First Weekly Winner

We are very pleased to announce that we have our very first It's Daddies. Plural. winner for our "Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco" Challenge. Wow... say that five times.

Chris and I have spent the day laughing at the post on the blog, the text messages and the emails. This weeks winner was very easy for us to pick out because you all told us who should win.

It's none other than BellaDaddy, with "SHIT EATING GRIN" . Come on... You all wanted to say it, and just didn't have the guts to type it! Well, Congrats to the bois over at http://belladaddy.blogspot.com/ for stepping up to the plate :)

Fatherhood Friday Foto Fiasco

We're jumping on the dadblogs band-wagon and partaking in their popular "Fatherhood Friday" supernova. And with that being said... foto (okay, really it's 'photo' but I'm trying to add a literary alliteration - a touch of swank if you will) fiasco will be my theme. And why you may ask? Because I thought I deleted a majority of our pictures of Kensington by moving files around on my computer [yikes].

I was informed last week by Jason, our IT (computer - not 'it') guy, that I would be receiving an email from our VP of IT because of the amount of files I have on my computer. Apparently everyone with 3GB or more in their "My Documents" (items that get backed up to our main server) were being notified that they needed to clean up and delete obsolete files. No biggie. I can clean items up.

Well, I had folder on my desktop (items not backed up) of all of our pictures since Kensington's birth. I've had to place them on my work laptop because our personal laptop was being worked on by Toshiba because of a bad battery thing-a-majig.

While I was moving items to a new external drive, I noticed in the upper left hand corner a 'delete' box with file and folder names that I didn't want to delete. It was my photo folder. Lets just say several expletives came out of my mouth. loudly. I quickly hit cancel and then looked in my recycle bin. Empty. They were gone. I ended up deleting all of our December pictures and about the first week of January. I cried.

I went into the office today and went straight to Jason. I was told there was no hope. It was on the desktop and not backed up. But while I was there, he wanted to show me his spreadsheet about my storage space. I was using approximately 58% of the server space from our office (of 25 people). Then he pulled the organization report. There was one person in NYC (Pam... hahaha, it's you) who used more space than me. Out of 500+ people, I'm the second highest storage waster... with 19GB of files on the server. I needed to clean it up, and pronto.

So I spent the day looking at my "My Documents" folder, and seeing what could be deleted, what could be moved to the shared drive and what needed to stay. While doing this, I saw something out of whack. I had a "Personal", "Desktop", "Desktop1234" and a "PEID" (my initials) folders. Last month when I got a new laptop, I backed-up my files in a "PEID" folder (I've had my files deleted in the past when getting a new laptop and learned my lesson. I want to keep my files, my fonts, my favorites and my settings and not put my complete faith in someone else's to-do list). When I went to back up, it said "102 minutes remaining" so I headed to a meeting and told Jason that I'd give him the old laptop after my meeting. About 30 minutes later, I saw that Jason left a note on my laptop and the files stopped transferring. So I created a new folder, "Desktop1234", and transfer ed again. While I was transferring files in my computer, Jason was actually transferring all of my files to a "Desktop" folder from his office. And for some reason, there was another set of the files in a "Personal" file. So I actually had 4 backups of these files... so I didn't have to scour through files to see what I needed to keep versus what I wanted to keep. All-in-all, I was able to reduce my storage space down to 3GB's. Jason and I are both very happy... but Pam - gurl, you have issues!

So, for our part in Fatherhood Friday's, I'll be posting pictures that children may have wished their dads would have deleted, and I'm looking for your comments/captions. Why? Because I said so, [I can't wait to say that... I've been practicing], and you can be crowned the week's winner for best caption. What do you get? Praise. Laughs. A virtual pat on your back. Oh... and a web badge that you can proudly display on your blog :)

Here we go:

Happy Birthday Kensington!

Wow... can you believe it's been two months already. Where did the time go? Let's just recap a little bit of what's happened in the last 8 weeks:

• Over 7000 visits to this blog, from 33 countries. We're impressed, and honored.


