JP HARVEY Somebody’s dad.

AGE   47

HOMETOWN(S)   Born near Sacramento, CA. Currently live in Las Vegas, NV

@TWITTER   @Somebodys_Dad

GOOGLE+   JP Harvey

ON THE WEB   Somebodys Dad

* Editor’s Note * JP took considerable time and offered very thoughtful responses to the PDJ questions, and for that we’re grateful. If you want more JP after today, check out his writing on Somebodys Dad. He blogs about many of the things we cover here, including a review of the Tag Reader his son uses.

NUMBER OF CHILDREN   One

FAVORITE CHILDREN’S BOOK   There really isn’t a single favorite book or story we’ve passed down to our son, but there are favorites that have emerged as we’ve exposed him to a variety of stories. That said, there hasn’t been a consistent favorite book or story. We read to him and he has a Tag Reader with a variety of books that go with it. When it’s all said and done, across his first five years, if it’s thematically about space, airplanes, cars or dinosaurs, he loves it.

DAY JOB US Air Force officer (26 years of service this year)

RELATIONSHIP STATUS   Married. We celebrate our 19th anniversary this year!

HOW DO YOU COMBINE WORK AND FAMILY?

My wife is a stay-at-home mom and I work full-time outside the home. When I get home, my son usually turns his attention to me, allowing Steph a chance to take a break.

I’m usually ready for his attention as well, anxious to hug him, play with him and hear about his day. On weekends, I usually “camp out” with my son in his room. We often stay up late watching a movie. Then Saturdays are almost always “Dad & Lad” days, giving my wife a day to sleep in and full day off. Sundays tend to heavily be Dad & Lad days too, but usually not as much as a normal Saturday.

There are weekends though when my son declares a day or days as “mommy days” when he primarily wants her undivided attention. On those days I take over some of my wife’s household chores to help compensate, so she can enjoy that time without the competition of other things to do.

HOW HAS PARENTING CHANGED YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL?

For lack of a better way to put it, my focus has changed.

I knew it would, but couldn’t truly understand it until it did: everything else comes second to the life, well-being and raising of my son. I literally miss being near him when we’re not in the same room. My lifestyle hasn’t really changed in terms of risky activities. I’m generally a careful man anyway. Being middle-aged forced me to quit some of the things I used to do as a younger man, regardless of being a dad. (We had our son just a few months before I turned 43.)

As a military officer, my job carries some level of physical risk anyway — certainly when it comes to the risk of, or actual deployment. Overall though, nothing has really changed in this regard. Again, what changed most dramatically for me as an individual is the shift in focus. I didn’t understand how significant it would be until it happened. (And I love it!)

I’m generally fit and in good health. Given my age though, and watching my body change physically as a result, I wrestle with whether or not to have another child. Any given day I strongly desire another, and yet simultaneously feel my age and am wonder if it may not be a prudent thing to do. My wife wrestles with the same thing, especially since she has the privilege and burden of carrying a baby. Having a second child remains to be seen!

HOW HAS PARENTING AFFECTED YOUR RELATIONSHIP?

My wife and I joke that having our child this late in life has made me younger, and has aged her.

I don’t know if this is actually true, but I know our son wears her down more than he does me. Also, with the birth of our son, he became the primary focus of our attention, where as previously, each of us held that place for the other. I assume this is true for all healthy couples and their kids, though. Our love for each other hasn’t diminished at all even though the specific time and attention we pay to one another has lessened. Now we’re co-laborers with our collective attention focused mostly on our son.

As a pastor of ours once said, “the old sacrifice for the young.” I think this is very true and we see it daily in almost every aspect of our lives as we raise our son.

As for our intimate relationship and time with each other, it’s dramatically diminished. We both know it, but see it as the way it is when you have a young child in the house. Having more intimate times would be great, but I’m not sure when those times could happen any more frequently. We didn’t have a child before, and now we do. Ironically, when time occasionally permits a chance for intimacy, one or both of us is usually just too tired. That’s okay; we’ve learned to love rest when we can get it, and just being in each other’s company is more a treat than it ever was! The reality of it is, we have a child in the house, he’s at the center of our practical lives, and takes a real investment of our time–time we used to have exclusively for each other.

We had our son on purpose and don’t view him as having diminished our relationship. Instead he’s enhanced and changed it. Do we miss things about the days before we had him? Absolutely! Would we trade having him to get those things back? Absolutely not! In a sense, he has added to our marriage, or perhaps added to the fullness of our marriage.

You asked if we communicate differently. We do, but only in the way we communicate when our son is around. We have never “baby talked” around him, but we’ve adjusted what we say openly in front of him. Some things aren’t said openly with him around (an “age appropriate” filter is always running through our minds), and other things are said more cryptically.

No matter what we’re saying to each other, interruption is constant. I suspect none of this is unique to our parenting experience.

WHAT ARE YOUR STRENGTHS AS A PARENT AND WHAT ARE YOUR WEAKNESSES?

Wow, this is hard. What you see here is the combined view of both my wife and I; I can’t answer this alone. STRENGTHS: I am a patient man. She is patient, but I’m much more patient than she is. I wash dishes. If she can cook most of the time for all of us, the least I can do is clean up the mess.

WHAT ARE YOUR PARTNER’S STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES?

Related, my wife and I also shared in making this list about her. STRENGTHS: My wife is kinder than I am. She might say I’m more diplomatic, but she’s definitely kinder. She has a much bigger heart and it shows all the time. She can cook–I mean she can COOK.

WHO ELSE PROVIDES CHILDCARE FOR YOUR CHILDREN?

No one else participates in the raising of our son at home. It’s not very often, but my wife and I take a date night every now and then, and like most parents have a babysitter we trust. On week days, our son is in school, so his teachers participate in his education. Although he’s in preschool, he is working through an accredited curriculum and not attending daycare.

WHAT IS YOUR WORST PARENTING MOMENT?

There really isn’t a worst parenting moment. Even though there have been less than awesome moments, I’ve genuinely loved absolutely everything about being a dad! See my best parenting moment for one event that could fall into both a best and worst category though…

WHAT IS YOUR BEST PARENTING MOMENT?

This will start off sounding bad, but becomes one of my favorite and best moments as a dad.

When we were moving from the US to Germany, my son was just over a year old. One evening after the moving company had left our house, my son became very fussy and clearly didn’t feel well. My mother-in-law was visiting to help keep an eye on my son while my wife and I dealt with the movers. She was worried and couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my son. She passed him to me and he seemed to be getting worse. I held him out in front of me, facing me, to get a good look at him and asked him, “what’s wrong buddy?

Right then, he projectile vomited and hit me square in the neck and chest. I drew him back in, snuggled and held him against me (in spite of the mess on both of us), then told my wife, “We’ll be in the bath tub,” and off we went. I climbed into a warm bath to clean up and hopefully relax my son. It worked and he fell asleep in my arms as we soaked in the warm water.

With the mess in the other room cleaned up, my wife came in after a while, my son and I got out of the tub, we bundled him up and put him to bed. That event created a bond between my son and I, born in that instance of child-sized pain and adversity. Ever since then, when my son doesn’t feel well, he turns to me for comfort. I absolutely love it! (My wife doesn’t mind either; she’s a sympathetic barfer and really enjoys that when I’m home and our son is sick, he wants me near by.)