So knock on wood, or my desk, which I guess resembles wood - our little man Tasman is now sleeping at least 10 hours in a row. We are just on the cusp of it being two weeks since a really horrible night with the Tasmaniac, so while I fear I am jinxing it by writing about it, I must confess our lives have become so much better in such a short period of time.

No longer do I feel the volcanic rush of rage at my wife for squeezing the toothpaste in the middle, thereby creating a toothpaste barbell, instead of simple squeezing from the bottom up - allowing for easy ooze.

No longer does my wife contemplate husbandcide because of the red cap to the jar of the peanut butter is inches askew and smothered in golden peanutty goodness.

No longer does my blood boil at the 13 word coffee adjectives used by the praying mantis looking woman in the line in front of me at Starbucks.

No longer does my wife curse like a horny sailor when the BMW sneaks behind the minivan to cut in and gain the one car advantage on our snail-like route home.

To summarize - the uninterrupted sleep is blissful. The cloud of angst and anger has lifted from our little house, replaced by rays of giddiness, all because one little boy, with a smile that wavers between I love you and I am driving you crazy on purpose, has finally decided that his crib and his two soft, stinky blankets ain't that bad after all.

I was lucky enough to take the last three months of parental leave (in Canada, we are allotted 50 weeks of parental leave) to spend with Hudson in the summer of 2003. We went for picnics in the park, we giggled at birds and squirrels, and even managed to compute the value of Pi to 981 digits - good times. It was basically the kick start to my love affair with parenting, and it allowed Hudson's roots to entangle my heart that will never ever be snipped.

Alas, this luxury did not occur with Tasman. In fact, both Stephanie and I quickly had to return to work after he was born as our year long adventure in Australasia had drained many a penny from our bank account and bills they were a climbin'. So Tasman was basically ripped off when it comes to quality parent time - we hated it, but choices were made, cards were dealt, beds were made and we had to sleep in them.

This past weekend, a long one in my province (thank you Liberal government!), Steph had the opportunity to take Hudson up north to go skiing. He had skied for the first time around Christmas and very much took to it, so this was something we are trying to encourage as brevity is not Hudson's strong suit. As Steph is a much better skier (and much better looking), it was decided she would go, and I would stay home with Tasman.

Well what a weekend! It's not like we rushed out and ran with the bulls or fought crime as some sort of father/baby superhero combination (Headline: Clad in diapers and wielding only soothers, another bank robbery was foiled by The Incredible Baldies!), but we did connect in a way that only concentrated time together provides, and I loved it.

We went for walks and ate messy bagels, both of us being giggled at by the teenage girls sitting across from of us because of the globs of cream cheese on our cheeks. We took all the pillows in our living room and put them on floor, lolling about, stopping only to identify our eyes, ears mouth and nose. We cuddled on the couch and watched Jeopardy (he won) and eventually we fell asleep in whatever piece of furniture we could find comfort in. It was wonderful.

Yesterday was a difficult day - both leaving in the morning and yearning to see Tasman as the end of the work day approached. I spend a good deal of time with Hudson. He is at an age where he looks to me for fun and answers to his five year old curiosity. I appease him and enjoy the interaction so much that I sometimes forget about Tasman and his very basic, but equally entertaining needs. This past weekend brought me so much closer to my little boy and I regret that I did not request this type of alone time up until this point.

But I know I have the rest of my life to make it up to him.

I kissed my wife for the first time on July 10, 1997.

It was a secret kiss, between two houses, a party going on in one, her friends searching inside and outside, not knowing we were engaging in a moment of clandestine lip lock, thus beginning the most important relationship in my life.

I knew immediately that I was going to marry Stephanie. She had a smile that made my heart wince. She also got my sometimes overwhelmingly goofy sense of humour. She was involved in a complicated relationship that quickly dissolved once she realized that I was not going to give up my pursuit of her and also when her then boyfriend found a somewhat spicy note in her purse. Sometimes romance is a little bit naughty.

We have grown up together - from vodka swilling bar hoppers to dog owners to home owners to baby havers to worldwide travelers to the comfortable Sunday afternoon friends and lovers we have turned out to be.

Parenting has been both the ultimate blessing and largest challenge in our life together. We don't agree on all parental strategy, and make the mistake of disagreeing in front of the two boys sometimes. We recognize we are not perfect - spending too much money on ourselves and scrambling to make the important ends meet. We don't get enough sleep and that occasionally will be the underlying hum to our arguments. It's tough sometimes, it really is.

But there are moments, when we are together with our two stunning children, where I feel so complete, so in love with her as a woman, her as a mother, that I have to hold my heart to ensure it will not jump out of my chest and kiss me on the cheek.

