My toddler is a teenager

My daughter is already showing signs of teenageritis - and she's not even two.

Her shoe shopping expedition was cute. That's not what I'm talking about. This problem is getting ugly. She LOVES phones.

Sure, it started out cute. In fact, Grace learned to crawl by placing a cell phone just out of her reach. The love grew from there. With her imagination, everything became a phone: her hand, shoes, crayons, sweet potatoes. She hold them up to her ear and carry on a conversation with who I assume was Mickey Mouse.  When she started walking, she would pace with a phone (or sweet potatoes) to her ear, waving her free hand from time to time to emphasize the REALLY important gibberish point she was making. She would pause to hear the other end of the conversation, laugh, and then continue her gibberish. Like I said, cute.

Now, like her father, she has become picky about technology. Her Leap Frog cell phone is too baby for her. Her deactivated adult cell phone doesn't hold a charge. She wants - nay - must have the real thing. She even knows how to unlock an iPhone to get to the good stuff. If the Wife or I accidentally leave one of our phones on the coffee table (for 2 nanoseconds) Grace will get a hold of it and is in heaven. Until we take it away. Then the flood gates open. Not much phases this little girl, but take a real cell phone away from her, and it's like you told a 5-year-old that Santa isn't real.

Anymore we practically have to leave the room if one of us adults wants to make a phone call without her asking to "Talk GiGi. Talk Bop Bop." Over and over again.


Yesterday, we gave in. The Wife was talking to her mother (GiGi to the kids), and Grace wanted to say hello. So, the Wife handed her the phone, and off she went on a nonstop gibberish conversation about who knows what. She may have recounted our entire Thanksgiving weekend, or relayed the latest gossip from the church nursery. She was ecstatic to have someone on the other end of the phone. Cute. But like a teenage girl talking to a boy, when we told her it was time to hang up, she got upset and drug the goodbyes out for at least another three minutes.

"Vuv oohh. Buh-bye ... Hi Gigi. Howyoudoingt'day? Vuv oohh. Buh-bye ... Hi GiGi!"


Maybe I shouldn't be so worried now. Yes, she may be displaying signs of being a teenager, but thank God, she isn't actually one yet. The conversations are harmless, they're with people we love, and we're right there.

I should probably save my worrying when she's 15 and "Biff" calls.

Saying Goodbye

The family we had in town for the last couple weeks leaves today.

While our house will be back to "normal," I'm sad to have to say goodbye. I know that Grace enjoyed having her two cousins around. She finally had pint-sized playmates besides the dog almost 24/7. Timothy had more than enough people to hold and rock him, and The Wife and I had other adults to talk to (simple things, really).

There's more to this goodbye for me though. What kept me from falling back asleep this morning - besides Timothy wriggling in  my arms fighting off his own sleep - was the realization that this goodbye means I'm closer to the one I've been dreading for a while now.

In the not-to-distant future I'll be separated from my family for a year.

A whole year.

Those words are like a punch in the gut every time I think about them.

I've deployed before. My wife and I were barely six months into our first year of marriage when I went to Afghanistan. Half of our first "honeymoon" year was through bad phone connections, e-mail, and grainy video chats.

While that deployment was certainly difficult at times, this is going to be even tougher. I'm going for twice as long and now there's two kids who grow and change every day. That's 365 days of change I'll miss.

I know that my wife and kids will be well taken care of while I'm gone, and I'm going to be busy most of the time, but I'm sad knowing I'll miss Timothy's first steps, Grace's ever-expanding vocabulary grow into full sentences, and the fact that The Wife has to balance everything on her own. She didn't ask to be a single mother, and yet my service is forcing that for a while.

Don't get me wrong though. I'm proud of what I do, and my wife supports and helped make the decision that I should stay in the Marines. It was a decision made with lots of prayer, and we believe this is where God wants me right now. We'll make it through, just like we did at the beginning of our marriage.

But goodbyes suck.

Whether it's goodbye after two weeks with your sister and her amazing family, or it's goodbye to the people that complete your life.

Goodbyes suck.

Adult Conversations

I am one of those parents. It's not that I planned on it, wanted to, or can change. But I have become one of them. When talking with other adults, including my wife, I can only talk about my kids, parenting techniques, and the finer points of baby bodily functions.

I simply do not possess the capability to hold a conversation for any length of time about anything else. Take, for example, sports. We watch them in this household on a regular basis. We root for the home team. We even catch the occasional SportsCenter. I should know enough to hold a five-minute conversation about last night's game. However it goes more like this:

Coworker: Did you catch the ball game last night?

Me: Sure did. Great game.

Coworker: How about that homerun in the seventh!

Me: Oh yeah, it was awesome. As soon as it happened Grace did the cutest thing! She heard the crowed cheering on TV and started to clap and cheer herself. We love that she enjoys sports so much. We're such cool parents!

Coworker:

Me: We even had Timothy in a baseball-themed onesie. That is, until he soaked it so much with drool we had to change him.

Coworker:

Me:

And that's about how the conversation ends for me. Awkward silence. Fortunately for the coworker, someone else usually overhears the attempted conversation and jumps in to rescue him with batting average stats, the amazing performance by the relief pitcher, and the lousy ump.

Talking with fellow parents isn't so bad. It seems we're all stuck in the same conversation rut. However my wife and I still have friends who don't have kids yet. Thankfully, they're nice enough to still call us to get together, but I can't imagine how boring we sound.

If you think I'm complaining about all this, I'm really not. I love talking about my kids. Besides my faith, I'm finally passionate about something to the point I can talk about it all the time and not get bored. Good for me. Maybe not so much for you.