Fatigue and Cheerios

By Blake Friis

Anyone who has been in great shape, only to cease working out for several weeks, understands the fragile nature of human conditioning.

Months of weekends alone with our baby should have prepared me for my wife’s three-night vacation. Summer attended clinical nurse training at the hospital every weekend throughout the fall. My confidence as a parent grew. I became completely comfortable bathing a baby and never missed a feeding, regardless of how much great football was on television.

When my in-laws invited Summer to join them for a weekend in Reno it seemed like a no-brainer. Of course I could man the fort while she was gone. I’d done it 12 consecutive weekends. You’re dealing with a pro here.

Have you ever jogged on a treadmill after a period of laziness?

You approach it like nothing has changed, until you look down and see you’ve run just .24 miles and question the machine’s ability to gauge distance. And are these the same shoes you ran in last? And for Christ’s sake, why can’t you find the right song on your iPod? Better step to the side rails and scroll through your library.

With Summer home for the holidays, our routine has been broken and my independent parent swagger has been shelved. I am only as responsible and ambitious as circumstances dictate. Give me the opportunity to kick my feet up and where do my feet go without hesitation? Up.

Dad, I'm trapped. Call Mom.

When Gabe and I took Summer to the airport – I drove, he just sat there and didn’t even offer a dollar for the toll – I realized my parenting legs had grown a little heavier than I thought over winter break.

I narrowly avoided an accident on the way home from the airport, a classic Dallas highway encounter. One driver slams on the brakes causing a chain reaction that ends with a speeding truck skidding toward me before swerving into the median to avoid a pile-up. I attempt to sooth Gabe, who woke up amidst the commotion. He cried for the remaining 30 minutes of our drive, making it feel like two hours.

Summer hadn’t made it through airport security and I was already counting down the hours until her return.

The first workout after a layoff can be brutal, but it doesn’t take long for your body to wake up and get back in the groove. I found my rhythm in the cereal aisle.

Growing up with three brothers, all cereal enthusiasts with healthy appetites, I became all too familiar with generic cereal. It hurts my heart to see my son learning to eat solid food with Toasted O’s, even if it makes economic sense and he doesn’t know the difference. I threw down an extra $0.79 for Cheerios and set the tone for the rest of the weekend. We may miss the occasional bath when Dad is in charge, but we smile like idiots and eat like kings.

By the time Summer returned I was in such great parenting shape I could have easily handled another couple days. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a little conditioning and name brand cereal.

Never going back to Toasted O's

No Vacation, No Problem

By Blake Friis

Snowshoeing up a Colorado mountain was just as miserable as I believed it would be when my wife suggested it. Hundreds of people having the time of their lives flew downhill, many taking the time to inform us we were going the wrong way.

I was making the best of a “ski” trip with my wife, who had been pregnant for six months and had non-refundable tickets in her possession for seven, so I laughed and nodded instead of telling each unoriginal yuppie to eat shit and die.

A vacation planned on the strength of skiing, alcohol, and hot tubbing is substantially marginalized when one of the participants becomes pregnant, but we made the best of it and managed to enjoy ourselves. We looked ahead to the following year and thought the trip would serve as a nice getaway during our first year of parenthood.

Our friends made the annual trip to Steamboat this week. Our participation was limited to “Liking” their pictures on Facebook.

As parents, we love to go on about the greatness of parenthood – the journey, the joy, the legacy. Less common are discussions on the cost of parenthood. The cost of this miracle is freedom. At the very least, freedom is a relative term with children.

Every single day I look at my son and can’t believe he’s mine, but there are days I also think it would be nice take my wife out to dinner without having to pack a diaper bag. We no longer have the luxury of going to a movie on a random Tuesday night or eating at a restaurant where it's frowned upon to leave a wake of crackers and cheerios on the floor by your table.

No recreational activity or extra hour of sleep on the weekend can match the wonder of an average day with my son, but there are moments when even the most engaged father longs for the freedom to strap clunky snowshoes to his feet and trudge his fat ass up a mountain to the amusement of wealthy skiers and their turtlenecks.

As our friends were skiing we realized something amazing; every day with our 9 month-old has a vacation-like quality. Watching my son meticulously pull everything out of his toy box until he finds his green maraca has become our mountain sunset. Chasing him from room to room has become our snowshoeing. Thank God.

