Baby Picture Madness!!!

I think I just came up with a fun and exciting project for this blog. I'd like to call it the Baby Picture Madness! It's in essence a cutest baby picture contest, but with a twist. I plan on setting it up in tournament style, to decide a baby picture of the month. Then at the end of the year take the 12 monthly winners and decide the baby picture of the year!

It'll work like this: I'll have say a field of 16 baby pictures in the running for the month. The 16 will basically be decided by the first 16 pictures I receive via email (could expand it if I get a lot of pictures sent in). In the first week of the month I'll write a blog post with each baby picture facing off against another baby picture, and have a open poll for viewers to vote on which baby picture they prefer. For example: Baby 1 will face Baby 16, Baby 2 will face Baby 15, Baby 3 will face Baby 14 and so on. Then on Friday I'll close the polls and which ever baby pictures have the most votes against their opponent move on to the next week in the Top 8 and continue until we have a winner.

I would love to go ahead and have one for February but I've started this a week late. So I figure I'll just start it off with an 8 baby picture bracket this first month and see how much response I get to it. Here is a pic of what I'm envisioning here:
I really think this would be a lot of fun. I was hoping to open the first round polls on Tuesday February 10! So if your interested in being apart of the Baby Picture Madness you can send me a your cutest picture and a first name of your little one at familyfirstman@yahoo.com and I'll take the first 8 pictures I get. Oh and PS for right now I think I'm gonna put a age limit of 3 years-old right now. If all goes well I may open separate age divisions, we'll see.

Mad at Dad

I read a very interesting article this morning from parenting.com called "Mad at Dad". It sits at #1 on their most viewed column. If you haven't read it you should, very eye opening for dads and probably very, "Yeah see, I'm not the only one" for moms. Here's a link if your interested: Mad at Dad.

I hate to admit it but I fall right into these statistics she gives in this 4000 word rant. I actually feel really bad, because I know my wife has hinted at the unequal amount of things she does compared to what I do. It is also sad that it takes an article like this to shame me into helping her out more but I can guarantee that I'm going to do my best to move out of these statistics.

I know, now I'm the guy that's holding up the pom poms for guys' wives now, but you know fellas the women of our lives do handle a lot, and for the most part we get to live in our own little world a lot of the time. A lot of you will admit that we got it pretty good: nice clean home, nice warm dinner, our skivvies cleaned and folded for us. We can and should be able to reach out a hand and ask "what do you need help with." I'm as guilty as anyone of this. I believe I do pretty good with the kid but I know when it comes to the house I fall short.

So I'm personally making the challenge to guys. We know we can do anything when we want to, so lets go from "real" men to ultimate men.

"Daddy...Kiss It!"

Never before could I have imagine the amount of pain and fear a child can inflict on you, before I became a father. This was never more obvious than when, one fateful night, me and my tearful wife drove my, at the time, one and a half-year-old son to the emergency room with a big white gauze wrapped around the top of his head.

It was a normal Sunday evening and we had just said good-bye to my wife's parents, who had been over for the evening visiting us. It was late, about 8:30pm, and my wife announced to my son it's time for bed. Acting upon his tireless ways, he decides to try to start running and laughing around the table (very cute at the time). I then decide to indulge his bedtime rebellion by getting on my hands and knees and chasing him. Everyone is laughing, smiling, great family moment, and in an instant it all changed. Still not an expert with just two legs under him, my son trips and goes headfirst into the tall, window sill ledge causing a gash right below my son's right eyebrow that, at the time, looked like the Grand Canyon filling up with Kool-Aid. My wife, in hysteria, starts ripping me new one for my lack of judgment, while scurrying to find a rag to get pressure on the fresh wound . All the while our son is crying, we panicked and call the EMS. By the time they arrived our son had stopped crying and was more annoyed by us holding the rag on his head the crater underneath it.They took on look at it and told us there was no real reason for them to take him in, so they wrapped his head in gauze for us and we were off to the emergency room.

