January 22, 2009
The March issue of ShopSmart, the no-ads shopping guide published by the Consumer Reports folks, includes some tips for figuring out which used baby gear is still considered safe to use. [Get the pdf of the article here.] Though the...
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11:35 PM
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Comments (0)
January 21, 2009
There were once hitting playgrounds? If we've become a nation of helicopter parents raising a nation of wimps, maybe this 1972 survey of the entrenched-but-unwritten ground rules at various [uptown] Manhattan playgrounds will help identify the point where we went...
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11:16 PM
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Comments (0)
January 13, 2009
Because this one time, someone's bubbie complained about the parents chatting up their toddler at every painting, a Park Slope parent is a bit worried about taking her 22-month old kid to the Museum of Modern Art:A childless friend with...
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Posted by greg at
8:16 AM
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Comments (5)
December 31, 2008
Hmm, look what else is in that New Jersey basement. An unopened Creative Playthings Playsack, which, as you could probably guess, is a giant paper bag that a kid is supposed to play in. The eBay description is intriguingly...
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Posted by greg at
2:57 PM
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Comments (0)
December 12, 2008
And instead of tired, they get wired. Like running around the house and moving chairs wired. What can you do, or do you have to just ride it out?...
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Posted by greg at
9:36 PM
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Comments (8)
December 5, 2008
From East Texas, the four top ways not to quiet a 13-month old baby who cries like she's possessed, presented in the wrong, wrong wrong order: 1. Exorcism, amateur 2. Biting the kid back 20 times 3. Smashing the kid's...
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12:17 PM
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Comments (11)
November 24, 2008
So you want to prep yourself for Thanksgiving table discussions of the Overparenting Crisis, but, what with the baby yoga and Mandarin playgroups, you don't have time? No problem. Joan Acocella has summed it all up for you in this...
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Posted by greg at
9:04 AM
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Comments (3)
November 14, 2008
The naked baby from the cover of Nevermind is 17 now. It's an age where kids face face challenges figuring out who they are, and experiment with addictive drugs like alcohol, heroin--and arbitrary fame derived from their parents dropping them...
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8:35 AM
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Comments (0)
November 7, 2008
You know, I'm not feeling particularly freaked out this weekend. In fact, I'm feeling pretty good. And here are a few more reasons why: Because I'm not "mommy dating," and imagining that people are judging me for my watch and...
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Posted by greg at
11:23 PM
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Comments (3)
You live in San Francisco. You find out you're having a kid, which means you'll never be able to hop in the car with your friends on a whim and just go wherever ever again. What better way to celebrate...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (2)
October 31, 2008
And she did mean anything:"I was potty training Anna, she was sitting with her book. I stepped away for five minutes and I hear her fighting with somebody, saying, 'It's mine, it's mine!' I turned to go back, the book...
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Posted by greg at
7:44 AM
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Comments (0)
October 16, 2008
David is a new dad and one of the car guys [little c, little g, Magliozzis, relax.] at Cars.com. Well, the kid's six months old now, and Dave's care-free days of swapping the bases for his son's infant car seat...
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Posted by greg at
11:03 AM
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Comments (22)
October 5, 2008
The Swedish literary criticism quarterly Glanta recently published a satirical article on raising children in strict accordance with the arguments of post-modernism. It reads a bunch of tips cobbled together one night at an MLA convention, and it pales in...
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Posted by greg at
7:53 AM
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Comments (1)
September 25, 2008
We're in the middle of a "don't want to go to preschool today" standoff this morning, so posting might be a little light. has this ever happened to anyone in the history of preschool? [update: aha, maybe she can't go...
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Posted by greg at
10:29 AM
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Comments (7)
Because we've cleaned that fridge like three times, it still smells funky. And that's after we put them squirrels Ma shot into double freezer bags, and even after we threw out the rest of that brie wheel I snagged...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 AM
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Comments (11)
September 24, 2008
You new dads coming up now will get a kick out of this. Back before the FDA miraculously cured all colds, coughs, and flu in kids under 2 years old, we used to actually give'em medicine when they were sick....
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Posted by greg at
10:17 PM
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Comments (0)
September 18, 2008
We really like Dr. T. Berry Brazelton's Touchpoints books; they present research findings and what Brazelton looks for in child development in a very approachable, useful way. Now it turns out Brazelton ["and his colleague Dr. Josh Sparrow," gotta plan...
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Posted by greg at
1:10 PM
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Comments (0)
September 12, 2008
So you're going along, changing the kid's diaper, and she's covered in sodium polyacrylate crumbs, so much it looks like someone sprinkled parmesan cheese all over her butt. But you just wipe it all off, and put the new one...
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Posted by greg at
1:05 PM
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Comments (5)
September 3, 2008
Because K2's got this flat spot on the back of her head, and it's kind of bugging me out. It started early; she'd almost always turn her head to the right when we'd lay her down; and while we'd always...
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Posted by greg at
10:38 AM
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Comments (14)
August 26, 2008
I got an email from a reader the other day asking for advice. At first, I felt like I knew the "right" answer, but then I caught myself. I realized I was trying to parse the email for clues, identifying...
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Posted by greg at
10:17 AM
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Comments (26)
August 25, 2008
Did you know the classic ecotrend blog Inhabitat just had a babybloig? Mazeltov! So cute. So far on Inhabitots, the most actively discussed topic is Andre McCann's extensive roundup of the best cloth diaper options: pocket, one-size, pre-fold, g-Diapers,...
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Posted by greg at
10:14 AM
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Comments (1)
August 22, 2008
Seriously, screw the Five Second Rule. We have the Our Floor/Not Our Floor Rule. But now that's not enough. So I ask you: How many times do you return a piece of food to the kid's tray after it gets...
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Posted by greg at
2:03 PM
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Comments (7)
August 19, 2008
Because I'm trying like crazy to keep mine still, and I just can't do it. It's the "Do you breathe in or out on your backswing?" of babyfeeding....
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Posted by greg at
12:33 PM
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Comments (7)
August 18, 2008
I was just saying to Andy, sometimes having another kid feels like Groundhog Day; it only dawns on you slowly that you're going through the exact same ordeals as you did before [e.g., kid fighting her naps like crazy; or...
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Posted by greg at
4:09 PM
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Comments (3)
July 21, 2008
Wow, The Morning News is back from vacation, and how. As if in answer to my offhand Facebook Generation [sic] question, Kevin Fanning and Kean Soo have created Baby's First Internet, a boardbook in slideshow format. It is awesome:...
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Posted by greg at
10:24 AM
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Comments (1)
July 9, 2008
Short answer: a rounded tablespoon, or about 3.5 teaspoons. Longer explanation: Breasts travel well, especially to the beach. Just one more way in which they're the best. But the true sign that you love your child is that you don't...
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Posted by greg at
7:46 AM
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Comments (9)
July 8, 2008
If Blognigger isn't actually one of Thomas Jefferson's long-unacknowledged descendants, he's still the black Patrick Henry of Park Slope. Like his blog handle, Blognigger's Declaration of Co-Dependence is not for the meek. [Unlefs maybe all those f-words are actually s-words...
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Posted by greg at
6:26 PM
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Comments (5)
July 4, 2008
The NY Times has tiny, Zagat-style reviews of five backpack carriers, four new, and one ratty old Chicco, which still does just fine. Whatever the results, the product list reads like some sort of shroom-fuelled branding poem: Deuter Kid...
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Posted by greg at
9:52 AM
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Comments (3)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Dad, Dude or Dud?, originally uploaded by agfachrome25. Lord knows. And if you have either...
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Posted by greg at
7:39 AM
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Comments (0)
July 1, 2008
You know, it seems not enough to just say, "There can be downsides to blogging about your kid." The WSJ's parentblogger Cybele was specifically worried about what happens when they post pictures of their kid on flickr [though apparently not...
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Posted by greg at
11:31 PM
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Comments (10)
On The Juggle, Wall Street Journal momblogger Cybele Weisser worried in print this morning about all the photos of their kid she and her husband post to flickr. By the time I got around to posting about it tonight, the...
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Posted by greg at
10:31 PM
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Comments (1)
June 20, 2008
I've been wondering about the fine art of stroller detailing lately, and how little I do it. Does anyone actually read the manual and follow the maintenance instructions, and clean their stroller? I think the last time I actually washed...
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Posted by greg at
1:05 PM
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Comments (15)
June 18, 2008
That's the conclusion one American Jewish dad came to after his family burned through--Oy, the tsuris!--three Israeli au pairs, with no success. The problem: their "Israeli attitude" [his quotes]. Though they praise their "indigenous charm," American Jews apparently have the...
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Posted by greg at
9:58 AM
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Comments (0)
June 15, 2008
Barack Obama got his Cosby on this morning, criticizing men who don't take responsibility for helping raise their children in a Father's Day speech at Apostolic Church of God in Chicago. If you just read the prepared text of his...
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Posted by greg at
10:06 PM
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Comments (2)
June 10, 2008
Tuesday is normally Mocha Moms day on Tell Me More, NPR's daily talk show with Michel Martin; it's as if The View were just about parenting, and just happened to be black. It's also the kind of chitchat that gets...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 PM
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Comments (2)
June 7, 2008
The one-L lama, he's a priest, The two-L llama, he's a beast, And I will bet a silk pajama There isn't any three-L lllama.* * The author's attention has been drawn to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer....
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Posted by greg at
6:46 AM
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Comments (11)
May 27, 2008
DT reader Mark has a problem. He lives in a brownstone apartment, and his Bugaboo Frog is about 1/2-inch too wide to fit into the phonebooth-sized elevator. So they have to fold the stroller every time they go in or...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 AM
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Comments (5)
May 21, 2008
Hugh Hefner's son Marston is turning 18. He lives with his younger brother and his mother, 1989 Playmate of The Year Kimberley Conrad, next door to the Playboy Mansion:“With Marston, I was there, a hands-on father. As you look at...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 PM
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Comments (1)
May 20, 2008
From the Boston Globe's profile of early childhood development researcher Nancy Carlsson-Paige, all I can figure about her new book, Taking Back Childhood: Helping Your Kids Thrive in a Fast-Paced, Media-Saturated, Violence-Filled World, is that kids should cut back...
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Posted by greg at
8:05 AM
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Comments (4)
May 14, 2008
I'll be at the ICFF this weekend. If you're there, or if you know of something I should check out, definitely let me know, either in the comments or via email. thanks and see you and/or your product or event!...
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Posted by greg at
8:38 PM
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Comments (0)
You gotta give them credit for sticking to the concept; when the Boston Globe created its local parenting website/community, they named it "BoMoms: for moms in Boston & beyond." And damned if it isn't the girliest girl talky girl...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 AM
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Comments (9)
May 12, 2008
Never mind that I can't believe K2's already four months old. After she checked out fine with the doctor last week, we thought we might as well get ready to try her out on solid food sometime, so my wife...
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Posted by greg at
11:59 PM
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Comments (10)
May 7, 2008
So I'm still kicking around the idea of building a dining table using a design by Enzo Mari [see some longwinded discussion of it here.] It's supposed to be made out of plain, unfinished pine lumber, which you can...
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Posted by greg at
5:22 PM
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Comments (9)
May 6, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Collin's Gift, originally uploaded by mnot. This is awesome. A couple flying from San Francisco...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 PM
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Comments (10)
April 28, 2008
David & Kelly Sopp's Safe Baby Pregnancy Tips has been around almost as long as their Safe Baby Handling Tips. But sometimes it takes someone posting damn near the whole thing online before it really sinks in. Though it's...
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Posted by greg at
11:56 PM
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Comments (0)
April 9, 2008
I'm re-reading Calvin Trillin's 1998 book, Family Man, and it's rather more interesting now that I'm a dad. Jim's right, he's the godfather of all typing daddies, not just those who make a big deal about changing tables in the...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 PM
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Comments (3)
April 7, 2008
My stack of unread New Yorkers and I agreed to start seeing other people a long time ago. So while I remember the buzz about Calvin Trillin's 2006 remembrances of his wife Alice, I didn't read the piece. And now...
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Posted by greg at
12:37 PM
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Comments (3)
March 25, 2008
So my wife's got an astrophysics conference next week in downtown Los Angeles, and we all decided to tag along. I think I know my art world Los Angeles, and I know my way around some of Sunset's scene-ier, but...
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Posted by greg at
12:17 PM
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Comments (13)
March 24, 2008
So the kid went to a theater for her first, actual movie over the weekend: Horton Hears A Who. It totally freaked her out. Technically, her first movie ever was John Cassavetes' Shadows, which she watched with me when...
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Posted by greg at
11:02 AM
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Comments (26)
March 19, 2008
So I pointed out yesterday that Nickelodeon's executives described "moms" and kids "on mom's lap" as two prime targets for their new $100 million, 600+ games, online marketing push. Which is a little lame, but mostly, it's fine, and not...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 AM
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Comments (0)
March 18, 2008
This just in from DT advertiser--and pudgy baby nixer--Cookie Magazine:Moms are the real experts, so we know that the most trusted advice is the Word of Mom. Tell us what the best products are for you and your family!This...
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Posted by greg at
12:40 PM
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Comments (5)
February 27, 2008
Five months ago, Keith Dixon and his wife lost their dining room to the new baby, and now he's struggling to figure out how to cook dinner in silence so the toppling towers of pans don't wake up the just-asleep...
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Posted by greg at
8:34 PM
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Comments (3)
February 21, 2008
I think we all know by now that praising a kid for being smart or talented instead of for working hard will doom them to failure--or even worse, a state school--when they're older. [And by "we," I mean people who...
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Posted by greg at
12:04 PM
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Comments (1)
February 19, 2008
Dr. Karp, the sultan of swaddle, soothe and swing, has a new book out an August pub date for the revised edition of his 2005 book [huh? -ed.] The Happiest Toddler On The Block. Because apparently, "Logic and persuasion, common...
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Posted by greg at
8:55 AM
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Comments (7)
February 18, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } , originally uploaded by timothy b. buckwalter. Though the headline pretty much says it all,...
