Dad of Divas

One Dad's Quest to Regain Control of his Kingdom

Is Digital Photography Helping Or Hindering Our Society #dadchat

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I love taking photographs and since 2004 I have had the opportunity to own a Kodak Easyshare camera. Now I know this camera is starting to get old, but it has done a great job at capturing the important images within my families life. Prior to this, I used a Minolta 35mm camera that was a hand-me-down from my mother (A very nice hand-me-down).

Prior to 2004 my 35mm was wonderful and produced great pictures! I was however staring to have some problems with the shutter speed and getting some light seepage that was a bit frustrating. Around November 2003, J-Mom and I decided to get a new digital camera prior to the birth of Diva-J. We also were very excited about the idea of immediate gratification, seeing the pictures, being able to delete pictures immediately and re-shoot, etc.

The camera definitely lived up to its reputation, and as I said before I have been able to get some greast picture over the years.

Saying this though I return to the crux of the question I am posing today. Is digital photography helping or hindering our society?

I can say that I love the ability to tinker and fix and know what I am taking. But the quality of a 35mm is stellar….and there is still something to the anticipation of what you will get with this type of a camera and the roll of film that you are turning in. I can honestly say that I always love the wait that I have and the suspense of seeing what my eye and camera captured with my newer Canon 35mm camera that J-Mom and her parents got for me back in 2006.

Does digital picture taking cheapen the moment? I think not. Now, I will put a caveat on that in saying that I do think that it has become so easy to make an image something that it is not…making the perfect image when the original is far from it. This makes me think of the whole concept of airbrushing pictures for magazines and how reality really isn’t reality.

I am not saying that I am a purist as some are…. I do not shun digital technology. By the contrary, I find myself using my digital camera more than my 35mm…but the sad thing…I barely print off the pictures I take. I do keep them on the computer, but I fail to print them as I would with my 35mm pictures. This is one of the things I miss with digital photography…you are not forced to get pictures you have to throw out or cringe at. Instead you can pick and choose the best ones, you get to digitally enhance those that you do want making the perfect moment even better…. and you get to save money because you are only printing the pictures you want.

One final thing that comes to mind is the fact that recently Polaroid released information that they would no longer be making Polaroid Instamatic cameras…this too is a creature of a bygone age. I mean I always loved having to shake the heck out of those pictures to see what kind of image I (or whoever else was taking the photograph) had received…oh well…I guess the technology revolution continues.

So I now turn this over to you, please fill the Maniverse with your thoughts…

Good day from the Divadom….

Maniverse #18 – Being a “Yes” Man

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Are you the type of person that will say “Yes” at the drop of the hat? Do you tend to over-commit yourself to things outside of your family? If so, you probably are a “Yes” man, and welcome to the club.

J-Mom and I have had many conversations about being over-committed, not only with work, but with outside activities. I fill my time outside of work not only with kids and family, but also with Rotary and church activities (I said yes to being on the church council).

So why do I have such a hard time saying no? I don’t exactly know why this is a problem. I think much of it goes down to being an experience junky. I love meeting new people and making a difference in the world around me. Now you may say that having my family and making a difference in their lives should be enough, and I know this, but I still find myself at times falling into this trap.

It also is not just in my out of work life where I do this. I also tend to over-commit in my work life as well. Now don’t get me wrong, I do accomplish my commitments, but I do tend to say yes more than I probably should!

So is there help for an over-commitment addict (as J-Mom would probably call me)? I did some research and found some great resources that I thought I would share with all of you (as I am not going to provide a top ten list of things you should do as I currently do not do them).

So do I think that I can change overnight? Not even slightly. Do I think that with hard work I could make this change? You bet I can. The biggest thing that I know I have to do is to actually do it… this will be the hardest thing for me. It is not that I do not want to be with my family…far from it. My family is my life, but also in my life as I have already mentioned, I crave interaction. I do not have a lot of friends that I do things with here where I live and these are ways for me to connect with people.

I also though understand that I need to be fair to J-Mom to allow her to also have these opportunities and to do things for her as well so that she has an identity outside of being a mom. I think at times my over-commitment gets in the way of her ability to separate herself from her role as mom…which is not fair in the least.

So today I am looking for your advice.

  • How do I get past this over-committed lifestyle with work and within my personal life?

  • How have you done it in your own life?


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Maniverse #17 – 9-11 – Honoring the past. Where were you 7 years ago?

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I think that for most of us we can all remember the moments that surrounded the 9/11 tragedy that struck our nation seven years ago.

