We’ve been communicating through text and the leader has been emailing us, so unfortunately, there are no pictures yet. They are in and out of phone service, and don’t have access to email very often, but here’s what I know so far:

They have repelled off of the Blue Mountains, swam at the Olympic Park, toured the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Aquarium, visited the Opal Museum, took a cruise of Sydney Harbor, visited the Parliament House, swam at Edith Falls, visited Aborigines, and Kat wrestled a sheep.

Let me tell you, I’m uber-jealous. I just texted Kat, and she said she won against the sheep, by the way. I can’t wait to see the pics!

———————————————————————————————-

• Stateside, I’m still working on that regeneration I talked about earlier, with some of the life changes possibly interrupting my launch of the webcomic. Trust me when I say everything will be better for it…
• Speaking of webcomics, I have been surfing around for others that have a family-friendly feel. If you haven’t seen these, check them out:
  • Red’s Planet
  • Dog Eat Doug
  • The Bean
  • My Cardboard Life
• Calli doesn’t seem to be that jazzed about T-Ball… when she’s there. At home, she can’t wait to go again.
• Tristin is really testing out his legs, and has even taken a couple of steps! He’ll be running marathons any day now…

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

That’s all I have for today, be sure to stop by Dad-Blogs for more Fatherhood Friday fun, and have a great weekend!

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• A Walk On the Creative Side (howefitz.com)
• Five Fascinating Walking Tours in Sydney, Australia (australia-travel.suite101.com)

With that, I am pleased to announce that through the generosity of my blog readers, friends, family, and a few impromptu garage sales (not to mention most of my tax return), Kat’s trip to Australia with People to People is now reality! She flies out on the 16th for 17 days in the Land Down Under. I can’t believe that it’s that soon! Incidentally, on the graphic above, I found a font on Artweaver called ‘Australian Sunrise’. What else would I use? Here’s a glance at Kat’s itinerary while she’s down there:

****

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

In the spirit of Fatherhood Friday and Week In Review, here’s what’s happening in the Howefitz world:

At the park yesterday, Calli claimed that I was a strong guy because I ‘pick up small childrens’…

Wednesday was Calli’s first day of Tee-Ball! She learned the ‘alligator’ and how to hold the ball, throw it overhand and catch. And even though practice went in to nap time and somebody got a little cranky, we all had a blast! Here are a couple highlights:

Practicing sccoping up the ball with 'the alligator'.

I could totally do 'the alligator'...

Then Calli got ahold of the camera:

'She's only 3, she's probably not even getting a picture of me. I'll just look crazy to play along...'

'Sissy has the camera. Ready penetrating gaze.'

Yesterday, we went to a park in Dillon, CO that we don’t get to very often. Pics!:

Tristin's working on his 'Superman'...

Attempts at a nearly complete family portrait with small children on a bouncy dock in high winds:

After the park, we went to a bookstore where Tristin saw a Batman book. He started shaking his fists in excitement, and, I swear, whispered an excited ‘Baban!’ It was better than if he had said ‘Daddy!’ At nine months, the fanboy training is paying off…

In other news, (Last, but not least) I bought the domain name for my upcoming webcomic. It will be called ‘Howefitz Sequential’, in honor of my web moniker and the more intellectual way of identifying comics: ‘sequential art’ (the art of telling a story in a sequence of pictures and words). Plus it kind of sounds like one of my favorite movies, ‘LA Confidential’, so I’m pretty proud of myself for coming up with it! Don’t visit the site yet, I’m busy building it and completing at least three weeks worth of material before I launch. I’m shooting for an official launch date of July 5. I’ll keep you posted!

Thanks for stopping by, and Happy Fatherhood Friday!

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We just recently found out that Kat needs to finish raising the money for her People to People delegation to Australia by May 14th! If you are able, please make a donation of any comfortable amount by clicking on the Chip-In button to the right of this page. Kat and my wife are working on hand drawn thank you cards that will be sent to you from Australia, time allowing, or when she gets home. If you’ve already donated, you’re already on our mailing list!

A work in progress by my wife...

