New guest post on Nutripaeds

I'm the resident Daddy blogger at Nutripaeds.co.za and my latest post on how Mitch thinks he's Michael Schumacher is now live. You can check it out here http://www.nutripaeds.co.za/my-son-schumacher-by-dan/

Having an outlet to protect your sanity

Kim being a supporter rather than runner

In the past I've made mention to the fact that Mitch is not a well kid and has spent a lot of time in Constantiaberg Hospital to the point where his visits have become the norm rather than exception. This can put quite a bit of emotional stress onto both your self and relationship with your partner unless you have an outlet of sorts.

Luckily for both Kim and I we are both athletically minded and sport has been a constant in our relationship. When one is stressed the other will often say "why don't you go for a run to get your head right?" It always works. So with Mitchells situation the natural fallback was always going to be exercise.

Probably the best thing we did to start with was buy a running jogger (I'll be posting a review on ours over at www.nutripaeds.co.za in the next few weeks) as soon as Kim was able to run/walk. This has meant that not only can we have family time after work that is also a nice relaxing walk it also meant that from the moment Mitch was six weeks old we were able to take part in weekly Park Runs held around Cape Town.

Unfortunately during one of these Park Runs Kim stood on a stone and got a small fracture in her heel. It was a period of twelve weeks of her being in an air boot that rammed home to us the value of needing this release as suddenly the stress levels at home rose slightly and small frustrations that never phased us suddenly became bigger issues.

Since Kims recovery she has decided to take on the Comrades Marathon this year, a nice little 89Km run run from Durban to Pietermaritzberg. While this has some small time management issues it does do two things nicely.

1. Gives Kim an outlet and stress release while also giving her a mental break or rather something else to focus on
2. Gives Mitch and I three to four hours of quality father-son time at weekends which I cherish especially as he gets older.

 From my side things are easier than they could have been. A few years ago Kim training for Comrades would have meant that I would have had to sacrifice my own endurance event plans. However since having knee surgery in mid 2013 I have canned all endurance dreams and focused on building a strong functional body at an awesome place called Roark Gyms (www.roarkgyms.com). This means that we can both plan our weeks around non-conflicting sports in a way that suits our own goals.

The benefits of all of this? Well for a start we are both a lot less stressed and have natural breaks away from having to be "on" with Mitch. As a result our relationship is probably stronger than ever as we have an outlet other than each other to take our frustrations on, this is a biggy! Finally and more long term Mitch would have known from pretty much the day he was born that mum and dad exercise and look after their bodies. Never underestimate the power of example from such a young age and I really do believe that by setting an example from now we are increasing his chances of making good lifestyle choices later.

Of course we prefer exercise. Other friends outlets range from computer clubs to their church groups to art clubs. It really doesn't matter what it is but I am 100% convinced that you do need an outlet of sorts.

Now if you don't mind I'm off the the gym.....

Our nanny doesn't live on the same planet as us

About five minutes after our snot gobbler entered the world all full of attitude we decided that to stand any chance of maintaining a working life we needed to hire a full time nanny. After interviewing and trialing a few we settled on Gertrude a slip of a thing from Zimbabwe.

Gertrude in the main is awesome. She loves Mitch, he adores her, she is quiet which was a prerequisite seeing as I've stayed in hotel rooms that are bigger than our house and we both work from how a few days a week, and she was affordable. However she is a strange puppy and her points of reference and understanding on life can be shall we say left of centre when comparing it to ours.

We really started to take note of the differences when she arrived one morning in tears. Apparently her husband had come home with his mistress not knowing she was still there as she had the day off. Not nice. Her way of dealing with it? To fast until 12 everyday as that would help show sacrifice, but also to put on weight as African men like big women and she's too skinny. Well first off from a blokes point of view I can tell you that if Kim wants me to take an interest in her, not that she has to request it but if she did......there are a few ways to get a red blooded male like me to do so and not eating until lunchtime or doubling her body mass index are not two of them. Secondly in all the years I've been reading books on nutrition nowhere have I ever read "if you want to get fat then we suggest you don't eat". Funny that, and I generally find a burger pie and six pack of beer a day will do the trick though.

We then come to some Gertrudeisms

- Mitch needs to crawl or he won't be good at maths. Ok so my sons chances of becoming the next Stephen Hawking rest solely on whether he shuffles on his hands and knees? If I'd known that 37 years ago I still wouldn't be walking and would be a genius!

- the reason Mitch has stomach issues is because Kim didn't eat enough chocolate while pregnant. Right ok, ladies go eat some snickers bars right now or be in trouble later

- Mitch farts a lot because he doesn't burp after every feed. Has nothing to do with his chronic gastric medical condition and three intestinal bacterial infections then?

- "Dan where're Kim and Mitch?" "At hospital" "what they have been at the clinic for three days, yoh the queue must be very long there, next time go to mine as I only wait four hours" oh the mind boggles

- her kids schools fees are 500 but her flat costs her 1.2 and her cellphone cost 2.4......took a while but I now know that to make life easy we drop the thousand from everything so 1.2 is actually R1200 makes sense I suppose

The list is endless and gets added too daily, much like the extensions in her hair. The main thing is though that she is lovely, she and Mitch are best mates, and we wouldn't be without her. It's just her outlook on life is slightly different to ours ans sometimes this can actually be fun!