“Leave Room for Jesus!”
That’s my favorite saying when I see underage boys and girls hugging or kissing, or if I’m chaperoning a dance. Man… I just realized, I’ve chaperoned a dance. I say it cause it’s funny. Not even remotely do I believe that boys and girls should actually be leaving room for Jesus… or do I? Well to start off, if I did believe that, it definitely wouldn’t be in the physical sense of two young budding lovers, hugging up on each other–although the older I get, the more unnecessary I think the act of youth intimacy is. But what about leaving room for Jesus in your mind, your heart, or your soul? Should there be room for Jesus there? Should I introduce my son to the idea of religion? Controversy! Well let me give you my background story. I’ve mentioned before that I frequented the south to visit my dad’s side of the family. Well in the south you go to church at least 4 times a week… maybe even 2 to 3 of those times actually being on Sunday. Yes… the stereotypes are true and that’s why people joke about it. There’s the obvious Sunday mass… but sometimes you go to the 5 p.m. mass, after you’ve already attended the 7 or 8 a.m. service. Bible study on Sunday mornings. Choir practice on Thursdays. You have to go for adult choir practice too because your aunt or parent is in the choir… or maybe your cousin plays piano and organ… (and make sure Continue Reading →
Posted in Fear, Getting Ready, Those Odd moments...with 7 comments.
Mother’s Day Ain’t What It Used To Be
For years …years… my mother and I have had a rather unusual relationship. Once I left the house, Mother’s day turned into “I wonder if my son will remember Mother’s day,” and as a 31 year old man, I feel bad for her, and I’m sorry. But that was our dynamic, and I can’t really heal that bleeding wound. But now Mother’s day is going to mean something completely different for me for the rest of my life. I’m not sure if baby JR will be blessing us with his gracious presence on Sunday, otherwise known as Mother’s Day, but he’s supposed to be my wife’s ultimate Mother’s day gift that I could ever give her… according to science. That’ right… I said it… I gave her that gift… But all jokes aside, what once was a day that had very little meaning to me, will become the biggest day in my household. For it will be a day that may be the same birthday as my son (and even if it’s not it will inevitably be his birthday since there is no specific date for Mother’s day, because it’s created to always falls in line with Sunday because apparently you can only do brunch on Sundays), but it will also be the day that I get to glorify my wife and the mother of my child. “But Rob, you should always glorify your wife… because she’s you’re wife… and the mother of your child.” Right you are… Continue Reading →
Posted in Getting Ready, The Puzzle Piecewith no comments yet.
NURSERY…. REVEALED!!!!
So it’s been a real work in progress, but it’s done. The nursery is finally, freaking, done. Over a course of well over a month now, I’ve taped, torn down tape, re-taped, painted, painted, painted some more, fixed my painting mistakes, put down new base boards, put up crown molding, changed wiring, installed the ceiling fans, built furniture, hung pictures and giraffes, but most of all… created my new favorite room. Here’s a small visual story of…. the journey. In order to get the tape job right, I spent a literal weekend doing it. The problem is, I decided that using a level was the best way at first. WRONG. It’s THE WORST WAY POSSIBLE. I taped up the whole room once… Twice… Three times before I got it right finally. Here’s the hint; The first time I used just a level and a tape measure. That doesn’t work because human error will prevail no matter how awesome you are at drawing lines. The second time, I used a laser level… the kind that sucks itself onto the wall and allows you to draw on your lines. Well the problem with this is that the level on that contraption has a lot of give and take for distances over a foot it seems. What I mean is that even though the lines looked like they were level, the tape measure said otherwise… and you Continue Reading →
Posted in Getting Ready, Parenthood, The Puzzle Piecewith 22 comments.
Technology… More Like Tech-NO-logy
Recently, I started thinking if Paps and I would be doing our children a disservice by not allowing them to get use to using electronics. Like, would it make them the equivalent of someone who is an illiterate adult once they get to college? And I’m not just talking, using Word or Excel…Paint– I’m talking technology; X-box, Playstation, Wii-U, tablets, smartphones, Google Glass, Twitter, Tumblr, FB (or whatever comes out by the time they’re able to grasp the concept of social media). *Note* I’m so disheveled by this topic, it may be hard for me to keep focus More and more do I become more conflicted with the issue of technology and children. I am a technician by trade. I L-O-V-E tech stuff. I love gidgets, gadgets, thingamabobs, new internet stuff, apps, media sources, social sites, new gaming devices, warfare items, space stuff… whatever it is, I’m interested and I want to play with it. That had to start somewhere… and it did. It started while I was in the 3rd grade when we had these old Apple Macintosh SE Desktop Computers that had 2 colors on them, green and greener, on a screen relative to the size of cell phones now… I took an after school class to learn DOS manipulation. However, the functions that a 9-year-old could do at that time were very elementary. Shit, personal computers were a practically brand new technology, and I know I’m showing my age but that’s what it was. But I loved that stuff because Continue Reading →
Posted in Did He Really Just Say That?, Getting Ready, Parenthoodwith 15 comments.
What I Learned at Lamaze Class Today
So I’ve been pretty on the ball as the responsible daddy as far as making sure I’m reading all the books, blogs, journals, magazine articles, and whatever else I come across in order to better prepare myself, and better prepare my wife and this household for the baby’s arrival. I’ve been pretty much on the wife about scheduling classes for us to attend to and making sure we take photos and other pre-baby necessities and things parents in the movies and tv do. The reason I’m asking her to search all this stuff out to do instead of just pulling the trigger myself is cause I don’t want to pick something she’s not comfortable with. Knowing my luck I’d pick a breastfeeding class offered on Groupon or Living Social given by a hairy Dungeons and Dragons Warlord given in a Taco Bell bathroom. Then I’d say something like “Babe… it must be legit, or else it wouldn’t be available on Groupon… we paid for it let’s just ride it out.” So the first class we ever took was in fact a breastfeeding class. Now, I understand that the father of 1958 wouldn’t have attended these classes with their wives, but I feel like I need to know just as much as she does, and I want to be there for the support. We walked into this house converted into a school for milking, and were naturally the first ones there. Enya –Sail Away starts playing ever so softly in the Continue Reading →
Posted in Getting Ready, Those Odd moments...with 4 comments.
