Rohdesign Weblog: Kids

Here you'll find all posts file under the Kids category.

February 6, 2008

February Blizzard in Milwaukee

Milwaukee was hit with a big blizzard today, dropping 16" of snow across the entire area.

Around 3pm, I took a break from work to clear our snow, and was shocked by just how much white stuff was in our driveway.

Our neighbors helped me shovel, and a little later, Nathan came out to play. I took a few shots of him climbing the Mount Everest pile near the driveway to give you an idea how much snow we've got up here.

Holy Cow!

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November 13, 2007

Declining an Apple Job Opportunity

About a month ago, late on a Monday night, I received an intriguing email.

A senior recruiter at Apple found my blog, reviewed my design work and wondered if I might interested in a position on the iPhone/OS X design team.

At first I thought it was a joke. Surely this was a prank, sprung by my good buddy, Michael Ashby.

Then I did my research, and it was the real deal.

This was definitely Apple calling.

Holy smokes!

Talking with Apple
After the shock wore off, I setup a initial phone interview. I had to find out more. I contacted several good friends living in Silicon Valley, to learn more about working at Apple and living in California.

The next day, I had a great conversation with the recruiter. I shared my background and skills, learned more about the potential position, Apple, and California.

If I was interested in moving ahead with this, the next step was an icon design project and an essay on my solution for a UI design challenge.

With this huge opportunity on the table, I took time to get counsel from my wife, family and friends, to think through the ramifications and to pray for God's guidance.

After much thought and consideration I decided to decline the opportunity.

Decline? Are you NUTS Mike?!
The very idea that I was completely nuts did cross my mind. After all, this is Apple, and an opportunity to work on the iPhone/OS X design team!

The opportunity was extremely attractive. A potential opportunity of a lifetime — doing design work on the iPhone, for Apple. But upon reflection and reviewing who I am and what I'm all about, the answer was clear.

Here are the reasons I decided to decline:

I Love My Work
I realized how much I love the design work I do, and how satisfying it is to build brands with small companies. I love being an advisor to my clients, sharing my expertise with them. I enjoy working directly with business owners and entrepreneurs, developing brands that reach their customers and help them compete and win against bigger competitors. I love being my clients' secret weapon!

I Love Milwaukee
A move to California would have been part of the deal. I've been to California and it's a beautiful place, but I love living in the Milwaukee area. I like being able to own a home we can afford, in a quiet neighborhood with great schools. I've spent my life building lasting relationships here. My family is here. It's a wonderful place to raise a son. I love the seasons, the Packers. This is where I belong and I where want to stay.

I Love MakaluMedia
The company I work for is a large part of my success. MakaluMedia's owner, Matt Henderson has been a strong supporter for my 10+ years with the company. He was willing to try remote working in 1998, when it was new and untested. He was willing to let me go after clients and create a design firm within the company. Every day, I get to work with amazing colleagues and clients, and that's very meaningful to me.

Maybe I'm crazy for passing up a chance to work at Apple. I'm cool with that.

I know in my heart and soul, that declining this opportunity was the right decision for me and my family. I'm content knowing this is the place where I want to be and where God is working through me to help others and love others.

For my money, that's the right place to be.

Related Links
Cameron Moll: Why I passed up the chance to work at Apple

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July 26, 2007

Give a Kid a Camera...

This is what happens when a 4 year old boy gets hold of your camera.

My wife and I were cracking up as we imported some of the images he made of himself and surrounding objects while we attended a Milwaukee Brewer's baseball game last Friday night.

I've been impressed with Nathan's eye with a camera. He's very serious when shooting, and often seems to deliberately frame shots, though many times his shows seem less than intentional.

I quite liked his set of blurred and gradated background images, which I might come in handy for future design projects. I especially like the blue gradation background shown on the left. Those make me want to set him loose with a digital camera and a 2GB card just to see what he comes up with! :-)

I'm planning to work with Nathan on his camera skills, so he can better understand what he's doing. Whatever the case, I find a deep, unexplainable enjoyment as I watch him explore his world and express himself through a camera lens.

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December 5, 2006

Only from the Creative Mind of a Kid

"Weeeyeeoo weeeyeeoo weeeyeeoo weeeyeeoo weeeyeeoo!'

I turned around to see what Nathan, my 4 year old son was up to on the PC behind me. There he was, rapidly whipping the mouse around in circles, while a blue-white blob vibrated at the center of his screen.

