake too- it’s an easy way to get him to smile.  When playing with him, I basically just think to myself: “What are all the ways I would like to annoy a cat if it would let me?”  It gives me good direction as a dad.

4 Comments Posted on Storytelling, Uncategorized

Planners Vs. Procrastinators: Of Control Freaks and Slackers

I am not a control freak… except when it comes to my own time.

Despite being a pretty social person, I could essentially see myself as a loner who happens to be outgoing and have good people skills.  But my personal time is closely guarded.  And I happened to marry someone who is the same way.  That means when friends invite us last minute to an event, the answer is usually no.  On the other hand, we are such planners that if friends invite us to an event at least several days in advance, we will definitely be there.  Not only that, we will not back out of the plans or be late.

 

Because we are such planners, every day is already accounted for: even if the event we already planned is to “do nothing” for the afternoon.  We don’t prioritize our calendar’s events based on the seemingly most exciting thing going on.  Instead, we go by what was planned first.  I think the psychological reason behind this is that one of my biggest pet peeves is being interrupted; jumping on board with last minute plans is an interruption to my schedule.

While there are so many elements in life I can not control, my schedule is something I am able to have a decent amount of control over.  My schedule is my time; my time is my life; if I can control my time, I am therefore able to control my own life.  I may not be able to control other people, but I am able to be in driver’s seat of my own life.  Not shotgun or in the sidecar.

 

Heckler from the crowd: “You just wait ‘til that baby gets here… He’ll be the one controlling your calendar from now on!” Right, I get that, but… we will still find a way, to the best of our ability, to “find a method to the madness”.  (I have this habit of placing clichés into quotation marks.) Because that’s what we “control freaks of our own lives” do.  We are wired that way.  The schedule will be built around the unpredictability of a newborn, yet still in some sense, there will be a schedule and consistency.

The irony here is this: For so many of the things in life we think we have no control over, we still can choose how we react to those situations; therefore, having control over the situations.  I used to get irritated when I would be two minutes late to work on occasion.  Because I couldn’t understand why if I left at the same time every morning, sometimes I would be two minutes early, sometimes on time, and sometimes two minutes late.  Then I realized that in order to never be late, I just needed to leave five minutes earlier, causing me to always beat school buses, grannies, illegal immigrants who always drive 25 miles an hour because they are driving without insurance, and the rest of the phase of commuters like me who all left at the same time.  But now, I outsmart them all.  They no longer have control over my life (and my stress level).

Of course, not all annoying things in life can literally be planned around or outsmarted.  But when that’s the case, I remind myself that either I am in control… or the event is in control.  If my Internet isn’t working right, then I shut off my laptop and find something else to do- I don’t allow myself to become irritated over a piece of technology.  If someone is tailgating me while I’m driving the speed limit, I pull over and let them pass.  I just know that if I’m am consistently getting stressed multiple times a day and I can feel my blood pressure going up, the problem is not the problem itself.  The problem is me and how I am choosing to react.  I have to choose to be in control of my own sense of well-being, if nothing else.

 

I am a planner.  I can plan around certain uncertainty.  I can plan around my own unrealistic expectations.  I can even plan to be spontaneous.  But even then, I still plan for it.

 

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dad from day one: Last Minute Expectations

Thirty-eight weeks.

It is almost a given that a family sitcom will reach its peak by Season 5 or 6, where in attempt to bring back ratings, someone has a baby.  (Examples include Full House, Growing Pains, Family Ties, Step By Step, and even though it’s not a family show, The Office).  There is often a way too familiar seen where the soon-to-be new mother’s water breaks during an inconvenient situation or random location and the soon-to-be new father clumsily rushes her to the hospital, only to continue being more dramatic than his laboring wife.  And for added effect, he passes out from exhaustion while his wife happily holds their new baby.

actual footage

Will that bumbling husband be me?   I sure hope not. Tomorrow morning we will do the final packing for D-Day: clothes, toiletries, snacks, Italian champagne, bottled water, gum, camera, cell phone charger, our birth plan,  and the birthing ball.  We’ll pack our bags into the car (I installed the car seat in it a few weeks ago) that we will drive to the hospital.  We will be all set.  It’s weird to pack for the birth of a child, yet it seems kinda like we’re going on a road trip to a state 8 hours away instead.

Since most of my expectations are based on laugh track infused sitcoms that first aired during the 1980’s or clips of worst case scenarios played out on birthing shows on networks that I only watch because my wife watches them, I’m sure the way I am playing out D-Day in my head is pretty far from reality.  I have a feeling it will be in between the two extremes.  I know it will be surreal.  Soon, I will experience the event that neither words nor snapshots will be able to describe.

All pictures with the “JHP” logo were taken by Joe Hendricks Photography:

Blog- www.photojoeblog.com

Website- www.joehendricks.com

2 Comments Posted on People, Spirituality, Storytelling, Uncategorized

dad from day one: One More Month to Go

Thirty-five weeks.

Jack’s due date is November 11th, so it’s pretty likely that within the next thirty days, he will be born.  I am past the stage of being nervous, afraid, or underprepared (because I’ve accepted the fact that no first time parent can truly be prepared enough). Instead, I am completely excited and feeling very positive about it all.  A few nights ago I had a dream that Jack was a few months old and I was holding him, feeling his face against mine, and even though it was a dream, it was a feeling that I have never experienced before.  But it’s a feeling that I know I will be experiencing soon in real life.

This late into the pregnancy, it feels more like our baby is actually born and less that my wife is still pregnant.  We’re so close to meeting him.  I’m already feeling a hint of this great desire to do anything I have to in order to make sure he’s taken care of.  Like an innocent puppy that winds up on my doorstep with sad eyes that say, “Please take care of me…”  Except he’s a human being and I had a part in bringing him into this world.

I look forward to caring for him with my life.  I don’t care about having to change diapers, losing sleep, and just flat-out transforming the normalcy of my life to be a dad.  I want this little boy.  And for the record, he’s got some cool shoes waiting for him out here in the real world.

All pictures with the “JHP” logo were taken by Joe Hendricks Photography:

Blog- www.photojoeblog.com

Website- www.joehendricks.com