saddad.net

First an apology

It has been more than a bit quiet here for a while, in fact it has been dead here for many months. I must apologise, although I suspect I am talking to myself here anyway, but that’s fine.

The main reason for the lack of posting is that life has been, and continues to be, really hectic. As my kids grow older they seem to be even more demanding of me and my time.  No-one told me this, I thought it was going to be the other way, and that they needed you most when they are babies!

It’s not the changing of nappies, feeding and night-time waking so much nowadays (although at least several of those are still occurring together) it is the requirement for active involvement all the time.  I am not complaining, I’m just saying that it takes so much effort that it leaves me with very little enthusiasm and energy for anything else.

Part of this is just me getting older, I feel like I should have had my kids 10 years ago, but I really didn’t want them in my twenties, I was too busy having a social life and those things where you go to another Country and sit on a beach and just relax, read a book, and drink fully inclusive booze from 10:00 a.m., what were they called now….?

Holidays from Hell

Holidays are NOT the same once you have kids in tow. Relaxing is not really part of any holiday any more, instead there is far more to worry about and organise.  Again, I am not complaining, I am just telling it like it is.

Holidays with kids are rarely fun for the adults, at least, in my experience of taking a 5 and 2 year old along (as well as in the 5 years before now since they arrived).

And yet, being the Sad Dad that I am, I wouldn’t really want to go away for more than a couple of days without my kids, because I love them to bits and want to share all the good stuff with them and their Mum.

So that is where the rollercoaster of emotions comes in.  One minute you could all be having a laugh at some family attraction, thinking that this is what you are supposed to be like, and that the Apple, Disney and Gap adverts were based on you and your family.

Then just milliseconds later something happens making one, or both, of your kids to have a complete meltdown.  This will invariably be in front of all the other (seemingly perfect) families and even worse the non-children owning people around you (who already think you shouldn’t have kids there when they came on holiday to relax and get away from all of that).

So your day takes a quick nosedive into parental hell and you want to do nothing other than chuck the kids in the car and scarper back to your accommodation, out of sight of everyone and their accusing glares, while you guilt trip your kids into behaving tomorrow or we won’t go to ‘the family attraction we have been promising for months to keep you quiet at home’.

That’s just one of the dips in the parenting rollercoaster.  I have more to relate, but that is probably enough for today.

I do intend to write more, just for my own sanity really, so if you want to help me out, please subscribe or check back soon for more of my musings, or not, you decide, I’ll be here talking to myself either way.

I love my kids, sometimes they make me laugh, sometimes I am super-proud, other times I am an emotional wreck, but happy; all because of the things that they do or say. I report all of this stuff on their personal blogs which only family and close friends see. But what I don’t tend to report over on their personal blogs is the less positive side of being a Dad, that’s what this place is for (as well as the good stuff about being a Dad of course, just look at any of my earlier posts).

Today, I was just wanted to talk about how very, very, tired, nay exhausted, I feel all the time (by the way, this includes my Wife, she feels this way too). It isn’t just today either. It has been going on for many months now, so long that I am not sure at all when the tiredness began. Actually, if I were to think about it carefully enough, it began soon after my Daughter was born over 4 years ago, when the sleepless nights started.

Yes, that’s it! It started with those nights where you are woken up every two hours to feed your new baby or change their nappy (which you do with your eyes still closed).  I honestly don’t think I have ever caught up on my sleep since then. Every night it is a real struggle to stay awake until about 10:30 p.m.

I have a lovely mid-range mountain bike sat gathering dust; I have unfinished iMovie projects on various hard drives; I have hundreds of photos that need processing in Lightroom and tens more that need keywording, editing and uploading to Flickr from iPhoto; as well as nearly 1000 unread news items in my RSS feed reader, not to mention hours and hours of Twitter stream to catch up on (you know, just in case I missed something really important). Yet, I haven’t got the energy to even start on these tasks, let alone finish any of them.

That is precisely why this is the first post here for several months, it was the start of Spring (well, April) the last time I posted, and it is the middle of Summer now!

And then there is everyday life that requires some attention too. You know, spending time with the Kids, eating, drinking, going to work…

I think there is a cumulative effect of many years of disturbed and reduced sleep patterns. This has all built up to make me feel like I do now.

And, of course, I feel guilty. Partly for neglecting things, but most of all for not enjoying the early years of Fatherhood, and my Childrens’ lives so far, as much as everyone tells me I should be.

Is it just me? Do other Parents, or for that matter does anyone else, feel the same way?

Comments very welcome!

When my daughter, our first child, was born nearly four years ago, she obviously slept in our room initially. I slept very little for the first few nights, not because she was crying (that came a few days later) but because I was paranoid that she would stop breathing at any moment.