One of Kat's Thank You cards

In other news…

Calli, the 3 year old, has become increasingly bossy, despite the constant reminders to say thank you. The establishment of who’s boss seems to be constantly on her mind. A few nights ago, as we were getting ready for bed, Calli pointed at me and said, ‘You can’t boss me, Daddy. Mommy can boss me. That’s her job.’

She must have doubted that fact a couple nights later. ‘Mommy, you’re not the boss of me!’ Only to quickly recant, ‘Oh. Wait. You ARE the boss of me!’

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

So to bring this discussion back around to me, (isn’t that what blogging’s all about? ) my wife and I have thought long and hard about changing the name of this blog. No one really knows what a ‘Howefitz’ is, much less a ‘Howefitz Blog’. Incidentally, ‘Howefitz’ is an amalgamation of my last name, ‘Howe’, and my wife’s maiden name, ‘Fitzgibbons’. We talk about opening a toy/comic store all the time, and a long time ago when discussing a name, one of us (neither one of us remembers who) suggested ‘Howefitz Toys and Comics’. The store still has yet to exist, but the name Howefitz has become my online handle far and wide across the internet.

When I started this blog, I had no idea what I was going to write about on a regular basis. I had to find a niche, and it really didn’t take all that long. So my wife and I have been discussing a new name that reflects the niche that I’ve settled in to: Daddy Blogging. As I walked around this meeting of hopeful, Australia-bound teenagers and their parents, I realized that none of the other parents had babies on their shoulders. Kids Calli’s age were even non-existant in this ballroom meeting place filled with the parents of teenagers.

It must have sunk in to my wife as well, because on the drive back up the mountain, she suggested calling the blog ‘Diplomas and Diapers’. Before that she had suggested ‘College and Diapers’, but college is still a couple of years yet. The reason we’re both leaning toward a name that reflects the ages of our kids is that we feel this situation is somewhat unique. We are experiencing a broad range of parenting situations simultaneously because of the gap in our children’s ages.

Now, when I think of names for characters for my fiction, or blog names, I do some research through the Google. A quick search this morning netted not a lot that matches ‘Diplomas and Diapers’, but I did find articles and even a day care called ‘Diapers and Diplomas’, which are sources for teen pregnancy and the day care is for the children of teens that are going to school. Hmmm… I also found a Mommy Blog called ‘Diapers to Diplomas‘, which is a stay at home mom’s effort to catalog ideas to use in every stage of parenting.

So ‘Diplomas and Diapers’ is close to an existing blog’s name, and could make people think of teen pregnancy, something for which, thank goodness, I have yet to have any experience with. Am I overanalyzing? What would you call a Daddy Blog from a dad that has a teenager and babies in the house? Maybe I should have some kind of contest…

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs' FatherHood Friday. Be sure to swing by for all the other great Dads and Moms who love to share their lives online!

I’ve spent all morning working on today’s post, well, the bits of the morning where I wasn’t taking The Teenager to school. Then there were the times I was holding the baby, which is a chore, let me tell you. Every time I hold that warm little snuggly body against me I can’t help thinking that I’d much rather be in front of my glaring blank white computer screen instead of throwing the baby in to the air and hearing his sweet, genuine giggle as I tickle under his ribs with my nose. Who wants that?

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah! I’ve spent all morning on a post that I can be proud of. This is not that post. I’ve decided to postpone that post until next Fatherhood Friday in order to do more research and obtain further photographic evidence.

So for today, please enjoy this peek in to my random fatherly brain, and I promise, next week will be a post more worthy of your precious time.

