If I don’t automatically respond “my son” to questions such as these, they cut a corner off my Daddy Card™. After four such incidents, I have to go to mandatory training…
Tag: Children
Writing Challenge Day 26 [MAKEUP]: A Coworker
A coworker. I’ve got a few of those. Which coworker do I write about? I’ve already written about a couple of them.
A lot of folks in the translation department are parents. Nearing on half. And since the depart of our Russian translator, I’m the only father on the team.
One of the ladies on the team, aside from being every bit as much a coffee addict as me, has a daughter just a bit younger than Matthew. But they’re close enough in age that they hit the same phases around the same time, more or less, and we’ve passeda fair amount of time sipping coffee and discussing, and at times, whining about, our children.
She and I disagree on some aspects of parenting – what to let the kids watch, for example (you mean you DON’T let your daughter watch Terminator?!) – but we agree on quite a bit more, and I know I can always count on her for a wise and valuable second opinion, or at least just reassurance that I haven’t scarred my son for life.
So, coworker of mine, I owe you a coffee. Meet me at my desk at 9:30. 😉
Check out our other participants here –
Niki: Sometimes I Write
Becky: Free2B2Much
Tracy: CountryRoadChronicles
Writing Challenge Day 18 [MAKEUP]: A Fictional Character in a Book
Matthew has a lot of books. And while I don’t expect every one to teach him a valuable lesson, I do at least expect them not to teach him a BAD one.
Which brings me Troubletops and the New Baby. This is a fantastically illustrated book about a young, trouble-making dinosaur. A triceratops, to be precise (because these things matter, you see). Troubletops enjoys being the center of his parents’ world.
Until a baby brother comes along. And Troubletops is suddenly not getting as much attention. So he decides to run away. That’ll show ’em. That’ll get them to pay attention to him again.
And here’s the part that made me shelve the book more or less permanently. It DOES “show ’em”. Troubletops wins. He gets his way. 100%.
His parents go out of their mind with worry (of course). They look for him (of course). And when they finally find him, Troubletops is not punished. He’s not even given a stern talking to. Or even a regular talking to. And everything goes back to the way Troubletops likes it.
What would have been a great chance to teach a lesson about good and bad ways to handle problems becomes a story about a dinosaur who throws a tantrum and succeeds in manipulating his parents to do exactly what he wants. No thank you.
Check out our other participants here –
Niki: Sometimes I Write
Becky: Free2B2Much
Tracy: CountryRoadChronicles
Writing Challenge Day 13 [MAKEUP]: A Beloved Child in Your Life
I’m afraid I’m going to repeat myself today. There are precious few children in my life, and fewer that I could say I love. So today’s post, as you might expect, is about my son.
My ex-wife dropped our 3-year-old son off with me today. And he has homework to do.
Or, as she more accurately put it, baby-sitting. Matthew is, this weekend, the proud guardian of the class teddy bear, Souricette, and he is pleased as punch.
What’s involved in baby-sitting a teddy bear? Quite a bit, surprisingly, and Matthew was happy to explain it to me. She (it’s explicitly a she) needs to be fed. She needs to be changed into her pyjamas and normal clothes. She needs to be read bedtime stories. And she has a separate scarf for every day of the week.
She also has her own schoolbook. This is where all of her watchful protectors write about what they did with Souricette, and paste photos of them caring for her. We didn’t do much with her tonight, but I’m sure Matthew is going to have a ball taking care of her tomorrow.
Edit: I was exhausted when I wrote this, and I originally referred to the stuffed animal as Nouricette, which would be a cutesy name derived from the french word for nanny.
It’s actually named Souricette, a cutesy name derived from the French word for mouse.
Check out our other participants here –
Niki: Sometimes I Write
Becky: Free2B2Much
Tracy: CountryRoadChronicles
Photo-A-Day 47 out of 47 — “Someone You Love” (Don)
I love my son. And he loves playing with sticks. But honestly, so did I at that age.
Photo-A-Day 7 out of 47 — “Makes You Laugh” (Don)
Bonus:
I laugh a lot. But nothing makes me laugh quite as much as my little one. Discovering the world is a fantastic, fun adventure, and he’s taking us along for the ride.
Little Things and Big Things (or Reminders From Baby)
As many of my numerous (see also: 3) readers may have divined at this point, I have a child. That’s the obligatory picture of him up there, and this is another post about my goofy self becoming a daddy.
So yes, as I was saying, I have a child, and I’ve even interacted with him once or twice. And on those occasions, there’s a word that continuously and persistently pops into my head.
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Baby Matthew’s Double Firsts This Week
Well this is turning into a daddy blog, isn’t it?