When we got to the emergency room , things didn't exactly improve for us right away. It took a good 20 min. to even get back to see the doctors. Then while we're back in the exam room we can hear and see EMS guys bringing in some absolutely drunk, belligerent guy right into the room next to us. He's in there screaming an cussing, banging on his exam room table. Finally there was a nice enough nurse that moved us across the room. When the doctor came in she took a few looks at and basically says "Yea well okay we'll just stitch it up.". Like it's no big deal? Look at the size of that gash! But then after awhile I stopped to think "just think of what she's seen before! I'm sure that this is nothing to her!" So basically she stitched him up, we took him home and gained a new level of fear for the safety of my child.

As soon as he was born, I gained a fear the I wasn't aware I would have to deal with when I became a father. Worrying about the safety of your child can be about as exhausting an attribute of parenting as any. One thing I've learned though, as a lot of parents have I'm sure, is that most times you you can't prevent all bad things from happening to your kids, it just won't happen. Trust me after his accident I believed that I was going to always be there to catch him if he fell again. It's nearly impossible without fitting him with full catcher's gear. So instead of being there to catch him when he physically falls, I feel it's more important to be there to console him after the fall. A parents hug and kiss seems to go so far in the minds of our kids. I personally know that I won't always be there to catch my son, but I will always be there when he says "Daddy...kiss it"

Part One: Family

A person normally gives up a few things to become apart of this family lifestyle. And not always the most obvious such as: giving up your wild and reckless weekends with friends, to be home with the wife and kids. It can be as simple as a child that gives up the last Oreo, in the little plastic tray, to his mother when she gets home for a rough day at work, just to take that weary, sad expression off her face and replace it with a smile. To me that is the beauty of a family, with every sacrifice comes an even greater reward in return.

Let me give you the "definition" of a family as you would find it in the dictionary: "a social unit living together"! Nope, not even close!!! So when two young guys are randomly paired together in a college dorm room together, they are a family? They are a social unit. They do live together. Boom! They're a family?! NO! In my opinion you don't even have to live in the same country. By my own interpretation of the definition, a family is....: "Two or more people that can't (emotionally) live without one another" So basically if one of your family member ceased to exist tomorrow you feel pain for the rest of your life. That is the best way I can figure out to physically explaining true love, because I know if my wife or kid were not here tomorrow....the pain....don't even want to think of it!

Families, in my opinion, are what make this world turn. They are what keep us selfless and strong. If a family lifestyle didn't exist, could you imagine how much more of a "me first" world this would be. This is, once again in my opinion, why God gave us this timeless and ageless gift of Love, so we my share the greatest joys in our lifetime with people we so deeply care for, as preparation for an eternity of Love for him.

A "real" man's first blog post!

This blog is dedicated to the one thing that I am truly passionate about, being a man's man. And no, I'm not self-proclaiming myself the next Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell or anything of that nature. But rather, I call myself the "real man" as a tribute to all "real men", men who share with me the joy and fulfillment of being family man. Men for whatever reason tend to , for whatever reason, tend to get a bad rap when it comes to the family aspect of life (try watching nearly any Liftetime Movie), but I would almost bet that if you were to polled almost every man on his death bed and ask him what moments he cherished most on this planet, I would be greatly surprised if his answer was anything but: "The one's with my family!".

I want this blog to have a lot of meaning for all who enjoy their family life, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it'd have a guy's touch to it. I'm sure I'll go off on rants of varying topics such as: sports, politics, technology, home improvement, etc., etc..... Although, it is my goal for it to be all centralized around a strong, healthy family life. I will be posting first a few broad, yet important, topics to eventually build off of. They will be split into several parts which I intend to include: Family, Health, Work, Friends, Church. There maybe one or two more I'm not thinking of right now but you catch the drift.

I will not proclaim here to be the three-time reigning father of the year, I will be the first to admit when my two-year-old say's "dadby a cookie, PPWWEEZZ" at 8:00 at night, I'm probably going to get him one (when his mother is in the other room, that is). Once again though, I personally believe that is also why I can hold stake to the name of a "real man". We all do it differently and that's good! As long as the family's well being is priority number one, you are a "real man (or women)" in my eyes.