Towards the end of the day, before dinner was ordered, B and I decided that we should both take showers.  We had just washed and changed the sheets on all of our beds.  (Ok, so it wasn’t a completely lazy day.)  We figured we shouldn’t go to sleep that night without having showered.

As part of my day’s activities, I had resurrected an old laptop we had.  So the boys both had computers to play on.  They were both occupied so I dared to suggest we shower together.  It’s been awhile since we’ve done anything like this and it seemed like a golden opportunity.

B and I got ready.  We got into the shower and B adjusted the water temperature.  Then, as the temp was just right… NHL came walking into the bathroom.

Did I mention that we only have one bathroom on the ground floor?  There we were in the shower with NHL just inches from us on the other side of the curtain.  No, we weren’t engaged in any "activities", but it did mean that any hope of "activities" was rapidly dwindling.  NHL wasn’t rushing either, but decided to talk to B for a bit.

I kept quiet at first until B gave away that I was in there.  NHL was surprised but didn’t question why dad would get into the shower with mom.  He probably figured that we were saving water.  (Yeah, saving water.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!)

This seems to be a recurring theme in our lives.  I’ll admit, there are days when I miss our pre-kid years.  In those before-kid times, we could go out to a romantic dinner or just spend some quality time indoors on a whim.  Now, we need to plan when we can drop the kids off at B’s parents house and when we need to pick them up.  Spousal quality time seems all too lacking no matter how much we try to make it a priority.

Still, we’re not going to stop trying.  Having a child burst in on you when you’re having a quiet moment together is just one of the many challenges about being a parent.

Luckily, there are always ideas to be had at EdenFantasys. Perhaps we can take a few quiet moments, while the kids are otherwise occupied, and give each other a massage.  Or maybe we can find some "toys" to help add excitement when we would otherwise give in to exhaustion at the end of a long day.  If we’re running low on ideas ourselves, we can also head on over to EdenFantasys Forums to ask other people for ideas.  Yes, B and I are always on the hunt for ways to maximize our Us Time.

Disclaimer: This post was written as part of the EdenFantasys Ambassador program.  I received an EdenFantasys gift card, but the opinions expressed above are my own.

The above words were written as we planned for a wonderful 10th anniversary trip in Disney without the kids.  Instead, Hurricane Irene hit.  Our original plan was to drive to my parents’ house on Sunday, stay until Tuesday and then fly out leaving my parents in charge of the kids.

Let me repeat part of that.  The original plan was to drive to my parents’ house on Sunday.  My parents’ house on Long Island.  My parents’ house on Long Island that Irene was bearing down on.  Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

Then, we decided to wait for Monday to see whether we should cancel or go.   However, attempting to plan for two very different scenarios (stuck at home for a week or away from home for a week) was too stressful.  Plus, if we lost power, we might not be *able* to cancel in time.  We finally decided to cancel and focus on staying safe until Irene passed.

Thankfully, both Disney and Southwest Airlines were great about refunding our money (Disney) and giving us credit for another plane trip (Southwest).  Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to take a sans kid romantic vacation sometime soon.

My Aloha Friday question was going to be: What is the longest that you’ve been away from your kids?

Considering that our vacation was cancelled, though, I’ll ask: Have you ever had to change your vacation plans due to weather?

Actually, why not answer both?

Don’t forget to enter my Hot Wheels Nitro Speeders giveaway!

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #103

I feel happy at getting to spend a week with my wife without little guys interrupting.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love my boys.  It’s just that sometimes I want to spend time with my wife.  We get very few date nights and even fewer complete nights without kids.  Our only “vacation” without the kids was when we went to BlogHer last year.  That trip, while fun, was hardly a romantic getaway.  We’ve been married for 10 years and we deserve this time to ourselves.

While I’m feeling happy, though, I’m also feeling guilty.  After all, the kids love Disney.  Since we told them what we’re doing, they’ve alternated between begging to go and accepting it sadly.  If we announced tomorrow that it was all a cruel joke and they were coming with us, they’d be the happiest kids in the world.

