Preparation

When you have a baby, getting out of the house is hard.  It doesn’t matter where you’re going, it seems to take a week’s worth of planning and preparation to actually make it out of the door successfully.  This has changed a lot of things for me.  My weekly grocery shopping has turned into a monthly affair.  Suddenly, I have baby shower gifts ready weeks before the actual event.  Last minute trips are no longer an option.  I have ONE chance to get there, ONE chance to get what I need and only ONE chance to get it right.  Failure means that I’ll have to go without until I find the heart and energy to make a second attempt.

With this in mind, father’s day shopping is being done early this year.  We still have two weeks to go (well, we did when I first wrote this post) but I’m getting my act together now, before it’s too late.

This father’s day is a special one in our house because this is my husband’s first one ever.  I’ll admit that I did get him a small gift last year since little Noah was already growing inside me and giving us the new identities of mother and father; but let’s face it, I was doing all of the work and Billy had no idea what fatherhood meant yet.  This year we get to celebrate his first steps into fatherhood and I am so excited about it.

Now, Billy has already knows what most of his present is.  The EAFA Euro soccer league starts this weekend and Billy is dying to watch it, so we’re getting a TV package for the time that it’s showing (we don’t have any TV connection currently because it is so expensive).  This, however, doesn’t cut it for me.  I love to put thought and time into my gifts.  I like to surprise and make someone feel special.  Satellite television just doesn’t have the finesse that I’m looking for.

This is why I went shopping today.  This is why I showered before 2 pm, put on real clothes and make-up and made the long, frightening trip to the mall with my little boy.

The result?  A perfectly awesome Father’s Day gift.  Check it out:

I decided to stick with the sports theme and got some of his favourite snacks to watch the games with.  We’ve got Nachos, Doritos, popcorn, M&Ms, some chocolates and of course, the South African game-watching essential: biltong (there’s already beer in the fridge so I didn’t bother with that).

I’m planning on adding a few sentimental touches later on.  I have a photo of Noah waiting to be framed, and I’m tinkering with the idea of making a card using his handprints… but I’m not sure that it’ll be too easy to do.  I mean, paint on a 5 month old’s hands?  I struggle to see that going too well.  Like shopping, I’m expecting to do a week of prep and a day’s worth of psyching myself up before trying that.