Facebook Bragging on Your Kids Is Not Annoying

One thing I've read a lot of recently on Twitter and Facebook, are the comments of people who don't have kids (and at least have stated that they have no wish to have kids) saying that they wish people would stop posting pictures and videos of their kids.

To that I respond, "Okay, will you stop posting pictures of your food?"

Here's the thing. You have something you care about, you talk about it. Unless you're mute, have no arms, or don't have access to one of those Stephen Hawking chairs, you talk. You communicate about things that matter to you.

People may complain that their Christian friends (myself included) post at on of Scripture verses. I'll quote a Christian athlete on that topic:

"If you're married, and you have a wife, and you really love your wife, is it good enough to only say to your wife 'I love her' the day you get married? Or should you tell her every single day when you wake up and every opportunity?

"And that's how I feel about my relationship with Jesus Christ is that it is the most important thing in my life. So any time I get an opportunity to tell him that I love him or given an opportunity to shout him out on national TV, I'm gonna take that opportunity. And so I look at it as a relationship that I have with him that I want to give him the honor and glory anytime I have the opportunity. And then right after I give him the honor and glory, I always try to give my teammates the honor and glory.

"And that's how it works because Christ comes first in my life, and then my family, and then my teammates."*

Roll your eyes if you want because I just quoted Tim Tebow. The man has a point. Now, I'm not comparing my love for my kid to my love for Christ, those are a little different. But the point is, you're going to talk about what matters to you. Parents shouldn't feel like they can't talk about their kids because other people don't like it. If you don't like it, don't follow their twitter account and unfriend them from Facebook.

With that said, I understand there are people who want kids and are unable to have them and that's a sensitive topic. If that were the case, then hey, I'd try to be sensitive to that, but at the same time, I'm still going to post things my kid does and pictures of her acting funny. I still have family who follow/friend me and want to see the pictures or hear the stories.

I do have a few Facebook friends who only post about their kids, but hey, maybe that's all they have going on in their life - their kids are the only highlight of their day. And yeah, sometimes it gets on my nerves to see that, but I do it, too. Or maybe they'll one up a story of my kid's with a story of their kid. Hey, I get that, too. Maybe they aren't trying to one-up, or be rude, I just took it that way.

So delete those comments and go on with your day.

I'm done now.



*Tim Tebow on ESPN's First Take

Its My Win, Too! (This Time)

Recently a friend and I got into a discussion via Twitter about how her son's potty training accomplishments felt like her accomplishment as well. She had said it was weird how our children's accomplishments sometimes feel like our own.

It isn't really weird, I told her, because in a situation like potty training, its very much her accomplishment as well.

Her son didn't go off to college on a basketball scholarship and a few years later deliver an MVP trophy and NBA Championship to their home. He pooped! To a parent, these are both very proud moments no doubt, but one is clearly more the son's accomplishment than the parent's.

It got me to thinking, though. At what point do we, as parents, really stop taking credit for the "wins" our kids experience? And if we continue to revel in the victories, we should be willing to suffer in the losses as well.

How horrible of a parent I would be if I only bragged about my daughter's trophies and was never around to let her cry on my shoulder when she experienced loss?

Yesterday, Evelyn went just a little bit of number two in her potty. It wasn't the full thing, but I felt like I'd just won a Super Bowl and saved planet Earth all in the same moment. And it was only a little poop!

I don't know if Evelyn will play any sports some day, but chances are if she takes up tennis or softball I'll be there helping her learn the sport and passing on any piece of knowledge I may have about the sport. If her goal is to be a scholar, I'll do my best to pass on knowledge to her that will allow her to pass all of her classes. In other words, no matter what she does, I plan on investing in her accomplishments and helping her through any failure along the way.

Someday, she'll get a win on her own. She'll hit a home run, pass a test, or something else that will have nothing to do with me at all. That'll be a win that's all her own and all I'll get to do is grin and be proud of my kid.

And a part of me will still think I had something to do with it, and its my win, too!

Singing

Dear Evie,

Daddy knows he's not exactly Peter Furler or TobyMac, but when we sing "This Little Light of Mine" it is not polite to stick your fingers in your ears and shout "All done!"

Sincerely,
Daddy

Copy Cat

Every night my wife puts our daughter to bed and, together, they say their prayers.

Lately, whenever I put her to bed, Evelyn has started saying "Again" after her prayers when I put her to bed. So, typically, I'll just say another prayer. The other night, however, when Jennifer was putting her to bed and Evie said "again" my wife had her say her own prayers. It went something like this:

She folded her hands, closed her eyes, and said, "Dear Lord, Amen."

Maybe I sound arrogant, maybe I'm biased, but I like to think that God heard that and completely understood and loved that prayer more than anything else he had heard that night.

Unless some other guy's kid somewhere did something similar. I bet God liked that, too.

I'm sure some cynic will point out that Evie is only two and probably doesn't understand what she was saying, or Who she was talking to. Maybe that is true. Perhaps this is just the ramblings of a proud Christian dad going on about his daughter repeating something she saw.

Kids do that, you know. They copy us.

There are kids out there who say things their parents say, do things their parents do, and think a certain way because their parents think that way. Just the other night at work I heard a kid who couldn't have been older than five swearing at his little brother and calling him stupid. The brother had to have been around three or four years old. I have no idea what the younger brother did to deserve such a verbal lashing, but I saw the root of it as we walked up to the house next door.

Upon seeing us, the mother came out and began swearing at the kids and telling them to get inside the house. The older brother said something in return and the mother said, "Boy, stop acting stupid and get in here." [I edited that a little because I don't use the language she used]

So yeah, be cynical if you want, but I would rather my kid copy us praying and believe it meant something rather than my kid copy something else... less desirable.

