I remember reading Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery when I was ten or twelve years old. It’s a great story that cleverly foreshadows danger, building to the unexpected climax and conclusion: the “winner” of the lottery is stoned to death in a small town ritual to ensure a good harvest.

In Boston, we have our own annual ritual and rite of passage for 4-years olds: the Boston Public School Lottery. Starting one year before children are eligible to attend kindergarten, parents visit prospective schools and choose the “best” school for their kids. Parents submit ranked choices and then assignments are made with priority awarded to siblings and people in the “walk zone” with a random number lottery used to break ties.

There is no neighborhood school based on address. Instead, the city is divided into 3 geographic zones. Parents can choose any school in the zone. In our case, we are eligible for 21 different elementary schools. In addition to these 21 schools, we can also apply for a spot in a public charter school (in a separate lottery).

The process is confusing for Boston residents and incomprehensible for everyone else. First of all, Boston is unique in offering what they call “K-1″–kindergarten for 4-year olds. There are not enough spaces for every child, but if you do get in, you have the opportunity of a free public education for 2-years of kindergarten before starting first grade. It is great that the city can offer that–but because it’s not universal, a lottery is necessary to determine who gets a spot.

K-2 is universal in Boston…but you will find that if you are not already in a school and moving up from K-1, there may be many fewer openings at the school you want…

Let’s stop right there. The school assignment system process begins with a “showcase of schools” and continues thorough the Fall with “preview days” when parents can tour the two dozen schools they might choose from to determine what school is the right fit. It ironically reminds me of my first days at MIT when we went through Residence/Orientation and chose our dorms or pledged fraternities. The feature of choice was a powerful element of beginning to establish an identity and develop a personal connection to the community.

But in Boston, choice subverts community and undermines parental involvement by encouraging a system of year-to-year decisions and an artificial diaspora of children who are bussed from their neighborhoods to innumerable destinations across the city.

But there is good news on the horizon! In the annual State of the City address, Mayor Tom Menino said:

I’m committing tonight that one year from now Boston will have adopted a radically different student assignment plan – one that puts a priority on children attending schools closer to their homes.

Apparently, it’s been said before, but it’s about time we challenge some of the fundamental assumptions that keep this system alive. We should start from a new set of priorities that recognize ameliorating racial strife from the 1970s is no longer a valid reason to subject our children and their parents to a crazy game of chance. But neither is a quasi-free market system of competition and choice.

We are not making education better through this regime of false choice. We test kids who barely speak English and wonder why they don’t pass. We have schools full of special needs kids–and other schools with advanced work programs. We offer minorities the opportunity to be bussed out of Boston to suburban schools and we use taxpayer dollars to fund an increasing number of charter schools that are virtually impossible for existing students to enroll in. Then, we bus kids all over town to make this mess work.

And yet, in many cases, our local schools are doing just fine. I attended a talent show at my daughter’s school last year about a month after we moved to Boston and I was amazed at the enthusiasm and positivity of the students. I’ve gotten to know teachers and the principal and feel more connected to our school than I did when we were going to an elementary school in the suburbs that is one of the top schools in the state. But every year, there is a new lottery for the incoming kids.

I’ve been trying to write this blog post for a couple weeks now…and I keep running into the endless complexity of explaining the system, why I still believe in the school system that my kids are a part of, and yet why I think this approach needs to be radically-scrapped. Many others have complained. Some have been labeled racists for desiring a return to neighborhood schools. Some become so frustrated they feel they have to leave the city and move to the suburbs.

We moved to the city and I want to make things better. I think the challenges of diversity will enrich my kids and my own education as we navigate this system. I believe a classroom of kids from all ranges of background, interests, motivations, and family is more like the real world than a classroom where all are the same and success is scoring the highest grade. In life, credentials do not matter and no one makes your life fulfilling for you. We must constantly deal with a world that is not fair and does not care what our expectations are. We must learn to find the passion in life, find what is interesting, and motivate ourselves always to learn–not just to compete or win approval.

But we ask our kids to navigate this mess in a sea of instability. Schools do not serve the community because they are not of the community. We need to find a way to make our urban schools grounded in community before we can build them up to the standards we would like for all.