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Posted by greg at
8:11 PM
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Comments (0)
February 17, 2008
It figures that just as we get back into the swing of the baby bottle phase, and we break out a new pack of the Playtex Ventaire bottles--in mix-and-match pastel colors--a new study comes oot of Canada showing that all...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 AM
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Comments (8)
February 14, 2008
The NYT's critical shopper column this week takes on the giant Victoria's Secret across from Macy's, "a slick, two-story mega-sexopolis, catering mainly to the boudoir needs of angry tourists." It's pretty damn funny [though I'm crying for America on...
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Posted by greg at
10:55 AM
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Comments (1)
You sick of the gear-heavy, alienating inconvenience of the stroller/swing/playpen combo that 150+ years of Anglocentric parenting culture foists on us all, and you want to try some of that practical, bonding-friendly, elemental goodness of wearing your baby instead? Fine,...
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Posted by greg at
12:07 AM
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Comments (4)
February 7, 2008
The boardbook comes down from the Hushamok tribe, In the big game I call, "Pitch it to me." The PRs, it's said, try to get in my head, And since I find the press kits quite gloomy... I was gonna...
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Posted by greg at
3:01 PM
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Comments (2)
January 26, 2008
In the Q&A the other day about his book, Crawling: A Father's First Year, writer Elisha Cooper mentioned the benefits of taking out your parent stress on someone who really deserves it, like that delivery guy who almost mowed you...
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Posted by greg at
8:16 AM
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Comments (6)
January 24, 2008
It's been out for a couple of years, but Safe Baby Handling Tips is a classic. It's by Kelly and David Sopp, the founders of Wry Baby, and its helpful instructional diagrams will provide literally minutes of raucous, entertaining...
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Posted by greg at
11:02 PM
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Comments (3)
January 23, 2008
I've been an admirer of Elisha Cooper's writing since I first got a copy of his book, Crawling: A Father's First Year from his publisher Pantheon in 2006. His stories of taking his newborn daughter to Chez Panisse cracked me...
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Posted by greg at
12:05 AM
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Comments (0)
January 17, 2008
Metafilter dad Matt Haughey asked the hive to recommend some non-dark, non-scary movies suitable for a movie-loving 2-3yo kid like his daughter. So far, Curious George and My Neighbor Totoro are it:I've tried all the pixar films and they all...
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Posted by greg at
11:14 AM
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Comments (29)
January 15, 2008
Supposedly, when asked by a Brooklyn parent why there were no changing tables in the Apple stores [or at least in the SoHo store], Steve Jobs emailed back saying, "There doesn't seem to be a demand for it, and it...
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Posted by greg at
12:22 AM
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Comments (0)
January 14, 2008
Just about this time last kid, I posted about an ancient [i.e., circa 1996] family remedy for quieting a fussy kid: a CD with a few white noise tracks on it of everyday household items: a vacuum cleaner, running water,...
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Posted by greg at
11:34 PM
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Comments (19)
January 13, 2008
According to New York magazine the two things every wealthy parent wants to know about raising his kids are: how not to raise another Paris Hilton, and how to keep flying private without turning the kid into an over-entitled monster....
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Posted by greg at
6:34 PM
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Comments (3)
December 31, 2007
In an excellent Boston Globe article, writer Tom Scocca lays out what you already kind of suspected: the burgeoning crop of parenting advice books is designed to lock you in with a combination of authoritativeness and anxiety. Also, yes, the...
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Posted by greg at
8:05 AM
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Comments (0)
December 13, 2007
Colin Ward? Graham Greene? Adventure playgrounds? creeped out West Village parents? There are like five things I want to link to in it, so instead, I'll just say click over right now to Things Magazine's thoughtful essaypost about how...
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Posted by greg at
10:50 AM
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Comments (0)
December 11, 2007
The British Medical Journal has published a pro & con debate on whether infant male circumcision is neutral, harmful, or beneficial, and if there are demonstrable medical benefits should operation be put off until the guy can decide for himself....
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Posted by greg at
11:02 PM
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Comments (1)
December 8, 2007
Not only are we still undecided on the other kid's name, our short list is twice as long as it was at this stage the first time around. It's got some great names on it [1], but I wonder if...
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Posted by greg at
10:04 AM
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Comments (24)
December 7, 2007
It's Daddy Types editorial policy that there's no quid pro quo for advertising on the site. So when I saw the ad appear on Daddy Types for John F. Mooney's play, "A Million Little Diapers," my interest was piqued. So...
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Posted by greg at
5:50 PM
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Comments (0)
Gawker took special note of the juxtaposition of these two features on the front page of Cookie Magazine's website today. When taken in conjunction with the ad Cookie is running on DT right now--"Help Us Reward an Amazing MOM!"--one...
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Posted by greg at
1:32 PM
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Comments (1)
December 4, 2007
So the other kid's crib, which was originally going to be the kid's toddler bed, is inching toward conversion, and you must admit, it is rather Juddish. Given the crib and the overall minimalist [as in art] vibe, I...
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Posted by greg at
11:41 AM
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Comments (6)
November 28, 2007
Does no one in the University of Nebraska - Lincoln cognitive psych department read Details magazine?? Professor Gustavo Carlos et al's newly published research on the impact of various parenting styles and behaviors is based on the assumption that parents...
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Posted by greg at
5:59 PM
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Comments (3)
I can't believe I ever actually wrote for a Conde Nast magazine. And not just once, either, repeatedly. What an embarrassment. The title of one of the cover stories in this month's issue of Details magazine caught my attention, just...
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Posted by greg at
12:17 AM
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Comments (10)
November 27, 2007
While the room itself is bigger, the closet in the kids' room is much smaller than in the kid's old room. So we need to get some actual storage furniture to hold their clothes. I really like the idea...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 AM
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Comments (11)
November 26, 2007
DT reader Darren and his gang are planning a trip to France and Switzerland soon, and he was considering putting his kid in a CARES Safety Harness--which is FAA-approved--rather than haul a freakin' car seat around the Alps on a...
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Posted by greg at
5:30 PM
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Comments (8)
As a perk of his wife's job, Bill Eville and his family live in pre-war, parklike splendor in the heart of Chelsea cathedral-like splendor near Columbia at the Union Theological Seminary. [I assume the picture at left was taken either...
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Posted by greg at
10:55 AM
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Comments (1)
H is for Holy Crap, we're gonna have another kid in a few weeks. My wife's now solidly in the Alien stage, where you can see her belly writhing from across the room. Superficially speaking, we're ready for the new...
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Posted by greg at
7:23 AM
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Comments (18)
November 23, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Post-it note drawing: H is for holycrap, originally uploaded by Marc Johns. After he made...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 AM
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Comments (0)
November 14, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Driving already, originally uploaded by plasticrevolver [and in no way related to the story below]....
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Posted by greg at
2:39 PM
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Comments (20)
November 13, 2007
So according to someone at the New York Times who probably just started toilet training her kid, these new [sic] automatic flush toilets everywhere are traumatizing young children. Like so many articles about Kids These Days, the real issue is,...
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Posted by greg at
7:53 AM
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Comments (6)
holy smokes, I'm tired. I'd ask when it all stops, and I can take a break, but we've got the other kid coming in like eight weeks now. plus the book, the house, the holidays, and on and on and...
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Posted by greg at
12:43 AM
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Comments (7)
November 9, 2007
A police raid on the house of the new head of the Sicilian Mafia netted a list of the ten commandments of Cosa Nostra--oh, and the head of the Sicilian Mafia, who looks more like [F. Murray] Abraham than Moses....
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Posted by greg at
11:15 PM
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Comments (0)
A team of researchers including Harvard psychologists Jesse Snedeker and Joy Geren published the results of their study of international adoptees, whose English-acquisition technique, they figured, might yield some interesting insights on how kids learn a language. It seems they...
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Posted by greg at
9:01 AM
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Comments (1)
November 8, 2007
As a New York Times reporter, Charlie LeDuff was a little bit Dharma Bum [drifter], a little Hunter S. Thompson [gonzo], a little Joseph Mitchell [character hound], and a little Joyce Wadler [crazy]. Now that's he's got a kid, and...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 PM
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Comments (3)
November 6, 2007
Because your dad might have picked up your mom there after listening to the sixth track on Eric Weber's 1975 album, Picking Up Girls Made Easy!: "Van Gogh? Who's that? You see, I don't know much about the Impressionists; I'm...
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Posted by greg at
8:40 AM
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Comments (1)
November 3, 2007
I really hope working for Harper's doesn't somehow disqualify Paul Ford for the MacArthur Fellowship, because he is our official Genius Of Love. Of his 100 ways to say, "I love you," the dad-specific ones are Nos. 36-40, 64 ["Say...
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Posted by greg at
6:14 PM
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Comments (0)
October 28, 2007
The DT browser tab clearance is on now: NYT Magazine: Looking for Their Children’s Birth Mothers Maggie Jones takes a personal look at the complicated emotional and cultural landscape of open international adoption. Though she and her husband decided to...
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Posted by greg at
6:06 PM
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Comments (0)
October 25, 2007
Because if I had to go by Mijka Samora's blog post, "The Nanny Arbitrage," I'd have to say no. Samora makes the argument--what used to be called "self-serving rationalization"--that paying a nanny off the books is not only awesome, the...
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Posted by greg at
8:54 AM
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Comments (21)
October 21, 2007
It's funny what three years of parenting will do to your attitudes on drugging children. Last week, I was plotting to promote an underground band of renegade dads, calculating their own doses of contraband decongestants, but in August 2004, when...
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Posted by greg at
1:58 PM
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Comments (3)
October 14, 2007
Recovergirl sets book traps and game traps for her sons, and they apparently always work:you can use book traps to divert your children to different parts of the house. I needed to clean the boy’s room but I knew...
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Posted by greg at
8:30 PM
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Comments (2)
October 11, 2007
So the major drug makers--members of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association--are voluntarily pulling their over-the-counter infant cough & cold medicines from the market rather than be forced by the FDA to pull them [or to put decades-old, grandfathered-in drugs through...
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Posted by greg at
8:15 PM
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Comments (12)
October 4, 2007
And by parenting nirvana, I meant, of course, that your kid could go to the fridge, get you a drink, and bring it back, and the fridge wouldn't be left wide open or dumped all over the floor? The...
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Posted by greg at
8:51 AM
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Comments (2)
September 28, 2007
Lead, schmead. It's good to see someone's tackling the real issues of burning importance to new dads these days. Like what order to show the Star Wars movies to your kid: Let's say you're a new father and a movie...
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Posted by greg at
10:53 AM
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Comments (7)
September 27, 2007
I just finished a very enticing account in PingMag of the Bologna Children's Book fair, which is held every spring [the 45th installment is coming in 2008.] It's more than a little breathless and boosterish. And as the title...
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Posted by greg at
4:08 PM
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Comments (2)
September 12, 2007
The Sept. 17 issue of The New Yorker has a long, fascinating, informative, but ultimately frustrating article on the vexing mysteries of colic. If your kid has colic, though, please don't use your one precious hour of quiet reading about...
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Posted by greg at
9:53 AM
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Comments (8)
September 9, 2007
"He's lookin' at dad, 'What am I doing in here?' 'Jes hang on,' the dad says." No ride longer than 3 seconds? We need a montage! No helmets in Caddo, OK's Rodeo, and it ain't never harmed them a bit....
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Posted by greg at
3:49 PM
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Comments (4)
September 8, 2007
Alright, Californian parents, stop talking about the size of your baby's penis and start explaining why the hell you are bringing babies and toddlers to freakin' slashfests. Here's SF Chronicle film reviewer Peter Hartlaub's second post about this mindboggling trend...
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Posted by greg at
12:59 PM
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Comments (12)
September 7, 2007
Is this just Californiatalk or did Josh from Cookie's Daddy Underground blog stumble upon something mothers have known about for years--but don't mention in front of their baby daddies? Or when you have a boy, everyone just talks about his...
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Posted by greg at
1:03 PM
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Comments (6)
September 1, 2007
25-yo Minnesota Twins pitcher Scott Baker and his wife Leean's second son Easton was born Friday before last, five weeks premature. Baker took a few days off, then hustled the clan back to Minneapolis to pitch the second game of...
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Posted by greg at
11:09 PM
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Comments (0)
August 27, 2007
You may know Henry Hill--the original Wiseguy who informed [sic] Nick Pileggi's book which became Scorsese's and Liotta's Goodfellas--from a question in the Movies Edition of Trivial Pursuit that you bought at a garage sale for a quarter and...
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Posted by greg at
2:13 PM
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Comments (1)
August 25, 2007
My second reaction to Freakonomicist Steven Levitt's strategy of focusing on teaching his kids the things they won't automatically pick up at school, like creativity, instead of math and reading: brilliant. [Note: for purposes of Freakonomics, "Creativity" is defined...
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Posted by greg at
1:20 PM
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Comments (1)
August 23, 2007
So while I didn't get on CBS yesterday, I did get a quote in the Washington Post's article about the latest developments in the whole Bisphenol A toxic plastic baby bottle controversy. [I guess that means I'm not TV-hot, only...
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Posted by greg at
3:42 PM
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Comments (2)
So the kid and I just read Mister Tall, one of the Roger Hargreaves books, and I know some old man at the Wall Street Journal will harrumph when I say it, but the book's just too damn long and...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 AM
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Comments (15)
August 20, 2007
DT reader, advertiser, and mailing list drawing prize donor Mark from Sparkability took a break from his sweet kids design guru-ing to email his list of the Top Ten Most Needed Kids Products:Cribs under $400 Doll/Play furniture (crib/cradle/highchair) Cookie Jar...
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Posted by greg at
1:40 PM
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Comments (6)
August 17, 2007
You know how, around the beginning of the year, Babble was launching at the same time Neal Pollack's book was released, and Babble's reviewer kind of threw a hissy fit, as if there was only one seat left in the...
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Posted by greg at
1:10 PM
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Comments (2)
I am totally floored. The playwright Arthur Miller had a son with Down Syndrome in 1966 who he never publicly acknowledged and all but wrote out of his life. [What an odd choice of words, under the circumstances.] The boy,...
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Posted by greg at
12:30 AM
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Comments (4)
August 13, 2007
Writer and creative block expert Susan O'Doherty's teaching an interesting-sounding seminar tomorrow night at Mediabistro in NYC:How to balance your job as a mom and your job as a writer It's possible to be both a great mom and a...
