Repost: Bless the Child?

Every other week my blog will feature a reposted work. I had been a contributor on two different sites that have since closed or no longer include blogs. I will be reposting pieces that had originally been featured on one of these two sites.  

This was originally posted July 6, 2011

Every night at bedtime I bless my son. 

I had talked to my professor’s wife through email about attachment and parenting, specifically pertaining to children who had been adopted.  One thing she mentioned was that my professor blessed their daughters every night.  I thought this would be a good practice to incorporate into how we/I parent Isaiah.

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Preparing for Easter

This semester I have a personal trainer as part of BoxerBoot Camp, a program that matches exercise science majors with employees at the university where I work. On Monday my trainer contacted me to see if we could postpone my workout until at least Wednesday because she had schoolwork to deal with.

I happily agreed to put off the workout she had planned.

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Exceptional, Except

It may have been on the way home from India, maybe it was a trip to California, all I remember for sure is that Papa, Mama, and Isaiah were in an airplane.  Our boy was unhappy and loud, as small children often are while traveling. We did what we needed to do to get through the trip and convince him to calm down. My wife processed the experience publicly through Facebook, sharing something like:

“I hope I’m not a bad parent giving my kid this much chocolate on the airplane”

The resounding response from our friends and family was that, even for great parents, exceptions are permissible during airline travel.

It would be chaos, anarchy, and foolishness to live without guidelines, standards, and even rules. We should all aspire to The Good. Parents should not give children large amounts of chocolate.

On the other hand, all of these rules need to allow for exceptions. Compassion, necessity, or wisdom will reveal times when the rule must be suspended.

…Like on an airplane with a three year old.  

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Repost: Losing Grasp on My Dominion

Every other week my blog will feature a reposted work. I had been a contributor on two different sites that have since closed or no longer include blogs. I will be reposting pieces that had originally been featured on one of these two sites.  

This was originally posted May 30, 2011

For the last day or so my lovely wife has been gently reminding me of the things I need to be doing.  One of those things is this blog. 

I didn’t really have any amazing inspiration so I had been stalling, but that’s not the whole story.  The other half of the problem is that I’ve recently become obsessed with a particular game.

Dominion is a card based strategy game by Rio Grande Games.  It was bad enough that we played it with some friends of ours, then bought it and an expansion, then bought three more expansions, then played it with more friends….but then I found that I could play it online.  No set up time. No counting cards.  No double checking rules in the rule book.  No getting anything else done.

Oops. 

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