Are You a Happy Healthy Hip Parent?

Over at Happy Healthy Hip Parenting blog, authored by Sondra Santos LaBrie, has started up a new series on What Makes a Happy Healthy Hip Parent. She is doing this to highlight parents that she has met mainly on the net, via blogs or Twitter. Also, I filled out the questionaire as a daddy blogger so soon I’ll be featured. I’ll post a link when that happens.

Why is Sondra doing this:

I look forward to sharing their stories and giving props to parents who raise happy, healthy, hip kids - one of the most rewarding jobs you could ever have.

Here are a few links and blurbs from her first two HHH Parents:

Meet Tracy and find out What Makes Her a HHH Parent

Facebook has brought me face-to-face with several high school classmates since joining, including Tracy, mother of two. Her son will be turn four in less than a month and her daughter just recently reached her six-month milestone.

Meet Laurel to see why she is a HHH Parent

You may know Laurel from the books she’s authored: Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains, Inside the Slidy Diner, The Myth of the Single Machines, Half Life, and Daphne and Jim.

Happy Healthy Hip Parenting was founded by Sondra Santos LaBrie.

Ms. LaBrie is a Certified Parent Educator through the International Network for Children and Families with a background in psychology and communication.

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Daddy’s Toolbox Carnival #4

Wow, this time I did it right. I used my Twitter account (@DaddysToolbox) to tweet about the upcoming carnival and this fourth edition received the most submissions thus far! I’m excited to bring you the following posts, please read them and share with others. If you want to have a parenting or Daddy post included in my monthly carnival please read the last part of this post.

Jeremy Neal presents Do It Because I Said So! posted at Discovering Dad.

Ron Mattock presents Chipmunk Gets A Post posted at Clark Kent’s Lunchbox, saying, “A short post about fathers and sons, catching chipmunks and passing along small lessons to your children that they may remember later.”

Petteri presents More About My Wicked Grandpa… posted at My Grandpa.

Being a Daddy

Jeremy Neal presents Top 5 Favorite Daddy Daughter Activities posted at Discovering Dad.

Kevin Heath presents Parenting Tips for New and Expectant Dads posted at More4kids.

Dad of Divas presents Remember Me posted at Dad of Divas.

Dads Summer Fun

ISPF presents Fun Family Vacations (That Don’t Cost an Arm and a Leg!) posted at Daddy Financials.

Modern Parent presents Summer Fun: Splish Splash He’s Not Taking a Bath posted at Modernparent.org.

James Hills presents La Tomatina - a Tomato Party In Spain | Father and Son Mancation posted at Man Tripping - Guys Getways and Mancations, saying, “This year’s festival is coming up on August 27 … probably too late for anyone in the US to visit, but should be a fun summer idea for next year like this dad/son pair did!”

Parenting Issues

Neelakantha presents 100+ Health and Safety Tips for Your Newborn posted at Nursing School Search Blog.

Jeremy presents Standing Firm - Cutting: One Dad’s Story of Intervention posted at Discovering Dad.

Special Memorial

This post was a last minute addition that I wanted to include in the carnival.

Anthony McCune presents a memorial to Todd Christopher Weaver who died in the attack on the World Trade Center. He was 30-years-old.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of daddys toolbox carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

3rd Installment of Bringing Home Baby

For those of my readers I was asked to submit three short posts about my experiences bringing home our second child. Myself and two other fellow Daddys and bloggers wrote short posts for Building Camelot.

The third and last installment of our stories are now posted. Stop over to Tyler’s site at Building Camelot to read. Read the third installment here.

Read the first installment of the series on Bringing Home a Second Baby.

Read the second installment of the series on Bringing Home a Second Baby.

Also check out these other Daddy Blogs for some good reading!

Elliott from 21stcenturydad.com

Chris from Dad of Divas

Why My Kids Want Mommy So Much?

