Expectations

I am breaking a rule today, I am writing about The Littlest Buddy, and for anyone that reads here that is part of the special needs community.

**If you are relatively new around here, The Littlest Buddy is diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder called Smith Magenis Syndrome. You can read about what it is HERE, and how we reacted to it HERE, and after all that if you are compelled you can go HERE and purchase a copy of Do Fun Stuff, a charity album that was made to raise money for new research. More about that later.

Cole and I recently had the pleasure of discussing The Littlest Buddies development on the phone with Dr. Ann Smith for a few hours. Ann is one of the original pioneers of SMS research and one of the geneticist's that made the discovery in 1982 of the deletion in chromosome 17 which is the culprit for all of the problems centered around SMS-- she has dedicated her life to putting this puzzle together. From the beginning of her research and caring for the first wave of diagnosed cases of SMS, Ann used to run a support hotline out of her own home, and would stay on the phone with frustrated and confused families, she would do what she could to navigate this syndrome with them. She continues to this day, despite her insanely busy schedule to make herself available to families in need. It's truly an amazing thing to get to speak to someone that intimately knows SMS. Let me say it again, it's absolutely incredible to have that kind of access to a Doctor that not only cares deeply about the person affected by Smith Magenis Syndrome, but also about the family. She has a warmth and a humor about her that makes you feel like, it's all going to be okay, we are in this together.

After speaking to her and hearing that she quite liked the way Cole and I had been handling some of The Littlest Buddies rougher moments in life, she felt like some of this information could possibly help other families. I have no idea if anything we do could help. It all seems silly when we do it, but it has worked for us. I think like most families navigating life with a person who has special needs there are many times throughout a day where you have a moment where you think to yourself, I can't believe this is what I have to do to keep things calm.

The Littlest Buddies entire life is based on rigid expectations that he places on his day, his night, his rituals. If something doesn't go the way he had envisioned or prepared his mind for, there is no telling what his reaction will be. His tantrums tend to stay on the light side, meaning just a lot of crying and carrying on, a small amount of hand biting and slapping, but nothing bloody. We have been lucky in that way. In our family, one of the things we were having trouble with was the "pop in" but really whether you have a special needs child in your family or not, who really likes a "pop in?" The older The Littlest Buddy gets the more he likes his day to go exactly the way he expects it to. So a sudden unexpected visit can really rile him up, so a quick impromptu visit would often leave our house in complete chaos for a couple hours. Most people know at this point that they have to call ahead, and it is very simple to just get LB excited about a visitor over the phone, this way he has time to prepare himself for a new person. We put him on the phone when they call, and he invites the person over, and it puts him at ease. As for the people that still manage to just randomly stop by, we created the do over. It started as a joke out of pure frustration. Cole had come home from work early, and just walked in the door, and LB freaked! He is slapping his head and saying, "no, no, no, no, no, no, mama." So Cole just looked at him and said do you want me to do that again? and he said "yes" through a bunch of tears. So she just walked right back out the door, stood outside for a few seconds, and I said: "I think Mama is home?!" and then she walked in the door, and he was happy, and yelled out, "Mama's HOME!!!" As genuine and sweet as if she had just appeared for the very first time.

So we tried this with anyone that popped in on us. We ask them to please get out of our house, and go back outside and we do a "do over." How this actually works I have no idea. I mean he is standing there and watches the person walk back out the door, stand outside on our steps and wait, and then walk back up and knock again. The key here is that we all pretend like this person just showed up, so we are all like. "OH hey!! Look who is here." Whether it makes sense to us or not doesn't matter, it calms him down instantly, and it's just based on him knowing exactly what will happen, and then it happening exactly that way.

Here is an example of how important expectations are to The Littlest Buddy. At night when he is the most anxious and wired, he looks for anything he can do to keep himself calm. He gets his calm of course from knowing the result of an action, so he started clicking his light switch on and off. Each time he clicked the switch, the light did exactly what he expected it to do, it went on and then off, and so then he decided this felt so good and soothing that he started doing it hundreds of times in a row. Non-stop. For hours. This felt better to him than sleeping did. So the lure of the switch, the comfort he felt from that clicking was better than sleep. Nothing we could say to him would make him stop doing this. I would lay in bed wide awake night after night listening to him click the light switch on and off. I finally had to go the hardware store and buy covers for the light switches to keep him from doing this so we could all sleep again.

As frustrating as it was, it gave us the best insight into what is soothing to him. It gave us the ability to manage his days better, knowing how crucial cause and effect is to him. Looking at his days with a set of his expectations attached to it is a huge alley to us. So really it comes down to planning and communicating well. A reoccurring theme amongst SMS families and something you often hear families vent frustration about is the feeling that they are "trapped" in a routine, or they are a "prisoner" to the schedule, they can't escape the rigid schedule they have to keep to avoid major disruptions, so simply making lists with LB and helping him plan his week, and then being sure to follow up on the planned events is a major help. For every new experience we build into the day, it has to be balanced by a certain amount of his comfort activities. Visual lists, and calendars, and post-it notes make these new things real events that he can prepare for. Simply building verbal excitement and lore of a proposed new thing doesn't do as much good, as showing him on a calendar, or going over a list he helped to write. The Littlest Buddy also has a cork board with all of his favorite things attached to it, Cole painted the words to his favorite things on wooden door hangers, like "ice cream" and "Wii Bowling" and "Swimming". We found out that having a physical representation for the things he likes to do was key in using his likes and interests as an alley to navigate the day. If he can physically see it be taken away for bad behavior, or granted a privilege for good behavior, he is more careful not to lose it, or diligent to gain it back.

This all feels preachy to me, writing this stuff out, anyone with a special needs child has their own way of managing a day and a night. What works for one family, will never work for another in most cases, because the kids are just so different. I do know that all of this boils down to making sure that a balance is found, and creating as many happy moments in a day as possible. The laughs, and the hugs, and the sweet moments that occur in a day are so essential to sanity and strength.

