Kids and stress

We are starting to see signs at our house that the kids are getting stressed about school (especially Cooper who will start Kindergarten). I did a little research at lunch to ensure that I'm doing my part as a Dad to help them deal with their stress and thought that I would document my findings here for everyone's benefit.

Here's a list of ideas for us as parents:

• Pray with them and share scripture.
• Reinforce their worth, their effectiveness, that we love them regardless, and their ability to take action.
• Help you child talk through it (what do they feel, why do they feel that way, what can they do about it, etc.). Don't be accusing or try to fix it (that's a reminder for me!) just listen and let them work through it.
• Encourage vigorous physical activity.
• Spend special one-on-one time.
• Give gentle physical touch/support (back rubs, hugs, etc.).
• Tell supportive stories or role play situations.
• Shift perspective (how do you think the other kids are feeling, what about the teacher, how do you think Daddy felt when I went through that type of situation).
• Help them anticipate and plan for a stressful situation. Help them think through the worst case scenario and then understand that it won't likely be that bad.
• Model coping successfully with stress.

Links to just a few pieces of additional information:
KidsHealth.org article
BabyArt.org article
Iowa State University Extension PDF

No more babies in my house!

Today is Caris' 2nd birthday -- happy birthday baby girl!

"Baby girl" is what I have called her for almost all of her young life but it doesn't really apply anymore. It's hard to believe that she is 2 years old. However, she's doing great with potty training and not in diapers anymore. She's so independent, talking better every day, smart, loving, just a ball of joy! There's not much about her anymore that even resembles a baby.

What a blessing to parent a girl after two boys. It's made me a much more well rounded dad that's for sure. Raising girls and boys are so different and we're only at the beginning. By the way, our boys love their sister to death! When Caris first came home they were such good brothers, but honestly we thought that it would wear off as she got older and started playing with their toys, cutting into their one-on-one time, and generally being the youngest. We couldn't have been more wrong! Those boys dote on her, love on her, get things for her, and generally treat her like the princess that she is. Caris truly is a treasure to our home and we are blessed that today she turned 2.

Half Birthdays

When my wife and I were first married, we took time to think through what we wanted to do as a new family. I brought some traditions from when I grew up and so did my wife, but as we started "our family" we wanted some things that were unique to us.

One idea that we have implemented with our kids is celebrating Half Birthdays. One of our goals as a family is to make each person feel special. Kids often use half years anyway for their age since they generally want to feel older. So, on each child's half birthday they get to invite over a friend for dinner and we bake a cake and have a special evening together. There are no presents allowed but we do silly things like cut the cake in half, only light half the candles, and sing only the first half of the birthday song (Hap birth t y, hap birth t y, . . . ).

I mention this because today is Collin's 7 1/2 birthday! My oldest son wanted chicken and dumplings for dinner and to invite his best friend Bryce over. We had a lot of fun and it was a special time for Collin.

What my kids have taught me . . . (part 3)

* The arms of Father is the safest place to be. We have a two-story house and the kid's bedrooms are all upstairs. When the kids were younger and scared by thunder or wind during a storm, not even their blankets or each other would suffice to keep them calm. When I go upstairs and hold them or just lay in their bed for a few minutes, guess what? They go right back to sleep! When we face the stormy seasons of life, we may need more than our spouse, our savings account, our friends, our intelligence. We need to run to the arms of the Father and enable Him to be our comfort, provider, and sustainer. Psalm 31:2 "Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me." (Need a Bible study topic? Search just the Psalms for "fortress," "deliverer," "rock," "stronghold," "refuge," etc. and read in awe the promises your God has for you.)

* There is no greater sorrow than lack of fellowship. Traveling is hard when I have to leave my family, I ache after only a day or two. Just being around the kids, they will look up and smile at me. I remember when Cooper was a baby, I was feeding him one day and I left the room for just a minute to get him more food. When I came back around the corner, he had a worried look on his face and looked about to cry but when he say me and realized that I was coming back he looked at me and broke out in a big smile. Prayer and Bible study is God's fellowship with us. When I don't spend time in personal worship, prayer, and Bible study, I can tell the difference in my attitudes and actions. What's worse is that I know it grieves the heart of God when I don't spend time with Him.

