Moving Right Along

Hello Everyone,

Well, it took a bit longer than expected (although Indy was 11 days overdue, so I shouldn’t really be at all surprised), but I am happy to announce that our new site has just gone ‘live’.

You can now find us at www.40YrOldDad.com.

While our email subscribers will continue to receive email notifications of new posts as before, (no problemo, amigos), WordPress.com followers will only see new posts in the WordPress Reader.

But for our WordPress.com followers who do wish to continue to receive email updates of new posts, be sure to pop by the new site and subscribe with your email address in the ‘Subscribe’ box.

Big thanks to tech-extraordinaire, Alanna from WebBabble, for helping us launch the new site.

We sure hope you like it. See you there 🙂

On the move to 40YrOldDad.com

Even Stevens

3-2-1…

That’s it!!

7.27pm: Marks the point at which our little man has now lived longer on the outside of the womb, than the time spent inside the womb.

Which officially makes us…

Even-Stevens!

He’s as much mine as he is your’s now, Mumma. (Don’t try to defeat my logic, it will only end in tears for all us…and by ‘us’, I mean…me).

You’ve spent 41 weeks and 4 days with him on the inside and I’ve spent 41 weeks and 4 days on the outside. I know you were there too…tut-tut. Hush, my love….AND SLEEP! (I’m having a moment).

So, for you little man, it’s like going to bed at 9:30pm instead of 6:00pm. It’s a whole new world opening up before your outstretched arms…“Wow, what happens now? I’ve never been out this long.”

I can only tell you this, it all gets so much better from here. A whole world of experiences to gather up, grab hold of and venture out into.

So many things to look forward to like walking, running, bikes, girls, school, jobs, rent, cars, bills, university, experimentation, proper jobs, proper girls, improper decisions, fun, family…the list goes on!

But one thing at a time, young man. Don’t be in a hurry to grow up.

We’ll discuss your rent, next week.

World’s Greatest Dad?…World’s Biggest Heel

It was a day I hoped would never come.

I’ve prided myself on being the cool calm collected one.

A dad so cool, the sun needs a sweater when it shines on me!

The dad who flows like water, who bends in the wind, goes with the flow and smells like teenspirit. (Wait…is that a cologne? I have no idea).

The kind of dad who exists only in family sitcoms. Loves his family, does crazy and outlandish things, quick with the funny remarks, dishes out sage worldly advice and never…ever…EVER…raises his voice in anger.

The kind of dad where Zen is my friend and karma is my confidanteė…

So, what went wrong?

To put it simply…

Daddy growled at me 😦

And boy, do I feel like the World’s Biggest Heel.

What would Chuck Norris do? Or better yet, what would Bill Cosby, Mike Brady or Alex P Keaton’s Dad, do?

Here’s the scene:

Baby’s so tired, he can hardly keep his little red eyes open, BUT…won’t have a bar of sleeping. Daddy Cool tries for 40 minutes to settle him off to sleep, all in vain. Baby then has poopy nappy. DC needs to change it and D-scovers a HUGE deposit in his Access account. Baby is still not happy and squirms all over the change table like a ninja playing laser-tag and as Daddy struggles with a handful of poop up to his elbow in one hand, baby decides to…crocodile death roll in his own poop and almost Nadia Comeneci it over the edge of the change table. At which point, Daddy Cool snapped…

STOP IT!

Indy froze and stared at me like a deer in headlights. His face, red with anguish and upset, eyes on the brink of dam-busting through glistening tears. He didn’t move a muscle and I could finish cleaning him up without a fuss.

And, I felt…ashamed and terrible.

Memories of me running into the middle of an argument between my parents and yelling out, “STOP IT!”, came suddenly flowing in.

And I can only imagine how he must have felt. The one man he relies on for laughs and tickles, for story book voices, for songs in the bath and whispers in his ears, suddenly went BOOM!

I cuddled him tight and apologised profusely. He seemed to accept it, but I feel like I dug a hole in my heart. I know he forgives me, but can I forgive myself?

Hopefully…

 

Teething – Stocks Limited, Get Your’s Today

Oh man, teething… how cool is that? I mean, everybody tells you about it, but they forget to tell you just how absolute fun, it can be!