I have a suggestion for implementing the radical reform Menino promises. Eliminate choice.

Take away the fundamental assumption of the lottery process–that parents have a right to choose their kid’s schools–but replace it with a commitment to ensuring that kids are guaranteed the right to attend a school close to their homes. Allow exceptions for special cases, but limit those cases to justifiable situations.

How would this work? I would start by simplifying the registration process and moving it to later in the year. Instead of having a month-long period starting in January where parents submit preferences, there is a deadline in the Spring for parents to submit their intent to enroll and prove residency.

Then, in an initial assignment round, kids would be assigned to the nearest available elementary school until 90% of the seats in that school were full. Existing data could be used to model the impact of this on the most recent group of enrollees to determine what a neighborhood map would look like. Re-running the assignment at higher percentages would generate multiple possibilities for families.

This system would not result in a “boundary-based” school district plan, but a probability map. If you live half way between the Sumner and the Bates, then you would know that you have a probability of attending either school or the Conley (also nearby)–depending one whoever else is applying this year. You have zero probability of attending the Lyndon or the Trotter however.

In my example, I held out 10% of the seats in each school…that is to allow some degree of adjustment. Parents receive an initial assignment and may accept it or apply for discretionary transfer in the next round. So, we receive a notice that our son is assigned to the Sumner, but is also eligible for the Bates or Mozart. We can return the form asking to transfer to the Bates. When the next deadline arrives, all the parents who resubmitted are preferentially-reassigned and the enrollments are adjusted to 100% of available seats.

This modified lottery is not just an effort to preserve some choice, but recognizes the reality that enrollments are not stable. Apparently, in some schools in Boston, they do not know who will be in the classroom until a few weeks into September when kids actually show up. I think a modified, limited choice approach to assignments could help that uncertainty sort out without resort to waiting lists and the current system of cascading re-assignments.

Now there are a million other issues…what about the city charter schools? What about METCO? What about how we have advanced work classes at some schools which result in enrollment shifts from 3rd grade to 4th grade? What about the K-8 schools and the Roslindale K-8 “pathway” to the Irving Middle School? What about the fact that K-1 is not guaranteed? What about schools that are fully integrating special needs kids vs schools that are not? We can’t solve all the issues at once! We cannot scramble the current enrollments either. So this whole approach needs to be limited to one cohort of students to begin. As Mayor Menino promised, “one year from now Boston will have adopted a radically different student assignment plan – one that puts a priority on children attending schools closer to their homes.”–so let’s limit the solution to one year from now, not try to change everything at once.

I’m afraid the only solutions we’ll see are tweaks to the current model–increasing the walk-zone priority percentage or increasing the number of school assignment zones to limit, but not eliminate choice. “Radical” is necessary to break from the incremental and unsatisfying creep away from the 1970s.

Our choice is a weak one at best. Because there are no guarantees, the “choice” parents currently have in the process is often a false one. Sure, you can choose to list the most popular school as your top choice, but you could just as well end up in a school across town that you know nothing about. I would trade meaningless choice for the right of my children to attend a nearby school.

I watched the documentary Race to Nowhere Sunday morning at the Dedham Community Theatre with a crowd of parents and educators concerned about the direction of K-12 education. Through the stories of students and parents, the movie makes a compelling case that we are headed in the wrong direction.

Race to Nowhere profiles students, teachers, and parents across the United States who are increasingly stressed out by the demands of middle and elementary school. The title is a quote from a young man describing his frustration at the growing sense of pointlessness he felt as he was driven to do so much homework and participate in so many sports and activities…for what? We usher our children towards a high-stakes, low probability endgame of competing to get into expensive colleges. We assign impossible amounts of homework–beginning in elementary school. We expect performance from our teachers and measure it by how well they coach our kids to take minimum standards tests.

