parenting

Leave a comment Posted on parenting, Storytelling

Family Friendly Road Trip: SkyView In Atlanta, GA

June 3, 2014 at 6:39 pm , by

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, parenting

Hungry Hungry Hippos Is A Toy, Not A Game

June 1, 2014 at 11:17 pm , by

3 years, 6 months.

Dear Jack,

Last weekend your Nonna gave you a $20 bill to spend on anything you wanted at any point in the future.

To my surprise, that money actually lasted an entire week!

This past weekend while we visited Atlanta for the Wizard World Comic Con, we discovered there was a Target that basically shared the parking of the Le Meridien where we were staying.

You had been asking me for months now about the classic game, Hungry Hungry Hippos. It just happened to be on sale for $13, compared to its normal price of 20 bucks.

I was amazed that Mommy and I were able to convince you to keep it in the box during the 5 minute journey back up to our 8th floor hotel room.

Going into this, I knew from past experience not to expect you to play by the rules.

Yeah, that would be an understatement this time around.

The blue hippo was your favorite. You manually opened up his month and directly placed the plastic marbles in.

Even still, after the 2nd time of playing Hungry Hungry Hippos mostly the way it was intended, you proclaimed, “I don’t like losing.”

It’s not that you suddenly lost interest in it once you learned how to play. It’s that you decided that Hungry Hungry Hippos is much more fun as a toy.

By the first night in the hotel, Hungry Hungry Hippos became your “bulldozer airplane.” Apparently, when turned upside down, the platform can fly and hover through the air.

Despite that, it seems that the collection of hippos are becoming categorized like stuffed animals:

“Mommy, can I bring Hungry Hungry Hippos to bed with me tonight?”

Even the plastic marbles have another function besides actual game use. You’ve been using them as freight for your Take-n-Play Thomas the Train sets.

It seems like Hungry Hungry Hippos is everything you had hoped it would be…

To a 3 year-old boy, it’s not a game. It’s a toy.

 

Love,

Daddy

 

Leave a comment Posted on Health, parenting, vegan

Ask A Vegan Anything: “Where Do You Get Your Vitamin B12?”

May 28, 2014 at 8:51 pm , by

3 years, 6 months.

Dear Jack,

Today, as part of my “Ask A Vegan Anything” series, I want to address the topic of Vitamin B12.

After I became a vegan, I was warned that I would not be getting any of my Vitamin B12, which I was told exclusively comes from consuming animal products.

I was told I could suffer permanent nerve damage if I was Vitamin B12 deficient.

Honestly, I’m not fully convinced this will happen to me, based on a lack of proof that other vegans across the world are actually suffering from a Vitamin B12 deficiency.

For me, I need to see the “missing link” to fully believe that vegans (who eat plenty of  fruits, vegetables, beans, grains, nuts, and seeds, not vegan junk food like Oreos, Ramen noodles, and soda) are actually unhealthy because of a lack of Vitamin 12.

However, I still consume at least 500% of my Vitamin B12 on most days. Yes, that’s right: 500%.

We keep something in our pantry called “nutritional yeast.” (At Whole Foods, it sells in bulk for $6.99 per pound.)

It’s pretty cheap and doesn’t really have flavor, so it’s very practical to just sprinkle it into our food; it’s really no big deal.

That’s it. That’s how we can ensure we get our Vitamin B12.

But other than that, our almond milk also contains B12 as well; 50% of the suggested daily amount, to be exact. It’s added into a lot of foods, actually.

Right now, you and Mommy are mostly vegan, but you both do consume a small amount of dairy; though nowhere near as much as compared to a year ago before I nixed the stuff altogether.

Perhaps the day may come when either or both you decide to join me in my 100% plant-based life, as opposed to 96%.

If that day comes, we’ll simply buy more nutritional yeast if we have to.

(Mommy has already switched from using dairy milk in your mac-and-cheese to almond milk, as she has done for the milk in the coffee she makes for herself in morning.)

Throwing in some nutritional yeast flakes is really is no hassle. With just a few spoonsful in a meal, it provides 5 times the amount of Vitamin B12 that we supposedly need.

So that’s why as a vegan, I’m not worried about becoming deficient of Vitamin B12. That is, if vegans actually do suffer from that to begin with…

Either way, I’m covered.

 

Love,

Daddy

Leave a comment Posted on funny, Nostalgia, parenting

With Great Blessings Come Great Responsibility (And Stress!)

May 27, 2014 at 8:12 pm , by

3 years, 6 months.