There are times I miss certain elements of life before parenthood, and I don’t think there is any shame in admitting it. We don’t have the freedom to take off on a whim, whether it’s for sushi on a Wednesday or a weekend out of town. We haven’t been to a concert or movie since Gabe was born.

What we have done is much more fulfilling.

The Dark Knight Rises would have been better on IMAX than on our television, but we couldn’t get to the theater. On the other hand, no form of entertainment could possibly match the freedom to spend an afternoon helping Gabe get the hang of the Batman cart he got for Christmas.

Freedom is a relative term. So is Luck. We have sacrificed a lot of freedom over the last nine months. I have no idea how we got so lucky.

The Dreams Team

By Blake Friis

My favorite piece of business advice is also great relationship advice: don’t make decisions or enter into partnerships for financial reasons. Follow your heart and surround yourself with positive people, and money will work itself out.

In some parts of the world the term “breadwinner” carries with it a certain panache, which I’m sure applies to many in that role.

My wife will be a nurse soon and we will become a two-income household, but for now I am climbing the corporate ladder while my wife stays home with the baby and takes online courses. And by “climbing the corporate ladder” I mean sitting in a florescent cube farm answering email and bouncing from meeting to meeting until the coffee runs out.

In some parts of the world the term “stay at home mom” carries with it the preconceived notion of book clubs and yoga pants, which I’m sure applies to some in that role.

My wife chases a very mobile 9-month-old around the house and attempts to study during the fleeting moments of solitude. Most of her academic responsibilities are fulfilled after I return home. This means her days are twice as long and intense as mine and few recognize the incredible grace with which she accomplishes this largely thankless routine.

Because we have a mortgage and my comparative comfort cruise is rewarded a paycheck, the outside world recognizes me as the family breadwinner. The outside world is not technically wrong, but the title couldn’t be more irrelevant.

Bread is not the working currency in our home. A strength of our marriage is our collaborative process for pursuing our individual dreams.

People who are unattached can invest entirely in their dreams and operate with a singular focus that borders on selfishness. Selfishness is not always a bad thing. In fact, it can be the most efficient path to achieving ones goals.

Parenthood tends to have a sobering effect on people, and not just because they can no longer afford to go to the bar. Being a great parent requires a healthy dose of selflessness and dreams are difficult to rundown without the ability to exercise a little selfishness.

If my wife and I checked our professional dreams at the parenthood door and made career decisions based on money, we’d have unfulfilling jobs and buy crap we don’t need to deal with the day-to-day unhappiness. Instead we made an agreement to support each other in the pursuit of our dreams.

Summer’s desire to go back to school and become a nurse required a commitment that works best with a spouse who has the ability to build their schedule around the demands of the program. I become a situational stay-at-home dad as she sacrifices her nights and weekends. I am an active participant in the process and I feel pride when she succeeds.

When I told Summer I wanted to leave my sales job for a less lucrative opportunity in line with my desire to write for a living, she was completely supportive. She doesn’t love that I am on my laptop as soon as our son is asleep, but she understands. She pitches me so many book ideas you’d think she was my literary agent.

There are things we can’t afford and things we have to do without, but those are just things. We are working towards our goals and doing so without depriving our son of the most valuable resource we have – our time. Whether or not we achieve our dreams is not as important as the example we’ll set for our son by never giving up on them.

Having a family requires sacrifice, but that sacrifice doesn’t require abandoning what you want to be when you grow up.

Who's Afraid of a Little Leaf?

By Blake Friis

Not all lies and misrepresentations are created equal. When my 8-month-old son attempted to swallow a random object he found on our living room floor, I held him with a steady hand and spoke in a calm and deliberate cadence to my wife as she identified the object in the back of his throat as a leaf.

Of all the things to give new parents their very first choking scare, ours was a goddamn leaf, probably carried in on one of our shoes.

My wife’s second and third attempts to sweep the leaf out with her finger failed and Gabe vomited in a way I hadn’t seen from him, and haven’t since. At this point I could have won an Oscar for my portrayal as a calm and confident father. Inside, I was scared shitless and could hardly move, but the character I was playing – this “Dad” who is more believable in print – would never get rattled in front of his son.

Should you find yourself in a similar situation – your child chokes and the only useful ability you possess is bullshitting those around you in hopes your soothing disposition facilitates the appropriate action – I pray you are also married to a nurse. Summer was amazing; she persevered through the failed finger sweeps and heartbreaking vomit, grabbed a pen light, tongue depressor, sterilized tweezers and calmly removed the leaf in no time.

