Ever since I became a parent I have come to believe that 75% of parenting is marketing (I just haven’t figured out how to write an article about it yet) whatever the matter at hand happens to be so my children will like it. One of the things I have marketed successfully to my children is spending time with me without their Mommy. We were spending five days without her (she went on a well-deserved vacation) and I suggested to them that we were now Los Tres Amigos (The Three Friends)! They loved it and it has stuck, amazingly. Now, when my wife is going somewhere, my children will at some point say, “That means we’ll be the Tres Amigos!” It is quite a lovely feeling.

Today, I stayed home from work to take care of our children so my wife could go to work - an interesting role reversal. We had such a wonderful day (not without its stressors, of course. They are still three after all.) and I really enjoyed it. There is something about being The Daddy, The Parent, The Primary Caretaker, that feels really good (and exhausting). I like feeling them turn to me for everything they need and not having to share them with anyone else. It makes me feel good about myself as a father that I can easily handle it, but also makes me glad that they get to experience me meeting all of their needs for the day. Maybe it is not the same as the way my wife would do it, but it gets done nonetheless.

And throughout the day my children would announce, “Los Tres Amigos!” Yup, not a bad day at all.

My sister was in town last week from California. One of the things my kids always love to ask when we’re eating dinner is, “Is this the whole family?” It’s pretty much always our family, but there is often extended family as well. Very often we talk about who is missing and the person is very often Aunt Deb. However, last week, it was the whole family and they loved saying that.

Over the weekend, Elijah asked, “Remember when we had Aunt Deb?”

“But she’s not here anymore,” Jordyn replied.

“Where did she go?” my wife asked.

“She went home,” they both replied.

I think this was Elijah’s way of saying he misses Aunt Deb.

Last night Jordyn asked me, “Remember when I had timeouts?”

“You mean last night, Jordyn?” I asked with a bit of bitterness in my voice, I’m sure.

“Yeah. I had lots of them in my chair,” she reminded me as if I had forgotten.

“Yes and quite a few on the stairs, too, right?”

Yeah.”

The only thing this has confirmed for me is that I’m not sure how something gets elevated to the level of a Remember when in my children’s minds. I can’t quite figure out why she would bring that up? Was this her way of apologizing?

I have no idea, frankly.

It came up again last night. My kids have been saying something that was gnawing at me, but last night it was unavoidable. Lately, our Okapis have started to ask me, “You going to see your work friends?” The question gives me pause. I have enough guilt about leaving them every morning, the last thing I want them thinking is that I leave because I’m going to hang out with some friends, that hanging out with friends every day is more important than they are.

I know they don’t really understand what work is except that it is the place Daddy goes to every day. But they know what friends are and have a few themselves. They go to friend’s houses to play and have fun. I really don’t want them thinking that’s where I go everyday. On the other hand, I don’t really want them thinking work is something tortuous and painful that every person has to go through to live life, right? There must be some balance here.

Last night, though, Elijah and Jordyn went one step further. Elijah was talking on one of his play phones. Then he handed the phone to me saying, “It’s your work friends.” Now, I have never received a phone call from work, thankfully, and I’ve never called work from home except to tell them I won’t be coming in.

“Tell them I can’t talk right now because I’m with my children,” I told him, not sure what to do really.

Talking back into the phone, he said, “He can’t talk. He’s with us.”

Then he turned to Jordyn and said, “You want to talk to his work friends?”

“What are their names?” she asked. Then they said my boss’s name and my cubemate’s name. (As an aside, they really do hear everything we say even when we are not talking to them. Oy.)

I’m a bit flummoxed by the whole situation and feel like the whole work friends concept is building momentum, but something about it feels wrong to me. I don’t want them thinking I go to see my friends during the day instead of being with them. But they seem to be developing an idea, an image in their heads of where I go during the day beyond the abstract concept of work. But I think it’s an image I don’t want them to have.

I talked to Gem about it last night and she made a good suggestion; I need to talk more about what I do during the day in very simple terms to help them build that image in their minds.

This is not the most dire situation I am dealing with in terms of trying to be a good father to my children, but it is one that caught me by surprise and one that has me questioning what I really want my children thinking about when it comes to me leaving for work every morning. Since I haven’t thought about it myself, I feel I have some catching up to do.

Since I’ve been seeing my kids in the morning lately, it has been interesting to see how they handle my leaving. Jordyn seems kind of sad, but Elijah, who in the past has had more trouble, has been running up to me saying “Goodbye, Daddy!” when I start to put my shoes on.

When I give Jordyn a hug, he says, “Goodbye Daddy!” quite loudly.

When I put my jacket on, he repeats over and over again, “Goodbye Daddy!”

As I am walking out the door, he reiterates, “Goodbye Daddy!” a couple of more times.

If I didn’t know any better, I would say he is kicking me out. On the other hand, he could be screaming as I left.

It has been two weeks now and our kids are waking up about an hour to an hour-and-a-half earlier than they used to. They used to sleep until about 7:30 even 8:00 in the morning. Now they are waking up between 6:30 and 7:00.

We have no idea why.

We thought maybe it was my moving around in the morning, but whether I am up and moving around or not they wake up at the same time. We thought maybe it was the new night lights we put in their room. Last night we moved them around and it is significantly darker, though hopefully not too dark, in their room. This morning they were up at 6:30, the same time my alarm went off since I give myself Thursday off from working out. We really have no idea what’s going on. We’ve even tried to limit their naptime, because they were trying to make up the lost sleep during nap which only reinforces them sleeping less during the night. That doesn’t seem to make much of a difference either. I have a theory, but it is pretty far-fetched. I think they might be waking up early to spend more time with me.

Aside from the egomaniacal elements of this theory, my kids miss me when I go to work. Every time I go into their room in the morning, they ask me, “You going to work today?” My leaving in the morning has been an issue I’ve written about in my blog as well as in my articles. I just have a feeling that somehow they began to understand waking up early with seeing, Daddy, with seeing me and they have continued to wake up early for that very reason. By waking up early, they get to do “beautiful children,” which is when I carry them down the stairs. They get to share my cereal with me. We get special moments on the couch together before my wife wakes up.

But they need the sleep. They are clearly overtired and when they are overtired, everything is a disaster to them and that makes our life so much harder. But we can’t get them to bed much earlier than we do. I have thought about not doing some of the things they enjoy about seeing me in the morning to see if my theory is correct, to see if they will sleep later once they realize they can’t have those things if they wake up early. I already don’t let them watch what they want to watch. If they want to get up early, they can watch SportsCenter with me. But the other stuff…

I’m not sure it is worth the extra hour of sleep if it means losing out on the special time. For them or for me.