Today is Father's Day

This is my first Father's Day as a father myself, although I don't yet really think of myself as a father despite the fact that I'm fairly certain I am one. There are these two wriggly, lovable little poop machines that are always around and who I'm expected to help care for, but I don't yet feel like a father. Heck, I don't yet feel like an adult. Most mornings when I wake up I'm still amazed I graduated from high school. Some other mornings I think I'm still in college... and then I remember that yes, I am still in college.

That said, if this is what Father's Day is like, I'm happy to report that I'm looking forward to the next one. Blueberry muffins, printed pictures I've been asking for since the kids were born, and a new copy of Portal 2? Yes, please. Daddyhood is good. The kids gave me some poop... which I didn't really want, but they made it themselves, and I guess it's the thought that counts.

When I think of Father's Day, I don't think about myself - I think, as we should, about my own father. He was the only real strong male presence I had for most of my young life, both of my grandfathers having died relatively early. I think I'd like to write a bit about my father today - Gerald James Lemoine, the Senior. He was a deeply flawed but nonetheless amazing person. That's kind of neat to me, because I'm at least smart enough to know that we're all deeply flawed. I'm deeply flawed, and maybe you are, too. However, there are very few of us who are nonetheless amazing. I'm not. You might be. Dad was.

Speaking of....

Well, it's good to be back. I don't see why I've been the only one catching hell for not visiting the NeverTown over the last couple of months... where have you been? And more importantly, am I the only one who cleans up around here?? There's dust all over everything! It's kind of cute... a fine layer of NeverDust covers all of the buildings and streets of the NeverTown. I guess I should start cleaning.

The last few months have been ludicrously busy (which has no connection with any rappers - instead, it's the level of 'busy' that comes after 'light busy' and 'ridiculous busy', and leads from there into the plaid zone), with kids, papers, classes, and anniversary preparations. And poop. Lots and lots of poop. But I guess that's tied in with the kids. Seriously, we could solve all of our American energy problems if someone would just invent a line of cars powered by my kids' poop. We could all ride for years oil-free and save the environment... but I hate to think of the smell emerging from the exhaust pipes.

An Unreasonable Quantity of Snow Days in Atlanta

And now, a blog about snow.

It's 5:43 pm on a lovely Wednesday afternoon in Sandy Springs, Georgia, where we've been snowed- and iced- in for the past few days. Last Monday was supposed to be my return to Georgia Tech, research, and classes, but instead I've been here ever since, spending plenty of time with the wife and kids while getting really, really sick of the available convenience foods. I got very excited about the possibility of walking down to Panda Express this evening for some real grub, but alas that my giftcard will go as yet unspent: they closed two hours ago due to a lack of customers braving the treacherous roads for quality Chinese. Heavy sigh.

It's 2011: Where's My Flying Car?

I mean, at the very least, there must be a hoverboard or something on the way. Christopher Lloyd taught me that. Where we're going, we don't need roads.

It's a new year, and the kids are sleeping.

Damn, that felt nice and relaxing to type. In fact, I like that feeling so much, I'm going to type it again.

It's a new year, and the kids are sleeping.

Aaaaahhhh....

And We're Back!

The NeverTown has long sat silent and empty, cold winter winds whistling through the barren streets that never were. My apologies. I've been finishing up my first semester as a doctoral student and research assistant at Tech... and in case you hadn't heard, I have twins. We just finished a trip back home to Louisiana with the boys in tow. It was nice to see everybody there, but the trip really had only one primary purpose: to introduce Benjamin and Kristopher to my one last living direct-line relative who cares about them. Grandma Mabel was pretty excited to say the least. Gotta say, though, I was very disappointed that she didn't have a chance to make her famous gumbo. Damn, I miss that gumbo. Despite that, she remains my favorite person in Louisiana (although my good friend Kristy has got to at least be in the Top 5).

Also got to hang out with some old friends (where I learned I was Eternal, Chunky, and Pure), and revisit my briefest of workplaces, Best Buy #1157. Nice to see the old crew again, but nicer to know that odd men named Bubba can no longer yell at me for failing to instruct my team to sell services to people who don't honestly need them. I like to think I subscribe to a more ethical version of salesmanship, which served me well back at Schwan's and Trustfile, but maybe I just don't want it enough. Who knows?

