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.
There is a nice frame of time in the diaper-wearing life of your kid that will frustrate the hell out of you. It typically occurs after your kid starts running around on their own, and before they know how to communicate fluently with you with words.
This is a time where, during the diaper change you will be forced to pin your kid down onto the mat. For many different reasons, your kid will stubbornly fight you during a diaper change. They may kick you, squirm and wiggle, and scream their bratty little heads off like a caged animal. Read the rest of this entry »
Kids will be kids and one of the things that kids do is run around and wreck themselves. This is partially due to the fact that they are new at this thing called walking and running. It can also be that their legs move faster than their brains. Whatever the reason—scrapes, bumps, and cuts are inevitable.
For you fresh noodads out there, you may get really freaked out when your kids bite it. That is perfectly natural. But what I am going to teach you today will seem completely unnatural. In fact, if you didn't already know me to be a decent dad, you would say that this is downright cruel. Read the rest of this entry »
Sesame Street is one of the icons of television and certainly the most important show in children’s television history.The Wiggles is a nice, fun and healthy show for kids to watch. It is fairly important to its genre. If it were a superhero, I would call it Iron Man.
It’s helpful, sturdy and always there when you need it, but it does not have the same omnipotence that Sesame Street, aka Galactus, possesses.
While the Wiggles have been able to transcend television with toys, concerts and clothing it is lacking the overall longevity of Sesame Street to be able to say that it is "better". Sesame Street and Mister Rogers re-invented the genre that pioneers like Howdy Doody and the Mickey Mouse Club kicked off. Sesame Street is the standard by which all other kids shows are measured.
This week, here in the states, we are celebrating Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a time to gorge yourself with food high in carbohydrates, mingle with family members you haven't seen since last Thanksgiving, and of course, watch football.
But the part of Thanksgiving that I enjoy the most, (besides the green bean casserole with the fried onions on top), is the time to recognize what I am thankful for.
Today's article will be a little bit of what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving. I encourage you all to post a comment of what you are thankful for as well. Read the rest of this entry »
As a predad, you will constantly worry about your pregnant wife. You'll stress over every little thing she does and you will sometimes piss her off with your obsessive safety precautions. "Don't lift that basket of laundry!" I have been accused of such obsessiveness from my wife in the past. But despite your best intentions, sometimes unexpected accidents happen and it is at the very instant that you realize, despite your best intentions, you can't really control anything.
My wife was in a fender bender last week, and its scared the crap out of me. When I first got the phone call, tons of feelings rushed through my mind. In order: Is my wife ok? Is my son (who was sitting in the carseat) ok? Is the car ok? I knew my daughter was at school at the time of the accident so I wasn't worried about her. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
Unfortunately, pregnancy is harder than just dealing with your wife's nausea, insecurities, and fatigue. Sometimes along the way, you and your wife will have to deal with some seriously important questions.
One of these important decisions comes around the 16th week of pregnancy. It is the decision on whether or not to take the AFP test. AFP stands for Alphafetoprotein, a protein made by your unborn kid and secreted through their liver and then dumped into your wife's blood. The test is a simple blood test that checks for abnormally high or low levels of that protein. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
There is a nice frame of time in the diaper-wearing life of your kid that will frustrate the hell out of you. It typically occurs after your kid starts running around on their own, and before they know how to communicate fluently with you with words.
Kids will be kids and one of the things that kids do is run around and wreck themselves. This is partially due to the fact that they are new at this thing called walking and running. It can also be that their legs move faster than their brains. Whatever the reason—scrapes, bumps, and cuts are inevitable. 
This week, here in the states, we are celebrating Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a time to gorge yourself with food high in carbohydrates, mingle with family members you haven't seen since last Thanksgiving, and of course, watch football.
As a predad, you will constantly worry about your pregnant wife. You'll stress over every little thing she does and you will sometimes piss her off with your obsessive safety precautions. "Don't lift that basket of laundry!" I have been accused of such obsessiveness from my wife in the past. But despite your best intentions, sometimes unexpected accidents happen and it is at the very instant that you realize, despite your best intentions, you can't really control anything.
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.
“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.
Unfortunately, pregnancy is harder than just dealing with your wife's nausea, insecurities, and fatigue. Sometimes along the way, you and your wife will have to deal with some seriously important questions.
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.
