Archives for posts with tag: Parenting

There’s a knock at the front door.  Duncan starts to bark his head off.  I’m in the middle of getting dressed.  So, naturally I ask Gavin to answer the front door.  But the Worm gives me that faraway look as if we don’t speak the same language.  Even if he knew what I was saying, he’s still too short to reach the knob.  Useless…but adorably so!

Thinking it could be Ed McMahon with Publisher’s Clearing House, I race to the front door half-naked (or half-dressed, depending on how you look at it) and expect to see a large check and balloons in my face.  But all I got was an old man.  No Ed.  No check.  No million dollars.

Does this lollipop make me look younger?

As if he plucked my cherries right off their tree, he muttered “Hi there.  Is your mom or dad home?”

Immediately, I wonder if this guy is serious.  I look him dead in the eyes for a hint of sarcasm.  Nada.  To make matters worse, the most mature thing I could retort was “What?”

“Are your parents home?”

Holy s#!t.  He’s for real.  (It’s California, people.  So, I give him the benefit of the doubt and  assume he’s just smoked a blunt for his cataracts or high blood pressure.)

“No, my mommy’s not home.  Sorry.”  I close the door and don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

So I turn towards the hallway mirror, reassuringly pat myself on the back and say to the incredibly dashing and handsome creature before me “I’m grown!  I may have the body of a prepubescent teenager, but I have underarm hair, nose hair, and even some curly ear hair!  I ooze manliness and maturity!”

Then I dust off the guns, cock them both back and hit another incredible double biceps flex in the mirror.  “Yeah, I’m a MAN dammit.  No mistake about it.  That old guy must have been blind.”

So, I’ve been daddy blogging for the past week and a half and I realized something.  I am not the first to daddy blog about being a first time dad.  So I’ve got no choice but to follow the excellent path set by those daddyblogs before me.  Sort of.  Some of the daddy blogs are pretty funny, like Busy Dad Blog and Cry It Out.  Other daddy blogs are useful, like Stay At Stove Dad and Frugal Dad.  With my daddy blog, I hope to bring the most interesting stay-at-home dad perspective ever.  I want the best daddy blog in the universe.  I want to be the funniest dad blog, the most useful daddy blog, the most groundbreaking dad blog, the best written daddy blog.  Yeah, all of that.  I want to be the Jay-Z of daddy bloggers!  With my incredibly limited vocabulary and extensive use of parentheses (even when it’s unnecessary), I will excite you, tease you and make you cry like a sublime S&M relationship.  And hopefully keep you coming back for more!

Even if you don’t learn anything whatsoever on my hip, new daddy blog, I hope that you will enjoy the ride as we raise a kid in the good ol’ U S of A!

If there are any products that you would like me to review pertaining baby stuff or daddy stuff or baby daddy stuff, please let me know.  I’d be happy to test out new products in my own home and give my honest opinion using the accurate Worm rating algorithm we’ve developed solely for this purpose.

If there is anything you wish for me to write about, including pregnancy pain from a man’s point of view, labor and how I narrowly escaped it, spanking someone else’s parents kids, etc., just let me know.  I’d be happy to give my inappropriate opinion since that’s what we do in California.

www.facebook.com/mevsgavin

www.mevsgavin.com

Did I do enough to entice the search engines you?  I love money comments.

One day, I hope to be in the Top 50 Daddy Blogs!

[WARNING:  Graphic Image Below.  If baby poop scares you, then don’t scroll down.  It’s worse than seeing baby seals getting clubbed.]

I know this is an odd place for this post, but hear me out. What I’m about to show you was once a tasty vegetable growing out of mother Earth. So, yes. It does belong here in the food category of my blog.

The veggie wedgie is probably the best baby poop ever to walk the earth. Or at least the best poop ever to be attached to your baby’s bum. It doesn’t stink obscenely, nor is it a mess to clean. It just peels right off and leaves practically no residue! Heck, sometimes you don’t even have to waste a wet wipe.  The baby’s wedgie is akin to that two-foot no-wipe chocolate cigar that you occasionally pinch off, pat yourself on the back for, want to show your friends, and say goodbye to before flushing down the toilet. (You know what I mean.) If Gavin was old enough to understand, he would be proud. But, since something this magnitude can always be appreciated by a friend or close relative, I’ll be proud for him…and I’ll take a photo to show him later.

