A new daddy

The past two months have literally been the best of my life. I did not realize that I could love someone as much as I love my son. I have likened it to falling in love with your soulmate but times that by a million. Some daddies rue the midnight feedings or the seemingly endless diaper changes. Strangely I love changing his diaper. This has turned into father-son bonding time. Before we started bonding at the changing table he hated getting his diaper changed.
Our second day home I was changing his diaper when he peed a laser beam right at me. I jumped out of the way which spooked the little guy who started thrashing all about and sending the yellow stream everywhere as if it were coming from a hose running wild without someone holding it. He also started crying, screaming really which spooked the animals who were watching with rapt attention. Thankfully the cat knew what to do and ran into the bathroom and cried at my wife to come save the day.
Since that fateful day father and son have learned to cherish the one on one time we get while I clean up his bum. Most of the firsts we have shared like, smiles, cooing and the like, have come while he was on his changing table. He has since peed and pooed on me a few times but I try not to hold it against him, he is only 2 months old.

Stork sightings

How many storks have you seen on the toll road? If you said none that would be one less than Stephenie and I. We were on the toll road last weekend and came across a stork hanging out on the side of the road. We both did a double take.

Seeing this stork got me thinking why are storks associated with new babies? Well apparently the myth of the stork swooping in with baby in tow dates back hundreds of years in Europe. Storks frequent ponds, wells and springs, people believed that babies souls resided in these places before they were born. So the myth was born. People would pray to storks for a baby boy or girl. In Germany storks were also signs of good fortune and luck.

The modern myth was popularized by Hans Christian Anderson in the 1800's. Storks would routinely nest on people's chimneys in Northern Europe. Storks have one of the closest family ties of any animal. When a stork becomes old its offspring will take care of it. This probably has something to do with the myth. Since storks nested on peoples roofs and would return every year it was a convenient explanation to little children on how a new baby was coming.

So now that Stephenie and I have seen a stork; how much long could it possibly be before Grant shows up??

RSM Labor Day 5k 2008

Today I ran the RSM Labor Day 5k. It was a last minute decision. Usually I pick races to enter months in advance, but this one I signed up just last week. This race was like my wife's pregnancy it was broken up into trimesters. The first trimester was the "race around the slowpokes" trimester. I ran my butt off zig-zagging around people that lined up near the front but then decided to go really slow. Then there were the people that wanted to chit-chat and they would run 5 wide and it was a son of gun to get around them. Once I passed the one mile mark I had finally overtaken the slowpokes and luckily I got a break; the next mile was down hill..Yah!

So it was the second trimester had begun. This one was the cougar trimester. Suddenly I was surrounded by buff 30-45 year old women. It seemed that every couple of seconds as I raced down the hill a cougar would pass me on one of my flanks. I was getting tired but I could not let this stand and I found myself sprinting every 20 -30 yards just to fend them off.

Once they had fallen back or smoked me, I entered the third trimester of the RSM Labor Day 5k. This trimester was all about avoiding little kids that had sprinted the first 2 miles only to run out of gas when the down hill of mile 2 was replaced by the uphill of mile 3. They would be in front of you and just stop. So the first trimester and the third were similar in that I spent all kinds of energy avoiding slowpokes and road hazards.

In the end I ran the whole thing unscathed, and enjoyed every second of it. Can't wait to do it next year with a stroller!

Nickel and dimed to death

"If I had a quarter for every time I said I had a nickel. I would have five times as much theoretical money." Stephen Colbert

The days that never existed

If someone ever tells you about a great historical event that occurred on October 10th 1582; you can tell them hogwash! The reason is: that date never existed! Neither did October 11th or the 5th, 6th, or 7th for that matter. For centuries western civilization had been using the Julian calendar which originated during Roman times and had been meddled with by various emperors. It had 365 days in a year and did not compensate for the difference in solar time and calendar time of about a quarter of a day a year. In the modern calendar we use a "leap year" when one day is added to every fourth year to correct for the difference. By 1582 the calendar was 10 days off and Easter was going to land on a Sunday in late February if nothing was done and would get progressively worse. Could you imagine Easter in January? Pope Gregory XIII decided to fix the problem, adding leap years and because of how out of whack the equinox was with the Julian calendar he decreed that Thursday, October 4, 1582 would be Friday, October 15, 1582. From then on we have had our modern calendar leap- years and all. The Gregorian calendar was born and October 4th-14th 1582 disappeared forever.

Always swing for the fences

Why do baseball movies bring men to tears? I have a theory. Baseball movies are about a man’s relationship with his dad, at least the good ones are. What guy doesn’t cry when Kevin Costner’s character in Field Of Dreams asks to play catch with his estranged father? I have seen that movie hundreds of times and every time I watch that scene, it’s like someone turns the faucet on. One time I was flipping through channels, came upon that scene and started crying as if by command. Sad I know. The Natural is another movie that tugs at my heartstrings. Man does Robert Redford have a sweet swing or what?

We spend our adolescent years emulating him, our teen years despising him and the rest of our lives trying to understand him. It’s complicated. Now that fatherhood is a few short weeks away for me, I am constantly evaluating the relationship I had with my father trying to sort what went right and what went wrong. Thankfully a lot more went right then wrong. He brought me up to be a man. Little league, Cub scout trips (he was the den leader) he taught me the value of being honest and always doing the right thing. Nobody is perfect but he got a lot right. Now I have to get things right with my own son and that’s a scary prospect. I think the goal is that someday my son will be watching Field of Dreams and start crying just like his dad does.

For all 10 people that stumble on this blog, it will be about more than just being a new dad. I will talk about politics, economics, real estate, books, and music. Of course there will always be posts about the trials and tribulations of being a new father.