Author: Guest

Daddy Are You Listening to me?

On Friday night we were hanging out with some good friends that just got back from visiting family in Canada. They were there for two weeks. The plane ride home is about two hours and it turned out that one of the tv’s in the back of the seat was broken. The mom being the nice and good mom that she is switch seats with her oldest daughter who is seven so that her daughter would be able to watch tv. The mom ( Read More...

Put away the sensitivity drum. Come here instead.

This is my first post on Dad Revolution. On my own blog, The Didactic Pirate, I mainly write about parenting and teaching, the two endeavors that fill my days.   My wife and I have an 8-year-old daughter, a precocious Mini-Pirate who entertains, frustrates, confounds, and enchants me every damn day.  (We actually decided to have a child so that, if I ever decided to started blogging, I’d have stuff to write ab Read More...

Even the Stay at home dads need balance

When we started this blog there were three stay at home dads in the Revolution but now that the dust has settled a bit I find I am the only one still going. I feel like I need to stand strong and represent the cause in a sea of great working dads, but at the same time the numbers seem a bit more balanced. While there are more and more men staying at home to raise the kids, whether by choice or necessity, the number Read More...

“What the… Get your… I’ll put a… Get out of my face!”

When you’re a father you censor yourself. You get just as angry with a child but you don’t want to say, “What the filth and foul and I’ll filth and foul, filth and foul and, yeah, ya filth and foul face, and I’ll filth and foul, foul, filth!” You don’t want to say that to a child so you censor yourself and you sound like an idiot: “What the… Get your… I Read More...

The Good Books

A comfortable place to read In a recent post over at my blog ‘Luke, I am Your Father’, I related how I was a bit astonished but also a bit proud of the number of kid books my wife, Mrs. LIAYF, and I have accumulated in the three years we have been parents. That number was at nearly 500. I would venture to guess that we have read almost all of those 500 to our son at least once. Many we have read to him Read More...

What’s in a name?

What do you call your grandparents?  What do you call your parents for that matter.  I know growing up I didn’t get into the ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’.  For as long as I can remember I have called the woman who thrust me from her loins Mom, or Ma.  My Father?  I’ve always called him Dad or Pop. Grandparents is weird.  My Father was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee so his Read More...

Please Excuse The Self Promotion

One of the reasons I was asked to join the Dad Revolution was because of my personal blog which is a focused study on the change taking place in Fatherhood. I hypothosized that dads are approaching fatherhood differently and then I set out to prove it with a comprehensive study that I call The DADvocate Project. The following post is summery of the project and I have asked any daddy blogger who wants to re-post it. Read More...

Beating the heat in the city – Water Fountains

Even in the NorthWest we get some hot days. I know it’s hard to believe, what with the reputation of never ending rainy days and tall evergreen tress but we are at the beginning of 90 degree temperatures like the NorthEast. When the weather warms up like this the boys and I go out in search of water to cool ourselves down. There are a number of great pools in Portland but when it is just me and three kids a p Read More...

Sunday In The Park

Sunday in the park is the only place one can really survive in Manhattan when the sun starts to literally melt the asphalt. We pack the stroller with plenty of water and toys and head out to the Great Lawn in the heart of Central Park. I am very grateful that plans to turn this vital patch of green into more city blocks was scuttled in the mid-1800s. As a parent, I realize how important this resource is for survivi Read More...

I am Dad

My family and I decided to go to the playground this hot summer morning. It was a relatively quiet start to the day, all of us somewhat sluggish from yesterday’s marathon July 4th celebration activities. After quickly devouring breakfast in anticipation of their adventures at the playground, my children waited for my wife and I at the door like two coiled springs waiting to be sprung. I took my wife’ Read More...

Turning Off the Tube

It was just the other day that my son, who just turned three, and I were at a local library. “Look Daddy. Look what I found. It’s a duck. I’ll call it Duck Duck.” at which point he held up a medium sized stuffed Big Bird toy. Such is the life of a toddler raised without television. Anyone who reads my personal blog Luke, I am Your Father should know that we gave up tv before our son was bor Read More...

What fatherhood isn’t

I’ve been reflecting on some things.  Post Father’s Day, I’ve thought about my own dad.  I thought I would write about that today.  It’s grim, I’ll warn you now, but it’s truth. Fatherhood. What can I possibly say about fatherhood? I suppose I could say that it’s many things, but I think I’d like to say what it isn’t. Much of my family and friends know about my site, Read More...

My brother-in-law Qualifies

We went to dinner with my sister and brother-in-law (BNL) last night. I’ve known for a while now that my sister is pregnant and I’m very excited because my kids will finally have cousins. We were on our way home from dinner and I was riding with them and my mom. Side note if you are ever in Atlanta and need to eat your full of southern food it’s worth the 1 hr ride north to The Smith House in Dahl Read More...

Teaching My Son What Is Cool

There are a lot of lessons a dad can teach a son–sports, fixing things, impressing girls, getting a job, how to drive, etc.  Some lessons can be quite serious such as the value of hard work or how to run a business.  There are also fun lessons like how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, how to do an ollie on a skateboard or how to play football.  My son is only three years old so obviously he is n Read More...

Negotiating with the neighbor kids

Dealing with discipline issues with your own kids is difficult enough but when you add in other kids that are not your own you run into some dicey situations. In our neighborhood there are no shortage of little friends to enjoy a sunny summer afternoon with but when all the kids end up on my watch I have to think about how to handle the inevitable fights that come up. With my boys I’m pretty quick with the wh Read More...

Plan? What Plan?!

As summer officially gets underway so do plans for a family vacation. Please keep in mind that our vacation falls into the category of “bring your child on tour so everyone can see him”. This entails, flying to Italy (yes, I know, boo-freakin’-hoo) and cramming ourselves into a car the size of a stamp and chauffeuring our son around for two weeks to meet every single relative of mine and my wife. This include Read More...

Post Father’s Day Reflection

So yesterday was Father’s Day. And a good one at that. My family and I went to a pool party to celebrate. There were families everywhere, cooking, drinking, swimming, playing games. At one point I stopped and just slowly looked around to take it all in. What I saw were dads engaged with their kids. Baseball, games, swimming—you name it they were doing it with their kids. Keep in mind this was happening during a Read More...

Raffle: Upspring Baby – milkscreen

It’s the week before Father’s day and the good folks at Upspring Baby have teamed up with DadRevolution to offer a lucky Mom or Dad the opportunity to win one of UpSpring Baby’s latest and greatest products, milkscreen™. What is milkscreen? milkscreen is a simple, two minute test to detect for alcohol in breast milk. milkscreen™ lets Mom know the volume of alcohol concentrated in her breast m Read More...

Backyard Camping

Despite the fact that the revelation of this may bring a few cat calls for me to relinquish my Pacific North-Westerner card, I hereby admit that I am not a camper.  Even though I grew up on a dairy farm in rural Southwest Washington state surrounded by high hills and abundant nearby campsites, I was always one of those guys who was too busy to get into the camping lifestyle.  Did I mention that I grew up on a da Read More...

On the road with toddlers

Last Summer Beautiful and I set off on a road trip with our three year old and one and half year old sons, from Portland, Oregon to Indianapolis, Indiana. We needed to get back to the house we owned in Indy to turn it over for our new tenants and we also needed to get out of town for a little vacation. The thought of driving 36 hours in a small car with small children is enough to inspire night terrors in the bes Read More...