smonk you: the best freaking daddy blog ever

There is a saying that an idle mind is the Devil's workshop...and I'm thinking that's a good thing. A bit over a month ago I was kind of bored and a little bit hungry. I wanted some sunflower seeds. And not just any sunflower seeds...I wanted Spitz dill flavor seeds because they freaking awesome...and better than their competitors. Then I and idea came to me...what would be better than some seeds? The answer of course is a lot of free seeds...even though in reality it would cure the craving I had then. So I sat down and wrote what I think was a funny open letter to Spitz asking them to sponsor my blog by giving me 50-100 packs of seeds. But Spitz is owned by Frito-Lay and they had no sense of humor...not that I was really expecting the seeds...but I was bummed by the total canned answer. Writing the letter was fun...and I figured I could use my talent of writing funny, sarcastic, and semi-obnoxious letters for good. The good being showing my support for brands that

Notice his Burt Reynolds pose This is probably my favorite thing that Miloh is wearing now. It's a bodyvest form Nippaz With Attitude a great clothing company from England that some friends of mine started. Ian and Leza used to work at indie record labels and that comes through in their designs and in the way they create their stuff. Instead of doing seasonal collections they try to get new stuff out every 6-8 weeks...and it's great stuff. They sent me the What Would Joe Strummer Do? shirt because I'm a huge fan of The Clash (I sing Bankrobber to Miloh to get him to sleep.) The stuff is great quality, looks cool and is different from things I've seen out there. There is a little hint to tomorrow's post in the pic. I wish I had seen the Love/Hate mittens because Miloh would have worn them as a newbie. Other fav styles of mine are below. Seriously check out Nippaz With Attitude for some great stuff...buy some.

If you're reading this and your name is Chip Kidd please read the whole thing because there is a designer geek story at the end...and you're in it. Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of controversy on my blog but this post involves a subject that people are incredibly emotionally attached to so please if you comment keep your comments nice. This wisdom comes from a recent post from Girls Girls Girls week where I called Morgan out for using a double space after a period. Metta1313  joined the conversation and backed up the use of the double space. As an English teacher she felt she was correct...and via twitter she rallied the troops of other teachers and two-space fanatics...which brings me to my wisdom for Miloh this week. Wisdom for Miloh: Teachers aren't always right. They make you want to think they are but they aren't. For instance there was the English teacher I had in 7th grade who said no one had ever gotten out of her class and never would. Then when I pissed

There once was a little boy who was very independent from day one. When he was strapped in a stroller he would find a Houdini-esque way to extricate himself from it. So the stroller was only used for a little while. When he was between 2 and 3 years-old he was walking in a parking lot with his mom. He started to run from the car his mom said she needed to hold his hand while he walked. He asked why and his mom replied that it's only safe if someone is holding his hand. So he grabbed his own hand and started walking away. Then he said "I hold my hand." That boy was me... Cut to 35 plus years later and I have a son who got that independence gene. One that I believe may lead to pain-in-the-ass-itis. Early on he started holding his own bottle. Then when he's done he chucks the bottle as far as he can. The floor bed is helping him become independent because when he wakes up he rolls and/or scoot-crawls across the room to grab a toy and start playing. Oh and did

July 16-22

When I was a kid my first bike was my sister's yellow bike. On the end of the handlebars was a spring that had streamers. Since the bike was now mine I pulled the streamers of...then while sitting on the bike talking to a friend I somehow got the now naked spring caught in my eyelid. I couldn't move my head away from the bike until my friend got my dad who extricated the spring from my eye. I believe bikes with streamers no longer have that spring for some reason. After a trip to the doctor I got an eyepatch, an action figure of Muffit from Battlestar Galactica and I think a new bike. I think getting yourself in odd situations may be a dominant feature...yesterday Miloh somehow shackled himself to his car seat with one of his rubber teething rings...this is just another thing that makes me think Miloh has too much of getting into weird situations part of me in him...