• Over 540 feedings & 700 diaper changes. Yes people, we do count. When we took her from the hospital, they gave us a Pampers baby feeding and changing schedule chart - but only 5 days worth. So I scanned it and modified it and then made multiple copies. It helped with the first doctors visit because it was two weeks after delivery and it helped identifying constipation. We've made the template available here, because i couldn't really find anything online when I checked.


• At 2 months now, she's just now fitting into her 0-3 months clothing.


• Her sleeping patterns are irregular. She'll sleep through the night for a week, and the next night she'll be up a couple times (which last night is the first night I didn't wake up to her cries. Chris did. I was so proud of her when I woke up this morning thinking she'd slept through the night until I saw an empty bottle next to the glider).


• With that being said, we've lost approximately 150 hours worth of sleep, collaboratively. Don't get us wrong... we're not complaining. We just can't wait to ship her off to boarding school so we can sleep in on Saturday mornings.


• She's been to a sitter 4 times. Once for the day, and the others between 1-2 hours.


• I've now gotten over the guilt period. Meaning, I felt guilty when someone offered to change or feed her. I don't know why... I just thought, "I'm her dad... you don't have to do it. I can take care of it." Now, you want to change her, go for it. I'll pick her back up next week.


• We've taken over 900 pictures of her. Now, not all 900 are great quality. Anytime you're taking pictures of a squirmy baby, you have to take 15-20 to get one that's in focus and not with a crazy baby face. But we've kept all of them.
  
• I've cried in public multiple times while holding her. We were at Michael's this week and over the intercom, the song, Amazed, by Lonestar came on and I started sing out loud to her. Every time our eyes meet, This feeling inside me... Is almost more than I can take. Baby when you touch me, I can feel how much you love me and it just blows me away. I've never been this close to anyone or anything - I can hear your thoughts. I can see your dreams. I don't know how you do what you do. I'm so in love with you. I didn't care who was looking... and people were looking (it could have been me walking up and down the aisle sing to her at a normal volume). Tears were flowing down my face uncontrollably.


• I've been pee'd on over 20 times, pooped on at least 3. Chris's numbers are also impressive, but I still hold the record. Not that I'm proud of that.


• We've gone through five... yes 5, bottles of Shout/Spray-n-wash. It aint pretty.


• Katy Perry has competition... I too have kissed a girl, and liked it!

California Vigils Set for Eve of Supreme Court Prop 8 Hearing

A series of candlelight vigils are being planned by Marriage Equality USA on March 4th (one week from tomorrow), the evening before the California Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the challenge to Proposition 8, the measure which banned same-sex marriage in the state.

Molly McKay, Marriage Equality USA Media Director: "On the eve of justice, we're calling on Californians to march forth on March 4th in candlelight vigils to be held across the state in support of the Constitution's promise of equality for all. We invite supporters of marriage equality, their friends and families, and especially the 18,000 same-sex couples married last year, to join us in a showing of faith and support that love and justice will prevail."

We're still learning...

While there are the basic "do's" and "don't" that Chris and I were aware of before becoming daddies, we were never given the full list.


1) Always bring additional sets of clothing (for us... not just for Kensington). I ended up with white formula spit up all over my black sweater. At the mall. When we first arrived.


2) If you think it's a dirty diaper, just prepare yourself to change it. Don't do the, "pull the side of the diaper to check" routine. We bought the wrong diapers. Meaning... not the 'blue line' ones that we've been soooooooooo use to. Now we have to check instead of looking for the color indicator. If it wasn't a pack of 96, I would have just discarded the pack. I laid Kensington down to check her (after I had changed her diaper less than 20 minutes prior). The diaper EXPLODED on me. Poop EVERYWHERE. And then what happens? Kensi lifts her leg and not only does it go everywhere, but she sticks her hand in it. Then, in true Kensi fashion... she does her 'hands in the air' routine. I puke in my mouth. Now I'm trying to hold her and her dirty hand down with my clean hand and open the wipes container with my chin. It took 11 wipes to clean up the mess. I'm glad I own stock in Johnson & Johnson.


