I already know that fatherhood’s difficult—life’s nothing short of a hustle when you’re juggling your marriage, your job and your #BloggerLife, but when you add young children to the mix with everlasting demands for food, affection and entertainment, everything you thought you knew gets immediately more complicated than you ever thought possible.
But really, I’m just your run-of-the-mill Dad doing everything I can to keep my family thriving, whether that’s the hours put in keeping everything straight with the 9-5; all the things I need to do to keep this roof standing over their heads; or the many times I put them before me, because that’s part of what being a Dad’s all about!
Now imagine trying to do all that while training for the Olympics.
A couple of weeks ago, I lunched with Olympian couple Mark Oldershaw and Annamay Pierse, celebrating the Road to Rio which includes Mark rejoining Team Canada for the 2016 Olympics, going for gold in men’s canoeing!
And he pulled it off while raising with newborn daughter Josephine with Annamay.
The conversation covered plenty about work-life balance; the expectations for a child of Olympic parents; and as the fifth Olympian in his family (and the first to win a medal), what dinners are like for Mark’s non-Olympian relatives and whether they show up bitter every time!
We also got the chance to chat with Alanna McGinn of Good Night Sleep Site, helping inform both the weary new Olympic parents and the Pampers Baby Panel members present about the benefits of a solid night’s sleep, and more importantly, how to get it when the odds often favour otherwise. Coupled with the delicious food offered by King West’s Colette Grand Café, I could think of worse ways to wrap up the six months I’d spent on the Pampers Baby Panel!
Pampers Wants You to Sleep Like a CHAMP—Because You’re Not Going to Win if You Can’t Keep Up!
Whether you’re a blogger, an Olympic rower, or any other kind of parent who’s raising some wee ones, we’ll all face similar issues when trying to teach them to sleep. And though it’s quite the ordeal, Pampers put together a PDF one-pager on the importance of healthy sleep—so new parents at your wits’ end, perhaps you should give it a go, so you can salvage what’s left of your already too-fragile psyches!
But babies don’t stay babies forever. With these kids already 2½ and 5 months old, it feels like Swaddlers are making way for Cruisers, and despite some reluctance, there’ll soon be someone in the house moving on to Easy Ups training pants.
Who knows—maybe you’ll be seeing me write more on this yet: I have a feeling it’ll still be a while before we find these boys making their way to the bathroom completely unassisted.
But hopefully you’ve enjoyed these Baby Panel posts—maybe you’ve learned something. Maybe I scared you off from parenthood. In any case, this is one parent who’s off to get some rest, because tomorrow’s another day, and trust me—we parents need all the rest we can get.
Until the next,
–case p.
Disclaimer: I’ve written this piece as my last post for the Pampers Baby Panel, a collective of content creators who work with the Pampers brand to share our experiences with the products they have for kids of various ages.
Because when it comes to diaper care, you can spare no expense in covering your butt.
