we [the dad] :: team dad blog

The R says "errr . . ."

". . . every letter makes a sound, the 'R' say "errrr."

QUESTION: When is it okay to give Crack to children?

ANSWER: when they have the cash on hand? (KIDDING!!! You here me secret Patriot Act watchers in the sky? I do not actually promote giving illicit drugs to kids!)

The answer is "never" of course. Unless . . .

You give them one of Leap Frog's "Learn to Read" movies instead. They feature that lovable young froggie Tad (get it, Tad?) and his band of merry readers (brother Leap and sister Lily among them) as they learn everything from letter sounds to complex words. All in four (there may be 5) easy to purchase DVDs.

I'm not saying that they actually work in teaching reading any faster than not, but they do seem to work their magic on kids--at least mine. They are truly like Crack for kids. Scarlett went through a phase where that was all she wanted out of her day was to run The Storybook Factory (part 3) on a loop in our one-TV Houston home. And whenever we said no, she snuck out to the pay phone on the corner to call Little Craig for a Leap Frog fix (again I kid).

Now it's Jude's turn. He knows how to work the DVD player, so I'm waiting to find him out in the living room at 4:30am with a plate of Cool Ranch Doritos and Tad telling him "the R says 'errr'" Guess it could be worse; he could be out there watching Golden Girls reruns. I do recommend the movies, anytime you can sneak learning or veggies into their diet, you gotta run with it.

New Converse Kicks

How can you pass on these sneaks at $17?

New Parent Must Haves

Just as every adult should have Excedrin, NyQuil and Neosporin in the medicine cabinet, every parent should have the following for the newborn / infant years:

The only cream worthy of your child's chapped ass.

Gripe water. Try a few different brands. Baby's Bliss works for us.

The swing. Doing its job for, I don't know, a long frickin time.

 

The play mat or gym. Hours of entertainment while you clean the bathroom.

The boppy. Without it, feeding would suck.

 

Recall shmee-call. The kid loves it.

Holy Gluttony Batman!

Have you seen this show--Man v. Food on the Travel Channel? This glutton, Adam Richman, travels the country profiling any food that is gluttonous, big, spicy, etc--while simultaneously taking part in any "pig out" challenges he comes across.

He ate a 72 oz. steak in under and hour (complete with salad, bread and baked potato), he attempted (and failed) to eat "The Sasquatch" burger, a 7.5-pound cheeseburger, he ate the "hottest" curry in the country (Phaal curry) and something called "Noodles from Hell" or something like that, which features the Ghost Chile (that sounds spooky). There was also some 35-inch pizza challenge. (As you may be able to tell, there was a Sunday marathon on the TV yesterday). Overall it is a sight to see, entertaining like a cross between a travel show and a bloody car crash--you just can't look away.

But, by far the most over-the-top thing I have ever heard of that Mr. Richman has eaten so far is the Double Bypass Burger he profiled at The Vortex Bar & Grill in Atlanta, GA. This burger is a heart attack in a bag (hence the name). It has an 8-ounce hamburger topped w/  three fried eggs, four pieces of cheese, six pieces of bacon, and get this, instead of a bun it is sandwiched in between 2 grilled cheese sandwiches. It may just be the most impressive and disgusting thing I have ever seen. Did I mention that it seems to come with a heaping portion of chili cheese tater tots? I think I got fatter just watching the show.

Damn you Campbell's . . .

and your kids' soups whose labels all look the same. And yet the soups themselves have a difference that is negligible. But Scarlett eats Double Noodle--and only Double Noodle. She calls it Double, Dub Nood, or Doubliscious.

They make a slew of kids-inspired chicken-noodle-based soups. I only remember the Chicken Noodle of my childhood. But now there's Curly Noodle, Noodle O's, Mega Noodle, Goldfish Noodle, Dora Noodle, Cars Noodle, Chicken Alphabet, Disney Princess Noodle, Chicken and Stars, Tomato Goldfish Noodle--I'm sure I am missing several of them; it aseems as if the boy demographic is underrepresented--there must be a Spidey Noodle or Batman Noodle out there somewhere, and if Spongeboby-O's doesn't exist, it should.

Trouble is I have the picky kid in the universe and a product that is easily misgrabbed for another slightly differently packaged product. So when I get into an argument with Scarlett b/c "Curly Noodle tastes yucky" (even though it has never touched her curly-Noodle-free lips) and I won't make her a new batch of "Doublicious," I'm suddenly the bad guy.

