DadCentric

Monkey See Monkey Do

My daughter has recently been marveling at the wonders of being a mimic. Most of the time, I’m quite ok with this as I enjoy hearing her pronouncing the words we try and teach her, climb the things I show her and eat the way we coach her. However, there are a few trends that worry me a little.

The dogs

Whenever our dogs bark, she runs over to the door, puts an incredibly stern face and yells “noooooooooooo”

I have these visions of some old lady coughing in the supermarket and the ‘2 foot enforcer’ runs over, points, gets a look like an old English school teacher and yells at her for hacking up half a lung.

The farts

She has discovered that when you crouch down and squat, you can fart much easier and louder than standing up. (She didn’t get this from me ok) She even tries to hide them by pretending to smell a flower in the garden or picking something up off the floor.

The nose

Sometimes I catch my daughter looking at me when I am doing a bit of nose mining. The other day she ran up to Wifey and I with both fingers stuck up her nose yelling “mumma - dadda”

“That’s nice dear, now take them out as they are past the knuckle”

The food

She now knows where food comes from. I sneak into the kitchen and try, I mean really really try to open the cupboard quietly but inevitably I hear little footsteps running full pelt towards the kitchen. “Dadda…..aaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh” This doesn’t stop until a biscuit, sultanas or piece of dried mango or other such sweet treat is given to her.

The screaming and throwing yourself on the ground

This one puzzles me a little. Neither my wife nor I are geared towards throwing tantrums. She must get this from the dogs.

The smack down

I like building things with her blocks. I have a game with my daughter. ‘See how quickly daddy can make something before I come and knock it all down’
This is followed by a mighty triumphant “raaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr”

The splashing, oh my god the splashing

I’m really starting to wish I didn’t teach her how to splash in the bath. Each time I bath her I come out looking like I have been in some sort of weird water-pistol orgy.

The pats

Whenever she cuddles, she pats you on the back. “Good job dadda” I can hear her saying

I love watching my daughter grow. I love seeing traces of my personality in her and wondering what type of person she will grow into. I hope the farting thing doesn’t go too far into adulthood and I’m sure she will probably get the urge to discipline dogs every now and again.

Posted by Peter

10 Things You Don't Know About Men

Despite the fact that DadCentric was originally intended as a gathering place for fathers, it seems that at least half of our current readership consists of women.  This is great.  I'm a big fan of women.  Always have been.  Always will be.  In fact, I love 'em so much, I even married one! 

Besides, the women who come here tend to be cooler than most other women.  Maybe they can comment on this thesis but I've got a sneaking suspicion that a lot of them come here because the available mothering sites tend to be a little mushy and not quite so centered on the humorous aspects of parenting. 

Anyway, I won't get into any more hypothesizing about why women like coming over here to DadCentric.  I'm just glad they're here.  So, since they've been kind enough to grace us with their presence, I thought I'd share with them a few things that they might not know about us guys.  In fact, if this goes well, I may even turn it into a regular series.  (But don't worry, fellas.  I'm not going to  divulge any state secrets.  I thought I'd just do my part to help bridge the gap between the genders.)

So, without further ado, here's my list of "10 Things You Don't Know About Men." 

1. We pee in the shower ALL THE TIME!  Remember that time you caught us and we said that was the first time?  We're still kicking ourselves for getting busted. 

2. If you were not watching us, we would eat dinner over the kitchen sink every night.  We would never use utensils.  And we would wipe our mouthes with toilet paper. 

3. We love farting in a rented tux.  We love farting when we're getting out of an empty elevator.  And we love farting in the swimming pool.  Why you don't get as much amusement as us out of these things is beyond us. 

4. When we're at the gym and working out, sometimes we listen to Alanis.   

5. When you're not around, we let the baby eat whatever she wants.  Last week while you were at your cousin's house?  We let the kid try buffalo wings, cole slaw and beer nuts. 

6. Speaking of food, we rate all funeral services on the quality of the buffet.  Also, we tend to be more sympathetic to those surviving family members who chose to serve top-shelf liquor, none of that no-name crap. 

7. When we drop the kid off at daycare in the morning, we suck in our gut a little bit.

8. If you think you can do better and know where we're going, you drive.  No?  Ok.  Then, please be quiet, please!

9. We don't pray very often.  But when we do?  We're praying that your birthday or our anniversary doesn't fall on the same day as the Super Bowl, the NBA draft, or the opening game of the World Series.

10. We like your perfume.  It smells great.  But if you want to really turn us on (and save $40), just rub a Cinnabon behind your ear.  Nothing smells better than a Cinnabon. 

Remember, folks.  Men are from Mars.  Women are from Venus.  Me?  I'm just doing my part to bridge the gap. 

