I love being a dad. I have always been a self proclaimed ‘child monger’; making faces at kids on the subway and such. Kids generally like me and I like them. Kids generally smile at me, respond to me - and mostly they give me an excuse to act like a 3 year old myself.

Having just spent a few weeks with my kids; Gabe (who turned 6 yesterday) and Micah (3.5) and I have been thinking about them a lot. I aspire to be a good daddy. Gabe has told me on a few occasions that I am a ‘good daddy’ so I wanted to write up a quick retrospective of a few weeks with the kids - where am I doing well as a dad, where do I need to work, what do they respond to, etc.

My goals as a dad

• To make my boys know they are loved and valued
• To make my boys respect themselves and others
• To prepare my boys to be flexible to lives that change
• To instill in my boys the passion for whatever they find in their lives to care about
• To instill a love of learning in my boys
• To help prepare them to have healthy, meaningful, rewarding relationships with others
• To help them love and respect each other as brothers, people, and friends

My mechanisms for achieving these goals

• Listen to them, be attentive
• Give them boundaries and let them know where they are
• Talk to them at their level
• Put them in good schools
• Cooperate with my wife, align our expectations, talk about the kids
• Spend time with them one-on-one and with the whole family
• Use an even tone when speaking to them
• Think about parenting
• Read about parenting

Where can I improve?

After a few weeks of being with the kids all day, every day - here is what I think I can improve on:

• Micah is still ‘the baby’ a bit. I need to align myself with Gabe as much as Micah when there are arguments, battles, etc. Little boys fight - it is important to make them both know they are respected and have a voice when they get in a tussle.
• Patience. There is no end to the amount of patience that you need to have as a parent. My wife is more patient than I. I have patience, I could use more.
• Evenness of speech. I simply need to keep an even tone when speaking to the boys, when they are in a fight, when they are being nutty, when they are doing anything - I need to have an even tone. This is a ’subclass of’ patience I think.

Divisiveness/ Togetherness

Whenever you have greater than 1 child, it is important to drive them together. My wife Shannon and I work hard at driving our sons together and are very cognizant of ‘not driving wedges’ between our sons. It is very easy to be divisive or cause dynamics that make kids resent one another. “Why is HE getting all the attention?”, “Why am I always getting in trouble?”, etc. This is one of those areas that I think Shannon and I are doing well, but only because we are ALWAYS really thinking of how to avoid driving wedges between our boys, and focusing on how to coerce them into brotherly love.

Boundaries

I thought that the idea of boundaries and their importance needed a quick comment. I think that the concept of boundaries is one of the most central and critical concepts in parenting. Kids thrive on strucuture and expectations. Kids need to know where the ‘edges’ of their lives are. It is SO important (IMHO) to let kids know where their bounds are in their lives. How do you do this? Well, mostly by telling kids where the boundaries are, offering a penalty for violating (and the hard bit) following through with the penalty WHENEVER the violate the boundary. CONSISTENCY is KING with kids.

I read in some book about parenting once; (psuedo-quote) “Kids do not hear what you say, they hear the actions”. So if you say something like “if you color on the wall; then you will go to bed early”, then the child colors on the wall and they DO NOT go to bed early, then the kids learn they DO NOT REALLY HAVE A BOUNDARY.

A general concept in my life that I try to adhere to is; having a STRICT match between my word and my actions. Child rearing is one area of life where the benefits of this mantra are clear. It is clear that this is an important concept to live by in other relationships, work, etc - but in parenting - it is just in your face. When you violate your word, you kids learn that their boundary is NOT where you SAID, but where you acted. They learn you are malleable, and they try to push you and cajole you to sort out where that actual boundary is.

Anyhow - there is my humble 2 cents on being a good daddy. I am not saying I AM a good daddy, just that I want to be I will ALWAYS be improving in this, and I will ALWAYS need to improve here.

-Chris-

Well, here are some pics (we took ~1000 pics, this is a small ‘best of’ selection).

