Mummascribbles – Mummascribbles meets…Captain Poo Pants – Mummascribbles
This week we meet dad blogger Ben from Captain Poo Pants (best blog name ever right?!). Thanks so much for taking part Ben!
Tell me a little bit about yourself and your family
I am currently on shared parental leave for 5 months looking after Isaac (7 months old) full time. My partner, Eleanor, and I shared our leave after Isaac was born so she was off for the first bit and is back at work now. We live in Tonbridge in Kent (not to be confused with Tunbridge Wells – I’m not made of money) having moved down from Lewisham about 3 weeks after Isaac was born.
What do you like doing to be you, when you are not parenting, working (if you do), or blogging?
I sleep. Usually in bursts of around 90 minutes. I also like to cook and I run (not at the same time).
What is your biggest achievement to date?
I ran a marathon last summer – it was probably the fittest I’ve ever been. Then after Isaac was born, I put on about 18 stone.
From your own experiences, what do you find the hardest part of parenting and what is the easiest/most rewarding part?
The hardest part is those periods of time when your baby isn’t hungry, isn’t tired, isn’t too warm or too hot, has a new nappy on but is still unhappy in every single possible position you put them in. The most rewarding part is definitely seeing him do something new whether it’s attempting to eat some banana or looking at a cat.
Parenting in itself is no mean feat; how do you juggle everything you need to in order to get everything done on a daily basis?
I do not get everything done.
Why did you decide to start blogging?
Mainly because I knew that I was in the first tranche of men to be doing shared parental leave (it has only been an option for dads in the UK since April 2015) and so I wanted to keep a record of my experiences and hopefully give other dads and future dads an idea of what to expect.
Tell me a bit about your blog?
It’s called the Captain Poo Pants Chronicles – this is the nickname we gave Isaac in his first couple of months. I think there are plenty of serious parenting sites out there so I wanted to keep mine as humorous and light-hearted as possible. It is based around diary entries each week of parental leave but I also do tonnes of other stuff like my critically acclaimed* reviews of all of daytime TV.
*not critically acclaimed.
What do you want your blog to achieve and where do you hope to see it go as it grows?
Hopefully it will encourage other dads to consider shared parental leave.
What advice would you give someone who is thinking about starting a blog?
The hardest thing is starting. Just get something written down.
If you could have dinner with three people (dead or alive), who would it be and why?
Erm…the Bee Gees.
Tell me three random facts about you
1. I don’t like gravy on my roast dinner or milk on my cereal. This has probably caused me more arguments throughout my life than anything else. Be honest, you’re thinking of emailing me to remonstrate right now aren’t you?
2. I once stood next to Michael Portillo on a train platform in the days before he started making TV programmes about trains. I like to think I was there at the moment he had the idea.
3. I once gave a 3 second vox pop on Midlands Today news during which I gave the opinion that crime was bad.
Along with his blog www.captainpoopants.wordpress.com, you can also find Ben on Twitter and Facebook