And scene.

The moment Summer pulled the leaf from Gabe’s mouth he flashed his giant, toothless open-mouth smile, as though seconds earlier he had not projectile vomited spaghetti-flavored baby food onto my chest as his body fought the foreign object stuck in his throat. 

I, on the other hand, dropped the tough guy act, sat down and cried.

It's all good, Daddy

Maybe it was the feeling of helplessness or the fear. Maybe it was all the news coverage of murdered children finally hitting me through a tangible example of what losing my own son might look like. These emotions hit me the second I realized Gabe was in danger. Holding it in and covering with false bravado in the moment, only seemed to elevate the degree to which it poured out after the fact.

So, why fake it?

Certain childhood memories impact actions in parenthood. Not in the sense they shape you and subconsciously impact your behavior, but in ways so profound you process the memory in real-time with your mind racing in the face of adversity. The most terrifying thing in childhood is identifying fear in a parent.

As my son began to choke, the best help I could offer was to conceal my fear and tell what I hoped would not turn out to be a total lie.

“It’s going to be okay.”

When the close call ended, along with my inclination to keep up the façade, Summer was surprised by how rattled I became. She tried to pick me up by saying my demeanor helped her remain calm and she couldn’t have done it without me.

Not all lies and misrepresentations are created equal. Hers immediately made me feel better about myself.

New Year, New Challenges

By Blake Friis

My wife and I sat in front of the television on New Years Eve, wearing sweatpants and watching Angela from The Office lead throngs of freezing people through an uncomfortable rendition of Gangnam Style.

And so ended the greatest year of my life.

I spend more time looking ahead than reflecting on the past. This used to be necessity rather than strategy. I didn’t make great decisions in early adulthood, and as a result looking back created a lot of regret.

The last several years have been a different story.

Each year since I met my wife has been the best year of my life. I know that sounds like the kind of sappy horseshit teenagers post on their Facebook page, but it’s true. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but we’ve stacked one major life event after another – 2009: met my future wife and graduated; 2010: moved to Dallas, got a job, got engaged; 2011: married and pregnant (in that order!); 2012: bought a house and welcomed our son into the world.

Good-Bye 2012, Hello 2013

As my wife fell asleep on the couch well before midnight and an unlikely pop sensation from South Korea took center stage in Time Square, I began to look ahead to 2013.

It is entirely unlikely we will experience another major life event this year, and that is strangely unsettling. This year we have to focus on micro-level challenges, like making sure our son is wearing pants when we put him to bed so he can’t remove his own diaper and throw a one-person pee circus in his crib.

Weddings and births are amazing experiences, but they are easy compared to real life. Nobody sends a “Congratulations for Not Letting Your Son Recreate the Bellagio Fountain Show with his Penis” card.

This is shaping up to be a year of little fanfare, a year of trying desperately to excel as a father or husband each day.

It is difficult to imagine a more exciting and fulfilling year than 2012, but I look forward to the challenge.

The Highs and Lows of Holiday Travel

By Blake Friis

It's midnight in the middle of winter at the Kansas City airport. I am waiting for a rental car and singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to an understandably pissed off 8-month-old. The reality of traveling with a baby is falling short of the cautious optimism I carried into the trip.

Traveling 850 miles to create timeless family memories begins with a question void of Christmas cheer: which mode of transportation will make me want to kill myself least?

Driving offers the freedom to dictate pace and keeps the misery private when the junior member of the operation decides being confined to a car seat for 12 hours is a crock of shit. Babies throw massive fits over the course of a drive, but a 30-minute cool-down stroll through an Oklahoma Wal-Mart during the holidays provides all the motivation one needs to get back in the saddle and carry on to greener pastures.

The downside of the road is it’s a boring beat down. A family road trip is like the drive-home from Spring Break. Everyone is tired, irritable, and hopes the smelly loudmouth in the backseat doesn't puke.

That’s why we choose to shell out a few extra bucks to fly. But the friendly skies are not without their own set of challenges.

Driving is a battle of attrition, but flying has an unmatched ceiling for potential chaos. Airport security, cramped airplane restrooms, and ear-popping changes in elevation prove humans were never meant to fly. Challenging the laws of nature with a child in tow is especially egregious.