Babies and My Poor Neglected Blog

Believe it or not, it's tremendously difficult for me to type one-handed. And as one or more of my hands seems to constantly be doing something with a baby, that's left few fingers free to add to this blog. I'm also getting over a particularly nasty cold. Insert appropriate apologies to my rabid fan-base here.

We're currently just two hours away from the twins' six-week-birthday, and I understand that this is the point where I'm supposed to gush about the inner warmth and joys of parenthood, my boundless love for the children, and my joy at the opportunity and privilege to serve them. I've been told that at this point I'm meant to discuss how I've come to think of myself as a father first and everything else second, how my life has changed, and how I can never look at the world the same way.

Well, my life has changed. I'll give you that one, at least. Other than that... nope. Maybe it's the lack of sleep, or maybe it's the workload of helping my amazing wife with these two combined with the myriad responsibilities of the doctoral program. In any event, I'm more numb and tired than anything. There have been moments, of course - some good and several not so much. I imagine that's natural for those unlucky few who get to try feeding, changing, burping, and soothing two at the same time.

Let Me Tell You About Baby-Poopies

Yes, I've counted eight distinct types now, although the variety has pretty much limited itself at this point to three assortments: the Mustard type, the Gravel type, and what I like to call the "Grastard" type, which conveniently combines the smell and colors of the Mustard type with the consistency and stick-to-skin quality of the Gravel type.

Honestly, the things I blog about....

Another Twin Update, and a Fallacy of Self-Monitoring

Have I bragged about how awesome my new home office here in Atlanta is? Seriously, when I learned I'd be moving here to pursue my doctorate, I imagined a grimy, dirty, tiny, urban apartment. I definitely did not imagine a spacious sunroom office with a balcony surrounded by trees and a creek. Seriously, it's a joy to work in here (and I'm getting a surprising amount of work done today, despite the fact that I was left alone with the twins - they've been pretty quiet and well-behaved, and yes, I'm knocking on wood as I type this. Honestly. Simultaneously. It's a sight to see.).

But that's probably not the kind of thing you're looking for if you read this blog. You're either looking for organizational psychology, baby updates, or a cheap laugh (or if you're Kerry, you're hoping I'll mention you). Well, you, dear reader, are in luck, because you're going to get all three in this post (but I'm not going to mention Kerry).

It's been a while since I've talked about self-monitoring in these (virtual) pages, and as I know for a fact that some of you aren't interested in the slightest in this, I should warn you in advance that I'm going to spend the next four paragraphs talking about it. Feel free to skip down if you'd like.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" or "Three Days with Twins"

So many lessons learned from the first three days of having both Benjamin Justin Lemoine and Kristopher James Lemoine at home... sounds like it's time for another bullet-point blog post!

• Both babies are healthy. That's the important thing. They seem pretty happy, too. Speaking of which....
• I'm reminded of an old Edwin Edwards (former governor of Louisiana) quote: "Louisiana is not first in everything that is bad, and last in everything that is good." That said, Benjamin is not first in all the negative records, and he is not second in all of the positive records. Sure, Kristopher took top honors for being the first baby to roll over on his own (already!) and Benjamin took top honors for being the first baby to have diarrhea. Sure, Kristopher took top honors for being the first baby to finish off his whole bottle, and Benjamin took top honors for being the first baby to experience explosive projectile defecation (seriously, it was amazing! I'm going to hang a mini-poster of Kenny Chesney next to the diaper-changing table, so he has a target next time!). On the other hand, Benjamin is completely wiping the floor with Kristopher on smile-count (about 27 to 0, at last count), and Benjamin took top honors for being the first twin to do a push-up.

Lo, They Shall Inherit Many Transformers, and a Pinball Table

And so, as those of you who actually know me and are hooked up with me on Facebook already know, it has finally happened. At the stroke of midnight early Friday morning, my wife was taken from me so that a huge needle could be stuck in her spine and her lower belly could be cut open. I hid, along with her head, behind a curtain as she held my hand tightly and I did an impromptu comedy routine to help alleviate our fear. The doctors and nurses laughed quite a bit more than Debby did. And there was this huge lamp in the room that looked just like the planet-destroying laser on the Death Star!

At 12:35am or so, we heard crying. I stayed with my wife until the crying erupted a second time. Then, with her permission, I disengaged from her and moved ten feet to the right to take pictures and see my sons for the first time.

