A Great Fathers Day (to come)

At Kinder, Archie made me a stubby holder with his cute little face on it and some chocolate inside.

I love it so much that I won’t even drink beer out of it. I’ll put it on the shelf and look at it every day. I didn’t even care that he showed me this present four days ago, as soon as I picked him up from Kinder, just so that he could eat the chocolates himself.

Nope, I love that little critter and I love being his Dad.

Lewis woke me up at 5am for Father’s day. He’s got the greatest little toothy grin and his warm face on my neck in the mornings is just as good as Archie’s little face on a stubby holder. (Somehow that doesn’t sound as sweet as I thought it would, but you get my drift.) If I could I’d put Lewis’s warm little face right next to the stubby holder on the shelf and look at it every day... um, I’ll move on.

This morning, I got to read the sport section of two newspapers without interruption (and without pretending that I needed to go to the toilet for thirty minutes) while I ate a shockingly easy-to-prepare breakfast. Check this out –

You try and tell me I’m not living large.

So what else do I have in store for Father’s day, loving my kids as much as I do, finding myself at this stage in my life so reliant on my family for my own happiness? An outing to the Zoo? A trip to the Aquarium? An hour or two at the Collingwood Children’s Farm?

Hang on. It’s Father’s Day, isn't it. Not kids day. (A quote from the Great Book of Dad Quotes, which my Dad referred to often - “It’s kids day everyday.”) So, I’m going to the Geelong St Kilda final at the MCG with a few mates. I’m going to have a few drinks and come back a bit tipsy. Yep, give me a kiss on the cheek kiddos. Next time I see you, you’ll be in PJ’s and all I’ll have to do for the whole day is tuck you in and sing you to sleep with a few renditions of the Geelong theme song.

I want to formally apologise to my parents for thinking that making you breakfast and cleaning my room was all you needed for Mother’s and Father’s Day. I should have opened the door, kicked you out and told you to have an entire day of doing something self-indulgent. (Dad, for you that would have been fishing and sipping some port-spiked coffee. Mum, for you that would have been reading self-help books and chanting positive affirmations or starting a new hobby –like raising geese, or building a water feature out of colored dog-hairs or completing a Masters Degree in Psychology.)