'She Probably Won't Be a Star Soccer Player'

It was a throwaway line, really. One of those things that someone adds to the end of an explanation as a way to lighten the mood. It was harmless.

"She probably won't be a star soccer player."

Our pediatrician, whom we love, said this about Aurora at her one-year checkup. I'm not sure I'll ever forget it.

Aurora, that sweet little set of cheeks up in the photo, has always been a little behind. She was born six weeks early, sat late, crawled late (really just started!), and will walk late. Probably.

We knew this was a possibility and maybe even likely because of Aurora's prematurity. We assumed she'd catch up by the one-year mark because that's what everyone said at the time. She hasn't. She's close, but she's still a bit behind.

"Yes, she has something we call low muscle tone," the pediatrician began. "It's not bad or anything. She'll be fine. It's just that she probably won't be a star soccer player."

I didn't tell Bridget at the time (still haven't actually, so she's probably just learning this now), but that moment was one of my toughest thus far as a parent.

The truth is I don't need Aurora to be a star soccer player. I mean, I'd like her to be because I love sports and soccer. (I've written about this before.) But if she never kicks a ball into the back of a net, I'll be just fine.

What bothered me the most was that there was a door that might be closed to her.

I'm not naive enough to think my daughters will be the best at everything they do. Or even the second best. They'll be good at some things and not so good at other things, but I want, more than anything, them to have the opportunity to try to be the best at everything. I want them to be able to put their minds and hearts into something and succeed at that thing.

That attitude may seem selfish and perhaps a little bit callous, depending on the reader. That is not the intention. I realize that some kids never have that chance to walk across a soccer field or any field, for that matter. Some kids are born with physical or mental limitations. Some develop those limitations as they grow.

Aurora may develop limitations, too. In fact, there's a chance she'll never catch up. That reality is unlikely, but it's possible.

And that's one of the hardest things about being a parent. You have this thing (or things) that you love more than you could ever imagine and, for a lot of their lives, you're stuck on the sidelines watching and hoping. You have no control.

Understanding and embracing that lack of control is something I need to work on as a Dad. So what if she won't be a star soccer player? Maybe she will be! Or maybe she'll at least be an average soccer player. But if not, she'll be a great painter. Or a talented writer. Or a curious scientist. Or a captivating teacher.

One thing I know for sure: She'll be something. And, no matter what, soccer star or not, I'll be on the sidelines cheering as loudly as I can.

The Right Response to 'Dad, My Tummy Hurts.'

Annabelle wasn't feeling well. Her "tummy hurt a lot."

It was my job, on a recent weekday off from work, to figure out exactly what that meant. I found it incredibly challenging. And I'd love some advice on how to get better at it.

First, the tummy situation.

Annabelle had gone to bed not feeling her best, so we expected she might wake up at less than 100%. We were right. Bridget and Aurora were off at a physical therapy appointment (more on that next Sunday), so it was up to Dad to figure out the next step.

Is she really fine? Do I call the doctor? Do I take her to urgent care? With a 3-year-old, I learned, those questions are really hard to answer.

"Annabelle, do you think we should go to the doctor?"

"Yes," she said.

"Are you sure? The doctor isn't fun, you know. It's not like Daniel Tiger. It's a lot of waiting. Are you sure you have to go?"

"Yes," she said. "My tummy hurts."

"A lot or a little?"

"A lot."

"So on a scale from 1-10," I began, "with 1 being no pain and 10 being so much pain, what would you say you are?"

"Yes."

At this point, I figured the smart thing to do was to at least call the doctor and explain the symptoms. They'd help me. So I called and left a message for a nurse to call us back.

In the hour between my initial call and the nurse's call, as you might guess, Annabelle started to feel a lot better. Her tummy was "fine and didn't hurt much anymore."

"Are you sure? We can go to the doctor and get it checked out," I said.

"No, I'm okay." (That's when we snapped the picture above.)

The nurse called and I smoothly explained the situation:

"So, I think, basically, um, I think we're fine now. I called because my 3-year-old said her stomach hurt a lot and she was having some issues yesterday. She's had some symptoms (sparing stomach-related details here) in the last couple days, but says she really feels much better. I just didn't know if I should bring her in or not bring her in or what ..."

"Okay," the nurse said. "You just want to look out for (stomach-related details) ..."

