smacky and bucky

Who has two thumbs and got a bilateral vasectomy 11 hours ago? This, ouch! This guy!

The three-year-old: "I'm going to clean up. And then I go to school. And then (starts a little dance) I go to the River and play with my toys and see Grandpa and Grandma! I can't wait!!!"

My wife just described the scene above to me in a chat and I am melting.

So 14 days into the new year we're hit with the news that our kids' preschool may close at the end of May because the church it is in may close up and get sold off.

That would suck for so many reasons:

• The school is literally less than two blocks from our house.
• Our oldest (3) has been there two years already and loves the teachers and has made friends.
• Our youngest (1) has been attending the one-day-a-week class in order to transition into the school. 
• If it closes, we'll be going from a "legacy" situation to probably competing with others to get the kids into classes and dealing with waiting lists. 
• This place is reasonably affordable. We can't really afford to pay more elsewhere right now.
  
  
  Not great news to receive. Please cross your fingers for us, okay? I know in the big scheme of things, this isn't exactly the hardest thing to deal with, but routine is so important at the 3-year-old's age and moving to another school will be upsetting. First world problem, huh? But still a big deal.

Yesterday was one of those rare days when the wife and I both had great days and everything just meshed and we were a team and both productive with work and kept the kids happy and at the end of the day we both felt it: A day when everything went right. It’s hard to explain, but it felt really, really nice.

So it's another year. 2014. I still feel tired a hell 24/7. I still have yet to sleep all the way through the night in years. Yet I'm still pretty happy, feeling pretty damn lucky, and pretty on top of things, more or less. Went back to work two days ago after two weeks off, and though I was dreading it, I'm handling things. The cold freeze is a pain, with our living room being 61 degrees when I woke up at 5 this morning. But I read an interesting list on a parenting blog, and it mentioned the coping skill of saying "At least..." As in, "yes, the living room was 61 degrees, but at least our pipes haven't burst, and we have a house to live in." In some way it sounds like you're making yourself feel better by comparing yourself to others less fortunate, but I think in this case it's more abstract. For example, tonight the 3-year-old had a huge screaming meltdown. But then he calmed down and had dinner and snuggled with me while I read him a few stories, then fell asleep.

It's all about seeing the silver lining. About taking a moment to appreciate things. Another example: over the holidays, I was trying to get pants on the same 3-year-old, and he was laughing and wiggling and kicking and generally trying the heck out of my patience. I was getting really annoyed, but I took a moment to take a breath and look at the moment itself: a happy, healthy kid is playing a game with me. My happy, healthy kid is playing a game with me. Yes, I want him dressed, but in the big scheme of things, in the tiny moment in time where this is happening, I have to pause and smile. And I did. I smiled and laughed along with him, which made his smile even broader, and we connected as two beings, as father and son.