My daughter, Haley, is writing a book.

Her book, “Mia Maria and Two Times The Kindergarten” is a wonderful little project, though Haley is slightly devastated she missed her first deadline.

Yes, she’s only nine, and yes, I did give her a deadline.

We’ve been working on Mia since early this year, starting back in late April. Every Wednesday night we would sit in my office for an hour or two, starting with our outline and working through the chapters one by one.

The finished outline was 3,000 words and provided a thick skeleton for her full story. Haley diligently added pages over the last several months. I promised her that as soon as she finished the rough draft, we would work together to get it finalized and published by the end of the year.

Haley’s voice is especially strong, the book is semi-autobiographical, and we were working from a solid outline, so the plan seemed sound at the time.

But the months faded too fast, and the end of the school year seemed to arrive ahead of schedule, even though it was on the exact day the calendar had promised. We drove to California, stayed for five weeks, then hurried back to catch the tail end of summer and school at the end of August.

Mia was stalled at the end of chapter 11, where it remained a chapter from finished for approximately forever.

David and I have published a couple dozen titles this year, but had to schedule a publishing pause in December so we could streamline our catalog, tie a few loose ends, and write the second of Yesterday’s Gone before the start of the new year and our next 90 day quarter. Our final publishing date was November 30, so Haley’s deadline for the Mia draft was November 15, at the absolute latest.

I told Haley it was no big deal either way, yet as her deadline loomed I could see the stress starting to simmer. I hated it, and myself a little for giving my daughter the deadline the first place. Yes, deadlines are important and must be honored, but you don’t need them (or the canker sores) when you’re nine years old and working on your first book with daddy. When she missed the deadline, her biggest emotion was relief.

Haley is a lot like her father. She loves to work on 1,000,001 projects at once. Missing the deadline gave her a short reprieve to finish up a few things on her plate and hit the new deadline, which is December 20, for a publishing date of her birthday, January 14.

This last weekend, Haley finished her rough draft.

I’m so excited to be working on this project with my little girl. I’m blessed with many amazing co-writers, but this is the first one to share my gene pool.

I love Haley, I love this project, and I’ve never been more excited for my first baby’s birthday!

“Do you think she still believes?” I whispered.

“Hard to say,” Cindy scrunched her nose. “I’d like to think yes, but it’s probably wishful thinking. If so, we have one year left, max.”

That was last year.

This year, it feels like we’re on hanging to belief by our fingernails (and denial). Our daughter Haley is nine years old, a few weeks shy of 10. Much to our delight, she still believes in Santa Clause. Or at least she’s smart enough to not allow her remaining faith to fade to nothing so close to the morning of truth.

Yes, of course we know Santa is silly tradition. But it’s one of the most lovable traditions there is. I loved believing in Santa as a child, so did my sister. And I longed to share the magic with my own children. Cindy, who had a zombie apocalypse childhood compared to my relative Disneyland, longed to do the same.

Now the façade is crumbling.

Whether or not Haley still believes in Santa Claus neither of us can say for sure.

But we agree the writing is on the wall. There aren’t too many 10-year-olds who truly believe.

Cindy has spent 20 some odd years as an elementary school teacher, the majority as a 4th grade teacher – the same grade Haley’s in right now. She said 4th graders who really believed were about as common as snow in fall.

Whenever she asked her 4th graders questions like, “Was Santa good to you?” she was most often answered with a rolling eye or quiet smirk.

I don’t remember exactly when I lost my own belief in jolly ole’ Nick, but I think it was around 8. And while I can’t recall the when, I do remember what happened immediately before.

I’d just called bollocks on the Easter Bunny. And as soon as I knew the Easter Bunny was a sham, Santa and his eight tiny reindeer ho-ho-hoaxed right behind. Ethan lost a tooth last week, I watched Haley’s reaction like a hawk.

Haley has a beautifully analytical mind, and it’s difficult for me to believe she hasn’t toyed with the idea that Santa’s a sham. She sometimes sees the wires and seams which split the magic of a movie’s special effects. I find it impossible to believe she hasn’t tried to unravel the mystery of Santa. Once she started, how could she arrive at any other conclusion?

Probably the same way we all do.

How many times have you lied to yourself, focusing on the 5, 10, maybe 20% of you that truly believed something, completely ignoring the 80% that didn’t?

For me, more times than I admit.

While that isn’t always the healthiest thing to do, right now and for the remainder of this year, I’m glad that’s what my daughter is doing. And once the kitty’s out of the bag and purring, I hope she can keep a secret.

Writer Dad

You know who your children are.

It’s a rare parent-teacher conference that shines new light on your child’s character, at least if you spend a reasonable amount of time with them, and are mildly observant.