Dad O' The Week: George W. Bush

Ever see that anti-drug PSA, the one where the dad is lecturing his kids about the evils of pot, then they show him rollin' a fattie and the ominous voice of the narrator says something on the order of "If You Do Drugs So Will Your Kids!"

What a crock. Just because you were a liquor-drinkin' coke-snortin' rabble-rouser doesn't mean your kids are gonna turn out that way. Right?

Christmas Crap, Vol. III: Don't Call it a Comeback!

Jason has had a couple great posts in the last couple of weeks about some of the toys we buy our kids.  Then this morning I saw an article on new media toys and their questionable educational value. It got me thinking about what makes a toy good, as opposed to what makes a toy "hot" or "a must-have".  With the notable exception of a massive Star Wars action figure collection (my mom probably still gets droid-factory components caught in her vacuum), my favorite toys growing up were the classics--simple, engrossing, and generally not-tied to some of-the-moment marketing campaign.  I still think the Magnetic Space Wheel (pictured) is about the coolest thing on earth.  I decided to investigate by looking at the most popular toys of all time to see what their appeal was.

Crayola Crayons:  First, obviously, they're colorful.  You can use them almost anywhere (although I was never able to get the colors to stick to my brothers skin...a major design flaw) and they encourage creativity, imagination, and artistic skills.  And some boxes come with a sharpener, unless you're a loser and your parents don't love you enough to get you the big box (painful childhood memory resurfacing...sorry).  The average American child uses 730 crayons by their tenth birthday, and between ages 2-8 spend an average of 28 minutes a day coloring.  That's less time than when they used to make illuminated manuscripts, but impressive nonetheless.

Lincoln Logs:  You can build a cabin!  You can build a bungalow!  If you've got lots of time and mad-skills, you can probably build a bridge to Mackinac Island!  It's basically a bucket of chiseled wood that can be easily connected together (pre-Legos, if you will) yet again it's a building block for more creativity, with the added benefit of teaching children the impact of gravity on structural engineering, as my brother learned when I pulled the bottom log out of his ski lodge.

Yo-Yo:  It's a disk on a string.  You throw it down, and it bounces back.  Hours of endless entertainment.  If you're brother is in range, it also makes an awesome projectile that you don't have to chase after.

ViewMaster 3-D Viewer:  Travel to exotic places, or see animals in their natural habitats, without sitting in the rear seat of a station wagon for 12 hours to get there.  As long as there's light, and your brother isn't holding his hand in front of the lens, you can explore all kinds of great places with one of these.  They were easy to pack, and endlessly renewable with all the different slides you could buy.  I don't think 3-D technology has come much further than these yet, so they're still pretty cool.

Scrabble:  I'm 35, and I still end up using most of my letters on simple words like "blow" and "job."  This game is the great generational equalizer...an eight-year old could beat their grandparents on any given day.  Plus, it helps with spacial planning and spelling, and with looking up words in the dictionary (I didn't know "quag" was a word until a few weeks ago)  Someday, I will spell "jukebox" on a triple-word score on the last play of the game, thus coming from behind to embarrass my brother in front of our friends and family and driving him to an emotional breakdown.  Dreams do come true...

Silly Putty:  You could mold it into a voodoo doll of your brother, or bounce it off his skull.  You could pick up Charlie Brown's head and stretch it so it looked like Stewie Griffin.  It came in an egg!  Hell, it was fun to just squish it in your hand.  Again, there are endless opportunities for invention and reinvention, at least until you dropped it in the sandbox.  I think I'm sensing a theme here...

Lite-Brite:  It's a light bulb in a plastic box.  You could either follow the designs that came with the box, or go nuts and punch colorful pictures of your brother falling from an airplane into the holes.  Don't you wish you were playing with one right now?  Here you go.

The above doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the classics, like army men, Etch-a-Sketch, Nerf balls, and Koosh balls.  From what I can tell, the toys that last...the ones that we're still buying decades after they were invented...are the ones that provide a way to express a child's (or adult's) imagination, and offer opportunities for new exploration and possibilities even after multiple uses.  So before you go rushing out to buy Nintendogs, Dora's Talking Kitchen, or the Hot Wheel Gorilla Attack Track Set, ask yourself if this will be the gift that keeps on giving this holiday season.  Then, when you're done with your shopping, pull that Mr. Potato Head out of the toy box and start playing with it yourself...you'll be surprised at how long it keeps you entertained.

What Could I Possibly Add To This?

My wife sent me the following message this morning at 8:45am...