To be honest, it wasn't quite like I expected. The babies weren't awe-inspiringly beautiful, glowing, or even paradigm changing. I did not look upon them and see a different world or a different future. I didn't see them and think that suddenly my personality would be completely different. I didn't even look at them and think they were beautiful; my first thought about appearance was probably something along the lines of, "Wow, they're covered in slime."

Sitcoms Taught Me This Would Be Different

Hi, honey, I'm home.

Quiet, I'm on the phone!

Oh, okay. Everything okay?

I think my water broke.

Really? Ummm... shouldn't we be running to the hospital or something?

No... just got off the phone with my doctor. He said we might want to go to the hospital in a bit.

In a bit? Uh, okay then... what do we do now?

I'm hungry.

Seriously, I Begged

About six weeks ago, I received my syllabuses... syllabus's... syllabi?... for my doctoral courses. I noticed that my first two major exams were spaced within four days of each other, in a short stretch from Thursday, September 30, to Monday, October 4. Seeing this, and knowing that our babies were due around the same time, I got down on my knees and begged Debby to hold out... after all, there are 365 days in the year (366 on a leap year!), and surely she could give birth on some other day. Then, remaining on my knees, I made the same entreaty very loudly to her belly.

And now... now... the damn kids haven't even been born yet and already they're defying me.

Pictures coming soon.

(obligatory Kenny Chesney reference here)

Best Baby Gift Yet

Seriously, these are just about the coolest onesies ever.  Now which baby gets to be the smart one, and which baby gets to make out with all the hot alien chicks?

Thanks, Gene!

(sorry, it's a short post, no way to work in the obligatory Kenny Chesney reference)

Everything I Learned in Debby's Pregnancy Classes

Recently Debby dragged me along with her to several of her pregnancy classes at Women's Hospital.  These classes were intended to teach prospective new parents how to successfully bear and raise twins in a modern world.  How to bring them home, care for them, teach them, change them, and bring them up so they won't become Kenny Chesney fans.

That said, I thought I'd take a few minutes to share in this blog all of the new information that I learned in these fascinating classes.  I won't include the obvious things they went over, like "you'll gain weight when you're pregnant" or "you should relax if you feel stressed" or even "you don't have to pay anyone to breastfeed your baby."  Instead, I'll only list the real, non-obvious, and relevant things they taught me.  I'll list all of them, and then end this post.

Let's see... the non-obvious things I learned were:

CTSO's, Children, and Canned Unicorn Meat

Happy Sunday, faithful readers!

This is the longest I've gone without blogging since I started the blog, for which you have my apologies. The life of a freelance-consultant/father-to-be/guy-who's-packing-up-the-house proves busier than expected.  No deep leadership insights at this time for you... I've made little to no progress on my research over the last week.  Instead, I've been spending my time reading up on organizational behavior research techniques, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how much of it I'm already at least familiar with.

Instead, I've got new kid pictures, which is quite an accomplishment considering that the light of day has yet to ever touch my babies-to-be.  But before we get to that... a few words on the National Pork Board.

One of my favorite websites is ThinkGeek.com... because, yes, I'm a geek.  Recently they were served a cease-and-desist letter (my favorite kind!) by the good people at the National Pork Board.  Now, normally I'm behind the Pork people no matter what... after all, they're the group that promotes bacon.  But this time... not so much.  Here's a pic of the ThinkGeek product the Pork People were prepared to sue over:

That's right... unicorn meat.

See, every April Fool's Day, ThinkGeek rolls out a bunch of fake advertisements for joke products that don't actually exist, like an E-Z Bake Oven with USB connectivity, or Spazztroids Caffeinated Breakfast Cereal.  This year they went with unicorn meat, calling it "The New White Meat."  The National Pork Board, seeing their trademark of The Other White Meat in jeopardy, immediately moved for legal action to prevent Thinkgeek from selling... canned unicorn meat.

It's a bit of an embarrassing situation for the plaintiffs (you can read all about it here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/blog/2010/06/officially-our-bestever-cease.html), but the moral of the story is this: we should all just lighten up.

Speaking of lightening up, that's exactly the opposite of what Debby is doing right now.  Instead, she continues to grow her baby-filled girth to mammoth new proportions... which, when you're pregnant with twins, is a Very Good Thing. Recently we got new ultrasound pics of both of them, including one 3-D model of Baby A!  Unfortunately, Baby A wasn't too happy with his picture session, as Baby B kept kicking him in the face. Cutest darn thing you ever virtually saw.

