Things I've learned recently

Here's another list for your reading pleasure.

1 - A 2-0 fastball right down the middle is the best way to end a "four baseball game in three day" weekend. 

2 - You know you need sleep when it's 8 PM, you're home alone with your sleeping twins, and you come to your senses as you're walking to the car to run a quick errand.  

3 - Seeing a father and child playing catch is pretty cool.  Even if the father is standing halfway down a steep hill and chasing every other throw to the bottom.

4 - A two hour lunch with a client where we talk zero business is the best kind of meeting.

5 - Some people just don't know how to negotiate.  You give and you take, you don't just take. 

6 - The thing you hate most about your own house will be a selling point when you list it, and you will defend it like you would your child.

7 - You may struggle understanding other toddlers, but with your own, most words are clear as can be.

8 - Going a day without seeing your children hurts.

9 - Business travel sucks, especially when you go to a coast from the Midwest and are there less time than you spend traveling there.

10 - Celebrate everything your children do.  No matter how big or how small.  You will remember their smiles more than the event which caused it.

11 - Having a toddler wake up with a dry diaper, then immediately asking to go potty in the actual potty, is so fantastic.

12 - Walking out to the backyard and finding your dog run has collapsed is frustrating.  Especially when you can't tell if the wire has worn out (after only a few years) or if it was cut by someone.

13 - Having both of your girls yell "BOO-BOO" as they stick a finger into the strawberries on your knees is funny and excruciating at the same time.

Thirteen is my lucky number, so I'll stop here.  What a week!

Hi there!

I wrote in my first blog post about the unwritten (yet mandatory) rules for writing a blog.  I've recently discovered another one:  apologizing for being absent at some point in the first year.

Almost every blogger I read has, at some point, seemed to drop off the face of the earth for a few days, weeks, or even months.  You don't see anything from them for some time - no posts, no comments, nothing.   

Then all of the sudden they're back!

They tell you about everything they've been struggling with, how they've dealt with it, what they're planning to do differently to ensure it doesn't happen again, and how they are doing now.

That is followed by a sincere thank you for your comments, emails, and concerns.

Typically, I'm not one to follow the crowd and do what everyone else does, but in this case I decided to make an exception.  Believe me when I say with all honesty I am not making light of people who need a break.  I've been pumping out three posts a week for nine months pretty effortlessly, but the words just haven't been there when I've gone to the well recently.

So, in keeping up with the unwritten rules, here is the deal.

Brad, and I'm a blogger.  I haven't posted for 7 days.  Sounds like an AA intro - when do I get my button and hugs?

That's right, it's been a whole week since you've heard from me.  Since the world is still turning, I can safely assume it doesn't need me to write to keep moving - what a load off my shoulders!

What have I been doing?  Working (I spent 26 hours in California and another 18 hours getting there and back this past week.  Business travel is not as glorious as you might think).  Playing baseball.  Trying to keep up with the girls.  Attempting to keep my wife sane and refreshed, at least as much as possible on the sanity part.

When the words are here, they're here.  When they aren't, they aren't.  I published a pretty crappy post a few weeks ago because I felt like I had to get something out.  I'm not going to link to it, and if you think of which one it is please keep it to yourself, just in case the one you thought was crappy was not the one I'm thinking of.

My wife didn't come right out and say what she thought about it, but she did give me some advice after reading it.

You don't have to publish something just for the sake of publishing it.

In that sentence, the following letters show up:

S - five times
H - five times
I - five times
T - six times

SIDEBAR - Who can admit they counted the letters to check my work?  If you didn't then, are you going to now?

Basically, she told me it was full of shit.

And she was right.

Sorry for wasting a few minutes of your day if you read it.  I promise not to let it happen again.

That being said, you might still feel like something I write is shit, which is ok.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion...even when it's wrong.

Too nice?

I'm talking about the weather. 

It has been unseasonably warm just about everywhere this year.  After a short winter, we were all ready to get outside and enjoy it.  We kept thinking:

"This is it.  Today is the last of the good weather.  We need to get the girls out and enjoy it."

The foul was well-behaved, until he attacked.  And then Mama screamed.

