Fatherhood

My son was born seven weeks ago and now that I'm getting over the initial baby shock I'll be trying to write again.

I planned to write a lot about the experience of being a parent, but when it actually happened not was I only too tired to write, I also found the whole experience to be very personal. But I guess I can share some aspects of my new life.

I don't really recognize my life anymore. So many changes in so little time. First I left my job of over three years and now I'm in Toronto for several months away from every semblance of my former life with the sole exception of my husband who is my only constant. I especially miss my dogs so much that it hurts. We had a picture of them as the laptop's wallpaper, but it had to be changed as it became too painful to look at it.

And there's of course this little guy who needs to be taken care of full time. Since my husband still works on the phone and the computer, it means that I need be the full time mommy, a job I enjoy most of the time. I haven't had a good nigh sleep since the birth, but I got used to it by now. Overall my son is a very good baby. The long term plan is for me to kick off my freelance career again or at least use the time to write more, but with the lack of sleep I find it hard to concentrate and produce work. At least I get enough time between feedings and changing and bottle making to genuinely relax by taking extra naps, play videogames or watch TV.

A nap right now would actually be nice!

--Mickey

Waiting

We've been in Toronto for a week and a half now. We had enough time to get over the jetlag, settle in our flat and shop for food and baby stuff. We have everything now, except baby. We even visited him on the weekend and said hello to him through the surrogate's belly.

I miss my dogs so much, but other than that I'm quite happy here. The President's Choice Buffalo Hot Chicken Wings and the breaded white cheese sticks are alone worthy of immigration. It's also nice to watch American television just as soon as it airs.

Mister baby seems insistent to be born a Gemini.

Waiting...

--Mickey

Rosie Millard is an idiot Part 2

Just a quick update on Rosie Millard. I googled "Rosie Millard is an idiot" to see how high my blog post about her will show up. It was the first, but surprisingly it drew other interesting results... This and this.

This woman has spent mind blowing amounts of money, got into debt and declared poverty while still sitting on a real estate empire estimated in the millions. Not only she's a filthy liar and criminal, she is also a woman out of control. So there is no wonder she can't get her children to show any moderation when having to share a toy (and surely she can afford four DSes).

For her to have any complaints aimed at videogames is just so outrageous and laughable at the same time.

Happier times before Nintendo destroyed their lives forever.

--Mickey

Rosie Millard is an idiot and a crappy parent.

The Daily Mail had a new anti video games article. The interesting thing here is that it's not to do with violent content that's not unsuitable for kids, it's against any type of videogames whatsoever.

In this article Rosie Millard essentially claims that her kids were perfectly behaved until she introduced a Nintendo DS into their lives. Well, what the hell did she expect when introducing a shiny toy they can only play one at a time? If she forced them to watch TV one at a time or eat one at a time, there would be a similar outcome, if not worse. Why not just starve your kids for a day and then throw a Kitkat into the middle of the room you lunatic?

Why didn't she buy them a Nintendo Wii that they could've played together? With Wii Sports not only four people can play at once, they also get some physical exercise.

I know several families with very well behaved children who do play videogames on a regular basis. They parents manage to regulate the amount of time their children spend on videogames and ensure they don't neglect other aspects of their lives. Cutting something out of the kids' lives is easy; moderating it requires more effort and skill. The only conclusion is that Rosie Millard is a bad parent. Her kids obviously enjoy videogames and now, after getting a taste, will have to witness in frustration how their friends keep enjoying this unique form of entertainment.

Another argument Rosie Millard made, was that playing videogames was an utterly unconstructive activity. Oh, there we go. That's what this is all about. Just another angle to attack videogames by an old generation that simply doesn't understand the medium. Rosie, your children seems to enjoy it, isn't that enough? On top of that videogames improve hand-eye coordination, reading skills, problem solving, creativity and much more. But that's a subject for another post. The best answer for the Rosie Millards of the world has already been written by Richard Bartle.

The happy family, safe from the evils of Nintendo

--Mickey

Blue Badger Gallery

Ace Attorney on the Nintendo DS is one of my favourite game series and I should probably write about it more in the future. The Blue Badger is a very minor character from that series. To call him a character will be pushing it, as he's really nothing more than a fictional mascot.

I was fiddling with photoshop and ended up with this:
I then decided to try and create various Blue Badger versions of famous characters. These drawings were NOT done from scratch. Sadly I can't draw that well. This is mostly photoshop magic (though I know some of them lack polish and are on the border of being utterly rubbish) This is what I created so far:

--Mickey

Wii Fit

OK, I had this for almost a week now and I used almost every day, so I'm more or less ready to write my take on this fitness phenomena.