I would lie awake in the very small hours making as little noise as possible so as not to wake my exhausted wife. In the darkness my hearing became hyper-sensitive, listening for the slightest movement or sound from our brand new little baby.

As soon as I heard her move slightly, or sigh, or let out a little whimper, I knew she was alright and the sense of relief was immense. I hadn’t realised just how tense I was until I relaxed at that moment.

With the arrival of our second baby, I was just as bad, but he was a noisy sleeper. So most of the time I knew, sub-consciously, that he was Ok and I could go back to sleep. It didn’t stop me waking up regularly to check though.

Now they are both older and a little more robust (my daughter is nearly 4 and my son nearly 18 months), I am not so worried or paranoid. But there are times when I miss that vulnerability in them, that helpless stage when they rely entirely on you as their parent for everything. It is hard to describe how that feels at the time, you feel strong and uncontrollably paternal, and fiercely protective, all at the same time.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want those days back permanently or anything like that. But as they both grow older, especially H who is now at Nursery and then proper school in September, I know they don’t need me and their Mum quite as much, and it makes me sad and a little bit remorseful.

The reason I am writing this post? A few weeks ago I had several days in one week where I got home from work after the kids were in bed, and I hadn’t seen them before I left either. I walked past their door that night, they were both sound asleep, and I had the strongest paternal urge I’ve ever had since either of them had moved out of our room. I just wanted to run in to their room and grab them and make sure everything was Ok, and make sure I hadn’t missed anything from those few days.

I couldn’t of course, and I didn’t dare even to creep in and sit on their beds to check either because our kids are so easy to wake up (a bit like me) and so difficult to get back to sleep again (like me).

So I just stood there at the door, listening to their heavy, contented, breathing, and I was immediately reminded of what I told you about at the start of this post.

If you are a parent, how about you?  Ever caught yourself checking they are still breathing?

I have taken my Daughter out in a Bike trailer a few times, especially when she was a bit younger but, much to my dismay, my wife hates to ride a bike. One of my favourite things to do!

So I normally end up taking H out on her own, but I am embarrassed to admit that since my Son has been born I haven’t taken them both out in the trailer ever. This is something I think I need to rectify, but I am worried they may kill each other before I get to my destination as there is not a lot of room in the trailer, so I am putting it off for now.

Anyway, the reason I mention this, is that I saw today via a Twitter cycling friend, a link to this article. The Danish Dad pictured here has done a great job in rigging something up to take his two kids out on the bike with him. Although in the comments it is suggested he add a bit more protection to the lower part for the sleeping baby!

I thought I would share it here, because I am always thinking of ways to involve both my kids in the noble pursuit of cycling. I spent many Summers permanently on my bike when I was younger and thought nothing of cycling miles across town on a Saturday afternoon. I want my kids to be as at home and at peace on a bike as I was, and still am.

In fact, writing this now has really made me yearn for a good long bike ride. If only I didn’t have this stupid sore throat, headache and cold, I would, honest…

As much as we parents love our kids and enjoy spending time with them, there are a few (some would say many) days when you feel like you are just ‘hanging on in there’, struggling and fighting your way to that magic time. This is the time after the kids have gone to bed and finally stopped shouting or calling to each other and settled down to sleep. Sometimes, this is several hours after you put them to bed!

The truth is, you cannot relax until you are sure they are asleep, but when they are, and you have an hour or two before you go to bed yourself, ahhhh, what bliss!

On that subject, this caustic and often hilarious comic strip is primarily photography based, but it made me smile and really struck a chord, check out the WTD site for more witty comic strips too:

Link to original cartoon.

(Update: 11/02/09 – changed the Post title to match the Cartoon’s ‘Magic Hour’)

So we finally got a decent covering of snow here on the South Coast of England. Well, not as much as other parts of the country, including London, but we did get just about enough to make a more substantial snowman than the last one from a few days ago.

And here he is, my Daughter has decided to call him Freddy (the snowdwarf was called Sam apparently, no idea where the names come from). We had to act fast as the snow had already turned to light sleet, and the scant ground covering was beginning to turn to mush.

I must say, the saddest part of all of this is, I was really quite excited about building the snowman.  H?  She just wanted to throw lumps of snow down my neck, because she thought it was so funny when she did it by accident the other day.

I was getting annoyed becuase I was working on the quick construction of a passable snowman to photograph for posterity, and she was determined to just have fun slinging snow around.  It was almost like she had never seen the stuff before. Tsk, Kids these days!

