How not to react when your child tells you he is gay

I watched (or rather listened) to this video earlier today and was horrified! If you love your child how the fuck can you react this way? Being a parent now I have come to learn that your love for your child should be unconditional. It is incomprehensible that parents can act like this. They disgust me! 

Imprison homosexuals for "10 Years Hard Labor". WTF?!

I am rolling my eyes so hard I think I can see my own brain. You know, the one this asshole clearly doesn't have. Also, maybe all that turning around made him dizzy causing him not to be able to think "straight".

ARMAGAYDDON: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Yes, it is happening. The gays are getting married, having families and slowly gaining equal rights.  Will all this lead to the end of the world as we know it?

Reasons my son cries

This is not a real blog post but more something parents can relate to.  Also, I am not writing a real blog post because our son is teething and it isn’t fun for anybody, especially not for him.  Having been a parent now for just over three months I have come to learn that babies cry because of the weirdest things.  So I decided to list 20 reasons why my son cries.

1. I would not allow him to drown in the bath.
2. I would not allow him to electrocute himself.
3. The cat walked away after he tried to suck on his tail.
4. He is tired but refuses to sleep.
5. I did not allow him to play with his own vomit.
6. I did not allow him to play with his poopy diaper.
7. The playpen.
8. Clothes because he likes being naked.
9. I took 5 seconds too long to give him his bottle.
10. He couldn’t find his ugly dummy.
11. I forgot his favorite chew toy in the car.
12. He dropped his favorite chew toy while in his walking ring.
13. The bunnies ran away when they saw him.
14. I wouldn’t allow him to suck on my shoes.
15. I wouldn’t give him the remote control.
16. I didn’t allow him to suck on my iPhone.
17. He got startled by a teddy bear.
18. He got his foot stuck in the cot while trying to get out of it.
19. I went to the bathroom and didn’t take him with.
20. The first time he tasted banana.

Obviously my son also cries because he is teething and it hurts but I am sure as he becomes more mobile (starts walking) there will be plenty other and new reasons for tears.

Till next time.

Gay Men Read 50 Shades of Grey

Well I tried reading it and then got grossed out. Here is what some other homos thought about it.

Death, Teething and Craziness

So I am not dead, got abducted by aliens or disappeared off the face of the earth due to the reaping.  I took a month off from blogging mostly because babies are a lot of work and I needed a break.  But I am back now.  A lot happened during the month I was away, some good and other things not so much.  I have always had a theory about the month of August, mostly that it sucks and it is a fucked up month. This year it proved to be no different.

Let me start with the good news first.  Last week we got the great news that our adoption of our son was approved by the court and that our son is now legally ours.  Nobody can take him away from us anymore which is a good thing because that would have had to happen over my cold dead body.  He has been such a joy in our lives and it feels like we have always had him.  It is strange how quickly one adapts to parenthood and how it seems as if there is just this parental switch that gets flipped in your brain and parenting just comes naturally.  Not that it is by any means easy.

Michael started teething and his first tooth is out.  This happened with a lot of tears, tantrums and the flu.  All-in-all I now have a healthy dislike of teeth.  Teething is a painful experience for all involved.  One of the hardest things is when your son cries after he had his medication and teething gel and nothing seems to be working.  Eventually all you are left to do is hold and comfort him which makes you feel helpless and like a bad parent.  There were also the odd occasions where I cried with him and every time that happened our son would give me this look that says “What the fuck is wrong with you.  I am the one in pain here.”  But we made it through the first one, now there are nineteen left to go.  God help us.

This month was also a month of tragedy for our zoo.  We lost two more pets this month.  Earlier in the year our oldest cat passed away due to a stroke.  Now earlier this month our angora bunny died from blood cancer and on Sunday Nikita, the matriarch of the house, passed away from organ failure due to old age.  It feels like death has been doing the rounds in our street this month.  Our neighbor’s son also committed suicide by shooting himself in their garden.  It’s all very tragic and it has been a shitty start to a shitty month.  Luckily we are half way through Hell Month and let’s just hope that nothing else bad happens.