Carrying the box home was a fantastic exercise. I just had to switch hands occasionally to make sure I got an even workout. This is a sturdy piece of equipment, not some rubbish toy.

It works. I found myself working quite hard and was sore the next day. In fact, I was a little sore almost every day, on the different muscles I used the previous day. It seems to give a good workout (as in tiring) to all the muscle groups, but it doesn't really give you enough direction to build your own customized programs.

It's amazing how unbalanced I am. Even when standing supposedly still during a breathing exercise the screen info showed me how much I was wobbling all over the place. But just like the visual aid in Singstar helps you correct you pitch, Wii Fit helps you improve your balance by showing you exactly what you're doing wrong. My Wii fit age varies between 34 and 41 based on what appears to be pure luck. At least now that I turned 30, I'm closer to my Wii fit age. I can get away with saying stuff like "not bad for someone in his thirties".

The aerobic and balance mini-games are fun and are perfect for parties with people taking turns. (or at least I thought so: no one wanted to play anything at my 30th birthday party, just drink and talk - I am getting old!) Hula hoops is amazingly addictive and my favourite. It's odd to find yourself controlling various mini-games by shifting your balance, but you get used to it very quickly and accept it as legitimate game controls very quickly. The yoga and strength exercises are slightly more of a proper exercise and are less "fun".

I'm no yoga expert, but the game got me really interested and even consider taking a yoga class in the future which is by itself a great achievement. I don't think there's a true replacement for a human guide. Also, the various postures are fragmented and so far I didn't see an option to flawlessly string a variety of moves into a full workout with proper warm up and cool downs. Clicking in and out of activities breaks the flaw a bit.

Also, one activity expected me to bend down and touch my toes without bending my knees and I couldn't do it so I just pushed as much as I could. The program still praised me, even though I didn't quite get it right.

It's a lot of fun and a great way to get a genuine workout that you can do on its own or mix up with gym visits, joggings or anything else. I believe that Wii Fitness alone is good enough for the average person who wants to keep fit. Obviously if you have more specific muscle building and cardio requirements, it won't be enough.

Unlocking additional exercises and mini-games by simply playing the game is a good way to encourage you to keep on playing. I hope the novelty isn't going to wear off before new software arrives for the peripheral.

Considering I'll be cooped up in flat for months after the birth of my baby, it'll be great to be able to sneak in a few minutes of exercise here and there.

I look forward to see what new software will be developed for it by Nintendo and other developers (Fit Monkey Ball please!)

--Mickey

Farewell my twenties. Don't forget to write!

One of the nice side effects of getting married and having a baby is that I really don't have any time to genuinly freak out about turning thirty between the two events. On the 29th I'll be thirty so it means I have only a little over a day to enjoy what's left of my twenties.

As the birth of the baby gets nearer and nearer, I find myself reading every bit of information I can get my hands on and listen to various parenting podcasts. I know that nothing will prepare me for the real thing so I won't lie and say that I'm not at all nervous. From what I understand something would've been wrong with me if I wasn't nervous, if I was very casual about it.

So in light of this exciting and mind blowing responsibility, I really couldn't be bothered much about turning thirty. I had a nice little birthday party with friends I collected in England over the last decade, all people I met in my twenties (except for my husband who met me just before when I was nineteen). So if I'll meet as many great new friends over the next decade, I can't wait! On the other hand, I could see I was getting older (as well as my friends) as previous birthday parties had people playing videogames all night, while this time everyone just drank, chatted and laughed.

I enjoyed my twenties, I enjoyed my life so far. But I'm ready for a change. It's like you've been to a restuarant and had a really nice appetizer. It was tasty, but you can't just sit there forever, eventually you'd want to move to the main course.

Well, I am. Thanks for the oysters, bring on the lobster!

I guess with this analogy, grandchildren will be dessert and death will be the bill.

--Mickey

My Many Faces

Just a little bit of fun using the following face transformer:

http://morph.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk//Transformer/

The original picture:

And that turned into the following:

This is supposed to me as baby, child and teen. I never actually looked like that, but it's still a bit creepy.














Not sure what I'll look like as an old man, but this looks quite convincing.















This is me in different ethnicities. Yikes.



















And this is me as a woman. What a cow!














And this is me as a manga character and an apeman.










This is lots of fun and very easy to use, so give it a go.

--Mickey

Bregman to Blumental

It's cool to meet new people who know me only as Michael Blumental. For others the change is quite hard to swallow and I still have to correct friends and acquaintances when they refer to me as "Bregman". Heck, I even have to stop myself as well when I find myself typing my old name.

I guess to some extent I'll always be Mickey Bregman to myself as well. It's not that I don't like that name or anything. I consider changing my name to be a little sacrifice as it was such a huge part of my identity, but I am certainly growing into my new name and getting used to it already. At least I get to keep the same initials which is convenient as I sign most of my emails with them.