3) When designing a home, never plan on placing the nursery above a garage. Guess what happens the moment you put a little one to sleep (after a good 45 minutes of rocking her) and someone opens the garage when they come home. The soft music from her iPod can't mask the sound. Lets just say someone else had to spend 45 minutes in the rocking chair as soon as they came upstairs. We now use the front door after 7 pm :)


4) Trust your baby monitor (as long as it's plugged in). I have spent to many times running (okay... a stumble is more like it) when i don't see movement or hear anything for awhile. Last night she slept 8 hours - don't congratulate us yet... we know it won't be two nights in a row - and I ended up getting up at 1, 3 and 5 to check her. But again... it's the middle of the night and on many occasions I've actually woken her up by leaning in too close to her little nose to double check on her breathing. Most of the times she goes right back to bed, but on a couple of occasions, it's straight to the glider we go.


5) Make sure you have your duties assigned prior to going to sleep. Chris and I now split the evenings. One of us will get the 7 and 9 pm feedings, as well as anything after 6am. The other person gets anything that could (and often does) occur between 10pm and 6am. But there has been a couple times when I wake Chris up and he tells me it's not his shift. So, I simply take his "On Duty" pillowcase and try to smother him with it. He's learning. But not fast enough. (No worries... I've increased his life insurance, so Kensington and I will be taken care of if he ever stops fighting).


6) Forgive stupid people... like the ones who see her in a pink dress and say, "How cute. Is it a boy or a girl?" They know not what they say.


7) Stop worrying about the small stuff! As a new parent, Chris and I instinctively worried about things like spitting up, occasional vomiting (us, not Kensi) and crying spells (this time... us and Kensi). We even have gotten caught up worrying over her formula intake, and the frequency of bowel movements. It is (was) a waste of value nap time.


8) Who needs a $45 bottle of Aveda Sap Moss shampoo when you have Baby Shampoo available? Well. Okay. Somethings we are not giving up. yet. :)

Yikes... We've been tagged.

We were tagged. Our very first time- yes, it seems like we've been de-taginized!

A special thanks to Kate at Stinky Tinky.

The rules for this award:

1) Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.

2) Show the 7 winners names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with “Honest Scrap.” Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.

3) List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

Okay... here we go.

~ We were always dog people and are happy we've converted and become 'open' to cats as well. (okay... boring. I know. But honesty here is hard to come by. Ha ha ha ha).

~ I love, love, love SCARING Chris. Whether it's through horror movies or hiding in pantries, behind doors, in back seats of cars, etc.

~ I have the hugest crush on Jospeh Fiennes and Toni Braxton.

~ We are reality TV junkies. The Mole. Celebrity Mole. Anna Nicole Smith (RIP). Survivor. Amazing Race. Big Brother. Tabatha's Salon Takeover. You name it, we've Tivo's it.

~ We want our own Walker family... without the son serving in the military during a war, drug addiction, adultery (unless it's with Jospeh Fiennes and/or Toni Braxton) and the sibling revelry.

~ We lost our life savings by investing with Bernie Madoff. Just kidding. But our stocks, 401k and 403b's have been hit :( Thank GOD we didn't listen to our builder when they tried to get us in a house that was over three times the amount we paid for this house or we'd be in some financial trouble).

~ I hold grudges. Big Time. Don't cross me or I'll shank you. Chris holds grudges too.

~ Chris cries at commericals, and I tend to laugh at him for it. But it really is sweet. Stop laughing. Only I can laugh at him for that.

~ I'm grumpy without my morning coffee.

~ We are so happy to have Kensington Grace in our lives!!!!

7 Blogs I read on a regular basis, and think you should too:

Gay Dads in Munchkin Land

Luca has 2 Mommies

Green Dads

Those Two Daddies

My Sid Dicken's Addiction

The Shazanne Show

2 Dads 2 Be

Conflicting Priorities...