Everyone in our household has also had the flu and as luck will have it mine doesn’t want to go away.  As I sit here I feel like death warmed up and like the CDC should come and decontaminate our house before my flu evolves into becoming the Ebola virus.  I caught the flu from our son due to exposure.  And with exposure I mean that Michael was a little snot factory and inadvertently some of the snot must have ended up in my mouth.  Gross I know.  Babies can be assholes like that.  Also, nobody told me how dirty babies can be and perhaps that is a good thing.  If they are sick everything is covered in snot mixed in with the occasional vomit.  And when they vomit they usually do it on you.  I can’t remember the last time I was 100% clean.

One good thing that happened since we got our son is that my OCD has gotten better albeit unintentionally.  You see after you have been vomited on, peed on and been shit on a couple of times you become somewhat immune.  Also, our lounge is constantly in a varying state of chaos with toys being scattered everywhere.  I localized the chaos by buying Michael a playpen or as I like to call it – a baby jail.  This has two advantages: 1. The chaos is centralized and contained; and 2. Michael can’t get out of it which means I can go to the bathroom alone.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago I was diagnosed with “Bipolar Disorder not otherwise specified”.  As some of you know I have been battling depression my whole life and I always suspected that I was Bipolar.  But sailing down the river of denial is more pleasant than facing the reality.  My psychiatrist finally put all the pieces of the puzzle together.  My chronic insomnia, OCD, social phobia, depression and my hypomania were all classic bipolar symptoms.  Luckily for me I suffer from the milder form of the disorder and I prefer to view it as my eccentricity because mental illness sounds so vulgar.

As you can see the last month was no picnic.  No wonder I didn’t get around to blogging.  Had I done so the blog posts would have been even more depressing than this one.  Nobody likes to read about death and depressing shit besides the people who do because they want to feel that their lives are not so bad in comparison.  And people like that are assholes and you know who you are.  Hopefully things will get better from here and that our remaining pets will not die, the other nineteen teeth will be less traumatic than the first, no more people I know will kill themselves and that my mood will stay stable.  Now cheer up and go do something fun.

Till next time.

In My Shoes: Stories of Youth with LGBT Parents

In My Shoes is a documentary in which fie young people who are children of LGBT parents give yo a chance to walk in their shoes - to hear their own views on marriage, making change and what it means to be a family.

I am covered in vomit and got pooped on. This is my life now.

Tomorrow I will have been a dad for a month.  Can you believe it?  Since becoming a father I have learned a couple of things that people don’t tell you prior into entering into fatherhood:  For starters I have had to make peace with the fact that I will never be completely clean again; Doing things I did before will now take me five times longer; I had learned that I can do so many more things with one hand that I could have ever imagined; and dealing with another human being’s bodily fluids is gross but you get use it.

The first couple of weeks since bringing home our son were a huge learning curve for all of us.  Babies don’t come with instructions and they communicate with you in one of three ways – smiling and cute sounds (which is adorable and nice), crying (not so nice) and screaming (the world is ending and we will all die).  Luckily for us Michael is a relatively easy baby and he only becomes stabby when he is hungry.  Also, apparently if he doesn’t get his bottle after the first three subtle hints that he is ravenous (which I am now acutely attuned to) the apocalypse is upon us and his vocal acrobatics during the perceived end of his world is astonishingly and ear piercingly loud.

During this month I have also realized that your baby’s poop is very important.  In fact so important that it is the first thing hubby and I discuss in the morning and several times during the day.  Charming isn’t it?  You determine your baby’s general health by their amount of poop, times he pooped in a day, its color, its smell and its texture.  Frankly, this grossed me the hell out the first two week but then something miraculous happened – I started looking at his poop scientifically and then it all changed.  I no longer gag with each poopy diaper and I now can manage to mentally block out the smell.  You know that smell that can linger in your nostrils longer than it should.  Yes, that smell!

The only time I really got freaked out by poop was when I learned that projectile poop is not an urban baby legend.  It’s real people! And it is fucking disgusting!  I made this unfortunate discovery last week.  I was busy changing Michael’s nappy in which he pooped and as I was cleaning him evidently he was not quite done pooping yet.  He let out a fart that was actually a poop and it sprayed all over me.  I nearly died!  I stood there in total disbelieve and denial while holding Michael’s legs in the air with one hand, a wet wipe in the other and I was totally dumbfounded as what I was supposed to do next.

