That's gonna leave a mark

It doesn't hurt here or here so much, but right here...

As parents, we all try to make decisions which set a positive path for our child's future.  Not everyone has the same idea of how to achieve this goal.  Whatever parenting methods we use or decisions we make, we are all trying to lay the groundwork to build a solid character for our youngsters.  Thus, we often find ourselves in scenarios where we wonder, "Will this leave a lasting impression on my child?"

We want to teach our children right and wrong, good behavior vs bad behavior, etc, but not everything is as clear cut as we'd like it to be.  On the one hand, we want our children to learn the best way to handle certain situations.  On the other hand, we don't want our children growing up with tunnel vision and thinking there is only one "right way" to do everything.  And we really don't want our children judging other people because of differences in the way they live their lives.  We would like to think that we can provide our children with different experiences to give them a diverse and open outlook on life.

Case in point, I'm writing this post to help justify our decision to take Emry to a tattoo studio recently.  Seriously? Who takes a toddler with them to get a tattoo?  Well, we thought we'd try. 

Ever since we've been married, I've told Maren I wanted to have my wedding band tattooed on my ring finger.  Maren had been watching a lot of NY Ink lately, so I thought it would be a good time to bring up the topic again.  Surprisingly, Maren was cool with the idea "as long as it didn't look trashy!" 

After receiving her overwhelming nod of support, I consulted with a local tattoo artist to get my design idea put on paper.  On an innocent Saturday afternoon the artist called back to say she had the design ready. Maren wanted to make sure it wasn't "trashy" before I set up an appointment to get tatted, so the whole family hopped into the car and headed to the tattoo shop.

Maren and I checked out the design and it looked great.  The artist had time available to do the tat right there on the spot, so I decided to go for it!  We just had to wait for her to shrink it to the right size and make the carbon stencil...however, that took forever! (In this story, forever was 50 minutes long.)

Just eating some apple slices while we wait!

18 month olds don't like waiting or sitting still...so we had to find ways to pass the time.  There were crayons and paper in the waiting area, so Emry colored for about 5 minutes -- the crayons were a reassuring sign that we weren't only parents who take their little children with them to get tatted.  We also had fun looking at all the colorful art and tattoo designs on the walls -- Emry picked out a colorful butterfly to get on her ankle(only 16 1/2 more years!)  We poked our heads into a couple of rooms to watch other people getting tatted.  We also looked at the rubber models of various body parts that showed different piercings you can get.  Fun fact:  If you decide to get your "you know what" pierced, there are 3 piercings available for guys, while there are 5 options "down there" for the ladies.

Who's next?

Finally it was time to get tatted!  The whole thing only lasted about 10 minutes, and that included stopping a couple times to take pictures with Emry.  Emry seemed to enjoy herself.  She had fun checking out all the different sights at the shop, but I guess we'll never know if Emry's first trip to the tattoo shop had any effect on her development as a human being.  One thing's for sure, the experience left a permanent mark on at least one of the Smith's...

Lessons taught by our kids

One of the hardest things for a runner is to not run.  Most runners feel the need to always be up and moving.  Apparently I've always been wired this way as well...my parents tell me I was a terribly fussy baby.  I supposedly cried all the time unless someone held me.  My mother says once I began crawling, my constant crying finally stopped.  I guess I just need to be on the move!

This fall I had started training for a marathon I was hoping to run in January. In early October, I started feeling some pain in my lower back. The pain persisted for a couple weeks, so  I started taking ibuprofen and cut down my mileage.  That that didn't help, so I finally stopped running altogether and decided to see my doctor. After 4 weeks on a prescription painkiller, followed by 4 weeks of physical therapy, the pain was almost nonexistent.

During this time, I had signed up for two events that I could not run.  The first was a Thanksgiving Day 5k, which I walked.  It was torture to walk the entire race while watching everyone else run by me!  The other event was the Tough Mudder, which I was really disappointed to miss.  I'd signed up to be a team member with some friends from The Sanctum Gym, and I felt really bad because I couldn't make the trip with them.

On Dec 22 the PT finally released me to begin exercising again!  I decided to go for my first run on Christmas morning.  On Christmas Eve night I bent over to put Emry in her car seat, and shooting pain ripped right through my lower back.  Two more times that night, I felt a shooting pain in my back that brought me to my knees.  After spending almost 3 months rehabbing, I was back at square one.  I woke up on Christmas morning stiff as a board(my back was stiff...get your minds out of the gutter!)  I was no better off than I was in early October. 

