smonk you: the best freaking daddy blog ever

This is another post in my VapoDad series since the good folks at VapoRub are shooting me a bit of cash to write whatever I want. I don't normally take showers at 11:40 PM but had you broken into my house a few weeks back that's where you would have found me. I used to shower late at night actually, doing stuff in the morning was unheard of pre-kid. Some people thought it was gross to take showers at night but I don't really buy that... But that's not why I switched... It's because the whole thing where MF wakes up if I even step to loudly in the middle of the night. A shower would asure a kid waking. And while I'm sure you're incredibly interested in my showering habits that's not what this post is about. It was a couple weeks back when MF spewed a bit while being put to sleep. Stomach flu was going around his class and he wanted to keep up with everyone so he of course caught it. After some clean up he moved to our bed and went to sleep.

It was a couple days before Thanksgiving when I remembered we didn't do holiday cards this year... That's when we got our first card from a friend. We forget every year. Staci will usually send out some nice cards but we haven't done the family thing... With pics of us and MF. I feel like that's what you're supposed to do... So I thought I'd do one. First I had to look back at the best ones I've gotten through the years... And the best are the ones that are total BS... Where it feels like the people live in Whoville (pre-grinch of course) where everything is perfect and their kid is a genius... Then I had to look at a site to get some info on what to write (since I have none in front of me)... And so I give you our Holiday letter, Dear Family and Friends (or should I say Friends and Family? I'm not sure if it's in order of importance or not and then does the most important go first and last? Maybe just read that part as Dear ____ and put your

Did you know Jewy has just one 'w'? I didn't... I was going to use two but then using the google I found that the New York Times uses one 'w' so 'm going with that. Anyway some stereotypes are based on truth and the one about Jewish folk doing Chinese food on Christmas is absolutely true... And it's partly because they're open and partly because we freaking love it (another true stereotype). In Cleveland, where I grew up, it was also impossible to get a last minute reservation at a Chinese place the night you break Yom Kippur or Passover fasts (or no bread thing). Here it's not so hard as there are about 6 Jewish people in the metro area... That's a fact. And while you may have read that I'm not so down with the religion part of Judiasm, I'm down with some of the most important customs... Like Chinese food on Christmas. Last year I don't remember what we did, actually I think it was Indian food since they're open too. Bu

Wisdom for MF: Don't cry wolf Yesterday we spent a bit of last night at the urgent care. The kid was playing on the fridge when Staci saw him give a look... You know the look. That I'm doing something I shouldn't look. So she asked him to come over and he came with mouth closed... The next natural question what's in your mouth followed by, of course, no answer. Then she asked if he ate a magnet... He was playing with these magnets we have on the fridge so that was a good guess... He said yes. She asked him to open his mouth and he did but nothing was there. When asked if he swallowed the magnet he said no... But when asked if he ate it he said yes. The deal is it was one of those super strong rare earth magnets ... Let me pause my story here for a bit... I have a huge problem with the name of these magnets... I could go and google it but that would be too much work. I remember looking them up a bit ago and the elements of them are "rare". That'

background texture by grungetv on flickr

Remember that time I got a camera from the awesome folks at Pentax? Well it became the official point and shoot of the blog. I have been busy so unfortunately I haven't posted much from it... But busy isn't the only thing that keeps me from posting pics... The kid is a big reason I don't have much to post. Since it's rugged (I got the Pentax Optio WG-1 ) I let him get ahold of it from day one... actually dropped it when it was only two minutes out of the box. Problem, and it's a good one, is he always wants to play with it when it's out... I'm able to get some shots of him but I have to show him the shots every two or three I take. So MF took it upon himself to do so self portraits I thought I'd share... These are from his Wow I Have A Crusty Nose series. Untitled Self Portrait #1 Untitled Self Portrait #2 This next one is probably so artistically over your head unless you have a PHD in Visual Arts. Basically the folks at Harvard w

I few weeks back a twitter friend tweeted a link along with "this is why I think people have a hard time taking bloggers seriously. Are we all on the take?" It was a link to a blogger's disclosure policy that was, well... Rather incredibly insanely long... So I thought about my blog... I have done reviews in the very far past and received swag... I actually did allow some sponsored posts because the person who contacted me totally had me at "I know you're PR Unfriendly but..." And I am of course on my hunt for a free iPad (even though in reality I don't want/need one). And thus (not sure if I'm using that correctly... Wisdom for Miloh: Pay attention in English class.) I feel compelled to write my own disclosure policy just so you all know the real intention behind my blog post and tweets. While I hate to be that guy (although sort of love being that guy) I feel compelled to link to the  original disclosure policy , that has 16 levels of com

