familytastic!

It seems I hardly spend much time with Rachel. If I'm going out somewhere, it's usually the boys who come with me, and mostly Daniel.

So, how surprised was I when I suggested she come out for a walk with me, and she didn't go absolutely nuts. Normally, such an innocuous request would be met with a fit of hysterics, making it pointless to even bother dragging her out the front door. But on Sunday, she placidly nodded her head and said, "Yeah, it'd be nice to get some fresh air." Then wandered off to get her coat.

Normally, I take a fairly long walk out round the fields where we live, so I took her in that direction. We rambled down the road, intermittently chatting and sometimes falling into silence. Rach was busily inspecting the changes in the countryside because of the impending winter - I showed her the apple trees where the crab apples were rotting on the ground where they'd fallen weeks ago.

Do you ever wonder what your children are thinking at any given time? I bet you do.

I had one of those moments at the weekend - I took Dan and Jake into Belfast to take the bus home for a change. You know, have a little adventure on the bus with the boys.

But we had about an hour to wait for the next bus home, so I took them across the road to Subway for a quickie snack and a drink of juice. The Subway in Great Victoria Street is a busy place. There's a lot of pedestrian traffic, and people coming and going from the shop itself.

We're getting a little tired recently of friends who ask for favours and never offer help in return. A favour here, a favour there. It all adds up.

As a couple, we take the same attitude to asking favours as we do to borrowing or lending money. We never ask. We don't depend on anybody but ourselves. But conversely, people rely on us and ask for favours on a regular basis. They never seem to factor in that we're trying to build a business and could do with a break ourselves. And the idea of offering to help us out every once in a while seems to be a foreign concept.

Of all our children, Jake is a wiry young fellow. Something about him is wildly energetic, and I've always felt that when he becomes grumpy at home, it's because he's bored and needs to stretch his legs.

Last night, after his friend had gone home for the evening, I noticed Jake looking grumpy and lost. Rather than allow him to wallow in his bad mood, I told him to put on his coat and we'd go for a walk. We live on the edge of town, and as we leave our street, there's a little loop road that leads us out of town and back in again. A short walk of about an hour in total.

After finally, after wrestling the reluctant youngster into his coat, we left the house. There was a moment of near-mutiny when he realised we weren't taking the car, but Jake's generally quite pliable and we started off on our walk.

I stumbled across this post over on Ririan Project today about the 7 habits of highly successful fathers.

Funnily enough, when we first started a family, I picked up that book by Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Families. While it was an interesting read, I never got to the end of it. It's on my to-do list for when I start working from home.

Ririan's post borrows heavily from the Covey formula, and it's an inspiring read. However, I do disagree with his first point, keeping stress to yourself. OK, it's one thing to not let your mood impact your family, but I try to talk to our children about what's going on in my life.

I came home quite tired from work the other day and explained that I'd had a hard day at work. We briefly chatted about why my day had been so difficult. While it's important to let the children get on with the business of being kids, part of being in a family is sharing your emotions, and I'd like to think the kids can come back to me and talk about their lives too.

I wrote this post back in 2005 on my first blog, and our then 3-and-a-half year old daughter asked me what I did at work that day...

At the ripe ol’ age of 28, I’ve grown accustomed to thinking of myself as a highly skilled IT Manager and a not bad programmer and web designer. When asked, I describe my job as the management of ALL aspects of the network. From the day-to-day support and troubleshooting to the future IT strategy, you’ll find me there, making it all work….

One of our goals in becoming self-employed is to increase our focus on our family. Lisa and I are both concerned about dividing our time properly between the business and our home life. And of course, working from home has the added opportunity for us to devote more time to the family. If we plan it right.

As I see it, with two of us at home, we should be able to more successfully manage the household workload and plan better meals, time with the kids and stuff like that.

My own personal goals for working from home are:

I did a bit of an exciting thing during the week. I quit my job.

Now, there were a few problems in the office that I wasn't happy with. Nothing to do with the work or the people who worked there, but more issues I had with my managers that have come to a head. Although I have decided not to divulge too much, the thing is that those issues led me to decide that working for an employer is too much trouble.

Does taking the kids to a restaurant or public place fill you with dread? Me too.

Our lot tend to go nuts in public places. I mostly blame Rachel, who is a force of chaos when the mood takes her. Either way, when we're in a place like Burger King, they'll run around like crazy and talk at the top of their voices. OK, shout.

I found myself in Burger King alone with the children recently. As I stood in the queue, the kids started out at one table and started running around. I called them to me and asked them to settle down, issuing that classic parental threat - OR ELSE!!!

Did that stop them? Hell no.

So, on a couple of occasions I take Jake and Daniel and make them stand beside me in the queue. After a few moments I'd let them go back to the table and within minutes they were running around again.

Other parents will be familiar with the feelings of frustration and despair when your kids just won't listen to you. I looked around the restaurant, at the length of the queue and the people whose kids were behaving. And then it hit me.

I stepped out of the queue and called the children to me. I simply told them "You blew it." and walked out of Burger King. They slowly twigged on what was happening and followed me out with promises that they'd be good if I gave them one last chance.

Kneeling down, I explained to them why we'd left and why them running around wasn't acceptable. In my head, I was trying to balance my need for food with the need to teach them a lesson. I'd like to say I stuck to my guns, but hunger won out and they looked sincere, so we went back into the restaurant.

But...

All three sat still while I ordered the food (Daniel stayed at my side) and behaved impeccably while they ate their food. I hope that this sets a standard for future jaunts out, but if not, I may have to follow through next time and leave the restaurant.

Jake's about to turn 5 in a few days. I've noticed over the last few weeks that he's getting a cheeky wit about him. He likes to spar and joke with us, but because it's the holidays, he's easily bored and frustrated. Sometimes he gets grumpy when he doesn't get an answer he likes.

He's a huge fan of science fiction stuff. Sitting in front of the TV right now, he's rewound the same scene in Doctor Who loads of times now, just to hear him say "Are you my mummy?" referrencing one of Jake's favourite episodes, The Empty Child. He's obsessed with Iron Man at the moment - not because of the movie, but because of the old cartoon series running on the satellite channels. You know, the one where Tony Stark looks like a big sleazy pimp on steroids? What a hero...

Still, Jake's one of the most pliant children. Ask him to do anything for you and he does it without hesitation. I'm not joking. I asked him this evening to pick up some cushions from the living room floor, and he did it immediately. No grumbling, no wasting time.

I just wanted to record a few thoughts about Jake as he approaches his 5th birthday. A sweet, intelligent boy. Still quite shy around new people, and withdrawn when he wants to be. I can see little signs of him maturing and developing his wit.

We're working at the moment on getting him used to more reading and we definitely need to spend more time with him writing and drawing to prepare him for pre-school in September, but we'll get there.