smonk you: the best freaking daddy blog ever

December 3-9

November 26 - December 2

When you take 3 frames of a sweet moment and loop them it looks like torture... However Miloh isn't ripping off Kalli's head.

Kids are funny when they play with their pets and Miloh's no exception. There's of course the awesome video of the moment he and our dog Kalli truly bonded for the first time. There relationship changes by the day. It's usually great as he feeds her as he's being fed...except we're trying to stop that now. Every once in a while it will go sour when Miloh tries to climb her while she sleeps, but they end out making up with some smooches and licks. And if the leash is every left out Miloh will sit by the door and hold it up hoping to be able to take Kalli for a walk...he'll have to figure out the walking part before that really works. Then there is Zoggs our cat. He's a kitten type cat who always wants attention...yet when a 10 month old is chasing him he gets a bit squirrelly. When Miloh's able to catch him Zoggs will be manhandled a bit but he gets away when he wants. And finally there's Random. Aptly named you never really know what she&#

Over a month ago I did my first book report for this blog and said I'd do some periodic reports on books that I feel miss the mark a bit for one reason or another. Perhaps they have run on sentences, innapropriate material or are have mistakes. Well time flies... and here's the second installment, which is really the first because the original post was a good book. Here goes. Cute cover The book I did a report on is called The Icky Bug Counting Book by Jerry Pallotta and illustrated by his bestest friend in the world Ralph Masiello. The Icky Bug book is about icky bugs. It has icky bugs in it and it has numbers too... Damn I loved those kind of book reports. We don't own this book so I won't say it's the most thorough  report but what do you expect...it's like 32 pages and that's a lot. Anyway it starts out all cute, and with number one which is a fantastic place to start a counting book. One Then the next 14 numbers are great. Some

Yeah I've been sick lately and not writing posts... but that will change shortly. I try to keep my work stuff separate from this site, but in this project Miloh makes a cameo–not the one in the pic above. Head over to  Flakeover.com , the website my company made for the holidays. A lot of good people spent time on it so I hope you enjoy and share with friends. Enjoy

I never really understood the phrase "Sick as a Dog." Using the Google and going to the number one ranked page  I found out that it was first used in the 1700s but no one really knows why it is used that way. So I'll just say I'm sick as a dog who has a horrible cold. I got said cold from MF. He hit the milestone of being sick for the first time. Little dude got sick Friday night and the only way to get him to stop crying and sleep was to sleep next to him. He needed to be touching one of us to feel comfortable. Really it's pretty common and we would have had him in our bed if we weren't 100% sure he would crawl over one of us and off the bed. So there I slept on the floor next to his floor bed...essentially making it a bed floor for both of us, he needed to curl up next to me. Every 45 minutes or so I would be awakened by being kicked in the head, crawled over or having a toy thrown at my feet. He'd wake and get antsy and since we had this stupid

I thought I'd get a little serious today. People often say that Miloh's cute...and I don't think it's the bullshit "oh, he's so cute" thing you say to a friend with an ugly kid just because it would be horrible to say a kid was ugly.* I do think he's cute, in a objective, and subjective, way. But I actually figured out why he's cute and this is what this post is about. You seen he has a small head. At one time he was at 25% head size...he's now at 5%. This makes him look like a tiny version of an older kid. But it also makes him a Pea-Head...that's the street term. The politically correct term is Pea-Headed American. Not a lot of people talk about Pea-Headedness. I can't think of any time I've seen or read a news story about it. Dick Gordon from NPR's The Story never did a segment on Pea-Headed Americans. And since it's a bit unknown I thought I'd say a little bit about it. Pea-Headed Americans are just lik

November 19-25

This post may be hilarious or it could be that I'm just short on oxygen from laughing so much that I couldn't breath. Earlier I put Miloh to bed just as I normally do. Plopped him on his floor bed and lied on the floor next to him with my hand on his back. 4 out of 4.5 times that I do this I fall asleep next to him...and that did happen but that's not the story. We give Miloh a pacifier when he goes to sleep. It's really the only time he needs one and it's great because it's a cue for him to go to bed, or when he grabs it for us to know he's sleepy. But he's fickle and often likes a couple—of identical—pacifiers to choose from and/or switch throughout the night. Now if you remember from an older post he sometimes puts one of the pacifiers in my mouth, you know because I have a hard time sleeping without one. Today he only had one. Well there I am lying next to him when he shoves his hand in my mouth...then he scrapped my mouth with his nails

Wisdom for Miloh: Don't feed the dog from the table. She'll start expecting it and she'll get fat.

