Storytelling

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dad from day one: One Year of Consistent “Daddy Blogging” Later…

Week 21 (4 months).

What can happen in just a year’s time?  Here’s a bit of a candid, behind the scenes look at both the history and the future of “dad from day one”.

It was April 13th, 2010 that I not only officially announced to the world that my wife and I were expecting a baby, but also the day I published the very first post (“She’s Having a Baby”) for my brand new series, “dad from day one”.  A year ago, I wasn’t even aware of the term for what I was doing, which now I know is “daddy blogging”.  Perceiving that there was a shortage of pregnancy and baby advice from a dad’s perspective out there on the Internet at that time, I decided to be the first to dad in history to publish at least one weekly post for my daddy blog, beginning with the knowledge of the pregnancy.  After a few months, once I had established my presence in the daddy blogging world, my wife sent an email to the editor of two major magazines for expecting parents, recommending them to read my blog.  One of these magazines expressed interest; the other, we never heard anything back from.

The interested magazine company was American Baby, who decided to feature “dad from day one” in their November 2010 issue, which hit magazine stands in October.  A few weeks later, my son Jack was born.  Two weeks after that, I worked my last day for my employer of five years in Nashville so that I could move my wife and newborn to my hometown in Alabama so we can raise our son near family.  For the next four months, we lived off of savings and eventually had to give ourselves a deadline of three weeks for me to find a job, or we would be forced to move back to Nashville where my employer agreed to take me back- despite all the money, effort, energy, and planning it took to move from Nashville.

We left it in God’s hands as I left my readers in suspense from March 16th until March 24th, as I too was in suspense regarding the future of where my family would live.  It was no coincidence or bout of good luck; but instead, a miracle: God provided a marketing and sales job at one of the world’s largest playground equipment companies in the world.  Plus, the day after that, I was offered the job (which I obviously took and now enjoy so much), I received an email confirmation from a major publishing company that I had been selected for a regular part-time writing job that will take “dad from day one” to the next level, like a “spin-off”.  In a few weeks, I will be ready to go into details about it…

But I will say this: As of yesterday, Parents.com (the website for Parents magazine) assigned me my first huge “non-blog” writing assignment, completely separate from my “big surprise”.  I will be writing a Father’s Day article for them and I am extremely excited about it!  Soon after, I was approached by a writer who is doing a Mother’s Day article for Parents.com who will be using some of my input for her writing.  Can I just say this?  I love Parents.com! And my wife and I were already subscribing to their magazine before they discovered me.  This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The irony of writing this one year anniversary of consistent weekly daddy blogging is that it’s in this post that I must announce that starting today, “dad from day one” is changing to a monthly format, and later into a quarterly format in January 2012. With all the writing I will be doing (as part of my “big surprise”), I have to re-prioritize my few free hours each week.  That means less new posts here in general on Scenic Route Snapshots, but the new parenting material I will be writing will be seen by more than the thousand people a day who read my site here.  I’m movin’ on up, and you, my dear readers are going with me!

So what can happen in a year?  All of the above.  The good, the bad, the suspenseful.  And thank God for it all.

Thank you, my faithful readers- even if you just recently tuned in.  You’re all a part of this.  Especially those of you who know me personally and help me out with “dad from day one” topics when I ask you on facebook.  You encourage me. And despite already being a positive kind of a guy by nature, encouragement is still a good thing.

Bonus:

A couple of months ago, I briefly mentioned that Jack will be getting a new cousin- my sister and her husband are having their first child.  They recently found out it’s a girl!  My sister’s due date is July 2nd, which means that her daughter and Jack will be in the same school grade.  Here’s the most recent picture of her:

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dad from day one: Jack Meets Max the Cockapoo (AKA “Falkor the Luck Dragon” from The Neverending Story)

Week 20 (4 months).

Fun Word of the Day-

Cockapoo: A  cross breed dog, bred for the first time in the United States, by crossing an American Cocker Spaniel or English Cocker Spaniel and a poodle (in most cases the miniature poodle or toy poodle), or by breeding cockapoo to cockapoo.  (Thanks Wikipedia!)

I have always been curious about the day Jack would finally meet his first dog. Up until this point, Jack has been introduced to several “dog like” creatures, including stuffed animal dolls of E.T. and Gizmo, but never an actual living canine.  We spent the past weekend with some good friends in Nashville who happen to own the coolest dog I have ever met.  Admittedly, I’m not a dog person.