"Great, thanks," I said. "Hey, listen, I'm not sure if you can help me, but do you have any advice on how to reason with a 3-year-old? She's a really good communicator, but it's not like she can rationally think about whether she should make a trip to the doctor. I feel like I'm flying blind here."

"Yeah, that's tough," she said. "The FACES pain scale is a good tool. Maybe try that."

The nurse was incredibly nice and helpful, as nurses tend to be, and I thanked her for her advice. Now I'm wondering if you have any. Annabelle, aside from pneumonia and a two-day hospital stay a couple years ago, has been a pretty healthy gal. I realize that won't always be the case and I'd like to get better at knowing when to choose option 1, 2, or 3.

Any advice on how to respond to 'Dad, my tummy hurts'?

Five Useful Things I've Learned in Five Years of Marriage

Friday, Bridget and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. And we celebrated with a frozen pizza, some asparagus, and a couple miniature Peanut Butter Cups. Take that, romance!

Before you call the Sad Police, we're doing a real celebration next weekend. No, not Paris, like the photo above, but some time away for just the two of us. At least that's the plan. Plans have a way of going awry when you have a young family and live in New England.

For example, we had planned a nice dinner out Friday night, but we ended up with the round cheesy delicacy (Newman's is actually pretty good, if you're in the market for one) because of the stupid snow. God, I hate snow. It's so stupid and awful.

Anyway, that whole "plans often go awry" is something I've learned several times in the last five years. But it's far from the only thing I've learned. So I thought I'd step back, take stock, and share five useful lessons from our first five years of marriage.

One note, before we dig into the list, is that we're admittedly early in our marriage, depending on your perspective. I don't pretend to know anything about being married for 10 years, 15 years, or 50 years. I hope to someday. But I do think I know a thing or two about being married for five years. So here goes:

1. Reactions are more important than actions. Bad things will happen in a marriage; they are inevitable. Milk will spill, diapers will blow out (if you have kids), and tragedies will sneak up on you. On top of that, there are things about your partner that will annoy you. One of you will be cleaner. One of you will like to sleep in. And so on. These things will happen and, mostly, they are beyond your control. But you can control your reactions. Those reactions, which are hopefully empathetic and compassionate, can go a long way toward making a marriage happy.

2. It's okay to go to bed angry, sometimes. I think we've all heard the opposite of this advice several times in our lives. Five years ago, I would have subscribed to it. (We can talk through anything!) Now, I think the advice is wrong and potentially harmful. Space is good sometimes. Sitting with your thoughts is good sometimes. Yes, you should always communicate, but not until both partners are ready to have a conversation.

3. Compliments are critical. More than likely, your spouse is the most important person in your life. That's certainly the truth for me. Your spouse's opinions, even if it's not always obvious, matter a great deal. And a thoughtful, well-placed, "Hey, you really look nice today" on a rushed weekday morning can make all the difference in the world.

4. It's important to try new things. We're all products of our lived experiences--this is the way my family does holidays, these are my favorite foods, this is how I spend my free time. Staying true to yourself is, of course, important, but marriage isn't a time for being stubborn or bullheaded. Had it not been for Bridget, I wouldn't like brussels sprouts, banana peppers, or yogurt. And I wouldn't love my dog, because I wouldn't have a dog. I've found that flexibility is better than firmness.

5. Marriage is hard. Duh, right? Well, maybe not. A lot of us (myself included) had a vision at one point that included finding the perfect person, building white picket fences, drinking lots of expensive wine, and letting the soft wind gently tickle your hair. So far, except for the first item in that list, that hasn't been my experience. (We are getting a new fence this spring, though.) Marriage takes time, effort, and attention. To me, it's like a big project at work. (Sorry, ladies. I'm taken.) If you ignore it or think someone else will handle it, it's probably not going to succeed. You need to work at it and nurture it. How? Communicate. Be spontaneous. Inconvenience yourself. Put in the time.

Above all, it's about picking the right person and then growing with that person. I'm so lucky I did. And that I am.

Nine Things I Learned During My Week as Solo Dad

Bridget went to Las Vegas for work this past week (at least she claimed it was work ... cough ... blackjack ... cough), which meant I was on my own with Thing 1 (Annabelle) and Thing 2 (Aurora) from Monday to Friday. It was challenging. It was also, by most measures, successful.

But yes, I'd lead with challenging.