It sounds like I'm complaining right now, but let me clarify that I'm not writing this to be a sob story or to feel sorry for myself.  Its certainly been a frustrating experience, but I am very aware that God has blessed me with great health my whole life.  Earlier I said it was torture to walk the Turkey Day 5k...often times we exaggerate to make a point.  It wasn't really torture, it was just not what I wanted to do.

Before having a child, I would have absolutely been angry, upset and impatient with the injury.  I would have shouted to the heavens and asked "Why me!?"  But having children forces us to look beyond ourselves to the needs of others.  We instinctively put off some of our selfish wants and desires to put our children's needs first.  Things that were so urgent and important before now seem minuscule in the grand scheme of things.  The point I'm trying to reach is that having children give us a raw perspective on what's important in life. 

Emry has also taught me that some things just take time.  Having watched her struggle for so long to accomplish such basic tasks as rolling, crawling and walking, I found a level of patience within myself I didn't know existed.  Just witnessing the amount of effort and time it took Emry to accomplish one simple thing was an inspiration.  Another example of her determination was when she learned to eat with a fork.  She'd get her face about 1 inch away from her plate and concentrate so hard to make the fork stab into her green bean.  It would sometimes take her 10 tries to get the food to stay on the fork.  Most of us would starve if we had to work that hard to eat just one green bean!

In our current world of internet, mobile devices, diet pills, cosmetic surgery and 90-day workouts that promise a ripped body, we all want instant results.  But our kids are the ones who really know that some things take just time to unfold.

***To update you, my back has started to feel better and I'm slowly easing back into running.  I'm trying to put a positive spin on the situation.  Since I'll be running very short distances, I'm taking the opportunity to try barefoot/minimalist running again!  My feet and my fitness level are both starting from scratch, so I won't be tempted to do too much too soon this time around!  I'll let you know how it goes!

Things I discovered about fatherhood (1month - 6 months)

Since Emry's baby cousin just turned a month old, I thought I list a few more things I learned about parenthood, babies, and caring for children from the time Emry was 1 month to 6 months old. 



1.  Babies who suck their fingers have horrible morning breathe!  It's compounded by the fact that the source of the stench comes from two places.  I'm working on producing a line of baby breath mints and scented hand lotions.    



2.  When adults interact with an infant, we look absolutely ridiculous.  Take the baby out of the picture and watch the adult's silly grin, super high pitch voice, exaggerated expressions...you'll know what I'm talking about when you see it.

3.  In a related matter...when your baby is with you, you're no longer able to have conversations with adults.  All your conversations are routed through your child.  Example - You and your baby walk into random adult's house.  Random adult does not acknowledge you, but looks right at the baby, puts on the big silly grin and says in a super high pitched voice, "How are we this morning?"  Then you answer for the baby, "Well we've been a little fussy..." 

4.  Everyone wants to hold your baby when they are this age.  However, when the baby cries, spits up or poops it magically finds its way back into your arms.

5.  "I think someone needs a diaper change."  Learn this phrase, it has 2 important purposes:  If you are around a baby-hog, this is the best way to get your child back.  But more importantly, if your wife accidentally passes gas while in the company of others, this phrase will save you some embarrassment.

6.  Why is your baby crying right now? Assuming you didn't drop the child, odds are its a physical need, so change the diaper, feed and burp.  That seems to take care of most crying spells at this age. 

7.  If your baby is still crying, the plastic price-tag thingy on her clothes may be stabbing her repeatedly.  Check to make sure all the plastic tag thingies have been removed.  (It took the longest Saturday afternoon of my life to learn that one.)

8.  I wish I could fall asleep while sitting up at the dinner table.  

9.  Your baby's life is always one notch better than your life.  Example - One day Emry and I were sitting on the couch watching football and drinking from our bottles(one beer, one milk).  I couldn't think of a better way to spend the afternoon.  A short time later, Maren arrived home and put Emry on her boob.  I swear I saw Emry wink at me.  Tusche little one!

10.  Avoid using words like bumbo, boppy and baby bjorn around your friends who don't have children.  There's no context where you can use these words without sounding like an idiot.

11.  The first time you and your baby sleep through the night without waking up is actually a huge letdown.  You think you'd be excited to have a full night's rest, but you're too freaked out and worried about your malnourished child to enjoy it. 


12. I can kind of understand why lot of parents end up doing their child's 6th grade science projects...Watching your child try to roll over for the first time is the most frustrating thing in the world. Its hard to see them struggle, and you really have to fight the urge to just turn her over yourself. 