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Posted by greg at
11:29 AM
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Comments (4)
August 3, 2007
Good L-rd, people, PLEASE tell me you are not out there choosing your mohels based on which celebrity offspring penises he's circumcised?! Just check out what happened to Babble contributor Sam Apple when he went chop-shopping at the JCC:Thirteen circumcisions...
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Posted by greg at
1:04 PM
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Comments (2)
July 30, 2007
Old blogger/new dad Jason answers the burning question, "iPhone, Wiimote, or newborn baby: which has the best built-in accelerometer?" [here's a hint: it's the one with the Moro Reflex plug-in installed]. Surprisingly, he doesn't make the next leap of logic:...
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Posted by greg at
5:16 PM
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Comments (0)
July 21, 2007
Can I be frank and honest and open? The only happy stay-at-home dads are the bloggers. The rest are insecure, career-abandoning losers with no friends. So get some friends, you say? With a LinkedIn profile that says "SAHD"? Good luck...
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Posted by greg at
7:35 AM
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Comments (13)
July 18, 2007
When daddytypes was born, I started the category UrbanBabyWatch. The idea was to sift through the impenetrable archives of just-the-girls talk and pull out those rare, invaluable, or at least useful, nuggets of information dads needed to know. Screw that....
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Posted by greg at
1:01 PM
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Comments (2)
July 17, 2007
A DT reader--we'll call him Joel--has a problem. It's not his wife Lana who, by insisting he get that low-mileage, late model Porsche 928 GT, sounds like what every white boy off the Lake wants. No, Joel's problem is...
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Posted by greg at
4:11 PM
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Comments (4)
July 12, 2007
Lead painted Thomas engines, poisonous Veggie Booty powder, rubber duckies with a 5,000-year landfill half-life, the environmental insanity of shipping Fiji Water around the world. DT reader Shawna emailed with a question I've been wondering myself. Are there any "conscientious...
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Posted by greg at
1:12 PM
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Comments (17)
June 27, 2007
The new Babblepedia is a wiki-style advice site for parents--or at least the cool, urban sub-demo--that aims to be an "encyclopedia of parenting knowledge that anyone can edit!" [Or add your two cents to, anyway. Make your contribution funny...
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Posted by greg at
12:19 PM
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Comments (3)
June 25, 2007
All the editors at BritLit journal Spiked Online asked for was a Those Crazy Americans! article on these so-called Park Slope Parents they'd just read about three weeks ago in the Telegraph. Is that so hard? Instead, Nancy McDermott's critique...
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Posted by greg at
5:47 PM
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Comments (0)
June 22, 2007
Silly mums with their Munch-like Screamfaces. This nightmare would never happen to dads. We don't have purses to drape over the stroller handles, so when we leave the kid on the street, there wouldn't be anything to grab for....
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Posted by greg at
7:59 PM
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Comments (0)
June 21, 2007
First off, I think I have to call BS on the Village Voice's cover story on gay toddlers: it's horribly written, full of unnecessarily incendiary mock-shock that is an insult to the paper's supposedly progressive and aware heritage. You'd almost...
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Posted by greg at
5:51 PM
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Comments (2)
The kid's been on a kick about dying [or as she puts it, "getting dead"] lately. It started with balloons and flowers, then animals, roadkill, the disappearing creatures at the National Zoo [old people, then wanting to know why people...
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Posted by greg at
7:11 AM
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Comments (1)
June 5, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, the British NHS [no, I don't know what it stands for; probably some raging communist thing] published an 8-page magazine supplement titled, 37 Things Every Man Should Know Before He Becomes A Dad which,...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 PM
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Comments (2)
June 2, 2007
Don't mean what they say. Fortunately, there's MetroDad, The Tina Weymouth of our parenting generation, to keep making sense of it all. His Parentionary provides the "True Meaning" of the phrases parents hear and use everyday, whether it's the meaning...
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Posted by greg at
4:52 PM
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Comments (0)
May 29, 2007
Happy freakin' Father's Day to you, too, Graco. Oh, and you're welcome. My dad asked me what kind of portable crib he should get for the beach [our kid sleeps in her own bed, but my sister's 1.5yo needed a...
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Posted by greg at
3:03 PM
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Comments (12)
May 19, 2007
Let me preface this by saying I haven't ever seen Cats or Phantom, but I'm sick of them. And even I was choked up when I watched this. The British education expert Sir Ken Robinson spoke at TED last year...
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Posted by greg at
3:36 PM
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Comments (1)
May 18, 2007
Magazines drive me crazy with their boil-it-down oversimplification and poppy listicle infographic entry points and the utter subjugation of actual, actionable content to the "overall" reading experience, which is actually about their advertisers, not you [1]. The tagline Esquire magazine...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 AM
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Comments (6)
May 15, 2007
NOTE: unless you can't read, there is no reason for you to click on either of these videos. You hear me? NO reason. at. all. 495] Hold the damn kid's damn hand, dammit. That's why they call it Times Square,...
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Posted by greg at
11:05 PM
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Comments (2)
May 3, 2007
Slate has short reviews of two books that deal with the unspoken or unregulated implications of fertility treatments: Liza Mundy's Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Men, Women, and the World and Peggy Orenstein's more experiential Waiting For Daisy,...
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Posted by greg at
7:20 AM
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Comments (3)
April 30, 2007
When it comes to preserving your aura of omniscience, I would've thought Wikipedia would be a parent's best friend, but no such luck. I'm sure it's partly because I try to tell the kid when I don't know something,...
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Posted by greg at
1:18 PM
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Comments (9)
April 26, 2007
A 2.5-yo toddler from Braintree, Essex, England got a toilet training seat stuck on his head. His mom took him to the fire station, where the firemen lubed the kid's head and ears with dishwashing liquid and slid the...
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Posted by greg at
11:21 AM
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Comments (3)
April 23, 2007
Lessee, 3pm, that means it's lunchtime on the Coast. Sorry. Because she was concerned with the increasing frequency of Caesarian births at hospitals these days, Ricki Lake produced a documentary about the Delivery Industrial Complex which debuts this weekend at...
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Posted by greg at
3:05 PM
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Comments (5)
April 19, 2007
Most folks have a governor on their flow of unsolicited advice, and while New Yorkers probably have theirs jammed open much wider than average, I could fill a whole blog with the hundreds of suggestions I bit my lip on...
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Posted by greg at
11:14 AM
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Comments (9)
April 17, 2007
Mr. McGroovy is dad and an art teacher-turned-entrepreneur, the success of who's main product, Mr. McGroovy's Box Rivets, is almost entirely dependent on getting more parents to make more play-related structures for their kids out of large cardboard boxes. On...
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Posted by greg at
2:06 PM
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Comments (4)
April 13, 2007
After he founded and left Mad! magazine, Harvey Kurtzman edited Help!. Suck.com co-founder Joey Anuff posted a collection of Kurtzman art, including the layout notes for the Feb. 1964 cover above, which tell a bit about how they got...
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Posted by greg at
1:40 PM
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Comments (3)
April 12, 2007
Not quite sure what the takeaway is from the NY Times' eleven years later follow-up article on men in their 60's, 70's, and 80's having kids, other than that the original article's star dad, Tony Randall, died in 2004 at...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 AM
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Comments (2)
March 30, 2007
Whatryagonnado? Here's a quote from Emily Bazelon's article about what the results of the latest NICHD day care study really do and don't mean[study author Margaret] Burchinal points out that on average, day care for infants and toddlers is worse...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 AM
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Comments (8)
March 28, 2007
Can't decide whether to file this one in the Never-on-Bloggingbaby folder, or the Front-Page-of-StrollerDerby folder. Or maybe the health risks to the fetus of extra-marital blowjobs during pregnancy are significant enough to warrant their own folder. From Dan Savage's...
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Posted by greg at
8:22 AM
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Comments (2)
March 27, 2007
Over at GearAbility, Marty has the first in a series of posts and photos about being raised in--and then raising her own daughter in--an Air Crib. Marty's family was friends with B.F. Skinner, the famous Harvard psychologist who invented the...
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Posted by greg at
8:26 AM
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Comments (5)
March 20, 2007
Oops. I made the mistake of inviting the kid over to watch this Chris Ware animation, which was released as a preview to the new This American Life TV show that starts Thursday on Showtime. I figured, cartoons, cute...
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Posted by greg at
3:19 PM
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Comments (3)
March 14, 2007
So we've noticed lately, maybe for a few months now, the kid holds her breath a lot. Then she gasps/breathes kind of loudly. It's the same breathing pattern you hear while pounding a sippy cup, maybe with slightly shorter intervals....
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Posted by greg at
8:47 PM
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Comments (6)
March 12, 2007
Suffice it to say that when it comes to hair, and particularly to perceptions, ideals of beauty, and norms of socialization, white folk have been messing with black folks' heads long before they actually started caring for them. Which...
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Posted by greg at
3:07 PM
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Comments (5)
March 4, 2007
The obviousness of this NYT article on how a few childrearing gurus in Los Angeles was getting really annoying: Neighbors and friends and people who work together refer each other to the same sleep consultants??! Self-absorbed agents want solutions to...
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Posted by greg at
11:04 PM
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Comments (0)
Yes, that's the gist of this article in the Wall Street Journal. Over the course of 17 years, parents with more money spend more money raising their kids. Some people even spend up to--wait for it--one million dollars. The...
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Posted by greg at
4:27 PM
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Comments (1)
March 2, 2007
You take an ad from an idiot, you suggest live on the air of your cable news program that your female guest come to your office to pose for nude photos. Everyone makes choices that, in retrospect, look a less...
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Posted by greg at
1:22 PM
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Comments (2)
February 27, 2007
Idaho dad Anthony Doerr takes a break from hipster parenting to agonize over the devastating amount of trash his family generates. His, yours and ours, that is:Before I became a parent, I didn’t bother to think about garbage all that...
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Posted by greg at
10:10 AM
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Comments (1)
February 26, 2007
Seriously, where to start? It was only a matter of time until NY Times columnist David turned his shopping=culture magnifying glass onto 'hipster parents', who are identified by their "hummus snacks," and their "abusively pretentious children’s names like Anouschka...
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Posted by greg at
7:05 PM
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Comments (2)
February 22, 2007
Now that's what I call progress! Just a couple of weeks ago, MomsRising was just another post-feminist attempt to reinvigorate interest in demanding improvements to intractable issues of work-family balance that nevertheless focused exclusively on women and mothers, basically taking...
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Posted by greg at
8:48 PM
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Comments (0)
February 12, 2007
Lactation consultants in Liverpool are deploying handknit model breasts to teach new mothers proper latching and milk expressing techniques. The idea started when one consultant brought a pair in from home and got a favorable response. More were needed, though,...
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Posted by greg at
9:28 PM
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Comments (3)
So supposedly, London's private preschools are a madhouse to get into, but not like New York's. It's not based on the parents, or some gnomic playdate/audition; it's first-come-first-served from the moment of birth. Only now that the numbers are so...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (0)
February 8, 2007
So I read Jessica Francis Kane's somewhat agonized [not a rant, she gets full credit for that] rumination on Babble about the new set of complications that arise from having a perfect, involved dad for a husband. And I come...
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Posted by greg at
11:27 PM
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Comments (1)
February 7, 2007
A reformed burglar gave PFAdvice some tips on where to hide your money and valuables at home. The first tip: have a plausible-looking decoy stash with some stuff in it [in NYC, they used to call this your 'mugger...
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Posted by greg at
11:07 AM
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Comments (2)
February 4, 2007
Pitt fan Caleb has been at-home dadding for going on six years now, and when they started thinking of him going back to work, he ran some numbers. Factored in: the cost of childcare for two kids the marginal...
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Posted by greg at
2:10 PM
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Comments (9)
February 1, 2007
Not quite sure what the hook is, but the advocacy organization Moms Rising got a nice profile on CNN Money a little while ago. Moms Rising was started by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner and MoveOn co-founder Joan Blades as part of the...
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Posted by greg at
1:42 PM
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Comments (1)
January 31, 2007
From the Park Slope Parents listserv, The case of the missing toy strollers:When she lost his other toy stroller, we didn't charge her for it, but this one is just really all the more aggravating because of the prior history...
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Posted by greg at
3:00 PM
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Comments (0)
January 29, 2007
Am I just blindly internalizing an inefficient social norm as a way to mitigate my own costs? I mean, forget the seat; doesn't the toilet just look better with the lid down, the way it was designed? Siddiqi, H. (2006):...
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Posted by greg at
8:56 AM
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Comments (8)
January 25, 2007
Q:Dear Daddy Types, I'm a dad in Florida. Over Christmas, a swarm of bees flew out of my neighbor's wall and engulfed by children's swingset. I tried throwing the 40 lb trailer hitch from our Dodge Caravan at them, but...
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Posted by greg at
4:28 PM
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Comments (6)
CBC arts critic stopped watching Much Music long enough to dump a Diaper Genie II full of hate on "hipster parents," which this week means Neal Pollack's Alternadad and Nerve.com's new parenting website, Babble.On several occasions, Pollack rhapsodizes about his...
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Posted by greg at
12:01 PM
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Comments (2)
January 24, 2007
OK, so I don't talk about the kid's school on the blog, but this is about furniture. I'm supposed to oversee the class project, which'll be auctioned off to raise money for tuition assistance. We're making a play table and...
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Posted by greg at
3:04 PM
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Comments (9)
January 18, 2007
Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up sucking up to the Baby Industrial Complex. First, Consumer Reports blows it, so the kid's riding around in a European deathseat; the shady phone store can't unlock my new,...
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Posted by greg at
10:52 PM
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Comments (21)
January 17, 2007
About six weeks before the kid was born, I was checking out a flock of strollers parked in the gym lobby, when the owners, a group of Tribeca moms, showed up. After figuring out I wasn't trying to steal their...
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Posted by greg at
1:02 AM
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Comments (66)
January 11, 2007
After an enthusiastic embrace of the new toddler bed and love-at-first sight with the ghost, the kid has had a really rough week sleepwise. Most nights, the problem's been not going to sleep. The first couple of nights were great,...
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Posted by greg at
6:42 PM
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Comments (6)
Child Friendly Australia is an advocacy initiative launched last year by National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN). Their first advertisement, titled "Children See, Children Do," is aimed at getting parents--and all adults, according to the...