The reason I changed my name is simple: our children. I know many couples, gay or straight, adorn their children with a double-barrelled name. I don't knock it, it's still a fair solution and some names actually sound quite good when paired together. But Blumental-Bregman or Bregman-Blumental sound absolutely horrible. A bit too law firmish. Our kids are going to have enough unique issues to deal with, better at least spare them from having this spelling nightmare for the rest of their lives. What I always wonder is, what happens when two people with double-barrelled names meet and marry? Do they give their children a quaruple-barrelled name? At some point you will have to trim the fat. The simpe fact is, I don't think the actual name really matters that much. A rose by any other name blah blah blah.

Anyway, there wasn't really any other solution. We both planned to have at least one biological child each... So then what? They'll have different last names? It will totally fragment the family and is probably the worst possible solution we could think of.

And then it hit me. I'll just take my husband's name and we will all be unified under the Blumental name. My older brother can be in charge of manufacturing little Bregmans. My mother voiced her disappointed with the choice and I pointed out to her that she wasn't always a Bregman, she also changed her name. My brother teased me that I was "being the woman" and my reaction was "so?". I genuinely don't see "being the woman" as a bad thing. What's good enough for generation upon generation of women (including my mother and grandmothers) is good enough for me.

We are the Blumentals. Hear us roar!

--Mickey

P.S

The actual process of changing my name is a whole different matter. Passports, driving license, national health insurance, credit cards, national insurance, pension, tax office, bank account... Going through that process again is reason enough for me not to divorce anytime soon!

The Zombie Survival Guide & World War Z reviews

I knew about the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z for a while, but never got around to reading them (which is odd considering what a huge zombies fan I am). So I bought both of them and read them back to back. Well, technically, as it took me several months to finish the Zombie Survival Guide, but on the same day I started reading WWZ and finished it in a little over a week.


It is not to say that the Zombie Survival Guide was bad. In fact, it is a very good book. It really does feel like an authentic survival guide, which makes it a bit of a slow reading in places. I ended up being a bit bored and getting back to the book every few weeks only to abandon it again. But near the end it got really exciting and turned out to be worth sticking with. The result is a unique book unlike anything you have read before. The amount of research that went into it is amazing and while I’m not an expert in any of the covered areas, it felt real to me. The text is written with such conviction and consistency that the illusion simply works. As soon as I finished ZSG I went straight to World War Z.


If ZSG is a slow burner, WWZ is a fast paced page-turner. Dropping the survival guide format, WWZ is pure storytelling, collecting interviews with survivors from the war against the zombies. Each short story can almost be standalone, but together the stories paint a bigger picture, covering the war from the very beginning to the aftermath all over the world.

That is not to say that WWZ is not as well researched as ZSG. In fact, it covers such a massive scope that dwarfs ZSG almost out of existence. The story takes place all over the world, featuring characters from many different cultures and covering many aspects of the war. Here you might spot some small holes when the author covers areas you are familiar with, but those minor accuracies are forgivable all things considered. Not only because the author covers a scope that is virtually impossible to cover flawlessly by any one person, but also because even when you spot those flaws, the story keeps moving and urges you to carry on and just accept this reality. You want to believe it.

I will not go into any spoilers, but the scope is so big that I don’t think anything is left uncovered. I don’t know what is left for Max Brooks to write about in a third zombie book, but somehow I am sure he could think about something if he wanted to. I am a big fan and would love to see more.

Highly recommended. World War Z is the better book by a mile, but the Zombie Survival Guide is also a very good read. While it's not necessary to read both, they work better together by painting a bigger picture. Stick through the slower parts of ZSG and you won’t regret it.

--Mickey

Who's Your Papa?

For many years we were trying to figure out how to become parents. Shall we use surrogacy? Partner up with lesbians? Adopt? We never actually thought past that point.

After we learnt we were pregnant and expecting out first child, that is when other questions popped out of nowhere.

One that I found particularly intriguing was: what should our children call us?

To our dogs we were both daddy. If either of us asks the dogs "where's daddy?" they'll excitedly run to the other daddy. Jokingly we'll each refer to each other as "evil daddy". That's not an issue, since the dogs can't talk and won't be calling us daddy.

But what about a child? For a child mommy and daddy are the names of his parents. When a kid calls for his mommy he means only one person. How can we both be daddy?

We can't.

So I came up with a very original solution. Since I grew up with parents who were russian immigrants in Israel I called my father both papa (russian) and later aba (hebrew). I decided to go with papa, as that sounds more universal (pronounced like Tapas without the S). So we'll be daddy and papa. Out of curiousity I did some research and found out that most gay couples have used that "very original" solution!