6:02 a.m. Kensington cries and the monitor goes off. I roll over and nudge Duncan, "Dunc... wake up. Kensi loves you." 30 seconds later I do it again. "Dunc... come on, buddy. Kensi loves you."

Normally when I do this to Chris, he gets up and makes a bottle and goes in and feeds her. Duncan was having nothing to do with it (Come on... if he can open a locked door one would think that he would be able to make a bottle - it wasn't like I was asking him to heat it up or something).

So I roll myself out of bed, wipe the sleep away from my eyes and grab my robe that is hanging off of the Bowflex machine. I stumble down stairs and am faced with multiple competing priorities:

1) Kensington crying and needing her bottle right this very moment.

2) A very, very full bladder.

3) Duncan now jumping up at the front door... with his very, very full bladder.

4) Gossip on her perch meowing like crazy because she needs food (and she's telling me she needs it more than Kensington does).

5) Matt, Meredith, Al, Ann and Hoda staring at me. They too are hungry. I'm talking about the fish in the aquarium... not my fab 5 on NBC. We did have a Kathie Lee, but she got annoying in the tank so all of the others attacked her and killed her. I'm still waiting for this to happen on The Today Show as well. I swear it would sky rocket their ratings. Trust.

So I flash to my personal hero, Captain Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger III, and wondered what would he do? Well... he would listen to his flight crew and they would tell their passengers that in case of an emergency, parents need to put their oxygen mask on before they help their child with theirs. I know this sounds cruel... but if you are helping your child with their mask and you loose consciousness, you both suffer. To bring this back to my scenario... if I'm feeding her (which takes 30 minutes) and wet myself - we both loose.

So, I rush to the powder room. Since I'm already next to the door, I open it and let Duncan run out to do his business. Then it's off to the kitchen. While the bottle is warming, I silence Miss Gossip by loading up her bowls with food and water and then tend to the Fab 5 (I see the little floating tombstone and think, "Rest in peace Kathie Lee"). The bottle buzzer goes off, I shut the door now that Dunc is back inside and I rush upstairs to see Kensington, a.k.a. Baby Houdini, has unchained - i mean, unwrapped - herself from her swaddle and her arms are waving up in the air like she spent a summer at the Jerry Falwell's "Bible Boot Camp" for young evangelicals. I show her her bottle... Hallelujah it is.

I wanted to share with you all the gift that Auntie Carmen gave Kensington for Valentine's Day. He personalized a How To Hug A Porcupine piece that is now hanging in her nursery. Kensi loves her porcupine... and loves her Auntie Carmen more.

I'm going on a diet...

next month :)

Today, for lunch, I came up with the BEST panini ever and I plan on marketing it to the 'powers that be' at Panera Bread!




So, I started with a box of Romano's Macaroni Grill Creamy Basil parmesan cheese and pasta. Instead of following the directions of the chicken on the box, I marinated the chicken in a tomato basil sauce for 30 minutes and then baked it. I then cooked the pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and then, put it on twice slices of muenster cheese on an asiago bagel and cooked it in our panini press - and whola!


A plate of delicious!

now i'm bloated.

ugh!

A sad moment in time...

our little girl is growing up fast... today we had to retire our first sleeper outfit because Kensington has outgrown it. Say goodbye to the "Newborn" category - pretty soon she'll be off to prom (wait... do they have Prom's at boarding schools in the Swiss alps?). But with that sad news come good news. She's now able to wear her 0-3 months and sorta kinda fit into them. As mentioned in a previous post, Kensington got a wonderful surprise in the mail a couple of days ago. Seems like her Grandma (our should it be "Great" aunite... I'll let you decide) Pro sent her TONS of "Taggies" outfits, along with some fun taggie toys.
Kensington has had a blast putting on a little fashion show for us. In the layout below, you'll see just a couple of the 0-3 month outfits that she's worn.I went back to my favorite kit, Artemia by After Five Designs.

