Good books for fathers and parents

Hi all,
Just had a thought today that I might need to go back to my fatherhood and parenting reading material... my son has really been exerting his independence lately, so gotta remind myself what to do in these situations! Today, for the first time, he was really keen on telling me and my wife to do: "Don't change the bed sheets!" to me, and when my wife tried to feed our newborn, "Don't feed her!" This of course, combined with lots of whining, kicking and screaming. Joy oh joy. Well, I think he was really tired and the feelings of slight jealousy towards his baby sister were starting to creep in. He is good most of the time though, and in the end we managed to get him to conclude that his baby sister can't drink orange juice and can't eat cookies, so she has to drink milk. It is always great to add a bit of sound logic to the situation to help smooth things over.
Nevertheless, it may be time to hit the books again. Here are two books that I found to be excellent and worth reading:
1) The Complete Secrets of Happy Children, by Steve Biddulph. This is actually two books in one... The Secrets of Happy Children, and its follow-up, the appropriately titled, More Secrets of Happy Children. This book gives lots of practical tips on parenthood, being a dad, the correct language to use when talking to your children, disciplining, soft love, firm love and special considerations for raising boys and raising girls. There are many good tips and ideas in its pages. We have used and applied many of his ideas with our kids, and he really gives you a lot to think about.
2) The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, by Stephen Covey. Need I say more than Stephen Covey. I mean, Stephen Covey, loving father of nine children plus highly successful entrepreneur. That says it all. If you haven't heard of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, please get out of the hole you are under and google it right now and then buy it. Then get this follow-up, where he applies the Seven Habits specifically to family life and parenting. Especially since he is a father, who also managed a career, there are many great pieces of advice for fathers here on how to cope and be a terrific father that your kids will love. He has so many great ideas and thoughts. There are lots and lots of great stories in this book from his own experience (he had enough of them, with nine kids and all). This includes the classic "green and clean" story, which is worth the price of the book alone in my opinion.
So I think I may re-read these books, cuz the time seems right to do so. If any of you out there have ideas for good books for me to read, please leave a comment and let me know. And if you have read the above books and have an opinion about them, feel free to leave it here!
Happy reading,
TBD

10 more minutes, 5 more minutes...

Hi all,
Just a quick one today cuz I am heading to bed soon.... gotta get as much sleep as possible in case our daughter wakes up in the night. She is usually pretty good, but the other night she was up for about an hour from 3am to 4am, so in case the wind is not blowing in the right direction or the moon is shining the wrong way again tonight, I need to be prepared and rested!
Wanted to share with you our usual technique for leaving places that our son does not want to leave. I find a lot of parents use this technique, and it generally works well, so you probably know about it already or at least have seen it in action, so here goes...
Trying to get our son to leave the playground is like trying to get Paris Hilton to leave a party full of cool people. It just ain't happening, or at least any time soon.
The only way we have a remote chance of getting him away from his favourite places without a major drama is to do the countdown.
In case you are new to the countdown, it goes like this:
Step 1:
Say: "Okay, , we are going to go in 10 minutes okay? Do you understand? 10 more minutes." (proceed to obtain acknowledgement from child, if you can turn their attention away from the sandbox, slide, climbing bars, what have you, for a split second).
Step 2:
Wait 5 minutes.
Step 3:
Repeat step 1, inserting "5 minutes" in place of "10 minutes"
Step 4:
Wait 3 minutes.
Step 5:
Repeat step 1, inserting "2 minutes" in place of "10 minutes"
Step 6:
Wait 1 minute.
Step 7:
Repeat step 1, inserting "1 minute" in place of "10 minutes"
Step 8:
Wait 1 minute.
Step 9:
Say: "Okay, it's time to go! Let's go!"

Seems like a bit much? I agree! But sometimes this is the only thing that works. I have found that if I just skip to step 9 without doing steps 1-8 first, I have a much lower chance of being able to leave without a drama. It's kinda like trying to bake a cake without breaking the eggs first... you end up with a real funny looking cake that don't taste too good.
Alrighty, I'm off to bed folks. Till next time,
TBD

More thoughts on calming a crying or fussy baby

Well, our daughter has had a bit of evening fussiness lately, so I have been spending a few of my past evenings helping to calm her to sleep. So, since this is the freshest topic on my mind, I thought I would dedicate this post to a few more thoughts on calming a crying or fussy baby.