Then the forecast would be updated and we'd be in store for a few more beautiful days.  The next set of bad weather would be announced, so naturally we needed to be outside while we could.

Then the forecast would change again and we'd  be blessed with more great days.

We'll continue to be outside, so my posts will probably continue to be spread out some. 

Hope you're enjoying it as much as we are!

30 minutes after he attacked, the girls forgave the bird...but kept their distance.

I love it when they hold hands without any prompting.

How old is too old...

A little while back the girls were at a play thing with lots of other children.  They were both standing there, looking in the same direction.  As I followed their gaze, I noticed a little boy hanging out.  By "hanging out", I mean he was standing there with his little boy junk dangling in the breeze for all to see.

I quickly called their names.  They came to me without hesitation and I continued to distract them until little Freddie's twig and berries were tucked safely away.

As the girls get older, I am finding myself wondering more and more often "when are they too old _____?"

A few examples for the fill in the blank section:

to be in the bathroom when I an using the facilities?  Just to clarify, I don't let them in there with me now, and haven't since they became mobile, but it's still a valid question in my opinion.

to have Papa help with bathtime? 

to have Papa help them in the bathroom, assuming they get out of diapers at some point?

to have Papa help them get dressed?

I really have no idea as to the right answer.  Do they magically become aware, at some point, of the differences between Papas and Mamas?  Any advice from mothers and fathers out there?

Nursery Rhymes - from someone else's point of view

When I first started this "series" I asked people to comment and let me know if there were any nursery rhymes they would like to know the background on.  Melissa took that one step further, and actually gave us the history of a few.  Instead of blatantly plagiarizing her thoughts, I asked her to guest post for me today.
 
After you're done reading her great post, please head over to Mame Musings and read more about her.  You won't be disappointed by what you find. 
 
Actually, you should probably just follow her (one way or another) so you can be sure to learn about her core values through her new 12 in 2012 series.  I personally follow her because she has a great mix of comedy, sincerity, lessons for living life, and honesty.  To be able to blend that all together on a consistent basis is truly a talent, and, in our household, we are big fans of her work.
 
So without further ado...
______________________________________________________________________________
 

Image Credit



Georgie Porgie, Puddin' and Pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry,
When the boys came out to play
Georgie Porgie ran away.

On the surface this rhyme reads like a classic case of an obnoxious playground bully—a perfect example of why schools now have tough new zero tolerance policies for just this sort of harassment.

According to sources who refused to be named for fear of unwanted kiss retaliation, it appears there is more than enough blame to go around here.
Apparently, Georgie’s inappropriate displays of affection and fear of males resulted from his low self-esteem, which was caused by his unfortunate nickname, which came from his high BMI, which came from his love for pudding and pie, which stemmed from the fact that his mother didn’t make him eat his vegetables, which was the result of his mother being too lenient, which was her way of compensating for the fact that she had run Georgie’s dad off (because he liked to kiss other women).

Bottom line: Georgie is the victim. Call Gloria Allred.


Image Credit


Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened the birds began to sing,
Oh wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?

What is the deal with these kings?

Weren’t pipes, bowls, and fiddlers enough? Now they are harassing birds?

What gives them the right to think it’s okay to feed some poor, innocent blackbirds a little cheap bag of rye and them stuff them against their will into a pie?

No wonder they started singing once the pie was opened! I’d probably sing too if I was finally released from the cramped, doughy confines where I had been encased with 23 other sweaty, squawking blackbirds.

And, dainty? 24 blackbirds might be called a lot of things, but I assure you, dainty is not one of them.

I don’t blame the blackbird for later pecking off a nose—that’s a justifiable angry bird.

Bottom line: The blackbirds are the victim. Call PETA.

New Year's Resolutions

How many times have you made a resolution, only to find yourself not being able to live up to your own standards and/or expectations?

Here are a few techniques to use to make sure you are not a failure this year - at least as far as resolutions are concerned.  If you are destined to be a failure in life I can't help you, sorry.

Don't set the bar too high.

