Weekly Recap #18: "Differences"
It's 4 in the morning & I've been up for a few hours because I fell asleep "early". For me, falling asleep before midnight is rare & I usually come alive at night. My wife says I view sleep as a weakness, haha 😂 As I've said before in a few posts, I'm in fact getting more tired these days, I'm losing my no-sleep super power & I know I should actually just accept that I need more rest. However, on the nights when I actually do fall asleep around 9 or 10pm I find myself waking up at odd hours of the night with a creative mind ready to do work.
The house is quiet, my brain is alive, & I'm ready to go. If these are going to be my new hours, I may just need to get a 24 hour gym membership again to take advantage of the time where no one else is awake, but still stay in a responsibility safe environment. I wish I could trust myself to just hit the trails solo, but it's too much of a risk & let's be honest, it's way too cold.
As a parent, I have such a hard time shutting off my parent-brain during the day and it's so much harder for me to get work done. Yesterday I started work at my office, but that was it, I started a few tasks on my work to-do list, but with the parent to-do list on my brain I couldn't concentrate & actually complete any of them.
After my daughter was born I started to work from home a lot more and still only do about 20% of my work at my office. If I'm trying to work during the day though, I simply can't get much done with the kids around the house, so I try to get a few hours away at the office every week. My wife is amazing at multitasking, but when the kids are awake I find it extremely hard to focus. She also works from home & its amazing to see her balance all of her errand list & work list at the same time. I tried this last week & was so embarrassed when trying to bring all 3 of my kids in the bike shop to do a quick errand & all I felt like was a crazy person trying to hold a conversation but manage my kids at the same time. But its in these lovely QUIET hours when the whole house is settled & resting in their beds when my mind can really start to fire & the wheels begin to turn. I'm definitely still that 9-5AM creative more than the 9-5PM guy, & I don't handle distractions well.
With that said, I'm also awake & reflecting on the past week. My boy Lincoln tried out the local BMX racing track on his Strider bike & absolutely LOVED it! I think we just might be in for years of watching races.
It was so funny watching him out there, but also fun seeing his siblings cheer for him on the sidelines. We had two completely different personalities going on, a big sister who was completely content cheering for her brother & a little brother who was getting wiggly & wanted nothing more but to be out there riding alongside his brother.
It's so interesting to see all 3 of them tackle new environments & how differently the boys approach things compared to their sister. Ellie is so much more cautious & timid, but at the same time she is an encourager, open to trying new things, & ready to tell her brothers how they should do something. If we tell her to show them what she means, she'll often back down & say she wants her brothers to try it.
It's going to be cool to see how the kid's differences continue to affect their personalities as they get older & how they possibly compliment each other as siblings. I can definitely notice their individuality already & also see how they're stronger as a team when working together on something. Often times our littlest guy is messing up what the older two are building, but just in this past month we're finally starting to get a glimpse of what it's like to have all 3 of them play together nicely. The thing that scares me most is it seems like the older two are starting to encourage their little brother to basically be the crash test dummy in various situations since he has little to no fear at all 😬
When it comes down to it, we all have so many unique personalities and are simply wired differently, and it's crazy to see what parts of our personalities get passed on to our children. My daughter just said to my wife the other day when having a hard time being told she couldn't do a craft, "Mom, you know when you have an idea, and you just have to do it?" And it made my wife and I think of ME when I feel the exact same way. When I'm in a creative mood you just can't stop me. It was also good to hear my buddy Leif in the interview we posted last week say the same thing. It's funny to have those types of differences with people, but it's also funny to be able to relate to the similarities.