I started out watching this moving feeling ambivalent because it’s not news to me. What the kids describe is similar to what I went through over 25 years ago. I knew exactly what grade I needed on every test to maintain a 94.5 or above average in every class and ensure I maintained a 4.0. I was on a race to get accepted into MIT from a rural community in southern Virginia. When I got to MIT, I experienced the proverbial “firehose” education, but it taught me about prioritizing and choosing to do the things that really mattered. It was an impossible workload, but we learned to “punt” less important things and focus on getting what we needed to get by.

Today, the race is on for EVERYONE it seems. Kids are freaking out about everything as if one mistake dooms them to a life of failure. Parents are overwhelmed with keeping up with each other. And schools are pressured to “get better” or lose money or be closed as failing schools. But I don’t think kids are being allowed to learn the lessons I did. And why should they have to?

I chose an extreme path. I have no regrets, but I don’t think it’s the right path for everyone. As my kids start school, I want to help them find what is right for them.

After the movie, there was a great audience discussion in the packed theatre. But the most interesting comment came at the end, in the form of a question from a very involved parent. He simply asked “what’s the alternative?” What are parents supposed to do? If the race is wrong…if we are freaking out over whether our kids will be able to get into one out of a dozen schools that aren’t even on the top 25 U.S. News and World Report list…what is the alternative? We don’t want to limit their choices; we want to give them better than we had, so what are we supposed to do?

We bought a house in Rozzie, and we finally move this Friday. It was not an easy choice to leave the town of Westwood where I’ve been active in several town boards, developed many friendships, and started our oldest daughter in the school system. (And authored the Westwood Blog for the past 3 years.) It was not easy to move past the neighboring town of Dedham either, where we also have many friends and probably would have purchased a house had it not gone under agreement the day we scheduled to go look at it. But I am excited about where we are moving and am thrilled we decided to do it.

It shouldn’t be a surprise we’d be attracted to really living in Boston (Roslindale is a neighborhood of Boston) for anyone who has followed the urbanism thread of this blog. I was excited about the Westwood Station project because it promised to bring some urban advantages to our community. I created a town board to promote active transportation–walking and cycling–because I believed we could really enhance the community by connecting our village centers and making it easier for more people to get out on the street. I commuted to work in Boston on my bike (14 miles or so) and via the train not only because I didn’t want to sit in traffic or park my car, but because it made me feel more like I was a part of the city that has called me to come home ever since I was a college student at MIT in the 1980s.

But what about the schools? It was our biggest concern. I found a blog, started by a Roslindale parent, called Braving the Lottery, which details her journey through enrolling her kids in the Boston Public Schools. My daughter is eligible to attend any one of more than a dozen elementary schools but transferring mid-year, there will not really be any choice or lottery. We submitted a list of our preferences and we’ll see what we get–hopefully later today or tomorrow.

I’m optimistic we will be happy as long as we get one of the schools we know have openings. Because class size is limited by law, the popular choices are full and have wait lists from the last lottery process earlier this year. But families do move (the people who sold us their house moved to Dedham) and parents don’t necessarily yank their kids from one school to another this late in the year, so it’s not necessarily an automatic as to where we will be assigned. Once we get in to a school, we hope that our sibling priority will be able to pull along the other kids who are currently in preschool.

Over on Westwood Blog, I recently noted how Westwood was featured by Great Schools.org as one of the top 5 school systems in the country. When you look up my daughter’s current school, it’s a ‘10′ on a 1-10 scale–based largely on the fact that everyone passes the standardized tests. And we know from our own experience that it’s a great community school for many reasons other than just the test scores: parents are active, involved, and engaged and teachers and the principal are great.

Where we are moving…no 10s. But those numbers are all about the pass rates for standardized tests. We talked to parents and attended meetings to learn about our potential schools and heard mostly positive stories–and a great deal of energy from parents, teachers, and administrators who are working hard to improve their schools. The lottery does cause the schools to compete and attempt to differentiate themselves. In the end, we concluded 1) we will need to be heavily involved in our kids education and 2) it’s more about the specific teacher and classroom year-to-year.

I see some advantage to engaging in system that is trying to improve. When everything is already great, sometimes we miss the opportunity to see how our efforts contribute to positive change. Learning is more than just passing tests–I think it’s also about an experience of growing and adapting. I think we have set ourselves up for many of those opportunities in the coming years.