Falling in love is easy - staying in love with that same person is much more difficult. The roller coaster of love is work. But, deep down, I cannot imagine my life without her. She is my best friend, a wonderful mother to our children, a great person with a big heart and a fantastic lover - I lucked out.

Although I can't believe I forgot to kiss her goodbye this morning.

I'll make up for it tonight.

Happy Valentines Day!

This will actually be a great companion piece to my fellow two boy parent Linda, who wrote of the amicability between her sons earlier today.

My two boys are four years apart less a couple of weeks. When Tasman waterfalled into the world 18 months ago, Hudson's reaction was pretty typical. Wow he is so small, he would say bug eyed, and then skip off to build a zoo with his Lego set.

As time grooved on, Tasman became more interesting to Hud, usually the contents of his diaper, but also when watching him go from wide eyed immobile bag of potatoes to slithering bag of potatoes to two step fall cry Tasman to the present monster Taszilla who roars while running room to room pulling random stuff off counters (eggs, oranges, knives, computers..whatever).

Now they are friends, but also brothers, which means occasionally Tasman will get annoyed with Hudson and whack him with a plastic shark, or a television remote control. Hud reacts usually in one or two ways - complete waterworks, because he has obviously got his pain tolerance from his father, or a harder than he should return shove - completing the waterwork circle as Tasman yelps out for his B! (blanket) and a hug from a parent.

While not an advocate of violence in the least bit, I monitor this interaction closely. I never had a brother so I am not sure when I should step in and resolve these miniature (both figurative and literal) conflicts. I always tell Tasman not to hit his brother, but totally understand that Hud can be annoying with his smothery toy snatching ha ha I am bigger than you attitude. I also remind Hud often that he is the bigger boy, and cannot treat Tasman like a physical equal - and must be careful to not lash out in anger - because, as Hudson has reminded me in the past, Tasman is just a baby, and does not know any better.

Growing up watching brothers interact, my friends etc..I was sometimes envious of bond but also aware of the viciousness two brothers can sometimes have towards one another. The fights on couches I witnessed while watching Happy Days were so brutal but also a bit comical as resolution was always quick to follow.

I love having two boys - but sometimes recognize being a witness to their relationship can be just as important as parenting it.

It is coming up to the two year anniversary of Steph and I and Hudson's (and Tasman in utero) return from our year long adventure in Australasia.

To recap, we quite simply up and left. I quit my job of ten years, my wife quit her job of two, we sold our house, weaned our stuff down to a storable level, grabbed our two and three quarter year old and made a run for the southern hemisphere. We did it for many reasons, the main one being we felt, as new parents, we were simply missing the growth of our child. His care situation was perfect, a shared nanny with a great couple, at our house, but we still longed late at night for more time with Hudson. He was at that magical age of true discovery, where the words finally caught up to the comprehension, and we wanted to see the world through his sky blue fantastical eyes.

It was interesting to listen to the mixed reaction of our friends and family to our plans. From light bulb late at night, to leaving on a jet plane was about five months, so we had a significant amount of time to listen to the naysayers tut tut our tearing of the rug of responsibility, as well as feel the warmth of the blanket of support from the people who were totally behind what we were doing.

A number of people, including members of our family tried to convince us that Hudson would never remember anything we did anyway, so saying we were doing it for him was a wash. Well Hudson, without an ounce of provocation, still brings up the time Mark, the Fijian tour guide held him as he scaled a rock face to get to a secret waterfall, or fart town, the sulfuric smelling Rotorua in the heart of the North Island of New Zealand or even the 11 minute snorkeling of the Great Barrier Reef in his tiny blue wetsuit. So he does remember some things, but admittedly, these will eventually pass. It will get lost in the cloud of memory, mix in with the kindergarten friends and the new cottage experiences, creating the foggy tapestry we all have trouble remembering as time snakes by.

But what I know he does not remember, but he does still feel is that sense of connection that only a significant amount of time together can provide. Steph and I were with him for almost one year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Every day he woke up to both his parents not hustling off to work, not checking their Blackberries at the breakfast table, not missing the swim lessons because of a client function, regretfully things that occasionally happen now.

We know it would be almost impossible to do that type of trip again without some windfall. We took a huge financial hit and will be digging out for a couple more years yet. But we never look back at that time with regret, to us there was no better time to do it, and the impulsive nature of the whole adventure is part of the memory.

And what a memory it is.

