My big man turned five last week. I feel a little guilty about writing a full blog post celebrating Nicholas turning two, then completely ignoring Owen’s fifth for a week. On the other hand, the number of photos and videos I have of Owen’s first two years makes it seem like I lost my camera when Nicholas was born, so maybe it evens out.

After cohosting (with the parents of one of Owen’s best friends) what was generally considered by all in attendance to be the best fifth birthday party of all time, we took Owen and his friend to the circus the next day. Not some new fangled Cirque du High Concept Performance Art, but the O.G. Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Yeah, I know, it’s not PC to keep elephants in train cars and make them do tricks. But whatever, it’s the circus, and it’s still pretty darn cool. Now, to be fair, they have made some changes since I last saw the greatest show on earth when I was a kid. They’ve taken a few elements from the Playbook du Soleil. They’ve mostly bailed on the three-ring format, and their costume designers have clearly been looking to make the spandex look a little more “now.” But despite the updates, some things are almost exactly as I remember them.

But this isn’t really a post about the circus. Or about Owen’s birthday. (Sorry, big man. You know I love you, and it’s crazy that you’re already five and starting Kindergarten. There will be more about that in other posts, I promise.). This post is about the circus as a metaphor for my life. Most of the circus wasn’t actually in three rings. It was one act at a time, allowing the audience to focus on that rather than splitting their focus trying to decide what to watch and not miss anything really good. But at a few points during the show, they did do more than one thing. There was some three-ring action. At one point there were FIVE acts at once. I tried to watch all five, but multitasking is a myth. You can only really pay attention to one thing at a time. I think I caught some good bits of at least the four performances closest to where we sat, but I’m sure I missed a lot, and I have almost no idea what that fifth act did.

Here’s the metaphor part. Sorry for the lack of slickness in the transition, but there are two or three other things I’m supposed to be doing at the moment, so the badass writer chops are not what they could be. A year ago I was jobless, overweight, drinking more than my share of margaritas, and trying to figure out what to do next. Oh, how things change. Now I have three jobs, of a sort, each of which I’m exceedingly grateful for, none of which yet pays enough to quit any of the others. Plus there are my kids, my marriage, and this obsession with running which I’d worry was a problem if it weren’t so beneficial to both my mental and physical health. Oh, and this blog. You may have noticed there haven’t been so many posts of late. And in case you’re curious, I’m off margaritas, but haven’t given up wine or chocolate.

I’m fairly certain none of these endeavors is getting what amounts to my best work. That said, I’m pretty darn good, so even with split focus I’m holding my own. But there are times I’m not sure which way to look. Which act to focus on. And sometimes I slip up. I suppose more than anything I hope it’s not my marriage or my family that suffers, though some days I know my fuse is shorter than it ought to be and my attention isn’t where I’d like it. But the occasional slip is to be expected. The dude on the trapeze didn’t manage to hit the quadruple somersault, and the missed attempt was actually pretty exciting. If I do miss one of these days, I just hope there’s a net down there.

loving life, as usual

Nicholas is two years old today! Our littlest boy. Our baby. Our amazing, adorable, irrepressible little dude, with an unrivaled enthusiasm for all things that makes the rest of us look like we’re phoning it in.

It’s hard to believe it was two years ago you were born. Two years ago last night I went to the opera to sit through opening night of La Rondine, because your mother was the calling stage manager, and despite having had regular contractions since around 3:30 that afternoon, she was pretty sure she could get through the show. So, with the show clock on one side and the contraction timer on the other, she called the show.

meeting little brother

I went back at each intermission to check in, asking, “Uh, think maybe we should go to the hospital now?” But not until the curtain came down did she decide it was time to head out. Even then we didn’t go straight to Cedars, but stopped at Chris and Becky’s to make sure it was REALLY time to bother going to the hospital.

When we finally did get there, after waiting for a room, they had your mom lie down, which of course slowed the contractions. They were almost ready to send her home when the nurse convinced the OB on duty to check her. She was around seven cm, I think, so we weren’t going anywhere (thanks, nurse). About three hours later you were born.

no fear, and no stopping him

Life since then has been a bit of a blur. Watching you grow is a joy, if a maddening and stressful one. You aren’t the cautious child your brother is, slow to take any unnecessary risks. Instead, you hurl yourself into each new adventure with little concern for the inevitable facial bruises. People might think we abuse you if everyone you meet didn’t witness you whirling about, careening into any solid object slow or stupid enough to get in your way. You walked at 10 months, and ran at about 10 months and a week. You were a bit slower to talk, but now that you do you speak with the emphasis of a preacher. We believe, little man, we believe.

he's a lover AND a fighter

Bam Bam, you continue to live up to your nick name. We know you love us from the force with which you smash us with your fists, your toys, your head. It’s a good thing Owen adores you, since you make him cry far more than ever you get upset about anything he does to you. On the few occasions he does do something to upset you, it’s almost never intentional. You, on the other hand, whale on him as though he’s indestructible. I imagine in your mind, he is. As are we all. And you hug us with as much zeal as you beat on us, so we know there’s no lack of love.