There are two types of parent-teacher conferences: honest and eggshells. Honest conferences leave you with tools to improve your role as your child’s first teacher, eggshells rob you of the opportunity.

I know who my children are, so do the teachers who are with them through the majority of their weekday daylight. I need those teachers to confirm what I know and illuminate what I don’t.

A conference should help parents nurture their children to become better learners. A teacher’s professional perspective – how they see your child interpreting their responsibilities as a student – will help you effectively navigate the best possible path to get them where you want them to go.

We work hard, so do our children. But all four of us would rather work smart than hard. A potent parent-teacher conference gives us an opportunity to work smarter together.

Haley and Ethan’s parent-teacher conferences were yesterday. Haley is in 4th grade and sees four different instructors throughout her school day. Cindy and I were able to meet with each of her teachers, plus Ethan’s.

Haley is a tornado of ideas with a bottomless well of creativity. She loves to be the boss, loathes to be wrong, at least publicly, and is nowhere near as confident with math as she is with art or language.

Ethan is an earnest, honest, and endlessly enthusiastic learner, eager to please and keep pace with his sister, but needs help understanding, no, believing, that slow and steady most often wins the race.

There’s wasn’t a single observation Cindy and I didn’t already know and wholeheartedly agree with. What made our conferences so wonderful was that all five teachers used direct language to praise our children for all we know they’re good at, and equally frank words to tell us what they could do better, then take the ball and keep charging, developing strategies we could all use to move forward together.

We know Haley needs help with her confidence in math, but to hear her math teacher say, “When Haley doesn’t want feel confident in a subject, she’ll try to avoid it entirely. WE can do better.”

We agree, she can, and we’re thankful for a teacher who will say so. Haley’s teachers agree she’s a wonderful communicator, and that while they don’t want to dim her enthusiasm, we all need to collectively work toward her understanding that there is a time and a place for everything. Which we are.

We know Ethan has been racing through his reading, blazing through Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban in days rather than the weeks it took him to read Chamber of Secrets, simply because he’s trying to keep pace with his sister. And yeah, I’m sure he read every word, but that’s like saying you read every sign you passed, speeding by on your way to work. Ethan’s teacher told us he needs to slow down on his reading so he can get more out of it, same thing we’ve been saying since he started Book III.

I love honesty, more than most things. And despite my tendency to go on and on (and on), I greatly appreciate direct language.

I want to help my children be the best that they can be, and am thankful for teachers who make it possible.

Writer Dad

When we first moved to Ohio from California, we played hide-n-seek a LOT.

We had to wait for our furniture to arrive. It took six weeks. And when it finally did, it came in pieces, splinters, or missing, which, of course, much of it was.

Completely harrowing, but also pretty cool since for nearly every night of those six weeks, me, Cindy, Haley and Ethan all played empty-house hide-n-seek.

There weren’t many places to hide – just big, open, empty rooms. The only rule we had was that you couldn’t go outside. Even with scant places to stay hidden, the house always echoed with laughter and we had so much fun we could’ve sold tickets.

Ethan could never stay hidden for more than 10 seconds or so. All you had to do was say something funny and he would start laughing. You could actually say “something funny,” and that worked well, but “poop” works best.

It’s been 15 months since we first moved in, and we still play hide-n-seek once or twice a week. Though of course our house is no longer empty, the game is different for other reasons.

A few nights ago we were playing just after dinner. As I was hiding, I thought about how when we first moved in I would always wonder how many times we’d play empty-house hide-n-seek before it wouldn’t be empty house anymore. Our furniture would be here any day, and the charm would certainly thin.

Now I simply wonder how much longer we’ll be playing hide-n-seek, period.

How much longer before spending time with Dad is something my children muscle through before getting to the things they really want to do with their day, like talking to their friends, finding cool stuff on the Internet, or doing things to their hair that will surely embarrass them later.

We’re still in the thick of the time when Ethan and Haley genuinely love spending time with me and Cindy. It’s what they want to do more than anything else.

I’m not dumb enough to believe that will last forever, and am smart enough to treasure the moments as they hit me, with the full knowledge that they’re forever fading. Yet it’s always pronounced when playing hide-n-seek.

No matter who’s counting, as the numbers fall to one, I wonder how many more times I’ll here “ready or not, here I come!” before we’re all four a little less olly-olly-oxen-free.

I hate baby talk.

Really, really hate it.

With the white-hot heat from a galaxy of stars, hate it.

At least I used to.

There’s nothing cute about baby talk. I’m not talking about the transitional language children use when trying to develop vocabulary.

