Happy Birthday to a Sensitive, Borderline-Autistic Boy

Has it really been five years? Man, time flies. I still remember the day you came, a screaming angry red little baby in the hospital. I remember the day when I first met you and felt overwhelmed with what is to come. You changed everything.

Since that day five years ago, life was never the same. The house was never the same. How I scheduled and prioritized tasks was never the same. It was a start of a journey, a journey called parenthood and fatherhood.

I had aspirations for what I wanted you to be. I had dreams of what I wanted to show you. I wanted you to have all the opportunities that I had and those that I didn't. I wanted you to become the man I am, the man that I haven't become and the man that you will become as an individual.

Five years seems like such a short time. Yet, five years has been a long journey. From the beginning when you came home, it was a constant struggle of trying to figure out how to be the best parent for you. From the beginning we felt we were inadequate in our abilities to raise you. From the beginning we gave you to God and trusted that He would bring you up and we would just be a part of it in the earthly realm.

During these five years, you have taught us patience, you have taught us priority, you have taught us to slow down in life, you have taught us to pray and depend on God to get through the day, you have taught us what it means to be sensitive.

You are a sensitive child. You were a baby that lagged a bit behind in growth and was even considered to be borderline Aspergers, depending on whether you base the diagnosis on the old or new criteria for ASD. But it was all in God's own timing. It was not about our dreams and desires for you, so much as what God has planned for you and made you to be. We learned to love you for who you are. We learned to be patient and let you grow at your own speed. We learned to reorient what we thought mattered for something that mattered more.

You taught us what it meant to be sensitive to your thoughts and feelings. You helped us navigate the struggle of learning to listen to you when you are not calm and doing everything we don't want you to do. You taught us that it was alright for a boy to cry and to be in tune with his inner self.

In essence, you have shown us a simplified life that does not care too much about what people thought or wanted. You have shown us a side to humanity that is often overlooked and viewed as a weakness. You have been a window to the human soul for us. And ultimately you have been a window into our own humanity and lack of perfection.

Life with you has been a rollercoaster. As with all rollercoasters, there has been its ups and its downs. Sometimes it's in the heat of your tantrum that I learn it's alright to let go and move on. Sometimes it's in your sensitivity and your crying that I realize the brutality of the demands of life. Sometimes it's in your innocent and repetitive questions that I learn it's OK not to have all the answers. And sometimes it's in your imagination or lack thereof that I learn there is a fine line between what is real and what is not.

Five years is not a long time but it feels like it has been a long time. Five years is just the tip of the iceberg and the beginning of your life. Here is where the journey will continue, a continual lesson of living, loving and accepting.

You, my boy, are now five. Five years into your childhood and development. And I had five years to be a better father, I hope. I may not be the father that you wish for but I hope to one day be the father you can be proud of being a son to.

Passing the Torch

Passing the torch? Have any of you ever ran a relay race? I remember when I was in high school, I was on the track team and relay was one of the events I trained for. I never had the endurance of a long distance running nor did I have the explosive sprint of a short distance runner, but the relay was something I could do. I ran my leg and passed the baton to the next. I just had to make sure I didn't drop it or trip over. Essentially my goal for the whole race was to maintain my position in the race and possibly overtake a competitor but it wasn't as stressful cause I knew for a fact that one of my teammates is gonna carry the team for the last leg cause he has that explosive ability.

Relay was easy. Life wasn't so much. Sometimes you can train for life but more often than not life trains you. Often times I find myself running a race not knowing where I'm running to. And sometimes I slow to a trot or even a crawl. But more often than not, I'm sprinting ahead cause of fear. What are we running for? What are we even going to pass on to the next generation?

Mankind, He has told you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8 HCSB http://bible.com/72/mic.6.8.HCSB

Thinking about it, I think the fog comes from the unknown. When you don't know what you are running for and why you are running, you don't have a reason or the motivation to run. For me, in the past decade, it has come down to this: acting justly, loving faithfulness and walking humbly.

Act justly: What is justice? What does it mean to do right even in the face of injustice? What is it to walk even when it hurts?