1) Using swaddling and white noise techniques, combined with placing the baby along your arm on its side (holding his/her head in your hand) to trigger the calming reflex, works really well. These techniques are described really well and in detail on the "Happiest Baby on the Block" DVD by Dr. Karp. See my post on this DVD for further details.
2) Swaddling and white noise combined with carrying the baby upright with his/her head close to your chest/heart also works really well. This works especially well for me if I use techniques to keep myself calm and relaxed at the same time. See my post on my "Aha" moment.
3) Carrying our baby around in our sling works really well, and it is similar to point 2 above, because when she is wrapped in the sling, it is similar to being swaddled. She is nice and cosy and often falls asleep after we walk around with her in the sling for awhile. I did this earlier today when I went out with her and my son again, and I was pleasantly pleased because she fell asleep quite quickly and slept the entire time (about two hours). Gave me a chance to pick up and enjoy a chocolate blended creme frappucino, while my boy enjoyed a donut (chocolate of course... think he takes after me)!
4) We have an elliptical trainer, and my wife has found that carrying our daughter in the sling while riding the elliptical trainer works really well. The sound of the trainer, combined with the flowing, rhythmic motion, had a very calming effect. My wife was happy because she gets to exercise at the same time! (compare this to me, who takes the opportunity to go get chocolate)!
5) Choosing the right colours can have a calming effect - it has been found that blues and greens are the most calming colours, while yellows tend to cause fussiness. So if you are trying to calm a fussy baby, move out of a yellow room and into a blue or green one! Notice that our sling is also blue!
6) Making sure the baby has burped or trying to help the baby to burp can help to relieve the fussiness. Always burp the baby after feeding him/her. This can be done by holding the baby upright to your chest or over your shoulder and gently patting his/her back.
7) Checking the diaper is a good idea too, of course... sometimes a clean diaper can make the difference between a fussy baby and a calm baby.
Hope you found something you can use! Take care for now, time for some rest for me!
TBD

What would we do without our Didymos?

We carry our newborn in a Didymos Sling wherever we go. We used the same sling with our first born as well. The amount of mileage we have gotten out of it so far is probably the equivalent of walking to the moon and back. It has paid for itself a million times over, and we still plan on getting at least another good year out of it.
There are lots of slings on the market. I can only speak for the Didymos because that is the only one I have tried, because we heard from many other parents that it is the best. We have an African Baby Carrier as well, but we don't use it so much. We found it a bit harder to use, and less versatile, and overall our son didn't like it as much as the sling.
What I like about the Didymos sling is that it is very high quality and very versatile. You can tell that it is a quality product just by holding it. We bought ours used, and used it a lot with our first born, and are using it a lot with our newborn. It still looks and feels new. It does not show any signs of wear or over stretching. There are a number of different ways that you can use the sling to wrap your child, and you can use it right from birth to at least 12 months. You can do everything from a hammock type of wrap, to a front wrap, to a backpack wrap. See this website for some details about how the wrap is made and some pictures http://www.extraordinarybabyshoppe.com/didymosPage.html. I have also included a couple of pictures of us using our didymos in this post.
I admit it is a bit difficult to learn how to do some of the wraps and I was more nervous than a nervous person the first time I tried it. But the more you do it, the better you get at it. Now I can wrap our newborn faster than a Wrapanini worker can wrap a wrap.
Our first born loved the sling (at least as much as he now loves chocolate), and it seems that our newborn loves it too. It is a place for the child to be close to the parent, all warm and cosy. It is very calming for them, so much so that we usually use it as a calming technique when all else fails. I will write a bit more about that in another post.
So, just felt like praising the wrap here, because I used it with my newborn today and I was so happy. I took her and my son out together, alone, for the first time, and she slept right by my side in the wrap the whole time and I still had my hands and legs free to chase after my toddler son and sip a coffee at the same time! It doesn't get any better than that!
So if you are looking to try carrying your baby in a sling, I say it is a great thing to do, and the Didymos is a great way to do it!
Cheers,
TBD

