Monthly Archives: December 2014
“The Importance of Dads” and a Fatherhood Video by Boba
If you’ve been following my blog and/or social media pages, I’m sure you know I’m a major advocate of babywearing. As a father, I felt it was my best way to get that close bond a mother and child have from the womb. I know that type of bond can never be fully matched by a dad, but consistent babywearing helps create a father-child bond that your kid will carry for a lifetime.
Of course the wonderful babywearing bond is not limited to only fathers as it’s excellent (and something I highly recommend) for mothers as well. Going Mom and I both wear Avery and I know our small family is better and closely knit as a result.
I just read a brilliant article on Boba’s website that detailed “The Importance of Dads” and wanted to share it with you here. You might think you know dads have a lot to offer when it comes to playing just as I did, but there is so much more to fatherhood than the playing part.
Don’t get me wrong, playing is essential to a child’s growth, but do you know why or how? Please, head over to Boba’s article on The Importance of Dads and learn just what exactly it means to be an “involved father” and how as a dad, you play a vital role in the cognitive, emotional, and social development of your kid or kids.
As a bonus, the article explains ways that you can become a more involved father and how it benefits the mother-father relationship as a whole. Being a stay-at-home dad, I’d go out on a limb and say I’m a pretty involved father, and feel the relationship between my wife and I is, and will remain, strong.
After reading, please come back and let me know your thoughts in comments. Anything you disagree with or is there something you can relate to?
One more thing I wanted to share from Boba is their section just for dads titled “You Made Me a Father”. Don’t worry, moms, they have a section titled, you guessed it, “You Made Me a Mother” just for you too! Check out their thoughtful and touching video from their page below and see why all dads should be proud!
How to Make a Christmas DAD-vent Activity Calendar
Do you have an Advent calendar or some sort of Christmas countdown craft in your home?
As a kid, we never had one in our home, but I want to start a family tradition of having something to count the days down until Christmas starting with December 1st. Last year, I wrote 24 different activities for Going Mom and I to do each day until Christmas. They were folded up, placed in a big glass vase and we’d randomly pick one.
Problem was, though, the activities required time and more effort than we could give on any particular day. If there was one we couldn’t do, we’d just push it off and plan on doing several during the weekend. Nope, that never happened either!
While it was a fun though, I didn’t think it through enough; some things were just too complicated. So, this year, I thought ahead and made my own Advent/Christmas Countdown craft with things we could easily do each day.
Instead of randomly picking an activity, I assigned the tasks for each day. I didn’t get creative with the list, and actually just made things that we would most likely do that day anyway. It’s a win-win, right? Hey, this way we’re not pushing anything off!
To give you an idea of my activities, at least 10 of the days is just us working with Avery on walking and finding a reason to cheers each other. We normally split a beer or have some wine and will cheers each other every day; it’s tradition now!
The weekends are a little more involved, and include things like watching a Christmas movie or taking Avery to see Santa. We were left with just enough paper plates from Avery’s 1st birthday party and I figured they’d be great to use for making my own “dadvent” activity calendar.
With the help of Google and Pinterest, I collected enough paper plate craft ideas to put what we had to use.
Here’s what you need:
- 25 paper plates
- A printer or just pen and paper
- Almost empty glue stick (bonus points if it’s purple)
- Some sort of twine or string (had some Kelley bought for the birthday party)
- Mini clothespins (also from the birthday party) or another way to hang the plates
That’s it! Of course you could definitely use more, but I specialize in not-so-pretty DIY crafts, so this is how I do things! 🙂
As you might imagine, creating a dadvent calendar is fairly simple; all you do is print or write out 25 activities of your own to do with your family every day in December up to Christmas. The last days don’t matter since Christmas is over and we have new things to play with now.
Take your plates and either with printed numbers or a marker, number the back of each one from 1 to, yep, you guessed it, 25!
Cut your activities into strips and glue them on the opposite side of each plate. If you have activities you want for specific days, I suggest numbering each one so you don’t mix them up.
In numerical order, attach the plates to your string and you’re done! This is what we did on the 8th…
I planned on hanging them across the fireplace or make them in the shape of a Christmas tree somewhere on one of our walls, but that seemed too complicated and my wife does not allow holes in the wall. So I figured it was best not to hang and just let them lay on the floor.
Every day since, Kelley has gone into the room to pick the plate of the day for us to follow, and unlike last year, we’re doing great at keeping up!
Here are a couple of my inspirations….
And here’s my finished product!
Don’t be jealous.
Are you ready to make your own? I’d love to see pictures of what you have if you do anything similar.
FYI – I know we’re already into December and this is a late post, but that only adds to the awesomeness that is “DAD”!