Tag Archives: dad bloggers

Does Your Toddler Have a Super Bowl Pose?

01/31/2015 R.C. Liley 3 Comments

They may not have a clue about football, but toddlers can still rock an awesome cheering pose for the Super Bowl. My wife and I have captured several action shots of Avery practicing her pose during the Big Game.

Some are blurry, but we wouldn’t dare delete them because….cute, duh. Don’t tell me you’re not like that with you kid or kids….c’mon, you can’t fool a fellow parent. Okay, you can, but not when it comes to saving more pictures than you will ever need. Imagine if they were the old-school Polaroids. Yikes!

Since we have quite the collection, I’m asking you to help us decide what Avery’s best pose is so she is prepared to cheer for…..don’t get mad, Seahawks fans, the Patriots! We’re Cowboy’s fans first, but for this game, we’re rooting for the Pats.

Please help Going Mom and me out and tell us one or two of your favorite Super Bowl poses. We will then commence with blowing up the winning picture of her pose and train Avery to duplicate that exact stance with each scoring drive by the Patriots. Maybe we won’t go that far, but makes for a good visual, huh?

Whatever Avery chooses to do, I expect to see plenty of Patriot touchdowns to make the Seahawks wilt (Get it? Birds….wilting? No? Damn.)! Hopefully, just like the Super Bowl ticket prices, the balls stay inflated. Sorry, had to. 🙂

And now for the poses…

These 10 are the best we have so far, and I’ll be damned if it’s not hard to pick just one. I mean, look at the happiness, not to mention skill in some, of these poses!

Oh, and I would ask for help choosing a good pose for when the Seahawks make a touchdown or do anything good, but we already have that one figured out….

Yeah, seems appropriate, right? Hope you’re having a great weekend, and remember, try to stay somewhat healthy during the game and, well, always! Try dipping some baby carrots and apple slices in NuttZo, or eat right from the spoon. And if you must have something with bacon since that’s the trend lately, NuttZo + Bacon makes a delicious treat!

This is part of the Brilliant Blog Posts Link up, check out other #brilliantblogposts by clicking the badge below.

Who are you cheering for tomorrow?

Are they the regular team you usually cheer for, or just your favorite between the two?

Do you even care about the Super Bowl?

Life, Parenting

Potty Training is a Crapshoot

01/29/2015 R.C. Liley 5 Comments

We had our first shot at potty training the other day, and after our failed attempts, I’ve deemed it a crapshoot.

Taken right from Dictionary.com, the definition seems fitting….

crapshoot

[krap-shoot]

noun

1. Informal. anything unpredictable, risky, or problematical; gamble.

verb (used without object), crapshot, crapshooting.

2. to play craps.

3. Informal. to take risks; gamble.

I bolded the words that stand out the most to me when it comes to potty training. I bet all of you experience parents with plenty of potty training time on your latex-gloved hands are all laughing thinking “just wait”, and I can’t argue.

But, I also bet you agree that potty training is indeed a crapshoot, true?

Honestly, I haven’t looked at one resource on potty training, and we have yet to officially decide when to start attempting to get Avery to sit on the pot. I’m not even sure what age you’re supposed to start, and the more I think about it, it’s just another one of those “each child is different” scenarios.

Isn’t that how it is for almost all of parenting? We get bombarded by advice from what worked for others, but, taking advice from the thousands of internet parents is, wait for it, a crapshoot!

“Oh, my little princess (or DD as most forums call their daughters) was easy to potty train. I just told her to watch me and then she went all by herself! She even wiped, flushed, and cooked us dinner!”

Okay, I might’ve slightly exaggerated, but you get the point. All parents have their own parenting style! It might work for other parents too, but nothing is set in stone.

Anyway, Avery has been somewhat consistent with a morning and evening poop, and every now and then she’ll throw us a curve ~~ball~~ turd with another stinker somewhere in-between. One morning this week, she was in her Pooping Chair when I heard the poop grunts begin.

It was too late to even attempt to move her at that point since her face was already beet red from squeezing, so I just allowed her to go about her business. Five minutes later, I assumed the deed was done since her normal complexion had returned, and I brought her to be changed.

Diaper off with just a little pooplet (didn’t seem like her normal size), crazy legs in the air, and what do I see? A tiny turtle starting to emerge!! Crap (ha ha), time to attempt potty training session number one! I cradled Avery by holding her back and legs so that she remained horizontal until we made it to the toilet and quickly (but safely) rushed to the bathroom. Almost on the pot and then…..

….the turtle’s head fell off on my arm and rolled on the floor, next to the toilet. Damn. Since she had only two smaller nuggets so far, I sat her on the pot just to see if she had anything else to deliver.

She went from whining, to pointing at the bathroom lights, to crying, to hitting my face as I held her, to pointing at lights, and back to crying. I finally gave up, changed her into a new diaper, and thoroughly washed my pooped-on arm as I thought about how I could’ve approached that better.