Most people have the ability to recover from broken promises and disappointment from unfulfilled expectations, regardless of how easy it might be for us to move on from something not going our way, you still feel it in your head and your gut, and it stays with you. I am still feeling like a huge failure from a built up expectation I had from a job I lost, it has been months, so I keep all of that in mind when dealing with LB. When his emotions seem the most illogical and frustrating, I just remember that he is acting out emotionally exactly what I am feeling inside my guts when something I was really planning on and hoping for doesn't happen. My personal reaction to it, just might be to be kind of a dick, to be silent, stay in my head, be grouchy. LB just happens to react with emotional outbursts that he can't control. So give him something he can control and it calms him down.

I mentioned at the top I would say more about the charity album "Do Fun Stuff" it has almost been a year since the release, and after that one year mark, I will be donating the total amount of money earned to Dr. Ann Smith to help fuel along a case study she is in the midst of. It feels so tremendous to be able to hand over funds that will go towards hard research. So there is still a little time left before that album turns one, and if you are just now learning about this album. Please take a visit and you might just like the album enough to buy it anyway, regardless of the charity. There is also a place to make a separate donation of any desired amount located on the official "Do Fun Stuff" widget, it is a link to PRISMS who has been accepting donations on behalf of this fundraising effort. it's right there at the bottom of the monster, on the right side. Every little bit helps, and every cent goes to the charity.

For those of you who helped make this album a huge success, and helped to spread the word, a "Do Fun Stuff Vol. 2" is indeed in the works. I decided that I wanted to see what a release would do closer to the holidays :) So stay tuned as that develops.

If anyone is curious about how other families are dealing with SMS you can also read HERE about a wonderful family that is figuring out these challenges as they go day to day and doing a really fantastic job of keeping their spirit and making their kids lives as rich as possible. Their Little boy is around LB's age and it is spooky sometimes how much they look and move the same.

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Burn

Since we have been on the topic of keeping our kids safe, happy, and healthy around here the last couple days, and it is obvious that we all have that in common no matter what approach we are taking, or what we are dressing our kids in, or letting them watch on television, the bottom line is we love our kids passionately and do our best at raising them. Besides the princess culture issue that has been discussed the last two days, I also wrote of my concerns about food in the same posts, and touched on my worries about eating, and so... I wanted to share this project that was sent to me last week. After one viewing of this project teaser I was really taken by the story of the farmers in Haiti.

After Haiti was devastated by earthquakes, America sent all kinds of help. How many people had heard the story of starving farmers in rural Haiti rejecting some of the aid they received from the U.S. that came in the form of 475 tons of hybrid genetically modified seeds from the corporation Monsanto? How many people followed the story of the Haitian people rising up and burning these GMO seeds in protest? What do they know that we don't? How many farmers here in America wish they had that same power to reject these seeds now?

THIS PROJECT is a great example of how quickly things can turn, how rapidly happy nostalgia from our pasts can change, the simple act of eating food has become cloudy and complicated in America. How did the consumer get in the position where they were denied the right to know what goes into a food product? What was once "just fine" for us, isn't the same for our kids any longer.

GMO Film Project Sizzler from Compeller Pictures on Vimeo.

How great does this look to you? I certainly want to know more about it. This is something that I don't want to just shrug my shoulders at and assume everything is going to be totally cool with what's going on with our seeds. So if you are interested at all, I am encouraging anyone that shares that same curiosity for a closer look to visit this film makers Kickstarter page for more info and to donate to the project so this film can be made in its entirety. TAKE A LOOK HERE. It's important thoughtful work and I am really happy to see the story of these farmers in Haiti being told, people who know suffering in a way most of us will never know, but still will not just buckle to the power of Monsanto.

**To wrap up thoughts on this Princess debate that has been going on, I want to offer this up, this blog is largely my voice just trying to figure things out as they come up, as life unfolds. If I read a book that stirs me up like Cinderella Ate My Daughter and I start thinking heavy on a subject that I might not have ever worried about before, and then write about it, I'm not telling anyone that I am right and they are wrong, I am sharing my experiences as they unfold. If like minded people read here, it might be something that they enjoy reading and doing their own digging around on the subject. If I make mistakes, I blog about it, if I feel like the wool is being pulled over my eyes, I blog about it. If I feel like I drank too much Kool-Aid, I blog about it. The same goes for this GMO project that I featured here today, I don't know very much at all about it, but I really want to. I am intrigued. I am hungry for answers and theory and absolutely want to know what I am really buying at the grocery store. Undoubtedly there will be people that read here that know a lot about it, some that think it is safe and we are silly to fret, others that think it is the devil, and both sides will insist they are right. This is the internet, the second you give an opinion or take a stance, someone is there to tell you that you're wrong, and in the worst cases tell you that you're an idiot. I made a choice to give an opinion about something, and explore a touchy subject, we are not all going to agree, but I do thank you for being polite during the discussion.

Just like the Princess debate, this food topic is a serious and important one to me, and over the months and years of raising kids, I will be learning what i can and making the best decisions I can along the way. Do our best. That is what we do.

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About Yesterday

I need to start by being very clear.

Tessa has a favorite toy. She loves it. It's the closest she ever got to self soothing, no thumb sucking, or blankets, or bottles, or pacifiers, she never used any of that stuff. No idea why. It was all around waiting for her to pick it up if she needed/wanted it. She didn't. What she did do about seven months ago, was start carrying around a little brown haired doll, that wears a pink dress, and she named that doll "Honey." you should hear Tessa say "Honey" it's the sweetest thing in the entire world. Tessa plays with dolls, she has quite a few of them. We put them in the house with the rest of her toys for her to discover and make choices about. Tessa also wears pink. She owns a good amount of pink clothing, it's in her dresser with all the other colors she likes to wear. She has been pictured here wearing the color pink many times. You may have seen her in it.

I'm mentioning this, because my post yesterday had absolutely nothing to do with Tessa not being allowed to wear pink, or not being allowed to play with dolls. Nothing. Just wanted to be clear on that one.