• My wife is the best editor/reviewer that I could ask for. She is the one person that I would allow to give me advice on my writing. She nails it every time, and is the reason the real post for today is postponed. I felt like something was missing, and she filled in the blanks. Man, I love her.
• Pandora just played Richard Strauss’s ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zoroaster), Tone Poem For Orchestra, Op. 30‘, which was the theme for ‘2001: A Space Odyssey‘, and I had to stop what I was doing and turn it up. I lowered myself to the level of my desk and imagined my laptop was a monolith. It did not, however, make me more cosmically aware. It just wanted to tell me not to use teeth whiteners or drink acai berry juice. The search for cosmic enlightenment continues…
• Last night, my considerate Calli gave my wife an astute warning about the window sill: ‘Don’t touch that,’ she said, ‘I put a booger there.’ She’s so thoughtful!
• Tristin’s asleep in his bouncy while still holding tightly to his knobby bouncy ball. He’s so cute!
• My wife hasn’t missed a day on the Wii Fit since we started, while it just yelled at me for missing four. My Mii is now sentenced to wear a hoody to sweat it out. Come on, Wii! I’ve been busy!
• We’re still wrestling with exactly the right punishment for Kat after she dented the wall with the Wii remote, and then didn’t tell us… Any ideas out there?
• I am pleased and honored to announce that I have 42 fans on Facebook after starting my fan page four days ago! Thank you all for the support! If you haven’t fanned me yet, there’s a convenient badge on the right for you to do so! My hope is that the page will add another level of interactivity to this blog, and sometimes I’ll be using it as a testing ground for upcoming posts, so be sure to check the discussion board! (Hint, there are a couple of discussions up now…)

Aaaand… my brain just stopped working. Hope all is well with you, and have a great time reading all the other Fatherly posts on this Fatherhood Friday!

Glee has sappiness.

Glee is, more often than not, unbelievable.

But there’s something about the show that I did not expect: the positive portrayal of fathers. Or at least, fathers-to-be.

I’d like to focus on two fathers-to-be in particular: Will Schuester and Finn Hudson.

Spoiler Alert: I can’t really write this without spoilers, so if you think you’ll watch the show or haven’t caught up with your DVR or Hulu, go do so now, then come back.

Finn Hudson is the football player who thinks he’s gotten his head cheerleader girlfriend pregnant. Finn is scared out of his mind, but he wants to do what’s right. He sits and thinks about what it would be like to be a father, he’s started naming the kid, but at the same time, he had his own goals and aspirations that he feels like are going to get tossed to the side if he goes along with being a father to the child. Quinn, Finn’s girlfriend, has decided to give the baby up for adoption. Finn is supportive of this, but he’s still struggling with the idea of fatherhood and what that means.

Will Schuester’s wife Terri is pregnant with their son. He can’t wait to face the challenges of fatherhood. He takes on a second job to be able to afford the bigger, better home to raise a family that his wife wants. Early in the series, Terri finds out she’s had an hysterical pregnancy. She wanted to be pregnant so bad, that she had many of the symptoms… without the baby. Terri has approached Quinn about adopting her baby, which is a girl. The plot thickens…

What I like about the show are the unexpected fatherly overtones. Mr. Schuester genuinely cares about his students. He is there for Finn and Quinn as they go through their ordeal, as well as the rest of the underdog Glee club.

There was also a moment where Kurt Hummel, the gay kid, comes out of the closet to his borderline redneck father. His father tells him that he’s known Kurt was gay since he was three, and accepts him the way he is, but still stops to ask if he’s sure…

It’s refreshing to see fathers back in a positive light. After the thrashing we’ve taken the past couple of decades through Homer Simpson, Al Bundy, and even Ray Barone (Ray Romano‘s character in Everybody Loves Raymond, the show’s named after the guy, did he ALWAYS have to be insensitive?!), it’s nice to see the fathers in Glee be the level-headed, somewhat sensible characters.

Glee is full of stock characters (dumb jock, cheerleader, nerd, flaming gay kid that thinks no one can tell…) but there’s a lot of heart here, and an unexpected warm fatherly punch…

This post is brought to you by the wonderful event that is FatherHood Friday. The theme this week is again ‘TV Dads’. Follow all of my Daddy and Mommy blogger friends at Dad-Blogs for more FatherHood Friday goodness…

In Christopher Moore‘s hilarious book, ‘A Dirty Job‘, his main character is a ‘beta male’. Moore describes a beta male as the guy that wasn’t all that popular in high school that, when something does go his way, he feels like it will be snatched away at any moment. The beta male’s imagination is constantly shifting to the worst case scenario.

