Be proud if you can be 23.8% respected

08Nov08

For approximately 40 hours a week, you may be considered smart, quick-minded, creative and competent.  During those 40 hours, you may be well-liked and respected.  You may have even found occasion to be feared.
As a result, you sometimes stride with a cocksure gait.  On really good days,  when you proceed down the street, onlookers appear [...]

Filed under: Tips   |  6 Comments
Tags: fatherhood, manhood

Just promise to play the board game until the end

30Oct08

As you get used to the idea of being a father, your realization of the sheer breadth of your responsibility unfolds slowly, like when you unfold a board game.  Except with this board game, once unfolded, it spreads out wider than a room, wider than a house.
Your first instinct is to act as if you [...]

Filed under: Tips   |  4 Comments
Tags: board games, fatherhood, heavy-handed metaphors, parenting

Ten ways to get your baby to smile at you

23Oct08

After six to eight weeks of short breaks of silence as the only reward for good parenting, you begin to develop a bad attitude. You start calling your child names – at first innocuous ones, like “meanie” or maybe even “jerk,” but you quickly progress to inappropriate terms like “dickhead” and “ungrateful rat bastard.”
Your [...]

Filed under: Infancy, Month 2, Month 3, Tips   |  10 Comments
Tags: fatherhood, infant tips, laughing baby, make your baby smile, parenthood, smiling, smiling babies, ten tips, tips for babies, when do babies smile

How to calm your baby like Darth Vader

11Oct08

Okay, so I think we’ve finally gotten to the point, more or less, where we know how to keep Buster from going postal on us. There’s so much out there written about calming babies I realize there’s a lot of good places to go for information, but I think I’ve adopted and adapted [...]

Filed under: Infancy, Month 1, Month 2, Tips   |  17 Comments
Tags: baby crying, calming baby, crying baby, fatherhood, how-to, infant tips

Laughs are only a nickel

02Oct08

I do a lot of writing purely for your reading pleasure, and I’ve never asked anything of you for this three-laughs-a-minute joyride.  But today, you’re going to do something for me.  Actually, for some kids.  And some teachers.  Well, for all of us, really.
You, perhaps for the first time all day, are going to [...]

Filed under: Blogkeeping   |  8 Comments
Tags: charity, donorschoose.org, fatherhood

The Baby Monitor

30Sep08

This is the most extravagant baby accessory I think we’ve purchased, at least in terms of its cost relative to other options.  It is entirely possible that you can get a perfectly fine baby monitor for less than a third of the $199 that this one costs.   But having owned about 30 bargain-priced cordless phones [...]

Filed under: Products   |  6 Comments
Tags: baby monitor, baby monitor review, baby monitors, fatherhood, philips baby monitor, philips baby monitor review, philips scd 589 digital baby monitor, product review, product reviews

There is no such thing as unscented

26Sep08

We fall for some really dumb marketing concepts sometimes.
I’m looking at a bin of wipes. They are Pampers natural aloe unscented wipes. On the top left corner of the label is a picture of a perfect baby, with a mom kissing him gently on the shoulder. There’s also a picture of a raindrop [...]

Filed under: Products   |  9 Comments
Tags: aloe, baby marketing, baby wipes, fatherhood, natural, parenting, unscented

24: the baby version

19Sep08

The following events take place in real time… over the course of 24 minutes. Kiefer Sutherland was not harmed in the making of this blog post.
7:37PM Buster is happy and alert. He’s watching his father as he plays piano. Dad feels a rush of pride that Buster seems to enjoy music [...]

Filed under: Infancy, Month 1, Month 2, Tips   |  14 Comments
Tags: 24, baby crying, calming baby, fatherhood, how-to, kiefer sutherland, tantrums, tough love

The world’s most demanding boss

16Sep08

I’ve worked for some real jerks before. During a three-week stint as a KFC employee as a teenager, I had a manager who, other than during the job interview, communicated with me only by screaming in high-pitched broken English. During college summers, I worked for a union boss who could just look [...]

Filed under: Infancy, Month 1, Month 2, Tips   |  18 Comments
Tags: colic, crying baby, demanding bosses, drill sergeant, fatherhood

How to make your baby more attractive

10Sep08

Very often, the role of family photographer is heaped squarely upon Dad’s shoulders. For the most techie dads, the baby simply represents a new and exciting subject for a photographer’s eye that has been carefully honed over the years, largely from taking photos of vacations, portraits of the dog and snaps of passed-out frat [...]