Yesterdays post obviously sparked a lot of thoughts about raising girls, and I certainly wasn't writing a blueprint for anyone to follow. I definitely wasn't saying that I had answers, I was actually just talking about the questions that I have been asking, expressing worry and grief through humor, and sharing the path I took to get to some good info that I found. So I was kind of bummed to realize that most of the comments weren't about the actual post at all. I feel like most of it was the result of people not really reading the post, but simply reacting to what they perceived as an attack. It was like someone yelled "FIRE" in the comment section and then everyone else that came along was like, "what?! A fire?" and then started talking about what THEY did the last time they were in a fire.

Yes, the post yesterday did spur some lively discussion in the comment section, and thankfully so far everyone has been very polite, but it's getting defensive in there for sure. As the comments kept rolling in late into the night, my suspicions were confirmed and it became clear that people weren't commenting on my post anymore at all, they were commenting in defense of their own lives, and writing in defense of their own choices. Which made me sad, because it became really obvious that some people weren't reading at all, or in some cases, weren't getting what I was trying to say at all. It's hard for me to be clear, when I am using blogging to work things out. This is a place that thankfully feels safe enough that I can think out loud when something pops up that worries me about parenting, or my career, or my marriage, and hopefully what happens by blogging here is that I learn from others as the thoughts really take full form. So I am writing all of this to say that I will be happy to continue the discussion in the comment section of that post further today, IF it is actually about the post, and not about how wonderful and happy you and your children are playing with dolls, and how you have remarkably turned out "just fine."

The funny thing about all of this discussion is, that Cole has completely separate reasons for not wanting the princess culture in Tessa's life, and she is also hoping that it isn't embraced, however if she were to write a post on the topic it would be entirely different from mine. I just happened to get lucky that I married someone that also wasn't excited about the culture, but for her own very different reasons. So it isn't entirely fair that she is all entangled in this with all my opinions. To put it simply she hates it because to her it is just terrible taste, the clothes are poorly made, and look cheap, to her it's just straight up tacky. I am sure that's not going to go over well with some people, before you get hurt feelings, or feel attacked, she isn't saying pink clothes are tacky, she is talking about the princess gear, most of it is cheap material, poorly made, sold just as inexpensive as they can sell it, easy for mass consumption and priced low enough that it is hard to say no to when kids beg for it. Whether you like the stuff or not, you can't deny that. It is made for one purpose, to offer up the illusion of high quality at a cheap price. It's just her opinion that you may or may not agree with. I have never heard Cole pass judgment on other people for their choices, but at the same time, she isn't going to put Tessa in something that she thinks looks like crap. So she doesn't do it. So in this case although we have different reasons for not liking it, the result is the same. We avoid it.

As for the dolls and toys and fairy princess side of things, Cole would just rather be outside, on a bike, in the pool, at the lake, in the grass, so it isn't so much that she hates playing princess, she just never slowed down for it. She doesn't think about the evils of the princess culture and where it all leads, she just wants to play with her kids, and so her influence over the children is not based on parenting books, or stewing over worry like I seem to get caught up in. This is precisely why Cole is so good for me. Why she keeps me so grounded and so very calm. (she had the word "calm" inscribed into my wedding ring) So far we have made a good team, because there has been a good balance.

I would be happy to hear about anything related to this discussion that does not involve the idea that there is nothing to worry about, because you turned out "just fine."

The most consistent theme in the comments have been about balance and I couldn't agree more, and I appreciate anyone that takes the time to stop and read here, and to chime in on these kinds of discussions. I will offer up an apology to anyone that felt attacked or like I was trying to make you feel bad for your choices. It's tough to write about things like this without offending people. We are all so different and there is no perfect all knowing one way of doing any of this. With that said, it doesn't mean that tough topics shouldn't be talked about.

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The Mountain Lion Panther With Rattlesnake Arms

I walk around with a load of fear when it comes to the kids and keeping them safe, and the big list of worries keep getting bigger, it's to the point now where I can't even sit down and have a meal without worrying about all the GMO's and cancer-sugar loaded up in all our food. It's just hard to relax lately, anyone else feeling like this? There aren't many activities left where I can just sit back and relax without some scary news story rising to the top of the experience. Look at this lake picture I have posted from yesterday for example. Tessa was stomping around the shoreline amazed at the sand squishing between her toes. With every stomp of her foot and each little puff of sand that would stir up and then settle, it would elicit an adorable grin, and all I could think about was, "I wonder how hot that water is right now? What was the water temperature in the lake at today? If it got above 90 then there is a good chance that the super deadly flesh eating amoebas are active and swimming into that little cut she has on her foot?! And OH MY GOD GET HER OUT OF THE WATER!!" Can we go one summer in Florida without the scary lake amoeba story hitting the news?

So yeah. I keep all of this paranoia and the skittish voices contained in my own head as much as possible, I squash it all down, try and process the real stuff, like teaching Tessa how to swim and be safe around water, but really high five myself everyday for how much I don't let the fear rule our lives. She gets to play in the lake, and she has so much fun she doesn't even notice the white knuckles and nervous grimace, but I don't usually voice my fears to the kids or force them in a certain direction from things I perceive as potentially harmful.

UNTIL...

Recently a little four year old girl has come into Tessa's life, she has been around Tessa now for the last week or so, and it wasn't until this other little girl came around that I really noticed how tight of a ship I have been running on what Tessa is being exposed to. Ya see this other little girl came rolling up on her bright pink Disney Princess bike with a love for dolls, and Justin Bieber, and adores pink and fluff, and anything and everything princess related. My fear was confirmed one day after swimming the other morning, this little girl had a towel wrapped around her shoulders like a cape, and she began to spin around in sloppy circles and proclaimed gleefully, "I'm a princess!" and I said, "Oh really? A princess? And what does a princess do? What is her job?" and she said after some very hard thought... "To be pretty!"

So as I watched this joyous little girl spinning and giggling and pretending to be a princess-- I could feel my grip on Tessa get a little tighter. It was like I was walking along on a gorgeous mountain trail with my daughter enjoying the view away from the dangerous world we had left behind, and we suddenly came across a mountain lion panther that had giant fangs, and rattlesnakes for arms.

