Like most people who have little kids will tell you, they can say the craziest things sometimes. My kids are no different. They are always making some off the wall and usually funny comment. It also seem that the crazy second child, Greyson, is the biggest culprit. I decided this past week I was going to immediately jot down in my phone anything good that they said so I wouldn’t forget it. I’m notoriously bad about thinking I will remember later what they said and then forgetting. But this week I was good and wrote them down in my phone right away. Here are the best quotes from the Smith household from last week. Continue reading Funny things my kids said this week
Tag Archives: Stay-at-home-dad
Party Under the Big Top #12
I can’t believe this is already the last Tuesday in April, time seems to be flying by for me. Last week we had a bunch of really great posts that linked up. I’m excited to see what you guys have in store for us this week.
Don’t forget to share some comment love to others, everyone loves to read comments. So go ahead and make someone’s day with a few great comments and we’ll return the favor. Also don’t forget to link up to the Instagram Party at the bottom. Continue reading Party Under the Big Top #12
Things I Took for Granted
Before I had kids I took so many mundane tasks for granted. Staying home and watching 4 kids has taught me a valuable lesson about appreciating the simple things in life. Below I have compiled a list of some of the things I used to take for granted.
Going to bathroom
Long gone are the days when I could just get up and go to the bathroom without a care in the world. Now I either have kids in the bathroom with me, have kids banging down the door to try to get in with me or I’m hurrying as fast as I possibly can in hope that the house isn’t on fire when I come out. Continue reading Things I Took for Granted
Avoiding Bed Time
I don’t know what it is about bed time, but kids will come up with just about any excuse to delay going to sleep. In a perfect world I like to try and tire the kids out to the point they welcome the opportunity to fall asleep, but the reality is, that doesn’t always happen. Over the past 5 years I have heard some fairly ridiculous reasons why the kids couldn’t lay down and go to sleep.
Hands down, the two most common reasons have been: Continue reading Avoiding Bed Time
Practical Advice for New Parents
Here are a 6 practical, no frills pointers to help out any new and soon-to-be parents. Continue reading Practical Advice for New Parents
Practical Advice for New Parents
Here are a few practical, no frills pointers to help out any new and soon-to-be parents.
Photo Storage System
In about a weeks time you are going to have taken more pictures of your new baby than all the other pictures in your life combined. You will need to figure out a good way to store all of these digital treasures. If you don’t you’ll end up like me with 5 Picasa accounts and a drawer full of flash drives. There are plenty of options out there for digital storage. Also think big, a terabyte sounds like a completely unnecessary amount of storage capacity but I promise you, your baby is going to be really cute. You are going to end up taking a lot of pictures. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Read to your child
One of the best ways to help your child succeed in school is to read to him/her. In addition to it being great for your kids brain development, it’s fun and an excellent way to wind down for bed and have some nice cuddle time. Story time is special time around our house.
Pick out a few cool ideas for the long haul
There are so many cool ideas floating around the internet of cool projects parents did with their kids: Having each teacher sign “Oh the places you’ll go,” take an annual photo, measure their height each birthday, etc. Poke around Pinterest and you’ll find a cool idea or two (or 3 thousand) Pick one or two ideas you like and commit to doing them. Years later when your child leaves home and has a blanket made out of a shirt from every year of their life (or whatever you picked) they will have something they will cherish forever.
Journal etc
Some parents have a journal, some use a calendar but you should pick something along these lines to track your child’s milestones and record some of the things they’ve done. This will be fun to look back over in later years when you can’t remember when little Timmy first said “mommy” but if you wrote it down you can go back and look it up.
Decide on a few trusted/respected people to take advice on
Everybody and their mom is slinging internet parenting advice (me included). You need to pick one or two people who you respect and trust and can go to for advice. The rest of the parenting advice noise you need to ignore. You can’t make everyone happy but you can make yourself crazy if you try to listen to everyone in your friends list give you advice.
Don’t incessantly compare your child to everyone else’s
It’s fun and natural to want to cheer our little munchkins milestones and as proud parents we will swell when our little bundle starts walking early or knows more words than the 3 week older boy at the playground. But you will drive yourself insane if you nonstop compare your kid to everyone else’s. All kids are different and will develop at different times. In 5 years (or less) most of these things won’t really be that important. Don’t stress yourself out.
I hope some of these “words of wisdom” are helpful to you. Have a great week and please do me a big favor and answer my poll question. I appreciate it!
[polldaddy poll=8698953]
Unlikely Princess
As a stay at home dad, I don’t get all caught up in trying to portray some manly macho image to my kids or to the world to counter act the fact that I stay home and do a traditionally female role. It honestly doesn’t cross my mind 99% of the time. We have 3 boys and 1 girl and I can’t say that I go around intentionally trying to steer their play time toward “gender appropriate” toys. If my daughter wants to play with monster trucks or footballs then I let her and if my boys want to play with princesses and baby dolls then I let them do that too.