It’s been a really busy handful of months. I was tallying the list in my head and I came up with the following things that have been done so far:
- Trip to Las Vegas for a convention
- Canoe trip in Missouri, followed by a bout of strep throat
- Various work trips
- Changing jobs
- Chaperoning Jackson as he sold a boat load of popcorn
- Cub Scout campouts
- The 3-Day training and the actual event
- Traveling for Thanksgiving
And that’s just since June and I’m sure that I have left some off. The point of the matter is that it’s been really busy. While there are several family oriented things in there, I have been thinking that I’ve kind of been missing out on enjoying time with the kids when I’m at home. It seems like we have been on the run so much that when we do get home and have some time, we end up going to separate parts of the house and not seeing each other. In fact, a couple of days ago I was sitting on the couch with Kristen and had to ask, “where are the kids?”. Now, I know that as they get older, they are going to want to do less and less with their parents, so while they still think we are kind of cool I want to hang out with them. I had been thinking about this for a week or two and how to implement this when Sawyer came up to us last night and presented a perfect opportunity:
“Can I watch something?”
He had already watched a couple shows and that is usually the limit, so I said, “No, but how about you and I play a game?” At first he didn’t want to. He didn’t see why he couldn’t watch any more TV. He was on the verge of throwing a fit when Kristen reminded him that he had asked her to play with him earlier when she couldn’t and that now was his golden opportunity. He turned it around and decided that he wanted to play Legos with me. We built things for awhile. He built a “Autobot” of his own design and I built the word “Hi”. After I was done my simple project I spent most of the time helping him hunt for that perfect piece that would complete his creation.
We played until bed time came and when I announced it was time to get ready he said, “Ok, and daddy guess what. Tomorrow we can work on completing the crane that I’m making!” As a dad, I have to say that is an awesome feeling to have your son go from being upset about not being able to watch television to having so much fun with you that he’s already planning your nex day to do the same thing because he had so much fun. I actually had to tell him that we couldn’t do it right after he got home because I would still be at work.
Ok, I was off to a good start. It proved to be even better than expected when Jackson came up to me after I read Sawyer his bed time story and asked if we could play a game. There were only about 45 minutes left until his bed time but I agreed and he chose to play Memoir ’44, a World War 2 tactics game (yeah, he’s growing up to be a geek like me). Unfortunately we only got the game set up before we realized that he had one more thing before he had to go to bed. He wasn’t terribly happy about it, but I told him that we could play tonight.
So we had a great night. Both of the kids really seemed to enjoy our time together as much as I did and that’s a good thing. There are a couple more things that I’m trying to do so that we can keep having fun. Number one on the list is like a no personal tech rule. I’m going to try very hard to not use iphones, ipads, computers or even watch TV when I am done with work and the kids are still up (not that I watch tv at work). In looking back I am seeing that sometimes I will get sucked into something that I thought would just take a little bit of time (looking something up online) and it ends up taking a lot of time away from the family. All in all, I think making some small changes on my side and then asking them to do something with me will make a world of difference in how things are going down at home. Here’s to being a better dad.