Oh I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands...

Have I mentioned that we love music? Not only do we actually own thousands of CDs, we've also been known to enjoy going to a concert here and there.

Now we've been together since the very end of 1999 and I would say that from then up until 2007 we probably went to around 30 shows. (Note that this is an estimate with a margin of error at +/-20) Now while some people can pull that off in a year or less, we never felt like we missed out on anything we really wanted to see.

We will refer to those years as B.X.

What exactly does that mean? It's quite simple. Before Xavier

Now let me beat everyone to the punch here and state that we were more than prepared to give up on things that aren't baby/child friendly when we decided to start a family. The rewards are far greater than anything you've experienced beforehand, so it's really not something you think about. Have we taken him out to eat with us from an early age so that he becomes accustomed to being out in public? Sure. Have we taken him to the movies? No. Do we think it's appropriate to take him to a concert? Of course not. (When exactly that day arrives will remain to be seen for a while, but we both agree that we want him exposed to good music in it's purest form from a fairly early age.)

Now I bring all this up because we once told ourselves that if we couldn't both go to a concert, we wouldn't go at all. For the most part this hasn't been that hard to accomplish and there have been a few exceptions, but now we're in a situation where if there is a show that one of us wants to go to, we have to decide whether those days are truly over or if there's a very obvious solution to it. So here's what I'm thinking... basically, if there were to be a show that I want to go to then I see that as an opportunity for Xavier to have some quality bonding time with mommy for what really boils down to a couple of hours once you take out the time he will be asleep. And of course if mommy wants to go to a show or anything for that matter then I fully support her and will be more than happy to return the favor and stay home.

Let me stress again that this isn't a question of priorities and I don't believe for one second that doing things like this take anything away from your family or makes you a bad parent. Of course I haven't exactly shared this way of thinking with my wife so I can't say that this plan will actually go into effect, but maybe when Xavier was born on the exact day that I had originally been selected to go on a business trip he was trying to tell me something...

Oh did I mention that Pearl Jam is coming around in June?