Apr 12
25
Learning to lie to your kid
As kids grow up they think they know it all, so it’s never to early to start learning how to outsmart them.
Even though our daughter is not to the point where she thinks she is smarter than us, she does seem to think she is sneakier than us. If we catch her trying to touch something she shouldn’t and we tell her “no” she will stop, but then she will stand there all innocent like till we turn away, at which point she slowly starts reaching for it again, thinking we won’t notice. This is why now is the perfect time to start learning their dirty little tricks.
In this particular situation I recommend not taking your eyes off of whatever it was you were looking at when the little one began the sneak attack. For 
instance, if you are sitting on the couch watching TV and your child is sneaking something off of the side table right next to you, don’t look away from the TV, God gave us this nifty little thing called “peripheral vision” for just this very reason. Just reach over without saying a word and take away whatever the object of desire is. Since kids are pretty dumb about stuff they will think you are the Eye of Providence.
Another way to make them believe this is by catching them doing something they shouldn’t when they are in another room. Let’s say mini me is in the dining room and you are just walking out there from the living room. You see them trying to do something they shouldn’t, like trying to put the cat on the table by stacking up chairs and climbing them, but they are so engrossed in it they don’t know you just walked in. Slowly walk back out to another room where there is no way you could see them and just yell for them to stop stacking chairs and trying to put the cat on the table, you need to be specific. The fact that you saw that from two rooms away will have their puny little brain blown, adding to the illusion you know and see all.
This will only last a little while though. Soon they figure out you really aren’t seeing everything and that’s when they start thinking they are smarter than you, and you need to step up your game a bit.
Obviously there is still no chance they will be smarter than you..most of you anyways, but they will think they are. They may pretend to be sleeping when you come get them up for school, or pretend to be sick. They may fake a bath by filling the tub and letting the dog splash around in it while they play on their Gameboys, all the while believing they are the cleverest and most original thinker since da Vinci.
This is where you need to out da Vinci them. You need to know when they are trying to pull one over on you and react accordingly. If you know they aren’t really sick and just don’t want to go to school, get all sad looking and say something like, “I didn’t want to tell you this but when you were born the doctor said you had “ignoramus dumbass-icus” and that it wouldn’t effect you till about this age. The symptoms being exactly like you said. He told me the only thing we would be able to do if we wanted you to get better would be to feed you only canned dog food, apparently something in the horse meat they use will help regulate the disease. I was hoping it would never actually come to this though. He also said you would need to wear diapers because the disease will cause you to have to go without warning. You just stay right there in bed, I am going to call the school to let them know you won’t be in and see if we have some dog food laying around Walk away real sad muttering “my poor baby” You need to be very convincing to pull this off, but if you do they will jump right out of bed and tell you they feel great, it’s a miracle. If they don’t admit to lying, tell them they are in shock and to go back to bed, the Dr said this may happen and that you have to get the dog food in them as soon as possible. Just keep up the act till they admit they lied, if they don’t, feed them dog food, don’t back down. I’m pretty sure it won’t kill them.
If you know they didn’t really take a bath just act like they did. You can tell them “Thank goodness, the news had on tonight how this dust was going around attaching to the skin and clothes of kids. Apparently it’s pretty nasty stuff, causing their hair to fall out. Eventually the teeth fall out, your 
fingers will bend right up and lock that way and you won’t be able to swallow, causing you to drool all over the place. A good bath gets the dust off though. I didn’t want to say anything till after you got clean so you wouldn’t panic. Did you brush your hair?” at this point run your hand through their hair and comment about how it seems a little thinner than normal. Chances are they will jump back in the tub “just to make sure they are clean enough”. Like above, try to get them to admit they lied. You can say “No, one bath is enough to get it off, you should really go to bed now” hopefully they will admit to lying. If not, and they go to bed, shave their head while they sleep, that should teach the little liar, besides hair grows back.
The whole goal is to basically know when they are lying to you and to out lie them. You should know your kid pretty well to tell when they are lying, and if you screw up once in a while and they really were telling the truth, oh well, no harm done, kids aren’t real people anyways.