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Posted by greg at
1:00 PM
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Comments (2)
Another datapoint for the Doing Major Renovation Projects While Pregnant file, from the NYT. The Olsons' blog about their DIY renovation is called HouseinProgress.net:“One thing I always ask myself is, ‘is this really about the light fixture or something more?’...
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Posted by greg at
9:45 AM
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Comments (1)
January 10, 2007
Funny, I don't remember 1994 looking like the zany cruft on an Exersaucer. And I don't recall Post-Modernism retaining even half that credibility as long as it does in Steven Heller and Steven Guarnaccia's book, Designing For Children [first mentioned...
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Posted by greg at
3:06 PM
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Comments (0)
January 8, 2007
When little Natalie was almost two, her entire future hinged on how well she performed during the succession of 30-40 minute play auditions for Brooklyn's private pre-schools. A veritable Burgess Meredith to Natalie's Rocky, dad Tom Roston accompanied his daughter...
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Posted by greg at
8:16 AM
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Comments (1)
January 5, 2007
The NY Times film critic tries to buck the imagination-stifling money machines that are "family films":I cringe at the sight of strollers at “Apocalypto” or “Saw III.” But I also cringe at the timidity and cautiousness — the hypersensitivity —...
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Posted by greg at
8:38 AM
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Comments (2)
January 1, 2007
Consumerist got a report from Brady, a dad in Burlington, Vermont who works nights and stays home days with his 14-month-old son during the day. Turns out Brady & Son went to Playdate, and indoor gym-type deal at the University...
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Posted by greg at
9:28 PM
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Comments (0)
First Sgt. Charles King didn't take leave for the birth of his first son, Jordan, his fiancee, Dana Canedy writes, because he refused to come home ahead of any of the young soldiers under his command. [He did take two...
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Posted by greg at
5:44 PM
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Comments (4)
Every year now since 1996, EDGE has been asking a few really smart and/or talky people to answer a Big Question. This year, it was, "What are you optimistic about, and why?" Set aside for a moment the tautological critique...
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Posted by greg at
12:34 PM
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Comments (1)
December 5, 2006
Am I the only one not convinced that a 529 savings plan is the only way to save money for future education expenses? I want to save as much as possible for the Kid's future—but what if her future...
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Posted by dt-andy at
10:25 AM
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Comments (5)
November 27, 2006
So the kid's been pretty much a rock star on the toilet training front since the summer, which we figured was our deadline, since she obviously had to be ready to go to school in September, right? Wrong. Toilet training...
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Posted by greg at
10:47 AM
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Comments (6)
November 25, 2006
So I was flipping through my wife's Vogue, trying to help her get out the door by distracting the kid, and so I do an off-the-cuff play-by-play of each page, that is until the kid goes, "Tell me the story...
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Posted by greg at
3:33 PM
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Comments (4)
November 22, 2006
Pregnant but too busy to do anything about it? Why not let the experts at Baby Planners take care of all that annoying stuff like finding and reading pregnancy books, getting gear and furniture and setting up a nursery, finding...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
2:17 PM
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Comments (0)
November 21, 2006
All I can figure is that someone from the crib bumper industrial complex must have deleted my email announcement from someone in the sleepsack industrial complex. Anyway, kid sleeps, rests, and hangs on his back. No loose or puffy bedding....
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Posted by greg at
11:56 AM
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Comments (2)
November 17, 2006
DT reader Jeff asks a question that we struggle with ourselves. It seems like the first thing to get cut from a busy schedule, where you're being pulled in different directions by work, the kid, family, etc., is the gym....
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Posted by greg at
1:15 AM
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Comments (10)
November 16, 2006
The kid can count to 20 in one breath, and she can add and subtract numbers up to 4. But every once in a while, it really hits home, the difference between these kind of toddlery parlor tricks and a...
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Posted by greg at
8:10 PM
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Comments (0)
November 15, 2006
Let's be real about something: Einstein was a freak. Do you really want your kid to be spelling bee-winning, college-at-12-going, forgets-to-eat-for-3-days-zoning freak? No. So put down that DVD and that womb music enhancement system--which don't work anyway--and read Alissa Quart's...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 AM
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Comments (4)
November 10, 2006
This explains a lot, but it also opens a host of new questions. Baby. Still, it's a relief to finally know why she's turned into a TV-addicted, fartaholic diva lately. 5-1, I guess she really is my daughter [metrodad]...
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Posted by greg at
8:41 PM
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Comments (0)
The kid's been having nightmares pretty regularly these days. This week, it's been bugs. She'd wake up in the middle of the night, crying, "I don't like spiders!" And my wife'd have to go in and shoo the spiders away...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 AM
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Comments (2)
October 31, 2006
DT reader Mark asks a question I'd never thought of before:Do you know any hotels in NYC with daycares? My lovely wife wants to come to New York with me for work, and it would be fun for the kiddo...
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Posted by greg at
2:43 PM
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Comments (8)
I am absolutely slammed at work, with a deadline for today. The kid's off to Grandma's for Halloween, but here is what she did yesterday: Sesame Street Sesame Street Looked for the Wiggles, weren't on. Read a dozen little...
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Posted by greg at
10:14 AM
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Comments (8)
October 29, 2006
Spanking your kids helps them succeed in business and/or capital crimes, so get crackin! Someone needs to take this columnist out to the woodshed and teach him a lesson--a lesson in how to make embarassing attempts to shrug off the...
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Posted by greg at
11:57 AM
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Comments (0)
October 28, 2006
Heartening news for the SAHD's out there looking for playgroups and playdates. The NY Times says it's the newest trend. For for Stay At Home Dog owners:Nothing involving pets, though, is just about the animal. Just as it’s no secret...
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Posted by greg at
12:35 PM
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Comments (1)
October 27, 2006
Flush with our culture's stunning victory in The Mommy Wars [I guess we showed those capitalist moms who's boss, eh, Caitlin?], pundits may be looking to open a new front in the global war on parenting. So in his weekly...
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Posted by greg at
10:32 AM
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Comments (2)
In addition to being a source of fun, entertainment, note-comparing, germ-swapping, and polysyllabic conversation, good playgroups can save an at-home parent's sanity, too. But for a whole host of reasons, they can also be awkward or even unwelcoming for dads....
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Posted by greg at
12:09 AM
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Comments (3)
October 25, 2006
This Wall St Journal article talks about early diagnosis of autism and anxiety disorder in infants [signs: crying, agitation, inability to express self, mood swings, what?], but my diagnosis is there's a whole lot of projection going on. Parents' own...
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Posted by greg at
10:30 AM
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Comments (0)
October 21, 2006
So for three+ years, GamerDad.com has been a leading independent, pioneering resource to help parents get involved with their kids' video gameplaying. Started by a tech journalist and at-home dad and edited by parents and gaming enthusiasts, it's a...
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Posted by greg at
11:46 PM
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Comments (1)
October 14, 2006
Californians are all up in their own grilles over a new ban on cellphones while driving. From the LA Times: The distraction caused by children is likely at least as serious a problem as cellphones. Unlike cellphones, it is not...
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Posted by greg at
11:21 AM
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Comments (2)
October 12, 2006
They say, "write what you know." Malcolm Gladwell spoke to a conference of pychologists about precociousness, prodigies, and how bunk it is to use Mozart and even Einstein as justification for what amounts to a misguided obsession with childhood...
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Posted by greg at
2:14 PM
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Comments (5)
October 10, 2006
While there seems to be no solution as yet for the awkwardness that is a first birthday party [1], Big Daddy Drew does have some suggestions for saving the talking-with-dads-you-don't-know situation--by turning the conversation to the NFL:Bring up a game...
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Posted by greg at
6:12 PM
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Comments (2)
September 24, 2006
To New York Magazine's credit, they seem to recognize at least some of the insanity behind their "It'll cost you $4 million to totally outsource your kid" article last week. [I mean come on, $1.8mm is for 14 hr/day on-call...
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Posted by greg at
3:52 PM
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Comments (2)
September 18, 2006
Who'da thought? Nickelodeon not only bought GoCityKids.com last winter [$1 million, if you're keeping score at home], they've launched what the NY Times all but calls a MySpace For Parents, but what the rest of us might call a hosted...
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Posted by greg at
3:09 PM
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Comments (4)
September 16, 2006
Little did I know that while Metrodad, Laid-off Dad and I were pounding'em back, our kids were off somewhere trading notes, too. The last few weeks, the kid's been giving me the Heisman stiff-arm. A lot. Whenever my wife's around,...
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Posted by greg at
2:08 PM
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Comments (4)
And so we come full circle in the whorl of surveillance-media-consumer-parenting society. I Saw Your Nanny [isawyournanny.blogspot.com] wants you to send in your sightings of inappropriate nanny behavior, and "if you are able to capture a photograph of the nanny...
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Posted by greg at
12:40 PM
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Comments (14)
DT: As a consumer in a celebrity-focused culture, I find it interesting, but as a parent, I have to say, it's really hard to see; I mean, parenting's hard enough if there's not paparazzi staked out in front of your...
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Posted by greg at
12:04 PM
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Comments (0)
September 15, 2006
The afternoon nap has now been moved, in two equal parts, to 9PM and 8AM. Please plan your workouts accordingly. Thank you....
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Posted by greg at
8:41 AM
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Comments (0)
September 13, 2006
It's a good thing I got back from Las Vegas when I did; turns out there are too many wet pairs of underpants around the house for one parent to handle easily by herself. The kid's in a state we...
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Posted by greg at
10:36 PM
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Comments (6)
September 7, 2006
So we had the first event for the kid's little class at pre-school last night, a playdate at the school playground, and it went pretty well. {Except that while rushing to cut grape clusters while taking a meeting on the...
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Posted by greg at
9:22 AM
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Comments (7)
September 6, 2006
Thanks for a lot of really thoughtful comments about the "died doing what he loved" post. I have to say, a real standout came from fellow not-so-extreme skier Jon, who not only writes at length about the "other side," [i.e,...
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Posted by greg at
6:20 AM
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Comments (0)
September 5, 2006
And by "this country," I mean "Connecticut." The NY Times wades into the whole Chinese Nannies For The Children Of The Overclass thing a bit late, but don't worry, they've got a new angle: Chinese Au Pairs. See? Completely different....
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Posted by greg at
4:19 PM
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Comments (0)
September 1, 2006
A distraught mom wrote in to the Washington Post because their 3.5-yo son is obsessed with Disney Princesses: wants to play dress up rather than go outside, even insists on a Disney Princess birthday party. "So far, my husband and...
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Posted by greg at
2:30 PM
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Comments (3)
August 31, 2006
Angry hipster Ryan:Last weekend I was on my way to Riverside Skatepark when I very nearly walked right through a stream of urine being expelled from a toddler. I was walking down the sidewalk staring up at the trees when...
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Posted by greg at
9:44 PM
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Comments (13)
When we went to the hospital Sunday night before the kid was born, I actually brought my laptop--and a speakerphone. See, they had just released all 5,200 designs for the WTC Memorial competition, and I was maybe gonna be interviewing...
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Posted by greg at
11:16 AM
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Comments (29)
August 28, 2006
Well that did not go well. We're winding up a long weekend with all the kid's cousins, ages 11, 8, 5, 2, 18 mos, and 9 mos., and the kid has been bouncing around like a ping pong ball. It's...
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Posted by greg at
10:48 PM
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Comments (8)
So we're on vacation with the family, all seven cousins and assorted aunts, uncles and grandparents, and the kid's sleeping on a little blanket nest in the corner of our room. The other morning, around 5, we heard a series...
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Posted by greg at
12:06 PM
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Comments (6)
August 23, 2006
A long, rambling article about hovering, hyperattentive parents and the threat they pose to their children--and to civilization as we know it. Overprogramming; lack of unsupervised, self-directed play; parents on cell phone speed-dial from birth to age 30; finagling dubious...
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Posted by greg at
6:19 PM
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Comments (1)
Now that both his son and his first wife are dead [suicide, diseases brought on by lifelong coke addiction, respectively], curmudgeonly art critic Robert Hughes decides that "promiscuous sex with many anonymous partners without protection while at the same time...
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Posted by greg at
11:11 AM
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Comments (0)
August 20, 2006
Rand Richards Cooper has a great essay in the NY Times Magazine about becoming a new father late(r), in his forties:The prospect of life and death in the balance brings a metaphysical dimension to what I began calling “late-onset fatherhood.”...
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Posted by greg at
2:40 PM
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Comments (1)
August 19, 2006
New dad Raj publishes his socially and environmentally conscious blog, Green Parenting, from the heart of that notorious hippy enclave, Houston, Texas. Every month, he interviews his daughter, Lila for the blog. Here's an excerpt from the latest:Me:...Why is it...
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Posted by greg at
10:22 AM
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Comments (0)
August 18, 2006
Even when I'm getting stiff-armed at the driveways of publicists' swag-filled beach houses, some aspects of my non-dadblogging life still put celebrities in my path. No so much hanging out, mind you, just running into. If they have kids, we've...
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Posted by greg at
11:25 AM
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Comments (5)
August 15, 2006
Maybe it's just me, but even if I was breastfeeding too long, I don't think it'd help to have my rabbi describe my breasts as "an attractive cafeteria rather than a scintillating piece of flesh." Kosher Coupling by Shmuley Boteach:...
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Posted by greg at
1:20 PM
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Comments (5)
August 8, 2006
You know what's funny about England? They speak English, but they still have different names for things. They have a best-selling, but controversial cry-it-out baby scheduler like Dr. Ferber, only her name is Gina Ford. And their Urbanbaby, a message...
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Posted by greg at
3:29 PM
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Comments (1)
August 5, 2006
I think this is so true, except I prefer the term, "emperor-for-life":A pattern is established in childbirth and breastfeeding that can be hard to break, observes Greg Allen, author of the blog Daddytypes. The mother becomes the expert first, then...
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Posted by greg at
6:25 PM
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Comments (3)
August 4, 2006
A recent University of Melbourne study of new dads who work outside the home while their new mom partners do most all the "housework" and baby care, and who, while taking twice as much leisure time as their partners, still...
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Posted by greg at
2:41 PM
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Comments (0)
August 1, 2006
Seriously, in one week the UK's Daily Mail runs stories called Sorry, but my children bore me to death! AND Sorry, but I HATED Breastfeeding. With a beefy Irish nurse shouting, "Your baby is hungry! These are not for playing...