We went to:

• Saratoga (near Cupertino, Mountain View, etc.) to visit some friends that moved from NY (their lovely daughters are the ones with our boys in the photos - their best friends).
• Yosemite
• San Francisco

We stayed with our friends in their lovely place in Saratoga. We then stayed in Oakhurst (too far from Yosemite - but we reserved TOO LATE for a good hotel). I DO NOT recommend, the Oakhurst lodge - but at least it was clean and had a small fridge in the room. In San Fran we stayed at the Hotel Nikko - which I DO recommend - it was great.

=Chris=

Gabe’s 6th Birthday (and some park photos)

Fav excerpts:

So - yesterday was my last day in Equity Linked Technology @ Merrill Lynch in New York. I have spent the past 2 years working on building their ‘next generation’ sales/ trading pre-trade trade lifecycle platform. To avoid any confusion or concern - no - I was not let go - I left on my own (it was a hard decision to go) for a great opportunity working at a hedge fund doing just what I want to do.

It has been full of fun, trials and hard work. At the end of the day, I will really miss certain people. Also, it was very hard for me to leave after only 2 years. It took a lot of hard thinking, introspection and consideration to decide to leave with only 2 years in. I am a very ‘goals oriented’ person and one of my goals going into this job was to have a 5 year run. That being said, goals are ordered, and my other goals have overridden this one - so… life is full of trade-offs.

I will not understate how much I will miss my friends from within Merrill. I will also miss a whole bunch of coworkers that I was only fortunate enough to get to know a bit. Many people made a good impression on me. I believe that I was fortunate enough to make a good impression on many people. The small emails I got in response to my goodbye email were in many cases very flattering and humbling. Thanks again to all of those people who thought well of me - your kind words and thoughts are appreciated.

Next…

Well - it has been a VERY long time since I have had 3 consecutive weeks off - but that is what I am doing 1st. I will be taking 1 week around my neighborhood (Cobble Hill Brooklyn). Since Gabe (my ~6 year old) has summer camp every day this coming weel, I will be spending a lot of time with Shannon and Micah (my littler 3.5 year old). I am looking forward to just taking lazy time this week.

After my week of relaxing at home - we are off to California for a bit of a vacation. We will have 2 weeks out there - some in San Francisco, some at Yosemite. We will be seeing many missed/ loved friends out there - so we are really looking forward to it.

Our kids will be seeing some of their long-time good kid friends, so we are excited for them. Each time we go on a family trip - they change a bit. This will be a ‘bigger’ trip for them - so we expect them to change quite a lot. Kids are great fun - they are a wonder. They are also of course quite a lot of work!

…and after vacation??

So - after vacation - I will be going to work for a hedge fund. I will be starting in their NYC office, then within the next 2-3 months (fingers crossed for the paperwork and all). We will be moving to their London office. I was supposed to go work for Merrill in London as well, so this was ‘in the works’ in either case - but this job is going to actually be it.

Me, and why did I move jobs?

Essentially the new job is more aligned with what I want to do. A former colleague called me and said he had something that was a good opportunity. I have known many recruiters for years, and sitting in a desk in a bank, everybody knows there is no shortage of incoming calls for ‘good opportunities’. Jobs coming from people you know and respect in the field however are about the only worthy source of REAL good opportunities of that ‘next level’ variety.

For me - I can either go up the ‘management of technology’ ladder, or go get closer and closer to the business of trading. I have had teams in the past, although only up to ~10 people. At Merrill, I had the opportunity to help move our larger group of equity derivs technology to more agile methods. I have helped many people run their development teams. I like to run dev teams. I am a ‘field marshal’ type according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (see here, or here). It is in my nature to want to go accomplish something with a team. In my current world, I think I am more likely to lead ‘in the trenches’ in a very hands on tangible way. I do not really think this lends itself well to the investment bank hands off management of technology. My current opinion is there is too much politics to be a hands on field marshal leader in an investment bank, or at least at Merrill.

So - that leads me to the new fund. Essentially, I will be working with a very small team with - as far as I can judge - very talented people. The general mindset of ‘hiring few and excellent people’ as opposed to many many many people of varying skill levels rings with me.

