Cute little canary

It had to happen sooner or later.

I was expecting someone to buy him one at Christmas, no one did.

Then I thought Little Dude would get one for his first birthday, especially from either his Canary mad Granddad or Uncle, again he didn't.

So I have had to buy him one, something I have never purchased for myself, on the day they became League One champions, a Norwich City football kit.

Congratulations Norwich- On The Ball City.

Klingon baby

Little dude is applying the divide and conquer technique I recently read about in Autobiography of a One Year Old.

When I get home my beamish boy greets me. However I now have the added bonus of him clinging to me as if I have been away for weeks, spurning advances from his mum and staring at her from under his furrowed brow, as if she has been pinching him all day (she convinces me she has not and and has taken him swimming, singing and swinging).

For now, and until the post-holiday-Daddy-overload has dissipated, he is my Klingon baby.

The best laid schemes... Gang aft agley

It was going to be an Easter break to remember. The weather had turned for the best, there would be time to tend my garden, get on with all those jobs that had been put off through a miserable March. Time to turn my new allotment into a fertile ground and plant those peas, beans and spuds. To be able take a family camping break on the beautiful North Norfolk coast. Time to celebrate Little Dude's first birthday.

Then Mrs Domestic Goddess Inc got tonsillitis.

Then Mrs DG Inc was bedridden and out of action for nigh on a week.

The best laid schemes...

Meaning we had to find other things to do

Such as going to the beach for a picnic

Staring at the sea

Playing in the back garden

Helping plant the sweet peas

And getting a bubble machine for my birthday

Who needs plans anyway?

What's it all about

I started this blog, in part because Mrs Domestic Goddess Inc started one also. It looked fun. It was a way of sharing my new found enthusiasm as a fledgling parent. I imagined writing at least a blog a week and hopefully more- my enthusiasm quickly waned. So why?

The main reason I think is due to the fantastic and dedicated blog Mrs DGI has now created. It has become a large part of her life and I am so pleased that she is finding enjoyment through it. She writes extremely well, has written some very honest, very funny and personally poignant posts. I could not expect to reach her standard- I do not have the head time (on this point she would argue that looking after little dude is just as time consuming as my full time job- yes, but the mental space she has to create and imagine her blog posts while taking little dude for a walk in his pushchair, or similar, is something not available to me when teaching a class of 30 'challenging' pupils each day). So what am I to do?

First I should not think of my blog in comparison to hers, I should not spend endless hours, writing, re-writing and editing my posts. I should not try to be humorous or entertaining in every post. I should just write the mundane as well as the amazing. I should write just for me and as a record for Little Dude's escapades as he grows- if someone else should then find my posts interesting, then all the better.

So, for now, without even a cursory edit, that's what I think it's all about.

The C Spot

We carry on the traditions of our parents and create new ones when we become parents. This is especially so at times of celebration such as Christmas and more recently Shrove Tuesday.

Mrs Domestic Goddess Inc and I created a new tradition. It revolved around a particular part of the now defunct Chris Evans drive time show, on a Friday Night. Each Friday he played a Sammy Davis Jr track called 'The Candyman'. For those unfamiliar to it's charms, it is a joyful track with fantastical and uplifting images, such as "who can take a rainbow, wrap it in a sigh. Soak it in the sun and make a groovy lemon pie."

Our 'tradition' involved dancing around holding Little Dude in a group hug formation and singing the lyrics at the top of our voices, well Little Dude just blabbers nonsense at the moment. This was a great way to set up the end of a working week and the beginning of the weekend. However, Chris Evans moved on, and although he still has the C Spot on a Friday morning, I have already left for work.

That has not stopped us though, using Spotify, we can now listen to The Candyman whenever we want and The C Spot has become a much more regular tradition than just Friday nights.

Brighten up your day, have a listen to The Candyman and see if it hits your C Spot.

Come to my arms, my beamish boy

Previously Mrs Domestic Goddess Inc was Mrs Forging-a-Career-Path PLC, and if a little dude came along, I was to be the one that stayed at home. Between then and now, due to and through tragedies, triumphs and epiphanies, things have reversed. Mrs DG Inc loves her new role, and because of it, I now have a new highlight of the day.

No matter what has happened in my day and whatever has happened in Little Dude's, it all drifts away when I arrive home. When he sees me he wiggles his legs, rocks up and down, then gives the biggest beaming smile I imagine I have ever seen. The warmth and happiness in that smile melts my heart. It also gives Mrs DG Inc's heart a lift as well, because it means her day shift is over. She can put her feet up and calmly survey the day's toy carnage, which resembles a crash landing of Santa's sled.

Little Dude's natural and welcoming smile is my leveller. My beamish boy grounds me and brings me to my senses, long may it continue.

Where did my vanity go?

Before becoming a Dad, I had given various reasons for not having a cycle helmet, probably something to do with a restrictive strap or the extortionate cost of a lump of polystyrene. These reasons never really came close to why I truly rejected wearing a cycle helmet, and I suspect the unacknowledged reason why many people don't wear them, vanity.

Vanity, it seems, is one of the first casualties of parenthood. It started the very first morning, when we all left the maternity ward; unkempt 48hrs-without-sleep-bed-head hair, crumpled and creased clothes, bags under the eyes and a beautifully perfect baby in our arms. After nine months, and when I think have shaken off this loss of vanity, I am brought acutely back to reality- such as arriving at work, starting to deliver a lesson, and on removing my jacket finding dried, and by then brown, mushed banana, super glued to the cuffs of my shirt. Mrs Domestic Goddess Incorporated has been affected by this loss of vanity too, the ceramic straighteners that were once part of her daily routine now lie dusty and unused on the dressing table in our bedroom. She has replaced them with many ingenious methods of keeping her hair up.

Vanity had always stopped me from wearing a helmet, but on that morning when we first left the hospital as a family, something in me changed. My perception of my place in the world had changed, I now had a responsibility to someone other than myself and Mrs Domestic Goddess Incorporated. In order to be able to be there to protect Little Dude from harm, I now had to protect myself from injury.

Now my helmet is a badge of honour and my vanity has been replaced with pride. Yes, I put it on because it will stop my head from ricocheting off the road in the case of an accident, but when I wear it, to me it represents my fatherhood, it means I'm a Dad and proud of it.

Plus, it doesn't mess up my hair half as much as I thought it would...