I’m pretty sure that I am a beta male, and I have a pretty active imagination.

That’s why, on Wednesday, when I posted the ‘Super Dad and His Amazing Family’ edition of Wordless Wednesday, I took it pretty hard when Weasel Momma called me to the mat about a couple of pictures of my five week old son sleeping. In one, he is sleeping next to his three year old sister, in another, he is on his side, nestled in a blanket. Both pictures are abso-friggin-lutely adorable.

I think Weasel Momma agreed, but she utilized the comments on my blog and twitter to tell me of the dangers of allowing a baby to sleep on an adult bed with other kids. She reminded me that the best place for a baby to sleep is in a crib without bumpers or blankets or soft toys.

Of course, I knew that. I read the magazines at the doctor’s office. I do searches on WebMD. I almost fired back ‘He’s in the crib MOST of the time! Do you think I’m stupid?’ I wanted to ask what business it was of hers. But then I stopped and thought. I’m the one that puts my life out on my blog for the world to see. So far I’ve been fortunate enough to find kindred spirits that give me lots of encouragement and kind words.

Weasel Momma is one of those kind folks. The reason she cares, the reason she stuck her nose in at all, is that she is a SIDS mom. At this realization, my view began to shift. What would I do in that situation? I could only imagine. And as I mentioned before, my imagination gets pretty vivid…

Weasel Momma, I commend you. It takes courage to put these experiences out there. It takes courage to stand up and say something when you see that something’s not right. I thank you for your advice and look forward to more in the future. I also would like to apologize for any trauma I may have caused, inadvertently drudging up those memories…

Tristin, I apologize to you for not making sure that you are 100% safe at all times. Your mom and I would go straight out of our heads if anything were to happen to you.

When my wife breast feeds, she often lays down with him, and if he drifts off to sleep, we leave him there, thinking that because it’s during the day, and we’re being attentive, that it should be okay. Because Calli loves her baby brother, sometimes she wants to snuggle him.

At night, we’ve been kind of putting up with the bassinet, looking at cribs half-heartedly, but not with much sense of urgency.

Yesterday, I ordered a crib. It does not have a drop-side, adding stability and no pinch points! I’m not kidding, this changed my life.

Hoo!

I promised I’d lighten things up, so here’s a couple more snippets:

It occured to me that I did a lot of complaining on this blog in the past. I bitch about my job, my living situation, … but it occured to me that I hardly ever give resolution! Which, of course, goes against what I wanted when I started this blog. I want people to think that I am the perfect father and provider. I want people to weep when they read this blog, because I am so much better than them!  ;)  Alas, I am a beta male, and I have problems just like every one else…

The job is getting better. I have this weekend off, and I start my three days on, three days off schedule on Monday. They promise no more extra days, no more extra long days. I am completely optimistic about this, it will be amazing!

I mentioned it on twitter, but never blogged about my new digs. We were living in a two bedroom apartment and panicked about trying to fit a family of five into it. The week before Tristin was born, we moved into a three bedroom two and a half bath duplex with it’s OWN WASHER AND DRYER and a two car garage. There’s a lot of storage and a fireplace, and it actually feels like someplace I can LIVE!

On the online life front, I’ve started a protected twitter account that I will have more control over. If you would like to add to the conversation and not sell me stuff, (i.e. if you’re from dad-blogs) follow me @JustinMHowe, and I’ll follow back. If you want to show me how amazing it is to shove advertising down people’s throats on twitter and facebook, I’m blocking your ass.

Thanks so much for listening, I’ll be a lot more jovial in the posts ahead!

So I got my new landline telephone and super-fast internet connection, and I decided to once and for all completely stop using my cell phone for internet. I then decided to spend the evening vegging out with Hulu and free video podcasts. Then it hit me: Crap! I should be writing a FatherHood Friday post! All this vegging out has melted my brain. I didn’t think ahead! What will I write about?