I remember where I was… I was in the my office at the university that I was working at as a Student Affairs Professional. I believe it was J-Mom who called me and told me to turn on the radio because it looked like a plane had collided with one of the twin towers. Unbeknownst to us was all the malice that was behind the first attack, let alone the subsequent attacks within New York City as well as the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

I remember hearing this and calling my colleagues to fins a television that we could turn on and we watched in our main office as the tragedy revealed itself. I was numb, dumbstruck. Only once before had I felt this way, and that was when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. I simply had never witnessed such hatred, such a loss of life and later that week we found out how close to home this hit our family.

The Saturday before 9/11 J-Mom and I celebrated the wedding of a high school friend of J-Mom. The wedding was a wonderful event full of love and laughter. At that event I was able to meet a friend of the bride named Kelly Ann Booms who sat in front of us during the wedding. She made a comment that she had to get back to Boston on Sunday because she had a business trip that she had to fly out for (to Los Angeles) early on Tuesday morning (9/11). Later that week we found out that Kelly was a passenger on the first plane that hit Tower 1 (Flight 11). We were shocked that someone we just spoke with could be gone in an instant and it brought the national tragedy to a whole new level of meaning. We now felt a part of this tragedy and not as far removed.

The images of the first few hours, the first few days afterward still are burned into my memory and I think they will never leave. For my generation, I think that this even will be the event that truly defines our generation as it may have been Pearl Harbor for my grandparents of the JFK assassination of JFK for my own parents.

So today, seven years later I take a moment to remember Kelly and the other victims of the 9/11 attacks. May we never again live through such an event.

When my daughters get old enough to understand the significance of this day I will help them understand, but it will not be easy for the to grasp the severity of the events and what it did to the American Spirit that followed. I can only hope that I will be ready for this discussion when the time comes.

So my question for the day?

  • What are your memories of this event in our collective history?
  • How will you tell your children about this event in the future?

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Maniverse #16 – A Little Chaos Is Good For The Soul

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Back in graduate school I learned about a theory called Chaos Theory that talks about the idea of a rippling effect that occurs throughout life As one of the analogies (Called the Butterfly Effect) goes, a butterfly flapping its wings in New York can cause a Tsunami in Indonesia. Wikipedia does a good job at explaining this and its integral parts. (I talked about this theory a while back as well)

I bring up this theory as I have found that this theory explains much in my life as a parent and as a father. One of the main pieces of this theory talks about the fact that patterns seem to repeat. Look at the picture of the fractal fern and the Lorenz attractor. Both of these images show how patterns in mathematics and in nature repeat themselves.

As a father I see parents like myself having these similar routines and patterns that become innate in our lives. In my household, I tend to have the same bedtime routine I use with my eldest and when that changes she is not always the happiest camper. This is only one example, but there are many others that happen even on a daily basis.

One other concept with this theory is the ideas of the rippling effect. I am amazed at how hard these small aspects of life can be identified, even after some time. There are times where the small things we do have an immediate impact, while there are other times where you simply do not know what the outcome will be because they may not manifest themselves into much later in life.

Think to the things you say and do with your children on a daily basis. We do small things that may have a direct impact, but there are others that are forming who our children are and will be for the future as they may be invisible or unconscious at the time of occurrence.

Most people would think of chaos as being negative, or in a parenting construct, as completely losing control. The more though that you read about chaos theory, the one you will come to understand that losing control is not a bad thing and instead should be looked at as being something that you want within your home and within your life (now your kids and significant other may think that you have lost it when you propose this).

So I encourage all of you to have a little chaos in your lives and work to encourage this in your own way. This theory transcends into many aspects of our lives, so read more about it and find ways to incorporate chaos into your life!

Are you interested in learning more? If so, check out the below links:

Maniverse #15 – We’re Not Just Playing Poker – We’re Building Community

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Every weekend our community has a farmers market. I enjoy going to it, and even if I don’t purchase anything, I enjoy the feeling of community that washes over me as I am there. Each week I find myself talking to more and more people as we well as catching up with those people I had met in the past and it feels so good!

When our farmers market closes in the fall I find myself missing the interaction as people start to go into hibernation mode for the winter months (winters in Wisconsin can be bit brisk)., so again, come early spring I look forward to the first days of the market (even though there isn’t much – or many people – there).

I truly enjoy taking my daughters to the market and having them experience this community and the people I talk to always seem to enjoy interacting with them as well. I can only hope that as they get older they will come to enjoy this as much as I do (but you never know). I also feel that it is important to reach out to others and help in our own way (which talking to people may not do this – but assisting with other community initiatives and having my children involved will).

Thinking about this I decided to explore to see if there were any resources out there about building community for children and assisting or teaching children how to help others in our own communities. Some of the sites of interest included:

The building of community makes me think of the whole blogging community and how we all work to outreach in our own way and help others or help the world in our own way. In my most recent initiative, The great Minivan Trade Up, I have been amazed at the generosity of others reaching out to me to assist me in reaching my goal. There have been many other instances in starting out as a blogger and not knowing what I was doing where people stepped in to lend a helping hand. This type of outreach helps to build our overall blogging world, and assists to provide a more solid infrastructure for all of us to stand on.