Tasman just turned 18 months and I don't know if I just didn't realize it was happening, but it seems he just went insane all at once. The once sessile little boy with a goofy grin and buckets of mouth slobber constantly spilling from his mouth has now become this weird Godzilla like creature, running through the house with his hands over his head, grabbing everything in sight, climbing on chairs and tables, and growling and grunting like he wants to take over the world.

On Sunday, my wife Stephanie went to Yoga class and in two hours, Tasman managed to pull a dozen eggs down from the counter onto his head (nothing beats the smell of yolk head), climbed onto of the dining room table to bomb Wii controllers down at our dog Alice, ate gritty snow from the tires of his stroller, and finally, bashed his much older brother in the head with a glass scorpion. Hudson now has a little bit of fear in his eyes when it comes to his brother. Heck, I have a little fear when it comes to him too.

When Hudson was of similar age, he was very la la la, soft in his expressions, gentle in his motions, offering us toys to peruse with him, clapping his hands in delight at the building of a tower. Not Tasman, it's snatch this, throw that, kick this, smash that, all with a grin that would make Jack Nicholson proud. We have done nothing to encourage this type of behaviour. Maybe it's his lack of sleep I go on about incessantly. As if sleep deprivation somehow has turned our little baby boy into a smaller version of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, with the jungle being our living room.

Oh crud - gotta go - here he comes now!

In the giant vortex of parenting, curbing bad, or swear words does not rank high on the list of importance to me. Now this does not mean Hud enters a restaurant and sailors and salesman storm out offended by his tirade of curses. Nor does it mean he is freely allowed to drop f-bombs at dinner. What it does mean is that I recognize I cannot control what Hud and his gang of skittery boys giggle about in their playground circles.

My strategy is to occasionally ask Hud what bad words he has heard so far. He does so, reluctantly, as he is a really sweet boy, and he must think uttering anything worse than "dummy" or "idiot" would tarnish his angelic image in my eyes, and in the eyes of other parental figures he interacts with on a day-to-day basis.

So far 'hell' is the only word that he knows that I would generally disapprove him using in his kindergarten class. Particularly when answering a question from his teacher - him flustered, looking at a long word, saying out loud "how the hell am I supposed to read that?" is not a phone call I really want to take. Hudson knows this word exists, he also knows this word does not exist for him to use.

I have accidentally released a couple of doozies in front of both of my boys. Once in the car, I let loose a string of profanity that would make my father blush, and he was in the Navy. It was only after I relaxed did I remember that Hudson was sitting in the back seat fiddling with a Bionocle, singing to a Fergie song. I did not point out the bad words specifically, I just told him that Dad was very mad at the truck driver who almost ran him off the road. He simply shrugged and moved back into his land of robotic make believe.

I think once you point out a word is bad, it becomes more attractive to the mischievousness of a five-and-half year old. He is currently immersed in the land of pee and poo and bum and dink, laughing so hard when he says these silly words, still smiling sheepishly when we let him know that potty talk is not the way we talk around these parts. But secretly these words are harmless to me, and as long as he knows the difference between giggling about them in the bath, and screaming them at the top of his lungs at Easter dinner, he still remains angelic in my eyes.

Television was and still is a huge part of my life.

When I say huge, I most certainly do not mean mystery meat tinfoil dinners on top of butterfly painted metal trays as the four of us sit down and watch our shows. What I do mean is that when the kids are down, and life is quiet for a brief spell, I do not dive into a mountain of paperwork, or wrap my myself around the mysterious mathematical conundrum that is Sudoku, or even what I should be doing, writing posts for this site (oops, sorry boss), I sit down and get comfortable with my old friend television.

I watch few drama, fewer sitcoms, mostly flip through drivel and then hate myself for it later. Not really, guilty pleasures are acceptable to me - if it creeps into the creepy world of obsession, that is when stock must be taken.

So the question remains, how does this translate into parenting, or more importantly, good parenting?

Hudson is at the age where he likes television. Luckily he is not as mesmerized as some, and thankfully is quickly moving away from the fork-in-the-eye annoyance of some of the pre-school shows that are out there (think bald four year old who whines). He likes a few of the Japanamation shows, which are a bit weird and a lot fantastical, so I let them slide. He loves the movies he should love, and will occasionally sit for a couple of minutes watching my beloved Raptors, even more so since we went to the game.

So besides the Pixar movies, I find it a bit challenging to find things that we can both watch. The shows and movies I want to watch are a bit too rich for my five year old, even the superhero stuff I justify crosses violence lines. The shows he wants to watch almost induce seizures with the flashing colours and zig zag effects, never mind the disjointed dialog and rabbits with supernatural powers.