Well this isn’t probably too much of a shocker to most married couples with young children. What is with a "mommy " that the kids love that they need to cling to her and almost smother her, leaving me the poor old lonely Dad?  For instance, I used to be the bedtime "go to" parent for both my son (about a year ago) and my daughter up until about 3 weeks ago.  She’s going on two this August and our son will be four in October. Why had my daughter decided she wants MOMMY for bedtime. This really puts me in a bind because I would love to read books to my kids, especially if there are no "power struggles" or meltdowns at bedtime.But like I mentioned, lately, both kids want mommy.  It’s ME that makes the funny voices and sing silly songs about the day to them, so why do they chose her over me?

Maybe because I’m the disciplinarian in the house. Might be because I try to be more strict . Probably because my wife enjoys having fun where I tend to worry about the next meltdown or what "might" transpire if the kids aren’t in bed by 8pm.  So I guess it’s natural for them to gravitate to the one parent that has open arms all the time. But then that creates additional stress in the house, where my wife doesn’t get any "downtime" to herself like I do if she’s doing both bedtime routines.

Now don’t get me wrong. I would LOVE to read books and do the bedtime thing, I have this ritual with my daughter where we read a few books then as I put her into the crib we wave goodnight to the butterfly decals on her wall, then give BIG KISSES, then Eskimo Kisses, then BIG HUGS. Then up until about a month ago, she would immediately fall asleep.  Now since she is almost 2 yo she is beginning to realize we are leaving her alone in her room. Tonight was a battle with her. She really wanted Mommy. It’s the 2 year old thing, the sense of losing a parent.  Read the rest of this entry »

Reposting: Thing to Remember When Your Kids Are Driving You Frickin’ Insane

I found this article to be just what I wanted to say.  I have times where my kids drive me into a frenzy and they aren’t doing whatever it is that they are doing to INTENTIONALLY annoy me, they are doing things because that is they way they know how to do it.

Like yesterday when picking up L and K from daycare, my 22 month old daughter K now insists on climbing into the SUV and into her car seat. She has been doing this for a few weeks after watching her big brother do it.  If I try to boost her up she says, "NO I DO! I DO!", after 15 minutes of getting her into her seat I was pretty annoyed and just wanted her to sit down. It was 5:30pm after a long day of work and I just wanted to get everyone home for dinner and to play outside.

But afterward thinking back on what happened I now see that she is just trying to figure things out and do them herself.  Sure it’s frustrating, but if I didn’t let her climb into her seat alone it might take longer for her to learn how to do it and then I would have to keep buckling her in, etc.  Our 3 1/2 year old son, L, already climbs in and buckles himself in which is such a big help! Thanks Buddy!

So here is the article that I enjoyed reading. It’s over on the Cranking Widgets Blog .

Things to Remember when your kids are driving you frickin’ insane

Like I say, I realize there are times when my son gets in a bad mood and gets pissed off and wants to get the old man riled up. But if you were to take all of the times I have gotten riled up v. the number of times he was trying to get me that way, you’d notice a grave disparity between the two figures. This is something that makes me sad to think back on, but does well to motivate me in dealing with him now, or when I’m at my worst.

How I Spent My Father’s Day

Well Happy Father’s Day to myself and all the other great Dad’s out there. This is our day to do what we want, right? For the most part it is and on a typical weekend I would probably have gone off and took care of a few things in my basement, I’m finishing it on my own and my wife was going to hit the outlet stores to get some clothes shopping done. She was going to take our son along and I would spend time with our daughter and then have her take her midday nap after lunch. Well I decided it would be fun to have the whole family go to the outlets and spend the time together and not worry about the “things to do” around the house today! It was a good time! Surprisingly, the kids were pretty well behaved for clothes shopping! To a 3 and 1 year old if it isn’t a toy that makes noise then it’s not fun, so I wasn’t sure our shopping trip would be OK, but it was.

We just got home after a few hours drive and shopping and now the kids are relaxing. I just carried my daughter up to her crib and she had me read her one book and now she’s sleeping. Our son slept for most of the ride home and got a decent amount of rest in so he is just chillin’ on the couch with a few shows.

I’m in the other room quickly typing out this post and then will take care of a few other things and probably head down to the basement to run some wires through the 2×4’s so I can cross that off my ever-increasing-to-do-list.

