Author: Family Friendly Daddy Blog

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Why I’m Weird About My Kid Drinking Juice

July 11, 2012 at 1:55 pm , by 

19 months.

“Jewish?” asks my son Jack every Saturday and Sunday morning. His pronunciation of the word “juice” is still a little off.

Be glad you’re not my kid. In the economy of food at our house, juice is just one notch down from holy and sanctified.

Or liquor.

When can Jack have juice? Only on the weekends, in the kitchen. And it’s 100% organic juice, which we water down greatly.

(He can drink a little bit of  juice when he’s sick, like right now.)

Why am I so weird about my letting my kid drink juice? At least it’s not soda, right? Or some sugary, food-dyed cocktail.

People across the world and throughout time have wondered why we’re all here; as in, what’s the meaning of life?

Similarly, everyday thousands of people are looking for an answer to help get rid of their kid’s eczema.

Well, I have an answer.

For nearly a decade, I suffered from excruciating eczema; in particular, dyshidrosis.

Mine is completely in remission now, but only because I radically changed my diet and lifestyle. About three years ago when I starting experimenting with ways to get my “Freddy Krueger hands” to stop oozing, I discovered that if I stopped drinking juice for a couple of days, my skin condition improved.

So I stopped drinking juice all together.

While my son may look nothing like me, he did inherit my sensitive skin condition and he is prone to eczema.

And sure enough, if he drinks more than one serving of juice for more than one day in a row, the back of his neck and his thighs break out.

This didn’t happen just one time. It happens every time. In fact, I’m pretty sure his eczema will bad tomorrow with how much juice I’ve let him drink since he got sick a few days ago.

But why does 100% organic juice make eczema worse?

Because it’s a processed food.

The vitamin-packed juice of the fruit is separated from the healthy fiber of the fruit. Together, the juice and fiber digest properly in our bodies.

But apart, it’s messin’ with nature and stuff.

That’s why we feed Jack actual fruits and veggies, even if we have to puree them and mix them together. So he gets all the nutrition he needs from the whole fruit or veggie.

And that’s why he thinks prunes and broccolitaste good.

Jack’s dentist, Dr. Snodgrass, even warns against giving kids juice regularly, in his brochures. The high consistency of sugar in juice, especially when the child sleeps with a sippy cup full of juice, can lead to cavities.

This is taken from the guidelines of The American Academy of Pediatrics in regards to the subject:

  • Babies and toddlers should not drink fruit juice at bedtime.
  • For children ages 1 to 6, intake of fruit juice should be limited to 4 to 6 ounces per day (about a half to three-quarters of a cup).
  • Drinking too much juice can lead to poor nutrition, diarrhea, gas, abdominal pain, bloating, and tooth decay.
  • All children should be encouraged to eat whole fruits.

So am I really that weird after all when it comes to being extremely conservative about my kid drinking juice?

I invite you to read a blog by Lisa Leake, who is not okay with juice either. Her blog is 100 Days of Real Food.

Here’s what she had to say today on her Facebook wall:

“A few readers have asked what my kids drink besides milk and water…and I hate to say it, but the answer is not much! They occasionally have juice (which is usually store-bought 1-ingredient organic apple juice) and by occasional I mean 1 – 2 cups per week on average and it’s diluted with water.”

The way I see it, a kid drinking juice is like an adult drinking alcohol. It is to be consumed in moderation.

So that’s how it’s treated in our house:

Juice is “baby booze.”

 

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Toddler Potty Training 101: Father To Son

July 10, 2012 at 9:48 pm , by 

19 months.

*Warning: Contains oversharenting.

Early this morning I was getting ready to leave the house to take my son Jack to his doctor at Vanderbilt when I explained to him:

“Wait, son. I need to go pee-pee first.”

I left the bathroom door open so I could make sure he didn’t charge towards the potentially dangerous staircase, which he never does. Instead, he walked up to me, standing just far enough away from the toilet to be in the safe zone.

Jack watched the “waterfall” go into the potty in amazement and wonder. I felt he needed a sophisticated commentary.

“See, son. Pee-pee is coming out of Dada’s… hose.”

Yes. Hose.

