Entries Tagged 'parenting' ↓

Tina Howard, aka spaghettipie, interviewed me recently for her blog Stewardship Living, in which I hand out advice with shameless self-importance. Like this:

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Yes, our youngest wunderkind is three this Christmas. I’ve posted a lot about our daughter, but not as much about our son. His age this season means he understands all of the hullabaloo for the first time.

Santa is new–and has never come before in his memory. Trees are new. Presents are new–at least the Christmas version of presents. Every Christmas cookie is a new flavor to a three-year-old. Ours loves ginger bread cookies, and not just because they might jump off the plate and start running around the room.

Here are some other little gems my wife and I have noticed this season from our three-year-old.

You know you’re celebrating Christmas with a 3-year-old when…

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Last night before we took the Christmas pictures, during our dinner prayer, my son acted like a three-year-old.

That’s okay, I guess. He is three after all. But here’s what that looks like during a prayer.

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I’m not sure how I feel about book publishers trying to use video to promote books, but this book looks pretty cool for my six-year-old daughter.

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Donna Novitsky of Big Tent says her motto is “Go Big or Don’t Go.” But she also offers some interesting advice for working people with families in the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar. (Click on this link to stream or download the one hour podcast, “From Venture Capitalist to Entrepreneur.”)

The moderator says she has a different worklife balance between her business and her career than most people he knows. Then, he asks her to explain to the students how she finds balance between her work and her family (which consists of a husband, two kids, and a cat).

Here’s Novitsky’s response:

Finding balance is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do… When you have kids, everything changes. No longer is it solely your agenda, and they move at their own pace, and you need to adapt yourself to their pace. And so that’s just incredibly challenging because I’m used to being able to put in whatever hours it takes to get the A, whatever hours it takes to get another customer. Whatever hours. And now I can’t do that anymore.

One thing I discovered is that you’ve got to think of balance not in terms of a day or a week or maybe even a month. But balance takes place over a long period of time.

For instance, in 2006, I worked only a couple of days a week, spent a lot of time at home, got involved with the kids’ school, got them to make their beds when they go to school, got them to set the dinner table on a regular basis. Some little goals that I had for our family that take time and focus. Building that base allowed me to go at Big Tent, which is basically a 7 am to 7 pm role.

Between my husband and I, John now pretty much is home… So while I work really hard during the week, I also find some balance on the weekends, and I’m a dedicated world class soccer mom out there with the kids. You learn to juggle. You need to change the equation now and then, but who your life partner is is also a key part of that. And understanding yourself and your priorities is an important thing as you make those choices.

I don’t know Novitsky’s faith. But I think there is some real wisdom in this statement: Balance takes place over a long period of time.

Don’t try to balance your day. Don’t try to schedule your work and your relationships into a legalistic regimen of scheduled activities, duties, and obligations. No one needs another ten commandments of parenting.

After all, the law and the prophets come down to two commands. Love God. Love others. That’s it.

I love Monday mornings because now I can get to work. (Just like I love Monday evenings because then I get to be with my family.)

To be fair, she’s in the first grade now, but she did begin reading chapter books last year. I was the typical proud dad, but I only recently realized what most kids are reading at her age. The contrast is startling.

I guess I could pat myself on the back about all of the wonderful things we did, including pass down some apparently awesome genes. But that’s obnoxious, and probably untruthful.

So instead of gloating, I thought I would talk about the easy things we do that have probably helped our kids learn how to read. Most of them are accidental. Here they are in no particular order: Continue reading →

Kevin Lucia posted a wonderfully concise and helpful review over at his site. Kevin is careful to compare Wayne’s work to other YA series. He is writing YA after all–and doing so quite well. If you drop by Kevin’s site, be sure to check out Wayne’s promotional video. Dude, you are fearless!

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My alarm goes off at five. I get up. Flip on the coffee, stumble to the computer, and blink myself awake while the computer hums through its startup. I read a little of my work from the previous day and begin to fall into the clicking rhythm of creation.

When the coffee burbles, I go fill a mug and find my daughter standing in the hallway.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” she says. “Can you lay with me?”

There are two kinds of writer’s block. Internal blocks and external.

I have external writer’s blocks. One of them is five years old.

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