An Open Letter

This is an open "letter" to those couples who are pregnant, may become pregnant or are contemplating adding a child to their family some time within their lifetime.

As a parent, we gave our children a number of things that last their entire lifetime. Eye color. Hair color. Skin color. Temperment. Sense of humor (or lack thereof). Athletic ability (or lack thereof). Musical ability (or lack thereof) The list goes on. However, with each of these, because we were born with each of these traits, it is not our choice per se to pass them on to our children. However, there is one thing that we give our children that lasts their entire lifetime that we are solely responsible for.

Their name.

The inspiration for this post came a while ago when Missy and I took Riley to an indoor playground/melting pot of kids, foam, slides and sweat. We were watching our son happily dodge seven year olds as they ran, punched, kicked and tackled anything in their way. All of a sudden, a woman who was old enough to have survived the Titanic shuffled in with a 40 year old camera. She feebly tried to corral two of the boys for long enough to get a picture of her grandsons.

"Braxton!"

"Jagger!"

"Come over here, please. Braxton, can you stand next to your brother Jagger, please?"

From that moment, I knew I had write this post.

As a parent, you are given a tremendous responsibility to name another human being. That name will stay with them forever. I felt this weight when we were pregnant with Riley. Missy bought the baby name book and we combed through thousands of names until we found the one we thought was perfect. There are certain things you need to avoid when naming your child.

#1. You cannot give them a name that rhymes with something kids can pick on them for.
#2. You shouldn't give them a name that doesn't definitely tell what gender they are. (Oops. "Oh, your son is named Riley? We have a daughter and a niece named Riley!")

However, I would like to add another rule to the child naming commandments.

Think of the oldest person you are related to - preferably a grandparent or great grandparent. They will LOVE your child. And they will say your child's name. Pick a name that doesn't sound weird when an old person says it. They won't know it sounds weird. Actually they might but that won't stop them from saying it. Other people are going to have to hear them say it and will feel bad because their grand (or great grand) child has a name that the parent tried too hard to sound cool.

There are some sub-rules that go with this one:
-don't name your child after the name of a musician - Jagger, Braxton, Elvis
NOTE: Dylan is acceptable.
-don't name them after places - London, Ireland, Paris
-don't name them after nouns - Rider, Hunter, Pearl
And a new one inspired by a recent playground encounter:
-don't take great names and give your kid a knockoff name - Briley. I would also add "Bryan" to this list. Why mess with a good thing?

So all of that to say, you parents have a tremendous responsibility. You will not only impact your child but the hundreds or thousands of people who will have to say that child's name.
Follow the above rules and you will go a long way to giving your child a happy life.

(Author's note: This post was written while sitting in a room with no air conditioning. Any misspellings, grammatical errors or the fact that his child's name completely contradicts the above rules can be directly attributed to the fact that the author wrote this post while facing temperatures similar to those found on the surface of the sun. Gosh we need a laptop.)

Five Hours in MSP

Airports are a stressful place. Typically the minute I walk out of my house to go to an airport, I move up a notch in terms of stress level. Once I walk through the revolving doors into the actual airport, it goes up another level. I don't fully relax and take a deep breath until I get to my desination.....and pick up my bags from baggage claim. But that's a story for another time.

Once we had Riley and started traveling on planes with him, those stress levels increased ten-fold. Now don't get me wrong, Riley is a VERY good traveler. He loves planes. He loves de-icing trucks. He loves baggage claim carousels. He even likes it when his stuff gets to go through the "tunnel" in security. However, he is two and requires a small arsenal of toys, snacks, books and juice. And sometimes (usually on the trip back) he doesn't always want to go where we need to go when we need to go there. And he makes his dislike for such demands known publicly.

This past week, we flew to North Dakota to have a series of family reunions with Missy's family. We reun'ed (I just made that word up for this blog alone but you can use it if you like) with Missy's aunt (Missy's mom's sister) and her family. We reun'ed with Missy's dad's siblings and their family. We reun'ed with Missy's grandmother and Riley's great-grandmother. Though that was the first time Riley met her. He was a little shy but did bust out a few verses of "I've Got the Joy, Joy, Joy" for her. AND we reun'ed with Missy's family (parents, siblings and their family) which we do biannually and is certainly one of the things we most look forward to throughout the year. It was a great time to see family we haven't seen in a long time, meet new family members and truly take in the North Dakota culture (check out the family blog - delppartyofthree.blogspot.com for pictures and one of my favorite new videos of Riley).

It was wonderful but all the running around didn't help with Riley's nap schedule. In short, he didn't have a nap schedule except for one day on the trip. So by the time we lifted off from the Minot International Airport heading for Minneapolis/St. Paul (or MSP for airport code), we were all tired and had already experienced one of Riley's public displays of displeasure towards, well, pretty much everything.

And we were headed for a five hour layover.

Northwest, as wonderful as they are, pushed our last flight back three times between when I booked the trip and when we left. We had a nice hour and a half layover that would get us home around 5:00 pm. When we took off, it had been pushed to five hours. I figured I could take evasive action once we arrived in MSP and get us on an earlier flight a la "Amazing Race". However, I was informed when we stepped off the plane that we could go standby if we paid $150 and came back to the airport to get our bags. Since one of our "bags" (a trash bag) was Riley's car seat, there was no option. We were staying for the long haul.

And let's say things were slightly tense. I was fully prepared for five hours in the third circle of hell.

However, Missy and I prayed over Riley's chicken nuggets and our "morale builder" - day old, overpriced sushi - lunch that we would make the most of the time we had.

And the weird thing was, we did.

In fact, we had a blast. We had the rare opportunity to be in an airport, with a two year old, with no stress. We had nothing but time. Riley could do WHATEVER he wanted for almost five hours in a place that offered more fun and cooler stuff than any playground I have seen.

We rode escalators. We rode people movers. Mostly in circles back and forth, up and down. We rode the tram between Gates C-D, over and over and over. We played at the indoor playground. We watched the endless line of carts as they honked and transferred elderly and overweight people through the airport.

All while surrounded by stressed travelers and in some cases, their displeased children.

And the time flew.

Before we knew it, we were figuring what to do for dinner and making sure we could squeeze it in before we boarded our flight for Philly.

No one would ever accuse me of being overly optimistic. If I saw a glass that was filled halfway with water, I would complain that it wasn't Coke. However, experiences like this open my eyes to the fact that in almost any situation, we have the ability to control our perspective of that situation. I could have easily sulked and pouted for five hours. But instead, we embraced the fact that we had an entire billion dollar facility at our fingertips. And other than some "Watch out, Riley" 's and some "Sorry, excuse us" 's, we had the world's most elaborate family playground to ourselves.

Some highlights:
Riley in front of one of his favorite things: A motorcycle

Riley in awe of the tram in all its "choo choo" glory.