Let’s play Baby Chefs. Where I’m an aspiring chef preparing you a lovely meal and you can be Gordon Ramsay, telling me it’s all sh*t, you’re having none of it and send it ALL back to the kitchen.

Like guessing games? Okay…which cheek is redder?

Or, the perennial favourite…throw up in a public place? The fun never stops!

And productive, my god…totally!

It’s great for your health. Forget aerobics, patooey to pilates, scrap the stairmaster and throw away your old exercise machine forever. Who needs a gym membership when you’ve got, teething!

It’s great for your heart rate and what an amazing aerobic workout, just by getting up maybe, 60-70 times a night! It’s great for your self confidence because you pass the point where you give a damn what anybody else thinks of you, and stress…wow, you look thinner already! Just from lack of sleep and not eating properly! And don’t worry about those love handles, the bags under your eyes and furrows in your brow totally distracts anyone’s eye from looking at those unsightly bulges.

And teething is fantastic at giving you time back with your family. No more unruly dinner parties or bothersome get togethers with friends you really, really like. Nothing helps clear your schedule faster and easier than teething. But don’t take my word for it, listen to our satisfied customers…

Mumma: “I really love snuggling up in bed with my husband, but thanks to ‘teething’, I can now enjoy the whole bed to myself while hubby sleeps on the couch with the baby monitor, so I can get at least 3 minutes of sleep. Thank you, ‘teething'”

Daddy: “Having such wonderful friends and family that we love spending time with, living all over the place and with petrol prices the way they are, it can cost us a small fortune meeting up with them all. But thanks to ‘teething’ our social calendar has never had so many cancellations. I don’t have to drive anywhere! Thank you, ‘teething'”

So, act now. Get yours today!

“But, my son only has one tooth.”

Then wait, there’s more…(to come)…

Our operators are standing up inside their cots, to take your orders.

Call this number…“000”. International orders, phone “911”

“Teething” – fun for the whole family.

Call NOW!!

Bub Tooth Time Machine

As a kid growing up, I was obsessed with two things. Collecting bread tags…and time travel. (Uh…forget I mentioned the first thing)…

Wide-eyed and tousled hair (yes, I did have hair once and I assure you, it was quite tousled), I disappeared into TV shows like Time Tunnel, Doctor Who, Quantum Leap, Sliders, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, Ready Steady Cook (again, forget that last one). I built my own play TARDIS in the backyard and fantasised about travelling through time and space.

Then came the movies; The Time Machine, The Philidelphia Experiment, Timecop, Time Bandits, Terminator and Terminator 2, DejaVu, Austin Powers, The Time Traveller’s Wife, Hot Tub Time Machine and of course Back to the Future, just to name a few. All fuel for the Mr.Fusion that is, the Delorean of my mind, flitting backwards and forwards in time and space trying to figure out the hows and the whys.

And I have my own theories on what’s possible and what isn’t, but don’t get me started on that, I already alluded to the existence of temporal displacement in an earlier blog, (Mumma’s already dropped off at the very first mention of the words, time travel).

And there’s been a myriad of vehicles, devices and methods that people have used to get there. Elegant Santa sleigh-esque Time Machines, Deloreans, trains, boats, spinning psychedelic discs, plasma balls, phone boxes, hot tubs. You name it, they’ve tried it. But…

Who’d have thought the power to travel backwards in time, is located within…

One solitary, little…baby tooth.

For, just as things were progressing quite nicely in the “sleeping through the night” department, the emergence of that little tooth has transported us all back to 1928. Back when Indy was waking up every few hours and Mumma and I would look at each other, me in my high pants zoot suit and handlebar moustache, she in her flapper fashion bodice and feathered headdress, thinking…

“Haven’t we already done this?”

But alas, it seems we’re destined to relive the past, at least until we can find a way to get back to the future. But I’m guessing, we’ll need a lot more teeth to make that journey happen.

Until then, we’ll rely on our faithful friends, Panadol and amber neck beads, to get us through the night. Mumma can take the Panadol and I’ll try the beads, they seem to help Indy sleep, maybe they’ll work for me?

