Daddy Day Care

My wife was fulfilling her filial obligations last weekend by helping out her folks, which left me in the enviable position of heading up daddy day care for 24 hours.  Because my wife is able to adapt her work schedule to the hours when the kids are out of the house, she is the logistician who keeps the household from going down in flames.  She reminds the kids to pack their homework, reads the handouts from school on days I work, and generally acts as the glue that keeps us functional and on schedule.

Muppets or Marvel?
While it is far from fair, and I am trying to shoulder more of the less rewarding but necessary aspects of household logistics, this weekend was a homework free bonanza of daddy fun time.  We fired up the hot tub, went on a birdwatching and rock-collecting hike in a nearby nature reserve, and watched a favorite movie from my childhood: The Neverending Story.  The kids don’t watch TV, so the film was a  treat.  They don’t keep up with latest, greatest computer-animated Marvel blockbusters, but they are connoisseurs of the Muppets and other nostalgia movies from our childhood, which we reserve primarily for plane trips and grandparent visits.

What's Your Legacy?
Inspired by the recent guest post by WCI’s 12-year-old daughter, I took advantage of the time spent in the hot tub to ask my kids to define our family values.  This was as much a feedback session for me to learn what was going over their heads as what seemed to be landing.

Here were the answers my 7 and 9 year old came up with, in no particular order:

1. We are curious. We like learning magic and science projects from youtube.
2. We don’t care if people think we are weird.  We know that weird means creative.
3. We like to make art projects and write songs together. 
4. We save our money. Mommy and daddy don’t have fancy cars and daddy has a bad haircut. [CD: I cut my own hair, the wife and kids do not.]
5. We travel to new places together.
6. We spend a lot of time with our cousins and grandparents.
7. We go hiking.
8. We play family dominoes.
9. We read books.

What are your core values?  Would your kids (if you have them) or parents (if you don’t) describe the way you allocate your time as consistent with those values?