I was ruminating today about life and I realized that there are so many things I’ve learned as a parent. It’s so easy to focus on negative things so I wanted to share the positives. We, as humans, can be incredibly short-sighted.

• Kids grow up fast
• They do say the darndest things
• Small children speak only truth
• A bad day just needs a smile
• I miss having a baby around/li>
• You really only need five hours of sleep
• Baby wipes can clean up anything
• Diaper rash ointment is great for a chapped nose too
• Laughter is only a smile away

Kids love gifts. Think back to the time when you were young and how much you enjoyed seeing gifts under the Christmas tree, or piled up on the table for your birthday. Gifts are a wonderful way to show your kids how much you love them and appreciate them.

What is a gift?
Gifts don’t need to be expensive or extravagant. The best gifts come from the heart and are something that you’ve put THOUGHT into for your children. It’s simple, if your little girl loves Barbie get her a Barbie-like item. At a younger age you can get away with an imitation but after they get old enough to read you can’t always fake it. If your little boy likes G.I. Joe, don’t go for the firetruck unless it’s all you can afford. They will love any gift you give them, but the ones that mean the most are the ones that have meaning.

A true gift is something given without expecting anything in return. As a parent your “return” may be the smile and happiness you see on your childs’ face. To me, that’s MY gift from my daughter.

What are some gift ideas?
There are plenty out there. Spend some time on the Disney Channel, Nick Jr or Cartoon Network and you’ll have gift ideas bleeding from your wallet. I listen for the ones that my daughter wants or from the shows she may want to watch. I pay particular attention to the way my daughter plays. She loves to have Tea Parties with her Polly Pockets so I know that those are two easy gifts I can get; a new tea party set or a new Polly Pocket.

You don’t have to wait until a holiday to give your child a gift. There are other special occasions that may warrant a gift, like the first (or last) day of school, their first day at a a new job, or maybe just because it’s a Tuesday.

Only you, as their parent, can walk the line between how many gifts are proper and what occasions. We don’t want to spoil our kids or just lavish presents on them instead of our time. But done properly, gift-giving can be another way to show your kids how much you love them.

So I haven’t been posting much later.  Guess I’ll need to work on that, loyal readers. =)

My ex-wife and I were able to nail down a plan for Spring Break 2008 visitation.  I’ll be picking my daughter up from the airport on Wednesday and she’ll hang out here with me for about ten days until I fly back home with her.

She’s only five and even so she’s legally allowed to fly alone, and very responsible-acting for her age, my ex-wife and I don’t think she’s quite ready for that.  To top it off, it has to be a direct flight, which there aren’t between our airports.

So what will be doing?  Oh, I’ve got some Candyland, Old Maid and Chutes and Ladders addictions I’ve been nursing since Christmas Break.  I’m sure she wants to play her Barbie and The Twelve Dancing Princesses game too.   I took most of the ten days off, and I’ll work from home for a couple.

Earlier today I was engaged in a conversation with a friend and we touched on how I’d changed several behaviors over the last several months. Now my friend didn’t state if the behaviors noted were good or bad, just that they’d changed.

My reply was simple, at least to me. But as I said it I realized it was much deeper than the simplicity of the words.

“I didn’t like that part of myself.”

What If You Don’t Like Yourself (or just part)?

When I said that I didn’t like that part of myself, I meant that I didn’t like certain actions, habits, behaviors, or lack thereof. We all have habits that we don’t like I didn’t like a “collection” of certain habits; more than just one. Either they brought me no happiness or they brought pain instead of pleasure.

What I DON’T mean is loathing yourself. That’s not what I’m writing about. Hatred or a feeling of seriously not liking your existance is rooted in some pretty serious issues and if that’s what you are feeling please call a professional. I can’t help you.

Let’s Break It Down

I Don’t

“I don’t” means to me that me, personally, didn’t like these habits. They aren’t something that an external source has pointed out. I, or you, make a cognitive determination of what habits you don’t like about yourself and make an affirmation to yourself about why you want to change them.

This can be a painful step. Why? It makes us search out the deep part of ourselves that we hide from the light of day, the monsters in our closet, the thoughts we don’t share with other people. You don’t have to LIKE the fact you have bad habits, you just have to accept that you are human and that they are yours.

Like

You either like or dislike something. This can be equated to how much pleasure or pain you get out of it. Do you like that you eat like crazy and put on weight or do you NOT like it. Dislike isn’t tangible, but a LACK of LIKE is.

I have a lack of like for procrastination, but I DO procrastinate? Why? Maybe I’m just lazy, maybe a fear of the unknown. I think you get the gist of what I’m saying. You like it, or you don’t. There’s not really a gray area here.

That Part

This is the crux, the crucible upon which you pour your determation, frustration and your fortitude. This is the habit, action or inaction that you want to change.

Let’s go back one second. Normally this habit is an EFFECT of a FEELING. We’re humans, we FEEL, it’s how we wander through life. Think about how you FEEL when you do something and you’ll realize you live through feelings. It’s important during the “I don’t” part to identify the CAUSE of your EFFECT.

Example, your habit is overeating. (This is an easy one so I am going with it.) You eat and eat and you hate that you do it but you can’t stop, can’t put the fork down, toss down another glass of Mt. Dew and dislike the fact that you can’t stop eating.

