Dad Discovers... Blogging

The day I became a dad things changed. Not just the overwhelming sense of love and responsibility and the sick stains on my clothes, but the feeling I was entering a whole world of parenthood with it's own rules, expectations, products and activities! After finally feeling that I just about knew what I was doing with my life, I was now just a newbie trying to figure it all out as it came along.

More so than anything I've done before this has all been a massive learning curve, and I thought it might be fun to document as much of it as I could and share my findings with others. So I've created Dad Discovers. I hope you like it.

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Dad Discovers... Soft Play

“A dungeon horrible, on all sides round… No light; but rather darkness visible served only to discover sights of woe”
- Description of Hell in ‘Paradise Lost’ by John Milton.
A Great Idea Soft play establishments were one of those things that I was vaguely aware of before having kids, without actually having any interest in. It’s a bit like the way that I’m aware of cricket, ITV Be and Luxembourg and have nothing against them but have no plans on giving them any of my attention.
Flash forward to the present and I’m sitting at home with a small energetic child, it’s raining outside and we desperately need to get him out of the house for a bit. Then we remember that there are mythical play lands specially designed for small children. They have a café too, so what’s not to like? We decide to give it a try. Remote for a Reason What sets the tone for these places very early on is their location. Something conveniently located in town? Nope. Something in a leafy suburb overlooking a park? …

Dad Discovers... Shopping

Ah shopping. Some things I blog about aren’t necessarily age-specific and will probably stay the same regardless of how old The Boy is. Soft play for example, will always actually be soft torture even when he’s a bit older. But other things change over time and have varied massively depending on his age.
One of the times this is apparent is my experience of taking him to the shops. At two-and-a-half I’d say he’s been through three main phases:

Phase 1 – Babe Magnet This could actually be taken in two ways since it involves having a baby stuck to you like a magnet. When the Boy was really little I loved nothing more than strapping him to me in his harness and going off out and about. A few weeks later he started demanding a better view than my chest, and he soon became semi-permanently attached to me, looking out into the world taking in the sights and sounds.
At this point he was a dream to take around the shops. However, it was clear from day one that certain people were drawn to ba…

Dad Discovers... CBeebies

CBeebies is great. Until you have kids you'll probably never have any cause to watch it, but once you do you'll be thankful for the BBC for creating it. It's brilliant. There are, of course, loads of other kids channels out there from CITV to Nickelodeon, Disney Channel to Baby TV, but most depend on a paid subscription of some kind, are predominantly American in content, and are bursting with adverts. CBeebies on the other hand is free (sort of), has no adverts and can generally be relied upon to serve up several hours of good quality content for your sprog.

Needless to say there's a lot of different programmes out there, but these are my current personal Top 10 CBeebies shows.

10) Justin's House The almost reincarnation of Emu's Pink Windmill Show, hosted by the undisputed king of toddler TV, Justin Fletcher. He pops up all over the place on CBeebies but this one is the most fun.

9) Baby Jake Oh look, this family live in a windmill! Ah, here's each membe…

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