Filed under: Tips   |  4 Comments
Tags: baby photos, baby pictures, fatherhood, how-to, photo tips, photography, portraits, taking baby photos

Things to do while waiting for your baby to recognize you

02Sep08

Buster’s a great kid.   Considering his only job right now is to eat, poop, and to try not to cry, that may be a relatively meaningless statement, but so far, he’s pretty good at all those things.
That said, he doesn’t know me from an inanimate carbon rod.  At least not yet.
It is admittedly kind of [...]

Filed under: Tips   |  15 Comments
Tags: fatherhood, first month of infancy, infancy, infants, insurance, ten things

Songs to clean poop to

27Aug08

For some reason, Buster really doesn’t like diaper-changing time. He lets out these yowls that make me worry about my future hearing ability and his future hygiene habits.
Personally, I think the idea of someone taking care of an undercarriage wash for me sounds rather convenient. Not Buster. But he does seem [...]

Filed under: Tips   |  15 Comments
Tags: baby poop, changing diapers, children's music, children's songs, fatherhood, infancy, lullabies, lullabye

Gazongas!

23Aug08

I can’t really hold back anymore. I have to talk about them.
There’s no way that you’re not wondering about them if you’re a dad-to-be. Your friends have probably told you about what happens. If you’re like me, and your wife was never all that busty, you may think it [...]

Filed under: Infancy, Month 1, Tips   |  9 Comments
Tags: boobies, breastfeeding, breasts, fatherhood

The forgotten mongrel

20Aug08

For years, our dog Rover T has been the centerpiece of our home life. Our first kid, if you will. We have taken hundreds of photos of him. We get him birthday presents. We follow a guidebook of places for him to romp. We bought an SUV basically [...]

Filed under: Tips   |  4 Comments
Tags: dog and new baby, dogs and babies, family, fatherhood, parenthood, pets and new babies

They mean well. I think.

16Aug08

I’m running up the basement stairs, with an extra lilt in my step. It is 9PM and I’ve just locked the back door. I’m about to be alone with my wife and Buster. As I skip with glee toward the main floor, my wife locks the front door and rests [...]

Filed under: Infancy, Month 1, Tips   |  4 Comments
Tags: advice for new parents, fatherhood, first week of infancy, grandparents, infancy

The first five days

12Aug08

It’s incredibly tempting to give you the minute details of the first five days of my son’s life. It’s been incredible. Words of description lag by miles behind the joy. I’ve seen my wife as never before. I’ve seen myself as never before. In the shining grey pools [...]

Filed under: Doctors, Infancy, Month 1, Tips   |  6 Comments
Tags: fatherhood, first week of infancy, infants, newborns, parenthood

I weakly gesture toward something I already did

11Aug08

I did a written interview with daddy rockstar. It’s about the dangers of sharing photos and information about your kids online. But I think it used up all my words for a few days.
I’ll post some more details about the first week once it’s over and I can write coherently for more [...]

Filed under: Blogkeeping   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: bilirubin, family privacy, fatherhood, internet privacy, interview, privacy, privacy on the internet

It’s better when I talk back to the voices

09Aug08

I am currently teetering on the edge of consciousness. I am still processing the four days that have passed in the last 25 seconds. Or vice versa. I am not returning people’s congratulatory phone calls and emails for fear they will think I am wasted.
Don’t get me wrong – I am [...]

Filed under: Infancy, Month 1, Tips   |  2 Comments
Tags: epiphanies, fatherhood, first week of parenthood, infant care, new baby, newborns

Oh man oh man oh BOY

07Aug08

Our healthy baby boy was delivered yesterday afternoon via C-section, and everything is great with Mom too. I am so very grateful.
He is 7 lbs. 9 oz., and 19 inches long – not at all puny, I should note. What I shouldn’t note is the giant set of balls on the kid. [...]

Filed under: Doctors, Month 1, Tips   |  12 Comments
Tags: birth, buster, c-section, caesarean section, delivery, fatherhood, it's a boy, new baby, she-ra

I want you to name my baby

05Aug08

Okay, not really. But I don’t plan on using the actual baby’s name in this blog, so I’m going to need a pseudonym. I thought it might be fun to open it up to the vast and limitless wisdom of the Internets. Even if I don’t know the gender yet.
Here are [...]

Filed under: Blogkeeping, Pregnancy   |  14 Comments
Tags: baby names, contest, fatherhood