1) Tell me about yourself (as well as how you are in the limelight for my readers knowledge). 
After surviving a sheltered suburban childhood on baseball cards, Mad magazine and 8-track tapes of The Knack, I became a newspaper reporter. Luckily, an MBA-wielding Midwestern girl on her own rescued me from poverty. I then tried making homebuilding executives sound vaguely interested in their employees’ well-being. This, not surprisingly, put me on the leading edge of the real estate layoffs in 2007. My corporate demise was hastened by my becoming a full-time telecommuting dad three years earlier.  
These days, I masquerade as a freelance writer, hunt-and-peck a local newspaper column, and chronicle my world at the Always Home and Uncool blog. I also contribute to the McSweeney’s of dad blogs, DadCentric and serve as a court jester for the talented writing crew at Polite Fictions. I coach youth soccer (grrr) and baseball (ahh), volunteer at my kids’ school and annually mix up an eggnog of legendary proportion. I also have occasional panic attacks and body issues.

2) Tell me about your family
My Love and I have been hitched for almost 13 years. We have three kids:  Thing 1, our 10-year-old diva-in-training who is battling the autoimmune disease juvenile dermatomyositis; Thing 2, our overgrown 8-year-old boy who is always battling Pokémon; and Murphy, a nearly 4-year-old yellow Lab who is currently battling an ear infection.  

As you’ve surmised by now, I married up. That we met a keg party only completes the fairy tale. When she took a promotion that required regular continent hopping in 2004, I gladly traded in the soul-robbing florescent lights of the corporate office. It’s a good fit for us because she loves wheelin’ and dealin’ while I excel at eliminating ring-around-the-collar. Also, I’m a master at the intricacies of maximizing dishwasher capacity and efficiency. (The woman puts cereal bowls on the bottom rack. Without even rinsing. Is she high?) 


3) What has been the largest challenge you have had in being a father?
Without a doubt, it has been having a child with a rare, incurable disease. Nothing prepares you for your child suddenly becoming ill and being in a life-threatening situation. That little information was available on the disease when she was diagnosed about eight years ago and that her baby brother had been born only a few months earlier simply added to the difficulty. She’s still on a bunch of medicines, but otherwise normal and mooning over Justin Bieber. 
Next would be being a modern father in an old-boy corporate environment. Right before my daughter became sick in 2002, I took six weeks paternity leave to be with my newborn son. Word is I may have been the first man to ever do this at the corporate office in the 50-plus-year history of the company I worked for. Jokes were made about it in the executive suites, I’ve been told, but I know it paved the way for at least one other guy I worked with to stand up for himself and take time off when his son was born.

4) What advice would you give to other fathers?
Don’t panic. When you panic, you lose perspective, control and eventually your mind. Kids are going to get fevers and puke on you from time to time. They are going knock over dinner plates and scratch up your favorite CDs. There will be times your children say they hate you and you are sure you have screwed them up for life. Ninety-nine times out of 100, you’ll both recover just fine if you take a breath and keep your wits.  
Also, always carry a plastic bag and baby wipes in your pocket.

5) Seeing that you (or your position) is in the limelight, how have you come to balance parenthood and outside life? 
Since My Love has dedicated her life to conquering the business world, she periodically reminds me that she has to live vicariously through me. Did she pick the wrong guy for the job! Still, she encourages me to interact more often with people who don’t need to be reminded to wipe and wash. So I play some tennis and golf, sneak off to minor league baseball games while my kids are in school, and host a drinking night with some local bloggers ever so often. But mostly I just sit around and wonder where that smell is coming from.

6) What have you learned from the fathers that you have interacted with? 
I’ve found that many of them around my age are far more competent and involved as parents and husbands than they let on. Many have it all — good careers and strong family lives — but they don’t feel compelled to turn it into a crusade. Maybe we’re too humble or too scared or too lazy. More likely, we’d just rather expend our energy debating which Stinson brother was more essential to The Replacements or the value of using the wheel play with a runner on second because these are topics that will never be among Oprah’s favorite things.

