Author: Family Friendly Daddy Blog

1 Comment Posted on Nostalgia, parenting, Spirituality

John Mayer’s Daughters Vs. Greg Wright’s Daddy Dates

July 28, 2011 at 7:59 pm , by 

Eight months.

I love John Mayer’s music.  He shares my same love for the year 1983.  The first date my wife and I went on was to one of his concerts.  I will confidently buy every single album that he ever releases, knowing that John Mayer just can’t produce a dud.  When it comes to making music and writing songs, he’s undeniably a class act.

In 2005, John Mayer won a Grammy for his Top Ten hit song, “Daughters.”  The song contains the lyrics, “On behalf of every man looking out for every girl. You are the guide and the weight of her world. So fathers, be good to your daughters. Daughters will love like you do.”  He wrote the song completely on his own.  And it is definitely one well crafted and well written song.

However, I know to separate the music from the man.  Technically, John Mayer’s dating life is none of my business.  But after all, one of the most played albums in our house is Jack’s favorite Taylor Swift album, Speak Now, which contains the song, “Dear John.”

After hearing the song the first 23 times, it became pretty clear to me that the song is most likely about the highly speculated, brief relationship between the then 19 year old Taylor Swift and the 32 year old John Mayer.  One of the most stand out lines in the song is, “Don’t you think nineteen’s too young to be messed with? The girl in the dress cried the whole way home.  I should have known.”

Whether or not it should, it definitely bothers me that the man who wrote “Daughters” does not apply the song’s advice in his personal life.  It’s not just Taylor Swift that he’s messed with. Granted, it’s not a matter of whether Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston, and Taylor Swift should have known better.  It’s a matter of John Mayer knowing better.

In the same way that Bentley is known as the infamous player/villain from the Ashley Hebert season of The Bachelorette, so John Mayer falls into this same category. Just like in his song, “Who Says,” where he nonchalantly states, “Who says I can’t get stoned? Call up a girl that I used to know. Fake love for an hour or so.”  This kind of talk just doesn’t sound like it should be coming from the guy who was intuitive enough to write “Daughters.”

I view John Mayer as a modern day King Solomon, having access to countless beautiful women, unending wealth and glorious fame. Yet as King Solomon admitted later in his life, in the book of Ecclesiastes, it was all meaningless.  Similarly, John Mayer admits in another one of his more well known songs from the same album, “something’s missing and I don’t know how to fix it.”

So while I think John Mayer is flawless when it comes to making music and writing songs, I recognize that there’s a disconnect between what he knows is truth and the way he actually treats the “daughters” he dates.

And that is why I am giving away a free copy of the book Daddy Dates to the first 5 readers who request it by leaving a comment on this post.  I will need your mailing address, whether you leave it in the comment itself or would prefer to email it to me (nickshell1983@hotmail.com) right after you leave the comment.

The nonfiction book  Daddy Dates is written by Greg Wright, who regularly takes his four daughters on “dates.”  In other words, he is making a very conscious effort to spend individual, quality time with his daughters, assuring them that they are beautiful, loved, and worthy of being loved.  Coming from the guy whose mission is to positively re-brand fatherhood (I’m referring to myself,) I admire Greg Wright for what he is doing.

Therefore, I proudly give away his book here on The Dadabase.

*Within an hour or so of this post being published, I got my 5 winners for the book.  Hint: When I give away books here on The Dadabase, it’s always on Thursday nights around 8PM Central Time.  But not every Thursday…

1 Comment Posted on Nostalgia, parenting

My Best Friend is a Girl

July 27, 2011 at 10:22 pm , by 

Eight months.

We have been told more than a few times that we look like brother and sister.  Nope, we’re best friends. Oh yeah, and we happen to be married, too.

(Pictured right: St. Patrick’s Day 2007- We had been dating for about a month.)

Having spent my teenage years during The Nineties, the music I will always truly love the most is from the grunge and alternative era. In fact, I proudly continue to buy the new albums of those same bands that are still around like Counting Crows, Live, Matchbox Twenty (Rob Thomas), and Third Eye Blind.  And that is why I continue to remain a huge fan of Weezer. For many, if Weezer was ever relevant in any way, it was in 1995 with their hit “Buddy Holly.”

But as long as each year Weezer releases yet another self-titled or bizarrely named new album, I will surely be digging it. Yesterday in the car I was listening to their song “My Best Friend,” which never really stood out to me before.  But as I listened to the lyrics, I thought of my wife:

“You are such a blessing and I won’t be messing with the one thing that brings light to all of my darkness. You’re my best friend and I love you… I’m here right beside you. I will never leave you.”

And it hit me: My wife really is my best friend!

But it’s not simply a romanticized idea. In fact, the thing that actually helps me to truly grasp the concept of my wife being my best friend is by removing any romantic aspects from our relationship. It’s a struggle, but if for a moment, I view my wife and myself not as a woman and man, but instead just two souls, I can catch a glimpse of us how we are best friends in addition to being married and in love.

Of course, both of us do have our close, same-gendered friends that we talk to.  And that’s very important. But as a married couple, we refuse to let much time go by if we sense that the other is “in a moment” where they need some empathy or direction. As I always say, we strongly value communication in our marriage.

Ultimately, being best friends in a marriage often means transcending the romantic elements of the relationship. Sure, it still includes and depends on those necessary romantic elements, but it’s so much more than being in love.