Business Proximity

Sitting on the desk - it is important to me to have that immediate attachment to the business. I have spent years working with traders trying to automate parts of their work from your standard ‘enter these limit orders’ to automate an entire trading strategy, to flowing quote requests across global trading desks. I have often said that what I think I do, and what I think is valuable is executing strategic solutions incrementally bit by bit in those more tactical time-frames. In other words - you do not have to hack away day by day on the desk and grind to a halt at some point. You can have a strategy and execute within your own strategic directives for the software and deliver business value rapidly building the platform out bit by bit - ALL THE WHILE delivering business value.

Plinko

Prioritization. It all comes down to executing the business needs in EXPLICIT order of priority. All the while, dumping the answers (the code/ software) into the right strategic buckets. I have called this the Plinko model of software development.

So - that is plenty of chatter - I am off to play with the boys!

-Chris

…of me and the boys riding bikes in the neighborhood.

Choice Excerpts:

So, I am going to be moving to London with my lovely young family. Shannon, my wife, Gabe (6 years) and Micah (3 years). We are currently considering neighborhoods and all that entails (schools, proximity to ’stuff’, the tube, etc).

We are currently looking at these neighborhoods that several friends have recommended for one reason or another.

• Blackheath/ Greenwich (seems like I would need a car, and it is a bit far out)
• St. John’s Wood (seems like a good bet, and it is North)
• Maida Vale (seems like it is a shade ‘lesser’ than st johns wood)
• Battersea (Seems like it is very much like Park Slope NY)
• Clapham (seems like battersea + better transport)
• Hampstead (I have heard this is akin to Brooklyn Heights in many ways)
• Islington (I am optimistic on Islington - not sure of schools, etc.)
• South Kensington (Seems good, may be too nice for the likes of me)
• Primrose Hill (see s.ken comments)
• Notting Hill (see s.ken comments)
• Holland Park (see s.ken comments)

The people who have recommended these neighborhoods seem to think that the other neighborhoods recommended are ‘a terrible idea’, so we surely will have to sort it out ourselves, but I am eager to sort out the right place soon

The best website I have found yet for general info on moving from the US to the UK is UK-Yankee, their forums in particular are great.

Lots more to come;
-Chris

This is really off topic, but it is stuff on my mind.

1st - “Say Yes”

When I had just had my 1st son, Gabriel, my Mom (whom I think was a good parent and all) gave me a piece of advice - that I liked, and try to follow. Her basic advice was “say yes to them whenever possible, there will be plenty of ‘nos’”. So - with small children at least - this is an interesting challenge. I have found myself on many ocassions battling back and forth with my wonderful, brilliant and willful son Gabe (Micah is younger and generally more compliant - so not so much him yet). In any case - yesterday was a somewhat tough day (more on that next) and I did not see Gabe much at all. In the late afternoon when we all finally were at peace at home, I wanted to take Gabe out for some 1×1 time. Since he just got his “orange stripe belt” from Karate - our tradition is to go to J&R and get a (acceptable for small children) video game for his GameBoy (I know - oldschool - he loves it). I also took the opportunity to see the MacBook Air :).

Anyhow - the point soon… So - when we left - I made sure to tell him that this was his time and that there were now “no rules” - and that he just had the uber-yes - whatever he wanted right now was going to be OK (within reason, but we did not have to say that). In any case - it was amazing just to see how his demeanor lit up. In general life - there ARE lots of rules for a 5 year old boy. “Don’t talk about buts all day”, “stop punching your brother”, “please eat anything besides the junk you are begging me for”, etc, etc. It can cause tension between us as he is willful and it is a parents job to help their kids learn appropriate boundaries. In any case - saying yes to Gabe yesterday was rewarding. We simply went out together for ~2 hours - he smiled, we laughed and talked - and he did not ask for anything unreasonable. He is a great kid

  

 

 

Adenoids and Ear Tubes

So I mentioned that yesterday was a tough day. Micah - my other great kid had some minor surgical business yesterday. I say minor with some difficulty - because anytime your kid goes under - it is scary! It turns out that these surgical outpatient procedures are VERY common.

