We are getting closer to Haley’s operation and quite frankly I’m very nervous. Haley keeps telling us she is scared and I have a hard time not responding with I am too sweaty. Mel and I talked for a while tonight rehashing our decision and while we both know it’s right for us to make the decision we still are nervous. I decided to link up some of my old posts tonight so I had the opportunity to review them and so I could provide a central resource on Rhizotomy info on this blog. I also recorded Haley’s exercises tonight which I’ll post as soon as they upload. Note: I am not posting the entire routine as YouTube will only take a 10 minute video.

Rhizotomy DADvocate I’m Not Weird
Rhizotomy Next Steps
Rhizotomy Surgery is never an easy answer

The video is still uploading and I’m tired. I’ll add Haley’s exercise to the post in the morning. In the meantime Here are some before and after videos from St. Louis Children’s Hospital:

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

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Today I received a review copy of Deb Ingino’s hot off the presses book “The Discovery Adventure Club” book. This is a children’s book written for children 2-8 years old. The very fist thing you notice as soon as you look at this book is the incredible Illustrations. They are bright, vivid, cheerful and interesting. I’ll admit that I don’t always look at dedication pages but Deb is a friend so I was pretty observant and the second stand out factor in this book is that 100% of the proceeds of the sale of “The Discovery Adventure Club” go to The Prodigal House. The Prodigal house is a wonderful charity and you can learn more about it by visiting prodigalhouse.com.

Before reviewing the story it’s important to understand that the book is written to help children and parents understand where the child’s natural strengths based on the DISC personality profile.

There are two parts to this book. The first part is the story and the second part I’ll call a workbook. I read the story to my three year old tonight and while I feel like the story is a little long for a three year old it held her attention the whole time. She also asked questions about the characters in the story, while she tried to follow along with the pictures. At the end of the story Deb asks the reader/listener a question, “What character are you most like?” Abby listened to the descriptions and identified her personality type easily. All in all it was a good story and I think she’ll ask to hear it again.

When I got to the work book section of the story I was going to put down the book but she wanted me to keep reading. So I read here the statements from her personality type and she listened through that as well.

I think this book will be useful will both my girls and will give us a basis to discuss how and why people act differently and how we can use our strengths to achieve our goals. I look forward to reading it to my older daughter tomorrow to see what her reactions are. I’ll keep you posted.

Finally if you would like to learn more about Deb and The Discovery Adventure Club visit MyWiredStyle.com Please note purchase of the book “The Discovery Adventure Club” is not an affiliate purchase as all proceeds go to the Prodigal House. Also please note that I did a review for Deb’s program back in November and I only became an affiliate this past Friday.

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I apparently have set some pretty hefty goals for myself this year and at the beginning of March I’m feeling the pressure. If you read this blog you know I’m dedicated to the DADvocate project and while it’s going well I really thought I would have many more responses to the survey by now. As is I’m 10% of my way to the goal of 1000 participants. I feel like I probably should have had many more responses but the initial survey design which I pushed out to all my old friends was designed poorly and many of them thought they completed the entire survey even though they only answered the first page of questions. I suppose it’s time to reach out again and ask one more time. I’m just hesitant to appear as if I’m being too pushy.

My daughters book is being published. We are working with Publish America to bring “I’m Not Weird” to market and I’m very excited that the book should be available by the end of the month. However that book should be the biggest thing on this blog right now and because I started the DADvocate Project here I’m afraid that it will lose some of it’s impact. I’m working on designing a new blog for the The DADvocate Project but it seems to be taking a long time and I don’t seem to have all the time I need to get it done. I also want to do a strong media drive on Haley’s book but that takes time as well and I just don’t know where the time is coming from.

Finally I have been training hard for a 1/2 marathon that is scheduled for the end of April. This past week I’ve run a total of 14.5 miles. That is more than I’ve run in a single week ever but i’m still pretty far off schedule and to say I ran 14.5 miles is probably a bit of an untruth. Maybe it’s better to say I’ve traversed 14.5 miles this week most of it running, all of it breathing hard and hurting. I do feel good about the distance but my left leg hurts pretty badly after my runs and I just don’t see the end in sight.

Oh yeah some how I’m trying to maintain my relationship with my wife and kids, do well at work, pay bills, participate in a number of communities, and blogs, occasionally attend services, see my family, maintain friend ships and sometimes get a break and watch tv. Oh did I mention that I maintain another blog and guest post on DADomatic. I also have two dogs that are being neglected but still love me because I feed them. I wonder if I’m crazy?

On Saturday I did my first video interview of the DADvocate project. It was with the founder of “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” crew and BenSpark.com blog, Drew Bennett. The interview was great and I really look forward to the day I have the chance to meet Drew in person. As for the video I’ve had a space issue on my computer. I’ve spent a large part of yesterday and much of this afternoon and evening trying to get files moved to the correct places so I can actually edit the movie. It turns out I’ll probably have to use much of tomorrow evening to finish moving files, formatting drives, and making everything work the way it should. I’m hoping to have an edited video by Wednesday for publishing but it may be Friday depending on how tomorrow goes.

