Author: Family Friendly Daddy Blog

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Why This Dad Dreams About Losing Teeth

December 17, 2011 at 10:59 pm , by 

13 months.

Last night, in a completely believable dream, I lost a tooth for no good reason. I thought, “With this being the weekend, how am I going to get this fixed?” Then I lost another tooth, and then another; it was like a falling house of cards but with most of my teeth instead.

This has been a reoccurring dream I’ve been having since I graduated college; but now, as a dad and husband, it’s so much more vivid.

Dreams are interesting in that they reveal something that our subconscious is trying to sort out while we are asleep. When I Googled “dream about losing teeth,” the most consistent interpretation was not that this dream tells of a preoccupation with one’s vanity, but instead an ongoing worry about money.

Do I worry about money? I’ve said it before, “I hate money.” I’m the kind of guy who could never buy a brand-new car. I refuse to pay for cable TV; surviving on the 8 dollar a month Netflix package through my Wii. At least half of the clothes I wear are over a decade old. My iPod was bought refurbished off of Amazon.com 4 years ago and its screen is completely covered in a spider web-like crack.

But while I don’t care about money, it’s pretty obvious that my subconscious knows something that the rest of me is not so aware of: Like a lot of people, I’m sort of terrified on a daily basis of not being able to provide for my family; of being without a job, again.

Yeah, I know it- that’s nothing knew. Most people throughout the history of the world have felt that way. It’s what drives the free market.

I’m not assuming I have a unique story, but I do feel scarred from my not-so-distant 4 month stint of unemployment. I call it my “Vietnam.”

Perhaps another reason I keep dreaming about losing teeth is the fact that my personality and skill set have led me to a life where quotas and statistics matter.

I’m horrible at math, science, or anything technical. But when it comes to carrying on interesting conversations, influencing people’s opinions, and translating engaging thoughts into blog form, I’m your man. That’s one thing I can do with confidence.

Or is it?

Both my “real job” in sales where I’m on the phone all day in an office and my “side job” writing for The Dadabase on Parents.com have something very serious in common: My performance and livelihood are measured in numbers.

At my sales job I am highly pressured to “meet quota” every month in order to remain employed. As for daddy blogging, the pressure is applied by myself, not my editors, as I check my “views” at the end of every day, hoping to see that more readers are tuning in to The Dadabase than the week before.

In fact, it’s my personal goal each day to write a Dadabase post that beats August’s, “The Half Abortion: Only Keeping One Twin.” Nearly everyday, it remains the #1 viewed post.

Despite not being a numbers guy, numbers measure my income as well as my sense of career accomplishment. So yeah, it’s a wonder I don’t dream about losing my teeth every night.

If only in the dream I could remember to read this exact blog post so I could remind myself that I didn’t really lose my teeth and that it’s just me subconsciously worrying about money again.

Then the only dreams I would have to worry about then would be the ones where I wake up completely bald or where I’m only a few weeks away from graduating college but forgot to attend that final math class all semester.

I was an English major. You do the math.

Image: Man in Santa hat, via Shutterstock.

Unexpected Bonus!

Speaking of not worrying and just being happy, it’s time for a book giveaway. Hurry Less Worry Less at Christmas, by Judy Christie, is a book to help us get out of that frenzied, out-of-control frame of mind that we can find ourselves in during the holidays. This book helps us begin to have a deeper understanding of the joy of the Christmas season and how that can be a starting point for a more abundant life in the New Year.

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Healthy Parents: 6 Reasons Not to Join a Gym

December 16, 2011 at 7:44 pm , by 

13 months.

Featured pictures are from July 2008.

Back in August, in the midst of a Facebook message conversation, a friend I have known since Kindergarten described her perception of my wife and me:

“I think of you both as health conscious people….but I can’t picture either of you working out in a gym. I picture you as people who hike on the weekends or bike to dinner.”

Little did she know that I was already mapping out this post, explaining why I passionately oppose going to the gym, yet passionately promote daily exercise in other ways. It’s true, the last time I went to a gym, they had just discovered the hatch on Lost.

