Author: Family Friendly Daddy Blog

Leave a comment Posted on parenting, Storytelling

Helmets For Crawlers And Toddlers (And First-Time Parents)

April 14, 2012 at 10:02 pm , by 

16 months.

What the helmet?!

When I saw the MSN headline this week saying “Does your high-speed crawler need a helmet?” I couldn’t help but laugh and feel sorry for all those naive first-time parents out there taking that idea seriously. Then I remembered:

Exactly a year ago, my wife and I actually searched online for one. Oh yeah… that.

I was, and still am, an unexperienced first-time parent in each new stage of my son’s life. Yeah, it goes back to that stereotype about the firstborn child being overprotected.

Needless to say, we ended up not paying the 43 bucks for a “crawling helmet,” but only because back in April 2011, it wasn’t as easy to find such a thing. But now, it’s quite the trend.

There is a demand. There is a supply.

Yes, the “crawling helmet” is smart, sexy, and most importantly, a magnet for hipster toddlers everywhere in America; especially Portland, Oregon… I assume.

As much as I mock the concept now, I honestly believed last year that it was a good idea to buy my 5 month-old a helmet to prevent him from everyday head-bumping injuries.

After all, the house we lived in at the time had hardwood floors. But mainly, we as newbie parents hadn’t yet learned that babies’ heads are durable enough to take quite the banging.

It didn’t take long to realize that 99.3% of the time, when Jack hits his head on the floor, or the table, or the wall, he’s not even clued in to what happened.

In fact, one of my new games I play with Jack is to see how many times I can repeatedly hit him in the head (while he’s looking the other way playing with another toy) with this cheap, thin, extremely light, made-in-China inflatable ball you find in the dollar bin at Wal-Mart.

(Pictured right.)

After about 5 or 6 direct hits to the back or side of the head, he finally looks over at me and chuckles as if to say, “Oh, you’ve been doing that this whole time?”

Sure, my son is hard-headed; but that’s not unusual for young kids.

I wonder now what would have happened had we bought him a helmet last year; had there really been a fresh market for it back then.

Well, I guess ultimately, we wouldn’t have learned a very valuable lesson; that “high-speed crawlers” don’t actually need helmets.

Something else I wonder is if there an official way to get your kid tested to find out if they truly are a high-speed crawler. I predict there will be plenty of poser babies out there who are really just medium-speed crawlers…

Even worse, for all I know, “crawling helmets” are probably the gateway protection device leading to “steel-toed booties” and  ”baby bulletproof vests.”

If only crawling helmets were pitched on the TV show Shark Tank. I would love to see that episode:

“As a toddler, I jumped off the couch onto the hardwood floor headfirst and not only did I not bleed, but I turned out smart enough to make it here. So for that reason, I’m out.”

Leave a comment Posted on parenting, Storytelling

Reminding Myself Why I Can’t Text Message My Son

April 14, 2012 at 4:41 pm , by 

16 months.

Have you ever tried to text your toddler? If nothing else, I would like a phone app to translate all the speaking in tongues he does.

Yesterday during my lunch break at work I was taking a walk outside and thought to myself, “I should text Jack and see how his day is going.” I reached for my phone in my pocket and as I was pulling it out, it hit me: For more than one reason, I can’t text message my son.

I would start with the most obvious reason, but there is a serious problem there with that. Because which one is the most obvious?

Would it be the fact that my 16 month-old son doesn’t have have a working cell phone? Or that he doesn’t know how to use one?

Maybe it’s that he doesn’t know how to spell too well?

Nah, I think the fact that he and I can’t actually carry on a real conversation that doesn’t involve an animal sound, may be the winner.

I’m curious to know if having to remind myself that I can’t text message my toddler is a pretty universal thing.

When I mentioned this story to my wife yesterday, she quickly admitted she has done the exact same thing; perhaps more than once.

Subconsciously, I must be resisting this concept that even though Jack and I can’t talk to each other yet, it’s like that new TV show Touch, where a mute boy communicates with this father by using numbers: That the exception to a normal conversation in our case is texting.

Honestly, it sounds like a good idea to me.

I mean, I carry around this little man with me (and that’s often how I perceive him, not in that cute “that’s my little man” sort of way that’s popular to refer to your son, but literally an actual man who happens to speak like Chewbacca or Curious George) in my car for a round trip daily total of about 80 minutes a day and constantly entertain him all weekend.

In my own real life version of Bosom Buddies, I wish there was at least this cool/comical sci-fi twist where I could text message my son:

“Hey son hows ur day goin?”

