It's been 17 years since I've changed a dirty diaper,

back then I was:

Young and inexperienced at life in general

Over Worked and tired all the time

Overwhelmed with yet another mouth to feed

Didn't know I was codependent

Stressed out from a non functional relationship (sig other)

What a difference being: Older, Wiser, With more money, Less bills, and can go home when Grand Daddy Day Care is over!!!!

With a failed relationship (we never got married) and the crappy way I dealt with the break up, I really did fear that I'd screwed my kids up... Hell, I needed therapy and I was an adult... it only made sense that my kids might be at least as dysfunctional as their parents were.

Apparently my kids were watching and learning.

I ran a small (tiny) landscape contractor business, El Nino put me out of business in 1998 -100 days with no rain - 100 days over 90°

I went out of business... and my stress levels were so high... and my wife was cheating on me... I was a mess.

I really did think I'd screwed up my kids.

Well, what I didn't know then is that they were watching me, they were watching me like a hawk! My girls took away from the experience of being my offspring the best of what I demonstrated, modeled for them and... they learned from my mistakes!!!

I didn't know that they learned what NOT to do. Now that they are parents (and I'm a Grand Dad) they're much better equipped for the job of parenting than I was at that age.

Baby Raising Technology.

My Grand Children have amazing stuff to play with, educational toys to play with that was not available when I was a young father. My God, even the baby bottles went high tech, in my fathering days the neat thing was the bottle with a plastic bag that collapsed as the baby drank. My granddaughter has some kind of needle that lets the air flow back down into the bottle so she doesn't need to burp so much.. it's dizzying and I'm grateful.

I didn't have the luxury of extended family, my Dad moved to the west coast and my mom moved to Africa first then Japan. She settled in Louisiana, I lived in Gaithersburg Maryland, about 600 miles or so from them.

Extended Family

that's gonna have to wait for another post... GrandBabies Daddy came home and I can get something to eat now!!

Want more of this? Get each new blog post in your email. Look for the 'feedburner' subscribe button on the left side of this blog. Feedburner is owned by Google, so you've no worries about being spammed.