Backyard Camping Like A Dad

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If you have young kids, you have either already started camping, or you are thinking of it. Camping is the perfect adventure for so many reasons. I grew up with camping. Our family hit most of the Provincial Parks in Ontario during my childhood and I loved it.

Now that we have two little guys, camping is on our radar. There are some areas to overcome, like my wife not liking tents, to what age should the boys be before we really start.

But thanks to my parents buying Harrison a tent last summer, we have begun the camping train – slowly.

We have done living room camping before but that does not count. So, we started with backyard camping this past weekend and it was a lot of fun. Short-lived, but fun.

Nova Scotia is full of beautiful parks and places to camp. You can’t argue with that.

But before we go deep into the woods and get our “roughing it” on, I set up Harrison’s 2-man tent up in the backyard.

Day 82: You Should Not Let Your Baby Eat Chalk

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The PL stands for Parental Leave, which I am currently doing for six months.

A new week, a new set of stories to tell from the PL. Today was Day 82 of parental leave and as I mentioned, I have been fighting a wall of some kind lately. But good news, so far things feel a lot better this week. Despite a day of rain and mundane weather, I had a lot of fun with both boys. But the one kid you would figure to sleep more did not. Yes, Charlie really was a fussy guy today and based on how easy it was to put him to bed just now, he was tired. He did not sleep much in the afternoon and Harrison did. Harrison slept for almost three hours. But I know the reason behind that. It was our late night of camping that had him ready to catch up on sleep. The day was full of crawling adventures, bike riding, new food trying and of course a little TV watching.

All in all, it was a pretty good day considering Mondays are usually tiring. I must be a parental leave expert by now.

Hitting The Parental Leave Wall

As I come up on my fourth full month of parental leave, a feeling is starting to creep in that can only be explained as a wall. Not a big wall, but just enough to get in the way.

Things are getting a little mundane, routine and to be honest a little boring.

Don’t get me wrong, I am loving all the time I am spending with my boys, but maybe, just maybe, the lack of adult interaction is getting to me.

I have worked from home for long periods of time before, but this is different. This is not work. This is parenting. A lot of it is like being a fire fighter. You do a lot for your kids, your wife and your household, but there is a lot of down time where you really have to get creative or lazy in order to spend your time.

Like A Dad’s Photos Of The Week – July 26

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I love taking pictures. Whether it is of my kids, grilled meat or anything else that catches my eye.

Every Friday, we will be wrapping up the week with the best of the photos added to Like A Dad’s Instagram page.

With July coming to an end, it does not mean summer is over. Far from it. Still a lot of time to get outside and have some fun. Even though we had a rainy week in Halifax, I still took some great photos.

Here are some of the best I posted to Instagram this week.

Day 80: Parental Leave Is Starting to Crawl

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The PL stands for Parental Leave, which I am currently doing for six months.

For those following the daily battles, you probably have noticed there has not been an update in a week. I will do a full blog post on it later, but I seem to have hit a parental leave wall. As I approach four months in, I feel fatigued from many thing, one of which is the daily blogging about it. Not to worry. I have been blogging long enough to know that I always bounce back after being recharged. The same can be said for the parenting. I am trying my best to add some new things each day and looking forward to more changes with the kids. But for now, the last few days of July, I am just coasting on the same old, same old. So thanks for being patient with me. A lot is happening. I just can’t be bothered to sit at the computer and rehash it.

Let’s try to start it all back up by looking at today, Day 80 on the PL.

Grilled Pizza On The Big Green Egg

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Updated January 26, 2026

When grilling, smoking, or barbecuing on the Big Green Egg, meat is usually the way to go. Tasty dishes like beer can chicken, chicken thighs, ribs, and steak are all great choices. But what about other options to feed a hungry crowd?

How about grilled pizza? Yes please.

This past weekend, we had some friends over, and I wanted to try out the new pizza stone I got for my birthday. So, the wife and I teamed up to make homemade grilled pizza on the Big Green Egg.

The plan was that my wife would take care of the pizza dough and the homemade sauce, and I would take care of the grilling. I was pretty excited as the one fun part of grilling pizza on the Egg is that you get to ramp the heat up to over 600 F. This helps to replicate what a brick oven would do and make it feel like you were eating at a fancy pizza joint.

Now this was the first time for us to make homemade pizza dough and cook pizza like this. So, we were hoping that it would all turn out.

A Change In The Force Is Coming

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He sure does not look like a happy morning napper eh?

Charlie, I am your father. Please, don’t stop napping in the morning just yet. Stay on the dark side (meaning your room).

Yes, there’s change coming for this dad on parental leave. Slowly and surely, our baby boy, is starting to not enjoy or want his morning nap.

That has me cowering in the corner, daydreaming about having quiet breakfasts and having some time to myself each morning.

Charlie has never been as good a sleeper as our first boy. Hell, Harry still has a solid two hour nap each day and he is almost four. Yes, he loves and needs sleep.

Charlie, well he seems to enjoy being up a lot more.

Over the last few weeks, the morning nap, which is usually around two hours, has been becoming shorter and shorter. He does not go to sleep easy and fights it with all his might. Finally he crashes and sleeps for 45 minutes.

My wife has opened my eyes to the realization that his morning naps may be coming to an end.

Nooooooooooooooo.

Day 75: Fortifying The Home Base

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The PL stands for Parental Leave, which I am currently doing for six months.

Yesterday was an adventure and I hardly left the house. Why? We have a crawler! It was only a few days ago where it was okay to plop the baby down wherever and take care of something. Now, you can’t look away for more than a few seconds before he is wrapped up in cables. We don’t remember our first son being this active this soon and we are slowly getting back into the mind-set of having a crawler. The first step, fortifying the home base, or in our case, the living room.

Never a dull moment on the PL, here is Day 73.