Back in the kitchen and living room area, I set Avery down so I could finally cook her breakfast. Of course I get to eat some too, which is why I love using NuttZo as an ingredient and to spread on my creations. But not one minute after setting her down, Avery’s face turned dark red, she let out a grunt followed by her usual “poop shivers” indicating she was done.

Breakfast was put on hold once more as I changed Avery’s massive load. I think I found the body that belonged to that turtle head! I asked her why she didn’t do that when I had her on the pot, but she just pointed to the light in her room and said “Shdlislek” or something like that.

That night, while Going Mom was playing with her, Avery had her round two. Kelley attempted putting her on the pot to finish any unfinished business, but it only resulted in crying.

Two failed attempts and probably many more to come. Yeah, it “stinks”, but we might as well try when we can. I guess the first order of business (geez, I keep making myself laugh!) is to get a potty training toilet so we don’t have to hold Avery over our adult throne and risk dropping her in. Stay tuned for more adventures in poopland!

Are you past, in process, or still waiting for potty training with your kid(s)?

To you experienced parents, any tips you care to share?

What age did you start and what’s a good training toilet, method, book, etc?

This post is part of the #BrilliantBlogPosts link party hosted by Honest Mum. Click the badge below and check out all of the other Brilliant Bloggers participating in the link up!

Life, Parenting

What Kind of Pet is Your Kid?

01/08/2015 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

Does your kid pretend to be a certain pet/animal or do they convey a pet-like quality by choice or unintentionally? When raising our children, most of us go through the common pet commands like “No”, “Sit”, “Stay”, and “Don’t eat that!”, which means we are at least partly at fault for this use of imagination.

Is it wrong? I don’t think so. When I was a kid I used to steal and eat our dogs’ Milk Bones, after waving it in their face, of course. In retrospect, I’m lucky I still have a face since we had a doberman. And I loved when my mom would set out a bowl of water for me to lap up just like a real ~~boy~~ puppy! C’mon, I know there are others out there who did the same if not worse.

When Avery was only a few months old, Going Mom and I decided she sounded like a Pterodactyl when she hunched forward. It was cute, and for whatever reason, a Pterodactyl was the first thing that came to mind. If dinosaurs were still around, I’m positive they’d be suitable as pets, right? Just imagine, that’d be a ginormous bird cage! Maybe they would replace parrots on a pirate’s shoulder…..

Or maybe not.

Sorry, I was drifting off trying to imagine a pterodactyl perched on a pirate as he sailed overseas. Cool visual, huh? Just me? Damn.

Anywho, Avery no longer expresses pterodactyl-like qualities but acts more like a kitty nowadays. As I mentioned before, us parents are at least a little at fault, and this is where I’ll take most of the blame.

Avery has been making squeaky sounds every time she sees our fat black cat, Lou (we call him Fatty), and she’s become quite intrigued by the fat feline.

black cat, pet, animal — Hi, I’m Fa…I mean Lou

One day, after spitting out a spinach omelette I cooked for her, I asked her to be a good kitty and eat her “kitty food”. Lo and behold, she perked up, made a squeak (how a kitty sounds, apparently), and gladly ate the green-egged concoction I created. Score!

Since then I’ve been using the kitty trick (is it really a trick?) to get her to eat the more savory items I make.

feeding kid, feeding, pretend, parenting — Being a good kitty.

She normally enjoys the food I cook, but some of the initial bites take some kitty work, so pretending our daughter is a kitty has proved quite helpful and cute as well!

Of course I had to share it with the world on Instagram….

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by RC Liley (@going_dad)

I may have posted several takes, but it’s hard to resist!

I’m not sure how long Avery will let us use her being a kitty as a way to eat her food, but it’s nice not picking up so much food from the floor, and we’ll use it as long as possible.

I asked the Dad Bloggers group I’m a member of on Facebook and all of the responses had dads saying their kids act as some sort of pet/animal, or did at one time. One dad said all of his kids pretend to be some sort of animal, but his 4 year old has now moved on to her favorite band members. Hey, whatever works, right?

Other dads said their kids pretend to be anything ranging from a frilled lizard, a giant tortoise (love it!), and of course a dog, which the dad said he hates since they play the biting roll all too real. Ouch!

One of the dads even wrote on his blog, Daughter of the Beard, titled “The Hunger Games” about how they play a game pretending various animals are trying to steal his daughter’s food. Here’s part of his post explaining the game he plays with his daughter to get her to eat better:

BUT! We have a game. We have a game that works almost every time. All we have to do… is encourage her to steal and lie! You read that right, and I’m not sure how I feel about it either.

Here is how it works: First we put some food from her plate on her fork and say, “Phia, I think I’d like to eat this bite so keep an eye on it and make sure no one else eats it!” and then we turn our head to look at something else; she immediately STEALS the bite and eats it; she then taps the person on the shoulder and points to the empty fork and they say, “What!? Who ate my bite?”; then she will LIE and blame it on either someone else at the table or on some mythical squirrel/bear/bird etc… that did it. This repeats and escalates in incredulous disbelief at the disappearing bites until all the food is gone!

Tell me, what animals do your kids pretend to be? If they are grown, did they used to pretend?

Share your stories below, I’d love to hear.