I love being a dad

Yup, it is true, I love being a dad. Every morning I am sad when I leave the little people to go to work and every night I race home to be with them. Prior to my first work trip there have only three nights that I did not get home in time to help put them to bed. They are just too much fun, it is great to walk in the house and have Ava look up at me and have this HUGE smile on her face and have Owen crawl over to say hello, look out if you are in his way, he'll run you right over. Maybe this is some form of narcissism? It is too funny, when I come home Owen gets all worked up and starts flaying his arms around and gets upset if I don't go over and say hello, normally he just comes with me to get changed, so I can hang out.

Of course I think that my kids are the smartest, cutest, most wondering little people ever!! As my buddy Conrad said, which I totally believe - if you don't believe it no one will.

So... about two weeks ago, I went away for the first time. The short story is that it sucked!! It sucked for me, it sucked for Tracy and it seemed to suck for the kids, I think it even sucked for Maggie (our nanny - sort of). The slightly longer story is that, I was going to be away Tuesday evening and not returning home until after the kids went to bed on Friday night. Inherently this was going to be hard as neither kids was sleeping through the night. Owen was close, he normally slept until about 5ish, but Ava was still getting up twice, so that math did not look to good for Tracy, the plan was that Maggie was going to stay and help one night and work a bit more. Generally with a little parent love we were able to get the kids to go back to sleep, without too much trouble, and many days we wold not get up until 7am.

Monday morning comes, everything seems to be going fine, I am about to head off to work and start my week, Tracy comes into the kitchen crying, Maggie gave her notice - SUCK!! She is going to stay through the end of the month, but this is really not good. Still seems OK for me to go, it is a work thing and I really need to get it done. The next 24 hours are spent trying to figure out what we are going to do about the nanny, Maggie has been great, the kids really seem to like her what are we going to do....? After a bit of time we find out that she is moving, which makes us feel a bit better, but does not really solve the problem.

Tuesday afternoon, I come home prior to heading out, play with the kids one more time give everyone a big hug and a kiss and promise to call often. It seems that no sooner do I get on the bus that Ava gets a fever, this is really not good. Ava is all about mom at the best of times and when she is sick it only gets worse. Still it should be OK, Owen is crawling now and as long as he has a piece of Tupperware to chase around the house all is right in the world.... Well, guess what? We did not really realize how much Owen wanted to see Dad everyday. About 24 hours after I was gone Owen realized that he had not seen me and became pretty unhappy, he also got really needy and wanted to be held all the time. So now Tracy is home with a sick Ava and a needy Owen as well as trying to figure out what we are going to do about getting a new nanny. Needless to say, I could not get home soon enough and everyone was very happy to see me, but I think Tracy most of all. The following day she said one of the nicest things to me, it was something to the effect of 'I have never missed anyone's presence so much or felt so happy to have it back' - there was lots of hugging :)

The Sunday after I came back was father's day and although we spend most of it in the car, it was great to be hanging out the family.

Here are some recent pictures of the cutest babies ever!