Today is Miloh's 6 month-day and I planned on doing a big post, but some things came up an I wasn't able to write it in time. So I'm literally phoning it in as I write this on my phone on my way to work. That means I not only disappointed myself in not writing, but I could be disappointing people who follow me on twitter by not live tweeting the budding romance of 2 riders or tweeting about a woman eating yogurt on the bus (its a disgusting thing to do...and maybe she got the message because today she is having a granola bar.) But if I did actually write the post I'd start with how I've changed. I've been writing this blog for just over a year and in that time I went from dude who is completely scared to hold a kid to dude who one hands his kid while holding 4 different things in the other arm. I changed from a guy who takes 8 minutes to change a diaper (to be fair there was a fresh circumcision, his, and gauze to worry about) to being able to change it as

I was correct two weeks ago when I said there was 0% chance the weekly words of wisdom would actually be weekly...because I missed week 2. So here's week 2 (or 3.) Wisdom for Miloh:  It's easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission...but it's more satisfying to just say you were right in the first place. I heard the first part just this year, but I think I've always lived with this philosophy...I added the second part because let's face it, it's true. So Miloh as you go through life and come up against rules that just make no sense please take this advice...it's worked for me. HOWEVER... if it's ever a rule or such that your mom and I put out you better ask permission. If you don't I can assure you begging forgiveness will be much harder...you forget I'm a bit Hungarian and can be a lot stubborn. None of this asking your mom if it's ok if you can go out even though you're grounded...we're both going to be on the same pa

July 9-15

There was one guest post I wasn't able to fit into last week's Girls Girls Girls week. It's from Staci, my wife. She's awesome...but you have to wonder why she puts up with me daily...it can't be easy. Now that there is a mini-Kenny around it will only get worse. She's fantastic teacher, a great wife and a awesome wife. You may know a bit about her from the blog but here are some things you might not know: She makes the word "cold" into a 2 syllable word. Co-wald (think about that as you read) She used to 2 spaces after a period but it looks like she made the switch to 1...which is correct However she doesn't bake...I wish she baked...I like baked goods...especially scones She does buy good pastries so that's good. She has tiny feet. I once bought her snowboard boots by seeing if my hand fit...it did and the boots fit her She adds extra modifiers onto words. Like if she has a cut on her knee she says she cut her knee-skin She has a s

Hey...when you're done reading check me out on ohdeedoh . If you haven't read my post about my trip to the doctor with Miloh last week you might want to...chronologically these events preceded the doctor but both happened while Staci was out of town. Some may call me a subarbanite...maybe it's because I live in the subarbs...but in reality I'm not. I'm more of a displaced city guy. We live where we do because we like our place...it's a rowhouse, which means we have no lawn work to do...yeah you can find those in the city but they are twice as expensive...plus our area is a great place to go riding on a road bike...that's if I ever get on that thing. I'm not one of those anti-suburb people, obviously, but people often are surprised I live in the burbs...but there are some suburban things that I just can't stand...Drive-thru coffee houses. Or I guess to be more correct coffee houses with drive-thrus...I can't stand them. Okay, maybe that

This was originally a guest post of at For The Birds ...check out Ry's blog here . My wife Staci was out of town for the first time since our only son Miloh was born 5.5 months ago. I had him all to myself as my in-laws, who live in the same city, and a lot of my friends who could help were all out of town as well. I knew I'd be able to handle taking care of him for the 2.5 days but I knew I could get a bit tired since it's not easy taking care of a baby all by yourself...but that's all boring. I guess it started Sunday night when I noticed Miloh had been kicking his right leg an awful lot...I tweeted asking for advice and the consensus was that it was normal... Then on Monday morning while on a call with someone from my office I noticed that Miloh's right foot was blue...I hung up the phone and went over to him...it was quite dark and looked dirty, but it wasn't. That was the same foot he had been kicking the night before. I knew something was wrong s

As the greatest guest post week in the history of blogs comes to an end I'd like to first say thanks to all my guest posters and everyone who came and read their posts. Last up we have Morgan from The818 . I think I found her blog from Top Baby Blogs (shameless link to get you to vote for me) and it was really the first mommy blog I really liked. Check it out if you haven't...it's a fantastic miss of her life with Delilah and Scott with some great design stuff peppered in. Here are things you'll want to know about Morgan: She's married to Scott...this makes her the 3rd guest this week married to a Scott (or Scot) She says she's from The 818 but that is not totally confirmed...she could be from The 747  Either way she lives 2 blocks from a great friend of mine but they don't know each other...however they probably see each other at a coffeehouse or something because the world is weird like that Her Torah portion was much more boring than mine She ha