But Max the Cockapoo is the equivalent of Falkor the Luck Dragon (that flying dog thing from The Neverending Story).  And that is a very good thing.  In fact, one of life’s biggest disappointments for me, as a kid in the ’80’s, was accepting the fact that there truly is no such thing as Luck Dragons.  Max the Cockapoo doesn’t fly through the air, but he is one of the few dogs I have met who truly accepts me as I am and who doesn’t smell bad.  He is one chillaxed dog. Therefore, he is totally my speed.

Naturally I had envisioned Jack and Max instantly becoming big buddies, since in essence, Max is the dog equivalent of Jack.  I imagined Jack smiling real big whenever Max would walk up to him and I even expected Max and Jack to take naps together.  But this bromance didn’t unfold that way, in reality.  It’s not that they didn’t get along.  It’s that Jack didn’t realize that Max was a living dog.  Instead, I believe, Jack thought Max was the shag carpet rug he’s used to lying down on in our living room at home.  To Jack, Max was simply a moving shag carpet rug.

But being the classy dog he is, Max didn’t take it personally.  However, Max still did his dogly duty of looking after Jack.  When Jack would cry, Max would rush over and sniff him.  Of course, we humans fed and changed Jack’s diapers accordingly, but Max’s habit of sniffing Jack was his way of treating him like the youngest pup in the litter.  Even when Jack pulled Max’s face fur, Max was cool about it.

It was by observing Jack and Max together that I taught myself that dogs don’t actually smell “bad things”.  Instead, every smell is simply just another interesting smell.  So the couple of times that Jack passed gas and Max hurried to come smell it, Max was simply getting a different form of a doggie treat.  At least Jack could give Max that much.  And it made great entertainment for us humans to watch.

For now, Max the Cockapoo is a white shag carpet in Jack’s eyes.  But one day, Jack will understand the difference between humans, rugs, and dogs.  And this inevitable friendship will occur.  Jack will befriend the canine equivalent of himself and the two of them will be Joe Cool buddies, at last.

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dad from day one: Extreme Makeover, Baby Edition (Jack’s First Haircut)

Week 19 (4 months).

I am conspicuously clued in to the notion that maybe you’re supposed to wait until your child is nearly a year old before they get their first haircut.  I feel like there’s this unspoken rule that you’re expected to be all sentimental and reverent about it because this means that the hair your baby was born with will be removed from them and placed in a little envelope.  But if that is the rule, I am completely comfortable in breaking it.  Because last night, I got out my clippers and cleaned up the Little Guy.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact I got my hair cut short over the weekend in order to mentally/conceptually prepare for my new job which started this week. Or maybe it was the fact that I just couldn’t shake the image of Gollum from Lord of the Rings- the way his stringy hair grew out the side of his head over his ears. Either way, I felt it was my fatherly duty to give Jack his first haircut.  So I did.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to grasp the concept that Jack may somehow be a redhead, as his hair truly appeared to be a dark reddish color in certain lights. And more recently, I realized it was true: Jack was a redhead, but only for about two weeks.  Because it’s completely obvious now, that Jack’s real hair color is not black (like he was born with) or red (as it was for two weeks), but instead (drum roll please…), Jack is officially…

BLONDE!

And I don’t mean really light brown, or dirty blonde, or technically blonde, I mean 100% whitish-blonde.  Like Billy Idol.  The “peroxide look.”

I am tempted right now to go on about the statistical miracle that is, given Jack’s family tree, but I am saving that for another entry when he turns 6 months old (in just a few weeks), after I know for sure what color his eyes will officially be.

Granted, until last night, Jack had his original black hair laying on top of his blond hair and it looked like a baby toupee.  While I could have just given Jack a buzz cut, making his hair only half an inch, the general consensus within the family audience was to leave it long enough to style as a mohawk.  So that means now, I have a blonde haired son with black tips.  He’s entering his emo/punk stage a little early.

After his first haircut ever, heeeeere’s Blondie…

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dad from day one: Our First Professional Family Portrait Session

Week 18 (4 months).