Well, you know what? I blame Campbell's. these companies should research kids more closely. If they did, they'd find that kids hate change, big time. And also Curly Frickin' Noodle. C'mon Campbell's let's get with the mmm mmm good program.

(This is a misleading ad, by the way, showing just a smattering of the actual choices)

The Weather Outside is . . .

Frightful, I think the lyric goes. But why? We love snow! I haven't shamelessly pushed a product in awhile, so I thought I'd go ahead and shill one. There's been a lot of it in my life so far this year: Big Rapids has 2 feet; the east side just got 2-3 inches last night. The product I'm shamelessly plugging is . . . snow?

But I hate snow, isn't that what you're thinking? Iv'e written as much right on this here blog.

True. But I admit there are some plusses.

It's beautiful, for one. It flies at a time when the rest of the world is curling up and browning for the winter.

The kids love it. They make snowmen and snow angels. They frolic and fight (snowball fight that is). They sled, ski and snowboard (In fact we all do, specifically right after Christmas--I'm going to break my neck, I know it).

Snow boosts the economy (which we could really use right now). How you ask? By introducing a yearly forced market for many many products: hats, gloves, scarves, snow pants, mittens, rock salt, snow shovels, sleds, those plastic block-molds used to make bitchin' snow forts, the northern tourist industry, the southern escape tourist industry, the snow removal industry (Mr. Plow, that's my name; that name again is Mr. Plow), firewood, chimney cleaning, Christmas lights, tissues, cold medicine, Flu shots, sleigh bells & pails used to solicit my change outside the grocery, scrapers (especially scrapers, since I seem to lose/break at least two a season, which is strange (the losing part anyway) b/c it never leaves my car). Okay you get the point.

It also affords me the opportunity to wear many pairs of socks daily in order to keep my feet dry, and allows me the opportunity to shovel at 8am on a Wednesday (hey, today's Wednesday; what a coincidence) and notice that the fanatics I live near have long since shoveled/snow blew their drives and walks (at least 5 of them on my small street, including one guy who actually gets out there and "sweeps" his drive after the first 1/8 inch falls).

Yeah, snow is great; I love the stuff; I never want to move back to the south; Heat is overrated (not the movie, although that was slightly overrated too).

Excuse me while I change my socks.

All the News That's (un)Fit to Print

With Eric about to enter Dad-dom for a second time, I get to dust off my press credentials, which will be a fun blast from the past. I used to used to freelance for a publication or two back in the day, and it will be fun to put that hat back on for awhile.

I'll work the wire; It'll be as close as we can get to the hospital without incurring the wrath of the new-parents or the nurse-guardians. You'll want all the exclusive scoops--weight, sex, demeanor, duration of labor, etc. You'll want to know whether the little bologna-loaf is named Grady, Gustav or Gertrude (or possibly Lil-Green, if they're going for that whole future AMA award nominee thing).

It's already making me nostalgic for the newspaper days. Part of me always wanted to head down that career path. Did I dream of working for the New Yorker? the Atlantic? a position covering The Hill? grad school at Northwestern? Nope.

My dream was to work for The Onion--the greatest "paper" our fair nation has ever seen. The stories that inspired me the most?--

Christ Announces Hiring of Associate Christ

McDonald's Drops 'Hammurderer' Character From Advertising

As you can plainly see from my credentials, track record and favorite stories, the Grenier-Parrow birth will get the utmost in cutting-edge, up-to-the-minute, unbiased coverage that you have come to expect from a quality publication like we [the dad].

Maybe a thneed is something that all people need . . .

I grew up on Seuss--the poet laureate of my childhood. Learned to read on Seuss, learned my love of the lyric from Dr. Geisel as well. To me those stories are something no kid should grow up without. Scarlett's favorite is If I Ran the Circus. She loves the Circus McGurkis. And of course Too Many Daves is an awesome, albeit obscure, Seuss story.

But my FAV, hands down, is The Lorax. I'm a sucker for a story with a message, a modern-day fable. It all starts with one Truffula tree, and when the last one is cut, the Once-ler's family takes off for the next blue plot. What drama. What forward-thinking. "Look at the big brain on Brad!"

Geisel sure knew what he was talking about. Too bad he wasn't an ex-vice president

from the 90s,

he might have won himself a Nobel Prize. Al Gore was on to something I guess. Must've been kicking around, all glum from just having won/lost the general election in 2000,

stumbled upon the Once-ler's factory and an award-winning documentary was born. What luck, to get royally screwed only to find your way to a much better thing.