Do I finish changing Michael’s nappy while covered in shit? Or do I clean myself first and then finish changing his nappy?  It was a real profound debate I had in my head that lasted probably three minutes.  I decided that even though I wanted to throw up, felt like I was dying due to my OCD and gagging from the smell, that it would be good parenting to first finish changing Michael’s nappy before attending to myself.  I remember thinking to myself, as I was soldiering through, that nobody has ever shit on me before and I pray to God that it will never happen again.  But, we all know in all probability it will.  If poop is not bad enough vomit is worse.

I am not a fan of vomit.  This is also the reason why I will never be able to suffer from bulimia.  I don’t like to vomit.  I don’t like it when other people vomit. And most of all – I don’t like being vomited on.  It is right up there with being shit on.  Unfortunately babies vomit and in eight out of ten times Michael do it, it is on me.  People I am so over vomit right now I can’t even begin to tell you.  Apparently it is normal for babies and they out grow it.  When I asked our pediatrician exactly when this happens he told me it depends on the baby and they are all different in that regard.  Which was totally the wrong answer I was looking for and he probably saw it on my face.  Luckily Michael’s vomiting has gotten better, but it still happens every so often.  Some days are better than others.

The last important thing I learned was this morning.  Michael is on starter solids now.  In simple terms for people who don’t have kids, starter solids is basically food that has been totally transformed in a food processor from something that looks appetizing to a rather unappetizing paste like substance.  One day when you are old and toothless you will become acquainted with it.  Michael has taken to solids quite well.  After all he loves eating for which I am grateful.  However, timing when feeding your baby is very important; as a parent you need to have a crystal ball handy to be able to predict each and every eventuality before it happens while feeding your baby.

You must be able to predict when your baby will be sticking his hands in his mouth while he has food in it and prevent him from doing that.  If you don’t there will be a mess.  You have to know when you look away for a split second that your baby will stick his hands in his plate and rub sweet potato purity all over his face and clothes.  If you don’t there will be an early bath and wardrobe change.  And like what happened to me this morning you have to be able to predict when your baby is going to sneeze while his mouth is full of food.  If you don’t you, your baby and everything around you will be covered in a carrot and mince puree.  Lovely, and then not only will there be two wardrobe changes but cleaning as well.

I cannot believe I have been a dad for a month already.  It is a lot of work, it’s messy work and physical work.  I have almost lost 5kg as a result.  But that being said it is extremely rewarding work and not a day goes by that I don’t look at Michael with total amazement and pure joy.  Not a day goes by that I am not in total awe of this little human and the blessing he is.  Being a dad is awesome.  Except when it is not, you know that 2% of the time when you are pooped and vomited on.

Till next time.

The Price of Admission

Pretending that your spouse isn't annoying is the "Price of Admission" you have to pay for a long term relationship.  Just ask my long suffering hubby of 16 years. I am annoying as hell. 

If Gay Guys said the shit Straight People say to us...

Daniel-Ryan Spaulding is a Comedian based in Europe, exploring gender, sexuality, culture, stereotypes & identity. For More Videos & Tour Dates this Summer: @dr_spaulding SUBSCRIBE to the Channel & Join Facebook Fan Page: www.facebook.com/danielryanspaulding

I have been a dad for a week and nobody died

Today a week ago our lives were permanently changed forever, for the better.  Last week this time we were in Cape Town to fetch our son.  After ten months of waiting we finally reached the final stage of our adoption journey and it was both thrilling and petrifying at the same time.  Thrilling because we finally got to meet our son and bring him home and petrifying because we had no clue what the hell we were doing.

One thing I realized last week was that when you are travelling with a baby is that people at airports are so much nicer to you.  As most of you know airport security and I have no love for each other; mainly because I am always treated like a suicide bomber or drug mule by them.  But last week was completely different.  I managed to board the flight with things airport security is convinced can bring down a plane: deodorant, nail clippers and four bottles exceeding the liquid limit.

Also, I set off each and every metal detector and nobody molested me with that frisking business.  When security wanted to question me about the said contraband which their x-ray machine picked up I just said “Shsss… my baby is sleeping” and I was let go and not taken into a brightly lit back room and stripped searched as I have become accustomed to.

