Snotty kryptonite

Why does taking care of a kid with a cold sap your energy so thoroughly? When I  told Max that he might be too tired to go to Storybook and he agreed, I knew he was legitimately sick. Of course, the steady rivulet of snot and the coughing also gave it away. He was up since quarter to 6 this morning (as well as my poor wife who gets the early shift with the lad). My friend Roy let me in on the secret that kids sleep less when they’re sick, and it’s both reassuring and disheartening to see him proven right again and again.

Meeting Max’s needs today was actually a little easier than normal, with the cold subduing his natural rambunctiousness, but I still feel like Samson after a buzzcut. This is not to imply that I normally have epic strength or the ability to smite an army with the jawbone of an ass. I occasionally have the mouth of a jackass, but that’s not the same thing.

The other thing I have to keep in mind is that my immune system is a fan of bandwagon hopping, so my fatigue is probably my own cold rolling in quietly. Hopefully, the spicy sate beef soup from Ben Thanh will give me the vigor to return to robust health tomorrow.

Time flies-no wait, time drags.

Oh there it goes, switching back to ‘flying’ again. Parenthood can teach you a bucketful of  mind-bending concepts, if you can find enough brain power to absorb the lessons. For instance, the way that you experience the passage of time is almost entirely a subjective affair. It’s all perception, man.

I remember that during the first months of fatherhood, time would stop when Max was upset. It took a very long time to understand that there is no reason to hurry into panic when a baby is crying, because they can cry for a very long time and be just fine. It also felt like I would never get a full night’s sleep again, and that had a fair amount of desperation attached to it.Now that we are 2 years down the road and sleeping (fairly) well, it seems silly to have been so forlorn about sleep in the past.

If I could send any piece of advice back to the brand new dad version of myself, I’d tell him that things are going to hurry by and he should just relax and ride it out. Getting trapped into a mindset where you think your woes are endless and eternal is a stressful way to live.

I’m still surprised when we reach a milestone in his development, as if some part of me keeps assuming his current stage is the finished product. The first time I realized he hadn’t worn a pull-up all day, I was astounded. Figuring out that he could use a normal fork and spoon was also a revelation. So things are speeding by, like the summer that just rocketed past, and it’s okay to look forward to the upcoming changes.

That’s not to say that time still doesn’t drag occasionally: when he’s high energy, low sleep, and full of mischief, the minutes  crawl by. Right now, my poor wife is trying to entertain our little daredevil as he bounces off the walls like a gremlin on a sugar high. I better go rescue her.

Learning How we learn

It is fantastic to have a walking experiment in the human learning process taking place right in front of me. By watching Max I’m getting a chance to really think about how I learn or improve my own skills (and I do have skills, mad skills). My new theory is that we use a pattern of alternating effort to finally establish the right amount of effort for a given task. Let me explain.

Max had  a stellar day on Wednesday, in terms of his potty training. He spent the whole day accident free. He told me he needed to pee while we  in transit and he held the mighty torrent at bay until we made it to our destination. Oh, how that poor tree rues the day it ever crossed paths with his full bladder.

The following day we returned to an earlier, messier, stage of development, and as I cleaned up the latest puddle from Mr. sprinkles, I recognized this sort of temporary regression as one of his patterns. Whenever he has a breakthrough day in some aspect of his cognitive and emotional development, there is always a  followup day where he takes a few steps back.

The lesson I’m going to apply to my own life is that any task or skill cannot be defined by a single success. If something goes fantastically well once, but is much less impressive on the subsequent attempt, don’t get discouraged. By repeating the task again and again, you start to narrow the gap between your best success and your worse failure until you reach the middle ground competency.

(Short version:

1.Try, try again

2. Be prepared to suck occasionally.

3. Even when you suck, you’re getting better.)

ADDENDUM: This post brought to you by Roy, provider of delicious cheeseburgers. All hail Roy!