Of course it didn't help that I had just finished reading Cinderella Ate My Daughter on the plane ride home from CA. This book is a must read for parents of little girls, and it just backed up everything I had ever worried about since writing THIS POST about my annoyance with the pink culture when Tessa was just a few weeks old. So all of this was fresh in my head, and like some crazy test from the universe, this little girl drops into our life, and she is armed to the teeth with barbie dolls and princess powers.

The other day I ended up watching both the little girl and Tessa for a couple hours, and I ended up losing count of all the things that I was saying no to, "Sorry, Tessa doesn't watch the Disney channel." or "You know what, let's play something else, Tessa is too little to play that game" How do you explain to a four year old that Tessa is too little to play with princess toys? or "No sorry, Tessa doesn't eat candy for snacks." It was honestly like I was being tested, and everything I have been trying to avoid and keep out of her path showed up in the form of a fun little four year old girl that wants to play. All of the sudden I am this old jerk slapping hard candy out of her hand and covering her eyes and ears when the princess talk starts.

So you know what I did, I took Tessa home, and that night when Cole was at work, I ordered a Princess movie for us to watch together. I rented that Disney flick "Tangled" to see what Tessa would think of it, and guess what?! Tessa hated it, she was bored out of her mind. She stopped watching it after 30 minutes. And all of the sudden I was the one spinning around the living room like a princess because I was so happy. Tessa just last week sat and watched all of Megamind, and laughed and grinned the entire movie. Tessa is really expressive with the looks she will shoot you, and I couldn't have been more proud when she climbed down off the couch and looked over at me and flashed me a look in the middle of "Tangled" that was like, "What the F is this junk dummy, I'm doing something else!"

This is going to be really hard for me, fighting this princess culture bullshit, I have to try and figure out how to navigate this junk. It's easy when I'm slapping candy and junkfood out of their hands, because I don't feel any guilt at all when I'm protecting the kids from terrible food. This princess thing is way harder to explain, and at the same time, I am way more afraid of her falling in love with it simply because she is being denied it. So there is a fair amount of Cole and I letting her explore this world if she wants to. I hate that it exists. I hate that it is so saturated into our culture that it can't simply be sidestepped. It's everywhere. It's gotten to the point now where if it's food, and there is a cartoon character on the package, it's poison. And it would seem like people are trying as hard as they can to ruin any chances kids have at just playing with toys without worrying about if it is a girl toy or a boy toy, or if they are supposed to be playing with something bases on its color, or what character it is pimping. I tried buying a kid sized fishing pole for Tessa the other day because we wanted her to be able to fish with LB, so we go to the toy store and my choices were Barbie (bright pink) or Transformers. So we bought the Transformers one because it was black, and we peeled all the stickers off of it. Why make a gender neutral product that can be shared and passed down, when brands can make it so that you have to buy the exact same thing for each child, but painted up the gender acceptable colors. It's bonkers. All of it. The thing that makes me the most upset is how it makes me sound as a parent.

All of the sudden I'm the asshole walking around saying things like: nope she doesn't watch that, she doesn't eat that, she doesn't play with those, we don't sing Hannah Montana songs, she doesn't eat candy for breakfast. It goes on and on. The things going on the shelves in America marketed to kids is creating a bitterness inside me that I can't quite control. I wanted to write this post so I could let off some steam and have a laugh and all it did was get me discouraged. I hate that as parents we are put in the position to look like assholes for saying no to things that just aren't good for them. I don't want my daughter to resent me because I didn't let her drink sugar water with red dye in it, or let her wear makeup when she is 4, or dress up like a princess because it's her job to be pretty. When the kids are outside playing in the pool, or fishing at the lake, or outside in general just rolling around in grass or splashing in puddles I feel like they can just be kids. I feel like we are all happiest. None of this requires toys, or an appropriate color scheme or movie theme, it's just fun. They get to just play. So I suppose we will stay outside.

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On Assignment

I always feel unglued when I am away from my family. I know that if someday I get to be that super eccentric (and I say "eccentric" but mean total pain in the insistent ass that my family is with me) photographer that gets hired to do fabulous photo shoots all over the world, I will be the one that can't operate without insisting on bringing my family along. I just do better when I am at home, and if they are with me, then I will feel at home. I am almost done with my jaunt to So-Cal and have to say that sitting by a fire overlooking the Pacific Ocean on a chilly night in July indeed feels a million miles away from my family sweating it out in Florida. I just want them with me. Tonight was the first time I called home and Tessa said " I miss you".

My dream is to be able to do shoots with Cole, she will do the hair, and I will take the photos, and the kids will be with us wherever we are. We are way past the crossing the fingers and the pillow talk, and deep into the action of realizing these things.

Today Cole starts back full time at the salon, and I will be home with the kids WAY more often. So these trips around the map will be happening less frequently while Cole takes hold of her passion. I wrote about it HERE in case you missed it. I am so excited for her.

I know in my heart that this is the path to the both of us working side by side on projects.

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From Our Table (a piece for Kinfolk Magazine)

You know how you find blogs sometimes that will make you kind of pause and linger over their posts, not just their words, or the photos they present, but the blog itself actually puts out a very real vibe that makes you want to hangout longer, take closer careful looks... they have an energy to them. It's comforting, it feels familiar, soon you start thinking to yourself, "if I met this person in real life, well then maybe we would become good friends." Well-- there is this fellow Nathan that blogs at a place called Hear Black that was like that for me, and then one day to my surprise I received an email out of the blue from him, asking if I wanted to participate in a community project he was putting together called Kinfolk, and I immediately said YES! I knew from his blog that whatever he was a part of would be done with care, and heart, and pride, and would be presented as flawlessly as the rest of his work I had seen. And what has come together over the last few months, the people that he has attracted and attached to this project, is one of the finest talent pools on the internet I think. If you have not had the chance to see the new online magazine Kinfolk, please go there now and look, but go when you can actually spend some time with it. It isn't something to just glance at and scroll at, really take a good long look at it. You won't be disappointed.