So I thank all of you who have helped me along the way, especially Jeremy, Summer, Joey, Tyler and Tom. There have been others as well that have helped in their own ways, so thank you to all of you as well.

So my question for the day?

  • How do you build community in your life or our town?
  • How do you teach your children to value community building?

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Maniverse #14 – The Heart of A Champion

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I have been watching the Olympics and have been caught up in the spirit of the games, not only with United States Athletes, but by many of the athletes. I have been amazed at some of the sportsmanship that I saw, as well as the humble nature of some of the athletes (I did say some). In thinking about this, I started to wonder:

What makes a champion?

I came up with 5 main things that came to my mind:

1) Hard Work – None of these Olympians were able to come to these Olympics without many years of hard work. You hear the stories and what many sacrificed over the years to be able to be where they are today and I wonder how many of us could also do as much in our own lives.

2) Persistence – These Olympians did not get to the peak of their game without pushing through adversity and set backs. Whether these may have been injuries, country or familial termoil or other such things, these athletes pushed through them and many times worked even harder to achieve their goals.

3) Sportsmanship – There were numerous times in the games where an athlete’s graciousness at winning really came through. I was think specifically about Dara Torres in a semi final heat stopping the race before it had begun to help a fellow swimmer with the fact that there was a tear in her suit. I mean how many of us, in a situation where we are competing for a top prize could get our mind off of the target to help the competition…. I hope that I can say that I would do the same and I think I would, but without being in the situation it is hard to tell for sure.

4) Support – So many of these athletes have had families, coaches, friends, and the like behind them, being their biggest cheerleaders and fans. Put yourself in the athletes shoes… Who do you have that gives you such support? Who is your biggest fan?

5) Driven – These people are driven by a goal, they have set their eyes on a prize and for them it was an Olympic medal (preferably gold). This drive taps into the other four items that I mentioned above but also transcends athletics and can be seen in all of our lives in one way or another.

So in thinking about this I did a little research and found some resources that I thought I would share…

Teaching Sportsmanship

So my questions for the day?

– What lies within you that makes you a champion?

– What do you believe is most important in being a champion?

– How can you teach these skills to your children?


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Maniverse #12 – Drama at Dinnertime

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I have been noticing lately that at least in our household, dinnertime is filled with drama. Diva-J has a tendency to do great with her breakfast and lunch meals, but dinnertime is always a struggle. I think that a lot of this is in regards to the fact that breakfast and lunch are quite structured and she knows what to expect during those meals, while dinner is not going to be the same meal each day. In our home breakfast revolves around a handful (less than 4 choices) and lunch is usually only 2-3 choices.

Imagine the situation…dinner is on the table, prayers have been said and Mom and Dad are eating with eldest child sitting there saying they will not eat. Mom and Dad state the ramifications for not eating (no dessert, no snack before bedtime, etc.) This may or may not work, but instead can escalate the drama…”I want dessert” or “I want a snack”. The child is calmly told what they need to do, but does this assist this child in eating… in our household, not always.

I know that the key for this is consistency, but for children that are persistent, does consistency work? I would hope that the answer is yes, as I know that for parents who have these types of children, that it can be very stressful and concerning when a child is not eating and is distracting from a calm family meal.

I mean who would not want to have a calm family meal – remember Leave it to Beaver …with the Beaver talking to mom and dad about their day. Everyone eating peacefully and talking together…. Ah if this was the traditional reality…

In doing some research and searching this out, I have found that I am not alone. The following blogs have shown similar concerns:

• http://www.beagooddad.com/146/getting-kids-to-eat-dinner/
• http://secretmomthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/dinner-time-drame.html
• http://talk.milehighmamas.com/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=123001555&p=231725
• http://www.seriouseats.com/talk/2008/02/tricks-to-get-kids-to-eat.html

Below is a video that I identified. Does this sound familiar in your home? How would you react and deal with the situation?

Dinner time drama

Some experts state that there are things that we all can do to not only support healthy eating habits but also lessen the drama that may be occurring within your own home.

• http://www.saferchild.org/foodtips.htm
• http://www.healthychild.net/articles/na18picky.html
• http://parentingresources.suite101.com/article.cfm/getting_children_to_eat_right
• http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/toddlers/toddlers2.html

I leave you today with a question – How do you deal with drama at dinner or other meal period. What tricks and suggestions do you have for other parents?


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Maniverse #11 – Remember Me

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I heard a song the other day by Mark Shultz (A Christian Music Artist) named “Remember Me”. (If you don’t know the song, take a listen below – and you can practice reading Spanish)

The context of the song made me think about what I can do to make my family, friends, community, country and maybe even the world to remember who I was.