The veggie wedgie can be made from many different types of vegetables. (Gavin’s lucky to have a mom that makes most of his food fresh every week.) The wedgie staring you in the face is one such food combination.  Well, it probably has a little yogurt and rice cereal sprinkled in there too.  The wedgie is pressure-formed and heat-shaped due to that very hairy crack that God placed at the top of our legs for us to scratch.  (No not that crack, the other one.)

Now, that I think about it, you are probably wondering why I’m so excited about this. Well, I’m an acupuncturist and I talk about poop with all my patients.  Proper digestive system function is extremely important for overall body health.  Poor gastrointestinal flora can lead to all sorts of systemic issues, most visibly skin problems.  So, to bring this blog out of the gutter I leave you with some basic info on baby poop (Aren’t you tired of seeing the word poop yet?)

  • Baby poops while breastfeeding should not be terribly odoriferous.  They should also be liquid-like with possible small chunks.  They can also come in pastel colors.  If it’s red poop or blood-stained for more than one or two bowel movements, you should notify your pediatrician.  (But if you fed the baby beets a day or two before, it is likely his/her poops could be red.)
  • If your baby is formula fed as an infant, his/her stools will be more stinky and more formed.
  • In the early months, breastfed babies are typically leaner than formula fed babies.
  • Generally, when baby starts staring at you eating food or trying to grab food from you, he/she is probably getting ready to start eating solid foods.  Gavin started eating solids at 6 months old.
  • Solid foods usually bring solid poops.  Obviously, there is some transition for baby’s gastrointestinal system to prepare for digestion of solid foods.
  • Make a habit of using your five senses to monitor your baby’s stools, and consequently his/her digestive health.  Well, maybe use only 4 out of the 5 senses.  You pick which 4.

Don't be afraid! It's only vegetables...sort of.

You figure it out...and yes that is leopard print carpet.

So, I don’t want us to get off on the wrong foot here. I mean, I’m a good dad. I’ve got a clean record with the police station. Sort of. It’s just that every now and then, I get distracted. (Once again Steph, you’re right…) I disappeared from the living room for a split second and I may have missed the youngest acrobatic trick ever performed. I’m perplexed and still wondering how it happened.

The Worm is only 9.35 months old. He just started crawling this past Christmas day as a gift to us! Yes, I know…so cute and adorable as long as you’ve got a leash securing him safely to a post. Managing Gavin used to be a piece of cake, you know. Just lay him down to drink his milk and I go play on the computer for 30 minutes. Of course, I would always keep my ears peeled for that air-sucking noise from the empty bottle and return to find all’s well and baby is satiated.

Ok, so knowing (or still believing) that the Worm can’t get off the couch, I follow my couch feeding routine. Stuff Gavin between couch cushions (every dad knows this trick) with a bottle and let him go to town. I leave towards the kitchen for literally 2 seconds (or a couple more, but hey, who’s counting?) and I hear a little THUD. I go back to the living room and see the Worm on all fours smiling up at me from the ground. The milk bottle is still on the couch nicely tucked between the cushions which previously held a little body.

Now, mind you…the kid can barely stand on his own two feet, let alone jump from the couch. He just started crawling a couple weeks ago! So, I had to exercise my brain a bit to figure this one out. Using my engineering mind, I realized that the spacing between the couch and the coffee table is about 18 inches. He obviously didn’t hit the coffee table on his way down. Also, there is enough altitude between the couch and the ground (about 20 inches) for Gavin to complete the 540 degree somersault necessary to stick the landing. As long as he tucked his limbs in properly. Which of course, he must have.

Bela Karolyi, if you’re reading this, I think we have found the next Paul Hamm.

Gavin – 2; Dad – 0