Family vs Friends

Family can be a funny thing, they are the people in our lives that we cannot choose, we are related to them by blood, birth and history. Sometimes we get on with them, other times we do not. Sometimes we know them for their entire lives and other times we only know them for a short amount. Most of the time we love them, with short bouts of anger and disappointment but in the end, family is family.

Friends on the other hand, like the TV show says, will be there for you throughout and friends are picked by you, you have chosen them to be part of your lives. This can sometimes make them more special than family, and sometimes they are part of the family for life. The reason I am talking about this is that I come from a very small family and currently our daughter only has one uncle and two aunts (Uncle is my brother, his girlfriend is her aunt and my sister in law is her other aunt).

Now I love my brother and his girlfriend, and my wife loves her sister, however non of them really like children. My brother and his girlfriend have, on many occasions, expressed how much they don’t like children. They prefer animals, owning a small zoo in their home. My sister in law, though lovely, doesn’t really have any interest in our daughter, she also lives quite far away. So that brings me to my point that my daughter is going to grow up calling our friends aunt and uncle, though they are not related to us, and I am looking forward to this.

As I said, you can choose your friends and these friends we have chosen mean the world to us. They are in our lives for a reason and I am glad to see our daughter grow with them in her life. That’s not to say her real aunt’s and uncle will not be present, they will be whether they like it or not.

Music to share with my daughter.

I love music, have done since I can remember. I went through a pop stage at school, not really having my own taste in music, listening to the top 40 on a Sunday in the bath, not really appreciating music for what it was for. At college I took media studies and met others who loved music, and they opened my eyes to more styles and genres and bands.

If asked by anyone to choose a genre then I choose rock however my music taste will vary. Just listening to my ipod or Spotify playlists will tell you that. One minute its heavy screaming metal next its some eighties classic (big eighties fan) followed by some soft acoustic solo artists to end with some pop punk. If I like it, then well I like it.

Luckily for me my wife enjoys the same music as me, as does my father, meaning we’ve been to many a gig together. Our birth playlist was chosen by my wife but ultimately it was filled with rock tunes that I loved to as well. We listen to music all the time, both being musical ourselves (me guitar, her drums) so our daughter will no doubt be exposed to lots of music. I remember listening to tons of music via my dad, and I know he is the reason I eventually found rock.

So below is a list of bands/artists who I want to play to my daughter and hopefully get her into. She will have her own taste in music, whether its rock like her parents or the latest boy band tosh on the radio, I don’t care what it is, just that she appreciates and loves music as much as we do.

What are your plans for tonight? Oh you are seriously asking what my plans are.

We never really went out that often before we had a kid, occasionally going to a Rock club once a month, cinema on Wednesday when it was 2 for 1 on tickets, many rock gigs in the city of London with my dad and sometimes the occasional dinner party. We preferred to do more active things like going rock climbing and to the gym, as well as watching TV shows and films together on the couch. We had friends that went out every weekend, to the pub and the clubs, spending all their wages and wondering why they were skint. They would spend the weekends recovering from the night before or preparing themselves for the night ahead. Now there is nothing wrong with doing this, it just wasn’t us that was all.

People say that when you have a little one that your life changes and they were not wrong, however I disagree that it means giving up on certain things. In a previous blog (add) I discussed that it was all about compromise, that you may have to cut down rather than cut something out completely, as if you really love doing something, then you will find a way. It may not be a week after the baby is born, it may not even be a year after but eventually, if you enjoy doing something, you will find a way to do it. I don’t really see that my life has changed, just a certain aspect of my life, our routines. My other half’s life has changed a lot more than mine, but I don’t see that, I am work.

Ante-Natel Class – The wonders of knowledge

So I have seen in a number of films and TV shows where the parents expecting there bundle of joy rock up to a hall, a house, a room or a park, filled with other parents expecting babies and learn all about what to do. These sometimes include funny moments or serious moments depending on the show or film we are watching but what they show is people becoming friends at the end of it all, sometimes finding their best friends for life..

I was expecting a class that was going to run over a number of weeks, one evening a week, where the same group of worried and scared faces would appear, talk, learn and laugh with one another. I was also expecting, due to seeing this in films and TV shows, to sit behind my partner while she sat on a cushion and breathed, a lot.

After experiencing my first, and what I believe to be my only, Ante-Natal class, this is what I found and what I thought of it.