Just Eat!

How is it that if it has icing or chocolate on it, my kid makes it vanish like David Copperfield, but if it so much as has pickles on it, she thinks it's a toy?

Dear Me

I wanted to write a big, personal letter to my self from fifteen years ago. Something about how great life gets, there's some wonderful surprises just around the corner, how things may feel rough now but just wait a few years. You know, all those lame things we tell ourselves we would tell ourselves if we had a chance.

If there was a chance to write a letter, it would actually probably sound more like this.

Dear Me,

I decided to not give you winning lotto numbers or anything that would actually be awesome, but here's a bunch of lame advice you'll need to learn along the way that'll actually make you good at being an adult.

Proceed with blah blah blah.

Sincerely,

30 Year Old You


That's lame.

Wait, I got it. I'll just write a letter to myself from a week ago, so I still get the wisdom of being 30 and the other perks of writing myself a letter in the past.

Dear Me,

Wednesday, June 6th. 19-30-33-48-59-PB27. This is not a cypher. You know what to do. Just take off work Wednesday. It'll stink.

Sincerely,
You in a week.


Well, that was selfish.

Besides, I'll never get a chance to read that in the past.

I got it.

Dear Me in Ten Years,

How's it going? How many kids you got now? Evie's what, twelve? I bet she's getting difficult as she's reaching the teenage years. Money is probably still tight, eh? Look, for what its worth, I know you've seen better days and you've probably seen worse days. You're 40 and you're feeling it. Maybe not. Hopefully, you started getting yourself in shape and never stopped - that was my goal at 30. If you weigh over 300 lbs right now, punch yourself in the face. Literally. No, harder. Because 20 year old me would be punching me in the face right now for letting him get so fat. So this time around, just do it if you didn't follow through with it.

Look, I don't have any winning lotto numbers - at least none that could be useful to you. I don't have anything you don't have, except a very clear memory of what is happening today, this week, at this time in your life. A time that, in ten years, is going to be a little fuzzy and mixed up with things that happened twelve years ago and eight years ago.

But here's the deal. If you look around at your life and feel like you've failed, the only way that would happen is if you look at your kids with regret and time missed because of work. You've really messed up if you look across the room at your wife and feel like you don't even know who she is anymore. So what if Back to the Future 2 lied to us and you don't have a flying car or a hoverboard or clothes that air-dried themselves? You've got a family that you love, right? Because if the answer is no, then you, sir, are not the man I want to be.

Things may get hard. But remember the words we read in High School from Ernest Hemingway - "A man may be defeated, but not destroyed." You're not destroyed if you're reading this. Hopefully, you're not defeated, either.

One question, though. Did Jack ever stop peeing in the floor?

Sincerely,

You

Ps. As you were writing this, Evie came walking up just to hug you. Your heart melted.

The Monster That Eats Our Car

A Mother's Day story from the point of view of Evelyn Grace Williams.

I sat in the back seat of the automobile, strapped in like a mental patient, listening to the tall people babble on about how the rain has sullied the paint of their new car.

Psh, "new." Its older than I am.

New. Ha.

They had tried to lull me into a stupor with a nice dinner, interestingly enough eaten to celebrate the day of my mother becoming a mother.

Hey, I thought that was my birthday, but nobody got me any presents. What a bunch of... wait, what are they talking about?

I distinctly heard the bearded one mention the Carrash.

No.

He couldn't.

He wouldn't.

I mean he just scrubbed down this piece of junk a week ago. I don't care if the birds did go poopy all over it, its still plenty clean in other places.

Maybe I should explain. The Carrash is a giant monster that lives in this big brick building out by all the stores. He tries to lure in small children by posting stuffed animals of cartoon characters like SpongeBob and Bugs Bunny outside his noisy maw. Somewhere inside the beast's belly lurks an image of my only real friend, Elmo, but I have to remind myself that this is another facet of the beast's trickery.

This beast devours our car, and then proceeds to poopy us out its back. The car looks cleaner, sure, but at what cost? Everyone knows the beast is using its disgusting acids to burn away the car dirt, and its only a matter of time before the acids eat away at the protective barriers that save us from becoming an actual meal.

The bearded fool has just reached in his wallet and gave a minion of the beast his money card.

Oh.

This is not good.

My brain starts going into over time as I begin running through every possible scenario. Every single time I've not wanted to eat a meal, I've always said "all done," and the tall people have taken my plate. When I'm tired at the park, I say, "all done" and we go home.

It'll work. It has to work. "All done" is the only magical incantation I can use. Its all I know.

We're entering the monster's mouth and a girl starts spraying some liquid all over the front of the car. Obviously she is basting us for the feast.

I begin chanting slowly, "all done. all done. all done."

They don't hear me. Or perhaps the incantation needs more magical force behind it. Or perhaps the monster is too powerful. No, I can't allow myself to think like that.

"All done. All done."

Oh no, the blue teeth are sliding over the front of the car and over the roof. We're going in!

"All done! All done!"

Now the extra set of teeth, the ones that spin, are starting to rush over the sides of the car and terror breaks me. I begin to scream the magic words, "ALL DONE! ALL DONE! ALL DONE!"

Nothing. We pass into the monster's stomach where his farts dry the car.

And there's the image of Elmo, taunting me from within the great monster's intestines. We pass through, becoming the monster's poopy, again narrowly escaping death.

The tall people are fools. Some day the protective barriers of the car won't protect us.

Someday... I'll be better prepared.