* God knows everything before we do. My wife is nothing if not organized and she is a devoted scrapbooker. One of her best ideas was when she took a monthly calendar scrapbook page and put it on our refrigerator. On the calendar, she writes down the key events in our lives and she has a different color pen for each of the kids with their activities and their hilarious sayings. One thing written on the calendar right now is a reminder of when my daughter Caris (almost 2 years old) said "oo ah-ck Daee" (You rock Daddy). This was a great reminder to me of how God filled out the calendar of our lives before we were even born. He planned it all out ahead of time and knows the funny things that we will do and say even before it happens. He also knows the hurts that we have and how He will work it out in the end. Psalm 139:16b "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

Return to Part 1
Return to Part 2

July Scattershooting

Not much time to post, so here are the highlights:
* World Cup: I am so glad that Italy beat those Frenchmen! Collin even got into watching it with me.
* Church Budget: I'm on our church's Finance Committee and after a very interesting process (and a lot of work by our staff) we've almost got the draft budget worked out.
* Potty Training: Started yesterday with Caris -- she's so ready and doing great so far. Enough said on that topic.
* New Web Site: We rolled out a new Web site at work recently. Lots of good lessons learned and set up well for another related site in a few months. I'll share the URL next week most likely. I continue to be amazed at how strategic Web work should be to do it right.
* Speaking Engagement: I was asked to speak at a Church Leadership Conference. I'm honored and will post more about that later.

Argentina Messi'd it up

At lunch, I headed straight to a sports bar and watched the tail end of the Argentina vs. Germany World Cup quarterfinal. What a match!! Both teams played very well and the game completely lived up to the hype.

The referee did a good job overall of calling the match by keeping the card count down and letting the teams play. The players ran their legs off on both sides -- Germany's Ballack really needs oxygen and a good massage about now. The stats will likely show that the game was pretty even especially the shots on goal.

Disclosure: I had an Argentine coach when I played as a kid so I was rooting for them. My real problem has to do with Argentina's coaching. In such a key match in the World Cup, where the heck is Lionel Messi!! In the 72nd minute, they subbed out Riquelme (one of their top players) for Cambiasso. Now I understand some of the reasons -- Riquelme was clearly winded and not attacking and at the time they were up by a goal and defensively minded. Also, you could not have predicted the forced substitution due to injury of your goalkeeper which happened right before the Riquelme substitution. However, you're playing Germany in the World Cup Finals get one of your star players in the game. It's criminal that Argentina is going home right now after a match where Messi didn't play at all and that's all Pekerman's fault!! Okay, I'm done venting.

I am fortunate to have the opportunity to watch the final parts of the game where most of the action took place. It was great to be somewhere where we all were yelling, fussing, clapping, and having a great time rooting for our teams. England plays against a surprising Portugal team tomorrow morning so I hope to get to watch some of it. England is the other team that I support since I like the country so much. I like watching Brazil just because they are so talented but they better start playing up to their potential since they don't have teams like poor Japan to beat up on anymore.

Camping at Tyler State Park

We had a lot of fun at Tyler State Park this last weekend. This was the first time that we went as a whole family and it sure was awesome to all be together! We made smores, looked at stars (and Jupiter), went on a nature hike down a great trail, went swimming, sang songs, and had a great time. As is our custom, the boys selected something from our Family Coat of Arms (I'll have to blog about this soon) to focus on during our trip. They selected the lion so we talked about courage, strength, and leadership.

We stayed in campsite #8. For my future benefit and the benefit of others, here are the good sites that we marked.
Cedar Point: The best sites are 6, 7, 8, and 9 (with 7 probably the best overall). 8 and 9 are slightly sloping which is good for rain to run-off but bad for soccer balls to run-off! Sites 15 and 19 are okay campsites but back-up to a drop-off, where there was an old creek and currently a difficult trail, so we wouldn't want that with our young kids. Several of the other sites either have no shade or are very narrow (by the drop-off) -- 4, 5, 10, and 20 have little shade; 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, and 18 are narrow; 1, 2, 3, and 10 have very few trees and are close to the main road.
Lakeview: This area is right next to the lake (hence the name) and we wonder if the mosquitoes are worse because of it. Also, there are more campsites that share a bathroom in this section. Due to our young kids, we would really prefer not to have a site where they can walk right into the lake. Site 32 looked like the best site right next to the lake (for when the kids get older maybe). Sites that were across the road from the lake are 24, 25, and 27 with 21 being nice but close to the road.

