A Glimpse into Our Future

The Future

There’s little question that our future lies in the hands of our children. For the most part, this makes people nervous, and if you spend very much time watching the news or reading the paper it’s easy to see why.

They’re constantly given monikers like “Generation Me” and we hear of their selfish shortsightedness. Stories constantly run about their inability to see past themselves and put in a hard day’s work thinking about something other than how their efforts affect them.

But to the cacophony of negativity I want to take the opportunity to give a shout of praise.

I just spent a week with about 1100 kids from the ages of 14 to 18 and another approximately 160 20+ olds who work as counselors to the 14 to 18 year olds.

These kids were anything but selfish or self-serving. They were kind, and beautiful, and full of light. They want nothing more than to be good, to help, and to do what is right.

They’re still kids–and full of all the squirrely impulses and ideas that kids have been dealing with for hundreds of years. But, even that makes them special and wonderful. For, it reassures us that all the great things about being a kid are still healthy and alive.

Don’t kid yourselves either. These young people deal and struggle with things you and I could of never even imagined in the wildest dreams of our youth. Yet they meet these struggles and temptations head-on and overcome them with a grace and joy that is second to none.

I wish I could package up the experience I had this past week and ship it off across the world, so everyone could open it and see what I was able to see, feel what I was able to feel, and know what I know about the good kids of today.

The Best Ever

Just like every bushel is always a few bad apples. But these kids showed me that, although the vocal minority gets all the attention, and the vocal minority gets simply brushed over, the whole bunch still doing just fine.

I can’t wait to see what the future holds. I can’t wait to see what these kids can do. I’m grateful for the example that they already set for my son. And, on this day it’s difficult for me not to look at my little boy and wonder what wonders lay before him.

Jh-

Breach of Contract

Since the day Cole was born I’ve been doing my best to help out around the house. One of the things that I’ve become particularly adept at is feeding and burping. In fact, if you’ve read the last post you know we’ve had some issues in that area as of late.

However, through it all, I felt like Cole and I had an understanding. I would feed and burp him as long as he didn’t spit up on me. We came to this understanding minutes after his birth. I told him that it wasn’t that he couldn’t ever spit up, it was just that he couldn’t spit up on me.

I tried to get Kolette in the deal but Cole said he couldn’t agree to both of us. Which explains why I cut bait and left Kolette to fend for herself.

Cole has done great in keeping to his part of the bargain. Nearly 12 weeks into his life all was going to plan just the way we’d agreed on. Ko was getting spit up on all the time, but I was clean.

I foolishly took this to mean that Cole was a man of his word and began to rub it in every time he spat up on Kolette. Often, he would spit up on her and she would ask, “How come you never spit up on daddy?” Smiling to myself, I would laugh and point and chuckle knowing that it was all because of our deal that was firmly in place.

Then, earlier today things changed. I don’t know if Kolette found out about our deal and was able to negotiate a better one, or if Cole just decided to back out of his agreement with me altogether. But, this morning as I held Cole burping him according to his wishes, about 4 gallons of formula came spewing out all over my arm and sweater. Seriously! I might as well have bathed in the stuff.

Of course he was smiling and cooing all over the place. Proud that his belly was empty showing absolutely no remorse with regard to reneging on our deal.

So, back to the drawing board. Cole and I are scheduled to meet later on this week and discuss his breach of contract. Hopefully we’ll be able to come to some kind of agreement and I’ll be back in his good graces–out of the spit up, clean and pure. Until then, all bets are off.

Jh-

Coleman and I hammering out the details on our new deal.

Cole Signs!