Unless you and your kids are incredibly annoying or complete losers, birthday parties will be a fact of life for a good amount of weekends throughout their childhood. Some say you should expect 6 birthday parties per kid per year.
Depending on where you fall on the involvement spectrum, you may find kid birthday parties to be fun or aggravating. In terms of enjoyment, I can't help you there. But what i can do is help you sort through a key issue that comes up with every type of party: the etiquette around who to invite and who can come to kid's birthday parties.
Lucky for you, I have planned (with my wife of course), invited, and attended 6 of my own kid's birthday parties and by my best estimation have attended about 30 of their friend's parties. let's just say I have eaten my share of Thomas the Train and Elmo frosted cakes in my lifetime. Here are a few tips to help you through this mess: Read the rest of this entry »
It's my time of the month. I can't explain it but for some reason little things get on my nerves, I'm irritable, I'm feeling a tad bloated, and I am generally a pain in the ass to be around. These days, I pop a few StressTabs in my mouth every morning. You know the pills: the ones with the picture of the candle being burned on both ends on the outside?
A week ago, I was fine. There was an optimism in the air. Everything was cheery. Then little by little, a cloud started to form over my head. At first I thought I was imagining my ever-increasing bitchiness. But when I still couldn't sustain a smile after my Red Sox swept the Yankees last weekend, I knew I had it bad. I was Man-struating.
You may think that having the "time of the month" is reserved for the vagina and boob crowd, but you are wrong. Men can go through it too. Sure, we aren't purging discharge from our bodies but we can get pretty moody. And for no apparent reason, we can snap at innocent loved ones with our irrationality. Read the rest of this entry »
I know it's crappy, but being a dad means you have to talk about poop. Here at Noodad.com, we refer to that as "poodad". It isn't that bad, really. We are men, after all—potty humor is in our DNA (there it is between the deoxyribose and the nitrogen base).
When we were kids, poodad conversations typically evolved around teasing the kid that crapped his pants in school and had to wear a pair of green corduroys from the school nurse's emergency clothes stash, or poking a huge pile of dog poop with a stick.
Of course, finding the humor in all things brown and smelly did not go away when we got older. Instead, in college we just used it in more creative and complicated ways. We lit farts, we pulled the flaming bag of poo trick, we sometimes even saran wrapped the toilet seats.
If you’ve ever swapped mealtime horror stories with other parents, you already know the tale of “The Kid Who Only Eats One Thing.” Whether it is Kraft macaroni and cheese or PB&J with the crusts cut off, some kids just won’t try anything else. Night after night you plate the same meal. You don’t have to ask your kid what he wants, and he leaves the table with a full belly. As long as he’s growing and passes all his check-ups with flying colors, what’s the big deal if your kid will eat chicken nuggets and applesauce until he grows feathers and craps Granny Smiths? Besides, you haven’t attended any business dinners where a colleague asks to see the children’s menu, a sure sign that all kids eventually outgrow this behavior.
Dealing with your picky eater is tolerable if you only eat at home, but what happens when your kid is at Grandma’s for the weekend and she tries to serve a knock-off mac-and-cheese in a generic blue box? What if the principal of your kid’s elementary school informs you that PB&J is a no-go in his nut-free school? Maybe you’d be better off implementing some 1950’s sitcom torture by not letting your one-trick-pony diner leave the table until he finishes his Brussels sprouts. After all, as Timer used to say on that 1970’s Public Service Announcement, “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it!”
It happens eventually – either because you offered (good for you!) or she said so, but you will find yourself at home, alone, for the day with your newborn. This, Noodads, is your true indoctrination into fatherhood…a test of your nurturing, time-management and care giving skills and a rite of Noodad passage. Relax brother, success is just a matter of having realistic expectations and knowing a few tricks. We’ve had to figure it out on our own or piece together tips from our fellow dads but you, thanks to Noodad.com, have access to the 10 essential tips that will make this daunting day doable.
1. Know the Drill
Talk to your wife about what the baby’s day is typically like. You’ll soon discover that your day is just going to be a series of feedings and naps with diaper changes mixed in. Facilitating those three activities will consume 2/3 of your day. And realizing this should greatly lessen concerns you have about what your going to do with him/her all day. You don’t need a list of ways to play…just a few tried and true tactics…you’ll be amazed how they’ll never tire of “peekaboo” or “head, shoulders, knees and toes.” Read the rest of this entry »
There are some things in life that you simply cannot avoid. No matter what you do it hunts you down like a demon. You make excuses, you put up obstacles and still, inevitably, you fail. It's called diaper duty.
If you dislike changing diapers, you aren't alone. It's messy business after all. You are, wiping someone else's ass. Sometimes 8 to 10 times a day. I don't think too many people will stand in line for that opportunity.