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Posted by greg at
10:10 PM
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Comments (14)
Helen Kirwan-Taylor is apparently Britain's answer to the NY Times' shop-and-call-it-work columnist Alex Kuczynski, if not exactly their Candace Bushnell [Oh well, everyone needs to dream]. She writes at length about everything from parties to decorating to shopping to remodelling--she...
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Posted by greg at
1:48 PM
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Comments (3)
Students of journalism in the UK and US have proved that long articles by parents flouting their selfishness and repeatedly calling themselves "brave" for admitting how bored they are with their kids will elicit much heated, indignant response from readers....
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Posted by greg at
12:38 PM
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Comments (1)
July 28, 2006
When the topic has come up around here, we have learned that, colloquially speaking, "so they can get more play" is a not uncommon reason guys give for deciding to have their sons circumcised. Well, if one of your rationales...
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Posted by greg at
2:12 PM
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Comments (0)
July 27, 2006
Grrr. I get hyper-irritable when I read articles that reflexively namecheck Betty Friedan in their opening sentence and then proceed to discuss the dilemmas, stresses, and oft-ensuing depression that come with parenting, but that don't make a single freakin' mention...
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Posted by greg at
2:41 PM
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Comments (5)
July 25, 2006
There are over 4,000 photos in the Stick Figures in Peril photopool on flickr, including the above image of an exploding pram, shot by dan in deutschland in Paris. Narrowing the pool to baby-tagged images yields a manageable number...
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Posted by greg at
2:38 PM
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Comments (0)
July 21, 2006
Finally, Amy Sohn has some useful information. [Sohn, of course, after getting herself knocked up, had to trade in her NY Mag sex columnist beat for the parenting one. It's been rough going, as you can expect--and as the whiny...
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Posted by greg at
6:17 PM
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Comments (1)
July 19, 2006
A New Zealand Christian "Guide to Smacking". Somehow, I think I got the quotes in the wrong place let me try that again. A New Zealand "Christian" "Guide to Smacking." There, that's better. Grounding, giving children 'time out', making them...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 AM
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Comments (1)
July 17, 2006
Let your kid watch whatever you want, but just make sure the TV is anchored to the wall. According to a single Houston-area hospital's statistics, front-heavy TV's have fallen on toddlers 11 times in the last year, causing five deaths...
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Posted by greg at
1:40 PM
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Comments (1)
Would you believe that I had this ready days ago, but the server went down just as I was posting it? Actually, I was waiting until Jay "The Zero Boss" Allen came back to the dadblogworld. Now here's a wildly...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 AM
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Comments (0)
July 15, 2006
Just spotted this photo in the sidebar; it's from the fathers & babies photoset on flickr, and it's of a dad with his daughter's handprints inked on his back. Reminded me of the dad tattoo post a few months...
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Posted by greg at
8:06 AM
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Comments (2)
July 14, 2006
OK, so the story's a couple of years old now, as is little Andrew, who's probably gotten into plenty of trouble with the credit card companies all by himself now, but still. This story about a 5-month-old baby having his...
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Posted by greg at
11:08 AM
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Comments (1)
Jessica Francis Kane's no Judith Warner, fortunately, but she does take a look at "Supermoms" of her/our generation and the bind she sees them get into when it comes to shared parenting:the woman who ultimately wants to mix work and...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 AM
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Comments (1)
July 13, 2006
We're right in the middle of toilet training--so far so good, and the only bribes we've been using are the underpants themselves, and the shopping for them, and the opening the package, and the special underwear box to put...
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Posted by greg at
4:13 PM
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Comments (1)
July 10, 2006
By analyzing the way chicks dig a guy with a baby, and comparing it to the parenting technique of the sloth in Ice Age, then performing a regression analysis on the title of a ten-year-old book on how Japanese men...
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Posted by greg at
5:32 PM
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Comments (2)
July 7, 2006
Not anymore. If you're a CEO with more money than time to spend, you're in luck. USA Today's Small Business blog mentions a couple of agencies who can place a well-qualified nanny in charge of your children's lives--or even a...
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Posted by greg at
2:43 PM
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Comments (0)
June 29, 2006
Since no one else in the birthing/parenting/pregnancy industrial complex was talking about it, sex writer Susie Bright goes on a long, very open, and very revealing exploration of women's actual sexual experience during pregnancy, during delivery, and after giving birth....
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Posted by greg at
1:52 PM
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Comments (3)
June 22, 2006
Why does the kid seriously freak out when I wash her hair? Still? It's been like this for a long time now. From before she could even sit up, and I had to cradle her head and shoulders in the...
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Posted by greg at
10:49 PM
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Comments (24)
We were not one of those couples who prepared ourselves for having a kid by getting a puppy first. And neither of us is pet people, really, so I really never gave a second thought to the potential risks and...
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Posted by greg at
9:52 PM
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Comments (4)
June 13, 2006
Is it a random coincidence? A lack of vision about any other meaningful role for a dad? A traditional limitation on the way a dad's role is articulated today? Is it the weird, hothouse environment of a press conference or...
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Posted by greg at
2:20 PM
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Comments (5)
Washington, DC writer W. Ralph Eubanks talks regularly to his father--in his dreams--and has ever since his father died when Eubanks was 18:But the dreams have changed as the years have gone by. At first, I was still Daddy's little...
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Posted by greg at
12:54 AM
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Comments (0)
June 11, 2006
There's a looong article by a new dad in today's UK Observer. I tried to find the Big Idea nuggets to quote and give a sense of the whole thing, but there's really so much in there, it's like dads...
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Posted by greg at
2:43 PM
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Comments (0)
June 7, 2006
It's this weird guy thing, I guess, where I get busy, busier, and then I cut back on surfing and checking in on all the blogs for a week, then two, then... then it's just embarassment at being out of...
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Posted by greg at
10:16 PM
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Comments (1)
June 6, 2006
As every documentary filmmaker knows, British accents are far more believable. So it's worth taking a listen to this NPR story from yesterday [6/5], in which UK psychologist Ian St. James-Roberts [a hyphen like that? It MUST be true!] discusses...
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Posted by greg at
3:21 PM
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Comments (1)
Slate writer Emily Bazelon was worried that cry-it-out guru Dr. Richard Ferber's new edition of his book was gonna be all backtracky and soft about co-sleeping and stuff. Apparently, she needn't have worried. The book still has charts and timetables...
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Posted by greg at
3:03 PM
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Comments (0)
June 5, 2006
Dwell Magazine has definitely been drinking from the baby bar these days; the last few issues have had more kidstuff in them than a babystyle catalogue. The June issue has a story about a Portland, OR, family's renovation of a...
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Posted by greg at
3:31 PM
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Comments (4)
May 22, 2006
We've started the toilet training process, basically following Brazelton's approach. Last night my wife came across this shoutout to Brazelton in Dr. Spock [the 7th ed.], which mixes praise with a healthy dose of March of Freedom-style American Triumphalism. Guess...
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Posted by greg at
8:40 AM
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Comments (11)
May 19, 2006
The kid's been on a beautiful bender lately, calling all sorts of things "beautiful." Usually, it's the expected things that she hears [paintings, dresses, mommy]. Sometimes it's profound enough to make you scratch your head [the purple sky and skyline...
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Posted by greg at
11:10 AM
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Comments (4)
May 15, 2006
One of the unanticipated lessons of last week's JPMA show: nobody reads the manuals. For anything. As I was talking to makers of everything from carseat adapters to baby carriers to infant swings to strollers to flushable diapers, I found...
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Posted by greg at
1:31 PM
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Comments (5)
May 11, 2006
Sometimes Mr. Robertson talks mothers out of enrolling a child at all. "We'll call them with a spot that's opened up and they can't do it because every single day they have two or three things. I tell them, 'I...
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Posted by greg at
7:28 AM
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Comments (5)
April 25, 2006
And here we thought a 3.5 hour nap yesterday was just an isolated occurrence, a gift, even, to allow us to get a little work done, to rest... At least that's what we thought until 3AM, when the kid was...
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Posted by greg at
9:06 AM
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Comments (2)
April 1, 2006
Crazy days. Apparently some people get Chinese characters tattooed on them which turn out to say something different than what they intended:SHAD MAGNESS wanted to celebrate the love he felt for his young son with a grand gesture. At a...
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Posted by greg at
1:52 PM
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Comments (2)
March 31, 2006
You'd think after two years of being a dad, I'd get used to surprises. I wake up thinking I have something figured out, and then I get blindsided by people's experiences which are diametrically opposite to my own. I just...
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Posted by greg at
4:10 PM
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Comments (25)
March 30, 2006
Wow. My wife got back from her conference last night, and the kid and I headed back to DC to meet her. Another not-infrequent [for us] stint of solo parenting had ended. With our work travel, we regularly find ourselves...
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Posted by greg at
10:04 AM
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Comments (8)
March 28, 2006
Dear Upper West Side parents with the blue Bugaboo Cameleon with red canopy and the 6-9mo boy whose middle-aged Latina nanny was driving next to us near the Gracious Home store at 67th & Broadway at a still-chilly 9:30 in...
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Posted by greg at
6:37 PM
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Comments (3)
...and his name was Adam. He was 35, which meant he was Generation-X. Now unlike Douglas Coupland, who coined the term "Generation-X," Adam had never created a neologism, even though he had written about pop cultural trends for like ten...
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Posted by greg at
5:44 PM
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Comments (16)
If only I'd seen Garrett's graph a day ago. As readers of Daddyzine know, Garrett's got four years of parenting experience under his belt; a full 100% more than I do. And he's distilled it all into one simple...
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Posted by greg at
12:10 AM
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Comments (5)
March 27, 2006
Go ahead and call me a jerk; I'll agree with you later (I already do, some) but if it takes being somewhat of an idiot to maintain my sense of humor and to be able to continue to acknowledge other...
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Posted by greg at
12:02 PM
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Comments (18)
March 17, 2006
Just when you think you're really understanding this whole new fatherhood thing, and you're getting able to articulate pretty what it's like [and by 'you,' I mean 'i,' of course], you come across someone who crytallizes so many of the...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 AM
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Comments (2)
March 14, 2006
Last week, the kid floated some poos in the tub, and it kind of freaked her out. At the time, she was just a little agitated, giving a bit of breathless narration as I tried to calmly scoop them...
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Posted by greg at
8:59 PM
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Comments (5)
March 11, 2006
As I'm reading Catherine Lloyd Burns' excerpt from her upcoming memoir in the NYT--it's all about how she and her husband deal with their new daughter, Olive, differently, and how that's fine, except that he does it totally wrong, and...
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Posted by greg at
2:30 PM
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Comments (9)
Ben Macneill's geek-heavenly Trixie Update was a formative introduction to impending fatherhood for me. Not only did Ben transform the daunting, inscrutable cycles of a newborn's food, sleep, and poo into funny, startle-your-friends! charts and graphs, but he actually teased...
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Posted by greg at
12:00 PM
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Comments (0)
March 9, 2006
The kid has a memory like a steel trap, we already know that. Her first day back in the NYC apartment in almost two months, and she's reading all the Thomas books out loud to herself [of course, they only...
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Posted by greg at
3:51 PM
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Comments (0)
March 5, 2006
A list of highlights from other blogging dads out there that's as comprehensive as my knowledge of parenting [*cough cough*]: You can't pick your kids, but you can pick their noses. And you can brush their teeth. Adventuredad has a...
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Posted by greg at
4:51 PM
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Comments (4)
Funny, because I grew up hearing from my grandmother who lived through the Depression that you're only supposed to use three squares of toilet paper, and you should tear that paper towel in half because you don't need a whole...
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Posted by greg at
3:20 PM
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Comments (3)
Godparents are not a part of the Mormon doctrine or culture, and they existed largely in books or in shadows for me. Friends had them, but it wasn't clear to me what they did besides maybe throw in an extra...
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Posted by greg at
2:59 PM
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Comments (8)
There's a generational shift afoot, where dads are interested in being more involved in raising their kids, and are--or will be--increasingly willing to make the kinds of tough work/life balancing decisions that women have been grappling with for decades now....
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Posted by greg at
2:08 PM
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Comments (1)
February 28, 2006
So some clueless dad who apparently can't read a label inadvertently gave his daughter nighttime cold medicine after lunch, and --duh--all but knocked her out for the rest of the day. He just posted his sob story on dadcentric and...
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Posted by greg at
3:29 PM
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Comments (1)
New dad James is one of the bloggers at Business Week's Working Parents; his daughter's three months old and has hit the dreaded "colic" stage. That's the stage where the kid cries for apparently no reason, and parents try every...
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Posted by greg at
2:27 PM
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Comments (0)
February 16, 2006
Snapped at The National Zoo:Fatherhood: Female emus leave egg-care and chick-rearing to the males. Males keep ground nests where they tend about ten dark-green egs - rarely leaving during the eight-week incubation period. Chicks stay with their father for...
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Posted by greg at
10:21 AM
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Comments (1)
February 8, 2006
What with tax season and all, those parents who paid their caregivers more than $1,400 last year are looking at the withholding taxes their supposed to file and pay--and deciding whether they're gonna do it. The BusinessWeek Working Parents blog...
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Posted by greg at
9:31 PM
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Comments (4)
January 26, 2006
After the Miss USA pageant, the flamers at Fark.com Googled up an old DT post about baby beauty pageants and creeped out, retouched glamour photos of innocent Southern children whose mothers won't face the reality that Designing Women is off...
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Posted by greg at
1:50 PM
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Comments (3)
January 21, 2006
At bare minimum, when you're folding a dirty diaper, you have to make sure the contents don't escape. Once that's done, though, there's a universe of artistic and aerodynamic expression available to you, as Kevin demonstrates in his recent post,...
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Posted by greg at
12:09 AM
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Comments (1)
January 17, 2006
Twice now in the last several months, someone has come up behind us on the street and told me to walk more slowly using the whole "give me unwelcome advice by pretending to talk to the kid" thing, and it...
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Posted by greg at
6:54 PM
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Comments (21)
January 8, 2006
On the walk home after church, we crossed paths with a pizza and a kid and the dad holding them. The dad was asking the kid, who must have been close to three, "Can you say 'cheese? Can you say...
