smonk you: the best freaking daddy blog ever

I'm really into good bags. Bags that not only look cool but also work well for what they are made for. For me it's about Form and Function. If a bag has both I'm a fan. When I started my search for a diaper bag I had low expectations...I thought I'd have to get a women's bag in black or grey. I didn't realize that they make them in styles for men. Then I started doing research and realized there are some daddy diaper bags out there. I found 4 bags that are geared towards dads....there are more but if you're looking for a daddy diaper bag I think this round-up will be a good start. These are order of when got to check them out. Billboard series messenger bag by Dad Gear Dad Gear actually makes 4 styles of bags; the satchel, messenger, backpack and courier. They all come in a bunch of designs but the first three are available in the billboard series. What I like about the billboard series is that each one is unique...and they remind me of Freitag b...

I'm a huge fan off illustrators and while on a search for good stuff I stumbled upon Bubi Au Yeung from Hong Kong. She has some great stuff on flickr but she also has a cute little flash book called friend. Check it out if you get a second.

ONE: If you're coming here on a mobile device and have trouble checking out the blog you can go to http://smonkyou.mofuse.mobi/  it's a mobile friendly link...you should bookmark it. If Blogger ever get's it stuff together and creates a better mobile experience I'll jump on it. TWO: Voting for Top Baby Blogs has reset. So if you like my pre-daddy blog please click the banner below. It's not a contest...it just rates blogs based on the amount of clicks...the higher one is on the list the more good people like you find it. I also have a banner to the right so you can click it any time you come here...you can click once a day....thanks. Legally I can't clicking the banner will bring world peace...but you never know. You can also find some gems on there like The818.com , Little Pinwheel and Baby Dickey .

Disclaimer: I wrote this on the bus and really didn't spell check, grammar check or in anyway check to see if these make sense. Plus one of the shorts is rather long. There is an 87% chance that these make no sense. This is the kind content that if you paid for it you'd want your money back. I will re-edit when I get to my Mac. ONE: Staci said that I'm already changing with kids. She said that I'm feeling more comfortable with them. I noticed it a little a few weeks back when I mentioned I was good with a 2 year old. Here's what happened. He wouldn't hold his mom's hand in parking lot so I said to him that I'd hold Staci's. I did and he grabbed his mom's hand. Like I said in the original post don't deserve a Nobel Prize for that but it was a huge step for me. The thing is I was totally able to relate to his frustration of not wanting to hold his mom's hand. I think we all remember when we got to the age that we felt we could go it...

I want to thank everyone who entered the giveaway and checked out Orange Rhino's stuff. Using random.org the winner was chosen this morning. Number 23 came up and that was a tweet by @poshlittle (I counted the comments first then added the tweets after that since comments were method 1 and tweets method 2.) She will get a onesie or shirt of her choice. I am working on a couple more giveaways and I think they're all good but there is one I'm working on right now that I am super psyched about. So please keep reading and look out for those. I hope you continue to enjoy my blog. If you were digging the Orange Rhino stuff please tell your friends and if you're wondering what my fave is it's the Funky Owl. We have a shirt and bought a hoodie for a friend.

OK so I'm a bit of a design geek and Staci is too when it comes to the house...having this kid is bringing it out a bit more. So as we start to fill the baby bedroom we're using it as an excuse to get some cool looking things. As you may have read I'm a fan of Eames stuff so one of our must haves is the Eames Molded Rocker aka rocking armchair rod (RAR). It's a really nice low rocking chair. And I need to stress low because some folks don't realize it's height. But really you wouldn't want it higher because it's a rocker. Any way the chair has beautiful form. While the original was made with a molded fiberglass seat they are now made of plastic...not sure why that is...maybe fiberglass is bad for you or the environment. The base is chrome that lead to maple legs. Like the Eames molded plywood chair this one is super comfy. But here's the deal. This is going in our baby room and that baby will grow and become a kid who will draw on, paint ...

A bit over a month ago I did a post about us finally getting the baby's room cleaned out. We were ready to start decorating...but the room sat...we did nothing. We knew basically how we'd decorate...no crib because we're doing a Montessori style floor bed....no chest of drawers because we're doing a closet system and probably won't get a chest until we get bigger kid furniture...we'd add a shelf system and seating and such. We planned to be way ahead in getting the room done...but things came up...travel, friends etc and the room set aside. That was until Friday when Staci got the bug to get the room together. After ditching a shelf unit from Room and Board we headed Ikea for something that worked better. It might seem odd to trade down, but whatever...the piece we got has good clean designed lines and is exactly the size we need. Here's the skinny on the why of a shelf unit...this is coming from the husband of a Montessori teacher...not someone ...

The former vegetarian Staci has been knocking back ribs lately so the pre-kid hasn't had it's taste of veggies in a while. But my mom came to the rescue...she bought the pre-kid it's first veggies. Made from organic Egyptian cotton these four anthropomorphic veggies are super cute. The carrot, beans and tomato are made of kind of a jersey type material, but a thick quality knd of jersey that should hold up well. The mushroom is made of a terry cloth like material so it has some nice texture. They all come in a little wooden crate. Not really much to say about these...you can feel good about our baby playing with them, chewing on them and such because they are all organic cotton including the fill. And the crate is finished with lin seed oil just waiting to be gnawed on by your little one. Plus it could make your baby love veggies...maybe if I had these as a kid I wouldn't hate mushrooms because that's my second fave after the beans. Under the Nile also pr...

