Happy Birthday David!

Happy Birthday Little Papi!

So about 8 months and oh-so many days before August 25, 2004, it looks like it was around Christmastime or New Years maybe, it's hard to remember a specific 6 seconds of your life from so long ago, but around that time, God took the bodily fluids of two people, shook them up together inside a uterus looking thing and now we have this kid living inside the house with us.

How old was Grammy in 2004? David was Zero.

We called him David. He is not a Dave. Or a Davie or a Davey or however you want to spell it. He is David. Sometimes we call him Dude. Or Little Papi. Sometimes he runs when we call him David Hartley Emerson in a particular loud voice. But mostly, to us, he is David. He's like, here, in our house, eating our food, with us all the time now.

So I am not exactly sure what was in those bodily fluids, but whatever God did, take sand and all these other elements that you can see, touch and feel and can't see through, then mix them all up and how is it that you create something you can see through? It's like glass. I don't get it.




 So one night, God sees us, probably after a fabulous dinner and a few craft beers at Main Street Cafe in Willimantic and He conceives this idea to combine the elements of me and this other human, we call her Michele with one L, and create something as fragile as glass. It is kind of amazing when you think about it.



1 Years Old





2 Years Old



3 Years old



I'm not sure what you were doing then, probably sleeping or maybe getting up to go pee and wishing you were sleeping, but at about 4am, a couple hours earlier than right now 8 years ago, I was dressed in baby blue hospital garb, standing in a dark, empty hospital room overlooking a roof in Putnam, Connecticut, praying my guts out that God knew what he was doing when he thought it was a good idea over a few beers to create this thing, some people refer to it as a mammel, that was growing inside of Michele's body and wouldn't come out.

Michele is zip-tied behind a blue curtain to a hospital bed, I'm at least 4 Holy Rosaries into asking for forgiveness for every and any sin I can think of, and just like that we have this sticky, squirmy thing in our arms that we can touch and feel and forever see through, as fragile as glass.

God has some pretty amazing capabilities.

 So today we celebrate the birth of our son, 8 years ago. I'd rather celebrate his conception - those six seconds were a lot more fun than the hell he put me through that night being born. But whatever, you guys write the Hallmark cards.

I said last night - "David, tomorrow you turn 8. You will NEVER be seven years old again. How does that feel?"

And he says, "Who cares about stuff like that?"

All right then.

4 Years Old

This morning, I woke up a little after 4am and had to pee. I checked on him and that other little creation we named Matthew. They are like, here, everyday when we wake up.

They don't look fragile. David is on the top bunk, all twisted in a blanket, his sheet is all scrunched at the foot of his bed. He's breathing in a sort of snorkel sounding way. He likes Legos, milk more than juice, bologna sandwiches, fried chicken, going for walks, watching movies and luckily somehow, some way, he likes his Dad.

5 Years Old



6 Years Old



Each morning, I wake him up and instead of

climbing down on his own, he prefers that I lift him off the top bunk, hold him and set his feet on the ground. We start each day this way.

If each day is gift that God gives us - then I will continue to pray my guts out that I will be strong enough to forever hold my son and plant his feet firmly on the ground at the start of everyday.

Kids are fragile. So is the relationship between a father and his son. It's kind of like glass.



"Who cares about stuff like that?"



7 Years old







I do, David Hartley Emerson, says a particular Dadman in a loud voice.

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The Last Day of Summer

School starts tomorrow.
David enters 3rd Grade.
Matthew begins VPK - Florida's supplemented Pre-School Program.

The last day of summer was spent quietly. Dad worked. The boys played with Legos. It rained.  

I've been sick since Thursday. Talk about an anti-climatic end to the summer! Sure, I am feeling better than I did Thurs and Fri, but that only meant I spent more time on the computer doing work stuff.

We did get haircuts in the carport today. All 3 of us boys looked overdue. Thanks Michele.

The boys are all set with their backpacks and notebooks. I hear Matthew in the tub. David will take a shower next. Michele is cooking supper.

I will finish this and then clean up the Clip Art CD's and paperwork from doing jobs like nametags for the Jaguars and a flyer for Beaches Shuttle. I've also spent time on creating the path to improve customer service and hopefully save my job.

Tomorrow will be the one day a year the boys will wear a collared shirt to school, fighting us and throwing tantrums. WAIT. We'll go through this again when it is time for school pictures.

