“Man I love these BluBlockers… Everything is clear, they block out the sun… Ohh yea i gotta me some!”
Author Archives: Peter
Dance to the Beat of Your Own Drum
Dear Jackson,
I hope you always continue to…
Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching, and live like it’s heaven on earth.
Love, Dad
#FireSideLullabies
Being a dad has its perks. Being a dad has its advantages. The number one being the air time you get for your singing career…
Remember this blog… One day you’re just two dads sitting beside the fire singing lullabies to your kids and the next your a Grammy winning, Billboard Chart topping, musical sensation.
May I present to you… #FireSideLullabies
Funny or Scary?
We here at Chronicles of a New Dad make fun of the parenting blunders and mishaps we make quite often, we share way to much information and talk about situations that are way too personal. This blog is not about how cute my kid is, or does it pretend in any way to be anything other than a REAL look into the thoughts of a father who might or might not be fit to actually be a father!
So today I came across a picture that made me stop and think. It made me ask myself… what am I doing as a parent that has a direct influence on my kid’s actions and habits… I had to wonder if I am creating a monster…
Ages ago I was convinced my son looked like an alien (when he was first born). Then as he grew and did some human stuff I was confident in saying my new baby was the most adorable creature that had ever blessed the earth (not named Emma Stone or Mila Kunis). I remember showing him off everywhere.
I flooded Instagram and Facebook with his mug and continue to do so… from the bathtub to the car seat, cameras were snapping in in his face like he had TMZ following his every move. I also remember watching the reaction others had as we paraded him around grocery stores, restaurants and parks. I enjoyed seeing mere mortals look upon a god and seeing what kind of impact he had on the less attractive.
But did we create an egocentric, selfie loving, conceited toddler? Is that possible? Is it funny or scary that he saw a picture of himself and was immediately lost in the gray/green eyes staring back at him? Am I a bad parent for writing a blog about how my child finds his own face interesting?
Nobody likes pretty people who complain about how hard it is to be pretty… So you know what Jax… you’re clearly going to have to learn to deal with this… It’s not easy… Not everyone understands it… It’s your cross to bare… Yours and yours alone.
PS: WTF is wrong with me?
Life Goals
Funny how your goals in life change as you get older. I used to wish I could make it over the 110 hurdles under 14 seconds. Now I wish I could make it around the block pushing my son in the stroller without back pain or losing feeling in my leg. 😠
Ohh Ffffudge!!
Flat tire? Forget it… I’m just buying a new car.
What happens when you are already as manly as they come and you then have a son? Well you pass all that manliness right on to your son that’s what. You teach him to do manly stuff… How to fight off a hungry bear, how to start a fire with sticks… And of course how to change a flat tire.
Well I clearly poses all those abilities (none of them)… A MAN’S MAN as I’m so often (never) called… Ok let’s be real… I’m pretty sure Jax is more manly than I am. I’ve seen him fall and smash his coconut on the corner of the fireplace hearth and get up without so much as a whimper. I have no problem admitting when a one year old is more of man than I’ll ever be and that’s precisely the case here. Watch me fall and smash my dome and there’s not a chance I’m around to talk about it later. I’d be dead or in a coma with bloody bandages wrapped around my head like a Revolutionary War soldier. Those are just the facts.
I don’t do well with injuries
But yesterday was a day that will forever be told throughout our family’s history… A day that generations of little Carmine’s will pass on to their sons and their sons’ sons. A day in which the power of a parent quadruples when their child is in danger. There are stories of mothers who have picked up a car to save their infant child who was stuck underneath it. Well, that is exactly the sort of thing that happened to us yesterday.
Driving home the ole Honda blew out a tire. After pulling off to the side of the road and realizing that there was no way I could drive home on the rim the rest of the five miles, I knew there was only one thing to do. Call someone to pick us up and let AAA change the tire!
But… then I thought to myself, “this is the perfect opportunity to teach Jax something that The Old Man couldn’t teach Ralphie that faithful Christmas Night… How to change a flat tire.” I was pretty pumped to bring him out of the car and sit him down on the curb and give him a run down of the steps needed to change a flat… maybe even give him a stop watch to time it (yes I carry a stop watch around in my car, never know when a hurdle race is going to break out).
However, there was one fatal flaw in the plan… I don’t know how to change a flat tire Jackson was sleeping in his car seat. So the man-plan simply went out the window… got blown up like the tire I was attempting to change… I guess I’ll have to wait until his mother shows him to change one… until the next flat to have one of those father son moments!
Completely underrated movie scene… SO TRUE… Exactly how I picture Jackson and I changing a tire!
“Only I didn’t say ‘Fudge.’ I said THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the “F-dash-dash-dash” word!”
PS: Changed the tire in less than ten minutes, Jax slept the entire time and I only wound up with a few cuts on my hand.