Along with the guilt is fear.  Not just my fear of flying, but fear of the unknown.  We’ll be leaving the kids with my parents during the week.  My parents have never watched the kids for any length of time.  I’m sure they’ll do a good job, but my mind keeps conjuring up scenarios.  What if NHL has a panic attack?  What if JSL won’t eat anything?  What if the boys don’t behave?  Every less-than-perfect scenario is playing through my mind and it scares me.

Still, I know that we need this trip.  We need time away from the kids.  If we don’t get time off to work on us from time to time, the constant stress could negatively impact our marriage.  And a negatively impacted marriage is *NOT* going to raise our kids well.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you gone on trips without your kids?  If so, have you ever felt this mixture of emotions?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #97

This marked 3 firsts for me.  It was my first Linky and the first post I created a button for.  Most significantly, though, it was the first time I really apologized (in a public fashion) for something stupid I did when B and I were engaged.  You’ll have to read my post to see what it was.  (Hey, you didn’t expect me to just tell you, now did you?)  Needless to say, I thought I was doing the right thing at the time but hindsight (being 20/20 and all) has shown me how wrong I was.

Thus, my Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you ever done something that affected a loved one that you thought was the right thing at the time only to realize later was the wrong action?

After you answer my Aloha Friday question, stop by my LuLu.com Photo Book giveaway and B’s CardsDirect $50 gift card giveaway.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the Linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #58

Would it be too geeky to tell @TheAngelForever “Number 25 as expressed in binary on one’s hand then translated into ASL”? Yes, yes it would.

Unfortunately, B was too tired to figure out a puzzle. I even sent a hint:

Hint for @TheAngelForever, use this site to find out how to express the number 25 as binary on your hand: http://bit.ly/4vLQf0

After this, she continued to resist spending time on my little game as she was busy doing my laundry. Fair enough, I figured. Still, I wanted her to get the message even if I had to spell it out in a blog post…. so I will.

Let’s start with a photo of my hand:

Now, my puzzle first specified that you must express a binary number on your hand. Binary numbers are Base 2. This means that the digits go from 1, 2, 4, 8, etc instead of the 1, 10, 100, 1000 that Base 10 uses. So let’s label my hand with the number each finger would represent

Now that that’s done, we need to count 25 on my hand. This is relatively easy now. 25 = 16 + 8 + 1. So we’ll raise those digits and leave the others down. Like so:

Finally, my puzzle said to translate this into ASL. ASL stands for American Sign Language. The photo above might be 25 in binary, but in American Sign Language it has another meaning. This next image is meant as a direct message to B when she reads this post

Like I said, very geeky. But that’s me!

My Wife

I’m thankful every day that B has been in my life.  She’s such a wonderful and caring person and I love everything about her.  She’ll deny it left and right, but she’s also incredibly sexy.  (Yes, you are B!)  I’m even more attracted to her today than I was the first moment I laid eyes on her.  (And trust me, I thought she was very attractive then also!)  I don’t know what I’d do without her in my life.  So thank you, B for being such a great wife and friend to me and such a great mother to our boys.  Speaking of our boys….

My Boys

I couldn’t have asked for two better kids.  Ok, there are times when they’re getting into trouble when I might think I could have , but still they are good kids.  NHL rarely gets into trouble at school and loves learning.  He enjoys spending time with me, B or just playing with JSL.  JSL loves helping people out.  He’ll actually get upset and shout "I help Dada!" if I don’t need his help.  He adores his older brother and loves spending time with him.  The little copycat looks to his brother constantly for cues on how to act and what to say.  (This does lead to us telling NHL to stop doing something and then immediately having to tell JSL to stop also…. cute though it may be!)  I’m so glad that they love each other and us so much.  Every day when I go to work, I wish that I could spend more time with them and every day when I’m packing up to leave, I look forward to seeing them soon.

