Just a few short months ago, my idea of home improvement consisted of changing light bulbs and occasionally dumping something known as Liquid Plumber down the drain in an effort to unclog the bathroom sink. Ask me to do much else, and I’d become utterly useless. My eyes would gloss over and my mind would start drifting to other more useful things like when the Cubs would next win the World Series. This aversion to actually completing a home improvement project came about for two main reasons: I didn’t care to expound on this type of knowledge. I lived in apartments my entire adult life from my 20s through 33. This all changed with the purchase of our first home last April. Now, all of a sudden I’m mowing lawns again, and physically unclogging sinks with a drain snake (Evidently the liquid stuff corrodes pipes. Who knew?). I’m also learning how to refinish tables and repair gutters. Soon, hopefully, much more. During my teenage years, I made a silly bet with myself, and lost. I bet that this whole home improvement knowledge base would become as useless as algebra (I’ve still yet to find the reason to include letters while doing math.). Growing up, I had a good teacher for this kind of stuff, but a strong lack of interest. My dad’s an extremely handy person, and largely self taught, himself. None of that matters when you couldn’t have cared less about the class. I never saw the end-game for how a lot of that knowledge could be applied, especially living in apartments where there was no work area, and no need to do much more than call the landlord. How can lowering a drain snake to clean the previous homeowner’s gunk from our bathroom sink possibly give me a strange feeling of satisfaction? Because yesterday I could have taken a sponge bath in the bathroom after simply running the faucet and today it drains just as fast as it comes in. Mission accomplished. Results evident. It feels oddly good to be able to fix things around here without needing the landlord or a plumber. Maybe I’ll utilize Google, read a few books or take a class or two to learn a bit more. Anything’s possible. Look out world, and look out family. Here comes a new dad, and a new homeowner, who may soon know just enough to be...

My wife, my infant son, and I were all in the car with my parents a few weeks back, as we made our way home from Midway Airport sometime after 1 a.m. The mood was a little dour after a three-and-a-half hour weather-related diversion to Milwaukee more than doubled the length of our travel day.   Nobody really wanted to speak on that car ride, because nobody really had any nice things to say. At the time, my son Jamie was 10 weeks old. As we made our way out of the airport and toward the Interstate, Jamie let out the biggest giggle, cutting the quiet tension. After that we all had to laugh.   If he could stay loose in a diaper full of his own excrement, while he’s passing all his previous thresholds for hungry and tired, why couldn’t we just loosen up for the rest of the car ride?   Tomorrow he already turns three months old. Those were some of the quickest three months I’ve seen. I’m so new to this parent thing, it’s not even funny. When the nurse handed me that little infant, I held him so awkwardly in my arms, careful not to somehow break him. Babies are a little more durable than I initially thought, and my comfort threshold is slowly but surely on the rise.   I’m nowhere near an expert at this, but here are a few things I’ve already learned from (or about) my son:   Stop taking things so seriously. You have to be able to laugh at the situation once in awhile, even when you don’t want to. Take a deep breath and just enjoy things. It’s amazing how perceptive babies are. If they sense you’re anxious or just in a bad mood, they’ll keep crying, and your ears just weren’t built to handle that. Nothing cures a bad day like a baby smile. They’re so full of passion and so genuine. If that full smile doesn’t melt your heart, you might not be human. There’s a reason God made babies so darned cute. They cry and poop A LOT. Years of listening to rock music at full volume couldn’t prepare me for the shrill wail of a baby’s cry. They don’t just tell you when they’re hungry. They tell every neighbor on your street in hopes that someone, anyone (especially mom) will come to their aid. Also, nothing says love like getting farted on, pooped on, peed on and spit up on (sometimes all nearly at the same time). Whatever you do, don’t stand still. Jamie loves motion. This can come in a stroller, the car seat, or even a plane ride (he was remarkably...