When Ethan was two, he used the word “bama” for everything he didn’t have a word for yet, much like the blue dudes use the word, “smurf.” Anything Ethan didn’t know or couldn’t pronounce was a bama. Helicopters, for example, were helidabamas.

Temporary language is fine. But saying wittle for little or baba for bottle when you know better, or dropping your voice to an ear splitting pitch, is painful. It’s hyper-obnoxious with adults, and completely misdirected. Children need language, and baby talk isn’t helpful, it’s condescending.

Of course I understand why children do it, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

Both of my children have been baby talking since forever, Haley especially. Ethan does it because he wants to be cool like his big sister, but Haley chews on the baby talk then pats her tummy when done.

I understand her attraction to baby talking – she gets to pretend she’s little – a peanut, as she says. Small enough to fit in Daddy’s arms without the gangle, and tiny enough to never have to clean her room.

Yet, Haley didn’t even baby talk when she was a baby. The girl was using full, flowing, articulate sentences (run-on for the most part, loosely strung together by the word actually, said over and over again) at 18 months. She didn’t start baby talking until kindergarten.

Now, she does it all the time. And it makes me want to !!#$@&$^%@&#@&!#@%#!!.

I get it, and am able to put in its place, but there are definitely days when she just won’t stop. And now she’s added her brother to my nightmare’s soundtrack (he’s doing it more than she is at the moment).

Sometimes I want to hold my face under a pillow as the symphony of infancy sours the silence.

Fortunately, Cindy cured me forever. Sometimes all you need is a constant, an anchor to hold your sanity intact – to give you focus so your eyes don’t blur.

During an explosive round of battle scarred baby talk; lots of bah bah jula mama bee bee pee poo that made me want to !!#$@&$^%@&#@&!#@%#!!, Cindy whispered something in my ear that pulled the splinter from my brain.

At least she’s not talking about boys!

She’s righter than four right turns in a row.

Haley isn’t talking about boys.

Baby talk is just fine by me.

The average 3 year old can identify 100 Logos.

A child sees an average of 40,000 advertisements a year.

Madison Avenue spends 12 billion dollars marketing to OUR children.

No matter what business you think you’re in, you’re also in the business of marketing, at least if you want your business to be a success.

Few lessons have rang more true throughout the last three years as Sean has dived deep into digital industry, living the life of an online entrepreneur.

Sean thinks in measures:

How many products can I build?
How many stories can I write and publish?
Hw many people’s lives can I change for the better?
How happy can I possibly be while making our dreams come true?

The bark on Sean’s family tree is made up entirely of entrepreneurs. His Papi, Jose Jesus Ramos moved from Guadlahara, Mexico to the United States in the early 1920′s. He owned an import shop on Olvera Street in Los Angeles, CA.

Sean’s mother and father owned a flower shop when he was young, and are still in the business today. His sister has two successful enterprises, a hand-made greeting card business (they’re gorgeous!) and a boutique wedding business (even prettier!)

Sean has never worked for anyone other than himself.

As a child, Monopoly was his favorite board game, and he ruled. He created a market to sell playground SWAG like red vines, baseball cards, and Garbage Pail kids. His first book, Penny to a Million, is a tip of the hat to childhood and all the liberation which comes from being a kidpreneur.

I digress.

Our daughter Haley hates math. We don’t torture our offspring with constant number crunching, Kumon, daily timed math fact drills, or Sylvan Learning Center, but she doesn’t care for the subject. At all.

And though she’ll blaze through her math homework in the shortest time possible, she will spend hours writing remarkable poetry about how much she loathes the subject.

At least until this year.

Haley is now in 4th grade, the final year for Lower School. Next she’s off to Middle School, but this year her grade level is departmentalized to prepare her for the transition.

Every day Haley buzzes between classes, delightfully exchanging ideas and 6-7 different teaching styles. She’s in love with this part of her school year, even though it means she now has two blocks of math.

“UGH! Mom TWO TIMES the math!”

Though the teacher in me wants to see her muscle her way through boring computation so she can discover the magic of algebra, differential equations, and trigonometry, I’ve accepted her feelings.

But her feelings have started to change.

“Get this Mom, 21st Century Math is AWESOME. I mean REALLY, REALLY awesome. And here’s why.”

The first time she told me this, she was so excited her breath was a few seconds behind her voice.

“Today my teacher said:”

An entrepreneur is someone who creates something the world needs, then makes the world a better place, while providing themselves with a better life.

She giggled into her hand. “Isn’t that NEAT? It got me thinking.”

“I AM an entrepreneur, right?”

I AM a writer.

She clapped her hands and jumped up and down….. I’m already on Chapter 8 of Mia Maria!

