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I’m Guilty: 7 “DAD”ly Sins of Fatherhood

Every dad sins. There has never been a Dad who has never sinned. Sometimes a Dad walks a fine line between moral and immoral and, other times, he crosses it. Intentionally or not, ethics sometimes get swept under the carpet, or in my case, the bassinet, for self-serving reasons.

In my humorous and practical book for expectant and new dads, DADspirations: The 1st 100 Days of Fatherhood, I look back at some of those self-serving reasons, which I refer to below as 7 of the DADly sins.

After you finish reading, please feel free to leave comments about my sinful behavior so we can engage in a dialogue on what a new dad should or shouldn’t be doing during his 1st 100 days on his new job of being a dad.

Lust

Within three years, my wife and I met, got engaged, married and welcomed 2 kids into the world. Our desire for each other has been pretty intense in a short amount time. Naturally, the flame dims a little after childbirth, and for good reason. The woman went through a lot of pain for G-d’s sake. Nine months of discomfort, potential nausea, reoccurring backaches and then bam!, the birth of a 6 to 9 lb. baby. With all of the mental and physical changes a woman goes through, it’s not a shock that romance takes a dip after delivery. But as a dude whose didn’t experience much physical change during pregnancy, for better or for worse, my body (and lust) has remained the same. While my book is generally PG, there is a pretty consistent, if not blatant, theme of me trying to put the romance back into our relationship as soon as possible, such as my idea for making up a holiday in order to get some nookie.

Gluttony

100 days is not a lot of time. Add in marriage and a new baby and, in retrospect, it seemed like a couple of weeks. For me to try and cram 35 things into about 3 and half months is pretty excessive, if not selfish. Almost half of the ideas are for me, which may sound bad, but more than half are for wife and baby. And while I frequently profess my love for Doritos throughout my book, my over-consumption is not food focused. My gluttonous sin was to consume attention, from family and for them. While I don’t think it could be considered wasteful, the attention I gave and received was definitely more than what was required by a new parent. In hindsight, did I really need to send my wife to spa for a day, just so that I could have my daughter all to myself and introduce her to sitting on the couch and watching football? Hmm….





Greed

Yeah, this is a big one. After all, for 12 weeks, I did one thing for myself and 1 thing for my baby or wife. To cap it off, for the final 13 days, I did something just for baby girl. Excessive? Absolutely. Too much focus on material possessions? Probably. And in looking at most of the specific things I did, there was definitely an emphasis on them being tangible. Giving my newborn daughter the 1st of 18 future pearls to someday make a necklace for her? Adorable. Creating a family contest in order to raise money for a Bose surround-sound speaker system? Brilliant!

Sloth

I have to admit, if you looking for a lot of religion in this book, I have bad news for you. In fact, it’s absent of anything to do with spiritual work. Laziness isn’t really an issue with this sin, as one section of the book emphasizes the importance for me to get my butt back into shape and introduce the art form of push-ups to my daughter. It’s the complete failure of developing spirituality on my part that I find myself guilty. Although G-d’s name was mentioned multiple times as we tried to bring our baby into this world, He has been pretty absent since our little one arrived. Not that we are rejecting grace and G-d, I was too caught up in trying to memorize those damn lullabies.

Wrath

To this day, I still have a lot of pent up anger with myself for stealing a piece of pizza from the hospital floor’s community refrigerator. As I tried to rationalize in the book, I hadn’t eaten in twelve hours. I was starving. It was deep-dish from Lou Malnati’s. What makes matters worse was how it came to appear in the letter that I wrote to my daughter. It surfaced as one of the three things I wanted my daughter to know that I was thinking when I first held her in my arms: how do I make sure she knows that being smart is cool; how do I make sure she ends up with a good guy like Daddy; and boy that pizza was good. And, I can’t forget the fury of frustrated feelings in my 124-word, wrath-induced, sleep-deprived rant on the “conversations” my wife and I had. Spoiler Alert: this book is not all sunshine and rainbows. :-)