The iPhone 4 is out and while mobile and tech gadget gurus will analyze its features, this 2-minute video describing the “Facetime” feature deserves the Oscar. The video pulls all the right heartstrings and makes the case for why you just have to buy your grandparents one of these NOW. From the Apple website:

People have been dreaming about video calling for decades. iPhone 4 makes it a reality.

For thirty seconds, we have a predictable application–Dad away on a business trip in his hotel room alone. He watches baby crawl then Mom and the kids laughing and playing. Life is so good it’s like you don’t even have to really be there.

Then we move on to the grandparents watching daughter and granddaughter prepare for graduation.  A different daughter away at college shows Mom (or older friend?) her new clothes…but then Apple really pulls out all the stops…

A pregnant woman talks to her serviceman husband…and shares the sonogram. She switches to the second camera so he can see the baby on the monitor. He is so overcome with emotion…they start signing each other. It’s a beautiful mini-opera of empathic consumerism.

I’m not being cynical or facetious…well, not entirely. I’ve hooked up my iPhone with Ustream and called my mom to show her the kids on Christmas morning. It would be cool if it were so easy and if we could get her hooked up with Skype or something to do a 2-way video call. But there are a couple of practical issues.

One is the wifi–this Facetime feature only works between two iPhone 4s that are on a wifi network. It is not transmitting the video over the cellular network; you need access to an open wifi network that doesn’t mind you video streaming on their bandwidth. If you are at home, no problem, but it’s not quite a no-brainer.

Two is just the fact that everyone has to have an iPhone. That must be why Dad is working all the time and sitting in that hotel room watching his baby crawl via the iPhone parental link.

But it is cool stuff; you just can’t deny it. The video chat will not replace or patch relationships any more than friending your relatives on Facebook.  But it fills an undeniable need. The advertising is perfect to offer a solution that is far more enticing than just the gadgetry. We dream about the Star Trek communicators and transporter beams not because we want to go where no one has gone before, but because we want to be where we should have been all along.

Today is International Walk to School Day–but not for some communities where walking and biking have been banned. Two recent news stories are discouraging on many levels, but do not represent the norm as more and more communities are, in fact, adopting alternatives to driving.

• In Saratoga Springs, NY, a woman and her 12-year old son are defying school officials who, on the day before school started, advised all parents that “walking and biking to school would not be tolerated.”
• In Marblehead, MA, the town’s participation in today’s event was cancelled while the school works out “issues related to program administration, safety, and liability.”

These stories are “easy targets,” for walkability advocates and that is my first complaint. The newspaper coverage of the New York story in particular follows the pattern that has become so typical of print-based media’s clumsy attempt to remain relevant in an online world. Controversy-baiting stories leave little room for reasonable discourse as dozens of intemperate commentors react to the story that has set up the town for criticism without providing adequate context to explain why presumably reasonable adults in the community made decisions and now find themselves on the online hot seat. Online media (including this post of mine, to some extent) jump on the bandwagon as the Sarasota Springs story makes it to the Huffington Post, shows up in my LinkedIn Groups, and will undoubtably be a feature item in the many Pedestrian and Bike update email newsletters to which I subscribe.

Maybe the folks in Saratoga Springs ARE idiots, but I suspect there is much more to the story…the policy has been in place since 1994. The parents and administrators are probably focused on 100 other issues and it is unfair-based on the limited information reported-to leap to conspiracy and anti-progressive theories. But it is more fun to do that and it sells papers and generates online traffic. Meanwhile, the parents and community members probably feel angry and misunderstood, but dare not venture into the online argument of anonymous people who know nothing and judge everything.

In Marblehead, the local newspaper, the Marblehead Reporter, does a better job of providing context. Parents, administrators, and school officials are not characterized as opposing walking, but it seems the promotional effort “got ahead of itself.” The town had recently experienced a tragedy when a high school sophmore was hit and killed by a motorist…then, a “Wellness Committee” coincidentally launched a promotion of Walk to School Wednesdays. School Board Chairman Dick Nohelty said that the program was not passed through the proper channels before launching.