I designed my second digital scrapbook freebie template... I hope you all enjoy it. If you use it, I'd love to see your finished layout. Go here to download this template.

Man down...

Kensington and I are preparing to have one less person in the house this week - Chris has to go to "strike" training in Ohio. No... Chris isn't going on strike, but the telecommunication union employees may be, so all management has had to dozens (if not hundreds) of hours of training to prepare for the strike.

Anyway...

Last week I went into work on Friday and Auntie Jackie offered to watch Kensi for the day. It was the first full day that she'd been away from us. On my way to work, Chris called and said he'd gone into the living room twice looking for her :)

I dropped her off around 8:30 and had her diaper bag fully filled (this time - as opposed to our Superbowl party that we went to and forgot the bottle, so I had to backtrack to get it). I had an 11-2:30 meeting and after it was done, I called Chris who asked how she was doing. "Well, I don't know. I haven't called.", "What?!?! If I would have known that, I would have called." "Chris... It's Jackie. She's a mile down the street from me. I'm not going to call and hound her. She's okay. Trust me."

And she was :)

Happy Valentines Day... a day late.

Wow... so much to catch you up on - but unfortunately it won't be today. I'm just pooped. Within the past couple of days, Kensington has had a 'girls day out', a valentine's dinner with Rudy & Jorge (and family), a Taggies fashion show thanks to Pro, an afternoon with M2, a special How To Hug A Porcupine surprise and so much more. These are things I'll be posting about in the coming days. Stay tuned :)

Please Don't Divorce Us...

Friends,

Have you heard that Ken Starr -- and the Prop 8 Legal Defense Fund -- filed legal briefs defending the constitutionality of Prop 8 and attempting to forcibly divorce 18,000 same-sex couples that were married in California last year? The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this case on March 5, 2009, with a decision expected within the next 90 days.

The Courage Campaign has created a video called "Fidelity," with the permission of musician Regina Spektor, that puts a face to those 18,000 couples and all loving, committed couples seeking full equality under the law.

Please watch this heartbreaking video below. If you have the same reaction that I did, you can help spread the word by sharing it with your friends ASAP -- before the Valentine's Day deadline -- and sign the petition at this site:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/Divorce

The more people who see this video, the more people will understand the pain caused by Prop 8 and Ken Starr's shameful legal proceeding.

After you watch the video, please join me and over 150,000 people who have signed a letter to the state Supreme Court, asking them to invalidate Prop 8 and reject Starr's case.

Thanks ~ Paul & Chris

Lights Out...

It seems as though our production of "Night, Night... Kensi sleep tight" has come to an end. Kensington graced us with a stunning performance, for one week only, and is now under contract negotiations before she continues in this role. The executive producers, none other that yours truly of It's Daddies. Plural. Productions, have tried working with this little Diva for the past three days but her demands are just to outrageous; 1500 thread count Egyptian cotton diapers, pink baby wipes, La Belle Au Bois Dormant Coach, 10% of the gross profits of the Kensington Baby Hat line, and her own miniature pony.

On a side note, Kensington is working on the first book in her series, "Where's Kensi?". All we have to say is, Move over Waldo!

[Update to "Let the games begin..."]

Okay... Chris and I have accepted two more suitors in "The Courtship of Kensington Grace". S & C in NWPA are soon expecting a little boy, and Andrew's daddies, Paul & Edward, would like to add him to the mix as well. Okay guys and gals... your sons are in. I should warn you though, we're expecting a lot from your little ones. I know Paul & Ed are little concerned about the time frame (32 years). If your son graduates at the top 10 percent of his class (Chris say's 5%, but I think that's a little harsh) from an Ivy League law school before the age of 32 we'll accept him without any hesitations. Are there any others out there? Going once... Going twice...

Let the games begin...

