Noodad Product Test-drive: The Snack Sack

Do you ever find yourself marveling at the amount of trash you generate these days? Between the Diaper Decor bags stuffed with lethal hand-grenades and handfuls of dryer lint from baby clothes, bedding and towels (one day, I know I’ll open the dryer and all that will be left is the lint in the lint trap!), our single trash barrel that served us well before is overflowing by trash day. So is our recycling bin. For people so small, babies and kids generate an amazing amount of incremental trash.

It’s not a surprise that feeding and eating are responsible for a significant proportion of our trash in general but baby’s too. Without any effort, you can easily blow through roll of Saran Wrap or a box of Ziplock Snack Size baggies.

When it comes to keeping snacks contained when out of the house, you do have reusable options though…the ever popular Snack Trap and now The Snack Sack. The Snack Sack is a carabiner-toting cloth elasticized-drawstring bag
which holds a stainless steel bowl.

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Confessions of a Father with OCD

Obsessive compulsive disorder is thrown around these days like ADD. Everyone seems to have various degrees of it. I am admittedly throwing this term around the same way as I have never been officially diagnosed but everyone who knows me, knows I have some form of it. In a nutshell, my mind cannot be clear without a house in order. No, I do not wash my hands 30 times in a row (I do wash them once an hour). I don’t lock and unlock my door a certain number of times each night but I do frequently have to wake up in the middle of the night to double check it is locked and that does frequently result in unlocking it and then locking it again.

The biggest thing for me is I cannot stand clutter. Let me try to explain the distinction though between not liking clutter and not liking dirt. I can live with literally a pile of dust on the floor but if the mail on the kitchen counter is not in a perfect pile parallel to the edge of the counter, my head feels like it is about to explode. Don’t get me wrong, dirt bugs me too, just not as much. But it is an out of sight, out of mind situation. If you look through my closets and drawers you will find a dumpster but I will be damned if the counters aren’t orderly. Likewise underneath my toilet may look like Dagobah but the top of the seat is as buffed as vader’s helmet.

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The Noodad Lowdown on the Baby Bottle Controversy

Last weekend, we replaced all of our Avent bottles and Gerber sippy cups with new “BPA-free” ones from Born Free to the tune of more money that I want to think about. Yup, we jumped on THAT bandwagon. Although, I must admit that the more I learn, the less I feel like we got sucked into just hype.

For those as uninformed as I was until recently, BPA (bisphenol A) is a chemical that’s used to make hard clear plastic referred to as “polycarbonate” like the kind used in most popular brands of baby bottles and sippy cups. Some studies have shown a correlation between BPA and health issues in lab animals. The assertion that’s fueling concern is that over time, polycarbonate plastic begins to degrade and can leach BPA into fluids like milk and water. As you would expect, a swirling controversy has resulted.

I’d heard the rumblings (which have been more like thunder…it’s just that I had my “baby-product-health concern-filter” switched on so it only sounded like a rumble) for many months now.

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Noodad Labs Product Review: The Kaboost

My son is a little over 2 1/2 years old. But he wants to act like a 5 year old. This is because his older sister is 5 and well, he just relates to her more than his 7 month old younger brother. This greatly accelerates his willingness to do things for himself and most of the time that is good.

But when it comes to sitting at the dinner table, it is become quite a headache. See, he knows he isn’t a baby like his younger brother so he doesn’t want to sit in a highchair (nor do we want him to) but he associates a booster seat as basically the same thing. This mostly due to the fact that he is seat belted in his booster seat.

For months, my wife and I struggled with the fact that he wanted to sit in one of our dining room chairs just like his sister. And for months it meant that even though his sister was tall enough to sit with her butt on her chair, he went through meals on his knees.

Thankfully, a brilliant entrepreneur named Amir Levin, decided to do something about it. Levin had the ability to access the situation completely differently. Instead of changing the booster, modify the chair it used to be strapped into. The result is the Kaboost , a plastic booster that you strap the dining room chair into rather than the other way around.

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Staking Claim for Your Kids in the Internet New Frontier

You finally named your kid. Hopefully you didn’t wait too long after the little bugger was born. Now what? Besides the usual, changing diapers, warming bottles, ogling your wife’s boobs, or ogling your wife’s boobs some more, you should think about the internet.

I’m not talking about surfing porn or watching funny youTube videos. I’m talking about staking claim in the new frontier of the internet on your kid’s behalf.

Almost 2 years ago, one of the first articles I wrote for Noodad.com was about buying your kid’s name as a domain name . I wrote:

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11 Most Important Things to Know About Your Kid’s Artwork

Most likely your kids like to create things. Whether it is paint, PlayDoh, crayons, or anything else they can get their hands on, the way you deal with their little masterpieces can mean the difference between a fruitful childhood and a downward spiral into despair. Ok, it's not that bad but it is certainly important to know how to handle the issue of kid artwork. That's why I have compiled a list of the 11 Most Important Things to Know About Your Kid's Artwork.

1. Every piece is a masterpiece
Your kid will be very happy to show you their great creation. Treat it like it is the most amazing thing in the world and your kid should go to Italy to become a master artist. Anything less might discourage your kid from creating more stuff and visual exploration has been shown to stimulate the imagination and improve things like memory, dexterity, and learning.

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How I Scam Almost Every Piece of Halloween Candy from My Kids

Halloween is over and your kids are loading up on candy. But the last thing you want is for your kid to eat all of it. This is some serious dental work at stake, not to mention the prolonged hyperactivity that typically accompanies serious candy eating the week following October 31st. There is a very simple way to deplete their booty and that is called: stealing.

But for those who don’t like the idea of robbing your kids (and those people clearly see parenting through rose-colored glasses) there are other ways to limit their stash. Make it about their health.

My kids are crafty little devils. Not literally: they were actually crafty Elina from Fairytopia, Buzz Lightyear, and Yoda. But the oldest two are old enough to know candy rules and it is not a good thing to let mom and dad take it away. This helps us in negotiating techniques for a good couple of weeks: “Finish your broccoli and you can have a piece of Halloween candy.” But if you don’t downsize the bucket early on, it will take a long, long time to get rid of it.
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