So I got my new landline telephone and super-fast internet connection, and I decided to once and for all completely stop using my cell phone for internet. I then decided to spend the evening vegging out with Hulu and free video podcasts. Then it hit me: Crap! I should be writing a FatherHood Friday post! All this vegging out has melted my brain. I didn’t think ahead! What will I write about?

Leave it to the guys over at Dad-Blogs to solve the issue for me. They are now trying to theme the FatherHood Friday posts, and the next two weeks we will be discussing ‘Back to School’.

Well, my two youngest are still too young for school, and the teenager is too old to take the big-toothy-grin-clutching-a-lunchbox-with-the-heaviest-backpack-ever-strapped-to-her-back first day of school picture, so I’ll go at this from a different angle: i.e. my return to school. (The School of living with an infant, that is.) Since the theme runs for two weeks, maybe I’ll have a more traditional Back To School post next Friday.

I have essentially been a father for eleven years. Kat was four when I met her, she is now fifteen. I used to joke that I got to be a father and miss all the dirty diapers.

She's gonna be a star!

Fast forward eight years, and the birth of my daughter, Calli. I didn’t get out of diapers after all. Three years later, she’s still in them. (We just moved and had another kid, so we’re waiting for things to normalize. But when the dust settles, that kid’s using the potty if I have to duct tape her there myself!  ;)

Wait, did I just mention a third kid? Why, yes I did, which brings us to the meat and potatoes of this post.

So I’ve been changing diapers for three years now. No big deal. Stinky diaper? This looks like a job for Super-Dad. Robin Williams once joked that Super-Dad’s weakness was baby ca-ca. Well, I’m the new and improved version. So bring it!

With Tristin? Whole. New. Experience. (See last week’s post, ‘Boys. Are. Gross.’ … if you dare!)

Calli can't get enough Baby brother!

So life with baby has gone on now for (at the time of this writing) thirteen days. I have a three year old, so the whole baby thing’s still fairly fresh in my mind. No worries, right? I should be an old pro. Not even close. Not only does your brain quickly forget how tiny and helpless these little guys start out as, but in three years a whole heck of a lot can change…

1. You don’t have to swab the gross black umbilical anymore. I remember with Calli it was recommended that we swab her umbilical cord with alcohol in order to ward off bacteria. They now say leave it alone! Turns out the alcohol kills off the good bacteria as well as the bad…
2. Get that kid vitamin D! They didn’t say this when Calli was born, but now they recommend that you give your kid vitamin D drops because breast milk tends to not have enough. You also get vitamin D from the sun, but you wouldn’t want to accidentally give your baby a sunburn, so the drops are much safer.
3. A baby screaming at you at two in the morning is neither cute nor fun. Actually, I’m lying. It would be against Tristin’s nature to not be cute. As for fun, I actually do look forward to baby tantrums because I…
4. Remember the 5 S’s. Coolest thing ever. The pediatrician came in to check on Tristin while we were still in the hospital. He asked us if we knew the 5 S’s. No, we didn’t so he picked up Tristin and went through them:

• Swaddling Make sure your baby is swaddled good and tight, just like his old womb.
• Side/Stomach Hold him so that he’s on his side and stomach. (It’s still best when he sleeps to lay him on his back.)
• Swing them This one you probably have to see in action. Obviously, this doesn’t include shaking the baby (that’s bad), but it does include  a slight swinging/jiggling of the head. This simulates the motion in the womb as Mommy walks around or goes upstairs.
• Shushing This isn’t a quiet shush, this is a loud shush. You want to shush them as loud as they are crying. The baby has lived next to his mother’s aorta for nine months, so the sound of blood rushing by is a lot like this loud shush. You can also use white noise such as a TV or radio tuned to static, a hair dryer, or vacuum cleaner.
• Sucking Let the kid suck on something. A pacifier, your finger, etc., can calm them very quickly.

Before my doctor even got to the last S, Tristin was quiet and looking around like, Wow! This guy really gets me! The doctor laid Tristin down in his little clear bassinet, and said, ‘Yeah, they should have a video of that somewhere…’

As soon as the doctor left, I called a nurse and asked for that video!

The video is called ‘The Happiest Baby on the Block’, and it was created by Harvey Karp, MD. You can see some clips of Dr. Karp in action at thehappiestbaby.com.

