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

Children and Profanity

By Blake Friis

Parenthood is loaded with challenges. There are daily struggles of diapers and feeding, and long term worries about the changing world and how to equip a child to survive, let alone thrive in it.

But what concerns me most is that I can’t seem to stop saying ‘fuck’ in front of my son.

He is a verbal sponge and I know I am in danger of creating the most foul-mouthed parrot ever to roam the Greater Dallas daycare scene, but the more I attempt to reel myself in, the more the goddamn Bears blow consecutive leads at home to Pete-Scumbag-Carroll and the Seattle-Fucking-Seahawks.

Sometimes it feels like the world is conspiring against you. Actually, most of the time when you root for Chicago sports teams.

Parenthood is also loaded with lessons, and you never know where they are going to come from. When a couple kids from the neighborhood knocked on our door Sunday afternoon and asked if they could play with Gabe, I gained a whole new perspective on the value of squashing my free-cursing nature.

The dynamic of a suburban neighborhood is not a complicated. There are adults and there are kids, and if you can only befriend one, choose the kids. They’re a pleasant source of entertainment, and more importantly, very forthcoming with the dirty laundry of neighborhood grown-ups.

As the sweet little girl from down the street launched into an unprovoked monologue about her parents’ delinquent rent payments, I realized we are not dealing with parrots, we’re dealing with little journalists who unapologetically report “off the record” observations.

I no longer fear the words my child might repeat; I fear the things he might report.

Because we are the youngest couple on the block, and because every little girl on the block wants to be Summer when they grow up, our house has become a relatively high-traffic area. The annoyance of other people’s children hanging around would be trying if they weren’t so damn good at inflating our egos.

“Blake, can you teach me how to make the football spiral like that?”
“Summer, I knew you were good at sports because you’re skinny and you run a lot.”

They should run for office. I would literally vote for them tomorrow.

The compliments took on a new meaning when they shifted from our athletic prowess to the vibe within our home. The kids were quick to acknowledge how laid back we are and how well we seem to get along, which is apparently not always the case with their folks. One kid talked about hearing her parents fight over money. Another discussed his concern with the age gap between his dad and stepmother, a viewpoint that – given his age – has almost assuredly been cultivated by his mother.

The inside scoop on the neighbors personal business is definitely the kind of stuff you would like to unhear, but the kids spilling the beans have no idea they are crossing a line. We find ourselves uncomfortably attempting to steer them back to the story about their older brother pissing his pants while watching the SEC Championship.

Dropping F-bombs in the presence of my son was something I decided I better work on. After learning how openly kids talk about their parents, good or bad, I am scaling those efforts well beyond cursing. The adult issues we deal with have to remain between adults, so our kids can enjoy being kids.

Parenthood is loaded with heavy shit like that.

Distance Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

By Blake Friis

It turns out distance – and a lovely salmon dinner interrupted by an intensifying fire in the vicinity of your wood deck – can make the heart grow fonder.

My mother-in-law swears salt is a highly effective tool for combating small grease fires.  At her urging, I threw a tremendous amount of it at the camping grill on our patio while the flames rose higher and the fire grew hotter and, I swear to God, laughed at me.  When the salt remedy – or possibly my mother-in-law’s elaborate attempt to murder me – failed, my father-in-law grabbed an extinguisher and put out the fire; not in time to save the grill, but at least before the flames teamed up with the propane tank to royally fuck up Thanksgiving.

Standing over the smoldering mass of hot metal and melted plastic covered in a uniquely soothing layer of white fire extinguisher residue, I couldn’t help but think about what else I’d be willing to light on fire to create more moments like this.

Memorable moments are at a premium when you live 800 miles from your parents.

We moved from Iowa to Dallas for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the burning desire to no longer live in Iowa.  It is this mentality that leads so many people away from their small towns for a dose of big city living, only to return to the previously taken-for-granted comforts of home.  I knew this when we visited Dallas for a week and returned with a lease.  I knew the seemingly impulsive nature of our move set the over/under for our time in Texas at one year with heavy weight on the under.

Despite professional advancements and a renewed personal happiness, several family members continued to believe the move was temporary.  The belief was that we would move closer to home when we decided to start a family.

That might have been the case if our only reason for moving was an entertaining change of pace, but there was more to it than that.

Moving was not about proving something to myself or anyone else, it was about finding a place that allowed me to become the person I had been unable to become in my hometown.  As I drove the moving truck out of town, I didn’t know if Texas was going to be the long-term answer, but I knew, based on 26 years of trial and (mostly) error, the Iowa chapter of my life would remain in the rearview mirror.

The better things have gone in Texas, the easier it has been to detach from Iowa.  Texas has become home and Iowa is the place our parents live.  We go back for Christmas and try to make it sometime in the summer as well.  And that feels like plenty for us, but having a child complicates the matter.

The theory of quality over quantity was on display while we watched my in-laws interact with Gabe for an entire week – with the exception of the 15 minutes spent dueling with a three-alarm grease fire – over Thanksgiving.

Our parents are going to miss certain parts of their grandson growing up, and that is unfortunate.  We are going to have limited opportunities to utilize their inherent babysitting and diaper changing abilities, and that is absolutely tragic.  But the moments we are able to spend together are twice as meaningful, and that is a unique blessing.

