smonk you: the best freaking daddy blog ever

In my last post I asked some incredibly pressing questions to Dr. Scott Sampson aka Scott the Paleontologist. Questions that any parent of a Dinosaur Train fan wants to know... I got a reply and I have to say Dr. Scott is hilarious and pretty awesome... But I'm a fan of science humor... So here are his responses in line with mine. They're in blue because that's the color of most of  Shiny Pteranodon. Dear Scott the Paleontologist, My son Miloh and I are fans of Dinosaur Train and as an avid fan I have some questions regarding it that I hope you can answer: The train is a steam engine. Does it run off coal? If it does use coal is there a possibility that greenhouse gases from that could have lead to the extinction of dinosaurs? How come this isn't a theory? Very interesting question. Yes, to the best of my knowledge, the Dinosaur Train runs on fossil fuels, but we actually do have an episode upcoming where we investigate alternative fuel trains. Given that ...

Dear Scott the Paleontologist, My son Miloh and I are fans of Dinosaur Train and as an avid fan I have some questions regarding it that I hope you can answer: The train is a steam engine. Does it run off coal? If it does use coal is there a possibility that greenhouse gases from that could have lead to the extinction of dinosaurs? How come this isn't a theory? If you want to explore that theory more let me know and we can co-author a paper. Will we ever meet Shiny's real father? I mean c'mon she's blue. Mr. Pteranodon is not here dad... In fact, I have a hypothesis (an idea you can test). I think Mrs. Pteranodon kept Buddy's egg in the nest so any time Mr. brings up Shiny's real dad she can change the subject by saying something like "did we ever figure out how Buddy's egg got in the nest?" Is there any behind the scenes footage in which after meeting a dino Buddy pretends to forget something and goes back to the dino and eats it? Tha...

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. I thought I'd give you all a little treat for Halloween. Last year, and the year before, I learned what a bitch it is having a baby/toddler who sleeps early on Halloween. Also I think that's horrible sentence structure right there but whatever. Kids walk by, ring the door bell and are generally super loud outside your window...Which is normally cool on Halloween but so not cool if it wakes your kid. So this year I'm going to try this sign and see how it goes...Feel free to use it too and let me know if it works. Sorry google crunches the size, you can get a higher res version here .

The blog that is. But I had an idea for some posts that I'll try out for as long as it amuses me... Since I'm not killing it you don't get my goodbye post, which was not really going to be a full on goodbye post. In a way this blog is like that girl (or boy) you are dating and want to break up with but you can't seem to do it... You have every good intention on doing the "it's not you, it's me" thing. Or you break up and then slide back, maybe even that same day. I have a feeling that goodbye post would be good, except I didn't actually get enough time to sit down and write it. It was going to consist of little summaries of posts that I was going to write but never got around to... So I can include them now. There was the one from way early on when I was pondering how the first circumcision came to be. I know we say it's for hygiene but that's probably a side effect... I also know that it's ritualistic but who was the first ...

Sidewalk chalk. The awesomeness of temporary art. MF loves the stuff... He does his best at drawing fish, sharks, circles and monkeys (they all look the same) and has us supplement his Jackson Pollock-esque doodles with fish and other things... But mostly fish. And it's up for a day or two then gone after a rain... As it should be. But it could be a little disappointing because it's so faint... And so temporary... What if you could hack it and make it better? That's just what we did. It was an accident. We left the  washable sidewalk chalk out during a storm and the box got filled with water... It stayed like that for a few days before we noticed... Then came a nice day and The Kid wanted to play chalk... So play we did (although we really didn't play chalk we used chalk or drew with chalk or such) after I drained the chalk box. The water gave the chalk an awesome consistency... And the color was amazing. The chalk rods (is that wha...

We all know the story, right. A rabbit (who's a bit like me) doesn't listen to his mother and loses his clothes then get sick... Moral is listen to your mother. But is that really the moral? I think not. Let's walk through it a bit. Peter ran off while Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail were gathering blackberries. Sure Peter should have stayed with his sisters but have you ever picked blackberries? It's tedious and prickly... No one in their right mind would blame him for ducking out... I should mention here that in the board book we have they don't mention that Peter's dad was in a "accident" that lead to him being baked into a pie by Mr. McGregor... So much has been sanitized these days. I mean calling it an accident back in 1893 was still sanitizing it... You know he was hit by a rake, knocked unconscious,  skinned and then cooked in a stew or perhaps just on a spit over a fire. Anyway when we last left Peter he was running away from a job tha...