For the folks who have been reading for a while you know that we have no idea if we're having a boy or girl because our pre-kid refused to uncross it's legs during the ultrasound. If you haven't read the story you can check it out here . But we have 2 new guesses on what we're having. The first is from the kids in Staci's class. They are super interested in her pregnancy. One has even offered a pillow and some carrots to the pre-kid so it would be comfy and well fed. Yesterday the class wanted to take a vote on if it will be a boy or girl. It was a landslide: 15 for boy, 1 for girl. No recount needed. The second guess came from a shirt we got. We registered at a local store called Pacifier . They sent us a little package after we registered. In it was a Mysterio Predicts Your Child's Future shirt ...they come sealed and you get to open to see what he predicts. When we opened ours it read Romance Novelist. While I am cool with my child becoming whatever i...

The Friend : Early this week we went to a good friend's house, she has 2 kids, 19 and 16. Staci told her we were thinking of taking a birth class. I've heard a bunch of things about these classes...it's mostly that they are a waste of time . Our friend agreed the class is a waste...here is some of the wisdom she gave us. On burping the baby: you don't really need to do it like you did before...the new bottles make it less necessary...you know what you're doing with that, you don't need to learn. On bathing the baby: you put the baby in the cute whale tub...the baby hates the cold water...you fight the babies squirming and it comes out clean. On labor: Kenny will tell you to breathe...you say shut the fuck up...and then you have the baby. And that realistic outlook and sarcasm is why she's our friend... The Old Man: This weekend we went to my hometown and got to spend time with my family. My grandfather (96) was so excited to see Staci pregna...

I'm a finalist for The Bump's best blog award in the Daddy blog category. Normally I would say vote for me...but I just checked out Matt Logelin's blog. His story is both heart wrenching and heart warming. If he wins he will double the prize money and donate it the foundation he started in his wife's name (I'd be selfish and buy a lens.) So head to The Bump and vote for Matt's Blog: Matt, Liz and Madeline. Then because you love voting head over to the Pregnancy blog category and vote for one of the friend's of this blog: The 818 or Baby Dickey .

I'm not the only one in this pregnancy. Staci's actually doing some of the work here. So since I did the update post on me a few weeks back I thought I'd share what's going on with her. These are her answers with some notes from me in green. How far along? 24 and a half weeks Total weight gain/loss: It's all good. Stretch marks? No. I use Burt's Bees Mama Bee Belly Butter. I just learned stretch marks are hereditary...I think that's kind of weird. Sleep: Not sure what that is. Best moment this week: Seeing my belly move when the baby turned. Movement: Tons...see above. Food cravings: Spaghetti O's, hot or cold and Honeycrisp apples. I'm a bit pissed that grocery stores around here import their Honeycrisps from other states when they were developed here. Gender: I think it's a boy. I have no inkling on what the pre-kid is. I don't understand how people do. Labor Signs: . Nope. Belly Button in or out? The former ...

Hi all. Thanks for entering the contest. We picked the winning number 23 from random.org which corresponded to @poshlittle's tweet. More giveaways to come. I've mentioned before that I'm not a huge fan of a lot of the baby and infant clothes that I see out there. It's just not my style and I don't get most of it. So when we found out we were pregnant I was worried that I'd have to design and print a bunch of stuff myself. That would probably leave our child running around either naked or in plain clothing because I'd never get to actually doing the design. Then Staci found some really great stuff out there. I was psyched to find out about Orange Rhino. It's the stuff I would design if I designed clothes, so I'm glad they are doing the work for me. What's even better is they've been cool enough to help me out with my first giveaway contest. The winner will get a onesie or shirt of their choice. But first, here's the lowdown on Or...

've done a lot of stupid things in my life; pretty much all my hair cuts in high school, some things on bikes that left me scarred and broken, snorting citric acid on a dare in 8th grade (although I did make $10 for that) plus a bunch more but I don't know if the internet would be able to handle the memory it would take to write them down. Spending $39 ($44 including shipping) on a set of 12 wooden blocks is the latest. I know these are going to get dinged, bitten, slobered on, drawn on and lost but until that happens they will look beautiful on the shelf. Produced by House Industries, one of my fave type houses, this set of wooden blocks is (are? I mean set is singular but blocks are plural...hmm) really unique. The lettering comes from Photo-Lettering, Inc. (PLINC) which was a lettering giant from 1936 to 1997. You've probably seen there work all your life but not known...most font houses are usually unsung heroes. You can get a little bit of their history here an...

Before Staci got pregnant she would always be under a comforter when she slept even when it was the summer. At most in the dead of winter I wold be under a thin fleece blanket, but usually it was just a sheet. Now she's warm when she sleeps and is usually under a sheet, but I'm sleeping under a blanket. It makes sense that her body temp would change but makes no sense tha mine would. Based on some of the things we're getting our baby I fear it will be a design snob. Radiolab recently did an interesting story about babie's brains. One thing I learned is that when a baby is staring at you and you think it's super cute it's really just a lapse in the brain. To over simplify it the brain is switching from the primal older part of the brain to the modern thinking part of the brain and it gets stuck...so you think it's staring lovingly. Sorry... I was really good with a 2 year old this weekend. I'm not saying I deserve a Nobel Prize, I would accept if o...

Staci and have totally different tastes in music but one thing we do agree on is that we don't want to play traditional kids music for our baby. I mean you hear the same stuff over and over I'd go batty listening to stuff I loathed. So we'll play real music that's kid friendly. Jack Johnson, She & Him and other stuff that's semi-mellow but good. But what to do when you need good lullaby stuff and you don't want to have to hear Humpty Dumpty or Mary Had a Little Lamb a million times? That's where the Rockabye Baby CD series comes in. It's lullaby versions of music you actually want to listen to. From bands like Green Day, Coldplay, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins and the Pixies. One of my favorite songs in the collection is the Pixies's Where is My Mind To me it was always a great song. Then 'Fight Club' came around and made it a bit creepier yet empowering. The Rockabye Baby version takes it to a totally different level. It makes i...