David. David really struggled in 2nd Grade. We almost held him back. We talked a lot about this. He's young - the youngest of the young in his grade - and he did not thrive like he did in 1st Grade or in Kindergarten... But he advanced.

We reached out to his kindergarten teacher and expressed our concerns for 3rd grade and asked her advice...We have impressions 3rd grade will be like Boot Camp with the weight that the State of FL places on FCATS. God bless this woman - she went to the principal and  shared an email. She told the principal that she needs to treat this kid, like David is her own - and place him accordingly. To make a long story short and ignore the lumps in our throats - David was placed in the classs that he hoped to be in - and he came home beaming and fired up about school starting Monday. Wow. 

Matthew. Matthew starts preschool on Monday. VPK. It stands for Verified Pre-Kindergarten. Matthew is a freak. He will be fine.

It will be interesting to see where this year leads for our children and for us as parents.

Happy Sunday Night. Happy End of Summer.

We miss the Woodstock Fair.

Love Ya.

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Working from Home

I bring work home with me.  I bring it home with me in my head and with me as in a stack of work orders I need to research, layout and sell. It creates pressure. It alienates my children. It competes with my wife. My yard suffers. It keeps me awake at night. There are so many interruptions throughout the day, that it is truly hard to focus, and I'm compiling a pretty long list of stuff I need to get to get done.

A particular wife suggests I learn to balance better - that I take my job too seriously. I say look around, look at this economy, look at how lucky I am to be where I am; I NEED to.

But this weekend, I ignored that stack of paperwork and I did yardwork that has been ignored for two weeks because of summer rain and storms. I mowed, I mulched, I weeded, I trimmed, I climbed a ladder, I raked, I swept, I slept.

I walked. I took David to the park. I visited with friends. I grilled. I actually slept in bed and not on the couch. I watched Sandlot 2 with a 7-year old squishing my left shoulder and a 4-year old tucked under my right shoulder.

Sunday evening rolled around and the guilt, the pressure, the inability to balance began to creep in. That feeling sucks. That feeling SUCKS.

I took a gamble and asked if I could work from home on Monday. No interruptions. A chance to get caught up. I so need this. We'll be shorthanded in the middle of the week and I can't imagine the hours I'll need to pull if I don't get caught up now.

So I worked from home today. And you know what? Today sucked.

I should have gone into work. I felt overwhelmed. I could not focus. I felt like I was playing hooky and doing something wrong. My emails lit up and I handled all the current stuff I would've worked on anyway! All the stuff I needed to work on, remained needed to be worked on. Yes, I got stuff done, but it was painful. Almost like anxiety. No, it was anxiety. Every effort was forced and painful. What is wrong with me?!

I picked up the boys from daycare around 4pm. We changed and took a walk on the beach. Why do I beat myself up so much? I needed their silliness, I needed their distraction.

Fatherhood has its moments. And I was rewarded with one during our walk tonight, when David asked that if they make another Three Amigos movie, could it be on the beach and about us?  The boys brought me back to a comfortable place.

When I go into work tomorrow, I will do my best, like I always do. Customers come first. Everything else is a struggle for balance. When I get home, Family comes first and everything else is a struggle for balance.

I keep reminding myself that I am lucky.

And yet, I wish I could do a better job at both.

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Friday's Rainbow

Friday's Rainbow

Driving home from work, the sky got real dramatic. Looked like a big storm was brewing.

The storm got hit by the seabreeze and all the big, ominous clouds just kinda went away. At first, I was bummed.

But then....

Bam.

One of God's Miracles.

These pictures don't even capture how 3-dimensional and brilliant the rainbow was over the water.

The rainbow was so close, I couldn't fit it into one frame. It was like, right there, in front of me, like I could touch it. Look closely - look at the difference in the sky, above and inside the rainbow - I have never noticed the difference in the darkness and lightness before. Under the rainbow was so much brighter - the sky around the rainbow was so much darker.

I took these pictures from 3rd South. The rainbow was, boom, right there in front of me. Interestingly, when I got home to 6th North? Boom, there it was, right there in front of me still. Strange, thinking about the opticals of a rainbow.  From 3rd South, you would've thought for sure that I would've been looking north, taking pictures of the side of the rainbow!

I was showing Michele the pics and we could see the ends of the rainbow; we could see where the rainbow started and where it ended. I told her how bummed I was that there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.... she says, "Duhhh, that's because it's under the water."

And I thought I was the positive one.

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