Adenoids you say - what the (*&^# is an adenoid?

There you are - it is a thing in your head, behind your nose - near your ears. In Micah’s case - they were inflamed since he was small - and it made it so he could NEVER breathe out of his little nose. Not only this - but it messed with his ears. As it goes - he had some ‘glue’ in his ears that was starting to mess with his hearing. So - they put these tiny, tiny tubes inside his middle ear! You can’t see them - they are really inside, but they help drain the gluey junk from his middle ear (gross right!). Anyhow - these ear tubes went in - and the adenoids were deleted (some odd, non-bloody erasure of adenoids - I don’t really get it).

What this meant for us: We went in @ 730 AM, wiated, went to the pediatric waiting area were we put him in some partial hospital gowns (he began to freak out here - he is scared of doctors after too many ENT specialist visits where they shove a tube up his nose). He then freaked out when they took his temperature under his arm. Then (thankfully) they came and gave him a valume like drink that made him REALLY happy - sorta drunk, relaxed. He was singing, bopping around and generally enjoying life… for 10 minutes till the doctor (Dr Richard Rosenfeld who we love and is seemly regarded as tje best ENT on the Tri-state area) came to get him. That was @930 AM.

We then went to wait till 1000 AM - whe Dr Rosenfeld came to get us and let us know all was well, done, happy, etc. Alas - this is where the fun began for us. You see - children wake up ‘freaked out’ from anesthesia - really they do. We saw some other kids freak out pretty well. Micah - being generally passionate - elected to freak out for 150-200% of the normal freak out time - some ~50 minutes of raw, ugly, painful screaming, writhing, pitching about, etc. Essentially - he was all ‘wired up’ with an IV, heart monitors, thermometer etc. He really was very unhappy. Shannon and I had to hold him, console him, talk him down - and generally let him wear himself out. It sucked. It was not good.

From there - we let him rest for 1 hour-  then went back to pediatric wiating for another hour. He freaked out only on and off till we went home. Once home - he was much better - just like a kid with a minor flu.

The surgrey was a success - he is fine. This was minor as surgical procedures go - so my heart goes out to any parent who has to watch their kids go through serious medical procedures.

Anyhow - here he is - last weekend @ grandmas on his toy mortorcycle:

 

I love my boys:

Chris

Some pictures here. (Picasa has a cool “export album and upload to ftp” feature - useful.)

You can get a good idea of where we were based on google maps here. The map is subtley wrong if you zoom in. Basically we were on the inside of a mini-harbor - maybe 150 meters in from the atlantic - lovely as can be. Excerpts . . .

After some struggles with our 6 year old point ‘n shoot Canon, we got a new DSLR - Canon Rebel XTi - it rocks!! Some pix of the kids @ Prospect Park this weekend.

Dustin Matthews - long time friend of my wife Shannon and her brother Aaron - has died too young.

 Excerpt from the Raleigh News and Observer Obituaries:

DUSTIN MATTHEWS, 31, of Raleigh died Saturday, March 11, 2006.
A memorial service will be held 2 p.m. Saturday, March 18, 2006 in the chapel at the Cremation Society of the Carolinas, 2205 E. Millbrook Road, Raleigh.
Dustin was born on June 18, 1974 in Dunedin, Florida and, in 1992, graduated from Millbrook High School in Raleigh. He later graduated from the Body Therapy Institute in Siler City, NC and worked as a massage therapist. Dustin had a very active business with clientele that included Olympic track and field athletes. He had a passion for yoga, hiking and dancing. Dustin’s trail name was “Comet Kid” and he hiked the Appalachian Trail from beginning to end in 1996. He was a loving son and was well loved by many.
Dustin is survived by his parents, Janis and Audie Matthews of Youngsville; maternal grandfather, William A. Colman of Clearwater, FL; cousin, Amber Skinner of Winston-Salem; several aunts and uncles.
In lieu of flowers, memorials should be made to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, 799 Washington Street, PO Box 807, Harpers Ferry, WV 25425-0807.

Dustin you will be missed.

-Chris

My wife shannon - a photo from way back in the day