Dear Jack,

In my extremely limited ability to understand the concept of eternity and life after this, sometimes I subconsciously and erroneously tend to think of Heaven as a place where I could just exist in a state of unconsciousness and it not affect anyone else; void of responsibility or pressure to perform.

Sounds like I’m not the only one in that boat, after reading the comments on the Facebook page for Parents.com when they featured my story, “Daddy’s In His Quiet Place Right Now.”

Many fellow parents (understandably) laughed at the concept of a modern day parent having any escape from the overwhelming pace of life that kicks in once you become a parent.

I used to be extremely optimistic, like all the time.

But those were the days before… responsibility happened.

That was before I was truly feeling the pressure of what life (AKA “the real world”) actually demands from a person.

Of course, I also remember feeling lost, alone, and unfulfilled back when I was still single. Not a coincidence.

That’s because with great blessings come great responsibility; and therefore, stress.

A job, a wife, and child are all blessings. However, I’ve learned to begin equating the word “blessing” with “responsibility.”

Now, before I sound like I’m going off the deep end, I want to balance this with the other side of the story.

Earlier last week, I was at of one of my good friends’ house, hanging out with him on his front porch, while his family was out of town. We talked about how nice it was to be able to “unplug” for brief moments at a time like that.

Then we talked about how if life weren’t this chaotic, and if we as dads and husbands weren’t overloaded with responsibilities like we are, we would go crazy.

Without a regular dose of being stressed out, I get stressed out.

It makes me think of a line from one of my favorite Dave Matthews Band songs, “So Much To Say”:

I say my hell is the closet I’m stuck inside.

If in this exhausted (and limited) state of mind, a seemingly reasonable version of Heaven would be a state of unconsciousness, void of responsibility or accountability, then it makes sense that my concept for understanding hell would be a place where I was conscious, alone and bored out of my mind, with no responsibility or accountability.

I’ve heard the saying, “too blessed to be stressed.” Yeah, I’m not sure I agree with that.

Because the way I see it, if I am stressed, then I am blessed.

Otherwise, I would be searching for a life without responsibility, which is what I had before I had you, Mommy, a full-time job, and two part time jobs.

And back then, I felt incomplete.

These days, I can honestly say I never feel incomplete, or alone, or not needed, or unloved. I say stress is a good thing, if it traces back to responsibility and blessings.

 

Love,

Daddy

 

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, parenting

Man, I Really Used To Be A Cornball (And Still Might Be!)

May 23, 2014 at 9:26 pm , by

3 years, 6 months.

Dear Jack,

It was three years ago today that with great excitment, I saw my WordPress daddy blog,Dad From Day One, get rebooted  and placed on a much broader stage, asThe Dadabase on Parents.com.

Just for fun, I decided to go back and read the very first official Dadabasepost, entitled, “Welcome To The Dadabase.”

Yeah, about that…

I do think I made some good points in that post, as I made it clear men think differently than women and that one of my objectives was to positively rebrand fatherhood despite all the classic sitcom cliches of idiot dads and husbands.

However, I feel like I was pretty cheesy about it:

I am a guy, so I don’t do “cute.”  I do practical. With the name of this daddy blog, I wanted to allude to the idea that a man’s perspective of parenting is a bit offbeat when compared to the more easily recognizable viewpoint of the beautiful and poetic female mind.  So for you moms out there who wonder what your hubby is really thinking about this whole dad thing, I might be able to shed some light on the subject.  Granted, I’m not claiming to represent all or even most husbands and fathers, but I’m sure I will often hit close to “the dadabase.”

Wow. I must have really thought I was clever or something. Of course, that was back when you were only 6 months old and I was still writing to a social media audience, instead of you directly. That narrative change didn’t occur until your 2nd birthday, which I definitely think improved my writing style as a daddy blogger.

For me, it’s so much more natural and real to write about parenting when it’s to the very kid who is the reason I am a parent; if that makes sense.

I also had to laugh when I read my unofficial disclaimer from my first Dadabase post:

Sometimes, you will totally agree with my opinions and my take on fatherhood- you will appreciate what I have served up that morning for “blogfast” (note to self: copyright the destined-to-be-trendy word, “blogfast”) and you will “like” it on Facebook, and/or Tweet it.  Other times, you may feel I am so quirky that I’m kooky; disagreeing with my “wrong opinion” so much that you throw your shoe at your computer screen.  In either case, I’m still the same guy you either liked or didn’t like the day before.

But here’s the thing. While I see the 2011 version of myself as a bit of a cornball, I am very mindful of the fact that there’s a very decent chance that 3 years from now, I’ll be saying the same thing about the 2014 version of me.

Let’s find out.

 

Love,

Daddy