Before the rain of judgment comes crashing down, please understand that I am talking about 30-45 minutes a night that Hud and I get to share television time. It comes after homework, after bath time, after drawing, after creative building of creatures or buildings with toys. We sit, cuddled with pongy duvets and try to find the mix that will keep us both interested until story time.

Luckily, this past Christmas, my wife stuffed in my stocking the remarkable BBC produced Planet Earth DVD series. This stunning project, first aired in 2006 in the UK and was subsequently aired on CBC and the Discovery Channel in North America. It takes you around the world, from deserts, to oceans, to jungles, to plains, and in full high definition shows you nature footage that quite simply will blow your mind.

I love it. Hud loves it. Even Tasman will stop in mid squeal to be hypnotized by a great white shark leaping out of the ocean to harness a seal in slow motion. It gives me shivers writing about it.

So - nature shows win. We are halfway through the collection and both of us can't wait for the next screening.

Guilty pleasure indeed.

Well, we have finally hit it. The wall. We are spent, dazed, wrong shoes on wrong feet, yogurt in our hair (or on our balding head), trying to get ready for work after once again trying in desperation to get Tasman, our 18 month old beautiful boy, back to sleep.

We thought we had it there for a while, he was sleeping to 6am which was such a blessing after months and months of waking up at 5am or 4am for the day. But recently, in the last month, he has gotten even worse. Waking up at 11pm and staying awake for two or three hours at a time. All my wife and I can do is to alternate who manages this incessant slumber interruption, but because our house is small, the person allotted the sleep, still hears the fussiness or occasionally wailing that occurs trying to get him back to sleep.

Recently, Steph had the full meltdown. She works for a magazine that is very much seasonal and this time of year she is simply swamped with stress due unrealistic deadlines even in the best of times. Running on three hours sleep a night makes you think you are insane, your brain all gooey and foggy, fingers and eyes puffy, wandering around like you lost your keys even though they are in your hand. She spoke in squealy tones, like a boy going through puberty, explaining how she can't do it anymore. Fruitless words we both know as an option not to do it does not exist.

We have tried all the tactics that worked with Hudson. The Ferber, the family bed and of course the anythingtogetbacktosleep strategy that involves everything from warm milk to karaoke style lullabies to hour long rock a byes. Sometimes we just sit and stare at the bottle of Gravol - but we have yet to cave to any unnecessary medicines.

So good readers of ParentDish - I implore you - tell me things I know, tell me things I do not know about how to help an 18 month old wonderfully happy boy to get more than 5 hours sleep at a time.

I am on my knees.

I have mentioned in previous posts that I very much enjoy sports. I played team sports in my youth, I play pick up basketball once a week, and very much follow sports, basketball in particular, with a feverish passion. Having two little boys watching my every move means they obviously get the gist of my liking of sports.

Tasman, while only 17 months (so close to a year and half, thereby ridding my monthly age description - soon it will be...he is about a year and half), seems to have taken a stronger interest in balls than Hudson did. He kicks them, throws them, and actually is a bit obsessed by them, grabbing them and screaming "BALL!!" bugging out his eyes like he just struck gold. Give him a ball for each hand and I fear his head my simply pop off his neck in excitement.

Hudson...well not so much. He of the "Dad, sports is stupid " quote a couple of months ago still prefers other activities - more fantastical games of pirates or robots, or robot pirates. I love him for this, but when the opportunity came to go see my favourite team, The Toronto Raptors, play a game against Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, at the Air Canada Centre last Sunday, it was something I was obviously not going to pass up.

We took the bus. We took a subway, sitting at the front of the train to watch the darkness of the tunnel surround us. We bought popcorn and cotton candy. We split a Diet Coke. We peed in the urinal beside one another, crowds of beer-filled patrons waiting for us to zip up. We watched the game, or at least I watched the game. Hud watched everything else, the mascot, the little girl dancers (I may have glanced at the big girl dancers). He soaked in every morsel of visual entertainment a large sporting complex can offer. He watched the big screen above the court. He noticed the advertisements plastered everywhere (goooo team branding!), and of course by the mid third quarter he asked when the game was going to be over. Soon, I yelled over the very loud hip hop music, very soon.

Disappointed? Of course not. He can, and will do things he enjoys - I am not the forceful sports father.

But get this, at dinner on Monday night, a full 24 hours after the experience, Hudson began talking about the game. Not the event, but the game itself. How his favourite team is the Raptors (it does help that they are cool looking dinosaurs) and his favourite player is Chris Bosh. He also mentioned that King James - that's Lebron James mom he explained - was very good and helped the Cavaliers win, especially near the end of the game.

His words, not mine.

I beamed - sliding the mac and cheese into my mouth.