November 12-18

When I first started this blog I did a post about our plans for MF. One of the things I planned on creating was a style guide for MF (we didn't know if he was a boy or girl at the time). The style guide was going to have your basics; font (just because), color palette and then add some child specific things such as rules for clothes he/she would wear. One of the big reasons for the clothes do/don't list is because we (mostly Staci but maybe by only a small margin...51%) weren't fans of the stupid sayings on clothes...mostly boys clothes. I realize I'm probably offending some who only have those kind of clothes for their kids...and that's cool if you do...and you know I could care less about offending folks. If Staci had to pick the gender of our baby based on clothes it would definitely be a girl she wanted because she's bummed at how every store you go into is about 80% clothes for girls. To make things worse all the boys clothes have little saying on

Coming off my last wisdom post I thought I'd take on English. It's a silly hard to understand language with all the idioms and double meanings of things. Although that's what also makes it great. However there are a couple things to look out for. Wisdom for Miloh: Questions are often statements. You'll see this a lot in the work world...people often want to state their opinion but at the last minute decided to be nice so the statement ends up like a question. "What if we threw Turkeys out of a helicopter?" means "We should throw turkeys out of a helicopter." which actually means "We're going to throw turkeys out of a helicopter." Its subtle but it's something to look out for. Women use this question as statement often. "Do you think we should paint the living room?" means "I got some paint sample and cleared your calendar for Saturday so you can paint the living room." There is also "Is that what

November 5 - 11

This one's a bit late. Ninth month is coming up soon-ish. August 22- September 21

Wisdom for Miloh: You don't need math. You may find yourself in math classes when you're older and think it has nothing to do with what you'll be doing when you grow up. You are probably right. The teachers will say you need math...that's a lie. First, you have a computer and probably some crazy smart phone that I can't even phathom right now. Second you have an aunt who teaches statistics. Use that smart phone and call her up to get answers to any math question you have...I do. So skip your math classes and go to recess...go on the merry-go-round thingy. There's a little math involved there with centrifugall force and such but it's more physics, which might have a bit of math...but nothing a computer can't do. Instead of doing math homework in the winter we'll go snowboarding. Same thing with math and physics there...same thing with a computer being able to do it. I suppose you can rationalize that you need math to figure out your rotat

I'm not sure why, but early on we decided that we wanted Miloh to know how to speak and read. Therefore decided to read to him. I know it's weird but we're just like that. As I started reading his books I noticed a lot of ridiculous things. Some things in simple word books were wrong, some story-lines fell totally flat (I'm not expecting great literature but a little effort is nice), and some things just didn't make sense (and not in a good Dr. Seuss way). So I've decided to do some book reviews, in my own way...but before I start ripping books to shreds I thought I'd start with one I like, although I didn't like it at first. Petit Connoisseur: Art . It's a simple 7 spread book with art words like Moma, Dada, Van Gogh and such. I was an art major so I got stuck on a few of the spreads. Sure Van Gogh is in his style as Dali is in his and such. But cubism is just blocks stacked up, in more of a pop style if anything. Plus why is MoMA in there

October 29 - November 4 Colors based on the spring 2011 color trends for men's fashion...because Miloh is planning ahead.

Wisdom for Miloh:  don't carry things you could have let go. I learned a lot in college but I retained very little that actually matters. That's the thing about college...you learn a ton of crap you won't really need just because you have to get requirements in several areas of study. One of the nuggets of information I retained, and think about a lot...I mean a lot...I've probably bored your mom with the story...it's a story of two monks. I found this version  here ...it's the closest to how I heard it. Two Buddhist Monks were on a journey, one was a senior monk, the other a junior monk. During their journey they approached a raging river and on the river bank stood a young lady. She was clearly concerned about how she would get to the other side of the river without drowning. The junior monk walked straight past her without giving it a thought and he crossed the river. The senior monk picked up the woman and carried her across the river. He placed he