My friend was right. I am a biker; mountain biker, that is. At all times, my bike is stored in my Honda Element with me. Every day during my lunch break, I bike to Starbucks to read a book, or to the bank to deposit some cash, or to Whole Foods to pick up some Christmas presents for people.

I pretend that I live in a Mediterranean village in the year 1533, where I would literally have to travel miles at a time in order to get everything done that day. If I want to read a chapter in the current book I’m reading, I have to earn it by biking a mile and a half to get to a place to read it.

If it rains or is too cold, I have a heavy raincoat and “outside workout” clothes to change into. Even when it snows, I’ll still at least walk a few miles outside.

The point is to find someway to get daily exercise (at least 25 minutes) without having to depend on paying someone to use their facility. It doesn’t have to include a mountain bike, but it’s a matter of finding a creative way to get out of the office; even it’s just walking with a friend during designated breaks during work.

I say fresh air (even when it’s cold and wet) is still better than stagnant air inside an office. So let me go ahead and get into it, here are 6 reasons I don’t go to the gym:

1. Joining a gym often promotes an “all or nothing” mentality in which one’s diet follows. ”I was just too stressed to go to the gym for the past two days” often means a backslide into fast food lunches and potato chips as snacks.

2. Gyms promote a perfectly sculpted body as the goal, instead of a realistic, healthy one. We’re not movie stars; we don’t need six pack abs. The focus should be on being healthy, not losing weight. Weight loss is a side effect of active habits, not a target itself.

3. Gyms cost money. I’m not going to pay for what I can get for free.

4. There is a pressure to commit to a gym. Remember that episode of Friends where Chandler tries to quit the gym, recruiting Ross to help him, but then Ross gets suckered in to joining the gym too?

5. Working out puts too much focus on calories. For me, it’s about the the right food choices to begin with. I bet my daily calorie intake is slightly high, because I eat plenty of whole fruits (which are already naturally loaded with sugar) as well as avocados, nuts, and whole milk (full of good fats), but I weigh 20-something pounds less now than I did in these featured pictures of me from 2008 on my honeymoon in New England, before I had made my lifestyle changes- like biking and cutting out processed foods.

6. People size you up at a gym. Plus, it’s easier to do the same to other people; focusing too much on bodybuilders who basically live there.

So I say, liberate yourself from the gym.

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7 Reasons a Vacation with a Baby is No Vacation

December 15, 2011 at 10:09 pm , by 

One year.

The term “family vacation” may simply exist as a hilarious oxymoron; especially when you have a toddler. While planning a road trip across Florida recently, my expectations were exactly where they needed to be: low. And as I expected, I therefore wasn’t disappointed.

Though it was very tough flying all the way to Sacramento with our son when he was only 8 months old, at least we had plenty of family awaiting us to help out. (My wife is the 9th of 10 kids.) But when you don’t have family to help soften the blow, an attempt at a vacation is simply that- an attempt.

Taking a vacation with a baby is like winning a free iPhone with a cracked screen. Or getting off work early due to inclement weather and then getting stuck in bad traffic. It’s like eating a trendy $4 cupcake but it being your least favorite flavor: Butterscotch.

Perhaps the best word for a vacation with a baby is “adventure,” which promotes the idea of excitement of the unknown and as well as the great possibility of setbacks. Here are 7 reasons a vacation with a baby is no vacation:

1. You can’t sleep in. Man, the thought of waking up lazily at 8:30 AM on my own, without a baby alarm clock is simply, unimaginable. Nice thought, though.

2. The irregular schedule throws off your baby’s sleeping patterns. We’ve been back for over a week now and our son still hasn’t quite adjusted back to not only Central Time, but also actually being able to sleep when he’s ready to.

3. You can’t ever mentally relax; even while you sleep. It’s more likely that your kid is going to wake up in the middle of the night. And while you’re awake, there is no pause button with your child.

4. You become stressed out about finding meals. When you have to synchronize your own hunger cues along with your child’s, while finding an appropriate restaurant to stop at, it’s not too surprising having driven yourself all the way across the Florida Keys without lunch. A sleeping baby in a car overrides the growling of two adults’ stomachs.