On our flight back with Michael I was a bit worried.  I have always been one of those people who got annoyed when people board one of my flights with a baby.  Now I have become one of those people.  I was concerned that with the change of air pressure with the ascent and descent that his ears would hurt and that he would cry.  Then that I would cry and that the cabin crew would have to take both of us to the back of the plane and drug us while hubby pretends not to know who we are.  Luckily this didn’t happen.  Michael drank his bottle on takeoff and slept like the angel he is through the duration of the flight.

We couldn’t believe our luck with our son.  He was so well behaved and once we got home we gave him his last bottle before bedtime and decided to bath him.  That is when all hell broke loose.  We apparently bathed him wrong and he threw a tantrum the likes I have not seen since Cher announced that she was retiring from touring.  He screamed and he was only 2% bathed before we abandoned the idea completely, dried him off, dressed him in a cute onesie and settled him to bed.  He gave us both a look that I could swear meant “What. The. Fuck. You have no idea what you are doing?” and he was right.

The next day the Kangaroo mom phoned me and told me that our bath was probably not hot enough and that we should act with more determination when we bath him.  Her advice worked and our boy now loves bath time.  The Kangaroo mom also gave us a schedule.  Being OCD and suffering from anxiety I LOVE schedules, lists and order in general.  It makes me feel safe and this is what separates us from the animals.  Our son seems to agree with me on this.  Or at least he did until Sunday.

I was told some time ago that babies can be assholes sometimes.  They just are and there is nothing that you can do about it.  I never believed this until Sunday morning.  Everything went well until around 8am that morning.  Michael decided to cry for no reason.  He didn’t have a wind, dirty nappy, was hungry, tired or was being snagged by his clothes.  He was crying which later turned into full out screaming.  He screamed for a full hour, eight minutes and twenty five seconds.  He was being an asshole and we all needed a hug after because he freaked us the fuck out and whatever it was that he cried/screamed about was out of his system.  Also, he gave me three new grey hairs because of it.  Luckily we have not had a similar dramatic performance of “I am screaming because I can” since from him.

Michael is a delightful baby and is actually really easy to take care of.  I cannot believe that one can fall in love with a little human so quickly.  He has only been with us a week and I cannot imagine our lives without him.  However, I can imagine my life without another one of his weapons of mass destruction in his diapers though.  Poopy diapers are vile and I believe they are the way God punishes us for being shitty children to our parents.  What makes it worse is each time I have to change a poopy diaper and gags Michael laughs at me.  He is very proud of his poop and loves seeing me nauseous.

We are lucky that Michael sleeps through the night.  Between 7pm and 05:30am the only times he makes us get up is because he lost his gawd awful dummy.  Then we just find it, give it to him and he falls back asleep again.  The whole routine literally takes ten seconds at most.  So we are not sleep deprived at all.  However, getting out of our PJ’s before 11am is almost impossible.  I also have now for a week smelled either of sour milk due to baby vomit or Avon baby lotion and sometimes of both.  I have also gone to the shop with my shirt covered in baby vomit without noticing it or actually caring.  People who judge baby vomit stained shirts are assholes.

It is still early days of parenthood for us but thus far Michael has been a blessing and a joy.  Some nights I just sit by his cot and watch him sleep and every time he wakes up from a nap and gives me that beautiful smile of his when he sees me melts my heart.  I still find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that I am now a dad.  I am just so very surprised at how naturally it has come to me.  I mean I have always said when I was younger that I never wanted kids. And look at me now. My life feels complete and whole and we are all three tremendously happy.  Well, until the next hour long tantrum that is.

Till next time.

We got "The Call"

After ten months of an agonizing wait it finally happened. This week we got “The Call”. The call we were hoping and waiting for. The call that would say that our lives will now forever be changed. The call that would make hubby and I and our family so incredible happy. The call that said we are now going to be a family.

When we started on our adoption journey in August of 2013 we entered into the process being very optimistic. However, we soon learned that adoption is a very emotional process fraught with emotional pitfalls that one should navigate around with the greatest of care. I will not lie and say that the process was easy because it was not.

We have had some fights along the way. Hubby and I have fought with each other. We have fought with our social worker. We have even fought with ourselves. Mostly this happened out of sheer frustration and most of the fights hubby and I had were over stupid things that we now look back on going “What the hell was wrong with us”.