Toddler Bedtime Routine

Hi all,
I am sure many parents out there are searching for the perfect bedtime routine, so they can get the kids to bed and have a moment of serenity. I know we searched for one at first!
It took us awhile to come up with our bedtime routine, and now that we have one, we use it on a "routine basis" (pun intended)... Actually we use it every night and it works very nicely with great success. We use it with our almost 29 month old son, and he knows exactly what to expect with this routine, and it is a perfect signal to him that it is bedtime.
In preparation for our daughter's birth, I started doing this routine with him, knowing that my wife wouldn't always be available to put our son to bed, due to nursing duties with our daughter. Quite ironically (sorry, don't want to quote Alanis Morissette here), since our daughter was born, our son wants my wife to do the routine with him more often. This is understandable, since he wants to have some special one-on-one time with her.

So the routine goes like this:
1) Time to take a bath and brush your teeth. The bath is sometimes left out if he is not very dirty. In that case we just brush his teeth. If giving him a bath, I brush his teeth while he is in the bath. See also my posting on tooth brushing.
2) Time to wash your face and hands. This step is only if we didn't give him a bath.
3) Dry down and run under the bed covers! (this is his favourite part)
4) Put on bedtime gear/pyjamas/t-shirt, depending on how hot it is.
5) Close the blinds together (he sometimes wants to do this all by himself - that is okay, I let him).
6) Time to read a book... we generally read the same books to him each bedtime, or he chooses one out of about four typical bedtime books. I will write another posting on books we like.
7) Read the book one time.
8) Read the book a second time (before starting to read the book a second time, he always says "again? last time... then sleep." ... it was me who got him saying this, because I always said, "last time, then sleep" to him before starting to read the book a second time) - we don't read "war and peace" or "the lord of the rings" to him or anything like that, so it is not a big deal to read the book a second time.
9) Turn off the bedside lamp (he turns it off by himself).
10) Sing him a bedtime song/lullaby. He usually falls asleep during the singing. I always sing the same lullaby, "Hush little baby," my wife uses a different one.

That is it, our 10 step program to a good night's rest! It may sound long, complicated and elaborate, but it actually goes by really quickly and flows very naturally.
So if you are in need of a bedtime routine, I welcome you to try adapting this one to your needs, or take the steps that might fit for you and create your own routine out of it. Appreciate any comments you have!
Wishing you many nights of uninterrupted sleep,
TBD

Just had an "aha" moment!

Hey all,
Didn't think I was going to get to this blog entry tonight... it is getting late and our newborn daughter has had some difficulty getting settled and to sleep tonight. So I have spent the past two hours on and off using our calming techniques.
In a previous post I mentioned "The Happiest Baby on the Block" and the calming techniques used on the DVD of the same name. One of the techniques, combined with swaddling, is "Shushing" or creating "white noise" by making a gentle shushing sound. The theory behind this is that it creates a noise similar to what the baby is used to hearing from being in the womb, so it has a soothing effect.
So tonight I spent a lot of time holding her up to my chest and walking and rocking and gently shushing. I felt all shushed out at one point to say the least, and felt like I had shushed more than the ocean on a very breezy day.
That is when I had my "aha" moment! I was so focused on making my daughter calm and making shushing sounds for her, that I was completely wearing myself out and making myself more stressed in the process. She could also probably sense that I was stressed, so it was more difficult for her to relax.
So I thought, why not make the calming techniques work for me, rather than against me? I shifted the focus of the calming to myself (sorry if that sounds selfish). While rocking and shushing my daughter, I closed my eyes and imagined that I was in a hammock by the ocean and the shushing sound was the ocean breeze. This immediately calmed me and kept me calm and relaxed, and at the same time it kept my daughter calm and relaxed. As I became more relaxed, she could also sense that I was more relaxed, which further relaxed her. I had a virtuous cycle going, rather than a vicious one!
I really feel good about this discovery, so had to share it with you all right away! Try it out, it definitely helps!
Now off to bed,
TBD