My Mother

First off, I’m also thankful for my father, sister and other friends and relatives, but this year I’m particularly thankful for my mother.  Last week, she had a little accident.  And by little, I mean she almost died.  She was in her attic cleaning things up and fell.

Now, their attic isn’t exactly safe.  You get to it via a fold down ladder in the garage.  That staircase is about as old as I am (i.e. over 30 years old).  Once you get into the attic, you can’t just walk around.  The floor of the attic is thin enough that it can’t stand the weight of a person.  You need to balance on support beams which run all along the attic.  Years back, my father actually fell through the attic floor and got wedged in the hole he made.  His legs were dangling down in the garage, a sight which was scary then but funny in hindsight.

Anyway, my mother was up there cleaning near the ladder.  The details are a bit sketchy, but best I can make out, her foot somehow went through the thin flooring and she lost her balance.  She fell headfirst towards the ladder.  She hit her head on the ladder and skidded across the concrete garage floor.  Luckily, she wasn’t home alone.  A family friend was with her and called 911.

It could have been a lot worse.  She fell a total distance of about 9 feet (maybe more) onto a concrete floor.  She could easily have been dead.  Plus, she hit the ladder with her head so she could have snapped her neck and been paralyzed for the rest of her life.  In the end, she had a concussion (blacked out as she was headed for the ladder and came to on the ground), a couple of broken fingers, a torn up ear and scratches all over her face.  She’s very, *VERY* lucky!

She’s recovering slowly, but surely.  She’s still dizzy at times and needs to take it easy for awhile.  However, the doctors’ don’t think that any permanent damage was done.  I’m very thankful that my mother is alive and (relatively) well.

I hope everyone has a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

Strategy No. 1: Reward good behavior

When my wife and I were first married, our lives revolved around each other.  I was the most important person in her life and she was the most important person in mine.  When NHL was born, it was a transition for me to accept that I was no longer #1.  I wasn’t even #2 (my wife was).  I was #3.  As time went on, I felt myself slipping down the ladder of importance even more.  At times, it seems that I only get my wife’s full attention is when I mess something up or don’t do it at all.  If I do something well, I sometimes feel like I might as well be invisible.

I would love for my "good behavior" to be rewarded, however, Mrs. Moore used it to control her husbands actions.  When she got to sleep in one morning, she rewarded her husband’s good behavior (by praising him) in an attempt to get him to "perform properly" more times.  (i.e. Get him to allow her to sleep in more often.)  When he didn’t "perform right" (he inquired about alternating weekends) she got angry that her attempts to control his actions didn’t work.

A proper use of this strategy would involve praising good behavior without expecting your spouse to "perform right."  If a spouse (or anyone for that matter) is praised when they get it right, it helps to offset the times when they don’t and helps the relationship overall.

Strategy No. 2: Keep it brief

In this strategy, she insults her husband’s intellect by assuming that he can only perform an action if she sets up the entire thing (puts everything in place, puts the tools out, etc) and gives him short, simple commands ("Baby gates? Today? Install?").  For a child, yes, they might understand the shorter commands better, but husbands are not children.  We do have adult-level intellects and will resent being treated like babies.  A better modification of this might be to keep your "honey do" list brief.  Don’t ask us to fix every last little thing, especially when we’re not in a position to do it right away, and then complain when we don’t do it all.  Strategy #1 applies here as well.  If you ask us to do 10 things and we do 9 of them, praise us for the 9 we did, don’t ignore those and berate us for the 1 we didn’t do.

Strategy No. 3: The time-out

Here’s where Mrs. Moore got ridiculous.  During an argument, she tried to apply the Time Out principal to her husband and yelled at him "go to your room."  She quickly realized that there was no way for her to force her husband into his room for a timeout.  She just doesn’t have that kind of authority over him.  (Neither would he have that authority over her.)  In the end, she "modified" the rule so that she confined herself to their room for awhile.  Perhaps this is the better application of a "time out."  If you sense that an argument is getting too heated, take a time out.  It is better to cool off for awhile than to say something that you’ll regret later.  (And, if an argument is heated enough, you *will* say something you regret.)