The hardest part of the adoption process is not the screening, the psychometric assessments, the interviews, home visit or panel interview. The fact that adoption is not a cheap venture was also not such an issue. The hardest part of the adoption process is, after all is said and done and you are finally declared paper pregnant, the long wait. The waiting can kill you. Or possibly drive you nuts.

We have been paper pregnant since November 2013 and to be honest very few days passed since then that I didn’t think about whether our baby was born yet. Very few conversation between hubby and I did not include the adoption in them. So we did what we could to occupy our minds. We prepared the nursery, bought all the things we could buy that we would need. We even had our baby shower in February this year.  

It was like we were psychically willing our child into this world. We dreamed about babies. We noticed the gazillions of people with babies, gay and straight, in the shops and at restaurants. Isn’t it weird how you all of a sudden see babies everywhere while you are waiting for yours? It was like we were being tortured and tormented by the universe as we were reminded around every corner of that we were waiting for.

Then on Thursday, as I was heading to my Botox appointment, I got the call. Well, actually I got two. The first one was to inform me that we have a baby and the second one was to arrange for a meeting for the next day. As hubby’s Botox appointment was before mine I sent him a text that read “Wait for me outside and under NO circumstances can you leave. This is important!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Hubby probably thought I discovered something about our plastic surgeon online that freaked me out. Or that I WebMD self-diagnosed myself with the Ebola Virus again. But this time it obviously was nothing like that at all. I have not self-diagnosed myself with an exotic disease in ages. As I arrived at our surgeon’s office hubby was waiting for me and was all like “Are you dying again” and I was like “We are all going to die someday. You are stuck with me and I am going to live well into my nineties and you are not allowed to die before me!”

Then I told him the great news. He was in tears which also almost made me cry but I never do that in public. Very few people have ever seen me cry. Also, when I cry I prefer to do it in private as it ain’t pretty people. It’s like my gift to society. You’re welcome.

We were both overjoyed. After ten months we are finally going to be parents to a three month old little boy. As I started wrapping my brain around the idea the rest of that day I was overcome with both excitement and being utterly terrified. I mean, I have never had a baby. I have only changed a nappy once in my life and generally babies scared me. Now I am going to have one of my own. Will I even know what to do? What if I fuck up? What if I am a bad parent? Can I afford all the therapy my child may someday need because he has an eccentric dad?

After freaking out a realization hit me. We are not the first parents to go through this. All parents go through this with their first child. This is probably exactly what they must have felt like; except they are not my kind of crazy. The sense that other people before me suffered gave me a sense of relief.

Also, our son is three months old and past most of the crappy and awkward baby stuff newborns go through. He is still a baby and I am sure we will have plenty of sleepless nights ahead but I plan on savoring and enjoying every second of it. Yes, even if I am covered in baby poop at 3 o’clock in the morning and he won’t stop crying. I will so Blog and Facebook that. With pictures.

On Tuesday we will be fetching our son and I cannot wait. After the meeting we will have this afternoon we will be booking flights as soon as we find out what our court date and time is. It is exciting times in our household. The cats and bunnies have no idea what they are in for. The whole lot of us will be sleep deprived and our little zoo is now getting a little prince. He is the blessing that we longed for. I cannot believe this is finally happening. I. Am. So. Happy.

To read more about our adoption journey click HERE

Till next time.

Gay marriage: What if God changed his mind?

I will not suck another fag

So I am trying this again.  I have decided that I must stop smoking.  You know, because I don’t want to die.  After twenty years of smoking my lungs need a break.  I probably could pave a tar road with all the shit I have inhaled from cigarettes and I prefer not to become another one of those lung cancer statistics.  But to quit smoking is hard and thus far I have had a zero success rate with it.  Also, I now know how crack addicts must feel and it isn’t pretty people.

I remember when I first started smoking.  It wasn’t peer pressure that got me started.  It was my sister.  You see we went on holiday and my sister and I had to share a hotel room.  I was a scrawny sixteen year old at the time and it was still easy for my sister to bully me.  She is a couple of years older than I am and as strong as an ox when she wants to be.  She was secretly smoking and didn’t want my parents to find out.  Seeing as we shared a hotel room and she being a nicotine addict this obviously posed a particular set of problems for her.

