Memeology - The Ten Things I Tell Myself Every Day

This meme's not been around for very long, it comes from @angoewright78's lovely blog mumofthreeboys and I was tagged by @mummyglitzer who you can find over at Mummyglitzer.  

I suppose I'm coming at this from a bit of a different angle to the other examples I've read, firstly because I'm a man, and secondly because I don't have my baby yet!  Hopefully that will make it interesting in a different way to others I've seen, I'm sure some of you will remember feeling some of these before your littl'uns made their debut.

Here we go then:

1.  That no matter how early 6:45am feels now, I must cherish it; soon it will be a lie-in.

2.  That one day I will find the job that I want to keep doing, and doing well.

3.  That I can and will cope with whatever fatherhood throws at me.

4.  That my continuing addiction to RIDICULOUS and TIME CONSUMING games on Facebook must come to an end.

5.  That, although I'm about to gain a massive amount of responsibility, I'll still going to find a way to do some of the things I like doing.

6.  That I will do everything I can to help Mrs L do the same.

7.  That the risk of the Terminator films coming true really is rather minimal (but we SHOULD still be wary...)

8.  That I could lose loads of weight if I really had to, but that cheese isn't going to eat itself.

9.  That I will be a good dad.

10.  That I WILL be a good dad.

I probably could have put that last point for every one of these, but that wouldn't have been very good would it?

Now, with the usual disclaimer (no obligation, I know it's a hassle, etc etc.) I now tag a few other dads whose own tellings I would like to read:

@theJdaddy

@slightlysubdad

@SAHDandproud

@_firsttimedaddy

@TomBriggs79 (though I appreciate this may be far from his list of priorities just now, congrats on the new arrival!)

If anyone else has done it already, and wants to point me in the direction of their answers, I'll pop along and read them!

On knowing nothing, and realising it...

I once heard the following quote, or something similar, being said to a non-parent who had just given a parent some advice on parenting. 

“Enjoy the time before you have kids, it’s the only time when you’ll have all the answers” – Someone cleverer than me.

If it is a quote from some clever and well known sort then I can’t remember who, sorry about that.  All I know is that it stuck with me.

Me and Mrs L have often found ourselves chatting about other people’s approaches to parenting, usually not long after their child has done something delightful, like kick me in the shin or drop a mobile phone into the hole at the back of a speaker, never to be seen again.  Why, we wonder, has the child not been taught that these things are UNACCEPTABLE?  Why, following the event, do the parents roll their eyes, adopt a facial expression which somehow speaks the words “C’est La Vie” and shrug in a manner which suggests utter defeat?  Why, why, why aren’t they seeing the obvious solution that we are discussing?

To a non-parent it all looks so simple!  We, the childless many, who can hand the baby back when it begins to cry (or, if we were feeling particularly brave/cocky and tried to console it, when we’ve worked out we don’t know how) are often at a loss to the reasons for this apparently shoddy and slapdash parenting.

Well, with seven weeks left until our baby is due to arrive I have finally shed my naivety.  The realisation has dawned: having a baby is not easy.  Having a child is going to be a challenge.  Parenting well will be the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. 

I’ll be honest, I knew that anyway.  I’m a bit of a “head in the sand” sort of guy though, so I’ve been ignoring it.  But now the realisation has hit me, and I can’t un-realise it.  So I’m crapping myself.  Oh well, once the baby is with us I’ll probably be too busy dealing with him crapping himself to worry too much about it, right?  Maybe.  All I know now is that there’s another side to this adventure we’re about to embark on.

So tell me parents (not my parents, they’re not reading, I mean you), what jewel like snippets of advice would you give an expectant dad who is only just taking in the enormity of the task ahead?

A Dad is Born - The BBC's Take on Fatherhood

Last night BBC2 treated its viewers to something unusual - a look at becoming a parent from the Dad's perspective.  Obviously, with just a couple of months to go until I join the parent club, I made sure I was settled into the sofa with a mug of tea.  I was expecting a heart warming hour of modern dads-to-be sharing the run up to the birth of their child.

What I actually got wasn't too far from that; Jamie, a recruitment consultant from London, was first on the screen.  Like most dads he's been seeking out and digesting all the information he can on what to expect, potential problems, necessary purchases.  His biggest worry is that he won't bond with the baby in the early days.  I can relate to Jamie; he worries himself into sleepless nights when the baby is late, wonders when he will actually start to feel like a dad, is very obviously a caring husband and dad who wants to do right.  He's also clearly completely terrified.  Yes, Jamie, you were pretty much what I was expecting.

Next up was Victor, immigrant from Hungary and worker of long hours driving a mini-cab in London.  Victor's dad wasn't there for him when he grew up, except to administer beatings.  Victor is endearing, but not quite the "new man" (is that even a thing any more?) that Jamie appears to be.  With statements like "I can't take a woman seriously if she doesn't cook" and his description of how he used to view women (synopsis: too many women, too little time) Victor was clearly not out to get the female viewership onside.  Still, he says he's changed, and there's a good display of teary blubbing to accompany the birth of his daughter, followed by a palpable sense that, though he's not sure what he can do to help with the baby, he really wants to.  Unlike Jamie, by the end of the programme Victor is looking and sounding confident, he considers himself a dad and has a mission to be a better example than his own.

Father number three is Greg.  Greg is a motivational speaker, a multi-millionaire who teaches other people how to make money.  Greg has a Lamborghini Murcielago with the number plate PR05PER.  Greg also has a Range Rover (his baby car) in which he spends equal time looking at the road and the screen of his laptop, which he uses to inform the viewer of how much money he's making.  Greg is in the middle of a divorce from his wife (and mother of his three year old son) and is expecting the birth of his second child by his current girlfriend.  Greg is utterly detestable in pretty much every way, and therefore compelling.  I think Kira Phillips, the film maker, even tried to make him look like less of a tool.  But by doing things like directing the camera crew on where best to shoot from and bemoaning the loss of money from being present at the birth (£3.5 million, which I'm sure even the staunchest lefty would regret not having) he does absolutely nothing throughout the whole programme to make me think he is anything but a completely vile individual.  At least he seemed to like the baby, though I'm sure he won't see much of him anyway.

It was an entertaining enough hour, and if I can say I'm as thoughtful and caring as either Jamie or Victor once my wife and I have our own little one I'll be happy.  Thankfully there's absolutely zero chance of me being like Greg, I simply couldn't afford to be.

If you missed it, you can watch it on BBC iPlayer here

Hello, I'm new here...

Welcome to my new blog.  As the name suggests (to Bristolians at least) it’s going to be about a baby.  My first baby.  It’s also going to be about me, and how I cope with the aforementioned baby. 

Anyone who is already a parent will hopefully see the potential for good material here; since announcing to the world that my wife and I were starting off on the nine month journey to parenthood I’ve lost count of the stories I’ve been told by people who have already trodden that well worn path.  Many of those stories have been hilarious, many more have been horrific, and a small number of them have been heartbreaking.  I’ll be honest, I’m hoping, wishing, that the stories I post here will only ever be one of the first two.

I don’t know how this blog will pan out, just as I have no idea how my baby will turn out, or how my new role as a Dad will turn out, but I hope that I’ll entice a few readers on the way.  If anything I write can help anyone out, that’s great, if it can raise a smile on the face of one person doing battle with a newborn at 3am then I’ll be happy (even, perhaps especially, if that one person is me).

Well, that’s an introduction then, on with the story so far…