January will be a month of Milestones for our little family. First we have Jacob starting Pre-School tomorrow and registration for Kindergarten. I thought I had more time before I had to think about sending him off to school, but it seems that it’s all happening all at once. Of course his pre-school is only 2 days a week and though registration starts tomorrow he doesn’t start school till the fall. Follow that up with Violet’s first birthday and it’s clearly a big month for our little family. It seems like they are growing up so fast, but then that’s what it means to be a parent. To watch your kids grow and change. Every month has a new milestone, a new first and new challenges.
Finding the words to describe the those moments, the Joy, Excitement, and fear is never easy. It’s the reason I started to blog, I wanted share the moments of Fatherhood. In an attempt to keep posting I expanded to include some of my other interests but at the heart this is a place to talk about fatherhood. In this new year I’ll try to remember that, I’ll try to write more about the the time I spend with my children and my family. Try and not let this become just a place of geeky posts. I will remember that though they might be the harder posts to write they are worth writing. I’m still working out what it’ll mean for my blog to try and focus more on fatherhood, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out and when I do, I’ll share it.
The start of a new year, a time to look forward to the future. To set goals and make resolutions. This year I haven’t set any resolutions, I have three geeky challenges I’ve set myself, there are some other personal challenges that I might share on the blog in the weeks to come but for today I want to focus on the geeky ones.
Find my Blogging Voice:
I have been blogging on and off now for 4 years. During that time I have gone through 3 iterations of my blog. Michael’s Thoughts, Evolving Dad and Geek With Kids. The first two were on the same site, one just evolved into the other, which has now been taken offline. I’m pretty sure I back up the posts but as I write this I have a sneaking suspicion that I forgot to back up the MySQL databases and so I might not have kept the posts. Backed-up or not, in all that time I have yet I’ve yet to find a consistent posting pattern for my posts. I would have spurts of high activity followed by months of nothing. That was one of the reasons I started Geek With Kids, to have a fresh start. Of course it didn’t work. I had a good month of posting before falling back to just weekly picture posts.
When I took up the Challenge of NaBloPoMo three months ago, I didn’t think I would have the stamina to still be going at it, but here I am over 90 days later and I’m still posting. Of course it hasn’t been easy there have been a ton of days where I just didn’t have anything to write, but I found something to say, even if it was just a cheesy video from YouTube. Now I’m still looking for a consistency in my posts but I am posting every day. I’m hoping my other 2 challenges will help with that. By giving me something to write about on even on days when nothing is coming to me. So going into 2010 I hope to have a post every day for the year, in fact as you’ll see below I’m hoping to have more then that.
Tonight we packed up the Christmas Decorations, including our tree. It seems a little strange to be packing up before the new year, but this year it just felt right. So now I sit here, writing this entry in our Christmas fee living room, all that’s left is a few of the new presents that are downstairs toys. We have Violets Fisher Price Singing toy and her Mail box. Jacob’s Motorized Marble Race, that isn’t really a downstairs toy but we were putting it together earlier and the box is still waiting to be taken to it’s home. We’ve also got new toy for Mommy and Daddy, a PlayStation 3. It’s on the PlayStation that I’m writing this post. I figured if I could write a post on a net book on Christmas day, why not use the PS3 today. So I plugged in a keyboard fired up the browser and headed over to my Blog. There have been some hicups, I lost the first draft of my post, It also doesn’t like the wysiwyg editior in wordpress so I’m using just plan text, and will probably tweak it on my desktop. But it’s working I plan on writing up my thoughts the PS3 in the new year, when I get a bit more of a chance to play with it. Over all I’lll really liking it.
It’s been a greate Christmas, Jacob has loved it. He face when he came down stairs christmas morning showed me it was worth all the hard work Melissa and I put in. Our kids are the most important thing in our lives and Christmas is for them and they both had a great time. Watching Violet open her first presants was special, she’s alot older then Jacob was for his first Christmas so it’s so different for her. She of course has her first birthday in Janurary and she’ll be able to use her new present opening skills again then.
