Author: suburbandaddy

Bumbo Chair Recall. Are We Going Too Far?

News yesterday of yet another child product recall, this time for the Bumbo chair. We’ve used the Bumbo chair for years and it is a great product. It allows babies to sit up before they can do it themselves. Thing 3 loves to sit in his Bumbo and watch his brothers play. It’s like he’s one of the big boys.

The reason for the recall is not due to some product defect. Rather, it is due to misuse, and frankly, lack of common sense on the part of some parents. While the Bumbo is good for keeping babies “stuck” in the chair, it isn’t fool proof, and babies can sometimes get loose. It clearly says this when you buy the product. Not to make light of serious injuries which have occurred, but it seems obvious not to put a Bumbo on a table or counter, or anywhere the baby could get hurt if he falls out. If you put the Bumbo on a carpeted floor, the baby won’t get hurt when he falls out.

So the company will now put large warning labels on the Bumbo, saying not to place on surfaces where the baby would get hurt if he falls out. They even published a gallery of videos showing safe use of the Bumbo. Isn’t this a little extreme? I mean, do parents really need to be told not to do stupid things? Should soccer balls come with a warning not to play with them near traffic? Should bikes come with a warning that you can fall off them? There aren’t any toys which, if misused, can’t cause some harm. Do parents really need to be warned about every one?

Sometimes This Parenting Thing Is Easy

Once in a while…and it isn’t very often…I actually think I’ve got this parenting thing under control. I’ll be out with one or more kids, and get an almost out of body experience, where I can see myself and think wow, that guy makes it look so easy.

I had Thing 2 and Thing 3 (toddler and infant) to myself one evening after picking them up at daycare, so I decided rather than go home as usual, we’d stop at a new pizza place for dinner. Thing 3 usually sleeps in his car carrier, and Thing 2 loves to eat.? How hard could it be?
There was a long line to order food. Thing 2 started to wander off. My arm was about to fall off from holding the baby carrier. We ordered a slice of pizza and a sandwich and found an empty table. When I went back to the counter to get the drinks, and Thing 2 couldn’t see me anymore, he started crying and everyone was staring at the dad who looked to be in way over his head. Then Thing 3 woke up and needed a bottle. Why didn’t I just go to McDonald’s drive through?

But then everything seemed to line up perfectly into place. Thing 2 was happily eating his pizza and asking a hundred questions. I was eating my sandwich with one hand, feeding Thing 3 a bottle with the other, and keeping the toddler’s attention at the table, all while watching the Yankee playoff game on the flat screen TV on the wall!

This is where the out of body experience happens, where I can see the same strangers that were glaring at me earlier, now looking in awe at the dad who has it all under control. Or maybe they were looking at the mess of cheese Thing 2 had assembled under his chair and was now stepping on, or the baby spit up running down my shoulder. No matter, at least for a few moments, I was making it look easy.

What An Oreo Can Tell You About Your Kids

The way someone eats an Oreo can give interesting insight into their personality. There is even a psychological test on the subject. Thing 1 and Thing 2 eat Oreos in very different ways, and it’s right on with their different personalities.

According to the test, Thing 1 fits into the Twisted apart, the inside, and then the cookie category.

You have a highly curious nature. You take pleasure in breaking things apart to find out how they work, though not always able to put them back together, so you destroy all the evidence of your activities. You deny your involvement when things go wrong. You are a compulsive liar and exhibit deviant, if not criminal, behavior.

Thing 2 is clearly in The Whole Thing category.

This means you consume life with abandon, you are fun to be with, exciting, carefree with some hint of recklessness. You are totally irresponsible. No one should trust you with their children.

This video shows the two different styles in action. Regardless of how they eat them, Oreos remain a valuable technique for getting kids to eat vegetables/take a bath/stop fighting/clean up.

Can Parents Really Be Like This?

I can’t believe what I read in today’s Family Almanac column in the Washington Post. A mother of a 10 month old is asking how to get her toddler to listen to her and stop being so curious. I especially like this:

When we were on vacation, the rental home was full of objects he shouldn’t touch and I was bothered by all the “no’s” we had to give him. I also get upset when he won’t sit in his car seat.

What!? This has to be a joke. He’s 10 months old! I’m sorry you were so “bothered” by your kid on your vacation. Maybe you need to read about my vacation. If I had a dollar for every “no” I’ve given in the last 4 years, I would be RichDaddy instead of SuburbanDaddy.

Seriously, can someone be this clueless about raising a kid? I can’t wait until this parent has to deal with the terrible two’s, potty training, and all the other goodies waiting for them.

How To Win A Test Of Wills With A 4 Year Old

It started as a normal Saturday. The usual weekend errands and activities. Then, it was as if all the forces aligned to form the Perfect Storm, or in this case, the Perfect Four Year Old Meltdown.

Around 5:30pm, Thing 1 got into a scuffle over a toy with his brother, Thing 2. Again, nothing new here. Except this time, after I took the toy away, Thing 1 expressed his anger by peeing in front of me, soaking his pants and creating a puddle on the floor. There were previous incidents where he had “intentional accidents” to get our attention. But he had never been so bold as to look at me while he was doing it! The test of wills had begun.