13.  When a dude is in a foul mood, sometimes his buddies will call him out on it by saying, "He has a little sand in his vagina.".....After taking Emry to the beach for the first time, I finally understand the origin of this expression.





That's all I've got right now.  If I think of anything else before 6 months, I'll let you know.  Hopefully this list will help save any of you first time parents some future headaches. If nothing esle, at least you'll know a couple of things to expect in the upcoming months!

Emry Board

I'm happy to let you know the Emry Board has a new home!  The page was getting too long and difficult to manage when adding new content, so Maren and I have made a separate blog for it.  It will be easier for us to do individual entries each month to keep you up to date with pictures and info about Emry's latest endeavors. 

I'll leave the Emry board tab on this site and link it to the new blog.  Or you can go directly to the new address marenandken.blogspot.com.

Running from the Cops

The day I turned 21, I knew I'd never have to worry about running from a police officer for the rest of my life.  A pretty safe assumption, considering I would never intentionally break the law.  Well, we all know what happens to people who ass-u-me.  We had a 'situation' at the Smith house recently which had me wondering if the police were going to be looking for me.  To tell this story, I'm going to borrow a Quentin Tarantino tactic and give you the ending first, then start back over to find out what happened to get us to that point.

Friday 12/9/11 7:22 PM, The Smith House

Maren: Do you think they are going to send a police car to the house?

Ken: Why do you ask?

Maren: Most of the time they'll send a cop to check!

Ken: I'm not sure, she didn't say what they were going to do.

Maren:  We need to get our story straight in case a cop shows up!

Ken: We know what happened, what do you mean "our story"?

Maren:  If a cop shows up, we need to make sure our stories match up.  On Law & Order they always talking about criminals having their story straight.  We don't want any differences in our stories that would make us sound suspicious..........

Friday 12/9/11 7:47am, A hospital in or around Raleigh, NC

A baby girl was born.  Not just any baby though, this was Emry's cousin, Maren's and my niece!  It was truly a joyous moment for the entire family...a healthy mother relieved to finally be able to hold her baby; a beautiful baby girl taking her first breaths of air all by herself; and a proud father letting the world know what had just taken place. 

Friday 12/9/11 8:21am, The High School  

Maren got a text message from the baby's father notifying her the baby arrived and mother was doing well.  Maren was so excited that she texted me right away to give me the details.  A few minutes later Maren began receiving an onslaught of texts and emails with congratulatory messages and pictures of her beautiful little niece.  The emails and texts would continue coming throughout the day.....

Friday 12/9/11 5:17pm, The Smith House

I arrived home from work to find Maren and Emry playing on the living room floor.  Maren asked if I'd seen pictures of our niece.  Since I had only seen one picture, we all went downstairs to check out the baby pictures on Maren's email. 

While Maren and I were ogling over the pictures, Emry decided she wanted to go upstairs.  Emry was about 3/4 of the way up and decided to turn around to come back down.  She got her legs tangled and started to fall backward down the stairs.  She fell one step down on her butt, which caused her to flip backward into the air.  I sprang from my chair faster than a NFL wide receiver and dove onto the stairs.  I caught Emry just before she crashed headfirst by scooping my hands under each of her shoulders and cradling her body against my chest. 

It was a perfect catch and everyone appeared to be okay.  However, the crying and screaming started instantly...and Emry was pretty upset too!  Maren and I really were pretty shaken up just thinking about how Emry could have seriously been injured.  At first we thought Emry was just upset because she got scared.  Upon further review, we noticed Emry had a red, puffy eye from where my knee bumped her head.  That must have happened when I was fighting for extra yardage after the catch.  Once everyone settled down, we decided to go out for Thai food.  Emry seemed cool with everything...or so we thought. 

Friday 12/9/11 6:37pm, Thai Papaya Cuisine

We ate a wonderful meal at our favorite Thai place.  Not much happened here, but we really like this place and I wanted to put a link to their website!  Maren ordered her favorite dish, Phad Thai.  I normally order the Green Curry but decided to try the Red Curry.  The green is better, but they are both delicious!  Emry had some steamed veggies, and was fascinated by the fish tanks.  Great service, friendly owner and great food!

Friday 12/9/11 7:19pm, The Smith House

We came back home and played with Emry on the living room floor.  Emry had a swollen bump by her eye and was still frazzled about the whole -Maren and I not paying attention to her and letting her fall down the stairs- situation.  Secretly, she had been formulating a plot to get back at us the whole time.  Emry stole my cell phone and went behind the living room chair.  I heard her angrily babbling into the phone, and I heard a confused voice coming from the other end.  I grabbed the phone and said "hello?"