(Mia Maria is the chapter book Haley and her father are writing together.)

This conversation was part of pre-dinner chatter, and don’t let Sean tell you he didn’t cry just a bit. He’d be lying.

He said, “I doubt those words were said in more than a handful of schools today.”

He hugged Haley tight, kissed her on the forehead, then said, “I love your teacher and your school!”

I looked at them both in awe.

Haley is a creator, she loses herself in her writing and drawing, daydreaming of the day she’ll publish her first work to Kindle.

She’s unafraid, far more concerned with personal satisfaction and fierce independence than anything else.

Just like her father. 

She is walking in his footsteps, willingly, and more so by the day.

I think about  her current education, experience and exposure.

I loved my college experiences, and though I will always be willing to help Haley through college if that’s where she chooses to go, I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge the gleam in her eyes.

College might not be what’s best for her.

Haley has the spirit of an entrepreneur.

She knows no other life, because it is the life we live.

She embraces a love for language like her father, and those private moments are sacred; etched in my heart forever. Haley dances for her father with words, and now his stage is set for her.

Mia Maria was a 3,000 word outline for a chapter book called “Mia Maria and Two Times the Kindergarten.” Sean and Haley started their first publishing project together last spring on their Wednesday Father/Daughter Nights while Ethan and I had Mother/Son night adventures. It is now a mostly finished rough draft. Stay tuned. Haley swears it will be finished by Christmas. 

Cindy

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“Daddy, I was the man while you were away.”

Those weren’t the first words Ethan said as I stepped through the door, but they slapped a semi-permanent smile on my face as he stood two inches taller, pointing to my usual chair at the head of the table.

“I sat in your chair, Daddy,” he repeated, “I was the man while you were away.”

Cindy, Ethan and Haley made it clear – dinner wasn’t the same without Daddy.

I’ve taken 11 trips so far this year, but this last was the longest I’d ever been away from home. A week isn’t really that long, but it feels like forever when you unlock your door and can honestly swear your children have grown since last you saw them. Ethan was missing another tooth, Haley seemed to look longer, but weigh less, and a combination of a fresh haircut and a week away framed Cindy’s face more beautiful then ever.

I don’t think “Daddy!” ever sounded louder, or quite as warm.

The week away started with Lori and I flying to Florida for a copywriter’s convention. Dave lives just four hours from Boca Raton where the conference was, so he drove down to meet us. I was eager to sit in a room filled with others who made their living with words and ideas, but I was more excited to see Dave in person for the second time in our two and half years together.

The conference itself wasn’t too exciting – about five minutes of awesome for every 55 of meh – but bouncing ideas with Dave and Lori in unison was absolutely worth it.

The conference ran until Wednesday, but Lori and I had to leave early for a late flight to Austin. Early the next morning we attended a Mastermind, sitting in a room with 20 entrepreneurs, all of them using bleeding edge traffic and conversion strategies to move their businesses from high six figures to seven, or from seven to eight.

A single conversation brimming with wisdom is better than a decade of trial and error. Listening to the banter from a group of people who speak as fast as they think and think a whole lot faster than most was fresh air for my smoggy mind.

It was interesting to see the difference between the two worlds; those who create the information and those who control the roads. The writers were focused on content and building lasting relationships with their audience. The Mastermind was focused on traffic and conversion on rinse and repeat.

As with most things in life, I was happy to find myself somewhere in the middle. I long to create amazing content that bonds with an audience, but am loathe to let it languor to nothing, and am forever intent on finding new ways to make sure my words find as many eyes as possible.

The six days away were packed with revelation. I returned home, my mind pregnant with a million undelivered ideas. The new year teases me with all I am ready, eager, and well-trained to do.

I don’t like leaving Cindy or the children, but I do love unlocking the door and entering my house as a stronger and wiser father than I was when I left, knowing my time away was spent to build a better bridge between our present and future.

The smell of coffee reminds me of my father.

As a child, the only time I ever saw my dad slowly sip his coffee was on Sunday mornings when we’d sit around a restaurant table and share breakfast as a family.

Growing up, my dad was usually long gone and out of the house well before I woke up. I’ve always been an early riser, but our family had a flower shop, which meant Daddy’s day started around the same time as the dudes who make the donuts.

Early to rise must be in the Platt DNA. It’s barely six as I’m tapping at the keyboard. I can hear the clinking of spoons coming from the kitchen as my children swallow their cereal.

Ethan was an infant during my final year at the flower shop. He’d rise with a smile each morning at 4:30, then spend an hour cooing and gurgling as I grinned and giggled; the two of us having our boys time before I headed to the shop to open the doors with my own dad.