It’s been a busy week and I’m glad to have a few more days with the family to enjoy with out any major events to prepare for. It’s nice to just relax and enjoy the spending time with Melissa and the Kids. It all changes in January, first Jacob starts preschool and them mommy goes back to work. I’m also hoping that Violet starts walking in the next few days, I missed her first few steps while as at work, I don’t want to miss when she finally releases that she can walk. Of course I can’t make it happen it will happen when she’s ready and with my luck it will be on the morning of my first day back at work.
Today is Christmas Day, a day for family, food and presents. We started our day with Jacob coming into our room excited to go downstairs and see what Santa had left. We had a great time as a family sitting around the tree and opening presents. Jacob did very well, pulling the presents out from under the tree and watching and waiting while Violet opened hers. We took a bunch of photos and some video, but I’ve not had a chance to look at them yet.
After our family Christmas morning we packed up the car and headed over to Melissa’s moms place for breakfast, another round of presents and an afternoon of family before Christmas dinner. It’s been a great day so far, right now both the kids are napping. Danny is playing Modern Warfare 2, Melissa and Lynn are pealing potatoes. I’m experimenting with one Jimmy’s present. An Aspire One 10.1″ netbook. I’ve wanted a netbook for a while, but was never sure if I would like the keyboard. Or if they had enough power for what I’d want to do with it. So I thought why not write a blog post on it and give it a try.
Here is what I think:
The screen is pretty good. It’s got a 1024 X 600 res screen. Which is pretty good. On a few pages I found it a little annoying to have to scroll, but I probably get used to that. The bigger issue is the keyboard. Though as I continue to write this post I am getting faster at typing but my hands are feeling cramped. That’s something I don’t think I would be able to get used too. So I’m thinking if a netbook is in my future it would need to be a larger model, with a larger keyboard. For now I think I’ll wrap up my post, perhaps another day I’ll put it through a few more test. For now I think I should join the family instead of sitting in a corner writing my blog.
Tonight is Christmas eve and we tried to do expand our family traditions to include our youngest member of the family. Of course it’s taken all the evening and I haven’t found time to blog. I was hoping to just post some pictures, but as I went through them I realized that we took a lot and it would take time to go through them. So until I can find the right pictures you’ll have to be content with words.
Tonight was a great night with dinner at Melissa’s dad. There was presents for the kids and a good time was had by all. Then it was home for our Christmas Eve presents, a book and Pajamas. Then into the PJ’s and read A night before Christmas, put out the Milk and Cookies, hang the Santa Key and off to bed. Which is were I should be heading soon. Stay tuned for more of an update tomorrow.
Last night after I posted the old video of Jacob skating I managed to finish up the new one. I hope to do more then just post video and pictures during my vacation but I’m not promising anything. So without further delay on to the video:
Last week I got my hair cut, I don’t know if the hair dresser I end to was having a bad day or If I just wasn’t clear with him, but it was a crappy . But it was better then I had so I lived with it. Fast forward to Friday we took Jacob to a kids hair cutting place and they did a horrible Job. It was officially the week of bad haircuts, I’m just glad Violet doesn’t have hair so she was spared having a bad haircut.
With Christmas photos coming up we could just live with the bad hair cuts, so Saturday morning we looked around our neighbourhood for a simple men’s barbershop. We found 1, Philip & Frank’s Barber Shop. It’s just a little shop with a few chairs, and a couple of barbers. From the moment Jacob climbed up on the board placed a cross the arms of the chair the place brought back memories of my childhood trips to the barbershop.
He cut Jacob’s hair great and so I figured I might as well climb into the chair and get my cut fixed as well. It was great. The cut is perfect and it’s the little things that just make it great. He used a straight razor for the edges. I think I’ve found my barber, no more booking appointments or hair salons for me.
