Fatherhood

Caris turned three on February the ninth and we had three parties for her. One party was held for my wife’s dad side and we went to Bloomington Indiana to celebrate it. The second party was held in Carmel Indiana with my wife’s mom’s side. The last and not least party was held at my house for my side of the family.
I wanted to have one large party instead of breaking it into smaller ones but our house can not accommodate all those people. Last year we had rented a hall and hosted a party for everyone but that was expensive. Believe it or not having three parties for Caris was cheaper, but I still would of preferred all of us together. Birthdays denote family and family unity. By breaking it into increments, you do not experience the full embodiment of the occasion. That is my opinion and there are a lot of variables to consider. One primary thing to consider is if all three sides of the family get along well enough to partake in the festivities. And I can gladly state unequivocally that they do. While there are few commonalties that exist between the three groups, each one is mature enough to recognize that and work with it.
While friends went with to the party with my side of the family, each of our friends are well acquainted with all factions and would of been a great asset if a combined party was held in one locale.
However, that being said, the true winner in this is my daughter. She was asked what she wanted for her birthday and she told everyone she wanted books. My heart swelled with pride. I am an avid reader, as is my wife and any encouragement we can provide for her, we do in that venue. We read to her every night and she looks forward to it. Last night I read to her six books and she wanted more. I had to stop at six since it was well past her bedtime and there was school this morning.
Additionally, we asked people to contribute to her college fund he had set up for her a while back. So she got books, money for college, toys and clothes, and a great deal of attention and love. You can’t beat that.

The race for children social network dominance has a new challenger in the form of an old face: Barbie Girls. I try to stay up to date on this space and I have actually seen my oldest daughter spend a session or two on this site, but it’s now being reported that in its first 60 days of existence, Barbie Girls has signed up over three million members!

While it’s not entirely surprising to see Barbie jump out to such large numbers, the fact is that it is growing quicker than any of its predecessors and supports the theory that social networks are here to stay.  At least for now.

As parents, we need to accept this and come up with our own guidelines as to how we handle our children’s online usage.  Without these networks, it was easy to tell our kids there was nothing online for them.  Now, with many of their friends spending their time online, it’s increasingly difficult to make that point sincerely.  My daughter often spends time playing games on Club Penguin with a group of friends from class.

These networks will continue to grow and command more and more of our children’s time and attention.  Realistically, they can be looked at as training wheels for a lifetime of social networking.  Our parents played with Barbie dolls and my generation played video games, but our children are now in the midst of a virtual playground, one that will likely seep later into their lives than our we or our parents experienced.

Some more mega-popular social networks for kids include Habbo Hotel, Zwinky and Gaia Online.  With so many options and so many of their friends already online, it’s only a matter of time before your child expresses interest in joining one of these networks.

• Discussion Points:
  • Will you let your child join a social network for kids or have you already?
  • What are the good and bad side effects, if any, that you have noticed?
  • Do you think social networks are here to stay or just a passing fad?

A bit of a nutter, but so passionate about his work and his kids. Steve Irwin RIP.

steve irwin, fatherhood, crikey

Can you really justify the cost of going to the Movies? If you add the cost of Popcorn, parking (if you’re in a City), and tickets you’re looking at a princely sum.

It is almost an unwritten rule that at the climax of the film, or when then have the best scene, your young dates will cry ‘We need the toilet!’.

Also, some kids, including my daughter, wont so much as flinch when some bug or monster comes on the TV screen, but in a theater where said beast is 40 foot tall, she’ll scream her lungs out!

I often let my daughter watch the extended trailers for new films on the Apple Quicktime movie trailers site. They are great quality, and give an idea of the sights and sounds of the films.

So if you can’t wait until the DVD comes out, then just try to be prepared;

Sort out some quiet snacks.
Take another adult so you can take turns for toilet trips.
Some theaters have a family show on Saturday morning, where it’s cheaper to get in.

A couple of films my family are looking forward to are;

Pirates Of The Caribbean - At World’s End - Preview

Ratatouille - Preview

Surf’s Up - Preview

movies, surfs up, ratatouille, pirates of the caribbean

1. Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker - Father Of Luke and Leia (Star Wars)

2. Benjamin Sisko - father of Jake (DS9)

3. Angel- father of Connor (Angel)

4. Mr Bennett - father of Claire (Heroes)

5. Jack Hall - father of Sam (The Day After Tomorrow)

6. George McFly - father of Marty (Back to the Future)

7. Captain Adama- father of Apollo (Battlestar Galactica)

8. Cigarette Smoking Man - father of Fox Mulder (The X-Files)

9. Professor John Robinson - father of Will Robinson (Lost In Space)

10. Elrond - Father of Arwen (The Lord of the Rings)

Which fictional, or real celebrity would it be cool to have as a Dad? (Mine would be Paul Teutel Sr!)

best sci-fi dads, fatherhood, entertainment

You know what it’s like, the game is about to start, your team will be in the playoffs if they win, and you walk into the living room, chips in a bowl and a cold beer, and you’re met with DORA THE EXPLORER.