Dr. Karp claims that he’s found the cure for colic, and it seems like this is true. It is truly magical to watch the babies in the video, and then your own baby, turn from a screaming little monster back into your sweet angel within minutes.

This time around, Daddy is schooling the infant!

So I guess the bottom line is, no matter how many kids you have, things change. As much as you think you know, there’s always something else you can learn. Keep an open mind, and enjoy your new baby!

‘Kinda… green…’ the doctor repeated, scribbling the selected hue of my baby’s feces into his chart…

So I’m holding my fully clothed, five day old son in front of me, his big three year old sister oohing and awing over him, when we hear the biggest phooot I’ve ever heard come out of a baby.

BBRRRRAAAAAAPPPPPHHHH!!!

I felt a puff of air on my arm. ‘HOLEE -’ I said, laughing histerically. ‘What was that, buddy?’ Tristin looked at me like, what?.

I looked down, and it looked like someone had mistaken me for a Ball Park Frank and sprinkled mustard on me.

I turned to my wife and said, ‘Call the doctor, now it’s yellow!’

Earlier, at the doctor’s office, he waited to pee until just after I took his diaper off to check it before getting him weighed.

Before we even left the hospital, he arched it all over his little clear bassinet.

I have more bodily function stories from his five days of life than I do from Calli’s three years.

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

I’m sure I wasn’t this way.

I guess my wife has been right all along.

Boys. Are. Gross!

But, come on. Tell me this doesn't make it all worth it!

This doll will help Calli learn to potty ... right?

OK, I’m pretty sure around the time that Calli was born I read somewhere that girls generally start potty training at 18 months. ‘Woo-hoo!’ My inexperienced father’s brain cried. Only a year and a half of foul-smelling, foul-colored, unidentifiable, unexplainable messes in diapers? I can handle that!

Nearly three years later, I’m still changing diapers. I’ve failed. You can see pictures of the wife and I in the parenting Hall of Shame. There’s a failed potty-trainers wing, and we’re the star attractions.

Then again, maybe not!

I came across an article on WebMD called ‘Potty Training: Seven Surprising Facts’ tonight that gave me some encouraging news. They quote Dr. Andrea McCoy of Temple University as saying:

“Children can’t stay dry at night until they start producing a hormone that signals their body to stop making urine at night, that doesn’t happen until it happens.”

A hormone. A hormone that ‘doesn’t happen until it happens.’ A blessed hormone controls my child’s ability to use the potty! Handel’s ‘Hallelujah’ playing in my head, I can now relax. It’ll all happen when it happens…

That shouldn’t keep me from using all this potty training gear I’ve littered around this post, right?

We would love to achieve potty trained status for Calli before her brother’s born in August, but if that doesn’t happen, it won’t be the end of the world. Our theory for the moment is that she just enjoys being a baby. If she gives up the diapers, she won’t be a baby anymore. Especially with the new baby on the way, I’m sure she’s wanting to hang on to that for just a little longer. We won’t push it or hold our breaths. Well, maybe we’ll still hold our breaths, when appropriate…

Anybody have any ‘tricks of the trade’ to share? I’m always willing to follow the advice of those that have been there, done that!

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Calli and Daddy crack each other up! Ok, Calli cracks Daddy up...

It has been said that laughter is the best medicine. I am a huge advocate of this. I laugh all the time.

I laugh when I’m happy.

I laugh when I’m nervous.

I laugh when something’s funny.

Most of all? I laugh at my kids.

It’s funny how kids know exactly what to do. They are probably more in tune with your likes and needs than any of your adult friends.

Just a few examples:

The other day, Calli, the two year old, tried to sing along to the CD I had just bought for Kat, the fifteen year old. We had just scooped up The Ting Tings, were listening to it in the car, and I hear Calli behind me singing “Name, name, name! Name name name!” (‘That’s Not My Name!’)

The wife and I were discussing some kind of adult drudgery (bills, etc.) one morning when from the bedroom we hear “SCHWOOOOO!” and out runs a fully awake Calli, arms outstretched Superman-style. (She woke up flying!)

When Kat was four or five, we were watching ‘The Batman Superman Movie’ and I said something about the Joker being a clown. Brow furrowed, she slowly turned and said deliberately, “Joker is NOT a clown!”

