Dont just use all the brains you have....also use all you can borrow - Woodrow Wilson

     Well this entire entry is inspired by this quote I found at the last minute. See I have about a million ideas for content on this blog, my problem is that I'm still to new with the technology to figure out how to put my vision on the page. Not that I want all the readers to see everything thats going on in my head at any given moment in time,even if it were a snapshot it would be 1000 words to long. I think this whole blogging thing will get a lot better as I keep doing it. I don't know what the learning curve is on blogging with a high school diploma. I'm sure most college graduates, high school graduates,GED owners, high school drop outs and a few of those monkeys that NASA trains can type faster than I can. Most of them probably spend a lot less time pondering if they have dangling participial at the end of a sentence, and maybe a couple of the college graduates could explain to me what dangling participial means exactly.

     What I have learned over the last month is how much time you must invest in your blog. I have spent a ton of time on this lap top over the last month. I started by looking at blogs and reading a lot of articles online about blogging. Then after talking to my family I came up with the idea of sharing my relationship with my son with the world wide web. I have told my son that it doesn't matter if anyone ever reads these posts or not, he would have a valuable resource being able to look back at his childhood, and know what his father was thinking. Looking back at my blog so far I dont think he would learn to much.

     I have to be honest – I havent been able to be to honest yet. I have spent loads of time trying to figure out how to work twitter. Time figuring out how to set all these posts up and edit them and download photos. I feel like I have been writing junk so that I have content to mess with. That has to stop. Cause if its not a useful tool for my cave boy then whats the point. And is he really gonna care that the last sentence didnt have a “?” at the end, or that I started this sentence with And, I doubt it. I guess what Im saying is that I have to worry about substance over style, which is cool.

     For those of you who dont know I am unemployed. So for 2 months I have been getting up,getting the Cave Boy off to school, having a cup of coffee with the wife, and hitting the gym.(AKA our garage/Man Cave) for an hour, then I'm on the computer. Somedays I'm on all day. I'm reading blogs and researching things I wanna write about, and sporadically job hunting. I've found a ton of interesting people having some great conversations all over the world. Hat tip to The Mark Levin Show http://www.marklevinshow.com/, Pastor Kerry Mackey http://www.kerrymackey.com/, Pro active Dads http://proactivedads.com/, Father 411 http://www.father411.com/, and Play Ground Dads http://playgrounddad.com/ just to name a few.

     All these guys can make you think. Think about being a father, and having a good relationship with your son. What is it that you want your son to learn from you, what can you learn from him? What do you want to leave this world knowing your son will pass down to his sons? Deep soul searching questions that more fathers need to ask themselves. So for 2 months I've sat here trying to figure out the answers to all these questions – I go round and round on the answers – for days on end researching – thinking how I could write something profound.

     Last night I realized that the answers I'm looking for may come in a day or two ,or a year or two, or 10 years or 20 years. Truth is I dont know when I'll have the answers, maybe somethings were not supposed to know till after. Not everything I write is gonna be profound. Some posts may seem pointless to everyone except Cave Boy and Me – then again those would probably become our favorites.

     I dont know how some of these guys get all this stuff done. They have jobs and kids and a wife and they write these beautiful things – I'm unemployed and I cant find enough time to post once a week. I think I'm just gonna start firing out whatever I feel and maybe we can refine the stuff as we go along. I love reading all the different blogs and talking to all the different people but at some point I gotta get up and move around and stop reading and stop googling stuff.

     After all this whole thing is supposed to be about a guy spending time with his son – not a guy researching ways to spend time with his son. Cave Boy (CB) and I have been doing a ton of wrestling stuff – we have spent a bunch of time in the garage lifting weights over the last 2 weeks. My sister has been house hunting in our neighborhood for the last 6 weeks. She and her husband and their 2 sons (2yrs and 6months) have been at our house a lot. Its good for CB, he gets to play big brother to them. I have had 2 job interviews and am starting to feel like I will be going back to work sooner than later (knock on wood). So I'm gonna need some discipline of my own to keep a good work / life balance. 

     Course all this searching for things online have led to me developing a list of new things to buy. I have found boots, fishing poles, camping gear, wrestling singlets, resistance bands, pull-up bars all kinds of stuff. I have even been thinking about doing some father and son PX-90 over the summer. This is where the job thing could come in really handy. Darn 6 lottery numbers never sounded hard to pick - I hate being broke.

The Anticipation of Mud Pies

It has been a very cold and snowy winter here in the Pocono Mountains. Right about this time of year we all get the winter blues, cabin fever or just a plain old itch to get outside. Well I am happy to report that we will get some relief from old man winter here this week. The next few days we will see temperatures rise up to 60 degrees. There has been a blanket of that white stuff called snow, 8 to 12 inches deep, on my front lawn since the beginning of the new year. At the start of February the snow gave way to back to back sleet storms. The storms left a thick shell of smooth slick ice that has befuddled my poor dogs for the last two weeks. They slip slide and scurry along the surface like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Every once and a while they might find a weakness in the shell and suddenly drop 6 to 8 inches and then look at me as though I had sprung open a trap door.