Nobel Prize or President of the United States of America? There's not even a question--I'll take the Prize all day. Unless the Presidents we're talkin' about is something else altogether.

"Yeah Yeah -- Look out!"

"No you're not"

Scarlett is the stubbornest person on the planet the second most stubborn person on the planet (she has to come from somewhere, right?). She always has the right answer, even if she doesn't. It's funny how that works, how they resemble . . . you.

Scarlett is ready to read; she's been ready for sometime now. I've known it for awhile. Problem is, she refuses to let me teach her anything. This is infuriating. I am a teacher for chrissakes! And yet I can't even convince her that I am a teacher.

I say things like "Scarlett, you know your dad's a teacher, right?" to which she replies, "no you're not." She has always been this way. Her preschool teacher had all the luck. Scarlett would come home counting back from ten in Spanish or asking for some "Agua" to drink. This was when she was 2-yrs-old. But at home she would hide in her room and teach herself math or how to write her name, only to spring it upon us after she had accomplished the thing. Complete stranger? Teach away. Her own father? Nada. so i try to sneak it in whenever possible.

One way is through the computer. Scarlett loves Princess Dressup games on the computer (who doesn't?). So we've worked out a deal. First sjhe mus spend some time on Starfall.com

My buddy Dave (a fine teacher himself) turned me on to the is website and it is worth it to anyone who is trying to teach a toddler to read, spell, etc. It moves forward very methodically and actually has a "plan" for teaching this kind of stuff. It's quite good. Apparently actual teachers of kids use this resource quite often, I'm told (I teach college kids, so hopefully I don't need to use it on them all that often). Anyway,  Scarlett really likes it. It's not Princess Dress-up, but it runs a close second.

Check out this letter to parents produced by Starfall that speaks to the methodology and ease-of-use.

Twice the Shameless

A double dose of sweet geekdom. Here are two web sites that get daily play from me. In fact I'm sort of an addict when it comes to them--both of them are marvels, one for the sheer number-crunching weight of it, the other for its attempt to quantify the unquantifiable and categorize that which cannot be. With so much formulaic flotsam found on the internet, it's important to pass along the sites that are actually worth a shit.

Here's two of them:

fivethirtyeight.com - This website is a math-head's dream. Billing itself as "electoral projections done right," 538 (named after the number of electors in the U. S. Electoral College) is the baby of Nate Silver, who I knew from his work as a baseball statistician. Without trying to amp up the geektitude to unbearable levels (which Wikipedia's 538 entry does and does well), I will say that the premise behind 538 seems to be to take all of the national polls, weight them, factor them in, and bring to bear demographic information & past voting trends, and use this methodology to interpret the real & accurate narratives of the polls in both the presidential and senatorial races. On top of that, Silver has election simulations running daily (10,000 of them) to help come to a prediction of what the election outcome will be. I'm not even coming close to doing justice to the sheer magnitude and detail under which this website operates. It is truly astounding and worth checking out. I visit it daily; not only to see how the climate is changing, but also for the blog that Silver pens for the site as well. If you want to be informed and also reminded how much smarter some people are than you, this is a perfect place to visit.

pandora.com - If you are familiar with the Music Genome Project, founded in 2000, then you probably already know about Pandora--which would be okay. It's good to be reminded sometimes. If you don't know and are a fan of music, then shame on you. I like my iPod too, but it gets a bit "old" sometimes. I know what's on there, I'm comfortable, but I am certainly not discovering anything new when I shove those phones in my ears. But the Music Genome Project came together as an attempt to quantify and categorize music using descriptors and algorithms. By doing so the founders hoped to show the similarities in music, and to be able to describe Art--which I find utterly fascinating. As a writer and musician, I have given a lot of thought to the slippery nature of Art in any medium. Quantifying it, describing it, getting at its essence--essentially being able to talk about it coherently--is next to impossible. The best we can do is to talk around and around it, hoping to get closer to its impenetrable center. Sort of like if "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop"was answered with "infinity." So the Genome Project attempts to compare the "DNA" of different types of music. Pandora.com is the radio station that came out of it. Basically you create "stations" named after an artist or a song, and Pandora will start you out with a song by that artist and then proceed to deliver song after song that the Genome deems "like" or "amicable to" the music you originally selected. The beauty of it is the discovery--and also the curiosity it sparks to consider the choices of the Genome. I love this site, listen to it all the time, especially when I am sitting in my office grading the ginormous stacks of student papers. Highly highly highly recommended.