One year ago, in the Minneapolis airport, we shared a laugh at the expense of a couple struggling through the terminal with a young child and all the baggage – physical and emotional – required to travel anywhere with young children. Approximately 364 days later, we laughed at ourselves, despite not finding the situation particularly funny. We had become the overwhelmed couple in the airport with sore shoulders short fuses.

Looking over my shoulder from the boarding line, I was relieved to see a dozen other families with small children. There is comfort in a theoretical blanket of anonymity, but that is contingent on each baby having about the same lung capacity.

For most of his first flight, my son was a trooper. He charmed the grandfather-to-be sitting next to us and endeared himself to the high school English teacher sitting behind us. With the exception of the man in front of us, whose hair he attempted to grab on more than one occasion and whose seat he took great joy in kicking, everyone in our section observed his happy disposition and returned his smiles.

Then our plane began its descent. That’s when the levy broke.

For the final 15 minutes of our flight, my son managed to transfer the pain in his ears to the ears of all the friends he made over the previous 45 minutes. He wasn't the only child to dial up a good freak out on the flight, but his was by far the most powerful.

I don't know if it was general understanding or holiday spirit, but the people on our flight could not have been more understanding and supportive as we struggled.

There is no perfect way to cover 850 miles with a young child, but the experience can be surprisingly fulfilling. We met some great people on our trip that we never would have encountered before parenthood.

When childless couples with one piece of luggage laugh at us in all their beautiful, well-rested glory, we smile and nod. They’ll appreciate the smile more than they know one day, when an inconsolable little maniac with hurting ears makes them feel like those parents.

Turns out we’re all those parents.

Man's (Actual) Best Friend

By Blake Friis

I knew one thing for certain as I drove 90 miles per hour down the home stretch of a six-hour drive from Dallas to Emporia, Kansas – we didn't come all this way to eat lunch at Braum’s.

So, we exited the turnpike and pulled into Applebee’s.

I don’t make a habit of rising before the sun on Saturday and loading my family into the car for a six-hour drive to lunch at a franchise restaurant; It just so happens the Emporia Applebee’s marks the halfway point between our home in Texas and my parents’ in Iowa, which makes it the ideal meeting place when the health of a marriage requires unloading the family dog on one's folks.

Welcome to Emporia

There have been few contentious arguments in our 19 months of wedded bliss – which is to say I fold like a lawn chair in the face of potential unpleasantness.

We budget items we can comfortably live without. Last week we discussed the necessity of cable television and my iPhone – we both have iPhones, but only mine seemed a frivolous expense. We have since decided since my company offers a fitness center to both of us, the cancellation of our current gym memberships will free up enough discretionary income to justify keeping the cable. It is, of course, pure coincidence this decision coincided with my wife’s newfound love of true-life murder mysteries on the cable network ID.

My wife is like a great runner in baseball. She can steal a base at any time, and my defensive approach is let her go and casually toss the ball back to the pitcher, feeling I am better off dealing with the next batter. That's our marriage - aggressive baserunning against defensive indifference.

As her desire to live in a dog-free house intensified, however, I continued to step off the mound and look her back to the bag. Knowing my success rate, it was critical I never let getting rid of Elvis escalate past hypothetical chit-chat.

Shortly after Gabe was born, I wrote about the battle raging inside our home between my wife and our boxer, Elvis. My desire for our son to grow up in a household with a great pet lead me to dig in my heels on Elvis’s potential relocation.

The more we failed as dog owners, the more Elvis stated his displeasure by destroying everything in his path. I tried to take him for more walks, but my efforts proved futile. Summer’s patience was wearing thin.

It was only a matter of time until she broke for second base. I tried to throw her out this time, but Elvis intercepted the ball and chewed it to shit, just like every other goddamn thing in the house.

Still, when we handed Elvis over to my parents it was just as sad as I imagined it would be. I couldn't help but feel like I'd let him down and deprived my son of the opportunity to grow up with the unique bond a boy shares with his first dog. This guilt and regret were difficult to deal with. I was nearly half-way through the potato skins on the appetizer sampler before I was able to shake it.

In the weeks since Elvis moved to the farm – a real one, not the one in finger quotes where many children are told their castoff pets run happy and free – our life has been exponentially better. We never come home to a disaster in the kitchen, our patio doesn’t smell like a boarding kennel, and we don’t have to fear Gabe being injured by the paw of a well-intentioned, but dangerously hyper 60lb dog.

Thank goodness I never get to make the big decisions.

It turns out Man’s best friend is actually a happy wife.

Later, Buddy