Strategy No. 4: Give quality time to get quality time

In this strategy, she wants to take a bath and he wants to play a game with her.  She tries distraction and various other techniques to get out of it, but finally decides to give him 15 minutes in an attempt to placate him enough so that he won’t object to time by herself.  Now I won’t deny my wife her "me" time.  I need "me" time every now and then also.  However, as a husband, I could also use some time with my wife where we aren’t acting as parents but as just husband and wife.  And no, the time doesn’t need to be spent doing activities that are X-rated in nature… not that those are bad, mind you.

As I said before, I sometimes feel like I’m at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to my wife.  I’m sure she feels the same way with me from time to time.  It would be nice to have a little quality time with each other.  And it would be nice if that quality time was, unlike Mrs. Moore’s, not an attempt to do the bare minimum required to placate me.

Strategy No. 5: Creative discipline

In this one, Mrs. Moore sits down with her "disobedient" husband (guity of the crime of being late) to "figure out together how he should atone and, ultimately, change the behavior."  In some ways, this is good:  They sit down and have a talk about the situation instead of her yelling at him for being late every day.  If the discussion is phrased properly, this can actually be a good thing.  However, Mrs. Moore’s intention was to use this discussion time not to work out their differences, but to bring his behavior back in line with what she demands.  In other words, he’s nothing more than a disobiedient child to her that she needs to lecture about doing what she tells him to do.  The discussion should be a discussion of equals, not a "parent spouse" talking to the "child spouse."

In the end, only twisting the rules around makes them a good idea.  As employed by Mrs. Moore, the rules are insulting and demeaning.  Instead of treating your husband (or wife) like a child whose behavior needs to be carefully controlled, why not treat them like an equal partner in the marriage?  Sit down and talk calmly with them.  Spend some quality, non-parent time with them.  Let them know when things that they do make you happy.  But never, ever, think of them as a disobedient child.

It turned out that I woke up a few minutes before the alarm, but the alarm did blare at the designated time.  I quickly got dressed, grabbed my camera, and headed out.  No, I wasn’t running off to join the wedding party.  Not yet, at least.  I was bound and determined to get the perfect sunrise photo.  Where I live, buildings tend to block the sunrises.  Besides, I tend to be preoccupied with things like getting NHL ready for school, feeding JSL breakfast, and getting myself ready for work.  There’s no time to go outside with a camera and scout around for good shots.  In Charleston, though, free of work and kid time constraints, I was able to go exploring.

I took a few photos, then noticing that the sunrise was blocked from my current vantage point, walked to a different location.  I was a bit nervous.  During the Ghost Walk, we were told by a staff member that part of the grounds were closed and that guards patroled those areas.  I wasn’t sure when the grounds opened, but I figured I’d deal with the guards if/when they confronted me.

It turned out that I didn’t see any guards.  Just steam rising from the warmer water into the cold morning air and the sun spreading color across the dark sky.

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After taking some photos, I returned to my room to warm up.  I got showered, dressed, and headed back out for some more shots.  After these, I got some breakfast and then headed back to my room again to get into my Tux.  I met up with my friend and the rest of the groomsmen.  Together we walked to meet our ride.  A horse-drawn carriage that was to take us to the wedding location.

I took some photos during this ride, but many of them came out blurry.  The horse drawn carriage just couldn’t seem to move smoothly along the bumpy dirt road.   When we arrived at the grounds, the setup was nearing completion and there was a half hour before any guests arrived.  We wandered around for awhile and I took a bunch more photos.  (Yes, I know.  Shocking, isn’t it?)

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One of the photos shows my friend G hugging a giant oak tree.  That’s the Middleton Oak.  They were originally going to be married under it, but some limbs fell off.  The thing is massive.  About 39 feet around.  They estimate that it is between 500 and 1,000 years old.  Most trees where I live are smaller than this thing’s branches.  They even have wires to help keep the limbs up.  I didn’t feel 100% safe standing under it.  Not that it was going to fall or anything, but if it did fall I’d be TechyDad-brand jelly.  It was an amazing sight, though.