Perfect

If you really want to guarantee you'll be able to accomplish your goals, then make them easy.  Not eating fast food for the first week of the year is a lot better than saying you won't eat it at all for the entire year.  If you want to challenge yourself, at least make the goal reasonable.  Try to not to eat fast food at all for the entire year between the hours of 3 AM and 6 AM.

Increase your odds.

If you only set one goal then you have to achieve that goal to feel good.  Give yourself many opportunities to succeed.  Having at least eight resolutions, some of which should be able to get done with no work on your end, should enable you to achieve at least one.  If you really are an overachiever, shoot for completing 50% of them, but make sure at least half of them are easy.

Rely on others.

Make a resolution to do something better than someone else, or put yourself in competition with them.  Find someone who has recently filed for bankruptcy and make your goal to have a better credit score than them at the end of the year.  If you know someone confined to a wheelchair, make a resolution that you'll take the stairs more often that they will.  It might seem a bit harsh, but as long as you are the only one who knows your goal, it won't matter.  I still think it's probably best NOT to mention this goal to the handicapped person, just to be safe.  

Make your goals flexible.

The most popular resolution has to deal with weight loss.  Give yourself a chance to win no matter what happens!  If you lose 10 pounds, you win since you lost weight.  HOORAY!!  Go get a cheeseburger!  If you maintain your weight you still win because everyone knows muscle weighs more than fat.   Another cheeseburger!  Since you've been working out (again, give yourself a loose definition here) you might gain weight since you'll be turning fat into muscle.  Get two cheeseburgers for this since you'll need calories to burn during your workouts!! 
 
Make the resolutions non-quantifiable.

These are the easiest ones to achieve.  Saying you want to be nicer to door-to-door salesmen this year is a good one.  Resolving to eat out less than in prior years is one you can lie to yourself about, and since nobody tracks how often they eat out, you can do this easily.  Even if you end up eating out more often, just tell yourself you ate less food, more frequently, so you still win. 

Set up next year.

If all else fails, you still have the rest of the year to totally screw up so that next year's resolutions are easier to achieve.  Don't workout, so you can vow to work out more.  Start bouncing checks so you can work on not doing that next year.  The possibilities are endless.

If you can't fail yourself, encourage others to fail for you so you can beat them.

I'd love to hear some of your tips for making and keeping resolutions.  I'd also love to hear what your resolutions are so I can throw them in your face later in the year encourage you to succeed.  Actually, I'd just love to hear comments in general, so feel free to comment away.

My resolution is to get more comments and followers than I did last year.  If I fail, it's not because I did anything wrong, it's because you all did.

That's the third lesson from above.  See how easy that is?

I'm officially a guest blogger!

Check me out over at MaMe Musing today for a bit of holiday cheer!


Do you know the next words out of cousin Eddie's mouth?



Update on the book

I really hope this is the first update in a series of ones to come.  For those of you who don't know how this works (I counted myself among you up until recently), let me take a minute to explain. 

You write a bunch of words, send it to a publishing house, they give you lots of money, and publish your book.  Then they send you on all expense paid trips to exotic locations to market the book.  A movie producer comes along, throws even more money at you, and makes your book into a movie.


I'll definitely need a room to store all my gold bullion

Do it again for a second book and continue to do so until nobody wants to hear what you have to say any longer.

Pretty simple, right?

So maybe that isn't actually how it works.

Here's the process as I've gone through it.

I started writing stuff down so my girls could have a little insight into what life was like when they were young.  Julia does a great job journaling, but since my handwriting is nearly illegible, I decided to type. 

When I reached 30,000 words (easily more than I had ever written at one time in my life) I decided to have some other people look at it and see what they thought.  While I merely asked for feedback, one person went ahead and forwarded a copy of it to his agent.

The agent then called and asked the one question he could think of:

Is this it?

I really didn't know how to take that.  His question could mean "I love this so much I hope there's more" or "This is awful, please tell me this is just a joke".  Turns out it was closer to the first. 

He told me I really needed to be at 75,000 words to be something a publisher could work with, so I continued writing.  The first 30,000 words took four or five months, but the next 45,000 only took a few weeks.  Honestly, the girls were so interesting, funny, and educational I didn't have a hard time finding something to write about.