If nothing else, your mother and I are certainly thankful you’ve survived your first two years. There were times we weren’t sure it would happen, the way you throw caution to the wind. I think it’s fair to say you’ve gotten a running start at the terrible twos, though I’m sure they’ll also be spectacularly awesome, in addition to terrible. You can be all four seasons in one day, little man. Who knows what you can accomplish in an entire year. We can’t wait to find out.

treasure

Happy Birthday, Nicholas. We love you so.

For the first time today, I really missed my old job. I got an email from a friend and former coworker about her visit to the office where we used to work, to have lunch with people we used to work with. Reading her note, the pang of remorse I felt came as a complete surprise to me. Remorse? Or is it grief? Wishing I still had the comfortable job, comfortable income, comfortable perception of stability. Obviously the comfort I felt wasn’t real, but you don’t know what you don’t know.

At the same time, Owen has been obsessed with earthquakes. I think it started with glimpses of Haiti coverage he saw while we were out of town a few weeks ago. Since returning home he asks almost every day about what would happen if we had a big earthquake. Would our roof fall in? Would things fall down? What about the pictures on his walls? Would they fall on him? On his brother?

We live in Southern California, so we can’t tell him we don’t have earthquakes. We talk to him about our sturdy old house, about the things we do to stay safe in an emergency. We hold him and we tell him not to worry.

Also this week, Nicholas started day care for the first time in his 20 months of life. He’s a trooper, and he’s doing well, but clearly he is not thrilled about this change. The first few days he was uncertain at drop-off. Now he knows what’s happening, and he is not happy being left. This will pass, I’m sure, but while it lasts it’s hard to walk away from our sad baby.

So, I find myself facing my fears alongside my young boys. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what we can’t control. Fear of the new. For them, I know, they will get through it. They will endure and eventually these fears will fade.

For me, I strongly believe the same will be true, but it’s harder to see it. Will the work I’m doing translate into income that will support us? If not, will I find something else that pays the bills and doesn’t eat my soul? I struggle with these questions. I take strength from my boys while trying to comfort them. One way or another, we’ll all get through this.

My grandma would yell “Don’t run!” whenever she spotted me moving at any pace faster than a stroll. I swear she said it every time I saw her. I thought she was being ridiculous. Clearly she didn’t want me to have any fun. Maybe I should blame her for my sedentary tendencies? But that’s another post.

When I watch my children playing — running, climbing, jumping, hurling heavy objects at each other — I can understand where she was coming from. It’s scary watching people you love do things that could harm them. But I try to remember the kid I was as I watch my own. Running is fun (which it’s taken me close to 30 years to rediscover). Risks are a part of learning about the world. So the question I keep coming back to is, when to intervene?

I suppose this is one of the essential questions of parenthood. It’s easy enough in the beginning, knowing when to get hands-on. With newborns, the answer to when to intervene is, pretty much always. They’re helpless. It’s all on you. One of the first tests of parenting is getting a baby to sleep. I’m watching good friends go through this again with their 4-month old. How long do you let her cry before you go in and do something? Every instinct says, “Go to the baby, pick up the baby, soothe the baby.” But at some point, the baby has to go to sleep on her own. This cycle plays out over and over for the rest of our children’s lives, with constantly evolving challenges, and steadily increasing consequences for failure.

With our two boys, three years apart, we get to navigate two different sets of overlapping issues as we work out how to parent them. With the 18-month old, right now it’s mostly about keeping him from falling to his death, electrocuting or drowning himself, or destroying our house. Most recently he’s taken to whacking his brother in the head with anything he can get his hands on (see: bam bam). At his age, it’s still mostly black and white. You step in to prevent the kid doing harm to himself or others. There’s a little grey area around how high to let him climb or how quickly to jump to the bigger boy’s rescue, but not much.

