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Craig Shoemaker
Conquering Fatherhood with Laughter By Donna Smith
Shoemaker enjoys doing all sorts of activities with his family from visiting train museums to a day at "Under the Sea," an indoor playground. He thinks it's important to give Justin choices in deciding what they do together, though sometimes he's not thrilled with the answer. "I would love to lose a couple pounds, but I ended up in a pizza parlor because he wanted pizza," he says. "But since I haven't been around for a few days, I'm going to fill his needs."
Shoemaker credits Justin's accomplishments to the presence of both parents. "We just constantly read to him and tell stories," he says. "Every night when I'm tucking him in I'll ask if he wants a real story about me, or do you want a made-up story." What does Justin prefer? "A real story about Daddy."
Justin also inspired another creative outlet for Shoemaker – his first children's book, What You Have Now ... What Your Daddy Had Then (Bennett/Novak, 2004). Shoemaker wrote the book after Justin found his old typewriter in the garage and asked, "What's this?" Shoemaker told him it was a typewriter, and then Justin asked where the screen was. "I started explaining it to him, and I realized, wow, are things different," he says.
In the book, a father explains to his son what he had growing up, compared to what kids have today. "'You have organic fruit juice ... Daddy had Tang,'" Shoemaker says. "The book inspires conversation. It's more than the one joke."
Shoemaker thinks it's important for kids to see their parents as little children so they can relate to them better. "I looked at my parents as just these big creatures with no past, giving me orders – and I didn't understand them," he says. "I think my son is evidence by him saying, 'Tell me about when you were a kid with the wagon.' I told 
him the wagon story a bunch of times. He enjoys it and has a big smile on his face to think of Daddy as a little boy." Another book Shoemaker has written is called What You Have Now ... What Your Mommy Had Then (Bennett/Novak, 2004).