Author: Family Friendly Daddy Blog

Leave a comment Posted on October 29, 2015October 29, 2015 new house, parenting, Storytelling, Uncategorized

Dear Jack: We Put Up Our “Clip-On Tie” Christmas Tree on October 25th

4 years, 11 months.

Dear Jack,

This past weekend, exactly two months before Christmas, our family bought our first official artificial Christmas tree. I call in our “clip-on tie” Christmas tree.

I am very pleased with it. Not only did we only pay $30 for it by the time we used our Lowe’s coupon, but the tree came pre-lit!

It’s no secret that while I am gifted in the creative department, I am completely bankrupt when it comes to mechanical skills.

But there was nothing complicated about assembling this tree. I just took it out of the box and stuck it in its stand.

The tree came in two halves with a connected cord for the lights. So I just simply spread out the twigs like a fan and was done.

In the 7 years Mommy and I have been married, we never really bothered to get a little Christmas tree since we lived in a townhouse and opened the presents at Nonna and Papa’s house anyway.

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Things changed this year, though. We have our own real house.

Romantically Mommy and I liked the idea of a real tree, but Mommy didn’t like the idea of the mess it would bring in our new house, and I didn’t like the idea of having to set it up.

So a 4 and a half foot tall “clip-on” tie version of a Christmas tree ended up being the perfect fit for our family.

As I was taking care of the tree, Mommy was wrapping the gifts for our extended family, while listening to traditional Christmas music on YouTube.

Christmas is about 2 months away, but our tree is up and the gifts are bought and wrapped.

With all the inevitable upcoming holiday clichés, like “the hustle and bustle of Christmas,” this is our family’s attempt to get ahead of the stress.

We are ready for Christmas!

Love,

Daddy

Leave a comment Posted on October 29, 2015 funny, parenting, Storytelling, Uncategorized, vegan

Dear Holly or Logan: Daddy’s “Sympathy Hunger Cravings”

15 weeks.

Dear Holly or Logan,

Mommy is now officially one week into in her 2^nd trimester with you. I have noticed her nausea has seemed to have majorly subsided since crossing that line.

However, her hunger cravings are on still on full speed! And as for me, I’m along for the ride and enjoying it…

After all, it’s only right that I should “sympathize” with her hunger cravings. The best way for me to do so is to join Mommy on this!

She and your brother Jack made some vegan chocolate chip cookies this weekend. And yesterday, Mommy had me pick up some vegan cake from Whole Foods.

(And Halloween is coming up this weekend. I can only imagine the temptations Mommy will face!)

Until now, we’ve never kept fruit juice in the house, because truthfully, it’s just sugar water with vitamins. It’s a processed food so we stay away from it. Once the sugar is extracted from the fruit’s fiber, so much of the nutrition is gone and it just becomes a classier form of high calorie junk food; mostly empty calories.

But here lately, Mommy has been craving grape juice, so now we always keep some in the fridge.

It had been about 6 years since I had enjoyed a nice full glass of grape juice. Because I used to have eczema (dyshidrosis), I had to stop drinking juice because it always instantly flared up my rashes.

But now that I’ve been a vegan for 2 and a half years, I guess it somehow flushed out my body of the toxins causing my eczema to even go back into remission.

Therefore, I discovered that I can now get away with drinking grape juice again! It’s like candy to me!

I see it as a bad habit that I am enjoying a little too much right now. However, this is the time to live it up. (I’ll need to pull the plug on that once you are born, though.)

Your development inside of Mommy’s tummy is causing her to crave more of stuff she wouldn’t normally want. So I might as well enjoy a little bit of the fun along the way.

Love,

Daddy

4 Comments Posted on October 28, 2015 funny, Nostalgia, parenting, Storytelling, Uncategorized

The Only Time I Got Paddled (Spanked) in Public School: Gym Class, 8th Grade, May 1995

While I’m definitely in the minority (20% of Americans) in that I don’t believe in spanking my own child as an efficient form of discipline, I think it has become a collectively weird thought for us as American parents to consider that not that long ago, students were still being spanked (with paddles!) in the public school system.

I managed to make it all the way through 13 years of public school (that includes Kindergarten, obviously) with only getting one paddling.

I had just turned 14; it was at the end of my 8^th grade year, 20 years ago: May 1995.

It was a Friday at the end of gym class, during a “free play” day. A bunch of my friends were running towards the wall, then jumping as high as they could, to see how high they could press our feet on the wall.

The wall was built of concrete cinder blocks, so we could easily measure how high we jumped by the grout in between them, using the grout lines to measure the height of where our feet hit the wall.

Turns out, I jumped the highest that day. However, no one bothered to tell me that the gym coach had just warned the other guys that the next person he saw jumping on the wall would be paddled…

So the male gym coach took me to the locker room and paddled me 3 times with a wooden paddle, while the girls’ coach witnessed it.