7) What else would you share regarding your experiences as a father thus far? 
I’ve always maintained that it’s not what you bring to the table as a mother or father, it’s how you contribute as a parent. 


What have been the most memorable experiences that you have had thus far as a parent?
Cutting the cord after my daughter’s birth and being splattered with the blood was the first. The most recent was watching my son make his guitar debut by plucking out “Hot Cross Buns” for his grandparents. Today, I’m hoping they’ll spontaneously clean their rooms.

2) Tell me about your family 
I met my wife shortly after taking a job as an electrical engineer with a construction company.  I was new to the area (Birmingham, Alabama), I found her photo on the Yahoo personals and really, if there is such a thing as love at first sight, I guess that’s all you can call it.  I never planned to have children at all.  Shortly after Jerri Ann and I made a commitment, she basically gave me an ultimatum:  “Let’s have a baby or I’m leaving.”  I entertained the idea for a day or so and when she approached me the second time, I agreed that yes, one child would be great.  I won’t even get into how their came to be two extra males in my house instead of just one.  Honestly, she is pretty persuasive even if I say so myself.  But, in our most chaotic moments, trying to get to two ball parks at the same time on opposite ends of town, or when the noise level becomes unbearable, I remind her that she was the one who though we needed to have two, not just one.  


I wouldn’t take anything for my kids, don’t get me wrong.  I just never planned to be a father.  I didn’t have a huge male presence in my life growing up.  My granddad taught me everything I know about being an electrician but not so much about parenthood I guess.  I just didn’t see myself as a father.  Now, I don’t know how we would entertain ourselves without at least one of them.  

Ok, two.   


As I said, my wife keeps up with the limelight so I just go with the flow.  Our seven-year-old looks like me (or so they say) and seems to have my desire to want to learn what makes things tick.  My wife along with many others quickly named him Ditto Boy after he was born.  He has my mother-in-law’s maiden name, Walker, and then my middle and last name (so he has my initials too, there’s a reason I (ok, my wife) added this).  The second born came into this world blonde and I’m still searching for a blonde mailman somewhere.  Both of us have dark hair and a long line of dark haired family members.  But, when the sun goes down, he does resemble his mother and definitely has her athletic skills.  After careful deliberation over the first child’s name, my wife took an Internet poll to pick a name for Mini Me.  Surprisingly, he has her initials.  She is a sly one, that woman. 


Since she is the one who does the majority of the blogging, he was pronounced a Mini-Me (my wife being the Me) by almost everyone.  We make a pretty good-looking bunch. 

3) What has been the largest challenge you have had in being a father? 
I mentioned this above, I didn’t have a huge parental presences other than my grandparents.  My step-dad is only ten years older than me so he was more like a brother than a step-dad.  I depend on my wife a lot for what is acceptable but basically, I think it’s just instinct.  The biggest challenge though definitely stems from the difference in opinion that my wife and I have over discipline.  She is much more lenient than I am but often asks me to intervene.  Behavior and discipline are generally the only areas Jerri Ann and I disagree about   


I have ADD but I wasn’t diagnosed until after we had children of our own.  And I can see some of the same struggles I went through as a child in my oldest son.  I mentioned that my grandfather taught me a lot.  I was inquisitive and wanted to learn and he had the patience to teach me.  Walker is the same way but I have yet to harness the patience to explain everything to him step-by-step.  I know I should, my wife reminds me of that often, it’s just not natural to me and it really makes the whole process a challenge for sure.

4) What advice would you give to other fathers? 
Patience truly is a virtue.

5) Seeing that you (or your position) is in the limelight, how have you come to balance parenthood and outside life? 
What outside life?  My wife would like to say that we had opportunities to sow our oats. But now, we spend what most people would call an unhealthy amount of time either working or participating in activities with our children.  That’s it.  That’s what we do.  We’ve taken one very short trip without our children since the first one was born.  They do spend the night with my wife’s mom frequently but only one at a time.  So, we are focused on one of them almost always.  Other than the time I spend at work, we rarely spend time sans children all together.  
  
