Having to say goodbye to you kid

I currently work in an office filled with men. It’s a sales environment so you can guess the type of men I work with. Now this isn’t to say that they are horrible or nasty men, far from it, but it does come with some stereotypical work colleagues. Some of them are young but full of banter while the team I work with a similar age to myself. Two of these men are divorced and have a child of their own, which got me thinking. I struggle to leave for work in the morning, especially when I see my little super hero smiling and giggling at me. It beaks my heart to step out that door and leave her for most of the day. I have sacrificed going to the gym in the evenings now (head off before work instead) so that I can come home, eat dinner/feed the little one, bath her and join my other half in the spare room while she feeds her, waiting for my call to pick her up and place in her enclosure, sorry cot.

This is painful enough for me, someone who knows that they are coming home to the little one at the end of the day, but it must be worse for my colleagues. They both love their children, as much as I love my own, but due to a relationship not working out they now only get to see their children at certain periods. If you get a good ex-wife then this can be less of an issue as if you get a bad ex-wife, but the fact still remains the same, you have to give you child back after a certain period of time. This must hurt a lot, to have you child for a few days to know that once you’ve dropped them off that you won’t see them again for a few days or weeks. Like I said these guys are nice guys and love their children as much as I love mine but I can only imagine how they feel.

I wrote a blog before about working to live or live to work, and when I see my little ones face in the morning and when I get home, its a 100% work to live. As we all do we wish we could earn more and work less, but unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. We work long hours to pay the bills for a house we don’t spend much time in. The world is a messed up place but for me at least, I get to come home to my daughter each and everyday.

Mother vs father

I’ve wondered what kind of women my daughter will grow up to be, though it may take a while its nice to wonder every now and again. A lot of personality traits come from the parents and how they are brought up in this crazy mixed up world. However there are a few things I’ve wondered as I’ve sat trying to get my daughter to sleep.

Firstly I think, ‘why are you crying?’, then ‘how do I shut you up?’ Before moving on to a few others thoughts, like ‘I am so tired’ or ‘I need to pee’ and well you get the idea. Eventually I come up with other things and one other thing was ‘who will the little one take after?’. Now I don’t mean looks wise, though I am curious on that, but more like preferences.

Fears make us who we are – but what are my fears?

We all have fears, even if someone says they don’t have any fears they are lying, not only to you but to themselves. It may be a simple fear of oranges or bubble wrap, to common fears such as spiders or dogs or snakes (why does it always have to be snakes? as Indiana Jones would say) to the extreme such as being buried alive or fear of heights, whatever the fear is, we all have them.

Some of us face our fears head on, making us stronger in the process, others ignore them till something scares us and we have to face them, sometimes head on, but once the fear has passed we ignore them once more. Fatherhood scares me to death, the fear of becoming a dad to a living being is fear inducing, trouble is we only have two options when faced with fatherhood, run away and abandon our child or face the fears head on. I for one do not condone option one, nor will it ever be something I will do, which really only leaves one option, face my fears head on.

Whether you fear the same things as me, or you have your own fears, these are just a few things that I am scared of the most about being a new dad and tackling fatherhood.

Inspired by a fellow blogger – who had a great idea.

So just reading things that come up when you type in certain tags, and this time under the fatherhood tag I searched for, I found a wonderful post on the blog – A Daddy’s walk. His post, Left Hand Day, is a great idea and it made me think of other similar ideas that you can use on your own children as they grow up. As adults we take for granted things that we can do, or can’t do, and we forget along the way of growing up and growing old that we can change some habits or start new habits, all it takes is our brain to remember to do this.

In the post, Left Hand Day (if you haven’t read it, take a moment, it’s only a short post) the blogger explains that he and his other half are right handed, and that he feels that maybe he could have used his left hand a bit more often. This is where his children come in and in an attempt to help them feel more comfortable using their less dominant hand, he has introduced Left Hand Day. And this is a great idea, and I wanted to share other ideas that could work, along the same lines as Left Hand Day. 

You have got to love free stuff.

Who doesn’t love something free? I mean, some things are okay when they are free like free samples or free parking, but it’s even better when you expect to pay for something and you hear that great word ‘free.’ Five simple letters, one amazing word, FREE. Who doesn’t love a Free Hug at a festival (depending on who it is giving them out) though who actually pays for a hug?

The reason I bring it up is that recently we have been given two large boxes of clothes for our unborn child. All for the wonderful price of FREE, which makes it that much sweeter. We now have enough clothes for our baby till she’s 12 months old, just need to find something to store them in, as we’ve still not furnished the nursery.