Many people in my position end up moving home with a new appreciation for the life they once took for granted.  I am creating a home with an enhanced appreciation for life’s little moments, and I don’t dare take that for granted.

Killing Time The Target Way

I will be pushing a stroller through Target on Saturday morning. Every Saturday. You can set your watch to it.

With my wife out of town for her nursing program, I am not just responsible for making sure our son lives through each weekend – though it is a minor detail of some importance. For two days each week I have the unenviable task of finding a baby-appropriate activity to get out of the house and avoid going batshit crazy.

There are numerous places a man can play househusband. Parks are especially effective. A walk through the park says, “A healthy lifestyle is important to me and I wish to pass that on to my son, whose development I take very seriously, which is why I coordinated his outfit with this very expensive jogging stroller.”

Unfortunately, I break a sweat changing diapers in my air-conditioned living room. The park is out.

I own a jogging stroller like the park crowd, and I actually use it. The big tires and performance suspension are perfect for cutting across neighborhood yards on my way to the corner store. I could stick to sidewalks and add 100 yards or so to the half-mile walk, but that seems like a lot of work for a six pack of beer.

While parks hold a branding edge among time-killing activities, I find nothing matches the enjoyment of wandering around Target. Having a baby creates an infinite list of things you need and things you don’t, but can justify anyway. For an unsupervised father with frivolous spending habits, the latter can lead to some dangerous conversations with the missus. When my wife comes home physically and emotionally drained from a shift at the hospital in which she watched a patient take their last breath, she struggles to understand why the baby did, in fact, need a regulation size basketball and a Nerf sword.

"I watched a man die today, I don't need this shit!"
"You're right. Let's put a pin in this discussion and go to Target, they have a foot massager that I think we can agree you've earned."

And they do. I know this because after three months of leaving the house on Saturday mornings exclusively to purchase the materials for Gabe and I to survive the weekend – food, socks, Halloween masks, Mrs. Doubtfire on DVD, etc. – I have a tremendous feel for the place.

It’s become our home away from home. And the sight of us waltzing up and down the aisles inspires a range of responses from our fellow shoppers, primarily women toting around a young child or two of their own. Target is like flypaper for us pretty suburbanites looking after the children while our goal-oriented spouses grind through the weekend.

When they see Gabe sitting in his stroller, calmly playing with a toy, they give an approving look, like I am a pair of yoga pants and a complicated Starbucks order away from being part of the club. As their eyes shifts from the stroller to my shopping basket, the looks become sympathetic. They see Hot Pockets, a six-pack of beer, and four Red Bulls and assume my wife upgraded to a man with abs and ambition, and the sweatpants-clad derelict before them is struggling through his weekend with the baby.

Save the sympathy for someone who needs it, Ladies. My marriage is great. And I have a brand new Nerf sword at home.

The Language of Idiot Dads

It's Sunday morning and Gabe is sitting in what has to be a dirty diaper at this point, but the image of his previous blowout has me too grossed out and gun-shy confirm my suspicions. While he happily chews on a clean diaper his mother would have changed him into by now, I down a breakfast of Hershey Kisses and Pringles, wondering where the media gets off portraying the modern dad as a bumbling idiot.

The cavalcade of inept fathers depicted on television can be quite depressing. After being subjected to promo after promo for ‘Guys with Kids’ on NBC, I can’t help but wonder where capable fathers reside in the pop culture landscape.

I play the role of single dad for 36 terrifying hours each week while Summer is at the hospital for clinical nurse training on the weekends. This arrangement gives me plenty of time to contemplate the state of fatherhood in America, especially since we’re up at 5 a.m. Well, we don’t actually get up, but that’s when I attempt to bribe the boy back to sleep with a bottle. He generally shows his appreciation by puking in my bed. I cover it up and allow him to act like nothing happened, because I’m one of those cool, relatable dads.

Great parents appreciate the importance of forming good habits at a young age. A lack of adult supervision doesn’t mean the two of us are free to lie around eating garbage and being filthy. I drive that point home by feeding him a hearty breakfast of turkey and sweet potatoes – the building blocks for a future major league prospect.

At a certain point it becomes critical for young children to get some rest. After contemplating bathing Gabe and changing him into clean clothes, I pass in favor of playing with every toy in the house and watching Lee Corso dance around the ESPN College Gameday set in full leprechaun garb. Then we watch the Iowa Hawkeyes attempt to play football. The traditional name for this activity is nap time.

Okay, so maybe the media’s representation of the bumbling idiot father is not 100% fabrication, but it isn’t a completely fair example of art imitating life either.

For most of us, parenting is like picking up a second language in adulthood. Taking classes and reading books can help you familiarize yourself with a foreign language, but every bilingual person will testify there is no substitute for immersion  Sometimes you just have to go into a foreign country and figure out how to find the nearest bathroom. There are bound to be some confusing moments, but after pissing in a coat closet or two, you’ll pick up on signs and tendencies, and eventually fully understand the language and all that goes with it.

The bumbling idiocy in fatherhood is not a destination, it’s the part of the journey in which some of us piss in a coat closet on our way to figuring out the language.

But seriously, I’m pretty sure he’s sitting in shit.

Summer will be home in 14 hours.