The Marblehead story is a cautionary tale for walkability advocates about the importance of inclusion and consensus. These ideas–promoting walking and bike-riding–are not self-evident truths or causes “against” anyone. In fact Marblehead, like my town of Westwood, is fully signed-up for the Safe Routes to Schools program. School Superintendent Paul Dulac noted that he’d like to see that program “more integrated” before a walking campaign takes place.

It should not be controversial to organize a walk to school or choose to ride a bike. But anything involving the safety of children is an extremely touchy issue that, when it makes people uncomfortable for whatever reason, will prompt conservative reactions. I’m learning for our own committee, it is easy to make mistakes and to not include the right person, talk to people the right way, promote an idea prematurely, etc.–but I think it can be managed by maintaining a positive attitude and accepting criticism as a learning process. We can’t lose sight of our overall goals as we navigate the details.

Update: a torrential downpour here has cancelled today’s walk…so perhaps next week, I’ll report on how this went.

Plans change. But it can be powerful to work out a long term theme for your life as a way of grounding your current choices. Last week, I spoke with Pam Slim from Escape from Cubicle Nation about how to navigate my own situation–where my “escape” is involuntary–and came away with some great ideas.

Pam writes about the importance of creating a life plan and basing your work decisions around that instead of simply acting or reacting tactically. It is difficult, especially under the pressure of an impending layoff, to step back and consider the big “what do I want to do with my life” questions. But we don’t need to go that far. It’s helpful just to imagine what you want your life to be like in 3-5 years.

My wife and I sat down for this exercise–which was very difficult for us. We tend to do what we want to do and we are not big on setting specific goals and objectives. It’s not that we don’t think about the future, but we expect to adapt constantly and generally, we get where we want to be. But we sat down and considered the whole range of life issues, beginning with where we wanted to be living.

Home

We like where we are…but we are always reading about other places and thinking about what it might be like to live there. We like moving–not the process of packing up so much, but the excitement of a new city and having to learn everything new again. However, we took a good look around us and said, “we really are in the best place now.” There are always pros and cons, but we look at our 4-year old and realize she will be starting kindergarten next year and we don’t want to be moving her around. She can walk across the street to school…and she will be followed by her two younger brothers over the course of the next 3 years. So really, we need to make our stand now if we want to give that stability to our kids.

We speculate about our location in town too. The house behind us went on the market…there are other houses on quieter streets with sidewalks, etc. But again, we took a look around and realized, our house is great. It would be nice to finish the basement, but why would we want to go through the whole relocation process just to get on a side street? The kids will soon be old enough to smartly cross the street to the sidewalk.

For us, that was a major decision and it settled a number of things. I had been looking into refinancing the mortgage, but some lack of certainty about the future made me hesitate. The next day, I called the bank and, as luck would have it, rates had dropped to super-low levels and we were able to get a 30-year fixed mortgage and a line of credit at a historically low rate.

Relationships and Health

We’ve already changed a great deal in the past 5 years. We started cycling and running and spending more time together. We decided my wife would stay home and raise our kids and that we would find a way to make it work. We decided to join a church and make religion a part of our lives and the education of our children. And, as we described above, we decided stability for the kids was important. So in this area, we felt like we were already moving towards a goal we just had not defined.

Work
I want to work independently and with others, in an office and from home. I want to thoroughly “grounded” in a base here in my home in Westwood, but would like to travel to short events (like SXSW!) occasionally. I want a flexible schedule–not a predictable routine–because I need to fit other things into my life, not be trapped at a desk in an office in Boston. And I want variety.

Sounds pretty ideal and not like many jobs…but I think it is important to just run with the vision a bit…it’s not the job I get in the next month–it is a vision of what my life would be like…what would I be doing on a daily basis.

I’d be talking about social media and citizen empowerment. I would be listening to the interesting people that cause trouble because they care passionately about things. I would be writing and synthesizing what I had learned and participating as a person of consequence in every thing I did. In my paid work, I would be a thought leader, a person people sought out for advice. I would be doing things in technology–never trusting the details to consultants but getting my hands dirty. I would be writing–on my blogs and in books that served to further publicize my message. I would be connecting people, ideas, and technology in a way that made other people feel like they had the ability to influence and direct the future of their community.