Mini Monet
So, as parents we have our good days and our bad days, and we have our great moments and our not so great moments. (Here at Chronicles of a New Dad the scale is weighted much too far on the later). I know there’s a lot of talk on this blog about the funny and stupid things that happen day to day… but we really are trying to bring this kid up right. We read to him and take him to music classes and try to expose him to the arts.
Being that I work at an “Arts” themed elementary school I figured I have the inside track on getting Jax to appreciate the finer things in life, IE: Painting, classical music, writing blogs about baby poop creative writing. So yesterday I thought I would enlist Jax to help me create the artwork that all staff members have hanging outside their rooms.
This seemed like a totally appropriate and “good” parent thing to do. Toddler painting is easy right? They love to get dirty, they love to throw things and use their hands to make a mess. I mean Jackson’s highchair tray looks like a Picasso after every meal, so this should be easy, right?
Stupid dad… not something you hear me say often right? This was one of the worst planned events to ever come from my brain… (and your talking to the guy who planned a birthday party for his wife and didn’t order food, tell people what time to show up or get a baby sitter for the kid). For an educator, you would think that I would have had some plan here… Just a reminder there was no plan what so ever.
Just a naked baby, a blank canvas and some paint…
We got off to a great start… he wanted nothing to do with a paint brush (again, my son is 15 months old and cant hold a sippy cup for longer than three seconds without launching it across the room, but for some reason I thought he would use a paintbrush?!!!). Once he dipped his hand in the paint it was all over… he wanted nothing to do with it.
There was crying and drooling and hand over hand painting. There was a green footprint on my shorts and half of one on the canvas and a smearing of paint on legs, arms, eyebrows and the garage floor. There is a good chance this child will never look at paint the same way again.
But as I write this, I wonder if that is what made this painting such a success. When all was said and done it looks like someone who had no idea what they were doing and didn’t try to be creative painted it… like that’s because someone who had no idea what they were doing and didn’t try to be creative painted it. I think that is what creativity is… no rules or guidelines or structure… just a mess.
At least you can count on that… if being/creating mess is what it takes to foster Jackson’s creativity then we may have another Monet on our hands!
FYI: You learn a lot about yourself when you’re a parent… I’ve always worked with other parents who brag about their kid’s artwork; I mean I work in an elementary school… I’ve seen thousands… no millions of pictures drawn by children. The pictures are always of some polka-dotted flower or a gigantic cat with three legs. But for some reason these pictures always are a 100x better than anything I could ever draw. Now, even worse, I know my son can draw/paint better me too. But you know what Jax… I’m a competitive guy… and I may not be an artist like you but guess what… I can spelI… In fact, I can add and run faster than you too. So clearly you may have won this battle… but I win the war!
Consonants Cause Pain
Seems innocent enough…
What he sees…
What I see…
I hear stepping on a Lego piece talked about as the most painful and terrible experience of someone’s life. I’ve done it, it hurts, it really does. But there is not a person in the world who will tell you that stepping on a Lego is worse than stepping on a magnetic letter.
The special thing about these magnetic letters is that they are supposed to be magnetic right? Like you know Legos are always camouflaged in the carpet or something. They can’t be that big of a surprise… But the damn letters are everywhere but the fridge… Everywhere.
Listen I know from experience how inpossible it is to comprehend what it feels like for the first few seconds you step on a Lego. Your brain literally stops working from the confusion of trying to compute what is causing so much pain. But these letters are literally like tiny razor blades. The feeling of agony and pure hatred of life that courses through your veins when a “purple H” punctures your skin is indescribably intense. The words that come out of your mouth are unline anything you’ve heard yourself say before… and the string of curses that pour out can only be described as similar to sounding like “The Old Man” from A Christmas Story.
As you begin to (in slow motion it may seem) try to quickly lift your leg up and away from the pain, only to realize that you have a consonant sticking out your foot, your lose your balance because those letters are like ice skates on a tile floor.
And the thing is… They are like cockroaches… Where there is one there are more… Many more… And you wind up walking down the hall like you’re in a “hot coal walking” challenge on Fear Factor.
No Beuno!
You’ll carry the scars with you for life. Not only from the multitude of stitches that you’ll require during parenthood, but emotional scars too… Emotional scars from realizing that your son WILL NEVER LOOK AT YOU THE SAME AGAIN because he just heard you scream like a girl from the 90s who got to see N’SYNC on TRL.
😢 👎🏻
A Christmas Story: Furnace Fight Scene
This blog entry has been featured on Honustmum.com as a Brilliant Blog Post.
#ParentLife
Let me tell you something about life… parent life. It’s not that much different from regular life.
It was essentially: Alarm… Coffee… Work… Dinner… Wine… Bed.
Now it’s essentially: Baby Screaming… Diaper… Coffee… Work… Dinner… Wine… Bottle… Book… Bed.
Throw in a little TylenolPM for an insomniac mom and you pretty much have #ParentLife.
#PoolForDays
Gigantic pool in the back yard and all he wants to do is play in a little plastic kiddie pool with his slide.
Sorry Sons: Chronicles of a New Dad 