Trying to balance work, daycare transportation, reading bedtime stories, potty duty, middle-of-the-night duty, dinners, lunches (why don't toddlers eat lunches?), breakfasts, meltdowns ... the list goes on ... is tricky. If you are a single parent, you are a far, far tougher person than I am. You, simply put, are better than me. But I digress.

Yes, it was challenging, but I learned some useful lessons that I thought were worth sharing. (You, of course, can be the judge of that when you get to the bottom of the list.) In no particular order, here are nine things I learned in my week as solo dad:

1. If you hear your child crying in the middle of the night and you wait several minutes, well, nothing will happen. You'll eventually realize it's all on you. I'm not sure why or how I thought Bridget was going to come to the rescue on Monday night, but, not surprisingly, she didn't.

2. It's incredibly challenging to get the appropriate amount of toothpaste on your toddler's toothbrush with one hand while she's holding said brush. Too little, there's no point in brushing. Too much, paste is everywhere. It was like watching water buffalo mate--or at least I think that's an apt comparison. I've never seen such water buffaloes mate.

3. If you break even the smallest routine, your senses are heightened. I love routines, but they were obviously in the trash this week. I found it exhilarating to eat dinner at 8:30 on Wednesday and take the recycling out to the curb well past 9 on Monday. (That sentence is lame, even for me.)

4. No matter how many times you explain to a 3-year-old why Mommy is away for work, it'll never completely sink in. I heard "Why is Mommy in Lost Vegas?" no fewer than 79 times.

5. No phrase is scarier as a Dad alone with two girls in public than, "Daddy, I have to go poo poo."

6. Grandmothers (and family support) are invaluable. This is obvious in theory, but it's super important in practice, too. Help with daycare transportation, starting dinner, and allowing me to indulge in a mid-week gym trip were just the bee's knees.

7. When one girl is crying really hard, the other girl will start crying, too. You just have to sit there and let the cries wash over you like a cleansing rain. They will eventually stop. Life will go on.

8. Cereal is okay for dinner. Multiple times.

9. Being a solo dad leaves very little time for hobbies, like blog writing, which means you sort of mail it in with a quick list of observations ...

March Sadness

One year, after Syracuse lost in the first round, I sat with my head in my hands, incredulous at what I'd just seen on the TV. I threw my hat across the room in disgust and proceeded to sulk for the next several hours. It led to a spirited argument with my girlfriend at the time. (It sounds like I used to be a real prince, eh?)

Another year, I took a three-hour lunch break (very unlike me) and gorged myself on bar snacks with a couple colleagues. I'm actually not sure I even went back to work that day.

March Madness is, perennially, one of my favorite times of year. I look forward to it, to dust off a well-worn cliche, like a kid looks forward to Christmas morning, consuming game after game, reading analysis after analysis, and feeling a special kinship with Joe Lunardi and his bracketology magic. Selection Sunday, and this isn't really an exaggeration, is basically a holy day for me.

This March, not so much.

In fact, between Thursday and Friday, the two most exciting days of the tournament (and maybe the entire calendar year), I watched exactly three minutes of action. And that's just because Bridget and I were out to dinner when the Kansas-UC Davis game happened to be on at a bar across the restaurant. This year, I hastily filled out a bracket a couple days before tipoff, closed my browser, and got on with my life.

Which leads to me a question: What the hell happened to me? 

Kids is the obvious answer. My attention, pretty much all of it, is elsewhere. Instead of watching conference tournaments, I was watching Doc McStuffins. Instead of Sunday afternoon hoops on CBS, I was swimming in what I can only imagine is an almost completely urine-filled pool with my now 1-year-old princess. Parenting ... it's fannnnntastic! (It is, really.) And that's probably part of the answer.

Another potential answer is that my interests have changed. It happens, right? Every morning, I open up my Timehop app on my phone and see what I was doing that day a year ago, two years ago, etc. But mostly and surprisingly, I've stayed focused on the same things. Sure, fads come and go, but things like podcasts, Bruce Springsteen, running, and college sports have been constants. This past week, no surprise, my Timehop was filled with status updates about brackets, images of mouth-watering adult beverages, and one word over and over: Cuuuuuuuuuse!