All I wanted to say was thank you, not that this person will read this or that I actually know who gave them to my other half (someone from work I believe) however it is much appreciated. We have had things bought for us, which is lovely, as well as a few things people are not using any more, which is also lovely. I hope when our second child is too big for these clothes then we will have some one that we can hand them down to (depending on the condition) because everyone needs help when they’re expecting, whether they want to admit it or not.

Good Female role models I want my daughter to be inspired by.

So my little bundle of joy is going to be a little girl, then a slightly bigger girl, then a teenage girl and finally an adult women. I have recently posted up rules for raising a girl a man’s way, however there are a few things that me and the other half want to surround our little girl with, and these are role models. Now we are very active people anyway, taking part in various activities such as weight training, mountain biking, climbing and surfing, so we plan on getting our little girl into various activities as soon as possible.

We are also not going to use the words ‘Diet’, ‘Skinny’ or ‘Fat’ in our house. We eat healthy, but we are not strict with our diet, having the occasional (more than occasional if honest) naughty treat. We love training, so it’s easy for us to motivate ourselves to exercise and doing physical activities. We will not be limiting our children, especially if they are both girls, to safe sports. If they want to do something like MMA, or an extreme sport then we are all for that, equally if they want to do something less dangerous, we will encourage them.

But what about the women who I want to inspire my daughter, the women me and my other half believe are good roles models, not just for my daughter, but for girls across the world. We see a lot of women in the media who are not good role models, those who act like hookers, treat their fame and fortune like it was a right and those who are just plan horrible people (we all know at least a handful of these celebrities that plaster our media with their presence). Here is a list of role models that we want our little girl to be inspired by, if you have any others or your own, let me know in the comments.

Ultimate Children’s bedrooms – these give me some ideas.

If I had money, well not that I don’t have money, but if I had money just lying around and could afford to make some of these amazing Children’s bedrooms then I would love to. I do want to make a cool room for my children to grow up in however size and cost may restrict me, especially if I wanted to make some of the below rooms.

At least you can get some ideas from these rooms, if not for themes or cool things to add. It’s like a child’s imagination exploded inside the room. I can not wait to let my imagination run wild when it comes to their room, though my credit card may feel differently about the experience. 

Do I really have to? Do any fathers really have to?

The people who know me know that I am child at heart, a big kid who really doesn’t want to grow up, like Peter Pan but without the tights, the knife and the lost boys. I have friends, who like me love to mess around and refuse to grow up, I mean why should we, getting old and being an adult isn’t all that. I know when we were younger we all said, ‘I can’t wait till I grow up,’ but then it happened and we were wrong, dead wrong. Sad times.

So when I keep hearing ‘Oh your going to be a dad, time to grow up then and be an adult.’ followed by a chuckle and a smile, it really gets annoying. I know some dads out there will agree with me but why does having children automatically mean you have to grow up? I know I mess around and have fun and play games still but I have grown up. I have a job (boring), I have a mortgage (drain), I am almost married (whoo hoo) and I have a sensible house (nice) but why does having children mean that it’s time to ‘properly’ grow up?

What will she grow up to be? I can not wait to see.

Wow, that sounded like a Dr. Seuss quote, but it was on my mind the other day, while driving home from work. Obviously there are many things that I can not wait to experience with my new bundle of joy, from their first finger squeeze, to their first word, to their first steps, you get the idea, the typical things that all parents are excited to see and experience. However, I began wondering what my child will become?

We all remember wanting to be something when we were younger, if you don’t think you did, you did your just too embarrassed to say what it was. In fact as a kid, I changed career so often it was hard to keep track. I do remember wanting to be a tennis player at some point in my childhood, but other than that, know idea. (I am sure my parents have a better idea). So it got me thinking about the future of my child, and what she will become. 

Having children – an excuse to wear things like this.

The world wide web of wonder and amazement is full of useless rubbish, endless cat videos, pointless websites and access to images and videos that we wished we hadn’t seen. However it does have some wonderful uses, such as internet shopping and funny meme’s to make you chuckle while slaving away behind your desk at work.

I saw this the other day and I feel in love with the idea of wearing things like this, only because I think they are silly, but silly fun, something you want to be doing with you child, expressing your silliness as often and as much as you can. Hope you find some of these as cute and funny as I did, if you don’t, well you don’t have a sense of humour and it saddens me.