That’s the best I could come up with, given the lack of sleep I received because of him waking up at 3:30 AM due to his fever.

But hey, I was just trying to relate it to something he could appreciate. And knowing that Jack loves playing with the water hose, it made the most sense in that split-second, unplanned moment.

I saw the yearning in his eyes: I could tell that my son totally wants to “spray his hose” into the potty.

To seal the deal properly, as I flushed the toilet I waved goodbye to the potty water as I emphatically proclaimed, “Bye bye, pee-pee! Bye bye!”

(Because Jack says “bye-bye” to everyone and everything, I knew he would appreciate this.)

My wife and I are in no hurry to potty train our child. I just want to plant that seed in his mind, though. I want to him to know that when he’s a little bit older, he will have the privilege of getting to do what Dada does.

I want him to believe that he’s missing out. And after seeing his reactions to my recent habit of glorifying going pee-pee in the potty, I think my plan is working.

Here lately Jack is indeed growing more aware of “pee-pee” anyway. He has this new thing he will do at the house where he will announce to me:

“Pee-pee.”

He’s literally letting me know that it’s time for me to change his diaper.

But because of his inability to make all the vowel sounds so far, “poo-poo” is pronounced the same as “pee-pee.”

Either way, I’m impressed by his new trick. My toddler actually tells me when it’s time to change his diaper.

The days of me mindlessly changing his diapers and him being unaware of why I’m doing it are over. Now he knows why!

I think he deserves a trendy Pee-Pee Awareness ribbon just for that alone.

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Legal Custody With Limited Visitation Rights

July 9, 2012 at 7:53 pm , by 

19 months.

“We’re home!” Jack said as we pulled into the parking lot of his daycare last Friday.

Sure, he doesn’t yet understand the difference between the words “home” and “here” yet, but what if it was a Freudian slip?

I put the pen to the paper, then used a calculator to check my less than awesome math skills. My number-crunching revealed to me that Jack is at daycare for 45 waking hours each week.

Contrast that to the 38 waking hours he’s home with Mommy and Dada.

We the parents have 7 less hours with our son each week than KinderCare. I’m letting that though settle in right now.

He’s been going to daycare for almost a year now and I’ve just never realized that paid professionals technically know our kid better than we do.

But like most parents, we don’t have a choice, financially.

On the positive side of it, we’re very aware of how confident, independent, and knowledgeable he is for his age.

It’s not up to us; he has to go to daycare.

But tomorrow I’ll get a taste of what it would be like to be a stay-at-home dad, or househusband: Jack had a fever of nearly 102 when I picked him up from KinderCare today.

However, on the car ride home and after dinner he was more hyper than ever. I don’t believe he’s actually sick.

So even if he’s perfectly healthy tomorrow, by policy of his daycare I can’t take him in. My wife has taken off more than her share of “sick days” from work on account of Jack having a fever. Now it’s my turn.

I will see what it’s like to actually take care of my own kid all day while my wife works. By today’s culture and standards, that’s hardly ironic. Yet still, I have little experience staying home with him all day when, technically, I should be out working.

The title of this reminds me of just how ridiculous it is that both of us parents have to work full-time to keep our own kid in daycare; where the daycare workers will spend more time with him than we do.

Ridiculous, yet normal.

We’re happily married but it feels like we have legal custody of our own child but with limited visitation rights.

 

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Will My Kid Have A Southern Accent?

July 8, 2012 at 10:23 pm , by 

19 months.

Today my son Jack asked me to turn on the TV so he could watch Elmo on Netlflix.

By “watch” I mean “point to Elmo when he appears on the screen then let Sesame Street serve as background noise as Jack plays with his toys.”

And by “asked me” I mean he simply pointed at the TV and said “On?”

But his version of “on” was pronounced “own.” Whereas when I say the word to him to teach the difference between off and on, I pronounce it as “ahn.”

We live in Nashville, Tennessee. It assumed that people here speak with a thick Southern accent, if for no other reason, because this is where all the Country music stars live.

But the thing is, most of those Country artists moved here from Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia, or some other state in the South. And if they are actually from Tennessee, they’re from a good hour outside of Nashville.