So there it is.  I wanted to create this little ‘memory-moment’ for my Daughter; her first big snowfall, rushing out to make her first proper snowman with her old Dad, and the memories that would last for years, just like all the films tell me I should.  And it made me lose focus on the main reason we were out there, to have some fun together before the snow melted.

That is why I am a self-confessed Sad Dad.  I am all about the sentimentality of it, and H, she is just living life like a three year old should.  Lesson learnt?  Probably not!

I have just received an internal call from the House (I’m out in the shed/office). Expecting it to be my wife, I answered it and heard my Daughter’s tiny voice say “Um, do you want to build a snowman with me?”. Aw!

So I have promised to finish work a bit earlier, as it is Friday and go out in the garden for Snowdwarf 2. It is still snowing, quite heavily, at the moment as I type this, so hopefully there will be a bit more snow to play with this time.

I’ve got to get as much done as I can before it gets dark though. Here’s a photo of the snow beginning to settle, finally. Come on Dorset, snow for the weekend!

As I now have a WordPress blog, I thought it would be a good idea to try out the WordPress application for the iPhone and see how it does.

I am quite a geeky Dad and so, if I can find a way to use my main Gadget, the iPhone, I will. This post has been composed and edited entirely on the iPhone WordPress application.

What I really like about this app is a simple thing, being able to save a local Draft. This allows me to compose a post in stages, which is invariably how it happens. I can then pick up the Draft post and continue with it later.

Categories and Tags can be added here too, which is very useful and they are then available in WordPress back on the Website.

I have just amended the Category allocation for one of my existing posts. Checking the blog now I can see it has amended this for me straight away.

The in-application preview of current posts looks good, it’s using Safari as far as I can tell, but the Preview did not work for this post while composing.

Adding a photo was straightforward, either from my synced iPhoto library off the Mac, or you can take a photo on the iPhone to add to your post. It does not seem to have any options for photo placement however, and seems to automatically put them at the bottom of the post. Below are two photos, one the snowman’s face closeup taken on my digicam and synced via iPhoto, and the other taken on my iPhone just now of his remains! Sorry if that’s a bit macabre, but that’s just the way it is.

So, first impressions from this sad and geeky Dad are good. And you can’t grumble at the price (Free).

Today has been a good day, so far. Last night we had what would be a light sprinkling of snow to most people, a blizzard for us. We rarely if ever see snow here in our little part of England’s South Coast. The sea air does a good job of protecting us from such meteorological wonders.

So, when I saw last night that it was snowing enough to actually cover the cars and the road outside, I’m sad to say I went to bed excited about the possibility of building a snowman, or at least having a snowball fight, with my little girl in the morning. She is 3½, and although we had a dusting of snow last year, she has never thrown a snowball in her short little life, and I feel bad about that.

Waking up this morning to the shouts and screams of the neighbour’s kids playing in the snow, I couldn’t wait to get H up and take her outside. Before breakfast we were dressed, our coats, hats and gloves were on, and we were outside doing our best to scrape enough snow together to make a snowball.

H loved it, and quickly got the hang of slinging snowballs in my direction. One even landed on my neck and proceeded to melt slowly, running down my neck and soaking into my jumper.

I set about building, not really a snow ‘man’, more a snow ‘dwarf’, a mini-snowman if you like. Scraping all the snow off of our cars and the pavement outside our house to create the masterpiece you see below. It is so pathetic that I felt embarrassed to be involved in its creation to be honest, even more so when H declared that she was cold and hungry and walked off, leaving me on my own to finish it.

Already, by the end of the day, all the snow has gone, melted away by sleety rain that came along later in the day. Sam (as H has called him) is still there. He’s a resilient little thing, and a small reminder of a Proud Dad moment, my Daughter’s first snowball ‘fight’.

I don’t know about you, but when something is really good I want to tell someone about it. Actually, when something is really bad I also usually want to tell someone about just how bad it is. And sometimes, when stuff is just middling, I might want to at least mention it to someone else.

Well, that’s why this blog is here.

As my ‘About’ page mentions, I have two lovely children (not that I am at all biased), and I am constantly aware that my time with them is never to be repeated. As of this writing, my Daughter is 3½ years old, and my Son is 15 months old, and every day they do or say something new.

I am a sentimentalist, I admit it. So I have tried to capture these not-to-be-repeated moments in photographs, video, and blogs for each of the kids, which are for family and friends to look at and comment on.

This blog is about some of the above, and a place for me to vent, reach out to other parents, talk about the tough stuff, the fantastic moments, and to try and give an insight into my, and quite often my wife’s, journey through this madness that is called Parenthood.

I hope that you will join me, and check back often to see what we are up to and our current trials and triumphs as a family. Please leave comments if you want and share your thoughts, but keep it clean!