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Posted by greg at
4:54 PM
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Comments (5)
January 6, 2006
A lot of people get tattoos, and a lot of people have kids. And when someone who gets tattoos has a kid, it's not uncommon for him (or her) to commemorate the occasion with a baby-related tattoo. I am not...
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Posted by greg at
12:57 PM
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Comments (13)
January 5, 2006
It's like 11, the kid's been asleep a while, you go to check on her, and the nursery reeks; clearly, only the top end has been resting. When it comes to changing the kid's dirty diaper in the middle of...
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Posted by greg at
9:59 AM
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Comments (6)
December 30, 2005
Like Matt, I've been catching myself saying things I'd heard before from parents, grandparents, teachers, etc. Unlike Matt, I didn't have any deeper insight into what it might actually mean. That said, I am bracing myself to be ignored by...
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Posted by greg at
10:35 PM
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Comments (0)
NPR, which used to be the aural carpet to my work-at-home days, has been largely replaced by the kid's aural playmat, so to speak. But in the last 12 hours, I heard these two dads talking about the major changes...
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Posted by greg at
10:09 AM
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Comments (0)
December 29, 2005
From the time she was born, I used to chant that to the kid every time I had a shopping bag in my hand, or every time I'd take out the trash or unwrap something. In case the dangers...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 AM
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Comments (1)
The NYT reports on the growing Co-Sleeping Pride movement, in which literally several new parents who have been co-sleeping in secret shame have come out of the closet now that Dr. Richard Ferber has backtracked from his previous "cry it...
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Posted by greg at
9:03 AM
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Comments (10)
December 27, 2005
What is up with that? On and off for weeks now, the kid has been melting down if it's not Mommy who: - gives her a bath - puts her to bed - opens the applesauce - changes the channel...
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Posted by greg at
5:16 PM
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Comments (4)
December 20, 2005
Here's an email I received this morning. It's not unusual for me to get 2-3 of these kinds of email each week, and most of the time, I don't mind it at all. I'm a huge fan of parent-led innovation,...
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Posted by greg at
11:47 AM
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Comments (6)
December 11, 2005
While I was out late this afternoon, my wife called me to let me know the kid had started smoking. When asked, the kid had no words or concept of what she was doing, but she had very distinctly picked...
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Posted by greg at
11:31 PM
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Comments (0)
December 8, 2005
The holiday season doesn't usually drive me to swear this much. But I guess somewhere between the third breathless press release for the cheesy department store baby clothes, a Disney Princess catalog that's so nauseatingly pink it makes Pottery Barn's...
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Posted by greg at
10:09 PM
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Comments (4)
I'm all for carrying your kid, keeping her close, etc. etc. I may not be so into it that I'd get all in your face about it the way some Metafilterites have in this thread, though. Interspersed with some decent...
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Posted by greg at
7:16 PM
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Comments (0)
December 7, 2005
I am SO behind Dutch's idea of skipping big box stores and mass manufactured crap for Christmas [&c.] and buying--IF you're buying, which I'll get to later--independent, handmade, and local stuff, which rocks a hundred times better anyway. Check out...
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Posted by greg at
11:27 AM
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Comments (2)
December 5, 2005
Yes, I've been working on a holiday gift list for the site; it's not quite ready yet, but I'll have it up in a day or so, I hope. In the mean time, I'd love to hear--and several wives and...
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Posted by greg at
4:10 PM
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Comments (12)
November 30, 2005
You think any old 4-carat diamond'll do for a push present? Maybe, just in case your wife thinks such a skating rink is a bit tacky, some selfless companies and designers out there want to help. Here's a very incomplete...
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Posted by greg at
1:39 PM
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Comments (7)
OK, sorry to swamp Jason's lingerie buying guide with my somewhat skeptical take on "birth jewelry." I was wrong. Birth jewelry sounds like a lovely idea, a way to commemorate and celebrate the beauty--and hard work and sacrifice--of a woman...
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Posted by greg at
11:56 AM
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Comments (16)
November 29, 2005
Let me tell ya, new dad, with this subject line-- "christmas, newborn, sexy nursing lingerie"--you're lucky your email got through at all. Since it did, and since it's a timely, worthwhile question, I'm throwing it out for suggestions. Here's the...
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Posted by greg at
11:55 PM
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Comments (32)
November 22, 2005
Did I mention I'm thankful for NY Magazine? They take a break from their parenting snuff genre to do a long, remarkably sensible article on how parents should approach the private kindergarten admissions process in New York City. Well, it's...
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Posted by greg at
12:51 PM
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Comments (5)
November 19, 2005
Mulling over Metrodad's post and comments the other day about paying the bills and/vs. pursuing your creative dreams reminded me of a show "This American Life" host Ira Glass did once about his father. Growing up, Ira knew his father,...
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Posted by greg at
11:58 AM
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Comments (3)
Matt Haughey reports from his trip to Toronto:- either I look Canadian or tourists see people with a big stroller and baby and assume I live here. I've never been asked for directions so many times in a strange town.This...
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Posted by greg at
8:26 AM
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Comments (4)
November 17, 2005
We've started visiting pre-schools and daycare/pre-schools in the last couple of weeks, all with an eye to the spring/summer/fall when the kid will be old enough (2-2.5, depending on the program) to enroll. One place we visited yesterday morning seemed...
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Posted by greg at
10:01 PM
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Comments (32)
My guess is, if you approach The Talk as "The Talk," you're already setting yourself up for failure. Wouldn't it be easier to tell a kid what a penis is while he's peeing on you during a diaper change? Potty...
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Posted by greg at
11:53 AM
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Comments (0)
November 16, 2005
Metrodad Metrodad Metrodad. If you read blogs through their syndicated feeds in your newsreader or My Yahoo or whatever, you miss the comments. And that sucks, especially when they're as insightful as the ones on MD's post about the challenges...
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Posted by greg at
5:58 PM
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Comments (1)
November 15, 2005
Can't we all just get along? And get some sleep? In the new editions to their advice books on getting newborns to sleep, experts on both ends of the spectrum have made some compromises and qualifications to the techniques they--and...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 PM
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Comments (2)
November 14, 2005
Saturday, the wife took the kid to the Zoo, where they kept running into a kid riding one of those tricycles-on-a-stick. I guess I forgot to tell my wife that [who knew?], the kid had developed an obsession with these...
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Posted by greg at
9:13 PM
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Comments (3)
November 13, 2005
Here's the info stuff from the blog round-up: So parents [Swedish dads, New York moms] taking their kids into prison with them? wtf? [bloggingbaby] Beth of Blogging Baby flew solo with the kid and did just fine, thanks. She had...
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Posted by greg at
11:23 PM
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Comments (0)
November 11, 2005
Sheesh. What a way to end the day. After DT reader George used it to steer the "how to evaluate child care?" post back on topic, I decided to sit down with a just-published paper by CUNY sociologists Julia Wrigley...
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Posted by greg at
11:59 PM
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Comments (0)
November 8, 2005
There are some good-read, government-published guidelines from places like Canada and the UK, where professional childcare is a little more widely available, but most suggestions--observe the carer/set-up all day; interview parents, not just the carer or the daycare center chief;...
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Posted by greg at
6:36 PM
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Comments (7)
November 6, 2005
What do you give the caregiver for Christmas? For a full-time nanny/sitter, the rule of thumb I always hear is "a week's pay or equivalent." Discuss that one amongst yourselves if you like. Meanwhile, who knows what fits all the...
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Posted by greg at
9:58 PM
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Comments (8)
October 25, 2005
"The red/blue state schism is far less severe than the schism between 'with kids' and 'without kids'...because you are now protecting someone." - Jon Stewart doing audience Q&A after a standup at George Washington University last weeekend, as reported in...
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Posted by greg at
10:36 AM
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Comments (0)
October 22, 2005
Then this post is for you. The art world is so awesome. I love/hate it:I head to the after-party at Hiro, where I'm told that I've just missed what a colleague describes as "a classic Helene Winer moment." Winer, who...
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Posted by greg at
9:29 PM
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Comments (2)
October 17, 2005
CanadianLiving.com has some useful, basic info on how the way you talk to your infant helps him develop his language skills. The article includes tips like waiting for a reply, being descriptive of the kid's surroundings, and watching for early...
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Posted by greg at
6:16 PM
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Comments (1)
October 14, 2005
Guess which one Madonna is. Madonna talks of her mission to be "part of the solution" by imparting her parenting wisdom to some British fashion magazine. Save your shillings, though, because the Daily Telegraph's Neil Tweedie [yes] has graciously mocked...
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Posted by greg at
11:53 AM
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Comments (5)
October 9, 2005
A pregnant New York friend emailed today seeking advice/suggestions about good registry options "for everything from a Bjorn to a cute playmat to bibs to the Dwell sheets to who knows what else?" Oh, and layette. Grandma-to-be's suggesting Lester's, an...
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Posted by greg at
10:13 PM
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Comments (2)
October 8, 2005
The NY Times discovered elimination communication today on the therapy-happy West Side--and promptly freaked out about it:For many parents in the United States, the idea of potty training before a baby is able to walk, or even before age 2,...
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Posted by greg at
5:52 PM
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Comments (2)
October 7, 2005
Here's the situation: You are a big swingin' D at the office; lots of direct reports, you have the CEO's ear on things that matter. You hold many peoples' livelihoods and professional fates in your hands. And yet, you're surprisingly...
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Posted by greg at
12:39 PM
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Comments (8)
October 6, 2005
Since 2002, state-sponsored 529 college savings plans have become a very popular way to invest money for a kid's future college education. As long as the proceeds are used to pay for college & secondary education expenses, 529's are federal...
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Posted by greg at
10:26 PM
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Comments (4)
The latest installment of The Peanut Chronicle is out. The surprise baby shower didn't go well [Danny plays it down, but word to the wise on that one]. And they buy gear--big gear--but what struck me was this passage, which...
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Posted by greg at
10:14 AM
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Comments (1)
September 30, 2005
Prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome by screaming at baby every five minutes, "Are you okay, baby?!" Hey, if I was stuck after college with no job and no prospects and living in Milwaukee, maybe I'd become a mean-spirited, acidic comedian,...
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Posted by greg at
8:14 AM
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Comments (5)
September 29, 2005
As part of their "Good Questions" series, a New York parent-to-be asked Apartment Therapy's readers: Can you survive living with a kid in a 400-sf East Village apartment? A lot of comments are all Therapy and no Apartment, and there's...
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Posted by greg at
7:32 AM
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Comments (8)
September 27, 2005
After a day of driving; finding the playground at some Maryland Chick-fil-A (my favorite Christian chicken sandwich restaurant) was too big for her but staying too long anyway; and then running through a few hours of the kid's amped up...
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Posted by greg at
10:52 PM
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Comments (4)
On the occasion of some how-to books, The Times of London has a one-eyebrow-raised article on that crazy American trend, "elimination communication." [China and India, where there are two billion-plus early potty trainers/trainees, gets a one-line mention somewhere deep in...
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Posted by greg at
7:31 AM
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Comments (2)
September 26, 2005
Hakan at AdventureDad just emailed a link to Chocolate Makes It Better, where an Aussie dad found Fathers Direct's report on Aka Pygmies being the best dads in the world. CMIB wonders aloud if all the stuff we get and...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 AM
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Comments (4)
In the whirlwind logistics of getting out of the house in the morning, disaster strikes: Duckies, Bobo, and Pillow don't make the trip. But is it Jason's fault? [hint: if you find yourself quoting George Bush in your explanation...
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Posted by greg at
7:54 AM
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Comments (4)
September 25, 2005
From the baby gear gospel according to DT reader Daniel, who emailed this to me:What is it? I don't get it! Am I crazy for admiring simplicity? Am I the different one for shunning ruffles? Does the majority of this...
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Posted by greg at
11:05 PM
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Comments (4)
September 24, 2005
Now, surviving is a pretty low bar, and Pollack barely clears it, but he certainly does better than he did with that pre-school expulsion thing. He writes in the NYT Magazine about going to a "couples shower" at his mother-in-law's...
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Posted by greg at
9:10 PM
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Comments (1)
September 23, 2005
On Defective Yeti, Matthew explains how to quiet a pack of tantrum-throwing toddlers. First, get a pack of hounds... Dogged [defectiveyeti.com]...
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Posted by greg at
11:59 PM
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Comments (1)
September 13, 2005
So at the playground in Central Park today, we had a little problem. First, I guess I was out of town and didn't get the memo, but every single kid there had his or her own toy stroller. Every one....
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Posted by greg at
12:13 AM
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Comments (8)
September 1, 2005
I bought a smaller pack of Size 4 Pampers for the kid to try out the other day, and so far, I'm unimpressed. They're a little big still, but for some reason I just don't like the way they feel...
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Posted by greg at
9:15 PM
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Comments (31)
August 29, 2005
[Las Vegas] Metro police recommend the following to help you remember that your child is in the car: * Leave something important, like a purse if you're a woman, or a wallet if you're a man. * Leave that item...
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Posted by greg at
8:29 AM
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Comments (12)
August 21, 2005
On the Bugaboo snackholder post, a couple of (American) folks have told of their shock when their European friends (and in one case, their Dutch pediatrician) talked of leaving an infant at home while they ventured out for coffee...
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Posted by greg at
9:48 PM
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Comments (34)
August 20, 2005
Seriously, kid, you need to sleep. It's been three nights since we got back to the East Coast from Japan, and the kid has not moved her sleep schedule hardly at all. What gives? Flying from the US to Japan,...
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Posted by greg at
3:33 PM
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Comments (9)
August 16, 2005
I'm very interested in hearing about your experiences with Attachment Parenting, good and bad, how you've participated, how you adapted all or part of it, what kind of advice you got from other dads, and what kind advice you'd give...
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Posted by greg at
7:17 PM
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Comments (33)
August may be a slow month for parenting news [book review contest *cough cough*], which may explain why novelist-married-to-a-novelist Ayelet Waldman falls back on a classic topic in her Salon.com parenting column: unsolicited, belligerent, and judgmental "advice" from other parents...
