Headin' to the Orange Bowl

I love being a Dad more than anything else, but all parents need a break once in a while. My other passion is Wake Forest, and so for the next few days this blog will take a southward detour. After my Sunday night shift I'm climbing into a van for the drive to Miami for three days of Orange Bowl immersion. If you get the idea I'm doing this on the cheap, you're right. This is a trip I simply would not miss no matter how many pennies had to be pinched to pull it off. After all, this could be Wake's Woodstock - a defining moment in the life of the school where people like me will do whatever it takes just to be there and share some stories. I hope you'll come along.

Thank you

I hope y'all are having a wonderful holiday season. I just wanted to say thanks to all my readers and posters. It's been a rewarding first couple of months for me, and I'm looking forward to exploring more ideas in 2007.

Daddy G.

More than just gifts

I thought this was a great tip that came in a recent weekly newsletter I get from the people at Fathers.com : Ask your kids what they remember getting last year at Christmas. The idea is to remind them of the temporal nature of material gifts. My wife asked our son what he remembered last year, and I was surprised that the first thing he mentioned wasn't one of the higher-ticket items we got for him, but a slide whistle that allowed him to make silly sounds like the ones in Looney Tunes cartoons. If I recall, it cost $1.

The genetic risks of older parenthood in general and fatherhood in particular has come up several times on this blog. Now comes a story in the New York Times about some parents using preimplantation genetic diagnosis in the hopes of passing along their genetic diagnoses to their children so their kids will be "like them." It's a fascinating read.

Who does your kid remind you of...?

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I just figured out this weekend that my six-year-old is hyperimaginitive, loves dinosaurs and outer space, and believes there is no greater form of entertainment than cartoon explosions a la Looney Tunes. Reminds me of another blond 6-year-old I can think of.