Daddy, Papa, and Me
When my husband and I first found out we were expecting twins via a surrogate we were over the moon and rejoiced that our family was going from two to four. We immediately started scouring our local bookstores to see what resources and books we could find. We also knew that reading to our kids was a pretty high priority for us so we set out to fill the nursery full of picture books that we loved and new ones that we would, hopefully, come to love.
As we shopped around, there were tons of picture books on the market but not a whole lot when it comes to families with two dads. I wondered if there were any that would be specific to our family dynamic? We wanted to create an environment where the twins would see many different families and to teach them that a loving family can come in many forms whether a child has one parent, lives with their grandparents or has two dads, etc. As a part of this blog, I'm going to be bringing forth resources that helped our family navigate our way through the baby years and I hope it will be helpful to you as well. So below is one of the first picture books we found.
There is a wonderful baby store nestled in Toronto's Liberty Village district called Love Me Do Baby. Not only were they right in our neighbourhood but they also carried so many products and books we loved. This is where we were first introduced to the book 'Daddy, Papa, and Me' written by Leslea Newman and illustrated by Carol Thompson (there is also a version with two moms aptly titled 'Mommy, Mama, and Me'). It was the first book we found that had two dads having fun and teaching exciting skills to their child. We loved it and it has been an excellent addition to our children's library.
Photo by Robert Gontier. iPhone 6.