It’s funny how despite the hundreds of pictures we have taken of Jack each month since he was born in November, there are hardly any that include him with my wife and I together; in other words, no family portraits.  On top of the practicality issue, there’s also the fact that we are very particulate about our pictures not looking cheesy.  The best photographer in the world is Joe Hendricks Photography, who did our “pregnancy pics” which are featured in virtually every episode of Season One of “dad from day one” (1-36).  He also took the picture of Jack asleep on Thanksgiving Day, the one that you see featured at the top of this website as my banner.  Joe Hendricks is always my first choice.

However, I will also give “mad props” (that’s my salute to the year 2003) to JC Penney.  They have this program called “Portrait Perks” and it is definitely worth being a part of.  My wife took Jack to get his pictures taken back in December for our Christmas cards/birth announcements and we were very pleased with the results. Then over this past weekend we went back to JC Penney to get our first professional family portraits taken and to use our soon-to-expire $50 store credit we earned from our “Portrait Perks” program.  We were in and out in about an hour and 15 minutes, and after using our $50 credit, our bill was only $4.95.

Granted, we only bought about five of the 30 shots and we don’t own the copyrights to the pictures, but still I can legally share them with you today if you click on the link at the very end of this entry.  I should note that neither Joe Hendricks or JC Penney is paying me to say good things about them.  It’s just that I’m a firm believer that when someone does something right, you should say something.  Because sometimes it’s too easy to listen to negativity.  I don’t want to add to the noise.

If you’ve been keeping up with the last two “special episodes” of  “dad from day one”, you know that Monday, March 27th is the long awaited for, miraculously conceived big day, when I start my new job.  Thank God!  Infinite times!  For me, these family portraits I am sharing with you today represent the happy ending to nearly four dramatic months and the winter season, as well as the new beginning (symbolized by the color green) of our life here in Alabama.  A life that, thanks to God’s miraculous providence and not some major coincidence, is feeling pretty good right about now.

Okay, click here to see the pictures I’m referring to.

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How Teddy Ruxpin Subliminally Taught Me the Generation Y Trait of Being Motivated By Happiness, Not Money

Whether you are motivated more by wealth or happiness, it’s still a pursuit.  No guarantees for either one.

Maybe Teddy Ruxpin is the reason why today I prefer vests over neckties. Back in the Eighties, all my friends would put their fingers and pencils and crayons in their Teddy Ruxpin doll’s mouth when he talked- but my mom wouldn’t let me do that to mine because she said it would mess up his mouth. She was right. My Teddy Ruxpin worked fine for years and years after my friends’ Teddy Ruxpins ultimately broke down for good. Since Kindergarten (1986) I have been having brief flashbacks of this live-action puppet after-school special of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin I saw once where he and Grubby fly in an airship to find a hidden treasure and get captured by mud people.

Recently, some hero posted the one hour made-for-TV movie on YouTube. I watched it all the way through. Teddy Ruxpin and his friends discover a room full of golden treasures but choose instead to take only these crystal necklaces with words like “truth”, “honesty”, and “bravery” on them. Because “these things are the real treasures”. Right. Of course.  Then the bad guys take the real treasure (gold), but because their attitudes were wrong, the tresure vanishes into thin air once they touch it.

Golden treasures are typically a let-down in movies and TV shows, for the most part at least. From what I remember about most “treasure hunt” movies, the heroes ends up choosing some kind of abstract moral principle over the actual golden treasure, which is actually a trap or illusion for the villain. The only semi-exception I know of is the movie Without a Paddle. They get the moral treasure (which in this case was “life itself”) and also $100,000 cash, which the two richer friends give to the poorer friend.

Usually I am pretty quick to pick up on recycled plots, but it’s taken me until just recently to realize this one about “the real treasure”.  Interestingly, in my research about Generation Y (people born from 1982 and 2001), I learned that one of their main characteristics is that “being happy” is their main motivational drive, not money or wealth, as is the case with many of the older generations.  I would have to believe it was this common “love/life/joy is better than gold” theme in entertainment during the Eighties and Nineties that has something to do with the way Generation Y is wired.  Though I was born in 1981, I was still born close enough to the generational switch that I admit my main motivation in life is happiness, not material wealth.  And maybe that’s dangerous- because for some people, finding financial success could actually be easier than finding perceived happiness.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”  –John Milton