This is a list of all the mischief your spawn has gotten in to today, SO FAR. Luckily, in most of these cases, I was able to intervene in time and avoid complete disaster:

Spit her milk out all over the floor.
Make her sister cry.
Pull the dog's tail.
Get herself completely undressed.
Knock the Poinsettia plant over.
Unfold the folded laundry.
Pull the baby wipes out of their container.
Unwind the toilet paper roll.
Dig through the recycle container.
Pull all the magnets off the refrigerator.
Empty the toy basket in one sitting without stopping to play with a single toy.
Pull all her books out of the bookshelf.
Dig through my purse.
Push buttons on the TV and lose our satellite signal.
Climb on top of the dining room table.
Climb on your desk and mess with the computer.
Yank at the Christmas Tree.
Distribute her clean diapers throughout the house.
Pull my hair.
Take a huge poop.

Can you hear me now?

I've never really had any desire to do baby product reviews.  For me, there are really only two criteria that I look for in a product: 1) it works and 2) it does what it's supposed to do (i.e. entertains, educates, provides peace of mind, etc).  Other than that, things like aesthetics and design are just words meant to inflate prices and lure people into thinking they are providing the best possible product for their child: "If BradDad bought one, it must be the best."  Anyway, there are many other dads out there providing product insight that I never saw the need to jump into the fray.  Until now, that is.  Let me preface by saying that Mrs. Big Dubya and I have several items in our home that we couldn't live without.  The Fisher-Price Ocean Wonders Aquarium Cradle Swing and Fisher-Price Baby Papsan have been godsends in Casa Dubya.  Add to those the fondness Little Dub has started to show for the Baby Einstein Caterpillar Discover & Play Activity Center (lengthy way of saying exersaucer) and for his Bumbo seat, and things and have been fairly pleasant at home.

But.  You knew there'd be a 'but', didn't you?  I do have a gripe about a product out there you really need to work and work right.  Monitors.  You know, those walkie-talkie-type devices that allow you to be in another room or downstairs while the baby is, hopefully, sleeping.  The piece of equipment that lets you move around the house while still being able to hear the baby's movements and breathing and farting.  This is the one thing you really need to work...expect to work...anytime, anywhere.  Well, you will probably be disappointed.  You read every possible baby, product and consumer report site available on the Web, narrow it down to one or two and then make a decision only to have it shit the bed, not be loud enough or have some other defect that requires bringing it back and starting all over again.  Little Dub is six months old and we are already on our third monitor set.  Unlucky?  Maybe.  Faulty equipment?  Probably.

So, where have we been and where are we now?  Well, we started off with Fisher-Price's 900 MHz Long-Range Monitor with Dual Receivers.  This set worked great for the first four months we used them.  There was the occasional static but nothing that would cause you to tear your hair out.  But, all of a sudden, one of the receivers just went kaplooey...stopped making any noise whatsoever.  Just up and died.  It was unfortunate, they were pretty good and doing the job.  Well, returned them to Babies 'R' Us only to find they didn't have them anymore.  Mr. Big Dubya you are SOL.  So, I purchased:

Safety 1st 900 MHz Home Connection Monitor.  I thought this would be great and imagined I would get points for thinking ahead with regard to a second child.  It comes with three monitors and 2 receivers (which act as intercoms - very useful when quiet is of the essence).  And, judging by the reviews, this product was the be-all-end-all of monitors.  It just might be if you have super-human hearing like Superman or some kind of Spidey-sense.  I can't tell you how many times Mrs. Big Dubya or I hit the mute button and strained to hear something or stared at the thing long enough to see if the lights moved.  I despreately searched for a way to make it go to 11, to no avail.  So, last night I gathered it up, wrapped up the cords, neatly put it back in the box and off it went back to the Customer Service counter to be replaced by:

Private Connection™ Monitor with Dual Receivers.  After one night's use, I can say that the volume is sufficient - no straining to hear anything.  There are 10 channels to reduce the possibility of someone hearing anything and it has great range - though I'm not sure when I'll ever need to be able to hear the little guy from 800 feet away, but hey, you never know.

So, there you have it, my one and only review in my six months of dad-hood.  I know your mileage may differ.  I'm just throwing out my two pennies worth.  It might come down to two cans and some string, who the hell knows.

Addendum, Update or otherwise known as Warren's a big dummy: Mrs. Big Dubya is correct.  We actually are on our fourth monitor system.  After the original Fisher-Price unit shit the bed, Mrs. Big Dubya purchased a Fisher-Price Sounds ’n Lights Monitor with Dual Receivers.  However, the static was sooooooo bad it was enough to make you climb the walls, start drinking or both.  Needless to say, it was returned with a quickness.  I guess I just tried to erase this experience from my memory.

The Apprentice: Infant Edition

Today was my first “bring your child to work” day.  I scoffed at these for years: why were people making kids run back and forth between cubicles while I was trying to concentrate on MineSweeper?  It seemed odd to see colleagues heaping attention on kids while waiting for faxes or filing TPS reports.  I was going to blow it off, but I got a lot of heat from co-workers who wanted to meet Cheeky, and after realizing I’d get a ride to work instead of walking to the subway past the frozen vomit and yellow snow I figured it was worth bringing her in.