With the 4-year old, it’s already getting more complicated. He’s clearly much more self-sufficient, and, in our case, a much more cautious child than his little brother. He rarely does things that are truly dangerous, and usually operates pretty well within his capabilities. Sometimes he actually needs to be pushed a little outside his comfort zone. (I mean, really, how hard should it be to get a kid to try PIZZA?). Lately, with him, the question of when to intervene comes up more in social situations. Owen has lots of friends his age. With a few of his best friends, particularly the boys, everything is suddenly a competition. Who gets to be first? Whose is better? Who’s smarter? Faster? Stronger? You name it, they’ll turn it into a contest. Sometimes it’s all fun and games, but sometimes it turns into real conflict, complete with tears and even hitting. So, again the question — when do we get involved?

Sometimes they make it clear they WANT you involved, by coming and “telling on” the other for something he did or said. But even this isn’t a clear indication that stepping in is the right move. Sometimes they just need to work it out. I find myself saying, “Why are you telling ME? Why don’t you tell HIM to stop hitting/teasing/rubbing-his-string-cheese-on you?”

It’s part of our job description as parents to protect our children from real danger as much as we can. But that’s not the same as making sure they never have a bad experience. “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” (Bonus points to the first one to name that movie in the comments WITHOUT resorting to Google). Wise words, those, and something to remember as we decide how quickly to get involved in our children’s conflicts.

Now, I’ve seen parents who take the hands-off approach too far, in my opinion. I know it’s easy to judge how others parent their kids. It’s hard, and everybody’s got to make their choices. But, standing 10 feet away, completely oblivious as your child steals toys from other kids and proceeds to whale on them with said swiped toy? That, to me, is abdicating one’s parental responsibilities.

So I let my kids run, climb, and sometimes even reach out and touch the hot barbecue after I’ve told them 17 times it’s hot because nothing short of a little pain on the fingers is going to convince them it’s not a good idea to touch it. But I try not to allow them to do serious harm to themselves, or to those around them. This doesn’t always work. Sometimes they fall, sometimes they cry, and every day there’s a new challenge. A new question. I guess this is how it goes with parenting. Goodie for us.

We’ve never been really big on nicknames for our kids. I mean, we call our kids by pet names — Owen is often “O,” “Little Dude,” “Big Guy,” while Nicholas is “Baby,” “Little,” etc. But neither has really had an official nickname. Now one of them does. From this point forward, Nicholas shall officially be known as Bam Bam. You know, like Barney and Betty’s little cavekid on the Flintstones? Lisa came up with this, and it’s pretty much perfect for him. He’s small, cute, is a man of few words, and smashes the hell out of anything he can get his hands on.

As I wrote in a post back in September, our kids are so different from each other. They have stuff in common, too, but in some fundamental ways they are just very different people. Owen is curious, but cautious. Careful to avoid risks, he weighs unknown situations and challenges before trying anything new. This has been his M.O. pretty much forever. He wasn’t too quick to start walking, waiting till he was sure he could pull it off before getting up from the safety of all fours. Once he was up, he took it slow, measuring his steps, making sure there was was something or someone to grab if things got wonky. He’s the same with food, new activities, school, and just about everything else. Especially anything physical – he’ll try stuff, but he thinks about it first, analyzing the situation, and occasionally needing encouragement or help if he decides it’s not within his reach.

Then there’s Bam Bam. He started walking at 10 months — a full 4 months before his older brother. I think he crawled exclusively for about a week. Having mastered that, he was up on his feet, cruising around holding onto whatever he could get his hands on. Not long after that, he let go and went for it — look Ma, no hands! BAM! He’d fall down and bash his head/eye/nose/face/whatever. Short pause to cry, then up again. And while Owen walked slowly at first, Nicholas pretty much just fell forward until his legs couldn’t keep up anymore. He was a festival of bruises and scrapes, mostly on his face. I sometimes felt compelled to tell people, “Really, we don’t beat him, I swear,” but it never took long for them to see for themselves where all those little injuries were coming from. Now, at almost 18 months, he’s unstoppable. He runs almost as fast as his 4-year old brother, climbs almost as high, and is within inches of learning to really jump, which scares the shit out of his mother and me. To his credit, he’s amazingly strong and sturdy with great balance, so he does fall a lot less than he used to. Or at least, when he does, he falls well, catching himself with his hands, rolling on his shoulder, or plopping on his diaper-padded bottom instead of faceplanting into the concrete, hardwood, or wherever he happens to be. If there’s a natural athlete among us, it is Nicholas.

