Author: Family Friendly Daddy Blog

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Daddy, I Like The Dinosaurs That Don’t Have Gas

May 2, 2014 at 9:02 pm , by

3 years, 5 months.

Dear Jack,

I know it’s easy to forget this fact about your dad, but I do actually have a full-time job in HR at a trucking company called Paschall Truck Lines. It just so happens that my company was responsible for shipping the dinosaurs for the DinoTrek exhibits currently being featured in zoos across America.

Last Saturday, Mommy and I took you to go check them out in action at the Nashville Zoo just a few miles down the road from our house.

Though you knew up front they weren’t real dinosaurs, you still treated them with reverence.

You did have the nerve to pet the dinosaurs with me, despite the fact you saw the way they moved their giant mouths and you heard the way they roared at us.

A couple of the dinosaurs even spit water out of their mouths at us. (You spit back at them.)

Some of the “scarier” dinosaurs had machines behind them that caused fog to appear as we approached them.

After we finished our dinosaur tour, you expressed to me, “Daddy, I like the dinosaurs that don’t have gas.”

We had so much fun seeing the dinosaurs, you and I actually went back the next day to visit them again.

Not to mention, you’ve been telling your teachers and friends at school about them all week.

Yesterday on the way home from school, you told me, “Daddy, can we dig up some dinosaur bones? Maybe if can find some, we can turn them into real dinosaurs again.”

Until there’s a real Jurassic Park, our best shot of seeing resurrected dinosaurs is the DinoTrek exhibit at the zoo.

Sorry, Son.

I would love to ride a stegosaurus with you, if I could. Maybe in Heaven, who knows?

And if they have dinosaurs up there, I bet they don’t “have gas.”

 

Love,

Daddy

 

Leave a comment Posted on parenting, Storytelling

To See My Child Brighten Someone’s Day, It Makes Me Proud

May 1, 2014 at 11:05 pm , by

3 years, 5 months.

Dear Jack,

This morning you were so excited to take your pet dog, Chi-chi, to school. He (or is it she?) has an “on” switch which causes it to walk across the floor and bark/chirp. It’s pretty hilarious.

But since you and your friends are 3 and a half, it’s pretty much as awesome as me finding out yesterday why “A113″ shows up in nearly every Disney/Pixar movie.

You were so eager to show Chi-Chi to your friends, I was actually a bit surprised. I feared that you might freak out as a mob of your classmates would begin going crazy foryour toy.

I thought it would bother you. I thought you might quickly get possessive.

That’s not at all what happened. Instead, I saw the look on your face as 7 or 8 of your friends all circled around you in amazement of your toy.

Never was there a sign of concern as Chi-Chi (and ultimately, you) were the hit of the party.

I saw joy in your eyes as you witnessed your friends playing with and passing around the toy you brought to share with them.

You brightened their day. That made you happy.

And it made me happy too.

When we got home, I saw on Facebook that my friend Holly, from college, had messaged me:

Nick, i just had to let you know that of all the compliments I received on my pink hair picture, your son requesting a second viewing makes me feel the coolest. Hope you’re doing well!

A few days ago, Holly had posted this new picture of herself with some temporary pink hair dye. (Being half-Norwegian and half-Swedish, her hair is normally light blonde.)

You caught a glimpse of the picture on my laptop as I was scrolling through Facebook and were pretty fascinated by this seemingly magical girl with the pink hair. I let Holly know that:

“My son Jack likes your hair so much, he just asked to see your picture again!”
Of the 20-something comments and 70-something “likes” she received from that picture, your comment made her feel the coolest. Enough for her to take the time to let me know, several days later.
And if you can believe it, the fact that you made her day by asking to see her picture a 2nd time… well, it made myday.
Twice in the same couple of hours, I saw first-hand how you simply brightened other people’s days.
It makes me so proud that you are such a sweet boy. I don’t think I was that caring and giving when I was your age.
Yeah, you make me proud.
Love,
Daddy
Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, parenting

Boys Grow Up To Become Men Who Move Away

May 1, 2014 at 6:14 am , by

3 years, 5 months.

Dear Jack,

When I was growing up, I never minded the small town I grew up in. It was all I knew.

Life was good, easy, and comfortable. My parents did everything right.

But around the time I starting driving, I became more curious about life outside of the shared corner of Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia.

The summer before my senior year, I travelled to Ecuador. Then after I graduated high school, I went to college in Florida and Virginia; both of which took way more than 8 hours to travel to and from the house I grew up in.

I spent two of the summers in college overseas in Bangkok, Thailand; teaching English. I briefly did the same in South Korea, as well.

For a guy who sure was comfortable being raised in a small town, it was my instinct to want to go explore the world outside of safety and comfort.

I think you will be the same way. I think you will end up being an explorer of the world; at least the world outside the town you are growing up in.

Aside from that, though- after Mommy and I have “raised you,” you will leave us and start your own life. You will have the desire to become who you were to intended to be, apart from us.

I am preparing myself now for the day you will move away and figure things out on your own, like I had to do.

The way I see it, when a father does a good job of raising his son, he is rewarded by seeing his son move on to start his own life, and eventually start his own family. It seems that’s one of the ultimate rewards of being a father… as much of a paradox as that may sound.