For those of you who are not familiar with Kinfolk magazine, here is a copy of their manifesto: " Kinfolk is a growing community of artists with a shared interest in small gatherings. We recognize that there is something about a table shared by friends, not just a wedding or once-a-year holiday extravaganza, that anchors our relationships and energizes us. We have come together to create Kinfolk as our collaborative way of advocating the natural approach to entertaining that we love.

Every element of Kinfolk – the features, photography, and general aesthetics – are consistent with the way we feel entertaining should be: simple, uncomplicated, and less contrived. Kinfolk is the marriage of our appreciation for art and design and our love for spending time with family and friends."

Below are a group of photos I took that are a result of the piece I turned in for Kinfolk. Nathan had asked if I wanted to send along some ideas for the magazine, and after some thought I hoped that he would include a section for families. Having children does not mean that you have to start eating beefaroni, or Hamburger Helper every single meal while sitting in front of the television watching Sponge Bob marathons. The dining room table is so important to our family, and we try hard to make dinner time fun, and consistent, a place to laugh, and catch up, and of course to learn to appreciate food. So I am so very honored to have contributed a piece in the first issue of Kinfolk that focused on the family. Below are the outtakes from the dinner, that did not make it into the final piece, but that I wanted to share with all of you. I am not a foodie, and am out of my element taking pictures of meals. It was the actual preparation of our traditional Fl themed feast that made it into the magazine, I had been dying to smoke my own mullet (one of the finest Florida delicacies to ever hit your lips), and share it with Cole and the kids, and I was really happy with my first attempt at this old custom. I am thinking about retiring and getting a little road side stand and selling smoked mullet like my friend from the Pan Handle Fred.

Enjoy the outtakes, and then please do yourself a favor and check out all the gorgeous work turned in by some extremely talented artists over at Kinfolk Magazine.

The Menu: Fresh caught mullet Smoked to a fine smokey fresh smoke, Skillet Baked Macaroni & Cheese, Asparagus (recipe we tried from Seven Spoons), Florida Blue Crab boil (with smoked sausage, corn, potatoes, & artichokes), hone cornbread muffins, and for dessert... homemade delicious bready wonder Peach Cobbler.

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Watching The World

I have been lucky to get to know some of the guys behind the film project One Day On Earth a little bit over the past year. I do know how hard these guys are working to give respect to the thousands of filmmakers that contributed to this project, they pour over the footage and are constructing a sensational and compelling look at our world. When I see footage from this project I always have an emotional reaction to it. A little ball of fire that wakes up and moves around my guts and ends up in my throat. I am not completely sure what causes this, perhaps gaining the perspective of how infinitely small my little patch of life is in this sea of people, realizing just how many differences there are between us, but how we are all fueled by the same basic emotions and wants which bond us in a truly unique way. We can relate to one another on so many levels, knowing what great love feels like, or deep sorrow. Watching this trailer takes me out of my own little bubble here, and no matter what I might be feeling at the time about my own life and situation, I feel strangely connected on a scale I have never felt before. Simply put, I am moved.

I wanted to leave this trailer up this weekend perhaps for some people to discover the enormous effort being made by the One Day On Earth team to bring this film to life and to honor the contributors that made this film possible. Please give the trailer a look when you can, and take a close look at the One Day On Earth Kickstarter page which is located RIGHT HERE.

On a personal note, I am home from my shoot in NYC, I got in late last night while the kids were asleep, and so I was so very happy to wake up to the kids excited to see me. It's such a funny feeling to be missed the way a child misses you. That smile is one of the truest things on earth. Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

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Rabbit!

band photos by: the talented John Logan

Almost all of the music that has been used in the video work that I post around here, including the new book trailer for Design Sponge, has been written by my friends in the band Rabbit! It is the same friend who wrote the song Magic! for Cole that is featured in her maternity series video. That friend is Devin Moore who has been my good buddy since we were little kids, and he was the one friend who said he wanted to grow up and be in a band for a living, and he actually made that possible. So he remains one of my biggest heroes for his determination, and stubbornness, and drive, and it's people like Devin that keep me driving toward my goals.

**This post is for anyone around the United States that might know of opportunities for the band to help out communities, camps, schools, art centers, anywhere that funding has been zapped from arts and music programs. Let me explain how you can help and get involved with the band and what they are doing.

I wanted to spread the word about the bands tour going on this summer, (the dates are posted above in their poster) because there might be some great opportunities for some of you to get involved. When Rabbit decided to tour this summer, it began like any other band discussion about touring: where they should go, where they would play, how nobody knows who they are so who will actually show up? They have toured in various projects countless times, and had the same great experiences on the road, so when they designed this latest tour they wanted to do something different, and they made the decision to dig deeper into the communities they were stopping in. Rather than simply show up, play a show and move on, the band wanted to take the opportunity to spend their days doing what they could for struggling and strapped music and arts programs for kids. So as much as they have been able to do on their own, they have booked shows at art centers, and day camps, and have a show and program that they put on just for the kids. They are doing what they can while they are out on the road to help where they can.

So this post is a call for help to anyone that might be involved in any programs along the bands tour stops that they could get involved in. You can get in touch directly with the band and see about scheduling a show for them to play. It's an awesome fun show that will expose your kids to a hands on music experience that they will always remember. So if you work at a community center, or day camp, or school, or you are involved in any kind of arts and music program and would like to have the band come in for the day. Check out their tour schedule and if they are coming to your city, or near your city, please reach out to the band and see what they can do. Get in touch with them HERE! and write to Ashton or Devin and say hi, get a conversation going. Or give them a shout on Twitter, they are watching their stream for any opportunities to help out and get involved.

If you are not familiar with the band, you can visit their site HERE and listen to some songs. ALSO you can read their ownBLOG and see what they have been doing on the road so far, they have interviews, and videos of their show, and loads of good info about what they are doing.

Here is what others have said about the band: Rabbit!, a Florida-based indie-pop band, has figured out that mixing guileless, endlessly hooky songwriting to throbbing rhythms and toy keyboards is a masterful key to success. This is not profound music (the band seems to make that clear with its cover of The Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”), but the alternating male-female vocals and infectious energy, even on the slower numbers, pushes both band and audience along by sheer, sugary-sweet melodic pop goodness. And sometimes that’s all that matters. K. Petersen Columbia Free Times

AND

**For anyone in the NYC/Brooklyn area I am going to be in the city on Wednesday the 13th and will be going to see the band play at Union Hall in Park Slope. HERE is the info for the show. Who is coming with me?! Anyone? It will be good fun.