Apr 12
25
Stubborn kid won’t eat
Our Miss Lilly used to be a really good eater. After she got off of baby food and started eating real people food she would pretty much eat anything we put in front of her; vegetables, fish, fruit, anything. For some reason that has changed. Now it would be easier to neuter a wild hyena with a ball point pen and some duct tape than to get her to eat whatever we make for dinner. There are 
some things she eats of course, I mean she isn’t sitting on the floor with one of those starving kids protruding bellies and flies buzzing around…yet. She has basically turned into a tiny vegetarian that doesn’t actually eat vegetables. She likes her baby yogurt, and pancakes, and bread, and any kind of junk food she may see mommy and daddy enjoying, but as far as eating whatever main meal we have, forget it. As soon as her little hands get a hold of it, on the floor it goes.
The dogs loved this, naturally, so now I have to lock them up when we eat. At least it gives me a little time to actually get to whatever food is on the floor without the threat of loosing a finger. Unlike my kid, those things eat everything. Many times I have taken one of them out only to find a complete paper towel all rolled up coming out, but that’s a whole other story.
So now my wife and I need to figure out how to get a kid to actually eat what we make for dinner. We have tried taking a bite and then offering her one, thinking the fact we are eating it would help, but that didn’t work. We tried cutting it small, leaving it big, plate, bowl, no 
plate or bowl, doing the little fake ‘here comes the plane, open up’ thing, all she does is say ‘no!’ and turn her head, sometime arms swing, hers, not ours, I even tried shoving it in her mouth while she was saying no, but it just got spit out.
For some reason she just thinks the whole thing is funny, like we are playing with her, but she is healthy and happy and she does eat when she gets hungry enough so we don’t worry too much about it. I guess we will see if a kid can survive on milk, bananas, and yogurt…stay tuned.
Apr 12
25
Baby Wipes Forever
Whoever knew that baby wipes would be good for so much more than cleaning up baby butt? BBQ places, I suppose, and seafood places too…so besides babies and restaurants, who knew that baby wipes would be good for so much more than cleaning up baby butt?
And messy hands? We have a pack of baby wipes around handy most of the time now and I think we use them more for other stuff than what they were intended for. Spill something in the car? Baby wipes to the rescue. Need to clean your sunglasses? Baby wipes to the rescue. Got greasy fingers and can’t see your phone screen too well? Baby wipes to the rescue. I have decided that long after my daughter is done with baby wipes, My wife and I will never be done with them. So much better than normal napkins or tissues or anything. They may possibly be one of the world’s greatest inventions, next to medicine of course, and proper food storage. And indoor plumbing, combustion engines, basic tools, airplanes, those little jelly candies in the shape of fruit slices, the ones with harder edge to simulate a peel that as a kid you would never eat. Next to those things baby wipes may possibly be one of the world’s greatest inventions.
Apr 12
23
Diaper Bags for Dad
What to say about diaper bags…most look like diaper bags. Unless you use something not designed to be a diaper bag, which, I guess, if you put diapers in it, it then becomes a diaper bag. The problem is, it seems style and design are not really factored into most diaper bags.
A lot have baby colors and designs, which is cool, if you make your baby carry its own bag. But I found if you do that you have a good chance of the bag being left behind so I don’t recommend it. So that leaves you or Momma to carry the bag, which, more often than not will turn out to be you no matter what, hopefully because you volunteer (remember the cuddly bear). So what do you do if you want a bag designed to be a diaper bag, but still want to look like the hip, manly you that you think you normally look like? During my search for bags that I wouldn’t mind carrying around, I came across this site - http://DadGear.com 
They sell cool looking diaper bags, designed to be diaper bags, that any dad would be proud to carry. Unfortunately I don’t personally have one of these bags, my plan was to always get one but I put it off and now my daughter is 2 years old and, hopefully, will be fully potty trained soon, so I don’t know if I ever will get one. I imagine that it would be a great bag to use to carry stuff even after your kid outgrows diapers, so maybe someday I will get it, maybe it will carry my diapers if I wait long enough.
Apr 12
23
The Bassinet Incident
The whole time my wife was pregnant we kept saying that we didn’t want to use a bassinet. We planned on letting her sleep in her crib, where babies belong. Our feelings were that she wouldn’t know the difference and we might as well nip that whole ‘wanting to sleep in Mommy and Daddy’s bed’ thing as soon as possible, so we never bought one. That changed when we got home.
