Reading a book in the NICU is such a simple and lovely way to bond with your baby, so this year I wanted to include a kids book and in particular a book about Dad in our first ever Father's Day bags. I selected and added a heap of Dad books currently available to our NICU Cheer registry and posted my book drive on our socials. Within a week we had all of the books we needed and then some, due largely in part to a very generous offer from the Aussie legend that is Dave Hughes.
Dave and his wife Holly have written a number of lovely books for children with that perfect mix of the realities of parenting offset with the humour Hughesy is famous for. The perfect one for Father's Day is their book "How (Not) To Annoy Dad". I had a donor who wanted to buy 100 books from our registry, but he couldn't do it online as Kmart/Target etc have limits on how many can be bought at a time. So I reached out to Dave's agent to see if they could help us place a direct order for 100 books. They were so wonderful instantly getting back to me and saying that they would talk to the publisher for me and get back to me. Within a few hours the publisher Scholastic had offered a huge discount on the books + freight and I was just about leaping over the moon as every dollar saved when buying items for a non-profit is wonderful as it can then go towards additional items. That was all exciting enough, but then Dave himself found out and he offered to personally buy and donated the remaining books we needed to fill our bags for NICU Dads. L.E.G.E.N.D.!!! *Yes I cried happy tears, if you know me at all this is no surprise - acts of kindness just always get me right in the feels.
The original donor who wanted to purchase 100 books will donate something else now as we have all the Dad books we need for Father's Day as well as a great start on books for our Christmas Day bags. Isn't that just the most wonderful news... I am so grateful and so excited to be including books now in our bags. Thank you Dave and Holly... your donation will go a long way to cheering up many NICU families this Father's Day.
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