The 40YrOldDad

September 6

TEARS OF A CLOWN

AUTHOR: 40YrOldDad // CATEGORY: 0-6 months, The Baby Years, Thoughts, Tips
2 Comments

6
SEP

The moment all Dad’s dread has finally reared it’s head…

Falling face-first into an old Egyptian tomb and coming eye-to-eye with a deadly cobra!

That is, if YOU are Indiana Jones and the deadly cobra is…

Taking care of the baby…ON YOUR OWN!

WHAAAT???

Okay, time to put everything you learned from reading those “How to look after a tiny person that isn’t yourself” type books, into practice. (Is now a good time to reveal I was actually reading comic books disguised in a Baby Book dust jacket?) Books I didn’t read like Rich Dad Poor Dad, which I assume is all about life before and after having kids. How to Alienate Friends and Exclude People by Dale Carnegie and his followup book, For One Second Can We Talk About Something Other Than The Baby? And not to be outdone, today’s current best seller…Fifty Shades of Brown. (more…)
September 2

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY

AUTHOR: 40YrOldDad // CATEGORY: 0-6 months, The Baby Years, Thoughts, Tips
2 Comments

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When was the last time you saw a baby in a pram on the escalator stairs of a multi-level shopping centre? Never? Me either. Yet, there’s babies in prams on every level. How did they get there? WHAT’S GOING ON???

I have a couple theories. Maybe the shop owners on the upper levels live their entire lives trapped on their particular level. Kind of like Tom Hanks in that airport movie or Carrie-Anne’s Poltergeist trapped in its dimension and unable to move on into the light. As generations pass, they meet and interbreed with other shop owners on their floor, have babies and the cycle continues. Which explains why there are always food courts, supermarkets and bathroom facilities on every level.

Or perhaps multi-level shopping centres are located on mysterious ley lines that criss-cross the earth and have access to inter dimensional wormholes that enable parents with prams to mysteriously travel between floors, completely undetected. Or prams somehow have the ability to materialize from floor-to-floor somewhat akin to the blue Police Box TARDIS from Doctor Who?

Believe it or not, the real answer is not that far removed from those theories. (more…)
September 2

FATHER’S DAY FIRSTS

AUTHOR: 40YrOldDad // CATEGORY: 0-6 months, The Baby Years, Thoughts
3 Comments

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Today I feel like I’ve slipped through the Looking Glass and found myself in a topsy-turvy world, where everything is backwards. For 40 odd years I’ve always been the kid, but this year…the tables have turned and the child has now become the father.

Holy Cow! I can’t believe it. My very first…

FATHER’S DAY!!

I gotta be honest. I’m not expecting much. After all, my boy is only 8 weeks old. I mean, what’s he gonna do? Sing and dance for my own enjoyment? Hardly…

As you may have read, being a new dad, I’m pretty used to finding all kinds of surprises when it comes to unwrapping my son and changing his little nappy. Some of which have you cringing like a 40yr old chaperone at a Justin Bieber concert and others have you calling in the clean up crew from the Exxon Valdez. But nothing quite prepared me for the surprise I saw this morning when I opened his little wrap to find… (more…)
August 23

EXPLOSIVE STUFF

AUTHOR: 40YrOldDad // CATEGORY: 0-6 months, Daipers, The Baby Years
9 Comments

23
AUG

Fifteen weeks of morning sickness, a cesarian birth, baby up chuck and spraying urinations, when it comes to secretions, it’s not often I get shocked.

But when it comes to “pooh”, Christopher Robin never saw anything quite like this.

Somebody call Triple “Oh-Ohh-Ohhh!”

The first “Oh” is when you open the nappy. The second “Ohh” comes when you see just how runny it is. The third “Ohhh!”…is when you realize the nappy contains only about one third of its natural contents and the other two thirds is distributed up inside his little body suit.

“For the love of god!!!”

Did our son just poop himself or did an A-Bomb just go off in his B-Bom? Holy smokes! (more…)
August 17

STICK IT TO THE MAN

AUTHOR: 40YrOldDad // CATEGORY: 0-6 months, The Baby Years, Tips
3 Comments

17
AUG

OMG! Has it been six weeks already?

My, how time does fly. Where’s a Delorean when you need one?