We were home for a few hours, enjoying our new family, when my wife told me that she thinks she wanted to get a bassinet. And I don’t mean maybe sometime, or next time we are out we will look at them, and maybe will get one, just in case she needs to be sleeping with us, I mean 
that night. She needed to have her little fart blossom sleeping next to her…and I mean “fart blossom” in the most loving way, it’s just this kid would fart sometimes and you can’t help but laugh and so we would say “our little fart blossom”, but I digress…So my job was to go out and get one. I figured that would be easy enough, anything to keep the new Momma happy. After all there was a Walmart maybe 10 minutes away, they would certainly have a bassinet. Nope. No bassinet at Walmart. Now, I don’t really like going into Walmart anyways and only do it when I need something fast since it is the closest, but the fact I went there for nothing was pretty annoying. And not just that they didn’t have it, but I had to park a mile away because the parking lot is always full, and I had to dodge shopping carts because, apparently, the shopping cart corrals are way too far for people to walk to so they just leave them wherever, so I pull into an empty spot, only to find it has a shopping cart in the way, so I back out and drive further away until I finally find a shopping cart free spot. Then I go inside, and god forbid you need a cart, because, first off, it will have a wheel that doesn’t work right, probably from someone hitting it with their car, second it’s a pain to get through the isles to get to what you want, because, even though they are about 50 feet wide, they fill them with 40 foot wide displays of mouth washcreating an obstacle course of cardboard and people on motorized scooters.
"I think there may be something stuck in the wheel"
Then I get to where I am going, which in my case is as far back as you can get, and they don’t even have what I came for, so I have to do all that in reverse…anyway, Now I need to go to Target, which I much prefer over Walmart, but it’s about 30 minutes away, but my wife wants a bassinet so I am off. Luckily I find what I need there and head back home for some last minute assembly.
So now my wife is happy, which by proxy means I am happy.
So my advice to you is, if you are thinking of NOT using a bassinet, make sure you know where to buy one before you get home with baby, just in case.
Apr 12
17
Nipples Have Numbers
Here is something you may not have known if you haven’t been around babies much: nipples have levels. I mentioned in a previous post that out of the millions of bottles, we chose Dr Browns. When my wife and I opened up the box of bottles there were nipples already on the bottles and then there were bags of extra nipples. I just assumed that’s what they were; extra. Turns out they were different “levels”. Once again I realized just how much I had to learn.
I noticed tiny little numbers on the nipples. I learned that this number has nothing to with how old your baby is. You don’t wait till they’re 2 years old to use the number 2 nipple. I would like to state that I didn’t have to be told that little bit of info by my wife, I figured that out by myself. I would also like to state that, all on my own, I knew that it had something to do with how much “stuff” comes out of the nipple. That was all the easy stuff, the hard part was figuring out when you are suppose to switch.
Once again I was worried for nothing. As nervous as I was about my parenting skills, or lack thereof, it seems things have a way of working out and keeping a little person alive comes naturally.
Now, every baby is going to be different of course, but here’s what we did: Obviously the nipples that come on the bottles are “level 1″, OK, so far so good, I know to use that for a little while at least. I just left the other levels in the “Lilly’s Stuff” drawer and didn’t worry about it. Then she got to about 3 months old and my wife wanted to try just a little bit of rice cereal in her bottle, the babies bottle, not the wife’s.
Anyways, we ended putting on the level 2 nipples in order to allow the cereal to get through better. We then found that the number 2′s were actually better for the bottles without the cereal as well. Sometimes the nipple still got a little bit clogged though, so my wife bought ones that had a “Y” on them. I am not sure why it switches to letters, I am assuming it’s a lack of communication in the nipple level department. They “Y” ones turned my daughter into a fountain, however, so we quickly threw them in the drawer for later and just stuck with the 2′s.
We never did get to use the “Y” as my daughter is now using sippy cups. I thought choosing bottles was hard, but that was nothing compared to finding a sippy cup that we all liked.
For your reference here is Dr. Browns levels, should have Googled this 2 years ago:
Here is what the image is showing:
Level One – For newborns 0+ months
Level two – For babies 3+ months
Level three – For babies 6+ months
Level four – For babies 9+ months
Y cut – For babies 9+ months
Apr 12
17
The Dad Text Book
Before we had our daughter my wife wanted to go shopping for maternity clothes. We went to Motherhood Maternity and she tried on all sorts of nice outfits. The store happened to have a chair outside the waiting room next to which stood a little display of morning sickness lollypops,
While I sat and waited for my pregnant wife to open the dressing room door to show off whatever outfit she tried on, I started flipping through this book and reading a bit. My wife finished trying on her clothes before I finished the book so I bought it.
