About this column:
Contemplations on fatherhood from an East Atlanta dad.I often think about how great fatherhood has been. I come home to see my son smiling after a nap. I get to feed him and give him baths. These are all things that give him a kick. Thankfully, he has been sleeping through the night, growing quickly, and remaining healthy. I sometimes think that my wife, Rose, and I are lucky to have such an excellent baby. Then, I realize that, on the rare day that I am home all day, he does cry a little. He also requires more attention than the diaper changes or tummy time that I offer on my down time. My wife has a full-time job when she is with him and she …
It has been a while since I have been able to sit down and get my thoughts into some sort of working order. It is for good reason that I have been so depleted … my son has arrived and life has become quite hectic! Here’s the story… During the last month of her pregnancy, my wife had weekly doctor’s appointments. During the 37th week, her doctor felt her baby bump and estimated our baby to be about 7 pounds. I’m not sure if I’ve explained to you before, but my wife is just under 5 feet tall, so a 7 pound baby seemed large for us. This also concerned my wife’s doctor, soshe scheduled an …
Every day that I get to come home to see my son seems like a special day. On the longest, most-drawn out day, I do not mind coming home and spending an extra couple of hours getting him ready for bed or changing his dirty diapers. Having a special day for me, Father’s Day, almost seems silly because I should be so lucky to have such a great kid, and family, in the first place. When I imagined what it was going to be like as a father, I knew that there would be some tough nights and long days. Yes, I have had some trials in my short time as a father. But everything is worth it when he smiles …
I have been reading books and magazines and doing online research for months and months and, after watching two baby care videos, I feel like I am back at square one. I thought I was almost where I needed to be but now realize that I still have a long journey ahead. I have read books about what to do when the baby comes home, how a father should prepare for a child, and other general parenting books. Now that this baby can come at any time, my wife and I thought it would be a good idea to watch some of the DVDs that came with our books and hospital information as a last minute cramming …
It finally happened! Last Friday, my wife and I rushed to the hospital. After a late dinner at East Atlanta Thai and Sushi we came back to the house to only rush back out. However, our third passenger on the ride home was the same Dachshund-Jack Russell mix we took to the Emergency Animal Clinic earlier that evening. Earlier on Friday morning, I dropped Gilligan, my dog, off at the vet for a dental extraction. When I picked him up after my work day, he was extremely disoriented and whined the whole ride home. The doctors assured us he would be OK so, after he went to lay down, we went out to…
I just got a haircut. Normally, that would not be a huge deal. But that was my first haircut since early January. I was at the point where a couple of people likened me to an early 90’s Billy Ray Cyrus. I was a couple of inches short from rocking a mullet. With no disrespect to Mr. Montana, the mullet does not quite scream class or style and here I was almost sporting this abomination. How did I get here? I have missed a few haircut appointments before but this was ridiculous. The worst part was that I did not even mind that I was wearing a haircut that was old enough to buy liquor. I …
The other day, a friend and I went to a park in Roswell for a walk. After a while, he needed a rest so he and I sat on a bench near a play area. I was willing because he desperately needed the break and I was imagining my own son playing with the equipment. I really look forward to doing that sort of thing with my family. There, I noticed a handful of kids running up and down steps and across the sandy pits. There were two young girls going down the slide and then climbing back up to the top to do it again. It was a typical playground scene if there could be one. Then, I noticed this one …
My wife grew up in Philly and her good friends from childhood threw her a baby shower in Pennsylvania a month or so ago. Since she has been in Atlanta for quite some time, she has made some great friends and they threw her a second shower here last weekend. And since this was a couple’s shower, where her girlfriends bring their husbands, I invited some of my male friends to the “South of the Border”-themed party. Her friends went above and beyond for this event. They ordered a huge spread of Mexican food, hung a piñata and brought enough margaritas to get my whole neighborhood drunk. The …
