can i get a dap?

2026 observation

The NBA has a great family appeal. As a Dad with a daughter now, I think about watching Kobe and Steph with their daughters, or LeBron's individual handshakes with his whole family. That's the modeled behavior that gave me joy.

And now my son is named Coby, an alternate spelling of Kobe with Hebrew origins. Once I saw it, I couldn't not see it, if you know what I mean.

So naturally I pull Aria into sports whenever I can. Honestly, she didn't have much of a choice as it's my preferred method of relationship building. Functionally she is a better all around athlete right now than Coby, but that's because Coby is long and lanky and a little inefficient, and ironically good at basketball.

Around their 3rd birthday, we started sharing a personal dap. It's really cute because sometimes we'll do it at school as well as every single night before bed as a routine.

So one night of the last several hundred, I was leaving the room without dapping them up and Aria goes, "Dad…"

"What's up?"

"Can I get a dap?"

Almost one thousand daps and so far I only remember one.

multidimensional leadership

2026 observation

Taking my two four year olds and dog on a hike is a leadership challenge unlike any I've faced at work or in sports. This is what I mean, in four year old terms, sometimes canine.

Coby and Aria are twins, and four year olds show you exactly who they are if you're paying attention. Lenny is mentally on their plane, a 75-pound mix of two guard dog breeds who struggles to accept that she's not in charge.

Aria is a natural born leader while Coby occasionally feels compelled to lead, but he's antsy in the role and doesn't like that Aria sometimes pushes him to go faster. He just hasn't quite realized he's a natural support. Leadership from the back, like an elder elephant.

Aria is such a natural, but she'll quickly start to answer Coby's question only to realize she doesn't yet have an explanation and she'll choose our path without an idea of direction. At four, sometimes she gets ahead of herself. Like slow down girl, but it's really cute.

Then outta no where she'll act scared of climbing down a rock, prompting Coby into action, "Here let me show you!"

That's where he's comfortable. Of course, Aria struggles not to giggle when she looks at me to make sure I'm watching. She's performing, but she likes to know her baby bro has her back.

Then there's Lenny, attached via harness. She's got beef with every squirrel and chipmunk, overwhelmed with scents, and matriarchally motivated to get ahead of her packmates. There are times where she can comfortably lead, her natural state and a great early role model for Aria.

But she's limited as a dog while Aria has a lot of potential, so I call Lenny back "with me." Lenny doesn't like it.

The other day, we were exiting the Wiss along the roughly quarter-mile uphill White Trail Entrance after a 2 mile hike. It was cold out, and they rested halfway to enjoy a hot chocolate and a cookie.

By the time we were finishing, Coby had had enough, in that dramatized four year old way. But I wanted more, mostly entertained, a little activated, walking backwards and trying to motivate him. About ¾ of the way up, Aria interjects and goes, "You know Dad, we've been hiking a long time…" She's fulfilling her destiny. What was I supposed to do but obey? I put Coby on my back to finish the last 100m because his twin sister showed up in conflict calm and steady at just four years old.

That's the whole thing! Right there on the White Trail.

withdrawal as leadership

2025 observation

By choice: live in the city, travel to the burbs. We travel to my Dad's often because he (his wife) offers free food.

Sanctioned basement chaos quickly degenerates with twin toddlers. Until recently, the predictable pattern included adult supervision and cleanup, but we've been flirting with change.

"Alright guys, I'm heading back upstairs. I'll give you a five minute warning to clean up before dinner. Deal?" Aria smiled and Coby gave his standard nod.

As I came back down, my expectation was steady. But I was so wrong.

The nugget was tight against the wall. Small baby toys packed and large toy cars parked. Every degree my head turned made me want to look more. The trains, tracks, and even all the components and accessories were clean in their case.

And my two kids, standing innocently with total inside joke energy. They had been holding out on me, and they knew it.

I left because I wanted the fireplace, and it turns out that was exactly what they needed.

"Wow! Great job guys. Alright, let's go eat."

canine companion

2025 observation

One weekend morning, my son was just a couple degrees off. I was helping his sister get ready and he was performatively turned against the wall, starting to melt down. Sometimes parenting catches you suspended between providing space or boundaries.

Our family dog strolled into the room at just the right moment. Maybe she could smell it, and I watched my son plug into one of the rarer things we experience in life.

Lenny is half Doberman and half American Staffordshire, a rescued 75lb frame of high-energy muscle with a matriarchal drive to match. Her nose was the first to smell Coby's existence, and she continues to serve a vow.

Coby naturally gravitated into her spell, collapsing into a hug. It felt like slow motion.

"Dad, Dad… I gave Lenny a hug and I stopped crying."

"That's the game, my dude."

Off to soccer we go.

a protector in the making

2025 observation

The other day my son's internal world became legible for a few minutes. He told a story, but it was so much more. It was one of those rare moments where he felt safe enough to put something held close inside into the world as language. In the gravity of the moment, my son sat and spoke with a soft stoicism, fully present. It was a quiet reveal of a psychological schema forming in real time… attachment, identity, morality, and the anxious haunts humans inherit before they have language for them.

That morning, the air had flow you could feel. It was the day before Thanksgiving and school was closed. The gloomy November overcast was cut softly by candlelight in our apartment, and we made chocolate pancakes. In retrospect, flow always feels foreshadowy, like potential.

Like every morning, it had its usual frictions, too. Small resistances, small corrections. Serving as a soft but stubborn boundary to a four year old right in front of their twin has its own challenges. Those micro-repairs scale into a container in which he feels safe, underscoring the value of multidimensional leadership. When parents are sturdy, kids believe we can carry things with them. The story in the car was earned through ecology.

The first half of his story was simple: scared of police cars chasing him and policemen taking me away. For a four-year-old, police are a predictable symbol of something outside his control capable of separating him from someone he loves.

Then came a profound second act reclaiming his power. He named everyone in his family: his sister, his mom, our dog, all five grandparents. And he spoke about wanting to save everyone, save his family. In response to separation, my little man is holding the system together before he can define it. Making meaning before vocabulary.

These are the purest moments in fatherhood. That's secure attachment forming live, right there in the backseat as we drove to the trailhead.

how do you cry?

2024 observation

My daughter asked me a question so simple, but it stopped the world around us. She looked at me with that particular seriousness young children reserve for their most curious moments and said, "Daddy, how do you cry?"

The moment was unmistakably true. Her question was heavy. For a second, gravity folded time in on itself. My memory jumped back to my own childhood and then shot forward into the person she was becoming, teasing me with glimpses of my own arc along the way.

It wasn't a question about technique. A three-year-old doesn't mean it that way. She was trying to understand the architecture of emotion before she had the language for it. I witnessed her mapping the way feeling moves inside her world. And the way she watched my face… she was studying not just what I said but how I said it.

Sometimes the smallest moments feel like the biggest. It felt like she was asking me how to be human.