#daddyblogs

The NY Times Styles section took some time away from talking about handbags to break some news:  Dads, it seems, love their kids!

I can't hate on the Times too much for talking about dad bloggers or proud papas.  But the revelation that dads want to share pictures of their kids with other other dads instead of talking about sports or something is a little, um, condescending and out of touch.  Personally, if I wanted to scroll through pages of other people's kids I'd just log on to Facebook.  But it shouldn't be that surprising that it appeals to some dads.  

A lot of parenting blog posts - including many here - are about feeling bad about how bad a parent the writer is.  But today, let's flip the script!

My daughter wanted to play on the computer for more than an hour, so I let her and I made her more computer savvy.

My daughter wanted a malted milk ball before breakfast, so I let her have one and I made her happy.

My daughter kept singing a non-sensical, repetitive song that was driving me crazy and I pleaded with her to stop and I finally lost my cool about it and made her stop.  I taught her a valuable lesson about song structure.

The Invisible Child Gag

(or How I Multitasked the Pounds Away)

Two years ago, my daughter was in the especially useless school situation known as Morning Pre-K.  In NYC, you can have the sweet, sweet experience of public pre-k for your kid with the big catch that it will be an incredible waste of your time as it will last only from 8:40am to 11am.  That is just long enough to get a coffee, feel sorry for yourself and then turn around and get your kid.  

However, if you have no shame and you are an extreme multi-tasker you can replicate my trick to maximize your time and MINIMIZE YOUR WAISTLINE (pretty slick, right?).

You know that invisible dog leash gag?  Well, I employed a version of it with my jogging stroller.  This is where a lack of shame comes into play:  a lot of people just feel plain stupid running along with an empty jogging stroller.  But not me!

My trick was to jog my empty stroller over to my daughter’s pre-k to pick her up and then jog back with my full stroller.  I gotta go pick her up and I gotta go back too, right?  That's just one half stupid-looking, shame-filled workout and one half awesome-looking bad-ass multi-tasking dad workout.  Zero one way, hero the other.

So if you can deal with the stares on the way there, you are in for a nice workout.  Plus, you get to show up at school looking fine in your workout gear.  Pretty sweet!

ABGKAHT:  ALWAYS BE GIVING KIDS A HARD TIME

My daughter was trying to sell me some "dragon gems."  Dragon Gems are some sort of imaginary item that she was trying to get me to buy.  In other words:  a scam.

The price list for Dragon Gems:

2 DGs for $1

3 DGs for $2

4 DGs for $3

5 DGs for $4

and so on.

I tried to tell her that a lot of times you get a discount for buying in bulk.  Apparently not with Dragon Gems.

I tried to tell her that favored customers get discounts.  I'm her *dad* after all.  She was having none of it.

So I told her I'd prefer to buy 2 DGs for $1.00, then come back later and do it again, thus getting 4 DGs for $2.00 instead of her lousy 3 DGs for $2.00.  

I'm gonna take her DGs and run her out of imaginary business.

Just a reminder that I'm tweeting here:

And for non-parenting tweets here:

Why tweet?  To conquer all media, of course.  

One of the things I’m doing is RT parenting tweets from funny comedians I follow.  

But I'll be honest:  so far I find the parenting twitter-sphere a pretty bleak place.  If you want someone to tweet a "Good Morning" to you every morning, I'm not your guy.  Find a friend or spouse to do that.