The journalist in me is tempted to begin this blog post starting with all the conflict and torment that came with my wife’s emergency C-section last week. Instead I will give you the disclaimer that wife and baby are happy and healthy, and dad couldn’t be prouder of both. Just as soon as the doctor and my wife Meg settled on a C-section and began investigating the options for surgeons, the experience was expedited. Monitors kicked into overdrive beeping at a hurried pace. A handful of doctors and nurses swirled around Meg, as my son Jamie’s heart rate dipped. “Get down here now!” our soft spoken doctor yelled over the phone to the surgeon. They wheeled Meg into the operating room, leaving our previous room barren, except for the beeps reverberating in my ears. Meg told me things would be OK, as they wheeled her out. While her intentions were good, being consoled by my wife, who is about to undergo surgery, left me helpless and confused. A nurse sat me down on the couch, looked into my eyes, and told me that my son and my wife would be OK. The same thing happened to her child when she gave birth, she said. Jamie’s heart rate decelerated earlier in the day but rebounded. He also had meconium in his amniotic fluid, a combination that could have resulted in the need for a breathing tube, if inhaled. I processed these complications and thought of my parents, who dealt with my brother’s frequent asthma attacks as a child. The nurse pulled together a set of scrubs, and I quickly changed. We made our way to the operating room and Jamie’s heart rate had already rebounded. I sat with Meg holding her hand, as they made the incision and extracted Jamie. The earlier complications stemmed from Jamie having the cord wrapped around his neck. He had also changed positions enough, making it difficult to come out through natural child birth. There were a quiet couple moments as the doctors worked. Meg’s body contorted with the pressure of the extraction. Soon we heard the loud, jolting cry of our startled son, and couldn’t have been happier. I followed the nurses to the other side of the curtain. They left a length of the umbilical cord for me to cut. He measured in at 9 pounds and 7 ounces, and 22 inches long. Our Transition Every time we stress out about the crying or the lack of sleep or the chaos of balancing paperwork, household chores, and diaper changes, there’s a little trick we’ve learned. Just look at that smile. It’s a great thing that God made babies look so cute. It melts...

When you’re less popular than NFL replacement refs, you know there’s issues. Every time I read another story  about the 9 percent approval rating for Congress, I begin to do the math on the number of friends and family that each member must have, and extrapolate that out in terms of the poll. They’re that unpopular because nothing can EVER get done. A couple weeks ago, Meg and I watched the Ken Burns documentary on Congress. The whole time I’m watching, I’m struck by this sage wisdom being shared by the former journalists and pols alike: If you want to accomplish something within this body, compromise is essential. It’s almost like the people talking on camera were from another century. OK, bad example, but their experiences and their ways of doing things are most definitely antiquated. How do I know? Because there’s 535 people in power in D.C. who would rather lose a limb than compromise with the other side. The country and its leadership have grown more hyper-partisan than ever before. Careers have been staked on ensuring opponents do not return. The problem is that nothing good can happen this way. You end up with a Congress passing fewer and fewer bills, becoming an entirely dysfunctional branch of government. It makes me sad thinking of the future. No wonder why cockroaches are more popular in the polls. All of this becomes even more disturbing when you think about the work that needs to be done with the economy, education, and immigration just to name a few issues. Today’s politicians underestimate their constituents by positioning themselves to never vote against their convictions. I’m more inclined to support politicians voting for the greater good over the party line, even if I don’t always agree with them. I’ve got to think that the majority of Americans want to see progress, even if it means not getting their way 100 percent of the time. At some point, tackling the sausage’s taste has to become more important than how it’s made. It’s the only way for our country – and their approval rating – to...

If I kept time under the Chinese calendar, 2012 would have been the year of the holding pattern. My wife and I are in for some major changes, and they’ve been brewing for a long time. I started Spiraling Upward as a way to log the journey. Life is growing increasingly chaotic, but all of our changes are for the better. Hence the name. I better kick off the blog by announcing that my wife Meg is 30 weeks pregnant. If I’ve known you for more than five minutes, I’ve probably tried to work this into the conversation in some way. I couldn’t be more excited to become a dad. Nervous, but excited. The pregnancy has gone by incredibly fast. Of course, that’s easy for me to say. The most it means to me is some added cleaning and cooking duties, and the responsibility of being there for moral support. (On a side note, it’s always driven me nuts when a guy announces “we’re pregnant.” She’s carrying your future child around. You’re there for support. It’s that simple.) The month of January is going to be a busy one. In addition to baby-proofing our tiny corner of the world, I’ll be taking infant CPR, childbirth, and daddy boot camp classes. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never changed a diaper. Whenever the baby goes to the bathroom, I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to hand him back to his mother, saying “He’s yours now.” That’s about the extent of my knowledge at this point. We’ve also got an offer in on a short sale, and should be hearing back from the bank shortly. Needless to say we’re anxious homeowners to be. I’ll be blogging here on a regular basis about whatever subjects cross my mind. I’m looking to turn this blog into a conversation, so feel free to comment. Happy New Year!  ...