October 22-28

In my last  post  I wrote about how what I thought would be a love of handing out candy to trick-or-treaters was squashed the second I realized it involved talking to kids I don't know. I thought I'd recall a couple events from yesterday to show how my wife rocks at trick-or-treat and how 8 can use some work. We were at some friend's house when kids came by wanting some goodies. Staci answered the door and saw a kid dressed as Waldo and said something like. "Oh, there you are. I've been looking for Waldo for a long time and now you're right in front of me." She said it in a different way but she was on. Here was my one interaction with a kid...we got home later so trick-or-treating was ending. I took our dog to pee while Staci put Miloh to sleep. There was a kid with her mom outside. As she got in front of my house I said, "I can give you candy if you don't ring the door bell. My kid's asleep." Pretty elegant don't you thi

I'm a fan of Halloween...I had so much fun trick-or-treating as a kid so I loved the idea of kids coming to our place and trick-or-treating. I looked forward to kids ringing the door bell in their cool costumes and me handing candy out. Unfortunately when we lived in Chicago we didn't live in a neighborhood that kids came around to. But when we moved away...to some burbs...I was crazy excited about trick-or-treating. The first year I bought the best candy, because I don't want to be one of those houses known for the bad stuff. I got a lot of candy because I didn't want any chance of running out. This is where you probably think I'm going to say no one came...but they did. Sure maybe it was only about 20 door bell rings but it was something. Since then traffic has gone to shit...but it started good...and that's not what this post is about. Here's how that first night went down. Door bell rings...I get it. Then I realize I had to interact with kids

Here's another piece of wisdom learned from a tattoo...specifically one I saw on Fuck Yeah Tattoos . Really at the rate these wisdoms are going you should ignore every 3rd one and just check out the site because it seems to be where I get my stuff from. Wisdom for Miloh: Don't feed the bad wolf. As I said while checking out FYT I saw a photo of a woman's tattoo that said "Don't feed the bad wolf." She explains that it comes from a Cherokee story that I think is pretty great. An elderly Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life… He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me, it is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One wolf is evil—he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority, and ego. The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, com

Here's a little quiz for the new dads, and new moms...what's wrong with the picture below? Do you see it?  While you could say things like "none of the rings are missing" or "there's no food, snot, spit up or poo on any of the rings" or even "there are no bite marks from our dog and/or kid" those aren't the answers I'm looking for. I'm also not counting that they have an extra blue which they're considering indigo...that is wrong, because what the hell is it doing there anyway? I realize it's in the visual spectrum but I'm totally an old school primary, secondary and tertiary color guy. No indigo in those...so take it out of my color rings. Sorry for that but we have to stick up for our moral values.  To tell you the truth it took me months to figure it out.  See it yet? No, well I'll tell you...green is out of order. Yup, now that you see it you're probably realizing you were a fool.  It should go, blue, y

October 15-21

Hey Miloh, let me start by saying I'm a bit disappointed with you. Yesterday you totally dropped the ball in meeting a cute girl. Sure she was about three and a half times your age, which could have been intimidating, but dude...she was totally interested in you. I realize you gave her the Miloh "how you doing" eyes but you need to follow that up with something. Some kind of line, an opener, whatever but just say something. And that's my wisdom:  Say something. Say something smart. Say something clever. Say something honest. Say Something scary. Say something painful. Say something meaningful. Say Anything. (I totally didn't plagiarize that*.) I won't be able to pass along any good lines to pick up women...although I did pass along some bad ones . However the one thing I can pass along is that if you say nothing you will get nowhere. And, to fully understand the advice I'll force you to watch Say Anything because not only was it a great "sem

I'm super fascinated by brains of kids at the age Miloh is (9 months-ish). He babbles a lot and it's hard to tell if he's content with his babble, and our smiles that it gets, or if he's trying to communicate. Later you can see that a kid is trying to communicate and gets frustrated because he/she can't. Now is a weird sweet spot where I just can't figure what's going on in their brain. So I thought I'd write what Miloh could be thinking from when I get home from work until he goes to bed. This of course he he has mastered the English language...at least in thought...here goes: Oh, there's that dude that lives here. Hey lady, did you see that? The dude that lives here just came home. Hah, the dog is going nuts, she's funny. Look at her, she can't stop wiggling. Am I the only one seeing this? Hey folks are you seeing this? This is cracking me up. Why did the dude pick me up? I'm sitting here watching this dog and having a good