Don't have black teeth

Hi all,
This post is about tooth brushing... and in general, how to get your child to do important things that he or she doesn't necessarily always want to do.
My son isn't very enthusiastic about brushing his teeth. Eating chocolate, drinking orange juice and chewing gum are all not problems, but tooth brushing can sometimes be a drama.
We find he is most responsive and willing to brush his teeth when we (or I) tell him that if he doesn't brush his teeth, he will get black teeth and they will really hurt (be "Ouwwah" or "Ouchy"). He usually responds by saying, "no black teeth... be ouwwah!" and opening his mouth really wide to let us brush his teeth.
It really works well, but some of you out there may be wondering how ethical this approach is. But I think of it this way... I am not lying to him. In fact, I am telling the absolute truth... that is, if he doesn't brush his teeth, they will get cavities and hurt. I think he needs to understand that. Isn't that our motivation for brushing our teeth? Is there anybody out there who actually enjoys brushing his or her teeth and would do it voluntarily, if not doing it had no consequences?
Is this approach any worse than telling a child that Santa Claus will not come if he or she misbehaves? I find telling the child the real consequence can be a good and effective approach.
Some more examples: if you don't wear your helmet when you ride your bike, you will hurt your head if you fall down and it will really hurt. If you don't wear your hat in the sun, you will get a sunburn on your head... you need to protect your head from the sun.
Our son always wears his helmet and hat when we ask him to, because he understands why he needs to.
So many times I have seen parents tell their kids to do something, "because I said so"... and then wonder why the kids don't listen or don't do it. I think when the child understands the real reasons (i.e. not because of Santa Claus) why we are asking them to do (or not do) certain things, he or she is much more likely to listen.
So think about this the next time your child doesn't want to brush his or her teeth or wear his or her hat. Try pulling out the real consequence card before you pull out the Santa Claus card.
You might feel bad about telling them the real consequences, but in my opinion, it is not something to feel bad about... you are not lying, and if you don't tell them, they will end up finding out the consequences the hard way, when they actually do get a tooth cavity or a sunburn on their head!
Take care and happy napping,
TBD

Watch out! Projectile Poo-Poo!

Hey all,
Just a quick post for today because I gotta get to bed soon for whatever highly valuable moments of sleep I can smidgen together.
I was changing my 10 day old daughter's diaper today and was amazed at the speed, force and distance achieved by her projectile poo-poos.
She had the perfect timing...managing to do it right when I put my guard down and wasn't covering her up with anything. So of course, poo went flying everywhere. Luckily I was wise enough and had laid her on a very large towel.
So to all you soon-to-be dads, take heed to my story and always make sure to be on the look-out for those projectile poos!
Until next time, I wish you much rest,
TBD

Pee-pee and really long train! Wow!

It was a rainy day today, so I thought I would blog a tip for my fellow fathers for rainy days.
If you have a Chapters near you, check it out. There is a Chapters near us, in Vancouver, that has a nice Thomas the Train Engine track and trains set up in the section where the children's books and toys are. This is the Chapters at Broadway and Granville. What is great about this set up is that you can pick up some books or magazines and read them while your child/children play with the train set. I did that with my son today, and it worked great. He played with the trains contently for almost two hours with minimal need for my intervention.
My book and magazine reading was only interuppted by his need to go "pee-pee" and for him to show me his really long train. (Oh, and a couple of times when the really long train came apart and some minor repairs were in order).
My boy loves to play with other kids and build really long trains, so this was the perfect spot for him today. Since I like to read, it was the perfect spot for me too. I had to practically beg him to leave, he could have stayed there all night. I wouldn't have minded staying longer myself, to read some more, but of course we had to get back for dinner and beddy-bye. So to convince him to leave, I bought him a book and told him we would go home and read it. That worked nicely, although I only condone such actions when absolutely necessary :-) ...but he played really nicely anyways, so I thought he deserved a new book... I have to admit, it was a book that I have wanted to get for awhile too. I will write about it in a future post.
So, check out what your local Chapters or bookstore have to offer for kids. The children's section of your local library also may have something similar. If they do, and you like to read, you are in for a rainy day treat!
Until next time,
The blog blogg daddy