So check out the poster that is sitting at the top of this post for tour dates and if you have any interest at all in getting the band involved in your community please reach out. Also i am sure the band would be happy to do any interviews for any bloggers looking for something cool to write about this summer. So just reach out.

ANYONE that might know of friends, or family, or fellow bloggers that could use an opportunity like this for a camp, or a program, please spread this post around. Get the word out. And thanks a bunch.

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Belief

Taken with Polaroid 600SE on Fuji -FP100 B pack film

You ever just lay around in your backyard in the middle of sweaty summer and daydream about all of the things you will do someday to make it your very own little backyard paradise? Cole and I did this on Saturday during Tessa's nap time and the conversation quickly became a shower of "and thens" all based on the assumption that success will come to us, and we will eventually be able to afford to do things like dig swimming pools, build a little greenhouse, and secret forts for the kids in the garden. Every inch is planned out, leaving just enough of a grassy patch to lay around on in summer so we can daydream about the next batch of big wishes.

All I could think about when I was laying there across from Cole in the grass, (and actually got myself to stop staring at her waist for 5 seconds) was how easy it is to build a life with her. With the kind of work I do, whenever we plan for the future and discuss how we will eventually afford to do these big things like build our dream backyard, I don't have the kind of job where the solution is to ask for more hours, or get a raise, or bust my butt for a promotion, or a X-mas bonus-- I have to come up with new ideas that excite people. So whenever I start yapping about movies I want to make later in the year, or some grandiose 20 step photo project that sounds crazy even in my own head, Cole never thinks for a second that it isn't completely possible. She treats all of these plans I come up with as if they are completely possible and sane and speaks about them with this amazing tone like " of course it will happen." So in turn whenever she looks at me and says, "I think the pool should go right here." I say, "of course it will honey." as if being able to afford a swimming pool someday is an actuality and not a pipe dream.

It's her absolute belief in me that makes us able to live the life that we have, and so of course laying around in the middle of hot ass summer in the backyard with her talking about the future makes everything feel totally possible. Giving someone your complete support and belief in them is one of the most powerful things you can do, and so when I look at these pictures I feel like I can do anything. I guess I just wanted you to know what I see when I look into pictures like these of Cole. I wonder sometimes what other people see when they look into these frozen moments I share here in this space, and I hope that they can see everything that I do.

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Fart Salad

Cole and I made plans to have dinner with some brand new friends the other night, and when asked if there was anything we could bring, they said that: "yes, actually you could bring a salad to go with the meal."

Easy enough.

Now Cole and I have been on the friend hunt for awhile now, and it has been an awkward painful process-- especially for me. I'm not good at inserting myself into conversation, or doing the getting to know you thing with new people very easily. I was embarrassing as a single person and dating, ugh you should have seen me, and now I suffer from the exact same anxiety and shyness when it comes to making new friends. So I have been really excited and happy about this little family that lives just one street over from us that has a little boy that is Tessa's age. We like them, we really really like them, so we are in that beginning phase of hanging out, where we worry about ruining the relationship all the time. Where we worry about all of the sudden becoming listed as "a bad hang" and the invites stop to dinner and the playdates dry up, and then we are friendless all over again. So of course we took all of that unnecessary pressure and worry about being rejected by this couple and their adorable child, and we put all of the weight from our insecurity on the shoulders of the making of this salad. This salad over the course of just a couple hours became the linchpin of this new budding friendship. It somehow became the deal breaker.

Now I assumed that when someone says, "bring a salad" they mean a basic salad that you would order at a restaurant. a salad you would get with dinner at most places: some lettuce, a little cucumber, some tomato, maybe even a little red onion, or get really crazy and put some radishes on there. Simple, fresh, easy, safe. So when we are at the grocery store Cole says: "I'm going to make the salad!" and I was like "Really?!" because Cole never makes the salad. And I say, "Okay honey, knock yourself out. Make whatever you want." and she starts talking about this baby spinach, and egg, and mushroom, sunflower seed, salad that she claims is delicious. So the debate begins about the risk involved with a move like that. What if they don't like mushrooms? What if it is too nutty? What if they wanted a spring mix, or crisp romaine and not just straight ol' bitter spinach? Is there at least going to be any cheese in this salad?

The one thing I didn't think to worry about was the egg. So it's an hour before we have to go to dinner and Cole goes into the kitchen to make the big salad, and soon after is when I notice the smell coming out of the kitchen. As I walk past the kitchen, the smell hits me in the face and I'm like, "Oh my God! Did you fart?" and Cole is all, "Of course not, NO!" and then I notice that Cole was in there peeling the hard boiled eggs and breaking them apart for the salad. So I panic a little, "these eggs smell like gross musty farts. What's wrong with them? Do they always smell like this? Did you boil them right?" Now something to know about these new friends is that the woman is pregnant, and just now getting over being nauseated all the time. So I immediately launch into a rant about how she is going to take one whiff of this salad that smells like farts, and get SO sick feeling, that dinner will be ruined. "I can't believe you made a pregnant woman a fart salad! You know how sensitive smell is during a pregnancy! We just ruined dinner."

So Cole wraps up the salad and puts it in the fridge and says reassuringly that the smell will go away now that the eggs have been shelled and put into the salad. And I believe her. Now normally we would just walk over to their house, but it was raining, and we had the kids, and this big fart salad to carry, and so we decided to drive over to their place. We get the kids buckled in, and before we could even leave the driveway the whole car smells like a fart. "Great! Now we are all going to smell like a fart too." and that is when Cole starts to panic about the smell also, and she says, "oh no, she is totally going to get nauseous when she smells this. I can't believe this smells like this." And as we are pulling into their driveway Cole is all about hatching a plan to ditch this salad, and it was at this point that she suggests that I dump the salad out onto the driveway when I open the car door and pretend that I spilled it. She is like, "Just say we accidently dropped the salad and it's ruined and you can be out here sweeping it all up and apologizing." she adds, "Who would ever think we would do that on purpose? Just dump the salad."