They should hand this book out at whatever new parent course they want you to take. Peter Downey, the author, is a father of three girls, so he has experience in the field and is able to share what he has learned in a very humorous way. Now that I have my own daughter I should go through and re read it, maybe I will catch something I missed the first time.
If you are a father to be or even a new dad, I would highly suggest picking up a copy. My wife had her What to Expect When You’re Expecting,
Check it out.
When setting up your baby registry you are sure to see things that you think will be the best thing ever and you can’t imagine having a baby and not having this item. If you happen to get this item from someone you will think they are the greatest person ever and you will be so excited to have your baby at home so you can finally use said item. Then, after your baby is year old you will discover you still have never used this item and it is only taking up room in a cupboard or on a shelf somewhere, at which point you will regift it to someone else having a baby and they will think you are the greatest person ever, at least until their kid is born. This item is the “fruitcake” of baby showers and will be different for every person, so eventually the gift will end up being used, thus putting an end to the “fruitcake” metaphor, which, in hindsight, is probably not really good anyways.
But this is about stuff you need as well as the stuff you don’t. So let’s start with what you need, and this is only if you are me, which you are not, so your mileage may vary.
I already mentioned the Dr. Browns bottles, so I won’t do that again, except for right there.
Another great thing is a Boppy 
Good for baby naps and feeding and for you to sit on when holding baby, just a ton of things. It’s so simple in design but will get used a lot.
If you decide to use a pacifier, as far as my daughter was concerned these were the only ones that existed – Soothie Pacifier
They made car rides and bed time much better, for all involved. Luckily it was painless when she gave them up.
For the first few months we had a little baby seat that vibrated and if she wasn’t being held, she was in there. Many nights it was the only thing she would sleep in. I can’t find the exact one but it was from Baby Trend and was like this one – baby chair
The only difference is hers had a little basket area under it to store stuff and it also could rock.
Now, as far as things we thought we needed and didn’t, a bottle warmer/cooler. I could see where this would be handy for those who actually did warm and cool bottles, but as it turned out, we never did. We used formula that you mixed with water so if we traveled there was no need to keep it cool, we just didn’t mix it till she needed it. We also had some premade formula that was handy, so this thing just sat around, neither warming nor cooling. So, if you plan on using formula, don’t waste a gift on this. If not using formula, it may very well be worth it.
Another thing we thought she would love and she didn’t is one of those automatic swings that you turn on and it just goes back and forth. We tried that a few times and that apparently she wasn’t a fan of rocking back and forth. So that never got used, just sat in the basement.
Another thing that was awesome for a while, but then turned out not as awesome was a diaper genie. Probably about the first year it was great, throw the dirty diapers in, when it’s full, empty it – cool. After that year though, it seemed to get a funk to it that wouldn’t go away. Apparently after storing all those diapers the stench was just ingrained into it. We filled it up with little deodorizer things which would work for maybe a day, but if that room was closed up, it was pretty nasty after a bit. We turned to just throwing them in the outside trash which was actually easier and less stinky.
No matter how much stuff you do end up with though, there is strong chance that you forgot something, or, like my wife, decided our first day home with the new baby, we needed it now.
Apr 12
17
The Baby Registry
Like most parents to be, my Wife and I set up a baby registry so we could get people to buy us things. We decided on a popular baby store which I won’t name but sounds like “Babies R Us”, actually it was Babies R Us. Anyways, probably like most stores, the way you set up your registry is to simply scan the UPC code of whatever want with the little scanner thing they give you, super easy. The hard part is deciding what you actually want to put on it. I was surprised how daunting this task was. First thing we think of is: “we will need bottles”, “OK, let’s scan some bottles, that will be super simple.”, well that is wrong. One wall from ceiling to floor was
bottles, all different kinds, some bent ones, some with little non gas build up things, some with disposable bags that go inside, it was mind boggling. After a few minutes of us just staring we got deciding, and because I know you are curious we went with ones with the little non gas build up things, made by Dr. Brown’s
So far so good, 2 hours after we started our registry, we now had bottles added. Things did go smoother after the initial panic attack and we were moving along pretty well. We added bibs, a bathtub, teething rings, tons of stuff for people to buy us.
After our day of fantasy shopping we headed home, our hearts filled with glee and anticipation of which items would be purchased. Which, by the way, you can spy on using the webpage, as long as the purchaser had them mark it off the registry, and if are like my wife, she checked on a regular basis.
It turns out we got most everything on the list, which we would later discover included items we would never use…ever.