Eventually, we headed back and greeted the minister and guests.  In a particularly gut wrenching scene, I handed my camera over to G’s dad until the ceremony was over.  I figured that L wouldn’t want the camera strap slung over my Tux and wouldn’t want me leaping out of the lineup to snap a few shots.

After the ceremony, the professional photographers took our photos while the rest of the guests headed to the reception in the Secret Gardens.  After our photos were taken, we headed to the Gardens.  Here, my first day wanderings came in handy.  I was able to guide everyone directly to the Gardens without getting lost in the hedge maze.  It wasn’t long before I retrieved my camera and started shooting again.

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After the reception wound down, I headed to my room to take off my dress shoes.  I hadn’t worn those shoes since B and I got married and now I remember why.  They hurt my feet!  After some resting, I decided to venture out again.  This time, I headed for the stables.  I had snapped a few shots of them the day before, but this time I went back in search of more up-close horse photos.  I wasn’t disappointed.  The horses came right up to me and, in some cases, even posed for photos.  I think they’ve done this before.

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After the horse shots, I went back to my room for a short while.  Then it was time for the costume ball.  I’ll save that story for another post, though.

If you asked me back in college, I would have placed money on him being the one who would have gotten married first solely on the fact that I was so clueless about dating and G seemed so calm about such things.  I was lucky, though, to meet B.  She made things that previously reduced me to a twitching pile of nerves into a walk in the park.  (Get your minds out of the gutter.  I’m talking about simple things like asking her out, having a dinner with her, and stuff like that.)  G met L after B and I were married.

G has been a great sounding board and advice giver through the years, and I wish him luck in his marriage.  G, if you’re reading this, remember that any time you need marriage advice, just give me a call or e-mail.  And when/if you two have children (as I’m sure your parents will begin asking from the minute you say "I do"), feel free to call/e-mail B and I with questions.  Having two kids gives you some insight into these things (at the very least, it gives you knowledge of where online to look for answers ).

To start you out, here’s some unsolicited advice:

Know when you keep your mouth shut.

You’re sure to have arguments.  All couples do.  I actually think that any couple who doesn’t have any arguments at all has something seriously wrong with their relationship.  Some arguments are bound to become heated.  But know when to stop talking and just walk away.  Yes, talking is important in a relationship, but so is knowing when to stop and cool off before more is said.

Know when and how to compromise.

A marriage is all about compromise.  Two people cannot coexist without finding some middle ground.  You’ll find yourself doing some things that your spouse wants to do that you (by yourself) wouldn’t do.  Meanwhile, your spouse will find herself doing things that she normally wouldn’t do if you weren’t involved.   Finding that middle ground will be easy in some cases and more difficult in others.  Sometimes you will give in 100%, sometimes she will, sometimes it will be 50-50.  The important thing isn’t who compromises more (no keeping score!), but that you both compromise.

Find some "you" time, Find some "us" time.

Many things will go on in your life.  You’ll need to work on your house, pay bills, work, etc.  It will be really easy to go about every day as if you were just two people sharing a habitat.  Make sure you take time out every so often to have "us" time.  Go out to dinner, see a movie, whatever you both enjoy.  As long as you are doing it together (hey, minds out of the gutter!), it counts.

By the same measure, make sure you don’t lose yourself in the relationship also.  The perfect marriage (IMO) is one where both people merge into one unit, yet keep their individuality.  So you might want to have a poker night with your friends.  Meanwhile, she can have girls nights out.

And a warning about your future.  When you have kids, it’ll be harder to schedule "us" and "you" time.  That’s natural (and you might not get any "us/you" time for the first few months),.  Just make sure you keep doing it, even if it is at a reduced frequency.

What advice would you give to a newlywed couple?