So before I press submit, how are other Dad’s celebrating your day? Did you get a new tie or bottle of cologne? Could those gift items be any more time-dated!!?? I used to get my father cologne every year. He always would open the box, take out the cologne and open it and splash it on his face saying, “Ahhhh, this smells great!” My thoughts now as a father and thinking back to him doing that I think, “did he really need or want or like the cologne? Maybe he was being a dad and therefore appreciative to whatever his children gave him?” I would have to agree with the later, as a father we have the obligation to always be grateful, excited and happy when our children give us anything, even a piece of paper with a drawing of our famele (as my 3 1/2yo wrote after sounding out the word family the other day). I was so impressed and proud that he is beginning to sound out words and spell them the best his little mind knows how! He also spelled out “mos” for mouse, “sidwc” for sidewalk and a few others. I thought this was amazing!! My mother (grama) helped him sound them out but he did all the work!

That was a GREAT Father’s Day gift.

Read this week’s Manival #6

This week’s Manival is being hosted by Tyler on Building Camelot and was started by Brett from The Art Of Manliness.

The Manival is a blog carnival for men to post stories about anything manly! I myself posted one of my blog posts about losing some of the PSW, or pregnancy sympathy weight.

Please go over to Building Camelot and read this week’s The Manival!

Introducing Daddy’s Toolbox Carnival

I’ve been using Twitter (follow me at http://twitter.com/DaddysToolbox) a lot lately and meeting some great fathers and some of them have turned me onto Blog Carnivals. So I would like to set up my own to help generate great content on my blog as well as feature other Daddy blogs and their authors.

Since I am just starting this, my first event will be Monday, May 26th with the deadline for article submissions being Friday, May 23rd at 9PM EST/DST.

So here is what to do,

1. Write your blog article on your blog and publish,
2. Click my Daddys Toolbox Carnival link to submit your article,
3. The carnival will be published monthly with the deadline for submissions being the 2nd Friday of the month by 9PM EST/DST.
4. Please keep your posts related to parenting, children, experiences of being a dad (or mom).

Or you can visit Blog Carnival and browse for Daddy’s Toolbox Carnival to submit your post(s).

What Do You Do When Your Kid Throws a Whiny Fit?

How many parents have the beginnings of gray hairs due to a whining toddler or preschooler? What causes your child to whine? Why does the sound of whining drive parents crazy? Why do I feel like I’d rather hear someone run their finger nails down a chalkboard right now!?

Battling with a child that constantly whines is no fun — for both the parent and the child. Trying to stop the whining using threats or time outs probably won’t work either, and most likely end up in a screaming match of “BUT I WANT TO!“  And I’m not sure which side (in our house) wins.  Sometimes I have to give in to my 3 1/2 year old son because I just can’t take the constant whining. I know…this only leads to future whining. And I know it does. We just battled it out today with Boo because he wanted to ride his electric 4-wheeler but the battery was dead from the previous day’s riding (and Mommy and Daddy forgot to recharge the battery overnight). Read the rest of this entry »

Another Mother’s Day Gift Idea - Creative Wall Portrait

As I mentioned in my previous post, Mother’s Day Gifts that Will Make Mommy Cry, another neat idea for Mom this year is a wall portrait. Check out a web site called myDaVinci.com, Art that clicks and you’ll see all of the different styles that the artists offer in terms of creating that perfect, lasting memory for your wife and child’s Mommy.

Now going this route may cost a few extra bucks but if you are searching for that perfect gift this might just be it. As you can see from the sample image, the artists are very good at what they can do — replicating your photo into a perfect work of art.

How myDaVinci.com works:

1. You send the photo(s) via mail or email to myDaVinci.

2. They start the artwork. They use actual artists, a network of over 100 artists to be exact!

3. They evaluate the artwork, and email it to you if it meets our quality standard.

4. You can request for modifications if necessary after reviewing.

6. You approve the artwork online once satisfied with the artwork.

7. The artwork is delivered in a well protected package to you.

Pretty simple, huh?  Definitely sounds like a great gift idea for your mother and/or wife.

So again, visit  myDaVinci.com and check out all of the different ways they can create beautiful art from your photos.