Bitter Sweet

Today October 29, 2010, our 10 week old son Cole Franklin Childress went to his first day of daycare. Shannon started her Summer break in May of 2010, carried Cole all Summer, attended about 4 days of school in August and went on maternity leave having Cole August 17, 2010. She took an extended leave to spend as much time as possible but today that togetherness time comes to an end.

This will be the first of many "Bitter Sweets" for both Cole and Emmerson because I know that as time goes on both will make the transition to kindergarten, to Jr. High, High school and then the dreaded day they leave for college. In between these school landmark periods we will deal with bitter sweet moments of first tooth to first lost tooth, first time spending the night at a friends house, first boo boo to first broken arm, first time they realize mom and dad aren't as cool anymore and they try to avoid us. These are life filled moments that we as parents dread but know they are coming.

Poor Shannon had to be "bad parent" in both children's cases to take them to their first day of day care. I remember the day Emmerson had to go. Shannon's school year was at its beginning and we had agreed to take Emmerson a day early to acclimate not only Emmerson but Shannon and myself to the new change. I unfortunately had an early morning conference call and was unable to take her that morning; however it was on my mind that entire day. Shannon cried like most mom's but she knew deep down that she was not cut out to be a stay at home mom. There is nothing wrong with that. Some mom's enter marriage with the life ambition of being a stay at home mom, some, on the other hand, know they would completely lose their minds. Its all in how God made you, I explained to Shannon feeling guilty about the decision. One great thing about Shannon's occupation, however, is that as a teacher she has so much time off with the kids during the key times of the year. The extra income definitely helps, but if she ever decided to be a full time mom we would with out a second thought make that sacrifice.

Back to Cole, again I had a work obligation that required me to be in early (I didn't plan these by the way), and again Shannon had to bear the burden of yet another first daycare experience on her own. This one was not as hard on her as it was with Emmerson, partly because she has been through this before, but I think mainly because she has seen the the great benefit day care has given to Emmerson. Emmerson, and now Cole's day care is a great institution where we know our kids are deeply loved. Emmerson is always at the top of her class, and always been promoted before her peers. She is an extremely smart kid for a three year old. Now I know every parent will say that about their kid, but its not just me. Her teachers are amazed of her abilities and we strongly agree a lot of it has to do with her social and educational interactions at daycare. Although we are sad that Cole is not in our care at home through the week days we are excited to see what he will learn and grow to be in daycare, it is again bitter sweet. So though our hearts are breaking, as they do in moments like these, we smile as we look forward to the tomorrows. Because tomorrow will be a great ride.

-Steve

Why a Blog?

I have been wanting to pick up blogging for two main reasons. One, I don't want to miss what all is going on in my day to day life. Everyone says life happens in a blink if an eye and we are not to miss one moment of it. So just like I chronicled my childhood through "Lucy Memoirs" I want to chronicle this crazy journey I'm on with my wife and two children. Documenting as much as I can so that 10, 20, 30+ years from now I will be able to look back and remember times gone by. I see this as a great tool to upload memories for years to come.

The second reason for restarting this blog is to figure out the here and now. What I, as a Christian man, go through, the battles I fight, the beauty I see, and the unanswered questions I have. I'm very blessed to have a heavenly Father walk through this journey with me and for the wonderful instruction manual He gives me to figure out this crazy ride. These blogs may or may not benefit the reader but these will be things that define who I am and ways to look back on to see how God brought me through. In addition I think it will be pretty cool for my now 10 week old son Cole to see how good ole dad handled situations, lived life and how it could possibly give him direction for his trials as he becomes a man, father etc.

So here we go, a start of something new, something else to clutter my already cluttered world. However, unlike most clutter in my life I see great purpose in this blog. I see this more of an investment. Its kind of like a picture album pulled off the shelf and dusted off. You open it and floods of memories just hit you at once as you venture back in time to childhood memories, families past and present, and reminders of how good you actually had it. From a family standpoint photo albums are pretty much a thing of the past. We rarely print out pictures and paste them in a book. Today we take digital pictures, upload them to an album on our computer, share them on social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, and share our lives with a click of a button. Beyond that we take digital videos and can share them the same way. No more boxes and boxes of old VHS tapes or newly burned DVD's everything is now saved on the world wide web.

So I blog, put all of my history here where it is safe from any kind of natural disasters and can be accessed anywhere and at anytime. Now I will be freely blogging on my own time without my wife's "proof reading", as she did for me in "Lucy Memories" so please excuse the mountain of misspelled words and grammatical errors. For this I apologize but there again, is that stuff really all that important in casual blogging such as this? Nevertheless its time to start blogging!

-Steve