There was not turning back. We made a risky move and had to live with it. We couldn't show up empty handed. The fart salad had to be served.

So we went into their house with the smelly salad, and handed it over at the door with a warning to avoid any direct inhalation upon first opening up the salad bowl. We came clean about the smell right away, that was the best approach, just be funny about the terrible smelling food, and to not sit there and pretend that it didn't stink. One of the things we love about this couple is their sense of humor and that they are very funny, and not long after arriving they were making a homemade "fart dressing" to go along with the "fart salad" that we all sat down and enjoyed with dinner.

Crisis avoided.

We still have new friends.

For now.

Dating is the worst!

P.S. Cole made me add this P.S. to add that the salad was very good. tasty some said.

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Swinging In The Rain

Last week Tessa turned two years old, and we had planned on swimming all day with the kids to celebrate since she has been having so much fun in the pool this summer. You should hear the way she asks to swim. Melts us to a gooey mushy mess, and we say "Yes! Of course you can honey."

So wouldn't you know it. On her birthday it decides to rain the entire day. Leave it to us to never look at the weather forecast ahead of time to plan anything. We stood there on the pool deck with our phones in our hands looking at the radar going, "What the shit is this? Not fair, NOT fair!"

So Cole just decides that she isn't going to let the rain damper the day and she slaps a swimsuit onto Tessa, and grabs the umbrella, and played outside with her in the rain all afternoon for her birthday. Cole took hold of the day and wouldn't let the rain get any of us down. I of course was immediately all grumbling, "this sucks" and complaining, but Cole kept her spirit and played and made it fun for all of us. I had to step back and realize that Cole was teaching Tessa how to make the best of life in any situation. She was teaching Tessa how to be awesome, how to be a bright light. So I melted back into the background and made sure that Tessa was absorbing and soaking up as much of Cole's spirit and life lesson as she could. There are definitely moments when I see myself being a terrible example and I have to find a way to be invisible for a few minutes until I can squash it and reemerge with a better approach. It didn't take long for Cole to rub off on all of us, and seeing Tessa play in the rain was so sweet that we all ended up having fun. It's impossible to stay sour when you hear the two of them laughing together, it has to be the closest thing to a magic spell there is, all of the darkness is pulled out of me, the big dopey smile starts to form, it stays locked on my face. It's magic.

In the end there was delicious cake, and presents, and songs, and family, and big laughs and giggle fits, and all of it on a dreary rainy day.

And just like that, we have a two year old little girl.

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I Told You

**This is a little story about my work on quitting the quitter in me.

Completely motivated by the will to utter the words "I told you I could do it"-- have you ever done something as an adult that you always wanted to do as a little kid, but had been told "NO you can't do it" sooo many times by your parents, that you actually believed that you couldn't do it? I'm not talking about things we were forbidden to do because it was stupid, jackass, or dangerous. I'm talking about physical things, or complicated projects that we were interested in at young ages and told: "no, you can't do this, you're too little, you won't finish it." So as adults that forbidding "no" stays in your head and then one day you just snap and decide that no matter how ridiculous it seems, no matter how juvenile, you are FINALLY going to do this thing to prove that you CAN do it! Then as soon as you're done you make sure you let your parents know all about it in a real immature bragging phone call. No? Nobody else has done this? Just crazy old me? Oh well.

Let me explain. 8 months ago I walked into the hobby shop we have here in town-- It's been here for years, it smells like old developer and film, my mother actually bought her first camera at the age of 20 at this very same shop when she lived here in town. It was the same hobby shop that I bought my first big boy camera from (I just found this out a week ago and love that we both bought our cameras from the same place). Anyway, I walk into the hobby shop to pick up a lens that I had been saving for, and I found myself wandering to the back of the store to poke around the model cars and airplanes and Radio Controlled racing section of the shop. I went looking to scratch an itch I have had since I was a kid. In the mid80's they had these amazing RC cars put out by this Japanese company Tamiya called: The Grasshopper, The Frog, and The Hornet, and I wanted one. My friends had them. They were fast, they were slick, they could jump jumps, peel out, they could go off-road, they were the fucking greatest thing on the planet to an 11 year old. I wanted one. I didn't get one. My parents had pegged me for being a bit of a quitter, and said that I would never put in the work to build the car. You see it didn't come all put together and finished. You had to build your own car. The entire thing. Every detail. Paint the body and the parts, build the gear box, the steering system, all of it. Without getting into a whole crybaby thing about my parents saying no to me, I was told no (looking back probably for a good reason). I have never stopped wanting this car. The same 11 year old kid urge I had to own this car has remained in my belly my entire life. I have considered buying this car a hundred times. Justified the purchase and then decided no, I am too old for a toy, this is dumb. For whatever reason 8 months ago, I decided it was finally time.

So I bought it. I bought it 8 months ago. And it sat in its box for 8 months staring at me. It had become, and had always been this complicated thing that I couldn't do, that I wasn't able to do. So I just let it sit there in the box and intimidate me, a stupid toy made me think I would just quit and give up. It made me think I wouldn't be smart enough or detailed enough to make this work. What if I put in this work and it wouldn't run? This unopened box had me thinking that my parents were probably right, I couldn't do this. So I didn't. What a loser right? So then a couple days ago for whatever reason on the 4th of July, I got up early and decided that I would make this car. I opened the box. I got out the tools. I read the instructions and I built this car. I did it. I finally did it. I knew I could do this :)



Boy I gotta tell you it felt great to put this car on the ground and gather Cole and the kids around, flip the power switch and watch this thing takeoff like a light. The kids immediately full of smiles and screams and reaching for the controller for a turn. Tessa was chasing it down the sidewalk, LB insisting on playing with it too, and you know what I said to him? The first real reaction I had that came tumbling out: "You're too little. You can't play with it."