October 8-14

I was on Moosejaw's site and I saw Cottage Cheese in the secondary nav so I clicked it. Not sure why I clicked it because I hate cottage cheese as it's really gross looking. On that cottage cheese page I saw a thing called Moosejaw Humans of Influence in which they will name a piece of clothing after you. So since I'm batting 500 with my open letters I knew this situation called for another. Dear People of Moosejaw (with some extra love towards Sam) Let me start by saying you look fantastic today. No seriously. Did you cut your hair? No, that's not it...maybe that's a new shirt you're wearing. I'm not really sure what it is but I gotta say you look amazing (some may say "fantastic") today. I saw that Humans of Influence page on your site and I thought to myself "this is a great way for me, out of the kindness of my heart, tell folks about Moosejaw while getting a hoodie (or something else) named after me (or more specifically name

I'll eventually get somewhere with this but I'll start with don't get a tattoo...well at least wait until you're 25. That might seem like an arbitrary age, and it is to an extent, but there are a ton of bad tattoos out there so waiting a bit is a good idea. Although by the time you're 18 you will probably be able to have them lasered off at a cart in a mall. Also if you do get tattoos you need to vet them with me first...because like I said there is a bunch of crap out there...someone you know, not me, thought of getting a Smurf on a mushroom when they were 18. I have one I don't dig...it meant something at the time but it's so abstract that it kind of means nothing...but I kind of see some tattoos as scars, or remembrances of things, and that's why I got that one so I'm cool with it...until the day comes that I think of something kick ass to cover it up with (sorry mom.) Which (kind of) brings me to my latest tattoos, the one's I said I

October 1-7

This is is pretty much how every morning goes when we walk into Miloh's room. I had to cut it short short because a stray roach was walking around. Update: to answer Lauren's question. This is the Cliff Notes version of how this started happening. First thing is the floor bed should actually be called a bed floor. He often crawls out of his bed to sleep. Less now but he did a lot in the beginning. And at first he'd crawl towards the door wanting to get out and he'd fall asleep right at the door. There were a couple clunks until we started opening the door super slowly. Sometimes it took us awhile to open it. He could be right at the door and we had to nudge him out...slide a hand through and move him. Then as he got older he tried to open the door...but sadly he often shut it. He'd open it ever once in awhile but it was a fluke. But now that he's super old he gets how to open it. Most mornings he wakes around 6:20 and plays in his room for 15-30 mi

The other day after Miloh chomped on his Cheerios while Staci and I ate dinner I through my hand up to him and said "high five." He reciprocated. I smiled...probably ear to ear and put my hand up again for another. He smiled and gave me a second high five. We'd never done that before...I think one might have been offered when he was super young but I haven't tried in months. It was great. Then I went to put him to sleep...I laid on the floor next to him (in case you didn't know we have a floor bed .) He was there hanging with his pacifiers, he only gets them when he goes to sleep and now he can only sleep with at least 2. One in his mouth the others in his hands or around the bed...he switches around a bit. So there I was and he takes the one that isn't in his mouth and he tries to put it in mine. When he finally got it in my mouth, as opposed to my nose, cheek or eye, he smiled big. Then he took it out and tried to put it back in...and smiled. Thi

I'm fortunate that I haven't gotten many negative comments on this blog. And when I do I have to decide if I just want to ignore it (most are probably from trolls), respond in another comment (what I would usually do) or take the time to write a whole post about it like I did with an anti-formula comment months back. Well this one was pure gold so it gets it's own post. The comment was on a post that was basically just a picture of Miloh as we found him one morning...about 2 feet from his bed sucking his thumb. Said comment was a little rant about how horrible it is that we are allowing him the independence of a floor bed. Seriously that's what it's about...independence = bad. Here's the deal...I don't pretend that I think that there is a best way to raise a kid...I'm open to whatever works for others...so I get kind pissy when other people tell me what we're doing is wrong...because the floor bed is working for us, safe and great for Miloh

September 24- 30

just hanging spelled out his name spelled out FPO but he's covering the F he spelled xylophone spelled his name again and now he's reading a novel