Dad’s Workbench: A Dad Blog

5 Things I Love To Do With My Daughter

Here our my top 5 things I love to do with my daughter:

1. Chase her

When my daughter is several feet away from me, I will make little chewing noises and slowly crawl on all fours toward her. I slowly get faster as she begins to try to crawl away as fast as she can. She tries so hard to get away that she ends up doing a billy flop on the floor and giggles face down in the carpet. Then I pretend to eat her up.

2. Squeeze her

I love to scoop my daughter up and squeeze her. She used to try and wiggle out of it but now she likes it. Sometimes more than other times. Tonight she didn’t want to be put down. She wasn’t fussy but she just wanted to be held.

3. Tickle her

I don’t even know if she is really that ticklish but my wife and I like to pretend she is. Our little girl makes a few squeals at first then just ignores it and tries to sneak away.

4. Share my food with her

Sometimes when I am eating some sort of snack when she will crawl up to me to check it out. I will break off a piece of bread or soft vegetable and hold it out to her. She will carefully and gently reach out and take it. Then wait for me to offer her more. For a 1 year she is so polite.

5. Talk with her

Well, she can’t really talk but we have baby conversations back and forth. Somethings we take turns back and forth making baby sounds. Other times I talk to her and watch how she responds.

We have lots of fun together but those are probably my five favourit things to do with my little girl. The older she gets the more interaction and fun we have. I am soaking up every oppertunity to enjoy my time with her and I look forward to the years ahead.

Where Has Dad Been?

Fooooood

It has been a relaxing Christmas having 11 and 1/2 days off. All I have been doing is eating, sleeping, spending time with family and friends, eating more, programing an online computer game (half done), playing Mario cart on a N64 and eating more. It has been nice to have so much time with our little girl Joy because normally I have only 3 hours with her before her bed time.

In that time I did not touch my blog ONCE! It has been almost two weeks and my wife must think I have lost my mind (or maybe she thinks I finally got it back). I have been pestering her to check my posts every second or third day for the last six months.

So here I am typing away, my wife and baby girl Joy asleep, enjoying my sixth day off and thinking about new years resolutions. The last month I have been thinking about my time spent blogging. I have tried to do three posts a week. Not being a great writer, I have found it a challenge to do. I have felt that I have been spending too much time on this.

I have put a lot of time in to blogging, not only writing but also reading. This year I will limit more of my time down reading blogs and aim to post twice a week. Most importantly however is the focus of my blog. It started out to make money but I gave up on that the first day. Then it was to focus in on how to be a good dad but realized everyone has their own opinions any ways and hours of writing good advice just go in one ear and out the other. Finally it was to build online friendships with people.

Most online friendships are some what limited. Some people become really great friends but most of the time it is a “Hi, how are you today?” kind of relationship. I still want to have those relationships and learn more about all kinds of people around the world but I don’t want to forget the people around me.

This year I would like the focus of my blog to be more of a journal of the life of my family. A place where people who know me from far away can keep in touch. A blog that one day I could turn in to a history book of our life. I want it to be something my children can flip through and see what it was like in our day, remember all the fun times we had, and see all the events in their history. This history however cannot be made if I sit on my blog all day.

So this years resolution is: To make as many memories as I can with my family!

Living With Grandparents

Working in IT and living in a small city do not really go together well, especially when lumber and mining our the main industry. However, with both sets of Joy’s grandparents living here we decided to stay (at least for now).

To us family is more important that having a big house, new cars or holidays. Don’t get me wrong, I like those things very much. I also want to make lots of money. In fact, if you have lots of money you probably can afford to work less and spend more time with them. So I think there is a balance spending time to make money and spending money to make time.

Right now neither money nor time are in my favor but I am working hard to keep a balance. Having grandparents around has been great. She loves all the attention from grandparents, uncles and her favorite aunt

To live a wealthy life requires success in all areas of life. Finances, health, family, friends and a relationship with God are among the things that make our lives wealthy. A lack in one area usually means a lack in another area. Somethings hold more value and we all value somethings more than other things.

For us grandparents rank very high on the list of things that make our lifes wealthy.