“Great Scott, Doc. This is really heavy”.

Relax folks, it’s all relative…

Spreading My Seed

Well, today was probably the manliest Dad-thing I’ve managed to accomplish since the creation of my son. And coincidentally, both things involved the spreading of seed.

For months now, the lawn in our backyard has been dying a slow and agonising death, much like the Hollywood career of Lindsay Lohan. But unlike “Lilo”, there’s a pretty good chance of recovery if I’ve done my homework, properly.

After spending the day gittin’ down’n dirty with ma hoes (yo), I got all up in my backyard’s face, woz all over dat sh*t and got to the biznez of whipin’ that lawnz ass, foshizzel.

In other words, I dug up the yard, fertilised the ground, chucked a bit of topsoil around the place and sprinkled in the new lawn seed. Nothing makes a dad feel more like a real man, than using the word “topsoil” in any given context. And I wear the blister on my thumb, like a stinging badge of honor.

So, now I’m keeping my blistered fingers crossed that I’ve done enough to get the lawn bowl rolling. Now it’s up to the universe. With regular watering, hopefully, in a few weeks time, Indy will have a luxurious lawn to run his crawling fingers through, as opposed to the sparse ghastly comb over of a yard we had previously.

Can you dig it?

I know that you can.

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The Notso-Fast Weekend Getaway

Easter is synonymous for many things. Eggs, chocolate, rabbits, men with beards, hot cross buns, walking zombies and of course…traffic.

So, with that in mind, we decided to get a head start on the weekend and leave for Oma & Opa’s (a marathon 4.5hr drive interstate), on Thursday afternoon. That way, we hoped to avoid hirsute men of all descriptions and while Mumma packed the bags, I packed the car.

Cramming the last of the contents of a small European nation into our matchbox sized sedan (does he really need more than 1200 changes of clothes?) The “eye-roll” suggests, “yes”, the scowl suggests, “just keep packing and shut the hell up”.

Packing Indy into the car, Mumma asks, “Got everything?”
“I think so.” Good, and as the final clip on Indy’s car seat clicks into place, I have to duck back in the house for a quick pit stop before we leave. Except that…

“Uh, honey? You locked the door.”

“Yeah, you said you had everything. We’re ready to go.”
“I don’t have my keys.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“No…they’re still inside, on the bench.”

The second hand on my watch stops. Time stands still. Not a sound is heard. Just complete and utter silence (somewhere in the woods, a tree falls)…

Insert raucous LAUGHTER.

Panic-laughter-panic-panic-more laughter.

After unsuccessfully picking the lock with my cricket bat, at 4:23pm, we rang the real estate. They had a spare key, but we had to get there by 5:30pm when they close for the Easter weekend and reopen on Tuesday. Thankfully, Mumma’s sister lives nearby and saw our smoke signal for help. I borrowed her car and drove off for the key, while Mumma pulled Indy out of the car and played with him on a rug in the garage until my return.

We can only imagine what went on in his mind…

“That’s the weirdest car trip I’ve ever had. You buckle me in, we sit in the garage, then you buckle me out. Bloody car-tease. Make up your mind, for god’s sake.”

However, our one hour delay saw us drive passed the aftermath of three major collisions on the freeway, all within a kilometre of each other. If we’d left on time, we might have been right in the thick of it. Maybe a bearded man was keeping an eye on us after all?

Happy Easter, everyone!!

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Stand And Deliver

Brutally hard at work in my office (see: trolling through Facebook), my heart leapt to my throat when my lovely wife sent out a scream from the living room…

“Quick, to the batmobile…er, baby’s room!”

Batteries to power, turbines to speed, paternal instincts kicked into high gear! Nadia Comaneci’d it over my office chair, nabbed a cricket bat mid-flight, kicked the door open, wide-eyed and alert like Shaun of the Dead, ready to wail the willow over any would-be zombie assailant within 3 miles of my son.