It turned out to be a pretty big deal at my company.  A surprisingly sober Santa Claus was stationed in a conference room, and the adjoining rooms were well stocked with chicken fingers, mac ‘n’ cheese, and ice cream sandwiches.  (Slight digression:  is there anything more perfect than the soft chocolate wafers that hold ice cream sandwiches together?  When you pull your fingers off and little clumps of cookie stick to them…mmmmmmmmm.)  A hobo on a unicycle was riding around doing “magic tricks” for the kids as I squinted to identify the huge stains on his jacket.  Dozens of parents milled about, dodging a sea of balloons floating at eye level while trying to keep Junior from jimmying the latch that led to the 50th floor terrace.  But the best part (aside from effectively blowing off the entire morning) was bonding with all these people—not quite friends, but not strangers either—using hot dogs instead of PowerPoint.

Cheeky is way too young to appreciate any of the festivities, and thankfully too young to recognize the grimness of everyday existence in a cubicle farm.  I hope she is destined for better things than that.  If nothing else, she got to show off to a different crowd, all of whom spent the rest of the day telling me how cute she is.  I never get tired of hearing that.

Christmas Crap, Vol. II: Toy Wishes' Hot Dozen

I guess we're supposed to be paying attention to every "Must-Have Toy List" that hits the Internets. This one showed up on Yahoo this morning. There is apparently a magazine called Toy Wishes, and God as my witness I'll let my kid have a subscription to Hustler's Barely Legal Babes before he ever gets his mitts on a copy of that  publication. Call me a fuddy-duddy (and watch me point at you and laugh, 'cause who the hell uses that term anymore?), but I'm pretty turned off by the fact that all but two of the entries listed require either batteries, a TV, or a stereo to operate. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's my take on a few of the items listed.

Black Belts Karate Home Studio, by Spin Master: First, didn't Daniel-San beat Tommy Nitro's ass in one of the Karate Kid movies? So why the hell would you want this guy teaching martial arts to your kid? Second, even with the clever use of montages ("YOU'RE THE BEST - AROUND! NOTHIN'S EVER GONNA KEEP YOU DOWN! YOU"RE THE BEST - AROUND! NOTHIN'S EVER GONNA KEEP YOU DOWN!"), it goes without saying that your kid won't be able to learn karate in 30 minutes. Trouble is, your kid won't have the sense to know that, and thus will ensure himself an asswhoppin' when he tries to do the Crane Kick on the guy who gave him a Swirly in gym class last week.

Furby, by Hasbro: Jesus, people - didn't any of you see I,Robot? Wait - bad question - of course you didn't...look, Furbies are evil and they're plotting and one day they are going to rise up and slay their human masters and when I'm a Furby slave mixing their drinks and massaging their feet BUT STILL ALIVE while your head is mounted over some Furby's fireplace, don't say I didn't warn you. Unless...

the iDogs by Hasbro win the coming Robot Toy Wars. Then all bets are off.

Iz, by Zizzle: Snoop is apparently launching his own line of toys.

Pixel Chix, by Mattel: An electronic girl. This is wrong on so many levels.

Shell Shocker, by Tyco: Now with realistic IED action! (Insurgent dolls sold separately. Armor that would protect vehicle occupants from incoming RPGs not included.)

Magnetix 150 Count Primary Set, by Rose Art: This one really confused me, for it requires the kid to do something called "imagine". Not familiar with that phrase. Better Google it.

It's All Going According To Plan

See these two logos over here?  My daughter now recognizes them as biiiike and beepo, respectively.  With beer already under her belt, as well as radio, and her recent affinity for the Morongo Casino commercial, I'm predicting a full conversion to uberchild by age 3.  By then, she'll be able to apply her own lip gloss, gap a spark plug, exfoliate her face and re-plumb the bathroom.  I'm not saying I don't appreciate everything she's learning from her Mom and sister.  I'm just saying that's only half the picture.  :-)

Hey Santa Claus you…..

Ahh my friend Warren, you have missed out on a lot by not living in Australia. Christmas day being so hot you don’t want to eat. Cold beers and cold cuts for lunch and a swim at the beach in your new speedo’s (or as I like to call them, ‘Budgie Smugglers’)

Most of all you don’t get our Christmas songs. Aussies are a bunch of larrikins at heart. We love a joke and don’t take things too seriously. That’s why in Australia we really only have one Christmas song that everybody knows.

It’s by a man called Kevin Bloody Wilson and he has produced quite possibly one of the finest Christmas songs the world has ever heard.

This song does come with a warning – if you have no sense of humor do not listen to it. If you enjoy a joke and don’t mind crass Aussie’s taking a shot at Santa and swearing, then listen on my friends.

Click here to play or download

Posted by Peter