We really like the lake in the park which is a great activity for the hot part of the day. It has a nice sandy play area on the "beach" with nice restrooms. In the water is a large shallow sandbar where little kids can play easily.

Scattershooting . . .

No time to post a lot, so . . .
* Disappointed in US Soccer but they did do a great job in the Italy game.
* Tonight's the last night of VBS at our Church, we have a great group of 1st graders!
* Going camping with the family to Tyler State Park Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon.

Base-ah-ball bean bedy bedy good . . . to me

Thank you Saturday Night Live (the old and good version) for the title of this post --remember Garrett Morris as Chico Esquela. Collin and I went to the Rangers vs. Diamondbacks game tonight. I thought that I'd post before I forgot the best parts.

We got the tickets from Jake and Suzanne since Collin was the ring-bearer for their wedding -- thanks guys! Collin wanted to call his mom and his Boo and couldn't stop talking after the game since he had so much fun! His "best parts" were the blue Build-a-Bear that he got for free before the game, the players that he got to talk to (more on that later), scoring the game (more later), sitting up close (last 2 innings), and watching the band playing outside the stadium after the game was over. He had a blast and it was a great Father/Son experience from top to bottom!

We got to the stadium around 5:30 because I wanted Collin to watch batting practice (BP), see some of the players up close, see the stadium start to fill up and come alive, and obviously not miss our favorite part -- the national anthem. We watched Arizona take BP and Collin got autographs from Conor Jackson (good young player) and Eric Byrnes. They were both really nice. After BP was winding down, we went to the outfield picnic and game area and Collin did the wiffle-ball hitting game (very fun).

We made it to our seats in time to get settled in, check the line-ups, and cry during the national anthem sung by a kid (maybe 9 - 11) who did a great job. I had printed some score sheets out that I talked to Collin about on the way to the game to see if he was interested in scoring the game. He said that he wanted to try so I quickly filled in the line-ups and we got started scoring -- very fun and a great way to keep even a so-so game interesting. I found a pretty cool kid's score sheet (see link above, copyright Patrick McGovern) on the Web meant to be easy and not too much for them to track. Collin did great and learned the player numbering system fast. It was a fun thing to be able to teach my son. I have some mistakes in my sheet because I really tried to focus on him and answer all of his questions. I decided before the game and it didn't matter at all to me if he even wanted to do it and I asked him several times if he wanted to stop and just watch or go walk around. He wanted to keep doing it and we scored until the 7th inning stretch!! We had good seats in the upper-deck but needed the "stretch" so after getting a slushy we made our way down close to the field. Rangers games are always great for that -- the ushers stay down by the field and don't really check tickets after about the 7th inning and you can always find seats that aren't occupied down close to the field. We ended up about 15 rows back between home and first for the 8th and 9th innings.

Collin has played little league for several years and really gets the game. His excitement afterwards showed me that he really enjoyed the game and the experience. It was fun to be together and do some bonding!

Just for fun, here are my score sheets:

Dominican notes and pics

We got our pics organized from the Dominican Republic so I thought that I would share a few of them. We stayed in Punta Cana at the Melia Caribe Tropical, an all-inclusive resort. It had a great beach, great facilities (pools, buildings, beach front activities, etc.), but not the best customer service. I would definitely recommend paying extra for the Royal Service -- the rooms are much, much nicer and the service is much better. Overall, a great trip! The second day, Cooper turned to me and said "Dad, I like this place -- it's relaxable." We went because our cousin from Canada was getting married and it was a beautiful wedding on the beach! We had some great times hanging out with the family and friends, learned some new dance moves, and played in the sand with the kids.

Each of the boys have a heart shaped box with one of the rings in them.

The Wedding Crew, mostly from Calgary, Canada.

The bride and groom, congratulations Megan and Derek!