A Whole Month!?!

It’s been over a month since I blogged last???? Uh oh.
Let’s see… updates:

• Braden and Emma now take showers instead of baths… much more fun.  Much steamier in the bathroom for Dad.
• Braden has been evaluated by a therapist for what we think is ADHD and PDD symptoms.  He has also had some intelligence testing and his therapist believes he’s extremely intelligent and needs more stimulating activities to help.  We’re not sure where the 'extremely intelligent'  part comes from and aren't quite convinced.  We don’t think his ADHD symptoms are major in any sense of the symptom, but we do think he struggles with it a little and can use some help.  And no, medication is not on the table no, or in the near future.
• Emma is starting potty training, which is going about as well as we expected.  In other words, not well at all.  She has yet to actually go in the potty.  I’d be happy if she managed to go ON the potty at this point.
• School is out for the summer!
• We have new neighbors moving in this weekend.  They have a 4 year old girl, a 2 year old girl and a baby coming in November, so they’ll make great playmates!  Plus they go to Trinity and will be in Braden and Emma’s class next year.
• Bindi is 18 weeks old today and weighs 55 lbs.  In spite of that, last night she figured out that she can climb on my lap in the recliner last night.  She’s actually not a bad cuddler… until she decides she wants to get down.  Graceful she isn’t.
• Braden and Emma are at Grandma and Grandpa’s house this weekend.  We’re monitoring the Appleton emergency bands closely.

Twelve Things Good Bosses Believe

The following list was taken from an article in the Harvard Business Review.  I think it's a great list and something that I wish I was better at.  I think I do well at some of these and obviously could do better at most of them.  I'm sharing this here in hopes that it'll remind me to keep at it and so that others will remind me to do better.

1. I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work for me.
2. My success — and that of my people — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.
3. Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to make a little progress every day.
4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough.
5. My job is to serve as a human shield, to protect my people from external intrusions, distractions, and idiocy of every stripe — and to avoid imposing my own idiocy on them as well.
6. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I am in charge, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.
7. I aim to fight as if I am right, and listen as if I am wrong — and to teach my people to do the same thing.
8. One of the best tests of my leadership — and my organization — is "what happens after people make a mistake?"
9. Innovation is crucial to every team and organization. So my job is to encourage my people to generate and test all kinds of new ideas. But it is also my job to help them kill off all the bad ideas we generate, and most of the good ideas, too.
10. Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.
11. How I do things is as important as what I do.
12. Because I wield power over others, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk — and not realizing it.