Share    
Archives
Charities

Posts Tagged ‘Dad’

Fatherhood²: How well do you know your Cbeebies presenters? [QUIZ]

As a regular Cbeebies viewer (with the children I hasten to add – well, mostly!) I often find myself discussing the channel and it’s shows with other parents. Whilst my son’s biggest worry is how Kwazzi and Barnacles will get out of their latest scrape, I enjoy the usual parental activities – internally reviewing the shows, trying to avoid singing the theme tunes in the office, deciding which presenter I’d most like to have a drink with – I’m sure we’ve all been there.

I’ve written about Cbeebies a few times before (“Fatherhood²: I Know I’m a Cbeebies Dad Because…“, “Fatherhood²: Cbeebies next show – “Sh!t Driver Dan Says”?“) and I follow a number of the channel’s stars (both human and animated!) on Twitter – where I enjoy the occassional glimpses in to their ‘real’ lives. And I know many other parents do too.
Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Fatherhood²: A Day in the Life of a Stay-at-home Dad

Well, after over 9 months dreading it, the day has finally come for my wife to step back in to her other job. She isn’t going back properly until mid-April, but her school (and I suspect many other industries) offer returning-to-work mums the ability to take a number of “Keep in Touch” days throughout their maternity leave, and that’s what she’s doing today.

All together Sara will be taking 5 of these “KIT” days before she returns properly, and because our full-time care arrangements for the boys don’t officially begin until that point, I’m taking 5 days off work (over the next 4 weeks) to look after Robert and Freddie on these days.

Nothing particularly out-of-the-ordinary there, and aside from my inability to breast feed (which could cause some fractiousness with the younger child by the afternoon!) Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Fatherhood²: I Want to Believe, I WANT to Believe…

I should probably start this post with a disclaimer – a sort of “Spoiler Alert” for those of a sensitive disposition: If you have somehow stumbled upon this blog post and you are under the age of 10, please don’t read any further. It’s for your own good, trust me.

(You might laugh, but I don’t THINK my blog will have gotten on to any school-based blacklists yet, and I know how much kids are encouraged to use computers at school these days – spoiling a young child’s Christmas is the last thing I want to do, after all!)
Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Fatherhood²: 10 Presents Your Husband, Brother or Dad will LOVE this Christmas

As a father who often struggles with buying presents for people, I’m a big fan of the concept of wishlists – my Amazon one has served me very well over the years, and our wedding wishlist produced presents we’re still using now. But what do you do if you need to buy for somebody who hasn’t got a wishlist, or who refuses to tell you what they want?

My next step is usually those “Gifts for…” lists on sites like Not on the Highstreet or IWOOT – but they’re usually full of a LOT of filler and not much killer.

So, I decided to take the initiative and ask some fellow dads, brothers and sons what they REALLY want for Christmas, in order to compile a list of suggestions which I’m pretty sure EVERYONE will find something they want on. So whether you’re a dad looking to fill up your own wishlist, or a child looking to surprise your dad with a gift they’ll love, I present to you 15 suggestions for presents that the father in your life is bound to love…
Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Fatherhood²: Guest Post – My Mother Superiority Complex, or How I Learned to Let Go and Let Dad

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

In October 2004, when our son Evan was 9 months old, we packed our things, and moved out of the small university town my husband Andrew and I called home for over a decade. We headed to Dublin for a year so Andrew could finish his PhD. research. While I knew this was a valuable scholarly opportunity for Andrew—he would have access to archives, libraries, and people he could never meet living in our town— I was extremely nervous about what would happen to me, a new mom, living in an unfamiliar country, in a city with more than quadruple the population of the one we’d left. I was unable to work legally, and chose not to undertake a formal course of study since I already had my MA. It was therefore decided that I would stay home to raise our son. Our extremely meager living stipend didn’t stretch far in Dublin, which meant that our days out consisted of free museums, walks in the park and around the city, and the occasional trip to the coffee shop.
Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon

Fatherhood²: Embarrassing Your Child in Truly Spectacular Fashion

In the 6 months I’ve been writing blogs about fatherhood so far, I’ve resisted the temptation to write too much about anything outside of my own experiences – whilst I’d love to update this thing daily, I don’t want to just start rehashing other people’s stories, and I doubt it would make very interesting reading. But this story captured my imagination something chronic, so I wanted to point people towards it who might not have seen it.

You can read the story here (or at least one of the MANY stories that have covered it) but here’s the short version for the time-pressed.
Read the rest of this entry »

Post to Twitter Post to Delicious Post to Digg Post to Facebook Post to Reddit Post to StumbleUpon