It was Sunday and I was wearing my Moosejaw Jose Yero hoody . I try to set a good example to MF on how to piss off his mother so I wasn't wearing a coat over said hoody even though it was quite cold... But we were only walking 75 feet to go indoors so why put the jacket on, right? Here's a little mini review of said hoody. It's super soft inside... Fits really well... Has a big old moose on the back which MF loves. Basically I love the sweatshirt aside from it's one downfall... The pockets do not keep cell phones inside of them... Or what I should say is if you put your cell phone in the pocket then run up the stairs there's a chance that the phone will fall out, fall perfectly... Amazingly flat on the ground screen side down and crack like some tasty peanut brittle... Although it's not tasty and it cost a lot more. Because of that I'd have to give it four stars... Had it not broken my phone I'd give it five. And yes I'm totally blaming a sweatsh

Stay the F to sleep should really be the sequel for the Go the Fuck to Sleep  book. Here's the deal... A friend of mine and his wife are having trouble with their kid sleeping. This problem is a two parter... It all started when their kid, let's call him Em Eff was sick and they let him sleep in their bed at night... Partly because he's super cute, partly because he was having trouble sleeping and partly because it was just kind of nice. Then said kid got better but would wake up in the middle of the night wanting to sleep in his parent's bed... A so we our friends let that little kid sleep with them because it was kind of cute and kind of nice and they got to sleep instead of hear crying. I should mention that the part two of this is the kid wakes up every time the totally awesome dad goes up to sleep... One day he hacked into my twitter account and tweeted about it. Obviously not me because there is a typo. And so that night too the kid slept wit

So yeah... I'm PR Unfriendly ... I mean not totally... In reality I work with PR folk all the time in my real jobb. And I know that their jobs are tough. Still I can't help sending a snarky (and semi-serious) email every once in awhile to reply to their offers of free, super cheap, stuff in return for a free review. I've shared these on twitter and folks there enjoyed them so I thought I'd share again. Also while I know I'm being a bit of an ass in reality I don't think I am... I'm sure my emails have got passed around offices... People have laughed or called me a fool (or an ass) and laughed in a different way. So really I'm doing good and hope to be Knighted by the Queen for my efforts. I was offered the chance to review a new burger at a fast food restaurant... They said they'd throw in a gift card... Not sure why I never got a reply as this was quite generous and reasonable. Dear (omitted) Sorry I didn't back to you earlier regard

First of let's start by saying he never technically became a teenage girl. If that disappoints you I'm sorry. If he had become one overnight I probably would have been on the Today Show and would be writing a book about it because that's what you do. Also I should mention that this is another in my VapoDad series. These posts are about taking care of someone when they're sick... And it's a two parter in one post. The first part being long and rambling and the second one being short. Part one: So waiting for MF to get sick didn't take long because he was sick about a two weeks ago. Just pink eye in both eyes, bronchitis (which I totally spelled correctly without spell check but you'll have to take my word on that) and a slight ear infection. This of course meant I was sick last week but only for a bit. And you're asking how he became a teenage girl... Well I'll tell you and then you'll get pissed that I'm saying he was a teenage girl i

On both of my computers I have a playlist called "Music for the kid" both are unfinished. When I'm hanging with MF I usually have the radio on and ask if he wants to listen to Rock and Roll or Classical... Three of four times he says Rock and Roll which is awesome to hear a kid say (and that statement is weird for me to be making because I think back at two years ago when people woud say "doesn't he/she say that so cute?" and I'd be thinking "No." Since he's a fan of the Rock and/or Roll I'm trying to make a good playlist of music that I can listen to and that is good for MF to jam to. I have a few rules: It can't be music for kids – I recently bought a Lisa Loeb  kid's cd . I rather like it (Staci doesn't – but it's been confirmed that I'm right ) but that stuff and things like it won't make the list. It has to be something I can listen to on heavy rotation because I know how kids are with music. And

The kid is becoming a bit of a Luddite... Not in a go out, grab a hoody and blow some stuff up kind of way... He just isn't always a fan of technology. We kind of swore of television for Miloh before he was born... Then slipped a bit when he was super-crazy new and we were super-crazy tired... We let him watch Planet Earth... I know, scandalous. Then we went cold turkey on television for a long while until he was a toddler and mornings were just a little bit better with a cat and a also a hat . Our doctor had said a little bit before bed was ok too... As long as he had under a half hour a day... And most days he didn't hit that... Although he learned good stuff from TV... Seriously he learned a lot of words from Sesame St... We did notice he got hooked fast... What I'm trying to say here is the kid was watching television and while it was either nature shows or PBS stuff we always felt a bit guilty. So we shut it off again with the exception of a little Busytown Mys

Disclaimer: again I was going to write a real post... And then this was too good not to post... And if you follow me on twitter you may have seen it... And this is completely inappropriate... And this paragraph is some of the worst grammar I've used... Probably. Also I really like PD Eastman but he left himself wide open for this. We got our first snow this weekend... And it's awesome because while it's MF's third season of snow it's really the first time he gets how awesome it is... Or at least that it exists. A few weeks ago Staci had the great idea to get MF a book about snow so he could learn about it before it hits. She picked up PD Eastman's Snow . And, well, not sure I really need to comment about how this looks out of context. Even the dog is embarrassed.  Really it's PD and Roy McKie's book so I'm not sure who's to blame. And for what it's worth the book is great. P.S. Miloh when you're reading this it's inapp