Since she has become pregnant, my wife seems to have been giving off the celebrity vibe and people have been picking up on it. It is not because she has starred in any major motion pictures or won a Grammy, it is because she is carrying my baby. People that she has never met come up to her and speak to her about her pregnancy like they have followed her for the past seven months on television. Being pregnant definitely seems to be a real conversation starter. People really do just walk right up to my wife and ask her questions and tell her unsolicited stories about their pregnancies or they …
It has been quite some time since my son first kicked his mother in her belly while in her womb. At first, I was not sure if I was feeling a kick or just my wife breathing. After a while, the kicks became harder and I was sure of them. I remember my cousin, a recent father himself, telling me to wait until I see a foot poking through the stomach. I thought, maybe, I would see a little bump every now and again. I see explosions in my wife’s abdomen. It looks like the baby is working for the Narcotics Unit and busting in doors. That little guy is channeling Bruce Lee when he gets hyper. He is …
Now, I wasn’t a bad kid, but I was definitely a pain in my father’s ass. He didn’t really receive too many calls from coaches or angry teachers regarding my behavior outside of the house, but he had a lot to deal with when he walked in the door from work. While I really cannot express my exact motives, I know I did not mess with my father with intentions of making him angry or upset; I just liked messing with him. I can’t remember when I first started messing with my father, but one of the earlier pranks went on for quite a while and became a joke among my dad’s friends at his expense. My …
Having a baby is expensive. According to the authors of baby books, there are a ton of things that expecting parents need to acquire before the child actually arrives. I sometimes believe the publishers and manufacturers of baby items are working together to create a fortune to rival that of Bill Gates. That, however, is beside the point. My wife is well-researched and has decided that we need enough stuff to fill up half of our house. We will need everything from the obvious bottles and high-chairs to things that I have never even heard of like boppy pillows and dust ruffles. Realizing that …
As an expecting parent, I may be anxious or seem like I was left out of the loop, but I have recently done something that I felt fully capable of handling: Setting up the nursery. For me, this required no classes or book learning. All I needed was a little motivation and planning. The first part of the baby’s room took forever to start, mostly because I took my time removing all of the furniture that occupied the room that we have designated as our little one’s space. The original idea of starting to redesign the room sounded great. But removing a bed frame that was larger than the door …
With the recent snow, I have had some time to watch daytime television. It has been some time since I have watched this garbage. Thank God. This stuff is scary. There were two shows in particular that were unnerving. The first one was "Teen Mom 2." This is an MTV program that follows the trials of a handful of teenage mothers as they cope with their newborns, parents and partners. These young ladies are beginning to realize raising a child will not be easy. They will have to find time to spend with the baby amongst work and other obligations. They also are realizing that they will have to …
When my wife and I first found out that we were having a baby, we went to the bookstore to purchase some literature to help us with this pregnancy. There was a book there entitled "The Caveman's Pregnancy Companion." I flipped through the book and saw some of the cartoonish illustrations and wrote the book off as a gimmick aimed toward gift-givers or goofy dads looking to annoy their wives. However, as we move along in this pregnancy, I am starting to feel more like a caveman with each passing day. The main reason I feel like a Neanderthal is my lack of knowledge. It is not an ignorance of …
It's a boy! But the news did not come as easily as expected. There were no health issues or anything major to worry about but there were a lot of hurt feelings and insults leading up to this amazing news. Our plan last Friday was to wake up early and go to the OB-GYN for an anatomy scan to find out the sex of the person growing inside of my wife. Now, the prospect of learning the sex was very exciting, but not the most important part of the visit. We wanted to know that our baby was as healthy as he could possibly be: Having 10 ten toes and 10 fingers with properly developing organs. But this…
I had one of the greatest thrills of my life Monday night: I felt my baby's foot pressing up against my wife's belly. From the inside! It has been twenty weeks into our first pregnancy and my wife and I could not be more excited. We have been following the growth of our little one from the size of a poppy seed, to a blueberry, to a lime, to a peach, and now, at its current fruit comparison, a cantaloupe. The idea of fatherhood has not been fully realized because I have yet to hold my own baby in my arms. However, knowing that a new person descended from me will enter this world in less than …