Love faithfulness: What does it mean to be faithful? What does it mean to have integrity? What is it to you and me to keep our words?

Walk humbly: How can we go about continually learning? How can we go about knowing that there is something greater than us? How do we go about knowing the world does not rest upon our shoulders?

And it is these traits, these guidestones that I want to pass on to my kids. I want them growing up knowing what it means to be just, what it means to be faithful and how to be humble. I know I am a work in progress. But at least I have the baton and the purpose of running. And it is this baton that I hope to pass on to them one day.

What about you? What are you hoping to pass on to your kids or to the next generation? What are you running for?

What Would the Kids Do?

What Would the Kids Do? (Yes, this is a play on the WWJD, What Would Jesus Do?) Have you ever asked yourself that? It wasn't till recently that it popped in my head.

Over the course of the last few years, theWife and I have been trying to figure out how to parent our kids, in particular the older one. He's a bit more of a stubborn one with a lot what we call behavioral issues. But boys being boys, it may be more of a phase in life than an actual behavioral issue. However, it got me thinking as how or more like what we can do to elicit help him learn the behavior that we wanted.

What popped in my head was "What Would the Kids Do?" At first it made no sense but the more I thought about it, the more sense it actually made. I refocused my thoughts on what I wanted the kids to do to what they would naturally do. And I think that is everything. In asking this, I started to think of how they act and what the premise was.

I started to notice a trend, that it all comes back to theWife and I. We were in a sense exhibiting some of these same behaviors. The issue at hand was really a "monkey see, monkey do" type of thing, except as opposed to just copying, they were exaggerating it and playing it off in a different way. So what was a minor idiosyncrasy is now a behavioral issue.

And in realizing this, I found a few things that I needed to work in my life.

1. Think before you say or act - this is easier said than done but it will save a lot of headache in the future. Every little overreacting or nonreacting we give them will be copied and multiplied.

2. Don't do or say something just cause the kids aren't physically present - this got more to do with habit. You are you when no one else is looking. And this you will come out under stress or when you least notice it. And kids catch on quick.

3. Be patient with the kids - after all they are still learning and imitation is the best learning. Essentially, they don't know what they're doing, they just know what they're copying.

4. Be willing to change and to point it out for the kids - let the kids know we were wrong and we are working on change. Let them be your helper in keeping you accountable.

What about all of you? Have any of you come to the same realization? How have you handled it?

I got the power! As in Powerline Network

Cables. I don't know about you but at one point in time I had them everywhere. This was in the days when WiFi was not as prominent and wired network was still the main way to get stuff done. I would have wires hanging on the edge of the wall and ceiling and over door frames. It was a mess. I remember when The Wife and I first got married, we had an ADSL modem from AT&T hanging on the wall along with a wireless router not too far off. It was all on the wall. I even had a friend come over and comment that I seemed to have a bomb mapped out on the wall. It was a mess.

The advent of WiFi saved the wires quite a bit and I was able to essentially get all my computers, phone and tablets connected. However, this all went out the window when I found that WiFi wasn't getting the speed I needed to stream media on the Roku media box. So a wired solution was needed again. But the problem is that I live in a two story house now, with the modem/router being upstairs and the TV/Roku being downstairs. There was no way I was going to have cables snaking through the house with two toddlers on the loose.

I needed another solution. Originally I started off with a more complex solution of using an extra wireless router that I had sitting around as a bridge point to bring the cable to the media room. But it wasn't elegant and I still encountered the WiFi issue. So on to looking for another solution. My in-laws of all people suggested that I should try out the powerline LAN adapters as a possible solution. And to get me on the right path, my over zealous father-in-law already bought four extra adapters that he wasn't using at home as he only needed two and found them good enough for him. So I now have four of these things to play with, from two different brands.

I'm not sure where everyone is with their network or wireless vs wired solutions either at home or in the office. But for me, I needed a consistent and stable speed for both the streaming media box and also our file and media server. And with the way the house is, these two things are not always able to be near the router/modem at the same time. For the rest of my devices, WiFi does fine enough. So for me, the powerline LAN adapter is fully for solving the issue of creating network without the need for wires galore and still maintain a faster speed and stable network than WiFi may provide otherwise.