So that’s more of a political platform than a job. But if I have that vision, if I really believe that is what I want my future to be like, then I can begin to make decisions about what helps get me there, what is necessary, and what I must leave behind.

An equally important part of the vision is the vision of not standing in line for food stamps, updating my blog from my iPhone, while our house is foreclosed upon. I may have the luxury of a few weeks here to introspect on this blog, but bottom line is I need to find a way to make some money fast. I also believe we have not seen the worst of this economic downturn and the time I have to land something that supports my long term goals is limited. But the vision is useful because if I can fit tactical decisions into a longer term plan, I can act with authenticity and confidence…and ultimately do what needs to get done.

I could not resist taking a photo of half my garage this weekend as I realized we are seriously into cycling and running and taking our kids along.

Our latest addition to this collection is the blue dual baby jogger in the back which allows all 5 of us to go out at the same time.

We have a set of magnetic toys my kids play with–animals with interchangeable torsos, heads, and legs. Today we could not find the legs to the giraffe. Before I could begin searching for the missing pieces, my daughter simply placed the existing pieces on the train table in the “water” area and said, “the giraffe is standing in the water.”

Later, I searched all over the room for the missing pieces, only to learn from my wife that they had been missing for a year, so my search was doomed to failure from the start.

How often in our work do we fail to see the 4-year old solution? How often do we bang our heads against the wall in an effort to solve the problem as we have defined it, when perhaps, that is not the problem at all?

The problem is not about how to fix the giraffe; it is how to have fun. And if something is missing or not perfect, we can worry and fret and try to change things…or we can find a different way to have fun. Now, if I could just get her to teach that to my 2-year old.

The transplanted shrub that bloomed when Sharon was born…blooms a month late this year and with a spectacularly colorful flower:

On Friday, we’re planning to load up the minivan and drive 600 miles to visit the grandparents. My Mom was going to come up to Boston in February, right after Marshall was born, but she fell and broke her hip and hasn’t had a chance to meet Marshall yet.

Planning a drive from Boston to Virginia brings back fond, faded memories of 20 years ago when such a drive was done alone, all night, with a pack of Lucky Strikes and cooler full of Coca-Cola…back when gas was perhaps $1/gallon. Lots of things have changed since then.

Back then, it was an adventure; I had flown to Boston after high school to attend MIT and generally flown cheap flights back and forth until one summer when I had a car. My high school friend and I drove up from VA, and I drove back and forth a few times marking the landmarks and getting a feel for the size of the East Coast. Later, my wife and I would drive across country, back and forth at least half a dozen times, and I always felt the drive helped me really get a feel for the size of our country and a sense of what lies between.

But this time, it’s a different type of adventure. It will be a two-day trip; we leave Friday evening with a goal of crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge and getting to a hotel before midnight. Then up early to push through a no-traffic morning past Baltimore, DC, Richmond and deep into the heart of Virginia. Oh yeah, we also have a 4-month old, a 2 1/2 yr old, and a 4 yr old who will be sharing this adventure with us. Hope they sleep. I need to burn a few more copies of Wonder Pets and Max and Ruby before we leave…

But one thing that is easier this time is planning the route. Google Maps has changed everything with the following enhancements in the past year or so…that really work:

• Adjusting your route – after doing the basic from/to driving directions, you can click on any part of the route and drag it to an alternate route. While you drag, the route changes to recalculate an optimal route through the point you are selecting and displays the distance and time. Google had me going straight down 95, across the Cross Bronx Expressway and George Washington Bridge, and continuing down 95. I know, from folklore and experience, that route is a bad idea unless it’s 2am. So I can pull the route over to Nyack and force a route through Tappan Zee–adding a few miles, but bypassing the core New York City nightmare and routing me down the path I recall–the Garden State Parkway all the way down to rejoin the New Jersey Turnpike farther down.
• Traffic prediction – the really new thing I discovered was Google’s new predictive traffic feature. You can select the traffic button on a map of a major metro area to display color coded maps showing current traffic conditions (i.e. red lines indicate stop and go). I noticed a link to Live Traffic/change and found I could set the day of week and time to see Google’s prediction of traffic delays. I could use this to decide whether it is worthwhile to plot a bypass of Hartford, how much of a detour across Tappan Zee is worthwhile to get me out of the core mess in NYC, and what to expect coming back.