Visit Nashville and you will find that most people here don’t actually have a thick accent. Instead, you may here some Indiana or Maryland or Colorado in there instead.

Like my wife, for example, who is from Sacramento, California. And even though I was raised in the South, I don’t have the accent to prove it because my mom was raised in Buffalo, New York.

So Jack is being raised in a major Southern city consisting of a very high concentration of transplants and internationals, by two parents who don’t sound like they are part of the cast of The Dukes of Hazzard or The Beverly Hillbillies.

I predict that though he may have some Southern tendencies regarding his accent right now, when it’s all said and done he will talk the way I do. Like he’s from Louisville, Kentucky or Cincinnati, Ohio.

In other words, a virtually untraceable American accent.

On top of all this, have you ever noticed how Southern accents are extremely rare and underrepresented on TV?

When a character on a TV show or movie is from the South, they often embody a negative or theatrical stereotype, like Sawyer onLost.

Or even if the actual actor is from the South, they neutralize their accent to be taken more seriously in the world of entertainment.

NBC’s The Office is a prime example of this. The actors who play Andy, Kevin, and Angela are real-life Southerners who don’t show it in the way they speak.

Based on my own unprofessional (!) Wikipedia research, about 35% of Americans are Southerners speaking with a Southern accent. Population-wise, if my assumptions are correct, more Americans speak in Southern dialect than do Midwestern, Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic, Western, or any other American accent that exists.

So when we watch TV and movies, we are more likely to hear neutralized accents than we are to hear the same accent that the actual slight majority of America actually speaks.

I believe my son’s “own” will eventually become “ahn” when he tries to say “on.” But I guarantee you that, like his parents, he will still use the word “ya’ll.”

He may pronounce it “yahl” as opposed to the true Southern way, which is “yawh,” in which no actual “L” sound is heard, but at least there will be a little proof he is a Southerner based on how he speaks.

Not to mention the whole “yes ma’am” and “no ma’am” thing; which, as his dad, I will make sure he says, ensuring his status as a true Southern gentleman.

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“Your Son Looks Just Like You!” Said No One Ever

July 8, 2012 at 3:48 pm , by 

19 months.

“Jack is just a little version of Nick!” is something people never say, nor should they say. Whenever I post a new picture of my son and me on Facebook, no one compares the two of us. Because, really, there’s nothing to compare.

I look like the token Jewish actor from any and every sitcom you’ve ever seen in your life and my son looks like he stepped out of a time machine from the 194o’s… from Norway.

While I’m an olive-complected (I’ve got a green tint to me; it’s more noticeable when I wear black) and have dark brown hair, my son has a porcelain shine to his skin, along with undeniable blue eyes and (for now) blonde hair.

My physique makes me the kind of guy you’d expect to play the super hero before he turns into the super hero.

Meanwhile, my son, who is in the 75% for weight, is a strong and sturdy boy who inspires people to ask me what sports I think he will play when he gets older.

(Rugby, wrestling, football… all of the above.)

Yesterday I was at the pool with my son and my wife. While it didn’t feel like anyone was staring at us, I thought how if anyone there was people-watching us, they would surely assume our son was adopted.

It doesn’t matter to me or bother me that my son is keeping alive the rarest genes of my wife and me. It’s simply something I’ve noted from the beginning. And now at 19 months, the lack of physical similarity is still very evident.

Yeah, it’s weird and it’s funny to me, but for some strange reason I sort of like the unpredictability of it.

Every time friends hang out with us who haven’t seen us in a while, they always look at Jack, then at my wife and I, then back at Jack. Then they say us, “Who do you think he looks like?”

They say this thinking that because he’s our flesh and blood, we’ll have some magic intuitiveness that helps us see some resemblance they apparently don’t.

Well, no magic here, folks.

I imagine there’s a decent chance that as my toddler son transforms more into a real boy and eventually a young man, he will begin to look at least a little bit more like me.

Or at least his Mommy.

Either way, it’s safe to say that at least, physically, he’s no “mini-me.”

I think if he and I were given a “resemblance score” we would get 0%.

But hey, I’m open for a second opinion.

If you, the reader, see more of a resemblance than I do, let me know.

Would you give us a score higher than 0%?