Congratulations to my friend Rich at Creativepopupcards.com

 To Be A Good Dad  Comments Off on Congratulations to my friend Rich at Creativepopupcards.com
Dec 292011
 

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I just wanted to take this space and time to say congratulations to my buddy Rich over at creativepopupcards.com.  I’ve plugged his website before – his site offers lots of cool ideas and templates on how to make unique pop-up cards.  Well, he has now joined the ranks of us new fathers.  He welcomed his little girl, Mikayla, on December 19, 2011.  Funnily enough, this means that she and my boy Nathan are exactly 7 months apart!

Rich old friend, welcome to the brotherhood of dads!  As I’ve said on your facebook page, you’ve been given a promotion from husband to dad and it comes with more responsibilities, more stress, more worries, less money, less sleep, less rest, questionable benefits, and absolutely no turning back – and you’re gonna love every single minute of it.

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Dec 192011
 

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So a lot of my friends are parents now or becoming parents.  Sure I’m only seven months into this gig but I think I’ve racked up enough miles to lay down a few words of wisdom or two.  At the very least, I am close enough to the whole “new Dad” thing, and just far enough away to actually catch my breath about it all.  My number one advice for any Dad-to-be’s or newly minted fathers is this:  get in shape.

Yeah, Get In Shape.

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Dec 112011
 

It’s 11pm and I’m about to go to bed.  If you know anything about me, this is unusual.  I usually go to sleep around midnight or later.  In fact, going to sleep late and getting up early isn’t that unusual for me.  Used to do it all the time.   But for some reason I am completely wiped out every night.

And it’s not like my son Nathan is a hard baby at night.  He actually sleeps 10 to 12 hours a night.  He goes to sleep around 6 pm and wakes up around 5:30 or 6 in the morning.  So you’d think I should have nothing to complain about.  I know of parents who suffer through truly cranky and/or colicy kids all night.  And I used to do this kind of schedule all the time.

I remember only a couple of years ago that after working 12 hour days I’d go workout at 11pm to avoid the crowds at the gym and not got to bed til 2 or 3 in the morning.  You’d think that that would be more exhausting.  Nope.  That was cake compared to a day spent taking care of my boy.  I don’t quite understand why this is.  Taking care of my son and spending the day with him is a blast, but man I feel like I got run over by a truck.

I have to say that this is truly the most joyous but also the most physically hardest thing I’ve ever done.

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TED: Parenting Taboos

 Lessons and Info  Comments Off on TED: Parenting Taboos
Dec 092011
 

My good friend (and best man) Sanoj showed me this video last year before Nathan was born.  I thought it was thought provoking and interesting then, especially the part about it taking time to truly love your child.  My eyebrows were raised then, but now that I am six months into this thing called parenting, I’ve just rewatched this and I have to say that everything they say makes sense now.

This is a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talk given by Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman, who are the founders of Babble, a website for parents.  Here’s their profile from TED.  I don’t want to spoil the video with my own verbage, so I’m just embedding their talk from Youtube.  Enjoy!

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