Your kid has been watching the TV for hours, giving up food, taking toilet breaks during the commercials.

The episode has just started, Dora and Boots have to help a ‘poor purple burro’.

What do you do? Your options seem to be:

1. Send you kid away, crying, and settle down to watch the game.
2. Try, unsuccessfully, to persuade same kid that football is much more interesting than Dora. See 1.
3. Take your snacks and beer to a friends house.

But wait, there’s another option! PVR Dora!

If you get you child to learn how to use your personal video recorder (PVR), they can record their own shows, and watch them while its convenient to you. Instead of saying ‘thats it, turn it off, time to go to school’(or t-ball, or church, or whatever), you can say, ‘we need to go now, record that for later?’. I often use recorded programs while I’m getting the dinner ready. I know that the program will hold their interest and keep them occupied.

The best thing about the PVR is the time it can save. Instead of riding the sofa waiting to find a show to watch, you only have to spend a few minutes a week programming in your shows. You can avoid re-runs (just delete them), and keep up to date with a series, especially if it’s complicated story like 24, or Lost, or my current favorite, Heroes.

You can watch TV when YOU want to watch it, and skip the ads if you want to.

And lastly, if your kids are a bit sensitive, or you’re concerned about what they might be watching, you can exercise the control.

pvr, heroes, tv, remote, technology

Yes, admit it, you probably bought the PS3 as much for yourself as for your kids, anyway, how many years allowance would it cost. With all the fantastic titles available, how do you monitor and ensure that you are the one to teach them about war, violence, and sex???

read more | digg story

ps3, gaming, sex, violence, fatherhood

NASCAR SpeedPark

A family favourite since its opening, the NASCAR SpeedPark is one of the area’s top tourist attractions offering five exciting go-kart tracks, kid-sized rides, NASCAR Silicon Motor Speedway simulators, a SpeedDome arcade, Thunder Alley slot car racing, the Laser Tag arena, an indoor playground and a NASCAR merchandise and apparel gift shop.

Playdium

Into video games and simulators, then try Playdium in Mississauga. Over 40,000 square feet of simulators, rides, arcade games and more. Open from Midday most days.

CN Tower


Although I already mentioned the CN Tower in a previous post, I forgot to mention a few cool things about the visit to the CN Tower.

- Travel at 33 km/h, Glass Fronted, ears guaranteed to POP!

- Watch little kids scare the adults by jumping up and down on the glass floor, LOL! Its only 1122 feet straight down!

- You stand in a booth and get blasted with little jets of air, the Smiths Detectors can test for miniscule traces of explosive on persons or clothing. Reminded me a little of the corridor scene in Resident Evil , very sci-fi. (Insider note there, most of RE and its sequel were shot in Toronto, they even blew up City Hall in RE Apocalypse!).

Hockey Hall Of Fame

Great place to see Gretzky’s first skates and stick, lots of other memorabilia, and The Stanley Cup!, great shop, and best of all you can try out against Curtis Joseph! Its all at the Hockey Hall Of Fame

hockey hall of fame, cn tower, playdium, geekdad, fatherhood, entertainment, toronto

In Japan, fathers traditionally have little to do with child-rearing. But in now, fatherhood is fashionable, and new magazines devoted to young fathers are highlighting the trend…

read more | digg story

Air Canada Centre
Air Canada Centre is a state-of-the-art arena that is home to the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association and the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League.

Rogers Centre (formerly Skydome)
Famous for its retractable roof, the Rogers Centre is home to the Toronto Argonauts football team and the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, 1992 and 1993 World Series Champions.

CN Tower

Recently nominated one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, the CN Tower features glass floor observation decks, a revolving restaurant, and a Simulator Theatre. It is Toronto’s most recognizable landmark and as such, it receives almost two million visitors annually.

Canadian National Exhibition
For the past 120 years, the 18-day Canadian National Exhibition, which runs from mid-August until Labour Day weekend, has traditionally signified the end of summer to two million visitors from across Canada and throughout the world. The "Ex", as it is better known, is the largest annual exhibition of its kind anywhere.

Situated on the shores of Lake Ontario, the Ex is a 350-acre carnival of entertainment, rides, buildings, sports and agriculture. It is also the site of the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair held each November.

Ontario Science Centre

The Ontario Science Centre offers interactive and multi-media exhibits with live demonstrations and exhibits on topics that include sports, space, the environment and the information highway. The Science Centre entertains and educates more than 800,000 visitors each year.

The Toronto Zoo
Divided into geographic regions, the zoo’s 710 acres feature more than 5,000 animals in their natural environments. Its new Africa Savanna exhibit includes a 32-acre walking safari through the wild lands of East Africa.

