Tag: parenting

  • Eight years of parenting

    Megan and daddy making the eye contact that could last a lifetime

    Megan McLane

    Paul in a quiet moment right after birth.

    pgm030

    It’s hard to believe that Kristen and I have been parents for nearly 8 years.

    It’s weird how a picture captures a moment. I can think back to exactly what I was thinking at this moment. I wonder what they were thinking. Megan was probably thinking, “When will you read a book to me?” Paul was probably thinking, “What can I eat?”

    The first 8 years of parenting makes me realize something that is said all the time, “It goes by so fast.” Indeed it does. What will the next 8 years hold?

  • Getting it right, Getting it wrong

    right-wrong

    Today I can do no wrong. According to Megan and Paul I am the smartest and most excellent father in the history of the planet. Then again, I’ve bribed them into this behavior by taking them to Sea World later this morning.

    It’s weird how in life there is a fine line between getting it right and getting it wrong. Yesterday, I read this post by Greg Stier where he confessed that he blew it in sharing his faith with a couple of guys at a McDonald’s. A fine line. A couple days ago, I posted about our small group having the most amazing night at the beach. It was a fine line there too, wasn’t it?

    This is what I’m thinking about this morning. The more relaxed about whom I am, the more confident that I am that I’m walking daily with Jesus, the more passionate I am about what God is laying on my heart to do… the more comfortable with the reality that sometimes I’m going to get things right, sometimes I’m going to get things wrong.

    I think for too long I bought into the concept that I needed to get it right way more than I got it wrong. The reality is though… when I focused purely on getting things right I always played it safe.

    The next question, is playing it safe good or bad?

  • Digging out and shaking off

    Calendar shows April 15, taxes due

    Digging through paperwork and trying to find missing reciepts for tax time exposed that there was one big area of my life that I had just ignored for 6-7 months: The move’s impact on our finances.

    We did fine through the move. We’re doing fine now. And like I’ve mentioned before, we’re taking all the right steps to be in great shape into the future. That’s not the point of this post at all.

    The point of this post is simple –– there are areas of your life that you simply have to take control. You can’t ignore stuff and hope that it’ll be alright. Nor can you just pretend that it will all go away if you just put it into a nice little pile. In our case, we were fortunate and when I finally did open the vault everything will be just fine when about 5 checks clear the bank. But it could have been a lot worse.

    The same is true for a lot of things in life. I’ve had a longstanding weakness of avoiding things I didn’t want to deal with and foolishly hoping that they would just fix themselves. I’ve even tried to outsmart myself and those around me by over-doing some areas while completely ignore others.

    I have a feeling I’m not the only one who does this.

    – People ignore a project at work and try to distract their failure with success in another area at work.

    – Men tend to focus on work to avoid family issues. (Sorry for the generalization there)

    – We keep our schedules too full to avoid dealing with our walk with God.

    – We focus our ministry around a big event or a mission trip to distract from a larger problem we don’t want to deal with.

    – Kids will pay attention to the TV so they can pretend you didn’t tell them to clean their rooms.

    – High school kids will join a club or even get a job to avoid going to a youth group they are bored with.

    dog_shake_waterThe thing is, Tax Day is coming. The things that we avoid will eventually need to be addressed. It doesn’t matter how much we ignore areas of our life which make us uncomfortable… eventually we’ll just have to deal with them. And it is way better to deal with those things today than it will be tommorow. That’s where accountability comes in. We all need people in our life who lovingly help us draw boundaries. When we were kids we had those people built in as parents, teachers, and church leaders helped keep us on track.

    Adults need to find people in their lives whom they are willing to allow to go there and ask the hard questions. “Adam, what is it that you’re avoiding?” What a tremendous question for self-reflection!

    If you find yourself concentrating too much on one area of your life to avoid another… my only advice comes from my dog. Shake it off.

  • Sunday Normalness

    torreypinesPretty much every Sunday is the same for our family. It’s our new normal and we love it. For the first time in my adult life I have weekends off… and I’m still enjoying the novelty of it. Here’s what a typical Sunday looks like.