Calli had a case of the gimmes the other night. Our conversation went like this:

Check out the other guys who participate in Fatherhood Friday at dad-blogs.com!

“Daddy! Gimme popcorn!”

“Calli, what do we say?”

“Want it! Gimme popcorn!”

“Calli, do we say please?”

*Pause*

“Ooohh, yeah. ‘Please’ is ‘gimme’, nice.”

A child’s laughter is genuine. A child doesn’t know what a courtesy laugh is. They laugh when you’re really being funny, or you just hurt yourself. Either way, having a child in the home is definitely THE BEST way to brighten up the room.

Bottom line: have more kids! You couldn’t pay a comedian or watch enough farting pandas on YouTube for this much entertainment!

This day was recognized by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, following several high profile missing children’s cases. These cases included the murder of Adam Walsh, the son of America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh. John went on to found the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center. Later, the Adam Walsh Center merged with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children(NCMEC), where John still serves on the board of directors.

I’ll spare you the gruesome details of these high profile cases, since many of my readers are parents themselves. I don’t want to dwell on bad news, but I would like to take this time to urge you to take action and prevent anything of this sort from happening to your family. Here are a few things you can do to make sure your kids are safe:

• This first one is fun! Take as many pictures of your kids as you can! Make sure that some of these are even in focus. Trust me, this gets harder as they age and realize it’s embarrassing when Mom or Dad sticks a camera in their face, but this is imperative if anything were to happen, to have a good quality picture to identify your child.
• Make sure you keep child IDs updated. You can find great child ID kits at My Precious Kid.



• Make sure your kids know not to talk to strangers unless you’re right there with them. If someone does try to abduct them, teach them to kick, scream, pull away, and otherwise attract attention. According to the NCMEC, 88% of attempted child abductions are thwarted by the kids’ own actions.
• Teach your children how to call 911.
• There’s safety in numbers, if your kids walk to school, make sure they have a buddy with them.

These are just a few of the things that you can do to keep your child safe. My hope is that as you’re grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, enjoying the big summer kickoff, that you take a moment to remember those that have served our country so that we may lead free and wonderful lives. I also hope that you enjoy your family, and take a moment to praise your family’s safety. Do those things that will keep you safe.

This blog entry is part of a larger event found at Bloggers Unite. Be sure to check out the other participants!

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Calli achieving warp velocity within an inflatable castle...

We had another adventure at the rec center today. We decided to wake Calli up at the wee hour of 10am (we’ve gotta do something about her sleeping pattern…) and took her to Tumble Tots!

Tumble Tots is a time when toddlers can have free play in the gymnastics area! We had a blast! Calli got to jump into a hole in the floor filled with foam blocks, into which her daddy promptly got stuck, much to the embarassment of her mommy. She bounced on trampolines, swung from rings, and achieved at least Warp 3 running around an inflatable castle.

And of course, got the necessary social interactions with other kids her size. Or close to. There was another girl smaller than Calli, and they followed each other around the entire time. It seemed like they were taking turns deciding what to do next.

Near the end of tumble tots, the smaller girl must have fallen inside the aforementioned inflatable castle and knocked her noggin, because she began to wail. Her mommy scooped her up and rocked her, doing her best to comfort her daughter.

Calli rushed past us, pointing to the crying baby. “Baby Kying!” she said in explanation. When she got there, Calli started gently rubbing the baby’s back and saying, “Oh, baby. Oh, baby!” The baby’s mother pulled Calli closer and the two of them consoled the now whimpering baby until it was time for her to go home.

My wife and I swelled with pride. Calli’s new baby brother can not come soon enough! Calli will be a great big sister. I can’t wait.

I am both proud and humbled by my little girl’s behavior today. I can’t imagine a world without her in it!

Last night I tried something I’ve alway been too chicken to do: climb a rock wall! Calli, on the other hand? Leapt at the chance and handled it like a pro! The fifteen year old didn’t want to wear the harness. But the two year old that’s still in diapers, adding an extra level of discomfort? I’ve got a little Spider-Girl on my hands!

Insert my daughter here...

Unfortunately, the rec center doesn’t allow camera use, or this blog would be plastered with pictures!

My adventures in rock-climbing? Hoo-boy. My first attempt, I asked where was a good place to start for beginners. The instructor asked, “Sooooo, do you want, like, easy easy?”