The Happiest Baby on the Block

Okay, my newborn daughter is over one week old now, and I haven't really mentioned her on this blogg/blog yet, because so much has been happening with my son and my main duty right now is to keep him busy while mama nurses the baby and looks after her.
This in itself poses a bit of a dilemma that I think many parents of two or more face when the new baby is born... how to divide your time between the two, so that you can bond with both in the way that you would like to?
We have been doing our best with this. One approach we have taken is for my wife to put our son to bed after feeding our daughter, and I spend that time with our daughter. This allows a nice one-on-one bonding time for each of us with the kids.
But that was not what I wanted to write about in this post. In this post I wanted to mention a video that my wife and I watched before our daughter was born, called "The Happiest Baby on the Block" by Dr. Harvey Karp.
You may have heard of this video/method before, because he has been featured on Dr. Phil and many other programs and talk shows. I am mentioning it here in case you haven't yet heard of it, because before our friends told us about it, we hadn't heard of it either.
Dr. Karp outlines methods for calming your crying newborn baby, and these methods really work miraculously. We have used them on our newborn daughter and I can truly say the methods really do work! We are very happy, and so is our baby. She may be crying one second... and then we work our magic, and she is calm the next... literally. I wish we knew these techniques with our first child.
You can find more information at http://www.thehappiestbaby.com/ ... we actually borrowed the video from our local library, so it is worthwhile checking your local library for a copy. It doesn't cost you anything, and it really works wonders! Definitely recommended viewing for any parent with a newborn... you will be amazed!
Hope you are getting enough sleep, cheers,
TBD

A Raging Sea of Pink and Turquoise

I am bruised and battered... to give my wife a break today, I took our son to the Adventure Zone at the Granville Island Kid's Market in Vancouver, BC. Boy oh boy an Adventure it was!
I had been there before, so kinda knew what I was getting myself into, but the last time I was there the moons must have been aligned in my favour, because not too many kids were there. That was not the case today, unfortunately.
There must have been some preteen girl's party going on, because the Adventure Zone was swarming with them. The birthday cake must have had speed in it too. I got climbed on, trawled over, kicked, punched, pushed, body-checked... you name it.
I made several attempts to hold them back while my son climbed, because they would have marched right over him given the opportunity. At one point, he was climbing up a narrow passage and I was blocking them from coming up through this passage until he got up safely. I felt like Will Smith in I Am Legend, with all the hungry Dark-seekers at my feet, grabbing at my legs, trying to climb up around me or over me. It was a raging sea of pink and turquoise.
What is the point of all this you ask? Well, I learned a valuable lesson in perseverance... I was prepared to leave after about 5 minutes of these shenanigans, but my son was having such a good time that he wanted to stay. Surely enough, after about an hour, the girls were worn out and left, and we had most of the place to ourselves. In the end I was glad that we stayed.
My conclusion: Adventure Zones like this are great on days when they are not too busy or the kids are about the same size as your kid. But on busy days, they can be quite the challenge!
Well, I am off to go nurse my bruises now!
Until next time, hope you are getting enough sleep,
TBD

Sign says "Put on Socks!"

Hey all, something amazing happened to me today that I have to share... my almost two and a half year old son said to me randomly in the middle of playing "Sign said 'Put on socks!'" ... what is amazing about that is that he was referring to our outing yesterday at the Granville Island Kid's Market, where he had to put on socks to play in the play area.
At first when I told him he had to put on socks, he outright refused. He absolutely did not want to put on socks, no matter how many times I told him that he had to. Desperate, I showed him the sign that said that all children must be wearing socks, and I told him, "This sign says you have to put on socks to play here." Wow, little did I know the success that this would have... right away, he said, "Sign says 'Put on socks!'" and proceeded to let me put his socks on him without any fuss or muss at all! It was like telling him he should eat chocolate ice cream.
Then today, when he repeated this sentence, it showed that he remembered this whole event and totally accepted it as a given. I am definitely going to keep this little tool in my back pocket... it works better than "Serenity Now!"
It even worked the other day when we were passing a construction site... he wanted to go in, but outside there was a sign that said "Do not Enter" ... despite all my pleading and begging, he kept itching further and further into the entrance. Just as I was about to collapse with exhaustion, I noted to him... "The sign says 'Do Not Enter!'" He immediately backed away from the entrance and repeated "Sign says "Do Not Enter!'" so many times that I almost wished I hadn't said it in the first place. I got almost the same reaction that I normally get when I tell him we are going to buy an M&M cookie.
So that's it... one small sentence for a man, one giant leap for a toddler... try it out, if your child is anything like mine, it just might work for you too!

Until next time, happy napping,
Vincent