I have visions of who my kids will be later in life, and Bam Bam is so clearly going to be the trouble maker. While Owen stares up at the ball lost on the roof, working out whether there’s something he might throw at it or a stick long enough to knock it down, Nicholas will be dragging over the ladder, or whatever’s handy to give him enough of a leg up to climb up and get it. Since he’s three years younger and bound to be shorter than his brother for a while at least, I can also easily imagine him talking Owen into doing the climbing. “C’mon, dude, it’s not that high. I’d totally do it but I can’t reach. Dude, you’ll be FINE!” This will translate later in their lives to Bam Bam convincing Owen that “Mom and Dad TOTALLY won’t mind if we take the car out for just a minute to go pick up girls/get beer/drop in on a friend’s party. We’ll be back before they even know we’re gone. It’ll be totally cool.”

But we’ve got a few years until then, I hope. Meanwhile, it’s great to watch little Nicholas give his all to keep up with his brother. In addition to being the destructor, Nicholas is also the total clown. Owen’s funny in a verbal, occasionally mugging face kinda way. Nicholas is Charlie Chaplin. Well, maybe that’s crediting him with more finesse than he currently has. Maybe he’s more like a one-man Marx Brothers. He’s the total physical comedian, and loves to dance. Let’s take it out with a little video of Bam Bam rocking out with Ernie. If Bam Bam doesn’t stick, we can always just go with “Trouble.” And yes, that’s a wine refrigerator in the background. We almost always wait till the kids are asleep to unlock it. Almost always.

Our boys are so different from each other. They’re similar in some ways, too — they look a lot alike, they both wake up at the asscrack of dawn, they’re both pretty happy kids. But in many ways they are just very different people. One such difference is how they approach taking risks.

Owen — four years old — is cautious, thoughtful, and sometimes downright fearful. (He’s also smart, verbal, goofy, stubborn, sweet, and hysterical; but that’s not what this post is about). When he was a baby, we learned not to worry he’d put something unauthorized into his mouth. The kid would never put anything he didn’t know was food (and food he LIKED) in his mouth. This hasn’t changed (much to our consternation at the dinner table). With physical stuff, too, he talked early, but didn’t walk until he was pretty sure he’d be good at it. He wasn’t a big climber, jumper, run-headlong-into-wall-er. While I sometimes worry he’ll hold back too much and miss out on things, I also take comfort knowing he isn’t likely to do a swan dive off the jungle gym. I see a lot of myself in him here.

Nicholas — almost 16 months — is crazy. The dude has no fear and does not hesitate to do pretty much anything that strikes him. Partly this comes from being the younger brother. He sees Owen do things and he wants to do them, too. Never mind Owen’s three years older and generally able to do a lot more stuff without risking death. But even when Owen’s not around, Nicholas does things Owen never would have. Whether climbing onto tables taller than his head, running headlong down our steep driveway, or sticking anything he can get his hands on into his mouth (apparently chalk is now a snack food?) the kid just knows no fear. And pretty much always has at least one good facial bruise to show for it.

In this photo I imagine Nicholas struggling to free himself so he can stick that chalk back in his mouth and leap to the concrete below while Owen tries to take the chalk away and hold him back from certain doom. Is this who they will always be?

Watching Owen over the years, he’s changed. Grown is probably a better word. He’s overcome some fears, while others have surfaced. I used to think he was going to be a kid who wasn’t afraid of the dark, but as he got older and his imagination started to bloom, so did his capacity for fear of the abstract unknown. At his core he’s still the same kid — cautious, thoughtful, a little scared about things he’s unsure of, especially physical danger.

Owen’s gymnastics coach — the always amazing Coach Scott — tells him fear is your body’s way of telling you to be careful. When you do something even though you’re scared, that’s bravery. Being brave doesn’t mean not being afraid. If you’re facing something truly dangerous and you’re not scared, you’re not brave, you’re stupid. The key is to listen to that fear, allow it to heighten your awareness and proceed with care, but don’t let it stop you.

So I guess in a way I hope Owen will continue to conquer his fears, if thoughtfully, while Nicholas learns to be at least a LITTLE BIT scared of things that are potentially life-threatening.

I find myself taking some new risks lately. I’ve decided not to look for a “steady” job like the one I left (note my inaccurate but self-affirming choice of verb here) and instead go to work for a startup I think has great potential but which at the moment has no money to pay me. I hope I’m striking a healthy balance — being thoughtful and conscious of the risks I’m taking, without being too afraid to take a well-considered leap now and then. I hope I can learn from BOTH my kids and show them how to blend the best of each of their strengths.

No matter what, they’ll still be way cuter. I’m learning to live with that.