Now I’m not an athletic guy, but not wanting to display my weakness, I said, “Wellll, maybe not eeeasy easy…”

With a fairly dubious look the instructor said, “So, like, medium easy?”

Not wanting to overstep my abilities, I said, “Yeah, medium easy sounds good!”

So I stepped up, called out the few commands as I’d been instructed. (“Belay on? Ready to climb!”) And I was climbing.

I got about half way up the wall and couldn’t find my next footing. The instructor pointed one out that seemed too high. I made it, though. And then slipped. I found myself swinging to the next side of the wall. I guess instincts kicked in, because my left hand had a Vulcan death grip on it’s hold. I probably could have just let go and let the rope do the work, but, nope. I had to wrench my arm and shoulder instead. (It wasn’t that bad, no trip to the hospital necessary! )

I swung back to where I had been, and clinched. I am not all that comfortable with heights. Not deathly afraid, just … uncomfortable. I tend to clinch every muscle in my body when on a ladder or scissor lift for work, I just power through. So I think that’s what happened. I just couldn’t find the next step.

I called out that I was coming down and clumsily repeled down, my legs giving way when I got to the ground, placing me gently on my ass.

“What did you think?” the instructor asked.

“It was fun.” I panted. “A little harder than it looks, maybe…” There ya go, tough guy!

“Want to try somewhere else?”

Sure, why not. “Sure. Why not!”

He put me on the wall my daughter had just climbed…

After the wall, we went swimming. My arms felt like lead weights and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to swim! I stayed in the kiddie pool with Calli while my wife went around the ‘lazy river’. The lazy river is an area that winds around the main pool and has jets that simulate a current. My pregnant wife loves it because walking around that is the only exercise she’s found that doesn’t make her back hurt in her current condition.

We basically had the pool to ourselves, so I was throwing around some of Calli’s toys with her. We splashed and played, and I came to realize that for a moment, I had forgotten what I like to call, ‘my adult edit button’. You know, that thing we get as we grow older that tells us what not to say, how not to act… Of course, I’ve had many moments like that since Kat and Calli came in to my life, but very rarely in public.

Maybe it was the bolstered confidence from climbing the wall and at least making that attempt. Maybe it was left over adrenaline. Quite possibly, it was thanks to my amazing daughter. But after I discovered that my adult editing equipment was missing? I didn’t look too hard to find it.

These are the experiences that make fatherhood sooooo worth it!

____________________________________________________________

OK, now I’d like to ask for a little help. My wife and I feel like we’ve exhausted every baby name book on the planet and scoured every site I can google ‘baby names’ for. We need a really cool boy name! My running gag is that, we already have a Katrina and Calliope, we can’t name our boy Jeff or Jon!

Anybody have any really cool boy names out there? I’ll keep posting this each Friday and I want to come up with a cool giveaway, but I wanted to go ahead and fire this out now so that you can start thinking!

____________________________________________________________

Enough about me, get back over to dad-blogs and check out more of the amazing talented bloggers that participate in Fatherhood Friday!

“Who came up with pancakes?

‘No, Dear, you can’t have cake for breakfast, you can have fried cake with syrup for breakfast.

Load up on that and try not to nap.’”

-Jim Gaffigan

I can remember getting up in the morning to the smells of my father cooking breakfast. One of his favorite ways to break the fast was by cooking blueberry pancakes. He didn’t use just ordinary pancake mix however. Oh, no. That wasn’t good enough. He would fry up blueberry muffin mix into the shape of a pancake. These blueberry monstrosities were then covered in butter and syrup. These things were so thick, so heavy, and so rich that two bites were usually good for me. As a kid, I remember enjoying those first few bites, and then I’d be sorry. A few days later though, I was at the breakfast table awaiting a serving of blueberry muffin-pancake hybrids.

The strangest thing about this ritual was that sweetened cereal was not allowed in the house as I was growing up. My mom would use maybe a third of the sugar you’re supposed to use in Kool-Aid. Needless to say, my brother and I grew up not even adding sugar to cereals such as Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies.

I remember a time when my cousin came to visit, and we brought in food items that before were forbidden: his favorite cereal Corn Pops, and his favorite soda Mountain Dew. This was a bit different than the Corn Flakes and Diet Pepsi that generally populated our cabinets and refridgerator. If memory serves, this resulted in several sugar-induced comas for me and my un-acclimated little body.