“Good so far_ outside playn wit my bud Henry.”

“C any birds?”

“Yeah like 5 rite now on the fence_ They fly away evry time I run near them.”

“R they Angry Birds?”

“LOL. I think it just peed in my diaper. Not sure if its bc of ur joke or not. Gotta go. Peace out Ghost Dad.”

“Later Sonny Sonnerton.”

Leave a comment Posted on parenting, People

I Think I’ve Created A Hipster Toddler

16 months.

Rubik’s Cube? Check. Retro Pink Panther bendable toy? Check. Ability to walk backwards? Check. Vegetarian? Of course.

So typical.

On the drive back to Nashville on Easter Day, we made our one pit stop at the Starbucks in Manchester, Tennessee. We had to change Jack’s diaper in the front seat of the car.

To distract him, my wife reached up and grabbed my Rubik’s Cube and retro Pink Panther bendable toy I have kept in my Honda Element since before Jack was even born.

(I own every episode of The Pink Panther cartoon series on DVD.)

Just as we finished changing him, a guy in a tie-dye shirt pulled up next to us and got out of his car with his family, spouting out loud to us his immediate thoughts:

“That must be a pretty smart kid you’ve got there. He knows how to solve a Rubik’s Cube and he hangs out with the ever-classy Pink Panther. Nice.”

Was it really necessary to tell the guy that it was actually my Rubik’s Cube (my best time to solve it is 2 minutes and 20 seconds) and my Pink Panther bendable toy even though I’m 30 years-old?

Nah. I would prefer for an observational random stranger to believe my toddler is truly a hipster:

Yes, that my 16 month-old son chooses to listen to vinyl records over an iPod.

That he will only wear t-shirts if A) they came from a thrift store and B) they have the year 1983 on the front; along with unnecessarily thick nerd-core glasses.

That he would grow an ironic mustache if he could.

Leave a comment Posted on parenting, People

My Son Likes To Chill Out In The Fridge

April 12, 2012 at 8:49 pm , by 

16 months.

I’m not endorsing letting toddlers play inside refrigerators, but I am admitting that my son likes to chill… by sitting on the inside ledge of the refrigerator.

After I bring him home from daycare and he eats his dinner, Jack has a routine of playing with each of his toys from the living room.

One of his newest favorites is his Fisher-Price lawnmower. He likes to mow the kitchen floor as my wife prepares our dinner.

Of course, like most hardworking toddlers, he treats himself to a much needing break.

As soon as my wife opens up the fridge for some ingredients, Jack seizes the opportunity and plops himself down; always mesmerized by whatever products happen to be sitting there on the bottom ledge of the door.

He makes me think of an old man wearing overalls who walks into a general store as if to say to himself, “Ah, think I’ll just rest here a minute and take a load off.”

By this time of day Jack is just wearing a diaper and a t-shirt and it’s interesting to me that he is always unfazed by the coldness of the surface he is sitting on.

After a minute or so, he grunts his way back up and finishes his job with the mower.

I guess the funniest part about this daily routine is that as his parents, my wife and I completely go along with it; causing him to think it’s completely normal to mow the kitchen floor then take a rest inside the refrigerator.

Yes, it’s scary to think how a big part of my job as his parent is to teach him what is normal.

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, parenting

Cleaning Up Your Kid’s Vomit: A Parent’s Rite Of Passage

April 10, 2012 at 11:43 pm , by 

16 months.

It’s hard to believe that my kid is nearly a year and a half and he just now threw up for the first time. That’s pretty weird, right?

Granted, when he was an infant, he would spit up a little milk occasionally. But in general, he would drool more than he ever spit up.

But last Thursday, during a night we really needed some extra sleep because of the drive the next night to Alabama for Easter, we heard a sudden cough, then a [splat!] from the other bedroom.

Fortunately, my son was cool about it. He only puked directly on his blanket in his crib; then directly into the bathtub.

He didn’t vomit on me, nor my wife; at least not directly. And man, the carpet in his room was all clear too. Such a considerate 16 month-old I have.

Just to make sure we knew what we were doing, he waited about 10 minutes after we got him all cleaned up and back to bed before he did the exact same thing again.

Oh yeah, and I didn’t mention: It was all spaghetti.

There’s something about cleaning up the vomited version of a food that causes you to never see it the same way again.

I say that, yet this morning my wife asked me:

“For lunch today, do you want to take the rest of this spaghetti- the kind that Jack got sick from?”

The answer was yes. That was indeed what I ate for lunch today; only I didn’t get sick.

I am Dad; the janitor and the human garbage disposal.