I’m too impatient to wait for wordless Wednesday. Credit to Lisa for this awesome series of photos.

I like saying parenting is like curling. You know, that sport in the Winter Olympics where they push a big heavy polished stone across ice and then frantically sweep in front of it with brooms to try and guide its course and make it go as far and as straight as possible but they can’t actually touch it? I think parenting is like that. We can try and clear the way, but mostly kids go the way they’re gonna go.

Lately I’ve been wondering how well that analogy holds up. There have been a lot of pretty major changes at our house lately. Not counting babies being born, I’d say these are the biggest changes we’ve gone through as a family. Definitely the biggest Owen’s seen besides his brother being born and changing schools. Here are some of the highlights.

• I got laid off, which means I’m home almost all the time versus being at work 50+ hours a week.
• Lisa has a break from work until October, so she’s home, too.
• We let our nanny go. She was here five days a week for about seven months, spent more waking hours with the kids than either of us, and we all loved her. She was amazing and we miss her.
• Owen took three weeks off preschool then went back for summer school (at the same place). But some of his best friends aren’t there, and some won’t be coming back.
• Michael Jackson died.
• Nicholas turned one, and got serious about walking. He’s a walking machine now.
• Owen turned four, and has agreed to wipe his own butt for a whole month in exchange for the most coveted toy of his young life — Ahsoka’s Starfighter Lego set.

The Michael Jackson thing was mostly to see if you were paying attention, but Owen did come home from school one day and said “Who died?! Michael Jackson died!” Seriously, no idea where that came from.

But besides that pop quiz, the passing of MJ has been a blip compared to other recent milestones. It’s a lot of change for kids to absorb, right? I mean, they’re resilient and probably more durable than many of us when it comes to bouncing back from hard times, but they’re also creatures of habit and routine, and changes like this don’t go unnoticed.

Not surprisingly, Owen’s reaction is the most noticeable. He’s been much quicker to cry lately. When we ask him to do something, he ignores us about 80% of the time. He continues to refuse to try new foods, and completely loses his shit if we try to push him to do it. He’s quicker to get frustrated with his little brother.

But I have to wonder — how much of this is because of what’s going on with our family, and how much of it is just who he is at this moment in his ever evolving and developing life? The level of stress and uncertainty is unquestionably higher than usual. Most of this comes from me and being out of work. I try to keep my sharing of this mostly between Lisa and me (and my blog, of course), but sometimes I’m sure the kids get a taste of it.

Like the day we had this fun family outing to the La Brea Tar Pits (which, by the way, is totally repetitive, since translated it means The The Tar Tar Pits) which stopped being fun when we returned to our car to find it had been towed away because I didn’t pay attention to the “No Parking After 4pm” sign that apparently everyone in LA but me knows are all along Wilshire Blvd. But I’m not used to parking on Wilshire Blvd at 4pm on a weekday because I’M USUALLY AT WORK AT 4PM ON A WEEKDAY!!!! It was a stressful afternoon. I tried to keep my shit together as Owen peppered us with questions the entire way home, in traffic:

“Why’d they take your car away?”

“Why’d you park in the wrong place?”

“Why didn’t you read the sign?”

“Why couldn’t we take a taxi to get the car?”

“Why couldn’t I go with you to get the car?”

“Why was there a man in the only stall in the Koo Koo Roo bathroom when I suddenly had to poop as if my life depended on it while Mommy was off finding us a ride to the impound lot so I crapped standing up while you attempted to catch it with a paper towel while imploring me to hold it just a little longer please?”

(Ok, he didn’t ask me that, but he could have, since it did happen.)

But there haven’t been that many days like that. Mostly we’ve kept things pretty even keeled. So how much should we worry about what this is all doing to our kids? I don’t think we’re scarring them for life, but how can I be sure? The only thing I can think to do besides trying to keep my own cool is talk about what’s going on openly and honestly with them. I don’t think pretending nothing’s changed is the answer, but I also don’t want to make more of it than it is. I remember when my dad told me and my brothers he and mom were getting divorced.

It wasn’t long before I was like, “OK, that sucks, can I go play now?”

If my curling analogy is right, I’d say we’ve hit some rough ice, and the brooms might be showing a little wear and tear. Is this going to dramatically alter the course of our kids lives, or will they come through more or less unscathed? I suspect no one knows for sure, but I’d love to hear anything you care to share about how you’ve helped your kids navigate when the ice gets a little less smooth.

For Father’s Day I did an interview with Tatiana over at It Was A Very Good Year. One of her questions was what badass things my kids have learned from me. Here’s one.