Tag Archives: love

International Babywearing Week: Reap the Benefits

This week is International Babywearing Week, and our City Dads Group has teamed with Baby Bjorn to celebrate all across the U.S. today.

Here in Texas, our Dallas Dads Group will meet at Klyde Warren Park to wear their babies as they proudly get active outdoors. Any longtime reader should know I’m a huge advocate of babywearing and have shared my feelings as to why I wear my baby and the numerous benefits.

Since it happens to be Thursday, I’ll take this Throwback opportunity to share an old pic of me wearing Avery and a few of my past posts.

How to "wear" in style in Texas.

Ha ha, okay, I’ll show one where you can actually see Avery and not my flying saucer covered head.

Bundled up for a cold walk
Bundled up for a cold walk

This is from my babywearing progression post I did last October. Yeah, she’s changed a little… Here she is just last month while helping me mow with our EGO.

For a little babywearing motivation, check out these great sites.

Don’t just take part for the 7 days, you can and should wear your kids year round to reap the numerous bonding and health benefits both you and the kiddos receive. Speaking of health, you can even turn babywearing into exercise. Here’s a video I put together with Avery a long time ago….

I even turned mowing the lawn into a babywearing sprinting workout with her! The possibilities are endless!

Again, celebrate International Babywearing Week this week and ALL YEAR….and the next to keep your kiddos literally and figuratively close to you.

Make sure to follow these hashtags and give a little retweet/like love if you can:

#IBW2015

#citydads

Do you plan on celebrating by wearing your baby?

Do you already wear your baby or are you interested in starting?

 

Getting Dirty as a Family

Going Mom loves taking on projects inside and out of our home. She usually takes them on by herself, but this weekend our family of three all joined in. There were several moving parts, but it all revolved around dirt, and lots of it!

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Kelley is full of great ideas for our home, but, much to her dismay, I tend to stray in this area. If it was up to me, I’d seek the the help of professional lawn care services. Something like https://www.lawncare.net/service-areas/california/ around where we live would be first on my list!

I focus more on what to cook for our family and of course keeping active. Good thing a big requirement of her backyard project entailed moving dirt, which fit perfectly with being active and working together as a family. Win-Win!

I made sure to stay on track with my squat every day program, and then it was time to get dirty together. Actually, compared to my hardworking wife, I didn’t get as dirty. I did the grunt work of digging  up our existing dirt soil crappy clay with rocks and carrying it out with a wheelbarrow to a dirt dump site nearby and then moving the 4 cubic yards of dirt you see in our driveway.

Half gone!

The first half felt like it took forever to even make a dent in the pile, but the second one went much faster. Kelley did the dirt-y work (I crack myself up) by getting into the dirt to spread it around in the 3 garden sections she made. Basically, my dirty level paled in comparison to hers. When she sets her mind on a project, she doesn’t mess around! (Seriously, I’m on fire!)

Speaking of mess, our little toddler, who’s growing more defiant each day, “helped” by getting in the dirt with Mommy and falling several times. I mean feet flying in the air kind of falling; it was hilarious, but only because she didn’t get hurt. As long as she was outside (one of her favorite words right now), she was all smiles.

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That’s a lie, of course there were a few meltdowns, but nothing that serious. Oh, and stopping everything to announce that a plane was overhead and waving.

#mysundayphoto, toddler, kids, parenting, growing up, love

That waving, it’s serious business.

All weekend long, Kelley was hard at work with one mission; finish the project! She wouldn’t let anything stand in the way either. Well, besides this tree….

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….but only that was temporary. Although I claim to not care that much about landscaping, I’m impressed by and enjoy seeing what my wife created in our backyard. It was great working on the project together and I loved taking on the labor of moving out the old dirt and bringing in the new. But I can’t take all the credit, Avery did walk around making sure to stand right in the way as we moved around.

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She was just making sure Mommy and Daddy weren’t slacking. Which, I didn’t take the best pictures here, but obviously the end result looks good to me.

Back left corner
Back left corner
Back right corner
Back right corner
Back middle right side
Back middle right side
Back middle left side
Back middle left side

Let me reiterate, all of the good looks come from Going Mom, I just took and dumped dirt as directed by the boss. Oh, and found humor lurking around the new trees…

Kelley had planned to tackle this project several weeks ago, but things kept getting in the way. Spending time together with my girls as we worked on a project together made for a quality (albeit dirty) bonding experience, and left good vibes throughout our home. I even installed a new faucet Kelley happened to pick-up at the store while I was away at the At-Home Dads Convention.

“Accomplished” is the word of the weekend in our home, with an equal side of love and happiness.

Did you do anything fun this weekend?

Are you the project planner in your home, or tend to avoid them as I do?

Waving to the Airplanes: #MySundayPhoto – 10.04.15

We’re at the stage of toddlerdom (hey, it’s on Wiktionary!) where every new thing/word is repeated somewhere between 10 to 50 million times a day. One of those things is “plane” or “jet” every time she hears one flying overhead.

Oh, I should mention we live between two airports, one being the extremely busy DFW Airport. In other words, there’s a lot of planes that fly over us. We rarely noticed the flying vessels until now, since Avery calls out their presence upon each passing. We’re proud of our girl for everything she’s learning, obviously, but the repeated words can take a toll sometimes. First world problems, I know.

We encourage Avery with supportive words when she acknowledges a color, sound, object, etc, so now we have her waving to the planes as they fly by.

#mysundayphoto, toddler, kids, parenting, growing up, love

I’m not sure if she understands that she’s waving to people (like we told her), or just the actual jet and/or plane, but it’s cute nonetheless. Speaking of, we also try to explain the difference between jet and plane since she’s been using both words.

Essentially, all jets are planes, but not all planes are jets. The propeller driven planes and in a different category. All of this just goes over her head (ha ha, puntastic!), but I know she’ll eventually catch on.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

Do you have a lot planes fly near your home?

Are there things you never or hardly noticed that your kid constantly discovers around your home now?

 

OneDad3Girls