That leads me to the third potential answer to my bold question: Syracuse, my beloved Orange, didn't make the tournament this year. (The committee screwed 'em!) It's true that they are the one of the main reasons I follow college basketball, but, in reality, I love everything about the game. The passion of the players. The campus crowds. The rivalries. The iconic announcers. Together, it all warms my orange blood-filled heart.

So what then? Why don't I really care this year? I'm not positive, but my suspicion, though, to get a little emotional for a second, is that it's the first March Madness I've ever watched without talking to my childhood best friend first. More times than I can count, we filled out our brackets together, arguing about the strengths of the ACC vs. the Big East and trying to find this year's Cinderella story. We grew up playing basketball together and loved everything about the game -- playing it, watching it, dreaming about it ...

"It's getting a little dusty in here," as Marble liked to say, so I should probably stop. I just really hope I love the madness again next March. I'm pretty sure my friend would want want that.

A Second Chance at a First Piece of Cake

Annabelle hated her first piece of cake. It was a cupcake, actually. She looked at it, poked it a little, knocked it over, and started crying.

Fail.

For me and Bridget, mostly. We had been so excited about the experience. Our first baby! Her first piece of cake! It was going to be awesome!

But it wasn't. I'm pretty sure she didn't even take a bite.

Aurora gave us another chance, though. And man oh man, did she ever rise to the occasion. Sure, there was a little uncertainty, a little poking, a little thinking. But then it was on.

This is one of those moments when moving pictures are much better than words, so I'll let the next 2 minutes and 47 seconds tell the story:

In full disclosure, I ate the rest (most) of the piece after Aurora manhandled it. It was delicious, moist chocolate cake. No shame.

Our Little Shoplifter

Annabelle keeps a lot of things in her floral backpack. (Kids like to put things into other things, if you didn't know.) She fills her overflowing carrier with necklaces, stuffed animals, fake food from her play kitchen, tubes of ChapStick, original artwork, and crayons.

Oh, and stolen tubes of toothpaste.

We found that last item last Saturday night, as I was searching for a missing flip flop. I didn't think much of it until I went upstairs to talk to Bridget.

"That girl has everything in her backpack," I said. "I just found a tube of toothpaste!"

"Ha. Wait, what kind?," Bridget replied.

"I don't know, a kid one," I said. "Bubblegum princess, I think. You must have bought it for her at some point."

"No, I didn't," she said. "And we were looking at toothpastes yesterday in the drugstore."

Uh oh. Big uh oh.

The next morning, I approached Annabelle, who was busy at work with her backpack. I stooped down to her, looked her in the eyes, and held her hand.

"Honey, when did you get this toothpaste?"

"At the drugstore," Annabelle said. "Yesterday."

"Who paid for it?," I said.

"I paid for it," she said. "I got it for my sister."

I bit my lip. Hard. As you can imagine, the emotions were swirling at that point. She did something wrong because she was trying to do something nice. And at that moment, she knew she did something wrong, which is particularly tough for Annabelle.

"That's so sweet," I said. "But we can't take take things that aren't ours -- from stores or from other people. We're going to have to bring it back."

She stared at me, not really understanding. "Ok ..."

"Don't worry about it, honey," I said. "It's just an honest mistake. We all make mistakes."

So we drove to the drugstore, just down the street. It was early on a Sunday morning, so it was empty. Two women stood chatting behind the front counter. Annabelle and I walked over, hand in hand.

"Hi," I started. "So we got home last night and found this toothpaste in our backpack. We forgot to pay for it, though. We took it for our little sister and we're sorry."

The woman smiled, of course. "Ohhh, it's okay," she said to Annabelle.

"And we'd like to pay for it now," I added, thinking I was in an after-school special.

Annabelle handed the woman $20 and, as she did, I realized how easy it was to make the mistake. Transactions, nowadays, are a swipe of a card or a scan of an app. Why wouldn't she think she could just take it?

We left the store -- Annabelle clutching a bag with the toothpaste inside -- and went out to the car. We talked about feelings for a while and Annabelle said she felt "sad." I told her it was just a mistake and that we all make them sometimes. She said that, next time, she'd ask Mommy and Daddy if she wanted anything at a store.

Will the message stick? Who knows? Kids, especially kids that are 3 and curious, learn dozens of new things every day. This one seemed meaningful, though.

I didn't want to end the experience on a sad note, so we went up the street to the bakery. Annabelle picked out a cupcake -- a chocolate one with a snowman on top -- and paid for it, with a $5 bill.