Fully expecting our little bloke to be choking, something fallen on him, wrapped in a cord or going Mano-a-Mano with a giant lizard creature from the Gorn Hegemony (see: Star Trek: Kirk VS Gorn), preparing my best Charlton Heston impression…

“Get your filthy paws off him, you damn dirty ape!”

We stood in total disbelief at the sight that befell us…

There we were, eyeball to eyeball with a grinning little cherub, STANDING for the very first time in his cot. Having pulled himself up the bars on his own. His grin so wide, it pushed out two windows in his room and a look of accomplishment and satisfaction I haven’t seen since I heard we were having a boy.

Give me a heart attack next time, sheesh.

But mummy and I looked at each other and we both felt it…a disturbance in The Force. Our little baby is growing up. And like all good mystery suspense stories, it doesn’t stop there. For there is something else brewing, just under the surface. Waiting, biding its time to burst out and emerge from its little cocoon…

His first tooth.

Just below the surface, ready to pop any day now.

Oh my lord, it has begun…

Working Out “Indy-Gym”

Space: the final frontier (how apparent that we’re quickly running out of it). These are the voyages of the commando crawling, Indy-prise. His 8 month mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before…

Gymbaroo!!

(Not to be confused with the Boy Scout’s gigantic week long Jamboree, nor a 3 day festival of Jim Carrey and Jim Belushi films, Jimbaroo – and if there is such a thing…god help us all).

It is in fact, the biggest playmat exercise adventure experience (the size of a basketball court), that Indy has ever seen AND…a heralded saviour and answer to my prayers when wondering how many times can our little bloke circle the couch on his belly, play with the same plastic blocks day after day, figure out my tax receipts and change the oil in my car…all without getting bored?

And now that Indy’s unquenchable thirst for investigating has hit an all-time high (he’s a nosey little bugger), I feel like Roy Scheider in Jaws…

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Gymbaroo to the rescue. From the minute we walked in and was presented with the plethora of climbing, jumping, rolling and textural equipment…Indy went bananas! Like Charlie Sheen and tiger blood, there’s just no stopping him. Crawling around, singing songs, playing games, learning and having fun all at the same time (flashbacks to his conception), it’s so great to see our boy grow in confidence and tackle more challenging apparatus’ (apperati?), week after week.

And the great part for daddy is that, with all the excitement and stimulation, our little boy is plum tuckered out by the time we get home. Which means I get a few spare moments to myself during the day for important things, like figuring out just how he did change the oil in my car in the first place. And he’d better not have adjusted the seat, it took me ages to get it just right.

Syncing of You

I’ve heard that when women spend a lot of time living together that their cycles start to sync, but I never thought the same thing of men.

Until today.

My boy and I are spending so much time together that I suddenly realised, my god…

We’re on the same cycle!

We sleep, we eat…(and poop)…all on the same cycle. Put it down to routine, male bonding or effective time management, but there in lies the dilemma of needing desperately to go at the exact same time you’re changing your son’s nappy. It’s either you or me kid…one of us has to go (though, technically both of us).

So, what’s a dad to do?

Abandon the lad and leap for the latrine, possibly scarring him for life with issues of abandonment and leaving him sprawled on the change table in his own juices, like a half-stuffed turkey at Christmas?

Or grab hold of the change table and drag it with you like a scene from Platoon, dragging fallen comrades to the chopper (leave no man behind), as you back your way into the bathroom to conduct your business?

Or bite down on a block of wood with crossed legs, your body twisting like a pretzel, squinting through tears as you race to address your son’s needs, before rupturing internally or exploding like a frog in a microwave?

It used to be easier when he was younger, but now that he’s commando crawling quicker than Jeff Thompson avoiding A Current Affair cameras, I can’t just pop him on the floor and leave him unattended (there’s never a Matthew Newton available to lie on the floor with him, when you need one). And if he needs changing the same time as you’re “going”, there’s always the risk of him spreading a trail through the house that requires an urgent call to Drytron to shampoo the carpets.

So, short of matching “His” and “His” adult and child diapers, or a tandem toilet bowl built for two, I guess I have to just grin and bare it. Unless there’s a way to unsync our cycles? Anyone out there have Justin Timberlake on speed dial? I need to know how he broke up NSYNC.