The Big Pack

So it was finally time to get to packing. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that my wife and I moved 1000 miles south to enter a graduate program shortly after getting married. Five years later, with one graduate degree already earned and another just one dissertation away from completion, we’re heading back up north for a thousand mile journey with a beautiful son we picked up along the way. Things are, indeed, good. What is not good is moving. It’s not something I was prepared for or happy to do. While the destination of … Continue reading

Reading the Stageplay

I’ve always been an entertaining kind of guy. Some have interchanged “entertaining” with “annoying” but you get my point. It’s probably why I got into music, magic, juggling, and eventually theatre. I’ve always enjoyed making people laugh, smile, and generally enjoy themselves. A few years ago I was fortunate to be in yet another play portraying yet another character. This particular character had a higher voice than my own, a bizarre way of putting often surprising words together, and an even stranger accent. All of this was rolled up into a character in (you guessed it) a comedy. The comedy, … Continue reading

The Wrong Order

Order is an important thing. Whether you’re talking about how to put a hamburger together or how to put on your pants, the ordering of how things are done is important. If I zip up and button the pants before I put my legs in, I’m going to have trouble. While this seems obvious to must of us concerning our daily routines, it is not obvious to children. Our son has recently demonstrated his sometimes confused sense of order to tasks that we take for granted. Years of simply doing things have habitualized certain behaviors and tasks into things we … Continue reading

The Wet Rabbit

My first year of graduate school found me on stage in a musical. While things went fine (I can, in fact, sort of sing and dance), it was a surprise to my wife and I that an (at the time) MFA playwright would have his evenings occupied by performance rather than writing. At any rate, it was an experience. I’m not going to qualify it as either good or bad, so we’ll just leave it at experience. Not that I hadn’t sung or danced or acted before (I’d done a lot of it), but this place did things differently. Let’s … Continue reading

Washing My Hands

One of the few things I remember doing while alone as a child was pretending. I constantly pretended that I was on a boat, or driving a car, or that my stuffed animal could fly, or that the tree in the backyard was a monster. I think pretending is a very prominent quality in all children. In part I think it stems from mimicking the world around them. Over the time I’ve spent with my son watching his development it seems that he learns things by trying to do what we do. Talk and he tries to repeat what you … Continue reading

Type, type, type

Our son has a new favorite activity: typing. He loves typing. I’ve written before about his love of all things technology. One of my proudest moments as a father (and yes, this is sort of strange) was the day I caught him trying to plug the cord for a keyboard into the back of a monitor. He knew that the two went together and that the keyboard made the monitor do things. A proud day for Dad. Ever since then I’ve known that our son loves technology. I suppose it is no surprise that he does. I’m not very old … Continue reading

The Longer Book

When I was applying to graduate schools I had an amusing cover letter. The cover letter described my hatred towards reading for most of my life. Perhaps “hatred” is too strong a word, but for the majority of my life (through high school and even into college) I didn’t enjoy reading. Grade school’s “library time” found my in a corner with a picture book biding my time until we got to leave the boring/silent place. High school found me reading what I was asked to read and nothing more. I really disliked reading. In fact, the only time I realized … Continue reading

The Injuries

I’m old. Well, I’m not that old, but I’ve forgotten about being a child. I’ve forgotten about being a kid and having fun. I’ve forgotten about the repercussions of trying new things and being frequently physically active. I’ve spent the last five years either on a stage (acting), in the house (directing, dramaturg-ing, etc.), or behind a book or computer screen learning and doing research. My life has revolved, largely, around sitting in a chair. As I spend more and more time with my son I spend less and less time in the chair (or, perhaps, I just spend the … Continue reading

The Piano Player

Ever since we moved away from family we missed one thing (other than family) more than any other: music. Not recorded music, which is in abundance, but live music. And not so much the ability to go out and here some live music (as we can from time to time) but the ability to produce it ourselves. One of our specific goals as parents is to have an environment of art surround our children. Our son is reaping those benefits as much as possible at the moment. A couple of years ago we purchased a relatively nice keyboard. It isn’t … Continue reading

The Freezing Park

Recently it was freezing cold in our part of the great state of Texas. The wind whipping across the flat landscape only made it feel colder. Mom was at work and our son was wanting to have a fun day. Despite the cold we bundled up and headed out to the park in the mid-morning. While the sun was out there was no heat to speak of and the park was deserted. Not a single child to be seen. No one was jogging or out walking their dog. It was, to be quite clear, very cold. Our son had on … Continue reading