Don't worry, your wife doesn't like to do it either. And that's the number one reason why you should bite the bullet and do it for the both of you. Putting it out on the line with a simple Tour of Dootie will be met with gratitude and can mean the difference between going Han Solo and putting the "lay" in Princess Leia. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another installment of our weekly feature: Ask the Chick. The chick is Latia Harris, a noodad reader and mom with a lot of answers for you. Each week, Latia will answer the questions you don’t have the balls to ask your own wives.
Dear Chick,
What do women mean when they say not to get them anything for the birthday and then when you don’t they don’t talk to you all night? She says I could have at least bought her a card. I say shelling out 3 bucks for a piece of paper is considered a gift. Help!
Noodads, I've got good news and bad news for you today. Back in our hey day we could waste an entire saturday exploring the woods behind our houses, building random structures, and most importantly, burning things. Ah, those were the days. The bad news is that boys these days do not have nearly as much fun as we did.
The good news is your sons have it in them. They just need someone to teach them how much fun you can have with things that do not require batteries, electricity, or Wiimotes. So what are you waiting for? Go outside and start setting fire to things with your son!
If you are like me, those golden days of mindless fun and destruction are really vivid in your memory. But if you were to try to actually pass that knowledge onto your boy, you would be stumped. That's where "The Dangerous Book for Boys" comes in.
Want to win a free copy of this book? Details after the jump.
This morning, my 1 week old son jumped on his skateboard and did a crazy trick off a quarterpipe into ongoing traffic. He has serious sac. Okay, the beginning part is a lie, but the ending isn't. I am proud to say that my kid has monstrous balls. I'm talking balls that Chuck Norris would be envious of.
Before you start wondering whether large balls run in the family, you should think about your own sons when they were newborns. Odds are, they had serious sac too.
Don't worry, it is perfectly normal and you don't have to worry about your kid growing up to be known as the boy who bludgeons his girlfriend when teabagging. There's a reason why our newborn boys have Maximum Sackage. Read the rest of this entry »
Unless you and your kids are incredibly annoying or complete losers, birthday parties will be a fact of life for a good amount of weekends throughout their childhood. Some say you should expect 6 birthday parties per kid per year.
It's my time of the month. I can't explain it but for some reason little things get on my nerves, I'm irritable, I'm feeling a tad bloated, and I am generally a pain in the ass to be around. These days, I pop a few StressTabs in my mouth every morning. You know the pills: the ones with the picture of the candle being burned on both ends on the outside?
I know it's crappy, but being a dad means you have to talk about poop. Here at Noodad.com, we refer to that as "poodad". It isn't that bad, really. We are men, after all—potty humor is in our DNA (there it is between the deoxyribose and the nitrogen base). 
If you’ve ever swapped mealtime horror stories with other parents, you already know the tale of “The Kid Who Only Eats One Thing.” Whether it is Kraft macaroni and cheese or PB&J with the crusts cut off, some kids just won’t try anything else. Night after night you plate the same meal. You don’t have to ask your kid what he wants, and he leaves the table with a full belly. As long as he’s growing and passes all his check-ups with flying colors, what’s the big deal if your kid will eat chicken nuggets and applesauce until he grows feathers and craps Granny Smiths? Besides, you haven’t attended any business dinners where a colleague asks to see the children’s menu, a sure sign that all kids eventually outgrow this behavior.
It happens eventually – either because you offered (good for you!) or she said so, but you will find yourself at home, alone, for the day with your newborn. This, Noodads, is your true indoctrination into fatherhood…a test of your nurturing, time-management and care giving skills and a rite of Noodad passage. Relax brother, success is just a matter of having realistic expectations and knowing a few tricks. We’ve had to figure it out on our own or piece together tips from our fellow dads but you, thanks to Noodad.com, have access to the 10 essential tips that will make this daunting day doable.
There are some things in life that you simply cannot avoid. No matter what you do it hunts you down like a demon. You make excuses, you put up obstacles and still, inevitably, you fail. It's called diaper duty.
Welcome to another installment of our weekly feature: Ask the Chick. The chick is Latia Harris, a noodad reader and mom with a lot of answers for you. Each week, Latia will answer the questions you don’t have the balls to ask your own wives.
I recently read an 
Noodads, I've got good news and bad news for you today. Back in our hey day we could waste an entire saturday exploring the woods behind our houses, building random structures, and most importantly, burning things. Ah, those were the days. The bad news is that boys these days do not have nearly as much fun as we did. 
This morning, my 1 week old son jumped on his skateboard and did a crazy trick off a quarterpipe into ongoing traffic. He has serious sac. Okay, the beginning part is a lie, but the ending isn't. I am proud to say that my kid has monstrous balls. I'm talking balls that Chuck Norris would be envious of.