Paramount Canada’s Wonderland
Canada’s largest theme park was built in 1980 on 300 acres of land just north of Toronto. It features more than 180 attractions and 50 thrilling rides, including Canada’s only suspended roller coaster and the largest outdoor wave pool in the country.

Ontario Place
A 96-acre modernistic culture, leisure and entertainment parkland complex built on three human-made islands over the lake, Ontario Place features restaurants, a children’s village, an outdoor amphitheatre, a water play area, mini-golf, the Rush River Raft Ride and many other attractions. The highlight of Ontario Place is the Cinesphere - a six-story curved screen capable of showing not only regular 35 and 70 millimetre films, but IMAX films as well.

toronto, fatherhood, travel, air canada centre, vacation

Students of the W.C. Reid Center for the Creative Arts, in Asheville, North Carolina, have written and will perform in a play called Daddy, Where Are You. The play focuses on how kids—especially boys—handle life with absent fathers:

‘”We have anywhere from 125 to 230 kids come through the Reid Center every week,” [W. LaVone] Griffin [director of the Center] said. “I noticed that when it was time to pick the kids up or go on field trips, it was always the women who picked them up. We have families and men around, but it is predominately single-parent mothers.”

As Griffin grew closer to the children, he found that many of the fathers were out of the picture. “They would tell me, ‘Oh, he’s gone,’ or ‘He’s in jail’ or ‘He doesn’t care about me anyway.’” Griffin wanted to give the children a chance to tell their stories, so he and director Michael Hayes came up with “Daddy, Where Are You?” a play written by children who have lost their fathers through death, divorce or incarceration.

“The majority of the kids in the play are missing a father for one reason or another,” Hayes said. “We took stories from each of the cast members and ideas from the children at the center to come up with the play.”‘

Read more →
Asheville Citizen Times

Full disclosure: my wife and mother-in-law are both drama teachers. So I’m biased. Drama has a way of drawing students into the open, and encouraging them to share themselves in a way that, in any other situation, would never happen. For some reason, it’s safe(r) to let your walls down. From what I’ve seen, it’s very therapeutic.

What better way for these kids to deal with their pain and frustration than to share it with others?

Daddy, Where Are You? will be showing this weekend at the W.C. Reid Center for the Creative Arts (828-350-2048).

For any fathers fortunate enough to live near Coshocton, Ohio, make sure you visit The Pomerene Center for the Arts within the next two weeks. Through November 12, the Center is hosting an exhibit called A Picture of Fatherhood, by photographer Rev. Gregory Griffith.

The Reverend’s collection features black-and-white pictures of fathers and their children:

‘”I tried to get natural images, which are more beautiful and telling,” he said. “In some of the photos we are using, the subjects weren’t even aware the picture was being taken.”‘

Read more →
Coshocton Tribune

Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services collaborated with The Pomerene Center for the Arts to develop the exhibit, and hopes to tour the collection, and publish the photos in a book.

This, more than anything else, is what I think fathers need to help improve our image. Commercials with fewer bumbling and incompetent dads would be nice, but overall we just need to see more average fathers, being fathers. After all, the backbone of fatherhood isn’t the popular media; it’s men, throwing their children into the air.

As a kid, I remember watching Amazing Stories with my parents. We’d order pizza, lay a blanket on the living room floor, and dim the lights. It was a Friday-night tradition.

Last night, at eight o’clock, I sat to watch NBC’s new series, Heroes. My three-year-old son was freshly laundered, and nearly ready for bed. In the first few minutes of the episode, one of the main characters was lying in a morgue, her skin peeled away and chest cavity exposed. I was thankful my son wasn’t in the room.

Later, a woman in a bra and thong had sex in a Las Vegas hotel room with a married politician. After she’d threatened to shove her heel through another man’s skull. Another character is a heroin addict who paints the future, but only when he’s loaded.

It’s heart-warming, really.

I know a lot of parents decry the evils of television. Instead of allowing their sons and daughters to atrophy into bowls of tapioca, they instead encourage their children to chronicle nature walks in homemade notebooks, using pastels and watercolors. It’s a wonderful idea. Yet the average American watches hours of television each day. Our family doesn’t come close to the national average, but we do watch television…our son included. Wouldn’t it make sense for us to at least watch television together?

It’s getting more difficult. Television isn’t produced for families, but for demographics. Specific ages, genders, races. Single men, married women, three-year-old boys. Right now, the only shows I feel relatively safe watching with my son are Spongebob Squarepants and Dirty Jobs. And Star Trek, which probably isn’t the best choice.

I know channels can be changed, and power turned off. I understand that, for now, what my son sees is ultimately my and my wife’s decision. But is it too much to ask that bloody corpses and lap dances be relegated to nine o’clock?