Many have you have seen this, but after running the Beacon Hill Tri this Saturday, I got on youtube and searched around for various Triathlon videos, trying to understand how Micah Denison can transition so fast.

This weekend I spent some time doing more Tri research and came across an old story a friend had sent me about Dick and Rick Hoyt. This father son team is what fatherhood and being a true champion are all about. The video below shows some clips of them racing. As you can imagine, participating in an Ironman (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run) is enough to kill off most people, but to do an Ironman while carrying someone else is, for lack of a better word, incredible. Read the SI Article here.

Today was one of those days where I was just off and cranky from the minute I woke up. By 9 PM I just wanted to sit down on the couch and catch up with my Tivo. Maren climbs out of bed and runs into the living room. I yelled at her to go back to bed. She doesn’t move. Instead, her head and eyes look to the floor and silently, she walks over to me and puts her hands around my neck and looks up and says “Dad, I just wanted to give you a hug and a kiss, I haven’t seen you all day.”

I carried her back to bed and tucked her in. Sure enough Kaili’s Daddy radar went on red alert and she sprang from the covers for a hug and kiss as well. Well, she more licks than kisses - but you get the point.

Kudos to you Maren for helping me remember why your so rad. (Your rad too Kaili, but chill on the licking).

Milton Glaser, one of my favorite designers, you may recognize some of his work, has a great essay entitled “Ten Things Have Learned” (I saw this article by way of cameronmoll.com). The one point I wanted to share here was this, taken from #3 Some People are Toxic Avoid Them:

“You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life. “

So I try to be a nourisher of my kids - or so I thought I was a nourisher, until I had a small, but poignant, life lesson from my mom’s sister . . .

We were out eating with a bunch of extended family and I was just being my normal jovial self, when after one of my witty quips, my aunt says “Your cynicism will destroy your daughters” I had what those self help books call a paradigm shift and realized all at once, that Tarah and I are the primary source of hope and rose colored glasses our daughters have - the world will give them plenty of satire, ugliness and pessimism, our job is to show them what the world could and should be, to show them optimism, unbiased love and to protect them from the sludge of society. Some people call that keeping your kid in a bubble. I call it being a parent.