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Posted by greg at
7:05 AM
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Comments (5)
August 15, 2005
The playground by our crashpad in Tokyo has a huge jungle gym made of logs. Granted, the suspended log bridge does have a net below it, but there are slick wooden ramps and steep dropoffs; the gaps between levels could...
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Posted by greg at
3:44 AM
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Comments (5)
August 11, 2005
So much for THAT little perk. those were the days.A couple of weeks ago, the kid started calling them. She'd hear it, raise her eyebrows, and shout out the culprit's name. "Daddy!" or "Madison!*" Then, last week or so, she...
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Posted by greg at
10:44 PM
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Comments (1)
August 3, 2005
The NY Observer has a long article about Lachlan Murdoch, who just quit his job at News Corp in part, it seems, because he and his wife prefer to raise their newborn son Kalan in Australia:Sydney is a great place...
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Posted by greg at
9:57 PM
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Comments (1)
August 1, 2005
At least the kid isn't inciting a nurseryful of her colleagues into a biting frenzy that sends their hapless victim to the hospital, like they do in Croatia. Supposedly. But still, I have to confess, the kid knows her way...
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Posted by greg at
10:32 AM
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Comments (2)
July 24, 2005
It's been harder to post here than I suspected, but believe me, the material's piling up. Here are some bullet points: the kid's been eating very little and drinking 2-2.5x normal the first week, anyway. We've been going through almost...
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Posted by greg at
7:23 PM
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Comments (5)
July 11, 2005
She knows she's not supposed to play with the toilet paper, so now what she does is pretend to sniffle, then she'll reel off a bunch of TP, give her nose a cursory wipe, and proceed with the shredding she...
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Posted by greg at
9:39 AM
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Comments (1)
July 9, 2005
And you may find yourself one quiet morning, faced with an unfamiliar sight. And you may find all your VentAire bottles, in every color, washed and ready to be reassembled, all at the same time. And you may find...
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Posted by greg at
9:20 AM
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Comments (5)
July 8, 2005
DT reader Chris has this annoying report. Sounds like that whole, "Las Vegas is your family-friendly vacation destination!" schtick has gone the way of Sigfried and Roy's career:Just came from a trip to Las Vegas with the family. Found out...
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Posted by greg at
5:11 PM
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Comments (4)
July 7, 2005
An admittedly incomplete list of skills New York City girls need to learn and by what age: hail a cab: 3 swipe a metrocard: 10 duck under the subway turnstile: 2 duck when there are five people in a taxi:...
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Posted by greg at
10:55 AM
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Comments (7)
July 6, 2005
And all this time, I had it backwards. The Fulani tribe of Mali has a saying: "You're lucky if you've got someone who will shit on you." Lucky, perhaps, but not as well-versed as you should be in the art...
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Posted by greg at
12:09 PM
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Comments (6)
June 22, 2005
While searching around for dads and postpartum depression, I came across this study from Birth (Sept. 2000) which looks at how men approach prenatal classes and how the classes, in turn, affect their perspective on the kid's birth and afterwards....
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Posted by greg at
1:51 AM
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Comments (9)
June 17, 2005
Don't know how I missed this one. My brother snapped this advertisement from North & Co., a fine local establishment specializing in "Quality & Tradition," in Sun Valley's town paper, the Idaho Mountain Express. The Father's Day offer: "Is...
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Posted by greg at
12:31 PM
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Comments (2)
June 6, 2005
So Luke & Loz are in Sydney and are expecting their first kid in September. Never mind the kid's name, that's no big deal. But Luke emailed asking for suggestions or advice on naming the kids store they're planning to...
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Posted by greg at
11:14 AM
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Comments (34)
June 3, 2005
I was going to do another Father's Day Gift Suggestions list, but frankly, all I want is eight more hours a day to use as I see fit. Anyone out there have ideas? Dads-to-be and baby daddies are welcome. Colin?...
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Posted by greg at
3:47 PM
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Comments (2)
May 28, 2005
Umm, all of it? For every time the kid surprises us by understanding what we're saying, there are still approximately one million times where our obviously incoherent ramblings make no sense to her. Like when we want her to wait...
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Posted by greg at
9:03 AM
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Comments (0)
May 26, 2005
Seek out these people and avoid these people. Hamptons Baby Beach Club [hrhresorts.com] Hamptons Magazine Party [gawker]...
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Posted by greg at
2:44 PM
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Comments (1)
May 20, 2005
Found this thread on Ask Metafilter yesterday, but it was really hard to read, much less post. It started when a woman asked for advice on how to help her best friend, who'd just lost her 6-month-old daughter. There's some...
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Posted by greg at
1:55 PM
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Comments (1)
May 19, 2005
This question from a new dad showed up Tuesday on the Ask Metafilter section of the group blog. Definitely read through the whole thread, but here are a few highlights: Read to him Patty cake Peek-a-boo Talk to him. A...
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Posted by greg at
5:29 PM
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Comments (2)
May 17, 2005
At Defective Yeti, Matthew writes about a Positive Discipline Association seminar he and his wife attended in Seattle. There was something about roleplaying puppets, something about praise, and then an exercise to determine where on a bi-axial grid (x=Kindness, y=Order)...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:09 PM
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Comments (0)
May 15, 2005
So for weeks now, we've been thinking, the kid sure has her "B's" down. She'd be all, "bee bee bee bee" this and "bee bee bee bee" that, and we'd tell her, "what baby?" Now we (ok, my wife) figure...
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Posted by greg at
11:25 PM
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Comments (2)
May 9, 2005
Forget breakfast in bed. Around our house, the way to treat mom all special is to catch the kid's vomit yourself while mom sleeps in. Although later, my wife caught the bedtime bottle in her skirt (it was on its...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:24 AM
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Comments (4)
April 22, 2005
Huh. Yesterday when my wife showed the kid a tape measure, the retracting noise freaked her out. Then this morning, as I was packing up a box, the tape dispenser sound elicited the same reaction: a bit of startled hand...
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Posted by greg at
2:04 PM
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Comments (1)
April 13, 2005
Huh? So I'm walking home from a MoMA gig at around 11:45, and I duck into McDonald's for a cone. And there are two couples there, hanging out, with their kids--one less than one, one maybe 18 months, maybe in...
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Posted by greg at
12:25 AM
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Comments (14)
April 4, 2005
Because it's getting to be a problem. From Do You Want To Be My Friend?: Hippo Giraffe Fox* Peacock From literally everywhere else: Elephant those damn Bunnies I'm actually cool if the fox doesn't say anything on principle....
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Posted by greg at
9:55 PM
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Comments (16)
March 29, 2005
Bath Bottle Baby Bubble Belly Bird Bear Bed Bib Bunny Book Bugaboo Bag Block Bring Bye Bread Ball Beans Bowl Bug Booger Butt Belt Although they may sound the same to the untrained ear ("Ba"), the kid's got more tones...
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Posted by greg at
11:52 AM
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Comments (3)
March 22, 2005
There's a generation of hovering, obsessively protective parents out there, and our the culture is breeding more. That's the premise of Beth Hawkins' giant article in Minn/St Paul's City Pages:We fear school buses, babysitters, and sometimes even Grandma and Grandpa,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:46 PM
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Comments (4)
March 21, 2005
Here's a story that a DT reader and baby daddy just posted as a comment. I'm pretty stunned by it and have to think a bit before I can come up with any useful advice for him. But it's a...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:41 PM
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Comments (18)
March 19, 2005
And you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose. you CAN pick your kid's nose, though, and you will, more than you ever thought you would. Good luck with that....
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Posted by greg at
8:42 PM
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Comments (3)
March 11, 2005
Wow, as I first read it yesterday, I totally felt like I could've written Metrodad's post, "Take my kid, please!" After reading the 81 comments that followed, I was like, whew, dodged that bullet. Yet here I go, playing with...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:23 AM
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Comments (2)
February 18, 2005
I thought the Gawker post about Pampers' new Kandoo the pooing frog was incomprehensible until I visited the site. Then I realized how traumatic a flash animation of a happy frog wiping its butt must be for a carefree, child-free...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:43 PM
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Comments (0)
February 16, 2005
Ever since I saw this image in the exhibition catalogue for Kid Size, I'd wondered if it was still common for Chinese kids to not wear diapers. [The show began in the late 90's, and a lot can change...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:20 AM
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Comments (9)
February 15, 2005
Our baby has had some pretty embarassing problems with leakage. It's not something we talk about, because really, at her age, what could we do? Then I found Pampers Cruisers, and our lives have changed. Pampers really came to the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:17 PM
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Comments (9)
February 1, 2005
Ben posted an analysis of Trixie--yes, of the MSNBC and NYT Trixies--Trixie's shifting nap patterns, which is pretty cool, even if it does mean he doesn't get to shower anymore. While I don't have any empirical data or sweet infographics,...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:42 PM
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Comments (0)
January 28, 2005
In the formula cost comments, Kaz mentioned guilt, and I was saying how guilt and parenting go hand in hand. So now I've got a work email to get out before the kid and I drive to DC, and so...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:17 AM
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Comments (12)
January 3, 2005
Schrodinger's Cat is a famous imaginary experiment* meant to illustrate quantum physics: you have a cat in a box with some poisonous substance, and as long as you don't open the box to check, there's always a 50% probability that...
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Posted by greg at
9:15 AM
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Comments (4)
December 31, 2004
So next week we're going to get the kid's haircut. Not to gloat or anything, but she's got such a shaggy wig, we're running out of options; it has to be cut. Or styled, or shaped, or evened out, or...
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Posted by greg at
12:27 AM
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Comments (12)
December 28, 2004
You'd think we'd learn by now. It seems that every time the kid starts wigging out, or when we get frustrated with something she's doing--or not doing--we puzzle over it for a while, then we (ok, my wife) checks Brazelton....
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Posted by greg at
6:37 AM
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Comments (0)
December 15, 2004
Here are a couple of heads ups that have come my way via the entirely unbiased world of store publicists. I relay them only for your convenience, and because I actually HAVE shopped at both these stores and DO like...
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Posted by greg at
8:47 PM
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Comments (2)
In Psychology Today, Hara Estroff Marano wraps up a lot of current research into the mental, emotional, and developmental problems afflicting children today, and finds that many are caused by over-protective, over-programming, and over-accommodating parenting. Here's a random sampling of...
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Posted by greg at
3:43 PM
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Comments (0)
December 14, 2004
If you're sending gifts to a new parent this holiday season, why not skip the impersonal styrofoam pellets--which can be a choke hazard, safety first!-- and use diapers in the little angel's size as your packing material? It's soft, practical,...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 AM
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Comments (1)
December 8, 2004
The kid is fascinated by the Christmas tree--which, because we were worried her fascination would lead to eating, tugging, and a tree falling in the living room, is only 4' tall and perched safely on a table--and we expect that,...
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Posted by greg at
11:31 PM
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Comments (6)
December 2, 2004
While, with a few exceptions, a nation chuckles at Dingo-eating-baby jokes, I doubt "Coyote Snack" would make a popular T-shirt in the rolling hills of Austin, TX. Please refer to suggestion #8 on the City of Austin's "Ten things residents...
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Posted by greg at
11:19 AM
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Comments (1)
On Ask Gothamist, a single woman seeks advice on going out with her friends who insist on bringing their baby everywhere, even to movies and bars. So: Are YOU aware of how annoyed child-free get when you go out with...
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Posted by greg at
9:47 AM
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Comments (3)
November 30, 2004
What is it with kids and dingos? I mean, only ten people saw A Cry In The Dark in 1988 (and I wasn't one of them). Yet somehow, Meryl Streep's anguished, Australian-accented line, "A dingo ate my baby!" has infiltrated...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 PM
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Comments (4)
November 29, 2004
Naturally, there's nothing the kid likes chewing on more than electrical outlet covers....
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Posted by greg at
10:58 AM
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Comments (2)
November 28, 2004
Just got back from Thanksgiving at Grammy's house, and here's the epiphany I had at O'Hare, watching armies of dads lumbering under the weight--and bulk--of gigantic carseats while balancing carry-on luggage and personal pan pizzas, and while screaming after wandering,...
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Posted by greg at
5:59 PM
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Comments (5)
November 20, 2004
A posse of high-school age kids riding the 1/9 train downtown yesterday. The boys all looked alarmingly like Hanson. The lone girl wore her skirt over her jeans and explained about the babysitting gig that was going to keep her...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 PM
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Comments (3)
November 19, 2004
The one situation I'm thinking of right now, though, is when you're giving your kid a bottle. I just bought a new set of bottles. (Playtex Ventaire 3-packs. The kid takes 8 oz. a couple of times a day and...
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Posted by greg at
9:31 PM
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Comments (1)
We like to think kids are pretty resilient, but if the folks at the Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation are to be believed, a single scary-but-innocuous-seeming incident at a petting zoo can leave debilitating lifelong scars. So what treatment does the...
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Posted by greg at
10:41 AM
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Comments (5)
November 17, 2004
Why the recent lack of posts? I've been a single parent the last few days while my wife is away at a conference. The kid's cold has been getting better, and overall, things have been pretty manageable, thanks in part...
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Posted by greg at
2:48 PM
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Comments (3)
November 9, 2004
It was my day, and the sitter turned out to have scheduling issues, so I ended up taking the kid with me to a meeting at the new MoMA. [Unless there were some latenight shenanigans during construction, I believe...
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Posted by greg at
11:31 PM
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Comments (0)
October 25, 2004
Parking for church yesterday morning, we saw something I'd never even heard of before: the pumpkins on the porch of one house had been completely gnawed away. A squirrel was perched on top. At the next house was another squirrel,...
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Posted by greg at
10:36 AM
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Comments (2)
October 16, 2004
DT reader Nick has a problem: his 1-year old has gotten very good at removing laptop keys. And when we put babysmash software on one of our Powerbooks, the kid popped off several keys within minutes. Don't know if that...
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Posted by greg at
12:33 PM
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Comments (5)
While a father in Michigan was "distracted for three to five minutes" talking to someone--or "playing football," I'm not quite clear--his one-year-and-a-day-old daughter got out of the house, onto the porch, and into a 5-gallon bucket of water that'd been...
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Posted by greg at
12:44 AM
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Comments (1)
The Wall Street Journal thinks it's news that a Sacramento couple with an 8,000sf, 6br house makes their two sons, Neo and Eon, ages 3 and 2, respectively, share a single bedroom. Otherwise, they become "little czars," says their mother,...
