Debugging My Morning Routine

Every morning is a merge conflict between coffee, kids, and code.

At 5:30 a.m., the alarm on my phone fires. I don’t have to start getting Kassidy up until about 6:45 a.m., which gives me roughly an hour to do some tasks around the house or crack open my computer and put some work in—something productive like that. But in reality, I grab my phone, turn the alarm off, and just stare off into space, thinking about everything in life—from the greatest thing I’ve ever done, my children—to the hardest reality I have to face: God took my everything, Shanda, in 2023.

Before nudging Kassidy, the frying pan can be heard hitting the stove and the eggs being cracked open. With the eggs beginning to cook, I walk into Kassidy’s room. “Hey, princess, time to get up!” It takes a while to get a response. Once she hits me with that initial groan, I rush back into the kitchen to check on the eggs and pop the bread in the toaster, then pull the eggs off the flame and head back to Kassidy’s room to see that she hasn’t moved yet.

Once again, I start the process: “Hey, big head, it’s time to rise and grind—step your game up.” Her typical morning groan comes a bit quicker this time but still no real movement. I lower my head, shake it a bit. “Again? Really?!” Then I go in for the tickle attack. She kicks me and says, “Dad, fine, I’m up! Geez!” She heads into the washroom to wash up and get ready.

As she starts getting ready, I poke my head into Kelan’s room. “Hey, booger, time to get up.”

“Five minutes, Dad.”

“Okay, bet.”

I start making his bacon, then poke my head in again. “Young Kelz, time to get up.”

“Three minutes, Dad.”

“Okay.”

I check on the bacon, flipping it and whatnot, then go back a third time. “Let’s go, kid.”

“One more minute, Dad.”

I walk away silently, take the bacon off the stove, and plate it. I make sure Kassidy has all of her stuff for school. “Okay, go down the steps.” I peek into Kelan’s room one last time. “Time to get up, kid.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“Alright—the bacon’s on the table. I’m going to drop Kassidy off; by the time I get home, be dressed and start eating breakfast.”

Once I drop Kassidy off, Kelan is usually dressed and fed, and Mom’s caregiver has arrived. The morning merge conflict successfully resolved—at least until tomorrow’s build.

Parenting and programming share more DNA than most people realize. Both demand patience, logic, and empathy. A child’s meltdown isn’t far from a code crash—each requires you to trace back the steps, understand the triggers, and guide things back to a stable state. There’s no perfect script for either job, just a willingness to learn, refactor, and keep showing up.

In the end, raising kids and writing code come down to the same command: commit. You commit to improving, to fixing what breaks, and to loving the process even when it throws you an error message first thing in the morning.