And just as Doc Brown from Back To The Future said, “Once this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious shit,”. So it is for us, that our baby has hit 6 weeks (see 88m/hr), and the serious shit (see ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch), is of course…

Immunization

How can one little prick cause so much upset? (See Adolf Hitler, Obama Bin Laden, Colton from Survivor)

Or, so we thought…

Mums definitely have two distinct calming advantages when it comes to soothing away your troubles…

“They’re called boobs, Ed.” – Erin Brockovich

Boobs are an incredibly effective means of numbing any pain a man (big or little), might have. You can see it instantly, the very moment he snuggles in, latches on and suddenly… (more…)
August 13

BREAST FEEDS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT

AUTHOR: 40YrOldDad // CATEGORY: 0-6 months, Breast Feeding, The Baby Years, Tips
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13
AUG

Previously…in an earlier post, LOST VS Schnitzel, because Indy was taking sooo long to arrive, I ended with the comment…

…just cut to the end already!!

In actual fact, that is EXACTLY what they did.

The frustrating thing about having a cesarian (besides being opened up and gutted like a fish and incessantly “shooing off” circling Japanese Whale boats), is that, breast milk takes way longer to come in than Kirsty Alley running an Olympic marathon.

Which means our little man wasn’t getting as much milk as he could the traditional way and he lost more than 10% of his birth weight. I know that sounds awesome to Kirtsy Alley, but not so good for babies.

So, we had to give our little bloke formula and/or breast milk “top-ups” to ensure he was getting enough sustenance to keep his weight up. Problem is, that means pumping milk, mixing bottles and washing, boiling and sterilising ’til the cows come home.

(See my earlier post: It All Boils Down To This).

Enter, the Lactation Specialist to our rescue (“Come wit me if you vant to live!”), who provided us with a new approach to top-up feeding. (more…)
August 5

ROAD TRIP

AUTHOR: 40YrOldDad // CATEGORY: 0-6 months, The Baby Years, Tips
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5
AUG

Packing the car for Indy’s very first road trip to visit my family in the country, I’m struck by an astonishing realization.

How is it that someone so small requires so many things? We used to have only one suitcase in the back of the boot, but now, there’s a pram, two bassinets, nappy bags, blankets, car seats, clothes, spare clothes and did I mention…more clothes?

You quickly learn that babies require a bigger wardrobe change than Lady Gaga. Not because of artistic choices due to their imagination, but by necessity, due to the amount of baby-chuck that tends to spontaneously adorn their freshly changed clean clothes, like a random Pro Hart painting or a hapless Spiderman victim. (more…)
July 31

SECRET MAN’S BUSINESS

AUTHOR: 40YrOldDad // CATEGORY: 0-6 months, The Baby Years, Tips
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31
JUL

If you’ve ever been a dad (new or old), there’s always an area of slight embarrassment that you just don’t like to talk about. Where fingers rudely point and jeering smirks snigger behind your back. Where angst crawls up inside your gut and somersaults when you walk into a mother’s group.

That’s when you hear the phrase that pricks up the hairs on the back of your neck and your genitals shrivel up like shrinky dinks. You know the one…

“Nice bag…Dad“

If there was ever a type of bag that makes a man look genuinely effeminate (barring of course, the notorious “purse” or “handbag”), it is of course…

The Nappy Bag

Enter DadGear.com. A company formed by two dad’s specializing in gear that’s guaranteed to put Stallone back into testosterone when you’re out’n’about caring for your little man.

(more…)
July 29

WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?

AUTHOR: 40YrOldDad // CATEGORY: 0-6 months, The Baby Years
2 Comments

29
JUL

My wife’s niece celebrated her 21st birthday yesterday, with an (Ooh-la-la), Burlesque themed, Masquerade Party.

And if there’s one thing we loved doing as a couple, it’s dressing up in crazy costumes.
(I say again…ooh-la-la). And now, we get to experience our crazy getups…

As a family 🙂

Donning our decrotive masks and pseudo A Clockwork Orange-esque styled outfits, we piled into the Bat-mobile and stole away into the night, like a gang of masked crime fighters on the prowl for truth, justice and the Australian way. (more…)
July 27

A RIGHT ROYAL WELCOME

AUTHOR: 40YrOldDad // CATEGORY: 0-6 months, The Baby Years, Thoughts
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27
JUL

It seems that little Indy has his very own…international appeal 🙂

At a point in time when all eyes are on the motherland for the 2012 Olympic games, it seems the motherland has a sneaky eye on our little man.

Freshly delivered by the Royal Mail, a beautiful card arrived with a £20 note so crisp, the Queen herself must have just finished printing her face into it, to kick start Indy’s financial future. One can only imagine this Royal Blue Envelope (blue for boys), might well have passed through just as many hands as the Olympic torch, on it’s incredible journey around the world. Right into our humble little mailbox, Downunder.

Thankfully, it wasn’t the Olympic torch. Last thing we need is our mailbox burned to the ground.

But, it does make me wonder… (more…)