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Posted by greg at
12:15 AM
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Comments (0)
October 12, 2004
Whoa. Both coming home last night and waking up this morning, the kid freaked out seeing me in my glasses. She cried and cringed in my arms until I took them off. Does she think they make me look like...
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Posted by greg at
1:18 PM
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Comments (3)
October 6, 2004
The kid's finally getting over her first cold, which has produced several sleep-deprived nights for all concerned. With a stuffed up and/or runny nose, she had a really hard time getting to sleep. Several times, she even seemed to panic...
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Posted by greg at
1:25 PM
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Comments (2)
October 1, 2004
So the kid's been pulling herself up on the edge of the sofa all week, just jonesing to climb up on the seat. Then she scrambles to climb over the back, or the arm or whatever precipice is handy. She...
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Posted by greg at
9:23 PM
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Comments (4)
September 29, 2004
If the kid laughs almost uncontrollably at your slightest sound or facial gesture, don't try and figure out why you're so damn funny. You're not (any funnier than you were yesterday). If it's within an hour of the kid's regular...
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Posted by greg at
10:51 PM
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Comments (1)
September 28, 2004
The 2/3 Express train annoys most New Yorkers who have to endure it's way-too-loud passing on the subway platform. Yet our kid spent the first seven months of her life either sleeping through it, being startled then uninterested, or just...
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Posted by greg at
8:57 AM
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Comments (8)
September 27, 2004
Here at Daddy Types, I've been collecting tips for my little model-in-training (lots of vomiting; cutting lines on the coffee table with baby formula; smiling at the I-bankers-in-training private school boys on the train who are 16 years older than...
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Posted by greg at
5:10 PM
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Comments (5)
September 23, 2004
Does he think that his work will become gentler now that he has a child? "It's almost the opposite, particularly when your child is an infant," he said. "My son has just started to crawl. I'm always assessing the threat...
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Posted by greg at
7:24 AM
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Comments (0)
September 15, 2004
Sushi and alcohol are just the tip of the iceberg. In the last two decades, the lists of things a pregnant woman can't eat or do without putting the fetus "at risk" is a mile long. Not that I didn't...
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Posted by greg at
1:19 PM
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Comments (16)
September 3, 2004
They say play is a child's work. And just as work could mean anything from alleviating world hunger to hoarding red staplers, play can be a timesink or a richly rewarding developmental experience. (Hint: you want the latter.) Which is...
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Posted by greg at
1:22 AM
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Comments (0)
September 1, 2004
I mean, I've explained the situation to her multiple times. The signs are obvious. She's not having fun playing, in fact, she's just fussy and constandly rubbing her eyes. Yet she can spot a "put you to sleep" gesture a...
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Posted by greg at
11:03 AM
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Comments (10)
August 26, 2004
I've never had a dog, so there was one advantage of having a kid I wasn't familiar with: it's someone to blame a fart or two on. There are limits, though. Sometimes, when the limits of plausibility are reached--or exceeded--such...
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Posted by greg at
6:42 PM
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Comments (0)
Opt for the double freezer bagging rather than just putting the cannister in your suitcase. And be sure to press out as much of the air as possible from those bags. Otherwise, the combination of air pressure changes and baggage...
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Posted by greg at
6:35 PM
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Comments (0)
August 23, 2004
In discussing our recent longhaul travels, I've been a little freaked out by how many people mention drugs. A guy in the row behind us: "Good job, whadja give her?" A flight attendant: "I always use Dimetapp." Another: "On the...
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Posted by greg at
4:22 PM
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Comments (7)
August 17, 2004
Jet lag doesn't seem to be a problem; the kid takes about three days--like the rest of us--to adjust her schedule, both coming and going (we were trying to get her back on schedule, and had two major wakeup-feedings, then...
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Posted by greg at
9:07 AM
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Comments (3)
August 7, 2004
KAWAIIIIII! (kah-wah-eeeeeeeee) Cute. Used as an exclamation by 98% of the Japanese women of any age when they see your kid. Hana ga takai! (hah-nah gah tah-kai) What a big nose! and O-tosan ni sokkuri! (oh-toe-sahn nee soak-curry) She look...
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Posted by greg at
2:10 AM
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Comments (0)
August 4, 2004
1. flying 14 hrs was a breeze. the kid slept 8-9 w/no drugs, no crying, the only problem was over-eager-to-help-and-hold-her neighbors and total randoms. 2. oh, except she goes berserk as soon as the plane pushes back from the gate....
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Posted by greg at
2:16 AM
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Comments (4)
July 29, 2004
Early on, when the kid had a blowout at Barnes & Noble, and I had only a spare Onesie (R) for a cold day. I had to turn her hoodie into a pair of pants (with a baggy MC-Hammer-style crotch)...
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Posted by greg at
12:59 PM
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Comments (5)
July 26, 2004
This is depressing and all too familiar-sounding. On his weblog, Anonymous Lawyer sets off a string of self-flagellating introspection (and little/no action, it seems) with his post, which begins:I asked one of my colleagues if he wanted to play golf...
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Posted by greg at
11:02 PM
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Comments (3)
This is a better computer animation than all three Matrix movies combined. A Japanese TV demonstration of a simple-but-impossible-under-the-laws-of-physics way to fold a shirt. Not even the people at the Gap can understand it. Fortunately, as a New York man,...
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Posted by greg at
6:51 PM
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Comments (5)
July 22, 2004
...in the museum may be an art critic. He's loud, but generally harmless ...in the art gallery is probably the owner. No 10% discount for you. [via galleryhopper] If you're gonna take the kid to see art--and I heartily encourage...
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Posted by greg at
12:25 AM
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Comments (1)
July 21, 2004
1. Check everything but the onplane essentials (and your laptop, which won't fit in the diaper bag, so you stuff the emptied diaper bag into your checked luggage and use a camo duckhunting tote from LLBean. 2. Take the stroller...
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Posted by greg at
12:16 PM
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Comments (7)
July 16, 2004
Yeah, yeah, I know every guy thinks his daughter could be a model. But judging by the clean, business-like way the kid puked into the sink after eating, and her rapid, symptom-free recovery, I think she can really do it....
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Posted by greg at
11:58 AM
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Comments (1)
July 13, 2004
A 1979 article in National Lampoon gives post-women's lib dads some handy advice. Topics range from the basics of childcare and feeding, to giving the kid some of that "old-fashioned discipline" without facing a child abuse rap. Here's the...
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Posted by greg at
10:16 AM
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Comments (0)
July 10, 2004
Excruciating. The first few times, you don't even think it's possible to clip them without cutting flesh. We did it while the kid was eating, but now that she's actively involved in feeding, this doesn't work so well anymore. You...
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Posted by greg at
11:02 PM
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Comments (10)
July 2, 2004
These thoughts go through my head sometimes when I put the kid down to sleep: "I know you're tired, I can tell. Don't fight it. If I just brush this flannel cloth over your cheek, you'll grab it, snuggle up...
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Posted by greg at
3:27 PM
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Comments (1)
June 28, 2004
Over the last couple of weeks, I've been sitting the kid on the edge of the sink and explaining how I'm making a bottle for her. I show her the steps, do it all right in front of her. Most...
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Posted by greg at
9:27 AM
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Comments (1)
June 25, 2004
11:01 AM The kid wakes up at my feet. I pick her up and put her on my lap. "Look at you! You're sitting up! You're sitting up!" "Blech" "You're spitting up!" BRB...
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Posted by greg at
11:07 AM
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Comments (0)
June 20, 2004
The early mornings before the kid wakes up are prime time to get stuff done, no multitasking required. So when I got up this morning, there was a box of Crunch Berries with a bowl and a note that read,...
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Posted by greg at
6:53 AM
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Comments (0)
June 18, 2004
The kid went through a sniffly, congested phase a week ago, so be rolled out the needle-tipped squeezeball nosepicker to help her breathe. A couple of awkward attempts caused her to go into meltdown; and very soon, she'd start screaming...
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Posted by greg at
2:34 PM
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Comments (9)
June 17, 2004
A helpful instructional diagram [via waxy. He sure learns quick!]...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 AM
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Comments (1)
June 8, 2004
There'll be no shortage of ties, gold-toe socks, and lumpy ceramic doodads made by uncoordinated little hands in the years to come, so on his first Father's Day, why not think out of the box? Here are some ideas from...
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Posted by greg at
5:52 PM
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Comments (0)
June 4, 2004
Reading UrbanBaby's acid-filled message boards, so you don't have to:"Husband's self-centered, clueless and useless" I just had an epiphany about what it means to be a mother versus a father. A mother will set aside her wishes and whims of...
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Posted by greg at
3:32 PM
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Comments (0)
June 1, 2004
Apparently the influx of straight families in Chelsea isn't all bad news for the (less-and-less) gay ghetto. Jeff Bennett, who's documenting his and his "Hubby's" sweet-as-pie trip down the surrogate road to fatherhood for Good Housekeeping Planet Out, writes about...
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Posted by greg at
1:40 PM
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Comments (0)
May 29, 2004
Take a baby's higher sensitivity to nighttime temperature changes into account. Twice now, our inadvertent temperature-related actions upset the kid enough to wake her up much earlier than normal. Once, we turned the A/C down before bed, as we always...
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Posted by greg at
1:03 PM
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Comments (2)
May 28, 2004
Gawker has some advice if you're taking the LIRR to the Hamptons this Memorial Day weekend:2. Children need muzzles too. Duct tape will work. In fact, not only can you tape up their little mouths, when the train gets really...
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Posted by greg at
12:21 PM
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Comments (1)
May 27, 2004
First, get a Bjorn or some comparable (but inferior) babystrapping device. Once your kid is old/strong enough (3 months, in our case), strap him or her on your chest, facing out. Don't forget socks. Get your kid as cute as...
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Posted by greg at
7:50 PM
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Comments (2)
May 22, 2004
From the press junket in March for Spartan, his Secret Service conspiracy movie which no one knew about because we were all too busy discussing The Passion:Do you see your career in any kind of continuum? There's a sense, like...
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Posted by greg at
11:47 AM
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Comments (0)
May 17, 2004
Whether it's French, Spanish, or Japanese, we're very interested in raising our kid to speak or at least understand a language besides English. This weekend in the park, we happened to meet three French/English families, which'll get me off my...
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Posted by greg at
12:43 AM
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Comments (0)
May 14, 2004
Plan ahead or plan to be creative if you're taking a stroller on the NYC subway. We had the Bugaboo out, which I carried up and down stairs. That's the easy part. Tonight, we got off at a station that...
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Posted by greg at
11:57 PM
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Comments (3)
May 10, 2004
If your kid's already born, it's a day late. Otherwise, it's 364 days early. Here are a couple of lessons I learned on our first Mother's Day that new dads may find useful: 1) On the way to Ikea Friday,...
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Posted by greg at
6:42 PM
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Comments (0)
April 28, 2004
Blast, so to speak, from the past: In 2000, Jonathan Kronstadt gave some counterintuitive advice in Salon about what to do if when your kid pukes. DON'T move him, DON'T stand still. No, like "some kind of deranged hockey goalie,"...
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Posted by greg at
10:44 AM
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Comments (0)
April 25, 2004
A couple of months before the kid was born, I took my gym bag to a lunch meeting in Tribeca. I wanted to check out the new Equinox there because--well, maybe mid-afternoon is when the stars work out. Actually, it's...
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Posted by greg at
8:25 AM
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Comments (0)
April 24, 2004
Not being big users of baby wipes before having a baby, we had little/no idea which kind to get. So we bought some travelpacks of various brands: Pampers, Huggies, crunchy-organic ones from Whole Foods, some French ones. Sample them all,...
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Posted by greg at
10:53 PM
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Comments (5)
April 21, 2004
You know how, when it falls, toast always lands buttered side down? It's the same with diapers. ADVICE: Swap out the old diaper for the new one; make sure you get the new one under there, of course. Then, before...
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Posted by greg at
9:29 AM
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Comments (0)
April 12, 2004
On his own weblog, writer/uber-blogger/dad Mark Frauenfelder says:I was trying to think about what book has had the greatest effect on my life. I thought about books I'd read in college that seemed to carry a lot of philosophical weight...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 PM
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Comments (0)
April 11, 2004
One of the best pieces of advice I got for buying a stroller was to make sure it fit me. Most strollers, it seems, are designed with a mom as the primary user. If you're taller than the average woman's...
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Posted by greg at
8:19 AM
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Comments (3)
March 29, 2004
I was going to post some references for drownproofing classes, teaching babies to swim/float enough not to drown if they fall in a pool. But then I found the American Academy of Pediatrics website, which recommends against teaching kids younger...
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Posted by greg at
3:05 PM
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Comments (1)
March 27, 2004
Some tips arising from doing a lot more laundry all of a sudden: We only heard about Dreft, laundry detergent for babies, like two weeks before the kid came. Apparently, it's the combination of tough-stain remover and skin-coddling that does...
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Posted by greg at
12:30 AM
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Comments (1)
March 3, 2004
It's like toe jam, but in the tiny creases of your kid's hands. And it's appearance is a sign that you worry too much about not making your kid cry when you give her a her little bath. She's gonna...
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Posted by greg at
7:05 PM
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Comments (0)
Never mind trying to explain how I have the capacity to post anything during the first week of my daughter's life. Here are a few things that are working and some things I wish we'd done differently in advance of...
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Posted by greg at
12:40 AM
March 2, 2004
Unless you're a doctor or Howard Hughes, you're going to be washing your hands more often than you ever imagined possible when you bring a new baby home. So whatever soap you get, you'll be soaking in it. "In dishwashing...
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Posted by greg at
10:24 AM
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Comments (0)
February 21, 2004
There are plenty of health reasons that your new baby may be blue. After you've eliminated these possibilities, in consultation with your qualified health expert, if your baby is still blue, consider the following: 1. Your people may be blue,...
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Posted by greg at
11:59 AM
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Comments (0)
February 12, 2004
To this list of standard baby name dealbreakers: - Already too trendy - Used by celebrity parents - Soap opera characters > 0 - The WB/USA Network characters > 0 - Vanity URL availability I would add: Google search results...
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Posted by greg at
12:43 AM
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Comments (0)
