Featured Father #9

Anonymous
Executive Chef

1. How did your meet you wife? 
We attended the same high school. We got to really know each other in grade 12 and continued our friendship post secondary. We started dating 6 years after high school.

2. What was your first feeling & thought when you found out that your partner was pregnant?
My first feeling was ok then, lets do this and I smiled. My first thought was I guess its really going to happen then. 

3. What was your reaction when you found out the gender of your child?
I remember being very open to it being a male or female. Either way I was going to love him or her unconditionally. 

4. How did you come up with your child(ren) name(s)?
 My grandparents named all their girls with L's and all the boys were K's. With my wife being Korean we decided to name our daughter Leah as Leah is also a Korean name. We named our son Kai just because we really liked the name. 

5. How did you prepare yourself to become a father?
I went with the flow of things. I listened as much as I could but for me I am the type of person that just learns as I go and deals with it as it comes. 

6. How do you balance your work and family life?
Being a Chef as my career its very tough for me to find that family life balance. I do whatever I can when I can. I get my two days off most of the time and that goes to them. If I don't have to be at work early in the morning I will spend the morning at home, make breakfast for my daughter and drop her at daycare. Those couple of hours are the hours that I cherish because I know that once I get busy its hard to find that time for them. When I am really busy with work my family will come for lunch or once in a while Leah will come and hang out with me at work. I will give her some cookies and icing and she will decorate her own cookies, run around and greet our team members. 

7. If you had a super power, what would it be?
I would clone myself. I would make my clone go to work so I can make up for lost time. 

8. Word of advice to other fathers to be:
I know this is cliche but really do spend as much time as you can with them because they do grow up that fast and you don't get that time back. Try to relate and make a connection with your kids at an early age. Keep the communication open with your partner and try to make time for each other as much as possible.