There’s much we cannot plan. Maybe the kids will sleep a lot. Maybe there will be much crying. We’ve done drives to the Adirondacks and sometimes that has been a 5 1/2 hour drive with mostly sleeping. But because this trip involves 4 separate days of travel, it is kind of like the NBA finals–but it’s a 4-game series we want to sweep.

The other night, as my wife went to a meeting–one of her rare opportunities to get out and do something for herself versus managing our three kids–I decided to take the kids to Costco to pick up a couple of critical resources we can’t run out of: dog food and Enfamil. 6pm to 8pm is the home stretch of time between dinner and bed for our nearly 4-year old, 2-year old, and 3-month old. And a little mini-excursion is better than watching Max/Ruby/Dora/Diego.

But I don’t think I had done a solo trip like that before, so I was a little apprehensive. Parking lot…big store…etc. But I moved fast and they stayed in the carriage until I was stuck in line and the fun began as 2-year old Jason had become bored. A couple behind me noticed Marshall who was happily smiling at them and complimented me on how “interactive” he was for 3 months old. I said something like “I’ve got my hands full tonight,” to which the guy followed up with “Where’s mom?”

Now I know he didn’t mean anything by that, but I realized how different we perceive these situations depending on both the gender of the observer and the participant. I’ve been guilty of it too. Frantic mom with 3 toddlers crying and whining = mom who can’t control her bratty kids. Man with 3 toddlers crying and whining = heroic parent who is pitching in to help. For men at work, people fret over how if Dad is working late he is missing out on quality time with the kids. Mom working late has outsourced her parenting. Or if she leaves early, she’s not committed to her job.

It’s really nobody’s business. We do what works for us and try not to get caught up in imagining what other people might be thinking. But it takes effort to ignore…and I think men have a lot less to ignore because for us, taking care of kids is something “extra” not expected. For working moms–it’s two jobs. And for stay at home moms, it is one really big job without the break of being able to go sit in a cube where you can blog if you feel like it and eat a leisurely half-hour lunch without interruption.

Parents who tell parents of newborns to cherish these times as the best of their lives are seriously delusional. But, having been through this a couple of times before, I think it’s more a case of amnesia. We don’t remember much a few years later.

Maybe it is a result of sleep deprivation and the sleeping cycle. I vaguely recall, and now, re-experience, that for the first 3 to 6 months, we seldom sleep more than 3 or 4 hours at a time. My wife and I take turns…and our babies have been bottle fed, so I can do the midnight/2am feeding and then she gets 4am or so…and then we’re awake at 6 anyway…but it is flexible. And it’s not like we sleep through the times when the other person is feeding the baby. Sometimes I don’t remember who did what the night before. And it all blurs into a stream of semi-consciousness anyway.

Maybe the amnesia is the result of positive reflection. As the kids are older, you look back fondly on the time when they were growing up? It is a miraculous process. But being in the midst of the process is no joy.

It is a different type of hard than people who are not experiencing it can imagine. We are fortunate to have wonderful, healthy children with no serious medical issues. And we are fortunate in our circumstances that allow my wife to stay home full time while I work at a company where family is valued and respected. We are fortunate to have had many friends offer help in many ways. But there is no denying the period of difficulty all parents must go through. And I know, from experience with our two other children, that this time will pass and we will forget what it felt like to walk through life in a bit of a daze. Before you know it, the crying baby is getting ready to start kindergarten. You don’t believe that when people tell it to you…but it happens.

The newborn is like the winter solstice–it is the beginning of new life and new things–but it is only the beginning. There are months of dark and snow and cold to get through before the spring begins. And plenty of challenges ahead. The cycles rolls on and we must know that we can love the journey while we suffer the moment at times.