Other solutions include calling each parent daddy with their name afterwards (for example daddy Jack and daddy Mark). It's OK, but doesn't work for me.

To make things more complicated, I then realized that being papa puts me in a great disadvantage. Most children books, tv shows, movies and so on always refer to mommy and daddy. Papa is never mentioned! There are many cute baby clothes that refer to "daddy's little mate" or "%50 Mommy %50 Daddy". No papa...

So the solution for now is to buy some french baby clothes in Montreal that refer to papa. As for the depiction of papa in children's fiction? Well, if it doesn't exist I'll have to create it, but more on that later.

So there you go. One of the many unique little "problems" we keep encountering on this wonderful journey.

--Mickey

THE PREGNANT MAN

This is a story about a female to male transgender person who decided he wants to keep his female organs intact so he could have his own biological children.

I thought I’ve seen it all, but wow. This is pretty mind blowing. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it when I first read about it. The story doesn’t go into those details, but I assume once Thomas Beatie had all the biological children he wanted, he would finish his transformation.

I was always a little scared by the concept of transgenders. Not transgenders themselves, not who they are before or after the transition. What I found scary was the process. I can’t possibly imagine how it feels to feel like you are trapped in the wrong body. To view your penis or vagina not as a source of pleasure, but as a foreign object. I suppose the nearest non-transgender people can imagine what it feels like is to imagine what would happen if they were kidnapped and were forced to have a sex change operation. What would you feel like if suddenly there was a fleshy slit between your legs? Or the other way around, suddenly there’s this dangling piece of flesh between your legs. I find the idea repulsive and unpleasant. And I can only guess that’s what transgenders feel like from early childhood.

Now if gay people need courage to come out of the closet, transgenders need a hundred time the courage to do that. To tell your family and friends the news that will cause many of them to turn away from you. To embark on this long journey of gender reassignment and live with the fact that even with the best and most expensive treatments out there, some unlucky individuals will get to be only an approximation of the opposite sex with little things about them giving away their original sex (which in turn makes them a target to vicious strangers).

So when I read about Thomas I was so impressed. Even though his reassignment isn’t finished, he’s got a massive set of balls already. Not only did he start the process of change, he made a very clear and very practical plan to stop halfway in the process in order to have his own biological children. That takes an amazing amount of conviction, especially in light of his family’s attitude. This man is going to be a fantastic role model for his children.

When I was a gay teenager I assumed that I’ll never have a proper family, maybe just a long term boyfriend if I’m lucky. And here I am married and one month away from the birth of my first son. When there’s will, there’s a way.

Good for you Thomas Beatie. You’re the man!

--Mickey

It Starts...

As preparation for the birth I'm trying to sort out some sort of network of gay parents in London. You'd think with the wonders of Google and Facebook it won't be a problem to find many gay parents in London, but you'd be surprised. Only one person joined my Facebook group and she's only thinking about becoming a parent for the time being. It's been just the two of us for the last few months.

I took a calculated risk and posted on a general parenting forum and asked them what do they suggest I should do. Two posters, who are apparently the forums' local clowns, started making rude and inappropriate gay jokes. Another poster made the ignorant comment that I should get to know people first and only then confide in them that I'm gay as if that's some kind of secret and someone else voiced serious concern for the safety of my kids being raised with gay parents (due to society's reaction, rather than our specific parenting skills). I wonder if he would advise black people not to have children too in case they'll have to face racism as they grow up...

That little interaction was a bit depressing, but also eye opening. This is exactly the kind of crap I should be bracing myself for. And this is exactly why it'll be nice to have the support of people in the neighbourhood who go through something similar.

It's going to be one heck of a ride...

--Mickey

Facebook

I've created a Facebook group for Gay Parents in London. Not sure how many people will join...

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5136346737

I'm not sure how many people will join, but we'll see.

On further reflection, I decided that I don't really don't have that much to say as a father to be... So I might go quiet again for awhile until the birth.

I might still post about other things... We'll see. Like I said, play it by ear.

--Mickey

Lines

I never treated my blog as personal diary where I write intimiate things. Mostly because of the fact that it's not a personal diary. This is something that is available on-line for anyone to read. I'm not going to discuss personal problems or issues because I simply don't want to.

So here I go and discuss our pergnancy and wedding. Are these things personal? Of course they are. So why am I doing it?

I'm doing this to raise awareness about the issue. Spread the word. Let other gay people know that they can and should go for it if they want a family. I hope that by sharing out experiences we will also be able to educate many straight people who don't really know gay people and the unique problems they face. That's pretty much it.

I'm still going to draw some lines and not share everything. Where exactly? I'll just play it by ear.

--Mickey