"Weeeyeeoo weeeyeeoo weeeyeeoo weeeyeeoo weeeyeeoo!'

"Nathan, what are you doing?"

Without even turning to face me, he replied:

"Playing Google Earth, dad!"

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June 24, 2005

The Applesauce Boy

This morning, while I was in my basement office working, Nathan was upstairs, having breakfast. He'd finished his morning oatmeal, and had been given applesauce in a kid-sized cup as his fruit course. Gail went to another room, leaving Nathan in the kitchen with his applesauce for a few moments.

By the time she returned, Nathan flipped his applesauce cup over, and had spread applesauce on the entire tray of his highchair, on his arms and even worked some into his hair — eeewwww!

Gail asked Nathan if he knew what he had done with his applesauce was wrong. Nathan said:

"Yes mommy, I know."

Her next question was the kicker. Gail asked Nathan why he'd spread applesauce across his tray and in his hair. After a few moments of thought, he replied in a quiet voice:

"I'm just a little boy, mommy."

Gail wasn't pleased with the answer (and who knows where he picked that up from) but had to stifle her laughter, because it was an incredibly funny reply! But after some thought, I realized that's a tough question for a little kid. What else could a little applesauce-covered boy say? He's a little boy exploring his world, sometimes to the chagrin of his parents.

This story reminded me how sponge-like all kids are. I mean, how did Nathan know to use that phrase, and use it in the correct context? Does he understand the idea of an excuse? I'm not sure if he does or not, but for a little kid, he often amazes me with little things just like this — both good and bad.

Oh, the life of a parent. I wouldn't trade it for anything. :-)

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December 13, 2004

My Christmas Wish for Nathan

My wish is to fulfill the quote I read today on Teri Martin's wonderful Quote A Day email list:

“If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.”
— Brian Tracy

My parents did this for me, and I can tell you it is a great gift. I plan to, and hope to pass this same gift of encouragement on to Nathan and any other children I have an impact on. Its the least I can do. :-)

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April 15, 2004

The Kid Speaks

Something has been developing with our son Nathan lately — he's starting to speak more and more. As I sat this morning thinking, that fact crept up on me. Now, often his pronunciation of words isn't terribly clear, but I can hear his intent.

When I consider what he is doing, I can't imagine what it would feel like to speak words without any previous idea how to use them, except through immersion with us and others. The idea of learning a language completely from scratch, with no prior language experience seems quite amazing.

It was hard enough for me to learn German through a few classes and by immersion on several trips to Germany — but I knew English already — quite different than learning from scratch. I often don't consider the difficult task facing Nathan, until this morning anyway.

It makes me realize that he's an amazing little guy. He's an expert babbler, often jabbering for several minutes at a crack, espousing his views on preferable sippy cup design, or the reasons why he prefers red Matchbox cars to other colors. Well, we have no idea what he's really saying, but it's so humorous to hear him talking, using inflection, facial expressions and hand signals to speak. He's literally a sponge, copying our way of speaking and tone of voice in own his experimental chats with us.

We've been teaching Nathan sign language for a while now (since he was 2-3 months old), which might have some impact on his language skills. If so, that's just a nice side effect. Our idea behind teaching Nate sign language was to give him a way to communicate during the so called terrible twos. Rather seeing his frustration levels rise, we decided having a simple way to share his thoughts could make a difference in his behavior. He's doing very well with sign too — using signs all the time to tell us what he wants or thinks. It's really amazing.

But back to the speaking... I'm just amazed that he is now trying to mimic what we say. So far he can say car and truck, and choo choo among other things. In his attempts to speak, I can see how his mind works a little bit... how he hears and then repeats what he hears. It's right about now that I sincerely wished I knew a second language well enough to teach it to Nathan as he grows. I know enough German to be dangerous, and even less Spanish.

I'm wondering if I could learn a new language with Nathan, once he's at the point of really knowing how to speak. It could be fun to learn new words with him, giving us both a new language. I'd choose to learn Spanish, because my good friend Carlos is a native speaker, it's relatively easy to learn and would be a useful language to know.

Whatever happens, it is very interesting to watch Nathan grow and learn. I can see in his eyes the feeling of pride when he says something well or uses the correct sign and we praise him for it. That's one of the joys of parenthood — having a positive role in my child's learning experiences and being there to see development happening right before my eyes.