Unknown Caller:  Hello, what is your emergency?!

Ken: Oh, sorry, er...my daughter was 'playing' with my phone and must have called you.

Unknown Caller: 911 emergency! Do you have an emergency?

Ken:  No...sorry again...not sure how she called you, but it was my mistake.

911 Operator:  Sometimes cell phones have a safety feature if you hold down the buttons it dials 911.  Give me your name so I can verify who and where this call is from....

The conversation lasted another minute and I hung up the phone.  Maren went into worrisome mom mode and said that 911 usually follows up on "accidental calls."  Maren had me convinced a police cruiser was going to pull up to our house any second.  We were in a bad position...I interrupted a 911 call from an injured child and our lame excuse was "she fell down the stairs." Anyone who's ever watched L&O SVU knows that's the #1 excuse bad parents give when they've abused their kids.  What should we do?   

Luckily, we never had to face that situation.  No detectives ever showed up to interrogate us.  We went to bed that night thanking the Lord for keeping Emry safe from serious injury and for blessing our family with a new baby niece.  We are truly grateful for the gifts our family has received and can't wait to meet our cute baby niece!

Things I Discovered about Fatherhood

Since we have a new baby niece in the family, I'm taking the opportunity to share some things I've learned about fatherhood, babies and other tactics I've picked up along the way.  I've limited myself to discussing things I discovered during the first 4 weeks of Emry's life, although I may add to the list in the future.  Hopefully this list will help the new baby-daddy adjust to life with a newborn...

1. Nipples and breasts - If your wife is nursing, these words will now appear in about of 95% of your daily conversations.  Its scary how quickly you'll become comfortable discussing your wife's nipple inflammation with your family, in-laws, friends, cashiers at Babies R Us, random strangers, etc.  If you can't get comfortable with this you can at least make it equally awkward for the other person by dropping "titty" or "jugs" into the convo. 
2. Piggybacking on that thought...even more shocking is how willing other people are to ask about these things. Some people think that your life is now an open book and anything is on the table for discussion such as your finances, parenting methods, your wife's other lady parts, and (later on)your sex life.
3. Also, everyone from your parents to friends to co-workers(even this blog) has advice for you.  "We did this...we did that...you should do this...why are you doing that?!"   They all have good intentions and really are trying to help you, but not all advice is good.  When someone starts to give you bad advice, challenge your parenting methods or goes as far as correcting something you are doing, this is the best way to avoid a lengthy sermon:  1) Use the smile and nod technique while they are talking.  2) Continue your current childcare activity using your regular method.  3) When they finish speaking, follow up by sounding interested and say "I've heard a lot of people are doing that nowadays."  4) Finish by commenting on the weather.
 4. On a related note...regardless of what people might say, the only mistake you can make is not being a part of your child's life.
5. "The baby has been really fussy today." This statement is a free pass to get you out of any social obligation you don't want to attend.  Also use "I think I hear the baby crying!" to abruptly end unwanted phone calls, ward off door-to-door salesmen or quickly end virtually any other situation. 
6. The most fun you can really have with a 4 week old is to sing them to sleep.  The great thing is that they don't care what you sing, they just like to hear your voice. This is an opportunity to entertain yourself at the same time.  My favorite song to sing to Emry at 1:30am(her normal nightly snack time) was "Bawitdaba" by Kid Rock.  My other go-to song was "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers.  Except I wouldn't sing the actual lyrics to that song...I'd make up lyrics about what I did that day.  Its got a great tune and is slow paced, so you can easily ad-lib.  Well I woke up this morning...I made myself some breakfast...I ate it in the dining room...then went to work.....
7. Babies are like drunks(part 1) -  The only thing newborn infants seem to do is drink until they either pass out, get the hiccups or throw up.
8. Watching your sleeping baby and/or sleeping wife is the most satisfying thing in the world.
9. Being "on time" is a thing of the past.  You'll be at least 20 minutes late for everything no matter how early you start getting ready.
10. The first time you drive with the baby in the car you instantly become the safest driver in the world.  Consequently, every other driver seems like they're Mario Andretti.
11. If you go out for a run while your wife and newborn are asleep, you'd better be absolutely sure the baby won't wake up while you are gone - or you'll have hell to pay when you return.
12. When you first -- Darn, I think I hear Emry crying. I'll have to finish this later.
See how that works :)

Where's the Remote?