Envy

I was so jealous of one of the ideas I had for my wife, that I copied it for myself. Sick, isn’t it? When I scheduled a girl’s night out for my wife and her besties, something about them drinking champagne in a limo, eating sushi and sleeping-in until 10am the next morning sounded pretty damn good to me—because I totally hijacked it for myself a few weeks later. Although sans the champagne, limo and sushi, I did conduct a boy’s night out for me and my buddies. We went to a local pub, drank beer and watched sports. Sexy? No. Perfect? Yes. Additionally, I strongly coveted the physical bonding that my wife and baby had established while she was in the womb. So, instead of waiting for the bonding connection to occur, my little girl and I got to practice the art of chilling through skin-to-skin contact. That might come across as sounding weird without context, but I assure it was quite innocent and sweet.





Pride

By far, the biggest sin I’m guilty of, but also the one I’m most proudest. Ironic, right? Especially since this is the original and “most serious” of the seven deadly sins. Not only did I focus the majority of the book on my beautiful, smart, sweet, adorable, amazing, hilarious, independent and strong-willed daughter, I put her on the fricken’ cover of the book. If that’s not a daddy who went a little overboard on the proudness factor in showing-off his little girl, than I don’t know what is.

Ok, so maybe most of this is a little tongue-in-check and perhaps not the religious-driven story you might have been expecting from the introduction. But, I hope you a least got a few smiles and maybe a laugh or two out of it. If you did, then you should strongly consider purchasing a copy of DADspirations: The 1st 100 Days of Fatherhood for yourself or someone you know.

I would love to hear some additional DADly sins in the comments below.

Father of two, Pete Densmore doesn’t consider himself an expert in parenthood by any means. He makes the same number of mistakes as every other parent and doesn’t have any fancy combination of letters after his name. Densmore believes that anyone can be an inspired dad as long as he wants to put the time, effort and heart into becoming one.

Website * Facebook * Twitter * Pinterest * Goodreads

Publisher: DADspirations (August 1, 2012)

Language: Parenting, Fatherhood, Inspirational

ISBN-10: 061566363X

ISBN-13: 978-0615663630

Buy: Amazon , Kindle , IndieBound, The Book Depository

DADspirations: The 1st 100 Days of Fatherhood is a fast-reading, humorous book which includes an actionable checklist of essential ideas to help inspire dads to become the best father they can be. In short, this book offers a strategy for the expecting/new father focusing on 35 weekly ideas that Dad can do for himself, his wife and his newborn. A few of these ideas, which Densmore refers to as DADspirations, include:

*Develop a baby birth time capsule, which captures all of the precious moments from a day you're likely to forget.

*Send your loving wife to the spa, which secures for you an afternoon of introducing Bob Ross and Kung Fu to your baby.

*Build a toy box, which gives you the perfect excuse to spend an entire day alone in the garage with power tools and beer.

*Make up a holiday, which affords time for infant and grandma to bond, and gives you and your wife time for nookie.

People Magazine has asked Celebrity Baby Trend Expert, Rachel Florio-Urso, to host a BIG giveaway! The publish date is March 25, 2013. My book, DADspirations: The 1st 100 Days of Fatherhood will be included in the prize pack giveaway open to the public. In addition, I am making the eBook version FREE for Kindle on 3/25 and 3/26.

Giveaway



Beautiful Baby Tower Gift Set – An adorable tower with a large variety of gifts for the new baby. Open to US/Canada.

International choice of Paypal Cash or Amazon Gift Card for same value.

AND

March 17 –



Introduction at VBT Cafe'

Guest Blogging at Lori's Reading Corner

Interviewed at Free eBooks Daily



Spotlight at Writers With Books



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March 18 –



Interviewed at Mass Musings



Interviewed at BK Walker Books Etc.



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