Dad's Log

This morning, I wanted to share a current event. Danie left to go visit a friend in Kansas last night. She will be gone until Sunday night. Earlier on in our relationship I would have had a pretty big emotional flip just from being apart from her. Not that I enjoy spending time away from her now, I just want to support her independence from the family as much as possible.

The reality of this importance surfaced last night.

It goes without saying that for her to be independent she had to leave me with all the kids. No big deal. I love the kids and hanging out with them can be as enjoyable as a rock concert (see above picture). One could argue I enjoy it more than the kids. Yesterday, Alex went to spend the night at a friend's house and Mia was stuck home with me to help out with Keegan.

Keegan and I played car versus rubber-duck in the bath tub. Then we had ourselves an exciting sword fight in my bedroom. He's great at blocking attacks and even greater at hitting me with the wooden sword. It hurts. Still.

Play time fun aside, the real meat of importance surfaced at bed time. Keegan is used to Danie putting him to sleep at night. He goes down for naps all the time for the babysitter but will not go down, easily, at night for anyone else. The experience last night was quite the emotional one. He didn't scream at the top of his lungs all night, he tried to plead with me. Tried to pick me up from laying on the bed and kept repeating "Mom. Dad." He really did not want to go to bed like that. Needless to say, he didn't really have a choice in the matter. It was difficult for me only because I wish I could hug him and say, "Everything is alright man, mom will be home in a couple of days--let's sword fight in our dreams."

I feel that its these situations that allow family relationships to really build. I am grateful for the opportunity to help my best friend have time to herself and for me to get closer to the kids and install the level of security they need. I wanted to share these ideas with the supportive audience that you are, in hopes of documenting such an important event in my life.