Where's the Remote?  Growing up in my house, this was a very common question for one Smith to ask another Smith. It was easy to get up off the couch for a snack and accidentally leave the remote in the kitchen.  Sometimes the remote would come back to the living room, and other times it wouldn't.  Often times the remote would find its way under the couch or between the cushions.  It became such a hot topic that my parents finally designated an end table in the living room as the "remote table."  The remote had to be placed on top of that table when you were finished watching TV.  Maren says in the Bray house(with 3 girls), the question always asked was "Where's the telephone?"

Given my background on this topic, you can see that I fully expected to ask this question in my own house one day, but not this soon.  Maren and I found ourselves searching high and low for the TV remote this weekend.  This was way too early for our family to have this problem for a couple of reasons...

First and foremost is because we don't watch much TV.  We don't even have cable, a fact that has been well documented by Maren's high school students.  Anytime I meet one of her students, the first question they ask is "Why don't you let Mrs. Smith get cable?"  Truth be told, Maren doesn't want it either.  TV is too much of a distraction and a time waster.  Maren and I have found so many other things to do to interact together that have helped us grow closer together as a couple.  There are way too many other things I'd rather do than sit on the couch as life goes by.  Plus I can't sit still long enough to watch a whole TV show anyway. 

Another reason we shouldn't have a remote issue yet is because our kid(s) are not old enough to watch TV.  Emry likes to press the buttons on the TV to make it go on and off, but she is like me and can't sit still for longer than 5 minutes at a time.  So its not like she would be watching TV and running around with the remote either.  She does like to play with the remote though.  Maren or I will give it to her while we are in the living room together, but we don't ever let her take it out of the living room. 

Lastly, we shouldn't be having this problem with the TV upstairs because we never use it.  The only time it ever gets used is when I turn on a football game and mute the TV while I'm playing with Emry.  The TV upstairs is an old box TV.  Its not even capable of receiving a digital signal, so we have one of those converter boxes hooked up to it.  The signal cuts in and out all the time, and is really annoying.  We also have a VCR hooked up to that TV in the living room.  It would be a pretty sweet set up...if we were living in 1984.

Yes, it says 4 Head with Hi-Fi Stereo. Not many people today know what this
inscription means.  The rough translation is "pure awesomeness."

So if we never use that TV and don't let Emry take the remote out of the living room, what happened? 

It was Thanksgiving Day.  We had a great day which started with our family going downtown for the Turkey Day 5k.  I had to walk the whole event because of an injury...I won't go into it now, but I'll probably rant about it in a future post.  Then we went home and cooked some food to take to my mom's family's Thanksgiving meal.  We had a great time visiting, seeing relatives, watching football and eating too much food.  Emry enjoyed eating the sweet potatoes and the peas the most!  She had a blast playing with her cousins all afternoon. 

Between the tryptophan and playing all afternoon, Emry was exhausted when we got home.  She went down for a nap and Maren started doing some work on the computer downstairs.

We posed for pictures next to our passed out
daughter.  However, we resisted the temptation
of drawing on her with a Sharpie.

To avoid distracting Maren from her work, I decided to watch some football on the TV upstairs(and fall asleep on the couch.)  I turned on the TV and converter box and sprawled out on the couch.  We only get 7 channels on that TV, of which we only watch about 3, so my odds were pretty good of having the right channel.  Unfortunately the TV was on the wrong channel.  We can only change the channel by using the remote control for the converter box, but I couldn't see it anywhere. 

Maren and I had just done a thorough cleaning of the house, so I knew it couldn't be hiding in the couch or under any furniture. I asked Maren if she had seen it, but she had no idea either.  We searched high and low, but couldn't find it.  Neither of us could remember giving it to Emry recently or seeing her play with it.  We searched through her toys anyway, but came up empty.  We gave up the search and figured it would show up later.  A couple days went by and we never found it. 

One evening the following week, Emry was playing in the living room.  She was doing her routine of turning the TV on and off and pressing buttons on the converter box and VCR.  I went up there and joined in the fun.  She likes to flip open the door to the VCR, so I flipped it open, and to my surprise I saw this...

The files are IN the computer? - Zoolander(And yes, I own it on VHS)

Emry,that little turkey, had stuck the remote in the VCR.  Maren and I had a good, long laugh about it.  Normally, I'd go all Doogie Howser right here and sum up the post by mentioning a great lesson I learned from this....but I've got a Ferris Bueller's Day Off" videotape calling my name right now, so peace out!