My kids have enjoyed all of the winter seasons splendor this year from snow tubbing, skating, snowman building, snow ball fighting, igloo building, sledding snow angels, icicles, the beauty of seeing the snow on the trees, teasing each other about eating yellow snow, hoping for school closings, delayed openings, taking their little cousins outside, and coming back inside to a warm fire and a hot cup of cocoa, you name it they have done it, and now they want spring.

By Friday the ground here will start to thaw and all but the hardest snow packs will have melted away. This will start my yearning for one of my favorite times of the year... MUD PIE SEASON!!! I have a lifetime love affair with the mud pie time of year. There are plenty of times in the Summer and Autumn where it rains and nature gives us plenty of opportunities to mess around in the mud. But there is no time, as great as the first warm days of spring, after a long winter to get outside and muck around in the mud.



If your kids are bike riding age then you can put them outside and they will be dirty before they know it. If you have younger cave boys they may take some coaxing to get all dirty since their moms have probably been telling them to stay clean their whole lives. My wife is pro-kids-outside but she is very anti-mud-inside. We have a front foyer in our house that is affectionately called the MUD ROOM, where we kick off our dirty shoes and hang up coats and sometimes have to shed pants in an effort to not track mud all though the house. In warmer temps you can feel free to spray your kids down with a garden hose and let them dry in the sun. The important thing is to have fun.

Fun starts with the traditional mud pie, or as I like to call it, Nature's Play Dough. There really isn't an older form of sculpture than making things outta mud. You can bring out your cave boys artistic ability and his imagination just by saying build me a mud car. For some cave boys you might have to be more active, like throwing a ball into some mud and letting dive on it like its an NFL fumble. I know where I grew up, the kids in my neighborhood loved to play football, soccer, kickball even tag if it meant we got to go outside and play on the sloppy field in the park across the street from my childhood home. If you have a super playful little Bam-Bam and a lot of perfect mud then you can try the Woodstock Woosh. The W.W.1 is a tribute to those rabble-rousing  60's kids who were not only lovers of music, but also of mud. They can be seen in the old Woodstock footage sliding down hills of gushy brown mud in their underwear. HINT DADS: Only try the woosh in really warm weather.

One thing is for sure, you won't need a tour guide or your credit card or a fancy spa for your backyard mud bath. We just need the end of winter and the gradual warming temperatures of spring time. I know its only February, but here in the Poconos were ready for natures rebirth  We are ready for pitchers and catchers to report, ice to melt, flowers to bud, birds to come home, and ground to soften.We love living where there are 4 seasons to our year but, boy sometimes I wish I could decide how long each one lasted.

Happy Spelunking
The Caveman

   

Aggression Part of the Human Repertoire

Aggression Has Become a Label

"Calling boys 'aggressive' is an attempt to punitively try and control behavior we are not comfortable with. We rarely use this word in a positive way, so when we start by calling boys' behavior 'aggressive' we are already prejudicing how we look at it. Children use their bodies and express their feelings by pushing, grabbing, and fighting. This is age-appropriate for young children — they are in the motor stage of development. Teachers and parents need to help children find ways to resolve these conflicts. But the problem isn't that boys have these impulses and interests; the problem is that we over-react."

Joseph Tobin, Ph.D. Professor of Early Childhood Education, Arizona State University

What does it mean to be aggressive?

According to Webster's Dictionary, aggression is "a forceful action… the process of making attacks… hostile, injurious, behavior… caused by frustration." Real life boy examples include physical fighting, name-calling, and rough-housing that results in injury. Aggression is part of the human repertoire. "All human beings have the ability to protect themselves and attack others when in danger," explains Michael Thompson PhD.

Only a small percentage of boys' behavior is truly aggressive. While "all boys have normal aggressive impulses which they learn to control, only a small percentage are overly aggressive and have chronic difficulty controlling those impulses," says Michael Thompson, Ph.D. These are the boys who truly confuse fantasy with reality, and frequently hit, punch, and bully other kids. They have a lack of impulse control and cannot stop themselves from acting out. "They cannot contain their anger and have little control over their physical behavior and this is when intervention by parent or teacher is needed," says Thompson.

What Does This Mean To Me?

Well it means that I knew as much as 2 guys with PhD’s and I only graduated High School.  As any Dad knows, your son is gonna get into a fight sooner or later. Whether it’s on the playground with a school yard bully or his big sister is picking on him it’s gonna happen.  I think the trick is letting your caveboy So know when aggression is an appropriate response.  I also feel that we should show our sons how best to use this aggression when needed.  Teaching the caveboys not to be over aggressive in situations also goes a long way to instilling the confidence that they need for making good decisions.

Happy Spelunking,

The Caveman

P.S.  HAHA  Told ya I could report facts to cavemen  :P