Baby A

Baby B

Sadly, there are not yet names beyond the alphabet for the two boys:  Debby steadfastly refuses my suggestion of "Nathaniel" and "SuperFly" despite near unanimous agreement from our friends and family. Heavy sigh.  We're still taking suggestions (and in case you were going there, she's also vetoed Bill and Ted, Bugs and Daffy, and Voltron and Optimus Prime).

Last week I had the honor of training the Louisiana CTSO state officers in Baton Rouge, and I learned quite a few things from them. I'll close with some life lessons from the conference:

• Leadership is best demonstrated not by certain behaviors, not by certain traits, and not by certain appearances... but rather by the ability to actually get amazing things done.
• I heard one of them listening to a Kenny Chesney tune on their iPods... I resisted the urge to throw the offender out of the training!
• Never underestimate FCCLA.  Those girls (and one guy) are tough competitors.
• The Technology Students of America should add acting to their list of exciting new innovations.  I've never seen so many buy so much, when absolutely nothing was for sale!
• Louisiana DECA continues to amaze me with their propensity for an almost frightening degree of intelligence.  If you haven't heard about these guys yet, you will.  A simply amazing team.
• I'm very disappointed that FBLA, of which I am a former national president, was only able to send less than half of their officer team. Where's the love? But despite that... that was a heck of a balloon tower, wasn't it?
• And, okay, sure, FFA didn't win the CTSO Cup.  But FFA is and always will be My People: in the words of my old National Vice-President, they'll rock your momma's booty somethin' awful.

And speaking of mommas, I saw mine last week for the first time in years. She looked very awkward at the chance meeting and made an excuse to leave as quickly as she could, before I had a chance to strike up any kind of conversation.  She didn't seem to want to talk to me, but despite that, I learned that I apparently have a little half-brother now. Who knew?

And now for something Slightly More Meaty

So aside from the fact that I've been cajoled and begged by a bunch of people to start a blog for years (and I'm not trying to brag here... I'm not really sure why they wanted me to blog. Maybe they figured that if I spent more time blogging, I'd spend less time bothering them?), there were two major reasons for me to finally revisit the NeverTown and download this blogging software: first, because my wife and I are about to have twins, making this an excellent outlet for cute little pictures, funny parenting stories, and good child-rearing advice, like the below*:


However, as of now, said twins are only beginning to make the transition from tiny blobs to tiny fetuses... fetus's... fetusi? Anyway, not too much to talk about there, and not too many pics to share unless you have a fetish for Debby's rapidly expanding belly.

The second reason for the blog is to share, discuss, and gain feedback on all of the fascinating management and leadership knowledge I will (hopefully) gain starting this August as I begin my term as a doctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology (one of the top business schools in the country... great excitement!), specializing in Organizational Behavior. And that, at least, I can start to talk about.

The largest duty (heh... I said 'doody') of the doctoral student is to write a comprehensive "first-year paper," one which researches in some great detail one particular and somewhat specific topic in the field. I've been talking a lot with one of GT's many open-minded and helpful faculty member about a topic that very much interests me: leadership, and its relationship to self-monitoring tendencies.

I think we all know what leadership is here... (Or do we? Well, that's a topic for another time) but in case you aren't clear on it, self-monitoring is the tendency for people to monitor what they say and do in order to make other people happy, or to make others look at you with a more positive outlook. So, the question is... do high or low self-monitors make better leaders? Think about it... high self-monitors will change their answers to make other people feel more comfortable, bend their beliefs to foster consensus, and work harder to build a loyal and cooperative team-unit. Low self-monitors will stand by their principles no matter what, won't care what others think about them, and expect their team to change to meet their own beliefs and values.

I'm honestly not sure what the answer to the question is... in fact, I could and have made strong arguments in both directions. And academic research seems a bit mixed in this area, too... although it does lean a bit in one direction, from what I've heard. I find it a very interesting question, though, because I'm a geek like that, and leadership and org. behavior topics like this fascinate me.

So what do you think? What would your boss think? What would your teachers think? What would Kenny Chesney think?

* Thanks to Carrie Perez, my lifetime funny-pics supplier! She gave me a free fix, and any day now she's going to start charging me....