WHY are you eating so much? Maybe you’re stressed out or depressed. You have to attack the CAUSE to solve the EFFECT.

My allegory is treating the flu. The cough and the sinus congestion are an EFFECT of the flu. You don’t beat the flu without a good immune system and antibiotics.

Flu (Cause), cough (effect), habit (take medicine).

Of Myself

You, your essence, your persona. You don’t like things about YOU, or maybe you want to change a habit to be more like someone you admire. You are changing yourself. The key, to me, of long term change is having a concrete goal that YOU want to attain, not something that is set by other people. Actions and behaviors define you to the world, it is how everyone else see’s you.

By now you’re probably wondering what behaviors I wanted to change, which habits I wanted to break, what thoughts and self-limiting barriers I wanted to overcome.

We’ll save that for another day.

What do you do if all of your friends are friends from your marriage and you divorce? Most people say they don’t pick sides; but inevitably sides are chosen and battle grounds are drawn.

In my example, my best friend’s wife was friends with my wife. When we divorced they tried to opt out of picking sides. Him and I always had the “bro’s before ho’s” mentality; our friendship overruled everything else.

When my wife and I split, he was stationed in Korea for a year and came home, thankfully, the same time I was moving out. He and his wife helped me move and get setup in my new apartment. It was incredibly generous of both of them.

He and I stayed in touch after he was back in Korea and his wife and my soon-to-be-ex were still friends. Personally, I really didn’t care if his wife and my ex were friends. We’re adults and she didn’t pass judgement on me, or her, as best as I could tell. She treated me with respect and I gave her the same courtesy; it’s good to try to be the bigger person and in this regard we all exceled.

One evening my friend called to tell me everything that he knew was going on with my soon-to-be-ex and all of the nasty details that went along with it. It hurt, I learned a lot of things that at the time I wish I hadn’t but were good to know. His wife also reiterated things that she’d been forced to do out of “friendship” and apologized for everything that had happened. She had kept quiet about a lot of things but felt her moral convictions were driving her to come clean.

In the end I kept my friends. In many divorces this doesn’t work out. I spent zero time trying to save my friends by telling them the horrible stories of my ex, I let that run it’s course. Through her own faults my ex-wife drove a wedge between her and many of her friends. It is a shame to see good friendships go bad.

Friends are an important aspect of life. In many marriages, friends play mediator, spectator, role-model and support for our relationships. Be true to yourself and true to them and they will see you through anything. The cream rises to the top.

Today my daughter and I used our webcams for the first time. I bought mine a few months back and thought hers would make a good Christmas present from me. (I split up gifts from myself and Santa at Christmas).

My exwife helped out and got the camera working. We did a trial run with only their camera while I was at work. Skype on my laptop worked great while in the office and it was great to see my daughter for the first time in almost a month.

Emma and I set up our first father-daughter webcam session for 7:00 PM this evening. That way she had plenty of time to eat dinner and have her bath before we chatted and I had time to eat and hit the gym.

How was it?
It was cool. The video quality was good and the audio was excellent. I’m glad that my daughter’s new computer at her moms place could handle it all. I think their wireless was a bit iffy a couple of times but it was heartwarming to see her.

For all of you divorced parents out there who live apart from your child(ren), a webcam seems to be a good investment. Work with your ex-spouse to pay or help pay for one of the cameras. It doesn’t have to be the greatest quality or most expensive. I’m using two Microsoft LifeCams that have a built in microphone to keep the cabling down.

I think we are going to try again tomorrow. Maybe we can make it a recurring appointment for us. Emma is only five but is really handy with her computer here.

Online dating is all the rage.  There doesn’t seem to be a single commercial break that doesn’t have a commercial for Match.com or for eHarmony.com.  It seems that maybe online dating is “the” thing for 2008.

And why not?  It’s not as if we’re in the cloistered 40’s nor are we in the free-lovin’ 60’s and we’re moving out of the Yuppie 80’s.  Technology and all of it’s wonderful advancements has infiltrated every aspect of our lives any why not our love lives as well?

Most of these sites offers the same thing, a “risk-free” environment to browse from a list of eligible men and women.  You can filter through almost every aspect of a person imaginable; hair color, eye color, race, religion, children, height.  The list goes on.

It’s easy to get caught up in the sheer volume of people who are out to meet others on the World Wide Web.  With so many options to choose from it’s easy to see that there are plenty of fish in the sea.  The sky is the limit.

Or is it?

Read through several of the “wants” and “desires” that many women want and you’ll soon understand how limited your options become.  It’s an environment of catch-22’s.  “I want someone who is strong and open emotionally.”  “The perfect guy for me is one who loves to be outdoors but also likes to play video games on the weekend.”  Please, for the love of all that is holy, choose one!

And men can be just as full of paradoxes as women.  We know what we want (hopefully) and have problems articulating it.  In some ways it’s almost worse.

What is a single guy to do?  Try it out.  Take a look around.  Find what you are comfortable with and send that anonymous email to the lady that catches your eye.  Don’t be afraid to be different.  Make yourself standout from the crowd.

Hence I’m not posting anything new for a couple days.

Before I get any emails asking if I miss my daughter the answer is a resounding “yes.” But that’s just how it is.

My plan is to do some writing tomorrow.

I posted this on my other blog so I thought it’d be fun to post here too.

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