manly monday: kenny from smonk you!

I got my brave pants on a few weeks ago and started asking some of my favorite bloggers to make an appearance on BabyMooHoo, including Kenny from smonk you. Kenny is one of the first bloggers I started reading when I began this little baby blog, and I was immediately impressed. He and his wife always seem to have such a reasonable approach to parenting--a mix of practicality, humor, and best practice. I love reading this guy's honest and tender approach to raising his sweet son Miloh, and I know most of you must already love him, too.

So. Kenny was an obvious choice for me to get up the nerve to contact and invite to be a part of Manly Mondays. But then I got swept away by summer and didn't follow up on that invitation--hence, no Manly Monday post last week. Kenny very kindly takes the blame on that one, but really he's just being chivalrous. I think this post on what it means to be a dad more than makes up for his absence last week. What do you think? Leave him some love and stay tuned for more Manly Mondays now that I'm back on track with this feature!

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A bit ago Hilary asked me if I'd write a little something for her Manly Monday feature and I was psyched. I started thinking what I would write... Then I totally spaced... So it's my fault there was none last week. Or maybe it was the week before.

But somewhere in there my son got sick. So I blame him. Then he started waking in the middle of the night making me super tired every day... So I blame him again.

Anyway I'm following Don's post, which isn't easy to do.

But stealing someone's idea is the sincerest form of flattery so I'll follow in his footsteps.

As Don decided to look up the definition and then challenge the word of "manly" I decided to look up the definition, and possibly challenge, the word "dad."

According to Merriam-Webster the word Dad is a noun meaning father.

Okay I can't really challenge that... I think they got it right.

In my reality it's a word I don't know how to define... Long story short I'm not a fan of my father and haven't spoken to him since I was 14. And he was never really a dad... So the idea of a Dad was always pretty abstract to me.

Then I became a dad... And so I'm figuring it all out... I guess I base what I want to be as a dad from what I wanted in one as a kid... What I saw on TV and at friends' houses... And probably from what I saw and thought was just plain wrong... In that case I do the opposite.

I bought a book on being a dad, I think it was The Expectant Father or such, and scammed another one free from twitter... But I never read more than 20 pages of each... Mostly because of huge ADD but also because I formed my idea of a dad in my head and that was/is my plan.

And I think it's working out. My son Miloh is super happy and I'm loving being a dad (kids used to freak me out... a lot still do).

But to get back to the definition I might take umbrage at the simple definition of "Dad" as a father. I think they're two totally different things. And in reality I think the word Dad means something different to everyone. It's like saying something is red. How many varieties of red are there? Tons. And they're all red.

And the good ones are all dads.


P.S. dictionary.com had extra definitions for dad. They start with father of course but then add some that MW didn't:

– interjection; meaning god. Such as dad-gummed (a phrase I'm sure you all use twice a day)
– noun; a solid blow or knock or a large slice, lump, or portion.
– the 15th letter of the arabic alphabet.

And Acronyms including: Dogs Against Drugs (because we should all be concerned with dogs doing drugs... and that's the real moral of this post.)