Over this past long weekend, there were two events that had me thinking about the impact being a father has had on my life. The first was the news of a good friend of mine welcoming the birth of his baby daughter while the second was my family celebrating our oldest daughter’s birthday. Although they’re disparate events, they serve to highlight what I’ve experienced so far being a dad and what I expect will come around the corner in the years ahead.

Near the end of last week, my good friend Matt and his wife gave birth to a baby girl. Talking to him mere hours after the birth of his daughter and hearing him struggle for words, I couldn’t help but smile and remember how the birth of my daughters had had the same impact on me, of how seeing my newborn daughter for the very first time brought to light the reality that our family had now grown by one. You see for men, the idea of there now being this new little person sharing our life doesn’t really sink in until that moment when we meet face to face, and especially when we finally cradle this little package in our arms. Sure, thanks to our wives, we’re aware of how the baby is wrecking havoc on their bladder or that the baby’s calisthenics routine is keeping them up at night to prove the incoming change in our lives. There’s also the undeniable growing belly our wives’ start to carry and that unforgettable moment when we can actually feel our baby kicking from inside the womb. But in the end, Click here to continue reading »”Of Fathers and Daughters”

So today was Father’s Day – that one day in the year where fathers can lounge around the house doing nothing . . . and no one’s going to get on their case about it.

For this year’s festivities, my kids decided that they wanted the whole family to go bowling – sounds fairly innocent enough. However, once we got there, all of them, including my wife, were having the most fun seeing how much I stunk compared to them in playing this game (note to self – in bowling, the object is not to toss the ball like one would in shot put). Ah, yes, there’s no better way to better way to celebrate fatherhood than to have your kids cheering their whooping your permanent vertical smile in a game of bowling. Click here to continue reading »”Father’s Day – Best Day of The Year”