So now I find myself a father, writing this blog while eating a bowl of Kellogg’s Frosted Krispies. We generally keep the sugary cereals to a minimum in our home, but I can explain the Frosted Krispies! This is pretty good actually.

When I saw that such a cereal existed, I nearly walked right on by. But then I stopped and saw the promotion on the front of the box: with only 9 tokens or $9.99 plus 1 token, I can have my very own Starfleet ensignia T-Shirt, in honor of the new Star Trek movie coming out May 8th!

The box only pictures Science blue and Operations red, but I’m holing out hope that the order form will include Command gold! ‘I am Captain Kirk!!!’

But I digress.

The questions I have for all of you is this: What traditions for ‘the most important meal of the day’ did/do you have? Do you do anything different than your parents did? How do you keep breakfast healthy when we’ve been trained to think that the only thing that ‘sounds good’ for breakfast is something completely sugary or cholesterol ridden (I didn’t even get to sausage and bacon…) ?

Any thoughts?

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The lettuce?

Yep! The lettuce. The lettuce I used last night was a first for us: sustainably grown by the company Tanimura & Antle, this was Living Lettuce. Living Lettuce is the best lettuce that I have ever eaten. Period.

An ad for Living Lettuce

According to the package it comes in, Living Lettuce is hydroponically grown in state-of-the-art greenhouses that use Earth’s energy to naturally warm and cool them, reducing the need for limited resources. Living Lettuce is grown and shipped regionally, which means fewer miles traveled and the freshest peoduct. Living Lettuce is shipped with the roots attached, so it stays as fresh as possible.

Living Lettuce is a little more expensive than regular lettuce, but it is so worth it. While regular lettuce seems to just be there to add a little crunch, Living Lettuce has flavor. I really enjoyed that BLT last night, and this time it wasn’t just for the ‘B’!

When you try Living Lettuce, they do advise to rinse and dry it thoroughly in a collander. I would recommend that you send it through a salad spinner. They also recommend that you pull off only the leaves that you need per serving at the root, so you can extend it’s shelf life.

I warn you, once you’ve tried Living Lettuce, you are not going to want regular old iceberg lettuce again!

Fahrenheit 451 cover courtesy of amazon.com

If you’ve read Ray Bradbury‘s brilliant ‘Fahrenheit 451‘, you probably still have visions in your head of homes being destroyed because they dared to have books inside them. I know I do. That’s why an entry at bookshopblog really disturbed me. In their post, ‘Book burning on Feb. 10th 2009 due to CPSIA‘, they claim that according to new CPSIA laws, a book store or library can not sell or distribute items that do not have a certificate stating that they have been tested and proclaimed lead-free. Furthermore, this law is retroactive, meaning that even if the item was published fifty years ago, if it hasn’t been tested, you can’t distribute it!

What Does This Mean?

This means that you can’t trust anything. Even books. Destroy everything you own! (Not really, calm down and keep reading.)

I found another bit of reporting over at kreelanwarrior.com. In the post ‘Lead In Books – Another Reason To Get An Amazon Kindle‘, Michael R. Hicks makes the point that all this talk of lead in books should push everyone to buy an Amazon Kindle. He was immediately rebuked by his readers, who told him that books were lead-free. He posted a correction on the blog, but kept the entry there to preserve the discussion.

There’s a lot of information and misinformation out there concerning this topic. Just scan the folks talking about this at twitter!

Bottom line that I’ve discerned from all of this? 

Books are safe. Give them to your kids. Read them to your kids. Talk about them with your kids. They need books to awaken their imagination!

While I’m on the subject of books, there’s a great organization co-founded by Jimmy Gownley that I’d like to give a shout out to. It’s called Kids Love Comics, and they promote literacy through comics and sequential art. I remember comics being a huge part of my life growing up. (Who am I kiddin, they’re a huge part NOW!) They increased my vocabulary and got the creative juices flowing. When I did (do) pick up a novel or some other book without pictures, I could often imagine the art that would be in the comic version even more so than I could see the film. So to hear that there is actually an organization that promotes such things, all I can say is bravo! And. Let’s not let Fahrenheit 451 happen to us!