Because our children have grown up watching my wife and I both spend a lot of time online, they are pretty good with a computer, remote controls, electronics in general. I have no doubts that my kids are going to be highly skilled with technical skills.  I hope my kids get their education through college instead of the military simply because right now jobs are easier to find with credentials from a university than with our very own military.   


Although, other than what I learned from my grandfather, most of my computer, satellite, mechanical and electrical skills came from Uncle Sam.

6) What have you learned from the fathers that you have interacted with? 
We are in the middle of baseball right now.  Other than that, we generally don’t interact with many families.  I’ve never played sports at all.  But, last year when the boys were playing on the same team, I was asked to help coach.  (Don’t think for one minute that wasn’t a terrible blow to my wife’s ego though).  I watched as the other coaches (mostly fathers) interacted with their own children and I learned to enjoy the qualities in kids that really bothered me at one time.  For instance, I expected our children, even at a young age to be very efficient.  My wife is quite organized and even though I am a bit scattered, I still pushed our kids to do more than they probably should have been expected to do.  By working with the kids in practice and games, I learn to appreciate that it was ok for the 4 year old to hit the ball and run to third, even in the last game of the season.  I’m coaching again this year and naturally my kids are older but my expectations never seem to lower, but I have learned to cope a little better. 

7) What else would you share regarding your experiences as a father thus far? 
This question has held me up all weekend.  I can only say that I don’t know what father’s are suppose to do, how they are suppose to act and I’ve been forced to learn that one day at a time, one baby at a time and with a lot of patience from my wife.  I can’t say that instincts are the best way to go about parenting but so far, I think I’ve done fairly well.  It’s hard, so very hard.  My wife insisted I had this part or she was going to add it for me.  Anything that has an on/off switch, has at one time included a set of directions or that needs to be built, I can do it.  I rarely turn down a challenge for repairing anything that’s broken.  And if you need a new gadget invented, I’m always willing to give it a try.  But parenting?  I have yet to find a set of directions that are the cure all for this parenting gig, I just function on instinct.  So far, so good.   

What have been the most memorable experiences that you have had thus far as a parent? 
Memorable, huh? 

Ironically enough, as difficult as this question is for me to answer, I am going to give it a try.  I don’t have many memories of childhood at all.  And, I have no memories of interacting with my own father.  So, I truly enjoy a lot of the memories we make now simply because I never had that opportunity.  Again, this is tough I could give you so many examples.   


These aren’t in any particular order.  I mentioned that I never played sports. But my wife did and both boys enjoy it.  Last year in the season ending game, for the season championship, Walker pulled off a triple play.  We were playing the only team that beat us in the pre-season tournament.  We were up by 2, they had last bat in the final inning.  Walker was playing third base and it wasn’t really a line drive but he didn’t have time to think about it.  Everyone around him was yelling at him to tag the runner.  Naturally, at this young of an age, the runners on second and third had taken off.  He stepped on his bag for out two and then caught the runner headed back to second to finish off the triple play.

I know, it’s a bit shallow but having never played sports myself, I hope he can remember that feeling forever! 


Christmas of 2008 we had managed to get everything wrapped and under the tree at a decent hour (unlike many other years).  Both boys were tucked snuggly in their bed and we had crashed too around midnight.  About 3:30, one of the boys opens our bedroom door and the boy’s storm us with glee over all the presents.  They had opened every single present under the tree, regardless of whose name was on it.  Jerri Ann was so disgusted; we left the mess and headed back to bed.  This past year, we just went ahead and put them in our room so we would know if they woke up. 
On a similar note, they were in their own beds the night before Easter this year so the Easter Bunny hid the baskets in our bathtub.  Again, they would have to wake us up to get to them.

If you have any questions for Wayne, please leave a comment here and I will make sure that he gets them so that he may be able to respond!

Also, do you know a Dad in the Limelight? If so, please email me their contact information so that they too can be a part of this series!