I Am That Dad

I may have mentioned before that being a working father like most other fathers, I usually miss all the "firsts" for our children. On Monday 3rd November 2014 whilst travelling to work, I received a text from Nikala informing me that Ellie had rolled from front to back for the first time. Great news of course, but once again I had missed it, and although I knew I would get a repeat performance it is never the same as being there for the first time when your child does something new or reaches one of those pivotal developmental stages. I appreciate that it sounds a little silly to be upset about missing something as "unimportant" as a child rolling from its back to its tummy, but when it is your own child these small achievements suddenly seem monumental and when you miss all those little things it begins to add up. Before you know it it feels like you are missing your child growing up. As I type this I can imagine my younger self, the one before children reading i...

I understand its fairly common for children to go through a phase of loving dinosaurs, but one of the side affects of Noah's ongoing obsession with all things dino that I hadn't foreseen is just how much I have learnt about them all. I know more Jurassic, or indeed Triassic or Cretaceous, facts now than I have ever learned in my previous 39 years. Much of this is due to having watched Andy's Dinosaur Adventures on Cbeebies several (thousands of) times. I know the theme tune and all his dino raps off by heart and so does Noah. Noah's ability to remember dinosaur facts is positively sponge-like. For instance, Brachiosauruses were very tall, reaching the heights of two double decker buses stacked on top one another, whilst a Stegosaurus was as big as a single double decker bus (I always thought they were more the size of a car). Velociraptors were only slightly larger than a free range chicken and probably had feathers too. I feel cheated and lied to by Jurassic Park! ...