Leave it to the guys over at Dad-Blogs to solve the issue for me. They are now trying to theme the FatherHood Friday posts, and the next two weeks we will be discussing ‘Back to School’.

Well, my two youngest are still too young for school, and the teenager is too old to take the big-toothy-grin-clutching-a-lunchbox-with-the-heaviest-backpack-ever-strapped-to-her-back first day of school picture, so I’ll go at this from a different angle: i.e. my return to school. (The School of living with an infant, that is.) Since the theme runs for two weeks, maybe I’ll have a more traditional Back To School post next Friday.

I have essentially been a father for eleven years. Kat was four when I met her, she is now fifteen. I used to joke that I got to be a father and miss all the dirty diapers.

She's gonna be a star!

Fast forward eight years, and the birth of my daughter, Calli. I didn’t get out of diapers after all. Three years later, she’s still in them. (We just moved and had another kid, so we’re waiting for things to normalize. But when the dust settles, that kid’s using the potty if I have to duct tape her there myself!  ;)

Wait, did I just mention a third kid? Why, yes I did, which brings us to the meat and potatoes of this post.

So I’ve been changing diapers for three years now. No big deal. Stinky diaper? This looks like a job for Super-Dad. Robin Williams once joked that Super-Dad’s weakness was baby ca-ca. Well, I’m the new and improved version. So bring it!

With Tristin? Whole. New. Experience. (See last week’s post, ‘Boys. Are. Gross.’ … if you dare!)

Calli can't get enough Baby brother!

So life with baby has gone on now for (at the time of this writing) thirteen days. I have a three year old, so the whole baby thing’s still fairly fresh in my mind. No worries, right? I should be an old pro. Not even close. Not only does your brain quickly forget how tiny and helpless these little guys start out as, but in three years a whole heck of a lot can change…

1. You don’t have to swab the gross black umbilical anymore. I remember with Calli it was recommended that we swab her umbilical cord with alcohol in order to ward off bacteria. They now say leave it alone! Turns out the alcohol kills off the good bacteria as well as the bad…
2. Get that kid vitamin D! They didn’t say this when Calli was born, but now they recommend that you give your kid vitamin D drops because breast milk tends to not have enough. You also get vitamin D from the sun, but you wouldn’t want to accidentally give your baby a sunburn, so the drops are much safer.
3. A baby screaming at you at two in the morning is neither cute nor fun. Actually, I’m lying. It would be against Tristin’s nature to not be cute. As for fun, I actually do look forward to baby tantrums because I…
4. Remember the 5 S’s. Coolest thing ever. The pediatrician came in to check on Tristin while we were still in the hospital. He asked us if we knew the 5 S’s. No, we didn’t so he picked up Tristin and went through them:

• Swaddling Make sure your baby is swaddled good and tight, just like his old womb.
• Side/Stomach Hold him so that he’s on his side and stomach. (It’s still best when he sleeps to lay him on his back.)
• Swing them This one you probably have to see in action. Obviously, this doesn’t include shaking the baby (that’s bad), but it does include  a slight swinging/jiggling of the head. This simulates the motion in the womb as Mommy walks around or goes upstairs.
• Shushing This isn’t a quiet shush, this is a loud shush. You want to shush them as loud as they are crying. The baby has lived next to his mother’s aorta for nine months, so the sound of blood rushing by is a lot like this loud shush. You can also use white noise such as a TV or radio tuned to static, a hair dryer, or vacuum cleaner.
• Sucking Let the kid suck on something. A pacifier, your finger, etc., can calm them very quickly.

Before my doctor even got to the last S, Tristin was quiet and looking around like, Wow! This guy really gets me! The doctor laid Tristin down in his little clear bassinet, and said, ‘Yeah, they should have a video of that somewhere…’

As soon as the doctor left, I called a nurse and asked for that video!

The video is called ‘The Happiest Baby on the Block’, and it was created by Harvey Karp, MD. You can see some clips of Dr. Karp in action at thehappiestbaby.com.

Dr. Karp claims that he’s found the cure for colic, and it seems like this is true. It is truly magical to watch the babies in the video, and then your own baby, turn from a screaming little monster back into your sweet angel within minutes.