Chris and I are shopping deals with the all of the major networks to cast our little princess in her own reality series... The Courtship Of Kensington Grace. You see, Chris and I are going a little old school meets the 21st century - arranged marriage. We're lining up 4 suiters (three that we have ALREADY chosen, and one that we are allowing her to chose), and we she turns 32 we're allowing her to date each of them for a brief period. After this time is up, we'll decide who we're allowing to marry our baby girl.
Yesterday Kensi met the first contestant (opps, I mean suiter) - Lucas.

First Hybrid

Okay all you digi-scrappers, today was a day of two first; my first template I designed and my first hybrid project - combined.

So, I'm looking for feedback from you. What would you do different? What did I leave out? Come on now... be honest. It's the only way I'm going to learn :)

Last week Chris, Cathy, Kensi and I went to Michael's and I found this cute embellishment that I knew I wanted to use, and knew exactly what picture I wanted to use this with.

So this is what I came up with. So I created a template that had 6 pictures in it, so I could play off of the color arrangement in the "giggle" piece. I used embellishments from JAELOP DESIGN's Happiness Kit, who does absolutely AMAZING work. I've downloaded a couple of her kits and this is the first opportunity that I've had to used them. Her Happiness Kit was the perfect color combination that I was looking for, and it had complementing rhinestones that went with the ones in the 'giggle' piece. The stitched frames are from her Colors of LIFE kit. I used "Saginaw" as the font for the word "first".

So I then dropped the "Giggle" to create this.

You can get this digital scrapbook freebie by clicking here . You don't have to leave a comment if you download, I know what it's like to be searching for freebies (smile)... but if you do use it, I'd love for you to leave a comment with a link back to your finished product so I can see what you've done.

What a week...

I'd like to start of by thanking everyone for their calls and emails over the past couple of days. As you probably guessed, we didn't answer the phone much and laid low [from the media]. We found out last night that Michael has been suspended from competition for three months by USA Swimming. We've talked to Michael and told him how much we love him and support him, and he his trying to stay positive throughout this ordeal. He knows we are here by his side and that Kensington can't wait to meet her future God father. We also touched base with our friends Frank & Irene last week and five of us are still on for watching (as well as screaming and cheering) "Uncle Mikey" in London at the 2012 Olympics. Again, Michael, we love you and support you.

[When starting our blog, we promised certain individuals that we wouldn't write about them to exploit their friendship... we've found out that Uncle Mikey has been checking the blog on an ongoing basis and has given up permission to include him in our story]

We did receive the picture that you sent (we requested one for Kensington's nursery) and we love it... But silly boi, you were supposed to make it out to her, not me :) It's okay. Don't send another one (and you didn't have to go and have it framed - we could have done that, but thank you anyway).

Look out for a future photo of Kensington surrounded by gold metals (I think it would make a GREAT Christmas card, Chris and Michael along with our friends Jamie and Scott disagree -- you guys are no fun at all).

Random pictures from the past 10 or so days...

Mark and Tom... She's still a little to small to fit into this 0-3 months outfit, but WE ARE TRYING! :)









In a new onesie from Mazha and Fazha.






Binkie Free (just for you Teresa)











Joanie laughing at how tired I am (This is payback for making fun of her and her twins).











Auntie Kiki










Auntie Jackie, along with Jamie and Scott are making sure that Kensington is a Rangers fan. Not sure if she's even going to like baseball guys, but you can try :)







The sad thing is, I was hoping she'd spit up right about now. Jordan... not Kensington.




Evan and Patti. Hey Kerry.... I think Evan want's a little soldier running around the house.






Mommy-to-be Natasha feeling things out. She's about to have a little Princess as well.

Kensington's First Superbowl...

Our day started with brunch with the aunties... Nathan and Kevin.

Look at the adorable little place setting they laid our for Kensington.






Soon after brunch, our little girl got sleepy.

Then our other little girl got sleepy.



Nap time :)

Kevin and Nathan look at what their futures holds. Someone skinnier in the house than them. :)




Miss Gossip taking a cat nap.

Kensington prepping for the ride to watch the big game (who's playing?)




Dee feeding and burping.

Auntie Jean telling her what the score is :)