Before I introduce my next guest poster I wanted to let you know that my plan of complete slack this week failed as I have a guest post of my own over at For The Birds ...it's about some craziness that happened when my wife was out of town. Thanks Ry for asking me to post. Okay...now on to Becky from Mommy Wants Vodka ...I guess I should start by saying that today she is a year older than she was 2 days ago. Here's some other things you should know: She lives in an undisclosed city that I once drove to to check out a used view camera...the camera sucked. You can often find her hanging ate Chili's with Jen, who guest posted 2 days ago...often could be a stretch. She's sarcastic, tells it like it is and is droll like me which is why you need to check out her blog . Her current twitter avatar is rather stoic so it kind of cracks me up a bit more when I read her tweets. If she was ever hired by Hallmark their sales would skyrocket She's writing a book that i

Today's post was written by Mandy over at Harper's Happenings . Mandy is like the little sister I never wanted (just remember I said it first.) I wasn't even going to let her be a part of this but I get a number of emails from her each day begging me to guest post. Here are some things you may not know about Mandy. she has worked at a coffee house and at Target (as have i both except I never had to wear red and khaki)  she eats a hell of a lot of Pho when she grows up she wants to own a Narwhal farm even though she loves Narwhals there is a rumor that she kills cute little seals for fun she doesn't know where the shift key is Mandy is also a force to be reckoned with on the Twitter so find her here . And if you find yourself at BlogHer in NYC you can stalk all 5 of my awesome guest posters (postees?) this week there. Also if you find yourself there head to 46th and 6th and but a falafel sandwich from Moshe's falafel cart...you're welcome. there are num

The Next Martha actually has a real name and it is Jen. She writes about 30 different blogs including; The Martha Project ,   a blog about raising a gifted kid, and a "fat blog", where she adds mayo to things that should not have mayo. But the real gold comes from her @thenextmartha twitter updates...they are such gold that if you aren't on twitter you should be just to read them. One thing I should mention is this post is an exclusive...it is incredibly timely as some of the events happened at the end of last week. I paid her huge dollars to get this exclusive so I hope you enjoy. When Kenny asked me to guest post I jumped to say yes. He’s like my long lost Jewish hash brown eating brother. To say I like him is like saying that he doesn’t care for cheese. Though he’s not at the toilet training phase of parenthood, when he is I will NOT have any advice for him. I Have No Toilet Training Advice I started when most people in this country start. I started tal

I have a strict no girls allowed policy on my blog...but to celebrate the one year anniversary of Smonk You I decided to allow some girls to hang here just this one time. The line-up is FANTASTIC, so please stop by everyday to check them out, and remember to check out their blogs too for more greatness. First up is Mae from Parenting in Progress...she's a fantastic writer of words and will often throw out some awesome tweets . She asked if I had any ideas for a post and I said something about gardening because I'm a little jealous that she has a garden...but there's a reason we live in a row-house with 10 square feet of lawn that I never have to touch. Because if I had to take care of a garden or a lawn it would be dead. And after you check out her post here check out her blog and check out this post that I will steal sometime in the future (but of course change the names.) I'm really excited to be guest posting for Kenny and apparently he likes the posts in

July 2-8

It is a fact that I'm a huge wealth of valuable information and I'd like to pass some of that information on to Miloh. So I'm setting up my Wednesday Words of Wisdom. I was going to call it Weekly Wednesday Words of Wisdom but that would be WWWW and I'm hoping to get huge search traffic from "what does www stand for." In addition the chance of this being an actual weekly thing where I never miss a week is 0%. Wisdom for Miloh:  "When are you going to stop dating fucked up guys in fucked up situations" is not a good line to use on a girl...especially an ex. Sure at the time it might sound completely brilliant, she might realize she's been a total idiot, but the chance of that happening is as slim as the chance that I will actually do one of these posts each week.

At Miloh's 4 month check up Staci and/or I asked an innocent question about his head...it was seeming a little bit flat. Our doctor said she did notice, asked if we'd gone to a physical therapist and said she wanted to check it out...but when she did she told us he looks fine. Staci heard, "he'll probably need a helmet." A couple weeks later Staci took Miloh into the doctor for something else...I forget what. Our doc was out and this new dude mentioned Miloh's head. He said that it looked allright because it's symmetrical but that we might want to go see a physical therapist to make sure. Staci heard, "he needs a helmet." And this is where one goes online and reads all about the flat head deal (not sure that's the medical name.) Then one learns that it's pretty common now, and with the power of facebook one can realize they know a bunch of folks whose kids needed a helmet to correct this Flat Head Deal. We did all that. Then one

June 25- July 1

This is the kind of thing you wake up to when you have a floor bed. Miloh crawled off his mattress...made it a couple feet and fell asleep sucking his thumb.