Mommy is the nurturer, I am the mentor, and you’re the kid. Together, I know that the three of us will always have a close love for each other; but I get it that you will, in essence, need to “start over” and do this thing yourself.

Right now, these are the years when the rewards of fatherhood include cuddling with you, wrestling you, having you ask me to sing you bedtime songs, taking you to the zoo and the monster truck show… so many things each day that mean the world to me.

The undeniable irony here is that for the next 15 years or so, I will ultimately be revolving my life around you so that you can become independent enough to live your life without me being right there. I guess that’s sort of an obvious element of being a dad, but I’m thinking about it more here lately.

I don’t take for granted you are growing up so fast. After all, one day, that might actually be a real mustache on your face!

 

Love,

Daddy

 

P.S. The top picture is an entry we submitted for a “selfie photo contest” for Joe Hendricks Photography!

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, parenting

Who’s The Boss? (Minus Tony Danza)

April 23, 2014 at 6:23 pm , by 

3 years, 5 months.

Dear Jack,

When you woke me up Easter morning, on my 33rd birthday, one of my immediate thoughts was not, “Man, I can’t believe I’m this old!”

Instead, it was, “Man, I’m 33 years old and have a 3 and a half year-old kid who thinks I’m in charge!”

I thought about how three decades ago in 1984, there were two different sitcoms that premiered which contained premises and titles featuring the uncertainty of the character with the assumed authority:

Who’s The Boss? andCharles In Charge.

Granted, just a few seconds earlier I was in a deep sleep probably dreaming something weird, but I think my subsconcious was making a good point:

I evidently doubt my credibility as your dad.

While it’s no secret that Mommy is the officer in charge of our schedule and budget, there’s a lot I’m in charge of, as it pertains to you.

I have to remind myself of that.

It may not seem like a big deal, but I am responsible for getting you to and from school (in Nashville traffic!) each day.

While you’re in the back seat, having fun pretending to have a cracker for an eyeball, I’m actually having to proactively keep us alive and well… not to mention get you and I to school and work on time.

Each night after you keep calling Mommy back upstairs (for the 3rd time) after she’s already put you to bed, it’s me that comes up there to truly sing you the last song. Because you know that my last song really is the last song!

You have a reverence for me that is much different than how you perceive Mommy. (And I don’t even spank you.)

If nothing else, you know that at any given moment, I may make you wrestle me on the carpet and then I’ll tickle you when you lose.

Yeah, and I’m sort of in charge of you. Isn’t that scary?

Who’s the boss? Me, actually. Not Tony Danza with his wonderful tapdancing moves.

 

Love,

Daddy

3 Comments Posted on parenting, Storytelling

Why I’m The Cheapest Parent I Know

April 22, 2014 at 10:07 pm , by 

3 years, 5 months.

Dear Jack,

For me, it’s almost like a contest:

Can I be the cheapest parent that most people know?

I believe in the importance of just not buying things to begin with. I think that’s where the most money is saved.

I’ve covered some of this before in “5 Impractical Ways To Save Your Family Money In 2013.”

You are being raised in a household with a strict weekly budget, where our cars are over 10 years old but paid off; you live in a home without smart phones, without cable or satellite TV, without updated electronics, without pets… not to mention we rarely go out to eat because Mommy cooks basically every meal.

(And where Daddy does the dishes for all those meals. I’ve gotten really good at that, by the way.)

A credit card is used only to take advantage of the credit card company; earning points to get free stuff for our family. So we do use one, but it’s immediately paid off each week and is built into our budget the same way as a debit card.

We even reuse our plastic baggies.

You’re stuck in a household where we have an outdated 2005 TV with a mockable 30 inch screen with $8 a month Netflix streaming.

I admit, we do have an older model Kindle that Mommy bought… on clearance, after the newer model came out.

And that goes back to our trick about only buying stuff during the last two weeks of the month, when more items are on sale, like I’ve mentioned before.

Not to mention, I’m not going to deny that one of the reasons you are an only child (at least for now) is for financial reasons.

Part of your parents’ cheapness comes from us having 1st and 2nd generation immigrant grandparents from Italy and Croatia, who lived through the Great Depression. That rubbed off on us; I’m sure of it.

The rest of it has to do with us having to “learn money” the hard way.

We made a lot of financial mistakes that we didn’t realize were mistakes at the time; like moving away from a city where we had good jobs to a smaller city where we basically couldn’t find jobs for nearly 9 months- before finally moving back to where the jobs were.

However, I look to the positive. Living through that caused Mommy and me to forever think differently, for the best:

We ended up being able to pay off over $58,000 in debt, after living off credit cards because we thought that was normal.

Thank God (and Dave Ramsey), we have now begun reversing our debt into savings. However, I think that having to live through through our own “great depression” has forever changed us.

There’s just no way we could see things the same way again.

So while it may be weird that your parents can’t just look up the height of Tom Cruise on a smart phone in the middle of a conversation during dinner at Red Lobster…

And while it may sound strange that our family has to wait for TV shows and movies to hit Redbox or Netflix before we can see them, it’s okay by us.

Hey, our family is different. You get that by now. This is just me trying to explain what made us this way so you can tell your friends why your parents are so cheap… and/or quirky.

Love,

Daddy