    7:00- Everyone up. We don’t set alarms, but we all get woken up by hungry animals.The pace of our morning is extremely slow. With 3+ hours until church we hang in our PJs for as long as possible. The kids usually play quietly while mom and dad enjoy coffee and just enjoy the morning.

    8:30- Dad and Paul head over to Yum Yum Donuts about a mile away to hunt & gather some donuts. Typically, we get 6 donuts and a bag of donut holes.

    10:00- We leave for church. Old habits die hard… so we’re always there a little too early. (Californians are notoriously late for church; the cool kids come late.) This is the part that astonishes me… I just go to church. It took some intentional pulling back but I now do nothing on Sunday mornings but attend services.

    12:30- We leave church and head for home. Sometimes we go out sometimes we don’t. But there’s no hard and fast rule for going out like before. We’ve been to Chili’s exactly once since moving to California! (In Romeo we went almost every week.)

    2:00- We’re done with Sunday running around. No evening meetings. No youth group. Nada. We have the rest of the day to ourselves.

    When it’s warm outside we are in the habit of going to the beach after church. We run home, grab a quick lunch, and pack up the car with all of our stuff. But that hasn’t happened since October. We’re hoping for the beach routine to come back in April!

    It’s taken us a few months… but I finally feel like we’re hitting a healthy stride for Sunday’s. From the donut routine, to “just going to church,” to doing something simple and fun. Our family is actually starting to look forward to Sunday coming again!

  • Tammy

    The other day I was driving our truck on the way to pick up Kristen from work. Megan and Paul were in a mood and bickering in the backseat. Among other things Megan was kicking the front seat, annoying my passenger while laughing when I told her to stop. Dave, our house guest, was being good in the front with me.

    In a moment of sheer evil I piped up over the bickering and told the kids a story. “Hey guys, did daddy ever tell you about our other daughter?” Dead silence filled the car. “Yeah, she came before you Megan. (7 years old) One day we were driving along and she was being naughty. She wouldn’t stop kicking mommy’s seat and she wouldn’t listen to daddy when he told her to stop. So daddy stopped the car and left her on the side of the road. Then we had you two. You wouldn’t want to be like Tammy, would you?”

    There are a few moments in parenting when you’re certain you’ve said something that your kids will spend their twenties telling a counselor about. This was one of them.

    Thankfully Megan saw right through it. So did Paul. (5 years old.) Megan said, “Daddy, that’s not true. You’re just trying to get us to stop being bad.” Paul chimed in, “Tammy isn’t real.” [pause] “Is she?”

    Laughter filled the cab and Dave exhaled loudly. He couldn’t believe I’d made up such a horrible tale!

    I think Tammy may be around for a while too. Tonight, as Kristen was putting the kids to bed and reading about Joseph, Megan had an aha moment. “So Joseph was kind of like Tammy, right? An annoying member of the family that everyone wanted to get rid of?” Kristen somehow kept it together and agreed with her.

    Then, as Kristen climbed out of Megan’s bed, my little girl had to get the last word.

    Megan: “Why did Tammy cross the highway?”

    Mom: “I don’t know, why?”

    Megan: “To get to the other side after daddy left her.”

    I never claimed to be parent of the year.

  • Parentizzle like Snoop-dizzle

    You know I think this is funny when I show a Martha Stewart clip on my blog. I can’t stand Martha… but I do like Snoop Dogg. (Dee-o-double-gee)

    HT to Abby

  • Megan is a reader




    Megan having fun

    Originally uploaded by mclanea

    My oldest daughter, Megan, is just like her mommy. Besides being endlessly sassy, sarcastic, and competitive… Megan is a hard core learner.

    Her latest weakness is reading long chapter books. We will send her to bed at 8:30, but she’ll stay up super late enraptured by her latest book. And just like her mommy, it’s all top secret.

    It’s impossible for me to get angry with a little girl wanting to expand her imagination. Dream big girl.