:)

I heard myself say it. I cringed, and then I said: "You can drive the car buddy, we will take it to a park in a big open field where it can't possibly crash into anything solid." This car will become the kids car. I got what I wanted out of it. I just wanted to squash that feeling that I couldn't figure something out. Not sure why this one thing stuck with me all these years. It's always the strangest little things we harbor and turn into doubt and fear. How does this happen?

So my question today would be how many of you still hold onto things like this? Is it something specific? Have you conquered it? Did you call your mom and dad and tell them that you finally did it?! The only story I know that is similar is that I knew a girl who bought an Easy Bake Oven as an adult, and a bunch of the mixes they make for it, and she made the junky desserts because she was never allowed to as a kid. She couldn't shake the want. For Cole, she ALWAYS wanted to go away to camp for the summer, and to stay in a cabin with roommates, and learn to shoot a bow and arrow, and swim in lakes, and hike, and she still wants to go. She has already looked at possible camps to send the kids someday when they are older. Maybe she should be a camp counselor? Shit's as weird as my car thing right? But I love stories like this. It feels like letting go and squashing these little demons we create to hold ourselves back. It feels like growing up.

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How to Keep Falling

I was sitting with my family, we were in these comfy patio recliners by the pool, kicked back aimed up at the sky, Cole next to me, we each had a child wiggling around on our laps nervous and excited about the fireworks display bursting just over our heads. The blasts filled our entire patch of sky. You could see the fire bursts reflected in the lake, the booms bouncing all over the houses and back across the water. All the classic tunes were blaring in accompaniment: America by Neil Diamond, Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen, and American Pie by Don McLean. And as spectacular and American as it all was, I kept finding myself distracted from that spectacle, and instead kept looking down across the back lawn-- further away from us, closer to the lake, all across the grass were young couples on blankets, snuggled up, giggling, hand holding, kissing, lying on their backs with this awesome fireworks display exploding just over top of them, there is something just so American about ignoring the safe viewing distance warnings on a novelty explosive device and letting the sparks and cardboard shrapnel rain down on top of you. It was the perfect summer night, clear, a light breeze, fireworks were exploding all around the lake, it was romantic and sweet. And watching all of this I let something happen that has never happened before up until that point, never before had I given any thought or felt any jealousy at all to the fact that Cole and I never got to simply be a couple. Just the two of us. From the start it has always been just the three of us. And that night I let myself be envious for a second.

(** for any new readers, when I met Cole she was a single mama and LB was 3 years old)

I took this moment of envy as a sign that I haven't been making enough time for just Cole and I. That we don't exist as a couple outside of our roles as parents, and so I started thinking about a date night. I have always avoided a regular date night, because it seems so phony and forced to me, there seems to be no spontaneity in a regular night of dinner and adult conversation. Date night is as much of a rut as Taco Tuesdays can become. It feels pushy to me, it's date night so you better be ready to have some fun, no matter how your day went, and to do this every week?! It's like all of the sudden you're going: "Ugh, it's Tuesday again, I fucking hate tacos!"

I figured Cole and I would always just be responsible to our romantic relationship and create time to act on all of our impulses when they would build up enough. This has not been the case so far, we keep the babysitter busy with my trips out of town, but almost never for Cole and I to just simply reconnect. I figured out the reason for this. Our thermostat is all messed up...

When Cole and I were going to couples counseling our guy spoke to us about temperatures. Meaning what we are used to as a comfort level, what made us comfortable and secure as children, is what we grow to expect as adults. In my house my parents did not go on dates, we did not have a babysitter, if we went out, we went out together as a family. I can vividly remember a small handful of times my parents had my sister and I seated at a far away table from them at the Red Lobster so that they could dine in peace. My sister and I sitting there at a little two-top trying to get along, I wish I could remember what we talked about. I guess that was the closest thing I can recall that would resemble a date for my mom and dad. Now Cole on the other hand, her mom and dad dropped her brother and her off at their parents house every weekend, and they went out. They went out all the time. They went dancing, and had friends, and slept in on a Sat morning, and then went and picked Cole and her brother back up. So in this instance what Cole and I are used to, "our temperatures" for this are very different. So now we have to figure out the best temperature that will make us both happy.

I haven't even discussed this with Cole yet, I keep laughing imagining her reading this, going "What?! We're going to go out on dates?!" and immediately calling the babysitter to schedule a night. But before all that gets official I have questions, tons of them. How does this work, do you go out every week, on the same night? Does it get boring? Is it always dinner and a movie? Can you hangout with other couples on date night or does this defeat the purpose entirely? What happens if you're not in the mood for date night and you call it off, what does that guilt feel like. It's like saying, "I don't feel like being in love with you tonight." Geez the pressure! The whole thing makes me uncomfortable because I am not used to the temperature. See how that works, its like I'm sitting in a room that's 80 degrees and I feel like I'm on fire. I need a cool 75 to feel relaxed. Cole is wrapped in blankets when it's 75. See how this works?

Who can afford a weekly date night in this economy, I wonder if anyone has done a study to see how many married couples have had to cutback. Has this made the marriage in America suffer? How has this economy hit the babysitter sector? Are they suffering along with the rest of the country? Let's get these babysitters back to work people. My guess is that it has brought a little more of the family unit back together. Grandparents are back on top again. Do you find yourselves relying on your family more than you used to? Are we getting back to the tribe finally?

So far in my relationship with Cole, (and for the first time in ANY relationship as it is supposed to be), I find myself closer and more in love each month I am with her. So now that we are 3 years in, and we are starting to plan for another baby, I am feeling really anxious about preserving our romantic relationship. I want to preserve this upward trend, and my fear is that as soon as you let the couple fade, and solely focus on the parent partnership, the little line on the graph starts to trend down, and the romantic couple starts to die. I never want the "couple" part of us to get pushed to the back of the line and forgotten about. All of the sudden it's 10 years from now, and we're scratching our heads trying to figure out what happened? How did we drift apart?

So tell me all about date night. The pros the cons, the successes the failures, things not to do. I'm ready. I guess I am a convert, I see the light now, I am ready to be the couple that has an official date night.

Let it begin.

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