I have always tried my best to make a difference in the world around me, Ever since high school I have been a volunteer, Rotarian, and humanitarian. I have tried my best to raise money for worthy causes and have worked to be an educator to the people I encounter.

At times I have to wonder what makes a person remembered. Is it the legacy that they leave behind in their children, the money accumulate or their philanthropy, the people they serve or touch in their existence? Is it the large grandiose gestures, or the small, seemingly meaningless ones?

Over at Our Crooked Tree, a celebration of a 100th post, just occurred and with this she decided to talk about 100 things about her and one of them made me think again about this topic. She mentioned that she wished to write a book someday. Thinking about this, I guess there will be some who may remember me due to the publications that I have written. Yes, I can honestly say that I am an author, but no, most of you will never read it unless you are in the field of student affairs or are in college administration. I also have my dissertation published (I don’t know how many have actually read it besides J-Mom, and my Dad and Mom (pasts of it at least)). So will this make me remembered… I would probably say no, but the relationships I made in writing the book will make me remembered.

I think this is part of it…I think you have to put yourself out there and be willing to take a chance. Take a chance on people, take a chance on getting to know others, networking and being there when they need you. I tell you blogging has opened up a world of new people to me outside of my business network and it has been great! I know that taking this leap for some is not easy. Opening yourself and trusting the people you meet takes time – take the time and get started! Your listening ear may make a difference to someone else.

I guess for me, I will continue to do what I can to make a difference. In my thoughts, making a difference is contextual and carries an individual definition that only you can know. So what is important in my mind is making a difference in the lives of the people around me, but also those less fortunate.

So my questions for the day…

– What will you do or have you done to be remembered?
– What does making a difference mean to you?

I look forward to your thoughts and comments!


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Manly Monday #9 – Fathers as Dream Makers

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You know, I have always seen myself as someone who encourages others to do what they can and be what they can with the gifts that they have been given, but as I have assumed ther rolw of being a father I have found this to become even more important.

In my past post about the importance of fathers I talked about all of the important things that I think of, but also what others have said regarding the importance of being a Dad in today’s society.

Since writing that post, I also started thinking about the importance of a Dad being someone who inspires and creates dreams for his children. What I mean by this is that I hope with my girls that I can instill in them a sense of wonder and allow them to have BIG dreams that can be achieved (while others may not be achieveable). I hope to make them see the world through large amazed eyes, and allow them to experience the world around them as if everyday is a special one to be cherished.

Do I do a good job at this now…I don’t know about that… I want to, but I also think that at times I get caught up in my own world that does not allow this dream making to occur, at least not to the extent that I would like. Much of this goes back to the whole issue of time and not feeling like I have enough of it to spare or at times even share, though I know I should.

So, again, how do I make dreams occur. First and foremost I have to listen to my Divas and know what their dreams are and then by knowing I can work to make them come true. Second, I have to be present, I have to be around to be active in my divas’ lives, so that they will know that I am there for them and that they can rely on my to help them to achieve what they hope to achieve. Finally, I have to be willing to take a chance on my Divas… making their world a bit unexpected (well…at least somewhat unexpected).

So what about all of you… how are you dreammakers for your children?

I look forward to your comments on this one!

Maniverse #5 – Time In A Bottle

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Do you remember the song time in a bottle by Jim Croce? Yes I know that the song is a bit old and dated but the lyrics seemed a it meaningful to me as I was driving yesterday. For those of you that don’t remember the words…I suggest you read them below!

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that Id like to do
Is to save every day
Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
Id save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
Ive looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
Ive looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with

Let me give you some context to my thoughts. I was driving to an all day meeting in Madison, WI which is about a 2.5 hour drive and on the way home (another 2.5 hours) I started truly thinking about the amount of time away from our families we as full time working dads have sacrificed. Now I am not saying that Moms do not sacrifice this time as I know they do…so hear me out.

I started to think about all of the times where I was driving long distances for meetings and how quickly this time adds up into much larger amounts of time. I can remember my first professional job where I was driving about 2 hours each day. I stayed in this job for about 1.5 years. Thinking back on this for a year’s worth work (in this case 9 months) I spent approximately 360 hours of my life on the road. Now I occupied my time listening to audio books and the like, but still 360 hours. Those are360 hours that I can never get back to depend with J-Mom. The time now that I spend going to meetings is time I can never get back with Diva-J & Diva-PJ.

Outside of my own experiences, I think about those people who drive for a living, such as truck drivers. Now I know that some of them have their wives or families riding with them, but many of them ride alone, and I wonder what kind of life that is, especially if they have families. I don’t think that I could do that myself (needless to say I wouldn’t be able to stay awake for the amount of time that I would need without copious amounts of caffeine).

So the moral of this story…take advantage of the time that you have as it is fleeting and precious…don’t squander it!


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