This week, little Matthew, who is just reaching four months, has hit two important little landmarks.
Some Thoughts On Being A Daddy
Once, when I was a child, I asked my parents, “How do I move my eyes?”.
I wasn’t sure that I had the whole “voluntary eye control” thing nailed (of course I did), so I asked my parents how to do it.
After giving my earnest question much more thought than it probably deserved, my parents responded, “I dunno. You just do it.”
“Well gosh”, thought my much younger self, “I’m sure that I’ll never learn how to do it.”Read More »
Adorable Baby Photos – Post ‘Em, Share ‘Em, Vote On ‘Em
Your baby is cute. You know this and I know this. But does that stop us from whipping out wallet photos (or more often today, cell phone photo galleries), and bragging about how cute they are? Not a chance. Not even for a moment.
Show Off Your Adorable Babies
EDIT: Evidently the links were broken. They have now been fixed and should take you straight to the page.
A couple of weeks ago, my wife told me to go to a website and vote for our son Matthew. At first I thought she had posted his picture on some sort of photo rating website for babies – sort of like Hot Or Not with fewer skanky girls but just as much drool.
Turns out she hadn’t; it was a contest. “However,” thought I, “that would maybe be fun to put his picture on a site like that. I bet he’d do well.” Don’t all parents think their baby is the cutest?
But Googling for such a site returned nothing of value; I found only a couple of sites that hadn’t been visited in many years.Read More »
My Son’s First Trip To America
Ok, it might be slightly misleading to call it his first trip to America, but he went to the American Embassy in Paris, which means he was technically on American soil (and the guards happily said “Welcome to America”).
7 Surprising Things About My Newborn Son
This is my son, who is 13-days old at the time of this post. He is adorable, beautiful, and I love him to death. But, as a first-time father, there are many things I just didn’t expect.
What did I expect? Based on TV, movies, and anecdotal evidence, I expected the opening of a portal straight to the fiery plains of oblivion which would spit forth a miniature tyrant who would start continuously making noise and bio-hazardous waste, and spend all his days and sleepless nights forcing his mother and I to satisfy his every self-serving need until we became panting, ragged zombies, wearing grim, lopsided (emotionally satiated?) smiles and being covered in streaks of myriad “baby substances”.
Diverse Doubts of a Daddy to-be
I haven’t been posting everyday like I said I would. Bad me. But now, it’s a three-day weekend. So hopefully I’ll be able to catch up.
As you may or may not know, my wife is pregnant. Really pregnant. And soon, I’m gonna be a Daddy.
And that freaks me out.
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October Challenge – IT HAS BEGUN!
A good friend of mine, Niki (whose cutting-edge, hassle-free, locally-owned-and-operated blog may be found here), has issued me a challenge, and if there is one thing I love, it’s challenges. Ok, it’s actually bacon; challenges would actually appear somewhere in the 20’s, below various food items, art, literature and sex. But all that aside, I do like me a challenge.
The stated challenge is to post an article/blog post every day throughout the calendar month of October. She calls it the ‘October Post-A-Day Challenge’. Ostensibly, it’s to motivate the both of us to post more often and actually maintain our blogs – but that doesn’t stop me from seeing it competitively (although I’m not sure how I win).
So! Challenge accepted!
“He’s cute! And sticky lookin’!” – The Hillsons Are Reproducing!
“I knew it! Earth babies come from space!”
-Invader Zim
When I was a kid, we had this really horrible horse-racing game on one of the computers. You know, mid-90’s freeware horrible. And after every 10 second race that completely failed to reproduce any of the excitement of betting on horse races, a movie announcer voice would say, “The results are official” as the results posted on the screen. I hadn’t thought about that game in at least a decade.
This last Tuesday was a momentous day for the wife and I. We had done a home pregnancy test the previous week and gotten the H.P.T. equivalent of the 8-ball’s “Reply hazy, try again.“. So Tuesday morning, Ami headed over to a local lab, gave a blood sample, and got a ticket to redeem for the results.
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Babies!!1!
It’s that time of year again. Slate grey skies have given way to powder blue. The clouds that bridged the horizons now scud lazily about, and the freezing cold has been transformed to more moderate temperatures. Yes my friends, spring has come once again. And that can only mean one thing.
BABIES. LOTS AND LOTS OF BABIES.
Rugrats. Ankle biters. Rug monkeys. Nippers. Tots. Offspring. Imps. Hellspawn. No matter what you call them, it definitely seems to be the season for them. All the cool couples either have them, or are getting them. Or in some instances, both.Read More »
Expatriatism 