75,000 words is not that many, but it felt like it to me

The agent then told me to start blogging, as I stated here in case you haven't been with me from the start.  I think that basically narrows the list down to anyone other than my wife and parents.

The other thing he told me to do was to create a book proposal.  With his help we did just that.  A book proposal is merely a condensed version of who you are, why you wrote a book, what gives you the right to write it, and how the publisher can benefit from it.

That book proposal went out to several different editors last week to see if anyone is willing to take a shot on an unknown, first time author.

That's all I know for now.  I'll keep you updated as time goes on.  With any luck, my next update post will be about the book being picked up and not something along the lines of "If you want a copy send me an email".

The Golden Rule

Being in the financial services industry, I deal with privacy concerns every day.  There are so many rules and regulations surrounding most everything I do. 

• I can't send, nor would I, social security numbers, account numbers or anything similar in nature through email without having it encrypted.
• I can't speak to a husband about his wife's accounts unless I have her permission.
• If I mention my company's name on my facebook page or Twitter, I have to have a disclaimer stating that the opinions are mine, and not that of the company. 
• I can't let one client know another person is a client of mine, unless I get his authorization first. 
• I can't even tell one person if the friend of theirs they referred to me became a client without the other person's permission first.

There are a lot of rules to follow and they all have strict penalties for failing to adhere to them.  Blogging does not have any such rules.  I can do almost anything I want.  But I don't, and neither does Julia in her blog. 

When she first started blogging, we discussed what was fair game and what was not.  We've stuck to those rules for anything and everything we've written whether it's for her blog, my blog, or my upcoming book.

We agreed:

1. Not to post any naked or semi-naked pictures.  That goes for the girls as well. 
2. Not to post anything that would indicate when one or both of us were out of town.
3. Not to post anything if either of us is uncomfortable with the content.   
4. Not to publicly bash any person or organization.  

I can't think of one instance where either of us have failed to live up to our end of the bargain, and I don't expect it to happen. 

While it may seem as though our lives are an open book, they aren't.  Most of the truly intimate details of our life are kept between us.  If they're written down, it's in pen, in the journals we keep for the girls. 

  

I still see the occasional blog post or facebook update of a little naked one running around, the moaning about how one spouse mistreated the other, or how one's friend has wronged them.  I usually don't comment on them, because people are free to do what they want - even if I don't agree with it.

For us, we try to keep one thing in mind - once you hit submit it's out there, and will continue to be out there.  You can't take it back. 

Sure, you can attempt to delete it, but if one person has seen it, or if technology doesn't work exactly as it should, the damage is done.

Why risk it? 

Somewhere in the Middle

There seems to be three unwritten (yet mandatory) rules in blogging. 

Rule one states:

In your initial post, you must acknowledge you never imagined yourself as a blogger.

So acknowledged.

Rule two states:

You must identify the reason you started blogging.

Rule three states:

You must provide some background information about yourself.

I considered titling this inaguaral post "In the beginning", but that has already been used by an author far more talented than me.  The other reason I didn't want to start with that title is that it would force me to start in the past.  I am choosing to jump in at the present time.  If you want to know more about the first 18 months of life with twin girls from my perpsective, then you'll just have to buy my book (I know it's a shameless plug, but oh well). 

To be truthful, it is not a book yet, as it has not been published, but we're working on it.  My literary agent told me I need to start a blog so I can keep writing and get my name out there - that's rule two for those of you scoring at home. 

My girls are now just over 18 months old.  Everyday they do something new and amazing - and frequently humorous.  My plan is to entertain, educate, and enlighten. By the way, the fourth and only optional rule of blogging is to identify what you hope to accomplish through your blogging, so there you have it. 

Mamas and papas tend to see things a little differently - this Papa is no exception.  Actually, I am quite the excepiton.  I'm strange - I admit it freely and love it.  My mind does crazy things and goes crazy places.  Stick around and be you might just be amazed...confused...frightened...and more!

Now that the four rules have been taken care of, I can get started with the story telling.  I expect it to be a little like Mr. Toad's ride (wild - in case you aren't familiar with that particular story).   I don't quite know what to expect going forward, but in the very least it should be...interesting?