Baby Liam enters the world!

My wife has been in labor for 37 hours, it was long and grueling, but well worth the wait! Our sweet baby boy Liam was born late night on July 3rd! He weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces, and was 20 and and a half inches long! It was a bit scary, because he had to have a little help to get breathing on his own, and they were a bit worried about infection so they had him spend the night in the NICU. I am happy to report that he is happy and healthy, and has his mothers hair and my rugged good looks! Welcome to the world son!

Bears and Cancer!!

The beloved Oatmeal is in trouble, some dude has been hosting his comics illegally for three years, and now FunnyJunk is demanding money from The Oatmeal or he's threatening to sue! Any fan of The Oatmeal can see the full story here:


http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk_letter

Help him out everyone!

Thanks,

Jon

Anxiety

She's been having contractions all day, is it time to panic? That's the pits about being the dad, you rely completely on what the mother says. Thoughts?

Childhood vs. Childhood

I can't even remember how this came up today, but we were talking about Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood, and how much I liked it as a kid. Then it got me thinking about all the other shows I used to watch as a child, some of which include: Reading Rainbow, Magic Schoolbus, Darkwing Duck, Chip and Dale, Bobby's world, Ren and Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, and the list could go on forever. Lets face it, the shows from the 90's were the best, they weren't trying to shove knowledge and facts down our throats like some show's nowadays do ( you know the ones), they were clearly marked for entertainment!
Fast forward to today, and what shows do have today? Dora? Diego? Caliou? Just really non-entertaining shows, that try to force children to learn. Now I'm not trying to bash education, I'm going to stress learning to my children a lot, and encourage them in their studies, but I believe that you have to separate education from entertainment. You wonder why kids don' pay attention in school anymore, or get bad grades, I blame lousy television for making them think that learning has to be this roller coaster of excitement constantly. That's my two cents on that subject. As a soon to be dad though it makes me sad to think that my child isn't going to have the same childhood that I had, a simpler one, where Super Nintendo was the shiz, and my friends and I were always trying to build a super cool fort to hang out it. Now kids just stay in and play games over the internet (not to say I don't), and not go outside at all, or read a book unless its on an electronic device. This makes me sound kind of like a hypocrite because I have all these devices and do all these things, but at least I had an awesome childhood!
What is everyone Else's thoughts on this? What shows did you watch as a child? Do you think that cartoons nowadays are ruining children? Let us know what you think, or if I'm just completely wrong and biased!

Fred Rodgers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers

Pregnant Wife's Birthday

We're a family that likes their celebrations, from Halloween to Christmas, we always have something fun on the schedule. As you can imagine this includes birthdays, we usually go all out for birthday parties. One year, when we were dating, my wife had set up a zombie obstacle course in our basement as a surprise party. There was a Nerf gun sitting outside the entrance to our house, and I heard Left 4 Dead music blaring inside, that was an adrenaline rush, especially for a zombie nerd like me. I remember last year we had a BBQ pool party for my wife's 21st birthday party, it was loads of fun, and there was ice cream cake.

My wife, her cat, and her "Momma Poncho" taking a nap!

Fast forward to this year, and she's 8 months pregnant and walking is a struggle at this point for her. I kept on trying to think of fun things to do, but all of them would be hard for a very pregnant girl. So I gave up and asked her what she wanted to do, and she simply said "I want to sleep for my birthday". I laughed and let her do almost exactly that all day (I even snuck off to work for a few hours). I got her some new music books (music nerds can't get enough of them), and then took her to get a premium pedicure (sugar scrub, massage, the works), which I think was pure ecstasy for her! Then we were going to go see "What to Expect When you're Expecting", but she was too tired at that point. So we settled on coming home for a quick nap (which ended up being 4 hours long), and watching "Ever After" followed by more sleeping, and of course nachos.
 I've since told my wife that since we didn't do anything spectacular for my birthday, that we weren't allowed to do anything fun for mine! She just giggled and gave me that knowing eye that she has something sneaky planned, well as sneaky as you can get considering we are going to be having a new little screaming addition to our family by then! Has anyone else celebrated a partners birthday during pregnancy? What did you guys do? Tell us in the comments below!

Big Kid Dads

Ya know, I thought after marriage I would do some "growing up", this was one of several things I was wrong about. If anything I became more of a kid, suddenly we were the ones calling the shots in our lives, and suddenly we could do anything we wanted, granted if we had the money (poor newlyweds). But one things for sure, I kept my love of toys. Now I'm not talking about the good ol' speak and spell, or that cool rainbow piano I played as a kid, I mean gadgets and gizmos (a plenty). If there was a new piece of technology on the market, I wanted it, I had to have and play with it! Much to the shagrin of my wife. You should have seen how my eyes lit up when we got these cool baby monitors that look like walkie talkies, my friend and I had a field day with those.