I could sense she felt awkward being there; knowing I was “the good kid” who was playing the scapegoat that day.

When I emerged from the locker room, having just been hit by a wooden plank on my “bum”, all my friends were lined up waiting to give me a high five and cheer me on.

I suppose it was a perfect way to score some “cool points” just in time to prepare for high school.

The paddling was obviously not effective; especially since I wasn’t aware I was breaking the recently established rule until it was too late.

All it really did was make my friends think I was cool. It was like part of an initiation process, apparently.

Isn’t it bizarre to imagine that paddling (spanking) in the public schools was still going on in our lifetime?

These days, something like that could easily be perceived as harassment or abuse. Right?

2 Comments Posted on October 28, 2015October 28, 2015 Health, parenting, Pregnancy, Uncategorized

Family Friendly (Mommy) Blog: Jill Shell on Pregnancy Hunger Cravings

People often ask me what type of cravings I am having now that I am pregnant.

This used to be a funny question to me because when I was pregnant with Jack, I felt like I had virtually no cravings at all.

Actually, aside from the horrendous leg cramps that crept up in the middle of the night throughout the second trimester, I felt like I had very few “normal” pregnancy symptoms throughout the duration of it.

Well, I can tell you for a fact, I have cravings now!

It’s not the old fashioned “pickles with ice cream in the middle of the night” cravings; it’s the “you name it, I want it” type of cravings. For example, I was talking to a co-worker one day (who also happens to be preggers, too) and she mentioned how she stopped at Panera to grab a breakfast sandwich on the way to work.

Now, I am vegetarian not a vegan (because I don’t have the will power to say no to ice cream and things of that nature at all times), but because Nick is vegan, I often eat more of the vegan fare, which means we stay away from foods with animal products (no beef, no chicken, no fish, no dairy and definitely, no eggs).

Just a few months ago, I think I had even convinced myself that I was allergic to eggs. But wouldn’t you know, as soon as my friend began talking about that breakfast sandwich, the brain in my stomach started churning and demanding some eggs.

When I got home that night, nothing sounded good to me, but an egg and cheese sandwich, and I barely ate my dinner. Hours later as I laid myself down to sleep, I made my plan to get up just a few minutes early to make it into the Panera closest to work.

When my alarm rang, I got up without even so much as a hitch in my step and was out the door 10 minutes sooner than I had been in weeks. I was second in line in Panera and couldn’t wait to get my hands on that egg and cheese sandwich. And, even though my mouth suffered a few burns from eating it so quickly, it was just as every bit of delicious that I had needed it to be.

Please do not ask me how many times I have been back to Panera to get this same sandwich . . . it’s a little embarrassing just how much this little baby wonder in me is causing me to crave things I wouldn’t normally care about.

And, don’t even get me started on meat (blackened salmon and steak have never sounded so tempting) . . .

4 Comments Posted on October 26, 2015October 26, 2015 marriage, parenting, vegan

Family Friendly (Mommy) Blog: Meet Jill Shell

Hi! Many of you probably don’t know me, but I’m Jill Shell.

You might recognize me as the wife beside the Family Friendly Daddy Blogger, Nick Shell. He’s my husband and Jack’s our (almost 5 year old) son. We recently found out that we are expecting our second child in April 2016 and we couldn’t be more excited! With a new baby on the way, you can imagine how things could be transforming in our daily lives.

One day we got to talking about the many interesting things that happen during pregnancy and I mentioned to Nick that it would be fun to do guest blog appearances on his site to write about all the changes. It started out with me wanting to write about the funny things that happen during pregnancy, such as the for real increased appetite, incredible cravings that leave you lusting after food, the inevitable weight gain, and other nuances of the kind.

But as we spoke more about it, it sounds as if it may evolve into some posts about my interests and hobbies such as cooking vegan dishes (because you don’t know what you’re missing and it’s not that difficult to prepare), reviewing baby items (to get at the heart of what you really need and what truly works), thrifty saving trends (because who doesn’t like saving money), and my new venture in crafting (totally investing in a sewing machine with my Christmas money after we get through the holidays).

This has been an incredible space for Nick to share information with people and I’m happy to contribute to this virtual forum to continue our story; connecting with people as we grow from a family of three to four.

To give you an idea of what you may be in for, I’ll be doing my next blog post on a vegan/vegetarian recipe for chili. Fall is the perfect time to break out the crock pot to create a flavorful, low-key easy meal, and what better dish than chili?

Oh, and don’t worry, I don’t venture into complicated recipes with crazy ingredients that you can only get in Mumbai and will never use again, or that take three hours to prepare and five hours to complete.

After all, I am a full-time working mom and if I have to go through a lot of trouble to prepare a healthy meal for my family, I’d just as soon invest in the “Never Ending Pasta Pass” at Olive Garden, and let’s be honest, I ain’t got time for that and neither do you.

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