Father of the Year : blended families

The Beginning of the Beginning

Trey — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:48:00 GMT

A huge week for us here. The kids, Ava and Chet finally came home! I missed them terribly. I hadn't seen them in two weeks. They're sleeping now. I worked them to the bone and they start school in two days poor things. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A and I have been working at least twelve hours a day moving her stuff. Half of it goes to my place, the other half to Boston where she will be getting her Ph.D. in sociology three days a week. She'll be making the four hour drive twice a week to see us and to teach a college writing course. I know it sounds nuts but if anybody can pull it off she can. She's amazing.

So the crazy week last week began with us packing up her apartment. Then on Thursday night I moved the car for street cleaning around one in the morning. I had TiVod the Obama acceptance speech and was very fired up and also very tired. Anyway that's my excuse for having parked her car in a tow-away zone. The next day I picked up the UHaul while A taught back to back classes and then while I was moving her (with two paid helpers) she was racing around town on the eve of the Labor Day Weekend desperately trying to liberate her car. If she hadn't needed me to move her I think she would have chopped my head off.

I started loading the truck around 1pm, unloaded the stuff for our New York apartment around six pm and then A and I returned to her old place and finished moving the last little pieces around 1am. Then we were up again at 7:30 to drive to Boston through all the holiday traffic. She drove her car with baby M. I drove the 14' UHaul.

It was a thrill to see where she grew up; the sprawling house where she and her brothers were raised in an idyllic little semi rural town between Boston and Cape Cod. Her family took me candlepin bowling and we ate amazing fried chicken from the poultry farm just down the road. Then this morning I caught a 9am train back to Newark airport to pick up the kids coming from Atlanta. Before we got home I braced them for the huge mess and then bribed them with the promise of ice cream if they helped me put everything away. I would have loved to have waited for A and M on Thursday, to feather our nest together, but A will be so tired I think she'll appreciate that we've done most of the work without her.

I so want her, and little M, to truly feel that this is their home too.

Here is what the living room and kitchen look like now, thanks to my wonderful kids:

It was so lovely putting them to bed. I offered to sing them one of the songs I used to sing them when they were a little younger and they eagerly said yes. I can't tell you how grateful I am that they still wanted to hear me butcher James Taylor:

They're Gone!

Trey — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:56:00 GMT

This is always an odd time of year for me. Ava and Chet fly down to rural Georgia to spend August with their mom, their grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle and cousins. I know it's important for them and I really love the family down there and they love my kids and me, but still, after just about two days without them I fall to pieces. I rattle around the apartment, find myself wandering in and out of their oddly non-messy room and call them every day on the phone.

This August, of course, is different. I'm here in NYC with A and M. I still miss my kids but I am also loving spending time with little M by herself. When my kids are around they tend to hog her attention and her hugs but now I can greedily hoard them myself. It's still hard to believe how radically my household has changed in the course of only a few months. This month of just the three of us will be good for us.

Before they left Ava and Chet were very funny. I'd bought a bottle of hard cider, 4% alcohol, for A and I for our family dinner, and Ava pulled me aside and said she worried that I was developing a drinking problem.

"Why do you like that stuff anyway?" she asked.

"It tastes good."

"No it doesn't. I tasted some wine once with Lucia [our old nanny back in L.A.] and it tasted awful."

"Well grownups have different taste buds."

"But if you drink it you will get drunk."

"Have you ever seen me drunk?"

"NO!" and she folded over giggling at the thought.

For a guy who weighs 190lbs I'm the lightest of lightweights. I'm guessing it has something to do with all the pills I pop to keep my kidneys sort of working (they're at 23% right now, I'm hoping to get a new one.). Whatever the reason, even a half-glass of cider makes my head wobble. I assured Ava that she had nothing to worry about.

I remember my grandfather waking the whole house up when he and grandma were visiting. He would be banging around the bathroom loudly grumbling and trying to pee. She would be behind him whining and trying to steady his shoulder to steady his aim. His speech was so slurred he sounded nothing at all like the brilliant man I knew in the daytime -- the first of his family to finish college and Dayton, Ohio's, first black fire inspector. I was maybe six and vowed never to drink too much myself and never have. He was later diagnosed as manic depressive and meds and will power cured him of his drinking.

I used to spend a month every summer in Dayton with him and my grandma and they pampered me shamelessly. Every day was some wonderful adventure: King's Island amusement park, swimming, firing a bb gun (my parents would have killed us all had they found out). They're some of my happiest childhood memories. So although I miss my kids I know that I can't be too greedy for their company. Still, I'm counting the days till they return.

Our Brady Bunch

Trey — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Usually summers move lazily around here but ours is traveling at warp speed. As soon as we returned from France where the three of us were a quiet little family we've returned to A and M and a very full house. Neither A nor I are quite sure how it is that we have come to be living together but at least for me it really is pretty freakin' wonderful. I guess the plan was just that they'd stay while we were in France so she could sublet her place but now we're all together and it feels so perfect. Chet and Ava dote on M, I do too. She's as irresistible as her mom. Ava is always squeezing her and picking her up but Chet too is kissing her or asking her to kiss him (or getting her to parrot something inapropriate like, "Wanna give Ava a nuggy!") A was working in a cafe while Chet and I were watching M. Ava went to the beach with a friend. M woke early from her nap and shrieked for her mommy. Chet crawled into bed with her and held her and patted her and sang, "Hush little baby, don't say a word..." I had no idea that he knew all the verses. I had no idea that my hyperkenetic, Pokemon-obsessed little boy could be so gentle.

Watching them my heart nearly swallowed me whole...

Of course some things are also a lot more difficult. A and I are both used to being domestic tyrants and now we have to power share. Plus, she's messy. As Chet put it the other day, "With all of M's stuff around here the place is going to be a dump!" We're all working on it because we all feel that this is something that can last.

And little M is capturing more of my heart daily. I can't tell you how thrilling it is to be able to sell Playdoh again. I'd forgotten that it is one of my favorite smell