Very cool. :-)

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April 13, 2004

Family Photo Flashback

Heh! Last night, while spring cleaning, I came across a cache of old photos my dad took back in the mid 70s with his Minolta SRT-101 35mm SLR. The photo to the right really cracked me up — it's a shot of my brother Steve and I, when we lived in Chicago. I have no clue what we're holding up in this shot... some kind of box as far as I can tell. I suspect it was a box of candy, but I can't quite make it out.

What cracked me up was our fashion... check out the stripes and plaids there! That patch on my poplin jacket is a Road Runner patch (I had to enlarge the shot massively in Photoshop to read the patch). Steve's hat has some sort of baseball motif going on — so stylin!

Check out our glasses: molded industrial grade plastic, heavy duty glass lenses, all designed to withstand a nuclear blast — very important for rough and tumble 5 and 9 year old boys.

This is one of those reality-check pictures — the kind that reminds me no matter how cool I think I am, I can't avoid the fact that I was once a 9 year old wearing striped pants and geeky horn-rimmed glasses. ;-)

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January 30, 2004

A Lighter Look at Winter

Generally I'm Ok with wintertime, colder temps, snow and so on. Well, these past few weeks of very cold weather are testing that belief right now, so as a way to combat the negatives of winter, I've decided to do something fun this Friday.

To the right is a photo of my son Nathan, taken last week. I was about to head out and shovel the snow (again) last Saturday, when this crazy idea came into my head, to put my knit hat on Nathan's head and my big leather shoveling gloves on his hands.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... Lobsterboy!

Nathan loved it! In fact, we had a hard time catching him on camera, because he was running around the house in this getup. I caught him on camera as he ran about and finally, he stopped at the fireplace for a photo session, where I got this shot.

So, if you're cold and getting a little tired of winter wherever you might be, I hope this little lighthearted photo and story brighten your Friday. :-)

Have a great (and warm) weekend!

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November 13, 2003

Nathan Turns One

For our family, today is a special day: our first son Nathan, turned one year old! You can see a photo of Nathan digging into his Personal Birthday Cupcake©, lips first, at his Big Birthday Bash™ on Saturday. :-)

I'm amazed that a year has already gone by and even more amazed at how much Nathan has grown in that year. He came home as a shrively little dude who was completely reliant on us for everything, to a little boy who can cruise on the furniture, can stand up by himself (can't quite walk yet though), knows several sign-language signs like milk, all done, eat, and more and knows how to bite the heads off of Goldfish crackers like a pro.

I suppose other parents will tell me that this "wondering where the years went" feeling is going to be the norm now and for the years to come. That's ok though, because I get to enjoy seeing my son grow and learn while being a part of that process. Cool.

Happy Birthday Nathan! :-)

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April 25, 2003

Gawwwleee Paw!

Sometimes it's the simple things in life, like bucktoothed binkies for babies. :-)

Have a great weekend!

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March 14, 2003

Nathan at 4 Months

My little son Nathan just hit the BIG 4 month mark yesterday, in case you were curious. We held back and didn't have the 4 Month Mongo Birthday Bash we had planned. The Russian acrobats and Guido's Troupe of Dancing Elephants were a bit disappointed, but those are the breaks. Oh well. :-)

Fatherhood is a wonderful thing! It's great fun seeing my son growing up and learning in leaps and bounds. Lately he's been exercising his vocal skills in Baby Jibberish, often quite loudly! He's mimicking our modulated speech, shaping his mouth and even using facial expressions. Amazing.

Nathan's hand-eye coordination has also greatly improved in the past 4 weeks. He's been able to grasp things on his own and hold them long enough to shake them around a bit. He's also got powerful legs for a little spud -- what a kick!

But the most fun of all is seeing Nathan becoming aware of his surroundings. He's now much more aware of people and can respond in kind to their smiles. He seems to understand the tone of voices and is reacting to noises he hears. He's also more aware of shapes, colors and other bits of the environment he's found himself in.

It's amazing to think that this tiny little boy has come as far as he has in only 4 months. His growth excites me, since I'm privileged to see, first hand, just how he continues to adapt, learn and grow. Lucky me!

Have a nice weekend!

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February 25, 2003

Say Cheeeez! It's aweome being

It's aweome being a dad! Even taking into account the overall lack of sleep and extreme changes in my life's schedule, I just can't get enough of my little 3.5 month old son Nathan, especially when he gives me smiles like this! Life with Nathan is even more fun now, since he's starting to develop a personality. He's smiling and laughing much more, though I should mention he had the pouty lip face mastered within the first month. :-)

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