He was immediately sent to his room to change his clothes and stay there until I finished feeding Thing 3. It was pretty quiet for the next 20 minutes so I was prepared to go up to his room for “the talk”. Getting angry = OK. Peeing on the floor because you are angry = not OK. But when I went into his room, he had pulled all the sheets off his bed, and the mattress was wet. The conversation went like this:

SuburbanDaddy: “What happened to your bed?”
Thing 1: “I took the sheets off because it was wet.”
SuburbanDaddy: “How did it get wet?”
Thing 1: “Somebody poured water on it.”
SuburbanDaddy: “No. You peed on it.”
Thing 1: “No I didn’t. It wasn’t me.”

At not quite 4 years old, this was a nice display of imagination and storytelling, except it was a blatant lie. And, he had just intentionally peed on his own bed. It’s hard to see the silver lining in that one.

Instead of “the talk”, I told him he was to stay in his room until the morning. No dinner. No story time. No television. Thing 1 was NOT happy with this turn of events. He tried to get out of his room, but each time he opened the door, I was standing there to put him back in. This went on for some time. Once he saw this strategy was not working, he stopped opening the door. SuburbanDaddy had won! At last I could eat dinner. Or so I thought…

We heard some loud noises upstairs. Thing 1 had dumped all the books and clothes out of his dresser and closet, and spread them all over his room. SuburbanDaddy was NOT happy with this turn of events. I took the clothes and books and removed them from his room. To prevent him from leaving his room I held the doorknob shut. The kicking and screaming intensified, then calmed down again. Some more strange noises. I opened the door and found he had pulled the mattress and box spring across the room. So, I removed the entire bed from his room. Each time he threw something, I would calmly remove it from the room. Garbage can, night lights, toys, pull ups, you name it.

After two hours of this I realized my son is very, very stubborn. I also realized where he gets it from. After all, SuburbanDaddy was perfectly happy to keep doing this all night, and remove every last item from his bedroom, if necessary, until there was nothing but four walls left.

So how did it end? Who won the test of wills? I’m not sure anyone did, but I’m sure it would still be going on if SuburbanMommy hadn’t intervened. Playing good cop to my bad cop, she was able to get him to calm down and agree to go to sleep. It looked like the night was finally over, but then Thing 1 got really sad.

SuburbanMommy: What’s wrong? Don’t you want to go to sleep?
Thing 1 [on the verge of tears]: I do want to. But I don’t have a bed anymore!

Vacationing With Kids Is No Vacation

We just returned from a so-called family vacation. When I went to work Monday morning, I heard comments like “Welcome back. You must be so well rested.” and “It must have been so hard coming back to work today.” These were obviously not people with three kids under 4. When you have young kids, there is nothing relaxing about a vacation. For the kids its a vacation. For the parents, a vacation is actually a lot of WORK!

Our trip (I won’t use the word ‘vacation’ anymore) was to Sandbridge, a quiet beach area just south of Virginia Beach. We rented a house for the week. The house was actually quite nice, with plenty of room for all 5 of us and our minivan stuffed with gear, toys, clothes, snacks, books, DVDs, and everything else we could squeeze in.

The thing about a trip like this is that it still has many elements of a real vacation, the kind of vacation that existed pre-kids. Except those moments are very short lived, or they are combined with the new post-kids vacation experience.

The very first morning I didn’t mind waking up before dawn to feed Thing 3. After all, I got to watch the sunrise over the ocean from the deck. What a great start to a vaca–, I mean trip. That post card moment was short lived, as Thing 1 and Thing 2 woke soon after, and immediately went into their let’s-take-every-toy-out-and-fight-over-them routine. Not to worry, we’re across the street from the beach, so let’s get dressed and head out.

Walking a few hundred yards to the beach seemed like a simple proposition. Then we started to figure out all the stuff we needed to bring. Drinks, snacks, cooler, toys, diapers, extra diapers, formula, bottles, chairs, umbrella, towels, bouncy seat. Luckily, we had a beach cart and double jogger stroller to help. All I had to do was wheel everything out. Or so I thought…

Sandbridge had just completed a multi-million dollar beach replenishment program. What would have been a short walk to the ocean on packed sand, turned out to be a trudge through a few hundred yards of deep, fresh sand. Jogger strollers don’t do well in deep sand. Especially when one of the tires is flat. As you can see in the pictures, getting to the beach each day turned out to be the most grueling workout I’d had in years.

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As difficult as it was at times, the trip wasn’t without its good moments. Sitting back on the beach or deck, even for a few minutes, enjoying the breeze and peaceful ocean sounds. A quiet morning bike ride along the ocean was very nice, with Thing 2 in the back seat, other vacationers smiling and waving as we cruised by. Except the last mile and a half, when he decided he didn’t want to wear a helmet anymore, and then the quiet ride became a wake up call for every other house along the ocean as we rode by. Let’s just say the other vacationers were no longer smiling.