Firstly, at that time I would do anything to get my sister busted and get her into trouble.  Secondly, I was really bad at keeping secrets especially when it was something juicy and about my sister.  So naturally if I caught her smoking I would take our sibling rivalry to an epic new level.  Unfortunately, my sister would have made an excellent Survivor contestant, if she liked the outdoors and being dirty and hungry that is.  She continuously outwitted, outlasted and outplayed me right through our childhood and this time would be no different.

My sister convinced me through her clever psychological trickery that only really cool people smoked.  She also did not want me to be on the outskirts of society and she wanted me to join her sistren of really hip smokers.  See how I just revived a word that was last used in the 16th century.  Sometimes I amaze myself.  Also, I want everyone to start using the word "sistren" again because it is a really cool word.  But I digress... 

Being trapped in a hotel room with my sister was a bit like being a fly in a spider web.  It was in my best psychological and physical interest to not go against her generous sisterly advice on this particular social issue.  So I conceded out of fear and started fake smoking meaning that I would only puff and not inhale the smoke.

By the end of that holiday I was addicted to nicotine and, for obvious reasons, could no longer tell on my sister for smoking.  She had successfully tricked me in keeping her secret and I had now joined her in keeping things from our parents.  Twenty years and several attempts to quit smoking later, I am still a smoker.  In the past I have tried many things to stop.  I have done the patches, the gum, medication and even once thought that I could quit cold turkey.  That did not end well.

Trying to quit anything cold turkey is like playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun.  And the gun is not pointed at your head but pointed at the heads of others.  The time I tried to quit cold turkey I became a ranging emotional bitch from hell.  I had a short fuse and was generally unpleasant to be around.  I also started to behave like that slow cousin in your family that nobody talks about.  I did not like or recognize myself, at the time, and it felt like I lost my best friend and my mind.  I managed to survive a month of not smoking and then succumbed to the demon that is nicotine again.

When I tried to quit smoking on Champix things went a bit better apart from the fact that I almost died.  I had the worst nightmares while on that medication, it fucked up my liver and there were times that it made me ill enough not to be able to go to work.

I managed four months of not smoking on Champix but then we went on holiday to Madagascar and I fell off the wagon again, so to speak.  This is also when I contracted pneumonia and as we headed back home I went to hospital directly from the airport.  At hospital I would take off my oxygen mask to go for a smoke and when I was done I would put back the oxygen.  At least I had the good sense not to blow myself up but pneumonia and smoking – not the best combination.  Sometimes addicts do some weird shit like this.

So here I am again.  Attempt number God knows what.  This time I am staying clear of medications and I have opted to use the electronic cigarette and acupuncture to stop.  Thus far I must say it is going well.  I have cut down from forty cigarettes a day to around three a day.  Actually, the truth is I have cut down to about eight.  No, actually the real truth is I have cut down to ten.  Addicts lie.

I am very lucky to have an understanding husband who has placed no pressure on me at all to stop.  I am doing this for myself.  He doesn’t judge me when I have a cigarette from my not so secret stash and he has been very supportive.  I hope to exclusively smoke the electric cigarette (or like I fondly call it - my electric crack pie) in about a week or two.  Then I will deal with the nicotine addiction and swop the nicotine liquid for the non-nicotine one.

It has been a week since I started weaning myself off cigarettes and lo and behold, nobody has been murdered and I have not died.  Hopefully this time I will succeed in kicking this nasty ass habit and can spend the next sixty years smoke free.  And yes people, to the horror of some I plan to live well into my nineties.

I think the hardest part about quitting is not so much the nicotine addiction but the actual habit.  It is something to do with your hands and is an excuse to get out of the office for ten to fifteen minutes at a time.  However, now days smokers are banned to dodgy smoking areas and treated like lepers due to anti-smoking laws.  So it is best to just quit.  To my lungs, you’re welcome.  To the tobacco industry, I loathe all of you and you can all go fuck yourselves!  

Till next time.

Shit gay guys say

Here is a compilation of the funniest YouTube videos about "Shit Gay Guys Say".  I promise you will have a giggle.