Getting to her fifth ear infection just wasn’t fun for her or a great way to spend time taking her to the doctor for a little lady, so basically we had 1 option left which was taking her to a specialist. We took her to a specialist a few weeks ago and the doctor was nice enough but really within 5-10 minutes and $200 later (I’m in the wrong business) it was decided that within the space of 5 months she has had 5 ear infections so with my mathematical ability – that is well lots really! The prognosis was either have grommets inserted or she could go on for another year and a half having ear infections. Hmm I’m sure that is beneficial for her, so we threw caution into the wind and decided on the lesser of two evils – grommets.

“What are grommets” I hear you say! Well think of a very small tube that gets inserted in to the middle ear, and is generally used when children have ear infections and therefore cant drain away excess fluid! ... read more >>

My wife works as a hairdresser and so therefore we have very crazy eating habits, She might go all day without eating because she has been busy, and then she is straight into dinner then off to bed – especially as she has at least 2 late nights per week and they can have her finishing at up to 8.30pm/9pm.

Now on the days that Renee isn’t around I will cook for the household – including Pyper and she is relatively easy because it’s the same food different day, just a variation on the selection as such.

So this week because we are such budding chefs, I have been personally sick of the same boring food, and we wanted something a little different and healthy. Something that could be prepared in a smallish amount of time with minimal amount of ingredients. Well we managed to come up with a new system, and one that didn’t include chilli mince in either tortillas or taco shells. We seem to have a hundred weight watchers menu books or healthy menu books lying around gathering dust so we got them out and did what most smart people would do and read them looking for good recipes of which 95% of them are it was fantastic to see. ... read more >>

We saw a flyer at our local day-care centre that Pyper goes to that asked for any household items, you know the ones that you would have otherwise have thrown out, like boxes or drink containers – general packaging and junk – and it comes back disguised as artwork by your precious child aghhh

So we started to put drink containers, cans, little boxes and the like in there, now just a small bit of background on us, we don’t RECYCLE at all. It’s not that we don’t want to its that we don’t have that on the top of our list, or actually on our list of things to do. ... read more >>

I was at a meeting last week, and someone asked me if we did things with the rural community, and I thought well we don’t directly. Most of the fathers that access our information seem to be urban. It got me thinking about when I was brought up in the country and how a very unique situation farmers have with their children. And this is because usually their children are seen as an extra labour unit to either get the cows in or do jobs on the farm, which are not paid for.

So I thought that farmers over urban fathers have a great opportunity to get more involved with their children and to spend more time with them. Usually the farm has the family home on it, so it’s a lot more accessible to their children and also to the farmers in general. ... read more >>

The other day I was somewhat a little surprised when my wife, came back from work and goes straight to Pyper and said “give mummy a kiss” – I just about died – usually I have to pry a kiss off of my wife, rather than actually being told to give her one instead if you get my drift!
Anyway I decided to play the game as such and really listened to what she thought was what Pyper wanted. So Pyper gives her a kiss and Im there thinking ok honey “why don’t you come over and give daddy a kiss” I mean why should Pyper just get a kiss.

I think this seems to be the norm, when we have a child both parents go hard out to make sure their child is looked after, cared for and loved. I think we sometimes actually forget that both parents actually need the same from each other also.

- Scott

Well seems to be a common occurrence when you have a little person – that is visiting the doctor. I took Pyper to the after hours medical care to get her ears looked at, she was very unsettled grumpy and kept pulling at them.

So we waited and then saw the doctor, I recalled in my mind how many times I had taken her to our regular GP and as this was a Saturday our family doctor wasnt available. I counted it was her fourth time in what seemed like 3-4 months.

The doctor said yes her ear drum was inflamed but wouldnt be prescribing any antibiotics – OMG i just about cried it was one of those shall i say something or will I just listen to reason??

Yep i just listened to reason this particular time! This is weird for me but I thought ok there must be a good reason for this diagnosis?? ... read more >>

Pyper was on our bed with us, and so was the cat.... hmm ok I can hear what you are saying!!!
Pyper turned around and then burst our crying, and the cat jumped off the bed, i gave Pyper a hug as I didn’t see anything and just thought she was being a bit silly! After the hug she kept playing and then 10 minutes later I saw red scratch marks under her left eye and also on her nose and eye brow, I wondered what the hell was going on, and thought the damn cat must have scratched her. It must have been fast as it was directly under her eye and on her eyelid, it scared me, thankfully it didn’t look like it got her eyeball and she seemed to be fine. ... read more >>

I have been thinking about possible future scenarios when my daughter gets older and comes home and says ...

* "Do you mind if I call you Scott? My friends call their fathers by their first name"!
What I would say is ... I don't mind, really as long as it's not a swear word then I'm not concerned at all what she calls me.

* "I’m pregnant"
What I would say is ... please say you are joking? If not then I would say thanks for being honest and how can we work this out. No mention of shotguns at this stage of retribution against the boy that did this to my little girl at all ...

* "Can I try some of your pina colada?"
What I would say is ... alcohol is usually reserved for adults but what I don't mind doing allowing you to drink a very small amount in my presence

* "Can my boyfriend stay over?" ... read more >>

Sometimes Pyper wakes up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep so she cries and Renee will get her and bring her in to our bed. The problem is that she always kicks and throws her arms around which hit us in the face as she is usually lying in the middle of us.

Now I have found the perfect gadget for every family that has a little one staying in their bed. For all intents and purposes - let's call this "the cage". ... read more >>

Being the great water sports people that we are, we decided to make sure that Pyper learnt to swim and could “hold her own” in the water so to speak!!!
Therefore we enrolled her in swimming, this became something very important especially when in NZ and Australia lots of children die as a result of being around water no matter in what capacity. Also little ones love water, so as a precursor to taking to taking her to the pools she learnt two valuable lessons which where – Dad is going to get me completely wet and it’s a matter of time until I go to learn properly since Dad taught himself to swim and not very well, so don’t learn from him. ... read more >>