So here's the deal... First off all blog post, speeches and the like should start with "here's the deal". But while that's some ground breaking info it's not what the post is about. It's about my Virginia Slims moment... I've come a long way... baby (this is where I would link off to a vintage Virginia Slims spot but they are incredibly hard to find... And really it's the only reason I used that phrase... This is a cutaway fail). I was born and raised in the suburbs. And was a total suburban kid... I was that kid at punk shows wearing a gap hooded long sleeve hooded t-shirt because, well shit, my mom bought my clothes, I didn't know why I needed to look all punk and they were plain and easy... And really I didn't know any better... But it became my style so there you go. What I'm saying is that while I hung with the punks I looked like the suburbs... As an aside I'll say that some of the most punk people I knew did not ha

I was going to write an acutal post... One that actually mentions the scene in this video... But it's so much easier to just put up a video and feel like I did something and push any real work til later. Here's the deal... I've mentioned it before but MF loves watching this one Danny MacAskill video out there... Sometimes in the morning he'll point to the computer and say "bike". Then I say no because we don't want him in front of a screen all the time. Then he says "bike" again and I give in because A) he's cute and B) I'm brainwashing him into liking bikes... So today I took a video of him watching and doing commentary... He'll be taking Sal Masekela's job any day now. Also not sure why any of you would want to watch this because it's five and a half minutes long... Best parts are in the beginning where he sees Danny's shoes while he pulls a street sign out of the ground... He says daddy but in the past when

Disclaimer: I'm probably not the one you want to go to for info about Montessori, Staci would be a good place to go, but I do give a good lay person perspective. When I was in elementary school I new one kid who went to Montessori in preschool and he was a dork. So if you extrapolate that out it means all Montessori kids are dorks. It's the "All sheep are mammals but not all mammals are sheep" kind of thing... And I had only seen sheep. There are a lot of misconceptions about what Montessori is like and I think that the example above is a bit global... Others think that it's too strict and that kids become robots and have no fun. Really it's bad marketing, and a bad business model because Montessori hasn't been trade marked so anyone can use the name even if they don't follow the method at all. (For more info on schools that follow the method check out the AMI or AMS websites... AMI is closest to the original method). Anyway Miloh's b

The best part of my blog is finding how you all find me... And a bit of folks find me through search... Not for things like; "who's the most powerful and most awesome daddy blogger?" "who's the sexiest daddy blogger ever?" or "what blogger would be the best POTUS?" So here are some of the favorite search terms that brought people to my site in the last six months... If one of you found me with one of these searches and still read you are awesome: fucked up words of wisdom (honestly my favorite) you got your peanut butter on my fish (many variations of) ikea kids shitting bunny  (many variations of this too) 99 problems and the bitch ate one? brown stuff coming out of rabbits bum (reading this made me laugh so hard I started to choke) clouth dipers are bullshit (I actually liked them for MF... Also they spelled it wrong) dumb ass dog gay belly daddy having a baby sounds like the worst thing ever how to determine the amount of urine in

We all know the book Go, Dog. Go! ... at least I hope we all know that book because really it would be a shame if you don't. In fact if you don't please put away your computer, phone, tablet or webTV and go to your nearest book store and buy it because it rocks. It's one of my favorite kid's books and one of MF's... He calls it Dogs Going in Cars. Reading it to him he actually learned the concept of in and out... Big and little as well as some of the colors he didn't know... But the most important thing he's learning from the book is a bit more subtle... Something that's sinking in to his brain now... Something he'll be able to use in his teens and early twenties... He's learning how to be a total ass to women and therefore hook up with them. Let's examine. The hat's not so bad. I mean the hat's not great but he doesn't have to be a dick about it... Notice he steals her feather. And this one... Yeah it

I was going to do a post but then got lazy... So here's a video of Miloh pushing his shopping cart around whole foods. We've been there twice and he already knows where the free bread is.   Also since the quality of the video is so amazing you'll want to know the equipment used. The camera is from my awesome Sprint phone and the steadicam is my arm.

A bit ago I got an email from a PR company but it was different from the rest... It started "I know you're PR unfriendly but... " and so I replied because they read my blog. The gist is they wanted to know if I'd do some sponsored posts... And I said I'd think about it if I could write whatever I want... And I could... So I said yes. Also I should mention that while I put "Babble" in the title of this post it's a bit of irony... Because they put me down as one of the top 50 daddy blogs and mentioned how I don't sell out... Although seriously I'm not selling out. The folks at Vick VapoRub wanted to hook up with me because they're launching their first Vapo Dad so they wanted to hook up with the best dads ever and best dad bloggers and of course I was at the top of the list... And while I could really write about anything I think it would be weird if I wrote about how I did an amazing infographic for a friend's Halloween d