Awesome fort my friend and I made recently!

It makes me wonder1. How I am going to be as a father, and 2. What my child is going to be like. I remember as a child my mother always had the newest and best of computers of the time (which weren't very impressive by any standards) but I remember playing games for hours on that thing with my whole family. It's in my blood I guess you could say. Whereas my wife is very conservative when it comes to technology, she's a singer, actress, piano player, and I must say - a future awesome mother! So I have to ask to some older dads who may be reading, what was your first experience with your child's personality when those started shining through? Did you find that they had personalities of both the mother and father, or was it more of a 20/80 thing? I'll be sure to share my experiences when our little Liam comes out. But I know one thing, I'm going to be a very big kid new daddy, and play with all the new little gadgets and gizmos that come out, and turn my little boy into a technophiles! Any other Big Kid Dad's out there? Have any of you new fathers "grown out" of your big kid stage?
As always thanks for reading, and don't forget to post your own experiences in the comments below!

New Daddy Instincts

I read on an app on my phone the other day, that much like a women, the new dad also has some "fatherly" instincts that start kicking in. I dismissed this thinking "I'm to manly for such girly sounding instincts to clean, and organize the house", boy was I sorely mistaken. My wife had a baby shower the other day at my parents were gone, and seeing as she's pregnant and due any day, the house has fallen into a less desirable state of cleanliness (I'm not blaming you for anything sweetheart[she reads this blog and I have to cover my tracks]). So in an odd flurry of desire to clean, I set to work, thinking "this house needs a lot of work before a baby can reside here". So first thing I did was check something off my "honey-do" list (I'm sure that list needs no explanation), which was to change the air filter in the air conditioning. After that was done I moved the refrigerator that had been hanging out in our laundry room, to the place my wife wanted it, then re-organized the laundry room, again as she had specified (sure they ask our opinion, but in the end we all know its her opinion that counts).

The re-organized laundry room!

Then I picked up all the laundry in the house and did a couple of loads, men can do laundry too! It's not so hard guys, the machines practically run themselves! I sat down for a short breather, then vacuumed the entire house, as my father-in-law and I replaced some doors over the weekend and had left sawdust all over. Then in a real frenzy of "fatherly instincts" I folded all the clean clothes in our room and put them away. At that point I was too tired to attempt something else, but made a list of things that still needed to be done to the house before baby came. That's when it hit me men, the instincts had kicked in, and mother nature was giving me the energy to get it done. I laughed out loud, and realized I'm not above the "girly" instincts that other men get. Bonus for me though, my wife came home and saw all the work I had done, and I was her hero for the day! A happy pregnant wife, makes for an even happier man/daddy to be!
So men, let that be a good experience for you, the instincts will come, and you'll have a whole slew of energy to get these little projects that have been on your "honey-do" list for ages, but have yet to get done. This will also make your wife very pleased with you! Please share your similar experiences in the comment section below, and let us know when your fatherly instincts" kicked in!

Hello's and such, and a pregnant women's self percetpion

Where to begin? The beginning is always a good place! Hello everyone, my name is Jon, and I'm a dad to be. I wanted to start a little blog to share some of my experiences with a pregnant wife (who is as lovely as ever, even at 8 months pregnant) and my first little boy. It's been a crazy ride so far, and I've learned some interesting things, and I've also learned some things I didn't particularly care to know about the female anatomy (my fellow new dads to be will know what I'm talking about). It's my hope that in this blog I can impart some of the things I have learned, and will continue to learn, so that no one repeats my mistakes, and that we can share some laughs at my expense. I also hope to learn some new things from my fellow dad's to be. 

My beautiful wife and I in one of our maternity pictures

Let me start by pointing out one of the obvious things I've learned with a pregnant wife: DO NOT AGREE WITH HER WHEN SHE SAYS SHE IS GETTING FAT! This is a trap, and the proper way to sidestep this trap is to simply say "No dear, you're not getting fat, you're just as lovely as ever". This was a painful lesson to learn. Don't even try to justify the weight by saying "Sweety, its just because you have a baby in your belly", women in general seem to not accept this as an excuse. They see extra weight as just that, extra weight. I've brought my wife to tears (I'm sorry!) by making this mistake. So let that be the first experience to christen this new blog. Dad's to be, women will find any reason to call themselves fat, don't fall into this trap, just re-assure them that they are as beautiful as ever, and bonus points by proving it in bed! you'll be happier for it, and your wife will definitely appreciate it!

Thanks for taking the time to read, and I hope that this is the first of many new dad experiences. Please feel free to post some of your own experiences with this in the comments below!