I guess for me, the only way I could have ever been married was to know that I had found and was marrying my best friend.  And that’s exactly what happened to me.

Our Timeline:

October 5th, 2006: we met for the first time at a taping of CMT Crossroads

February 5th, 2007: our first date at a John Mayer concert

January 14th, 2008: I proposed

July 5th, 2008: our wedding day

November 16th, 2010: our son was born

 

All pictures with the “JHP” logo were taken by Joe Hendricks Photography:

Blog- www.photojoeblog.com

Website- www.joehendricks.com

 

 

 

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Can’t Put a Price Tag on Living near Family

July 26, 2011 at 9:04 pm , by 

Eight months.

From everything I had heard about a new mom and dad’s first night away from their baby, we were supposed to be constantly distracted, wondering if our son was okay.  That every hour we would call in, checking on him.  That the quality of our time together would be compromised by the thought of something going wrong back home, feeling helpless as Jack’s parents that we couldn’t provide the best care because we weren’t physically there.

And maybe that would have been the case.  But we were blessed in that from December 2010 up until about ten days ago, we lived near family. That’s why our version of our first night away from our son was nothing like the preconceived ideas explored in the first paragraph.

As mentioned in my bio (featured right), my wife and I are “bed and breakfast people.” A lot of the time, our gifts for each other are a trip a few hours away to a typically unheard of place where there is a B&B that received good reviews online. This was the case for my 30th birthday on April 20th, 2011.  Since our son Jack was born five months earlier on November 16, 2010, we had not yet spent a night away from him.

While in Alabama for those eight months, we had lived only a few miles not only my parents but also from my sister and her husband.  My parents were more than eager to keep Jack for the night, and of course my sister and her husband were there hanging out and helping most of the time too.  Meanwhile, my wife and I were three hours away in a town called Dahlonega, Georgia. (Pictured below.)

We enjoyed the laid-back environment of the B&B, the exploration of a new town, and the adventures of visiting a new winery as well asCabbage Patch Kids “Babyland.“ I am not ashamed to say that we never called to check in on our son. Because in the care of my family, we never had any doubts. It was some much needed rest for us both.  In particular, for my wife, it was literally the first night she had in many months to actually be able to sleep through the entire night.  (Our son was not yet sleeping through the night at that point.)

You can’t put a price tag on living near family.  However, you can put a price tag on the cost of living versus the amount of income lost by moving to a small town where there just aren’t as many appropriate jobs to go around.

In addition to the invaluable life lessons we learned, another priceless benefit is that we were able to share Jack with my family during this whole time.  I try to imagine how different that not only the stories but also the pictures would be in my Dadabase posts if we had never moved away from Nashville.

The content of the past eight months would be completely different.  Instead, the stories have been forever documented and told with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law in the midst of it all.  Even though we won’t be able to watch Jack grow up in the same town as my family as we had planned, we will always have these stories and pictures to remember.  Not to mention, we only moved two and half hours away.  While that may be too far for a visit during the week, it’s not a bad drive for a weekend trip.

I know things won’t be able to be the same as they used to, regarding how close we’ve lived to my family.  But I have a feeling things won’t be that different, either.  Because you can’t put a price tag on family- no matter how close or far away you live from them.

Above picture: My sister and her husband holding their daughter and my son.

Top picture: My parents holding both of their grandchildren.

 

 

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Jack’s Sticky Situation: The “Do Not Remove” Tag

July 25, 2011 at 8:23 pm , by 

Eight months.

The renters that have been in our Nashville townhouse will be moving out in September; in the meantime, we are once again staying with our good friends, Dave and Karen. Last Saturday morning while Jill was making a wonderful French toast breakfast (ironically with dark German bread), I hung out with Jack on the kitchen floor. He discovered a sticker on the bottom of a chair that read “DO NOT REMOVE…”.  So of course, he did exactly the opposite.

Jack was thrilled at how easily he was able to tear off the sticker.  He wadded it up in his hands, making a ball.  But it didn’t take long for him to realize his newly acquired toy was wearing out its welcome.

What had become a cool new discovery had instantly become an annoying chore. How could he rid himself of this pesky new virus? If only he would have read the tag, maybe he wouldn’t have done exactly what it told him not to.  Jack did his best to remain calm and find a way out of this sticky situation.

He tried crawling with the sticky ball stuck on this hand, hoping it would lose its stickiness, and in the process, latch on to the floor.  But that didn’t work.

So Jack tried to convince himself that he still wanted to play with the tag.  But the look on his face told me different.

Sometimes in life, when you just stop trying so hard to do something, that is when you get exactly what it is that you want.  After all, on the night I met my wife for the first time at the taping of the CMT Crossroads episode with Lindsey Buckingham and Little Big Town, I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone.  It was just a random Thursday night in Nashville and I only went because The Office was a rerun.

Jack put the sticky label up to his mouth.  I had a choice: Either take a picture of the next part of this story, or keep him from trying to eat it.  And that is why you do not see a picture of Jack with the sticky label in his mouth.

It’s funny how if you simply have a camera and a baby, then you automatically have a limitless library of stories to tell.  Writing for The Dadabaseis just a part-time job for me.  But with all the amusing little things Jack does everyday, I could without a doubt, do nothing but just share stories of him as a full-time job.

Jack really does provide great material. What a cool kid.

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Where Simple Faith Meets Complicated Reality

July 23, 2011 at 10:34 pm , by