So on to the solution. I was gifted by my father-in-law with a set of TrendNet 500Mbps Compact Powering AV Adapter Kit (TPL-406E2K) and also a Tenda 200Mbps Powering Mini Adapter kit (P200). Being the typical guy, I did not read instructions and decided to just do the plug and play pray option. Surprisingly, it worked right out of the box for me. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be this way or if my father-in-law already set it all up for me (but I doubt it, he is very tech illiterate). And surprisingly, despite the fact that the two sets were of different brands, they were able to work together. It just works.

But the question is, as always, how well does it work. I will say straight up, the speed on these things are good and consistent. However, the issue arises with heat.

The Tenda units tend to overheat easily and just stop working. A quick unplugging and replugging does the trick but can be annoying since it can happen anytime. I have gone for as short as 15 minutes to as long as two days. So it's not what I call a reliable source of plug-it-in and leave-it-be type of tech.

The TrendNet units functioned a lot better. It seemed to have been susceptible to heat only once when we experienced a heat wave and the room in which it was located rose to a blistering 29C/84F. Aside from that one fateful day, the units have been humming along great with no slowdown or hiccups.

Overall, the idea of running your network over your powerline is a pretty decent idea. It gets the job done. It minimizes the mess of wires in the house. It provides a more secure environment compared to WiFi. I would say it is a good mixture of helping to minimize and simplify your house and technology and also allow for better organization of your devices.

I would definitely recommend it to family and friends. However, I would also caution on buying too cheap of a unit as it seems like they are susceptible to heat failure.

What about you? How have you managed to organize the mess that comes with a more digital lifestyle that requires multiple devices? What is your experience with various solutions? Would love to hear about what you have been doing.

Why Faith?

I get this question a lot of times, and I would say, I have asked this question myself. And I actually challenge people to ask this of themselves. Why Faith? Why believe in anything? Or better yet, the question is why do you believe in what you believe?

I would say for me it has been a journey of life up to this point and it has consistently pointed me toward something greater. I'm not sure about you, nor would I want to make an assumption on your behalf, but I do know that we are all working through life looking for purpose and for meaning.

For me this has consistently been found in what I would term as faith. Faith is not the same as religion. Faith is not the idea of ethical or moral standards. Rather, faith has been for me a coming to terms that I can't do it alone and I need someone or something greater, someone or something beyond this life. For me, it was at the pit of life, it was at the darkest point when things seemingly aren't working. It was at a point where I questioned everything that I had been working for. It was in a state where I found myself spiralling downward into a darkness of the mind and soul.

It was in this darkness and pit that I found faith.

It was here that I found that I am only human. And as great as our human-race has been in advancing civilization and technology, it has seemingly never answered the deepest question of the soul, that of why we exist, or more specifically why I exist. It was in this pit that I found faith, an answer to this deep question. Does it answer all other questions? Not directly but it does speak toward them and forms a premise, a foundation, a framework to understand, explore and work with.

Faith for me is a relationship. A relationship with a creator, a God, a father. It is with an entity that is beyond me but one that loves me, one that wishes the best for me in life, one that guides me for my growth and my benefit, One that leads me upon the journey and path of life.

It is the idea that you are not alone anymore. You are carried. You are guided. You are overseen.

Faith brought this all for me. When you look at the definition of faith in the dictionary, it's the idea of believing in something that is not based on proof, it's the idea of placing trust or confidence on something. I can't prove that God exists or that God has a particular interest in us. But what I can say is that I have experienced it in my life and one can't say what I experienced is false or faked. Just like I trust that your experience in life is just that.

I have experienced what faith can do and where faith has brought me. And for me that is enough. That is what faith is.

What about you? What is your story and thoughts on faith?

This is what the Lord , your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel says: I am Yahweh your God, who teaches you for your benefit, who leads you in the way you should go. Isaiah 48:17 HCSB http://bible.com/72/isa.48.17.HCSB