This time around, Daddy is schooling the infant!

So I guess the bottom line is, no matter how many kids you have, things change. As much as you think you know, there’s always something else you can learn. Keep an open mind, and enjoy your new baby!

Every site about blogging you’ll find will tell you not to write a ‘sorry I haven’t blogged in so long’ post, so I’m not apologizing.

I’m just explaining.

So the past couple of weeks have held a move to a new house, a birthday, and an upcoming birth. That’s a lot to squeeze in to two weeks!

My new house, if I do say so myself, is awesome! 2 car garage with garage door openers (Something I’ve never had), 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, hardwood floors, gas fireplace, steel appliances… Well, it’s a heck of a lot better than the 2 bedroom apartment I had been squeezing my family into…

So we moved Thursday and Friday, then took a road trip to Denver on Saturday for Calli’s birthday. We had a BLAST!

We started the day at Amazing Jake’s, which is essentially Chuck E Cheese on steroids. This place had a mini-coaster, bumper cars, go-karts, an arcade, lazer tag,  and much better food than room temperature pizza! There were several rooms for eating, and each one had a theme. We chose the Movie Mania room, and Calli loved watching Hercules on a big screen while she ate her pizza and chocolate chip cookies!

Calli's favorite ride at Amazing Jake's. She told the ride operator, "Go Higher!!"

Daddy and Calli eagerly await the go-karts

We then went to Zoomily at the Denver Zoo, which was super-cool. We got to ride the carousel for free, see fairy tale characters teach us about animals, and enjoy free food and desserts throughout the zoo.

Snow White stops for a picture. Calli just wants to hold that owl!

The carousel was so much fun, Calli wanted to pull Daddy's face off! Sometimes I don't get that kid.

The next day, we had a birthday party for Calli, where she got extremely spoiled with presents and balloons and the lion cake that she had been begging her Sissy for for weeks.

Kat's talents strike again! This lion cake, complete with home-toasted coconut mane, was conceived and decorated by her! (And it tasted pretty darn good, too!)

We had our final prenatal doctor visit on Tuesday, in which we found out that my wife is going in at 7am to be induced. I sure hope they have Wi-Fi, because I am so blogging this!

So that’s the past couple weeks in a nutshell. I’m not apologizing for my absence, just explaining!

This doll will help Calli learn to potty ... right?

OK, I’m pretty sure around the time that Calli was born I read somewhere that girls generally start potty training at 18 months. ‘Woo-hoo!’ My inexperienced father’s brain cried. Only a year and a half of foul-smelling, foul-colored, unidentifiable, unexplainable messes in diapers? I can handle that!

Nearly three years later, I’m still changing diapers. I’ve failed. You can see pictures of the wife and I in the parenting Hall of Shame. There’s a failed potty-trainers wing, and we’re the star attractions.

Then again, maybe not!

I came across an article on WebMD called ‘Potty Training: Seven Surprising Facts’ tonight that gave me some encouraging news. They quote Dr. Andrea McCoy of Temple University as saying:

“Children can’t stay dry at night until they start producing a hormone that signals their body to stop making urine at night, that doesn’t happen until it happens.”

A hormone. A hormone that ‘doesn’t happen until it happens.’ A blessed hormone controls my child’s ability to use the potty! Handel’s ‘Hallelujah’ playing in my head, I can now relax. It’ll all happen when it happens…

That shouldn’t keep me from using all this potty training gear I’ve littered around this post, right?

We would love to achieve potty trained status for Calli before her brother’s born in August, but if that doesn’t happen, it won’t be the end of the world. Our theory for the moment is that she just enjoys being a baby. If she gives up the diapers, she won’t be a baby anymore. Especially with the new baby on the way, I’m sure she’s wanting to hang on to that for just a little longer. We won’t push it or hold our breaths. Well, maybe we’ll still hold our breaths, when appropriate…

Anybody have any ‘tricks of the trade’ to share? I’m always willing to follow the advice of those that have been there, done that!

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