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:

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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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• An Idiot’s Guide To Australia (Plus, A Sweet As Sugar Milk Contest) (howefitz.com)
• A Cry For Help, And Other Fatherhood Friday Goodness (howefitz.com)

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’m not going to lie. I started this blog to try to make money.

A year ago, I discovered guys like John Chow and Shoemoney. I saw sites like Problogger and thought, ‘Man, I could do that! Let me at it!’

A year ago this month I started the Howefitz blog, and I have not made one cent. In fact, I’ve lost a few. (I’m lookin at you, aweber!)

But the fact remains that my blogging intensity has increased during the course of the year, and I have no intentions of stopping, because this is fun!

If you go back to the beginnings of this blog (and I highly recommend that you do NOT) you will see that I had no direction. I was looking for ways to build readers and make CASH! I was reading all the pros tell me to build networks and find other bloggers and SEO and blahblahblah.

Who wouldn't want to blog moments like these?

My wife kept saying, ‘Well, it looks like the guys that are making money on the internet are blogging about how to make money on the internet.’

Right. And you should always write what you know. And I (obviously) do not know how to make money on the internet.

Then, as these things go, I discovered dad-o-matic, and then dad-blogs.

(Sound of needle being yanked off a record) Wait. Wait one minute. There are dads. Dads on the internet. Dads on the internet blogging about their families.

…

And…

…they were interesting!

These weren’t boring home movies of someone else’s vacation or their kids taking their first step, this was all about the emotions of having a family. This was about supporting each other and giving each other advice.

All kinds of dads: stay at home dads, gay dads, married dads, single dads, divorced dads…

All these dads were rising to the challenge of trying to put into words their thoughts and feelings about being a dad and all the challenges that come with it!

I sat back in my chair and exhaled. This was something I could talk about! You never run out of material from your family! There’s always somebody saying or doing something funny or heart warming! I love being a dad! I can do that!

So I haven’t made a dime. As you can see, the google ads are gone, there’s very little in the way of advertising here. I occasionally review a book or movie and try to hock it through my amazon associate account, but nobody ever buys.

What I’ve earned through this blog is more important than any monetary gain. It’s become a writing exercise. It’s become a way for me to put words and thoughts together, sometimes coherently, in a way to elicit an emotional response from others. But mostly, it’s made me a lot of friends.

Ron Mattocks, author of the blog Clark Kent’s Lunchbox and the upcoming book Sugar Milk said it best recently:

The thing about blogging that makes it so different from just writing is that it’s about community, and community requires interaction. … The blogging community has become very real to me, almost as real as calling up people that are physically in my area, and meeting them for lunch; in some cases I interact with blogging buddies more than my own extended family.

That community is what has made me not only blog my heart out whenever possible, (Mainly when everyone else is asleep, like right now…) but what has also inspired me to write the sporadic column ‘Kids Play On The Net‘ at Dad-Blogs, among other unpaid projects I have in mind.

Plus, I absolutely love having a venue where I can show that I have the Greatest Family On The Planet™.

So, I would like to thank you all for the continued support, and hope that you like hearing about my life as much as I enjoy living and sharing it!

Here (in no particular order) are some friends I’ve made through blogging and their blogs:

Eric Bolton of Juggling Eric and Marvel Off the Clock

PJ Mullen of Real Men Drive Minivans

Apok of Knee Deep In Kids

Mocha Dad

Ron Mattocks of Clark Kent’s Lunchbox

Ciara of Ciara’s Ramblings and Whatnot

Weasel Momma of World of Weasels

Dad Unmasked

Melisa with one S of Suburban Scrawl

Jason of The Devoted Dad

Kevin W. Grossman of Get Off The Ground

Surprised Mom

Bella Daddy

Mr. Man of Dear Mr. Man

Thanks a lot guys, I’m just reeling this list off the top of my head, if I missed you, hopefully you’re on my blogroll on the sidebar. If not, let me know!

***Sidenote***

Today is the last chance to enter my Paying Forward A Random Act Of Kindness Giveaway! For details, simply click the link!

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…

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!

Without too much more drivel from me, I thought I’d share another of Kat’s paintings…

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On to my park story: Yesterday I sent this tweet:

I got a couple ‘Oh, how sweet!’ type of replies, with one twitterer even retweeting! But something bothered me about it.

A facebook friend said, ‘Growing up in the twenty-first century’, which echoed more of what I think bothered me.

In this day and age, we have to protect our kids. The days of sending them to the corner store for a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter is long gone. We have to be with them all the time, to keep them safe.

But no matter how hard we try, we simply can’t. They go to school, they run around the park, they hide behind apparel racks in department stores. I challenge anyone to comment on this post that they are within eye sight of their children 100% of the time.

So we educate our children. Don’t talk to strangers. We teach them to yell and scream if they’re grabbed. This is all sadly necessary.

I guess all I’m saying is, of all the things we do for our kids, the most heart breaking for me is taking away their innocence.

Check out the other cool guys and gals who participate in Fatherhood Friday at dad-blogs.com!