{"id":692,"date":"2010-10-29T10:41:02","date_gmt":"2010-10-29T15:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/sketchbook\/?p=692"},"modified":"2010-10-29T10:42:57","modified_gmt":"2010-10-29T15:42:57","slug":"a-much-needed-affirmation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/?p=692","title":{"rendered":"A Much-Needed Affirmation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday was my daughter&#8217;s 14th birthday.\u00a0 Judging by her Facebook wall cluttered with birthday acknowledgments from many of her 500+ friends, I&#8217;m guessing she did not want for attention at any point throughout the day.\u00a0 My wife and I did our best to commemorate her special day with the generous gift of an iPod Touch&#8211;something she&#8217;s been wanting for quite some time&#8211;and dinner at the restaurant of her choice.\u00a0 And while I had no doubt that she enjoyed her birthday and appreciated all the attention and gifts, I was surprised this morning by this post on my Facebook wall:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Hi Dad. \ud83d\ude42 I just wanted to thank you for giving me such a great  birthday. You&#8217;re the best dad ever and I don&#8217;t know what I&#8217;d do without  you. \u00a0Thank you for always fixing my electronics when I do something  stupid to them, thank for all the times that you and I sat in the  computer room until midnight just talking about life and all my  problems. \ud83d\ude09 also, thank you for always helping me with my homework and  driving me to school, every single morning! You seriously do so much for  me and I used to take it for granted, but not anymore. \ud83d\ude42 You&#8217;re an  amazing dad and don&#8217;t let anyone tell you differently. I&#8217;d probably be  one messed up teenager without you. So thanks for keeping me in line. \ud83d\ude09  thank you for everything today, I&#8217;ll never forget this birthday! You&#8217;re  awesome!<br \/>\nLove always,<br \/>\n-Allie \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As it happens, this unexpected and most welcome expression of her appreciation could not have come at a better time for me.\u00a0 As a husband and father who tries to do as much as he can to help out around the house with chores, meal preparation, homework assistance, schedule coordination, and everything else that is part of a hectic family life, it&#8217;s easy to feel like one&#8217;s efforts go unnoticed and often unappreciated.\u00a0 But sometimes, if we&#8217;re lucky, we do receive some kind of acknowledgment that our efforts do amount to something.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you, Allie.\u00a0 You made my day today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday was my daughter&#8217;s 14th birthday.\u00a0 Judging by her Facebook wall cluttered with birthday acknowledgments from many of her 500+ friends, I&#8217;m guessing she did not want for attention at any point throughout the day.\u00a0 My wife and I did our best to commemorate her special day with the generous gift of an iPod Touch&#8211;something [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":695,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}