5. You and your spouse barely have time to talk to each other about anything other than the stress of the trip. When you do, it’s smarter just to fall asleep. So much for quality time.

6. Planning activities wears you out. You want to see all the cool tourist spots, but you also want to be able to relax. But you can’t relax anyway (as mentioned in #3) so it becomes easier just to distract yourself with the vacation activities themselves.

7. You become aware of the fun you’re missing out on as adults. So much for a simple date night at the bar of the hotel. It’s easier to settle for a bottle of Boone’s Farm from the gas station down the street, enjoyed in the splendor of two glass cups from your hotel’s bathroom counter.

But hey, this is what we know as normal now. I’ll sleep in when I’m dead.

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Baby Orajel’s Dad Ad in Parents Magazine

December 15, 2011 at 6:16 am , by 

One year.

You should be receiving your January 2012 issue of Parents magazine any day now. In fact, it may already be lying there on your coffee table. If you happen to turn to page 79, you will find something that really shocked me. I mean, seriously, I wasn’t expecting this.

It’s what I call a “dad ad,” promoting Baby Orajel. The subtle advertisement features a dad awake at 2:27 AM with his infant, who is obviously suffering from teething issues.

I don’t know, maybe it takes being a dad to really appreciate what a monumental move this was on Orajel’s part to take a chance on an ad like this. We dads are used to being portrayed in advertisements as the goofy idiot having to be corrected and tolerated by his wife.

Not this time.

The text of the Orajel ad doesn’t even reach out specifically to dads; that’s actually one of my favorite things about it. Simply by featuring a picture of a man involving himself in a sacrificial late night parenting activity, the message is sent:

“We at Baby Orajel recognize that dads play a big part in this thing too. So we’re not leaving you out of this. Here’s your pat on the back. Good job, fellas.”

One of my favorite classes in high school was Marketing 101. That’s where I learned that fast food restaurants feature yellow and red in their logos to subconsciously cause you to “slow down” and “stop” when you’re driving towards them.

I love the whole behind-the-scenes aspect of marketing. My wife and I both are huge fans of Mad Men; so I can’t help but picture the ad agency for Church & Dwight Co., Inc. (the company that evidently owns Orajel) sitting down in a board room and talking about the risk of featuring a dad ad in Parents magazine.

Will it be worth it? I think so.

For one, I’m taking the time to further feature this ad on Parents.com and the link to this post will ultimately be tossed around on Twitter and Facebook as well.

But second, for what it’s worth, I think it’s important to note the demographics of the people who “liked” The Dadabase Facebook fan page. As the sole administrator, I’m able to see the details: 75% of Dadabase fans are female and 25% are male.

If we assume that information translates to the demographics of who reads The Dadabase, it means that one out of every four readers is a dude. A dude who is ignoring ads directed towards to women. (I know I do.)

Thirdly, Baby Orajel’s dad ad has inspired me to start “Dad Ad Alert.” For the remaining 11 issues of Parents magazine in the year 2012, I will gladly further feature any dad ads here on The Dadabase. I’ll be specifically looking for them now.

The same goes for if I happen to notice a dad ad here on here on Parents.com. Game on.

Dad ad: An advertisement that is directed specifically to fathers, as opposed to mothers; which is expected in a parenting magazine or website.

 

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You May Have Just Won a Zazzle Christmas Ornament!

December 14, 2011 at 9:49 pm , by 

One year.

A few weeks ago I invited all my readers to send me their family’s holiday cards, so I can display them on my refrigerator. I explained that the cards would not only serve as a cool decoration and a way for me to meetDadabase fans, but also as entries for upcoming giveaways.

So now it’s time to check it out in action.

Today, Zazzle is giving one lucky Dadabase reader a free personalized ornament through their website. It’s really cool because you can put a picture of your kid on the ornament. We got one for Jack and it should be arriving in a few days.

Now, as for the winner, we’re letting Jack decide. I’ve put all the holiday cards in a hat and now Jack will draw a winner…