Now looking back at my complaining I’m going to re-write this post:

Wow! We are already 2 months into this year and things are going great. I’m finally getting into the swing of things at work after having been there for 9 months. I’ve been doing a good job of bringing my wife flowers regularly and the flow with 5 people in the family is starting to feel right. As you know I have a few huge goals this year and I’m really on target for achieving them.

First and most exciting – Haley’s book “I’m Not Weird” should be going to print this week! It’s extremely exciting. I’ll post a button for sale on the blog as soon as I have firm dates. I’m also excited b/c she is already lined up for an interview with Deb Ingino from MyWiredStyle.com who has created a wonderful program that helps families learn all the personalities and how to interact. We also have some hopeful meetings set up to publicize the book which really is a must read for every 4-8 year old. The book helps children understand Cerebral Palsy specifically and differences in general. I’m very excited for where this book will go. I’m creating a mailing list for when the book is finally launched. If your interested in joining please complete the following form.

Secondly, I can’t believe I’ve run 14.5 miles this past week. I ran 6 miles last Saturday, 3 miles on Wednesday and then 5.5 miles on Sunday. That’s 14.5 miles in a week. I still have a long way to go before my 1/2 marathon at the end of April but I just might be able to make it there. By the way you can read about my training on the comments at Intrepid Runner.

Finally the DADvocate Project! What an exciting project. We’ve had 100 people complete the survey which means we are 10% of the way there on the survey. This weekend I completed my first video interview. The interview was with Drew Bennett of BenSpark.com and founder of “I’m Not a Famous Blogger” fame. Drew is truly awesome and I really enjoyed the interview. I hope I have the opportunity to meet him in person some time soon. On top of this exciting news I will also be interviewed by the Geek Dads Weekly and Cast of Dad’s pod casts in the next few weeks. Things are going awesomely and after completing The DADvocate Project blog redesign I’ll be making my next moves reaching out for sponsors, and trying to do some traditional PR. I’m also thinking about asking the mommy blogger’s to mention my work in their circles.

I have had a technical set back this week which will hopefully be fully resolved by tomorrow. In the meantime it is pushing back my ability to publish the interview with Drew. Look for it sometime between Wednesday and Friday. Sorry I can’t be more exact but I’m not out of the woods yet with my tech issue.

Thanks for reading this blog and following our progress on the DADvocate project. We appreciate your input and feedback and love your comments. Feel free to post here or on any article on this blog. I do my best to respond to all comments so thanks again for reading and participating.

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The design process starts with the interview:

Havana Interview – The DADvocate Project Branding from Kevin Metzger on Vimeo.

After the interview Havana spent some time drawling and brainstorming with me so she could be sure we were thinking along the same lines.

DADvocate Header Design Brainstorming Part 1 from Kevin Metzger on Vimeo.

One of neatest things about this process was her introduction of children into the design during her creative process. It was something I would never have thought of but I really like how she worked it in. What do you think?

DADvocate Header Design Brainstorming Part 1 from Kevin Metzger on Vimeo.

There is a third page of work shown here which i hav not posted video for.

All this work resulted in the four following ideas. What do you like about them? what would you change?

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It feels like there is never enough time to spend with your kids. I imagine that’s true even for stay at home dads, but I know it’s true for most working fathers. We work hard to provide for the family, go to work, do our best to do a great job, and then come home and enjoy the kids for a few hours before we sit down and go back to work for the night, play on the internet, exercise, watch tv or hang out with the wife or even all the above. The weeks fly by and the weekends are even faster. As you can see from the above data we by a large majority are spending 1 -3 hours or less on weekdays with our kids, but it looks like we try to do our best to make up for it on the weekends.

Despite what these numbers indicate I still think we are tying to find ways to be more engaged with our children during the week. I know I try to be diligent about spend time with each of the kids at night, talk about there day and be present. I also try to find some fun game to play like hide and seek or something of that nature. What do you do during the week to deepen your involvement with your kids?

Have you taken the DADvocate survey yet? If not click here and participate now!

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We had a number of users take the DADvocate survey this week too. I hope to get all their answers into the spreadsheet I use to build the data tomorrow so I can get more current statistics. The drawing for the MyWiredStyle.com will be held tomorrow.

Finally we had more people take the survey this week than we have yet. The numbers are beginning to excellerate and I’m very excited.

Here is a quick video interview I did with Haley about her book.

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I hope you enjoy this series of videos. This is the first video a second one will be posted tomorrow. There will be at least one additional video probably scheduled next week.

Havana Interview – The DADvocate Project Branding from Kevin Metzger on Vimeo.

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