We often arrived within 30 minutes of one another. No matter who was first, the routine was the same. We’d stop what we were doing, drop our tools, remove our aprons and amble around the corner to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to share a cup of coffee and a half hour or so before starting our day.

For 10 years I had coffee with my father, almost every morning, six days a week.

I knew my dad as an adult far better than I did as a child. For 12 years we worked side-by-side, going where most fathers and sons never can. In addition to being my dad, my Pop is one of the best friends I’ve ever had.

Many men never really know their fathers. As boys we look up to our dads as mythical creatures, ruling our worlds with iron law. We move up and on, maybe have a family of our own, and begin to understand our dads by looking at our past with a bird’s eye view.

Yet few men can know their fathers as people, warts and all, the way you do when you run a business together and spend each morning holding the heat of your coffee in your mouth while keeping an open ear to the older version of you sitting on the other side of the table.

I know my father inside out and upside down. I know what makes him laugh or cry or swallow hard with melancholy. We spent a big fat wedge of my life discussing music, movies and politics; business, family and future. My father’s patient ear was eager to hear me, even when I was only saying the exact same words in a slightly different order.

Our conversations were long and lingering, sometimes lasting for years.

Once I left the store to open the preschool, I traded coffee with my Pop for coffee with Cindy, who is now the primary recipient of my limitless blather. Instead of music, movies and politics, conversation drifted to children, goals, and a future written by us.

Time bends the bars of memory. It will never change who you were, but it can shift your perspective and remind you of the endless opportunity before you.

I still sip my coffee with purpose each morning, thinking of all I’ve done and all I want to do; knowing it’s up to me and that each day brings not just fresh coffee, but fresh possibility as well.

Now I’m living in Ohio and must imagine new ways to make magic with my dad. The scent of my coffee curls through the air and reminds me I must make time to call more.

I tell myself I have only five minutes, and that I’ll call when I have 20. But sometimes five minutes is all I’d need, especially since 20 is an endangered species and I’m working overtime to raise a healthy business and healthier family.

I am the designer of my days and must do a better job.

Time evaporates like steam from cooling coffee. I must make more time for the stuff that matters. My work will get finished and my dreams will come true, but I must never forget the gifts of my present.

I smell the coffee every morning and think of my father every day.

I love you Pop. Happy Birthday!

My daughter broke her finger. You probably heard her screaming.

It was the ring finger on her right hand; the one she writes, reads and draws with.

The worst part of the episode, besides the angry plum colored maw of a digit, was that by the time it was over I felt like 175 pounds of dirtbag (okay, 190 – Daddy has some work to do).

I’m not 100% sure since the event plays in my mind like a hazy flashback shot by an inebriated director, but I *think* I might have told her to please cease the melodrama somewhere in between her sixth and seventh shriek.

You have to understand, Mia sometimes pours it on thicker than Mrs. Butterworth. Last month, in the midst of attempting to doctor her nose through a relentless cold, she went all Linda Blair, foaming at the mouth and hissing, “THIS IS THE WORST MOMENT OF MY ENTIRE LIFE!!!!”

It must be nice to have a well of experience that runs just eight years deep.

Last week, Max was channeling his inner rascal and threw a paperback at her head. His aim was lousy and her reflexes sound. She nimbly dodged the projectile, turning a solid thump into a mere tickle. Her escape, however, did nothing to mute her outrage.

“That didn’t hurt,” I said, barely looking up.

“Yes. It. Did.” Her brow furrowed like her mom’s and her voice dropped to a pitch that clearly belonged to her father. “THAT was 287 pages of PAIN!”

So yeah, wolf has been cried and my armor is thin. It was only midway through her hysteria, with Cindy’s shirt saturated by Mia’s shudders, when I finally realized this was a no doubt, real deal sorta thing.

“I’m sorry,” I said, spinning from my chair and crossing the room.

I was halfway there when she said, “No, you’re not! You just want to work.”

OUCH

The next hour felt like a week, as Mia breathed into her murmurs with a few choice phrases:

“I just love you soooooo much.”
“Please just say something to cheer me up.”
“It just hurts, SO so much.”
“Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“The next time anyone hurts themselves even a little, I’m going to cry with them.”

And my favorite…

“You don’t even know what pain is.”

Eventually her sobbing subsided and we were able to soothe our first born. But it wasn’t until the next day, after a twin set of X-Rays, when we knew for sure she had a hairline crack in her tiny bone.

It’s a week later and her finger is no longer the size of two. I’m sorry I doubted her.

We try to teach our children lessons in both what we do and don’t do. Sometimes it’s what we don’t do, though, that teaches us the most.

Sorry Mia.