Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

I know, I know, I promised you guys 3 lists this week and the last one was suppose to be a gift guide for husbands and wives. Well as I started making that list, I got to thinking, how can I possibly publish this thing without compromising the many surprises that I have planned for Fefe? There was no way around it, so I decided to cut the wife portion of the list and just put out a gifts for Dads guide. After creating the “guys only” list, I thought it would be a bit selfish of me to put that list up without a counterpart for my female readers. I didn’t want to be accused of 1) Only looking out for the fellas or 2) Trying to “hint” at things I wanted for Christmas. If you knew some of my readers like I do, then you’d know that accusations fly freely, lol! Therefore, there will be no last gift guide, instead I’d like to hear some of the things that you’ll be shopping for this holiday season and some of the things that you’re hoping your significant other will be buying for you. Please share, I’m always interested to find out how closely my gift choices align with other individuals.

Welcome back to day two of Daddy’s Fish Bowl’s 2009 Holiday Gift Guide.  I hope you enjoyed the options presented yesterday for toddlers.  Today we’re shifting gears and taking a look at some options that your preschooler is sure to enjoy.  Shopping for this age group can become a tad more difficult as you attempt to balance fun toys and learning toys, our list contains a good amount of both, but as always, if you have suggestions that should be added or comments on any of the items listed, be sure to let it be known in the comments section.

Hello all, in the spirit of Black Friday coming up, this weeks posts will be dedicated to holiday gift guides.  There will be a separate guide for toddlers, preschoolers, and a combined guide for husbands and wives.  The gift guides will feature some items that the boys already own, as well as items that we plan to purchase for them this Christmas.  The items are in no special order, they are all gifts that I find interesting and think the kids will enjoy playing with.  Please feel free to add items to the list in the comment section, or if you already own a particular item, share your experience with it.  I hope you enjoy, talk to you soon.

Let me start off by stating that I HATE THE DENTIST! There I said it! If you’re a dentist reading this blog, I’m sorry, but we could never be friends (don’t stop reading the blog though, lol). Dentists perform hate crimes against humanity and I refuse to subject myself willingly to their torture. I took the stance that I would never subject my kids to the demented hands of a dentist either; luckily I have a level headed wife who vetoed my ruling. Yesterday was Tre’s first visit to the dentist and it appears that he’ll be following in his Daddy’s footsteps. He wasn’t too pleased, and surely let it be known during his visit.

When it comes to parenting, working Dads get screwed, as do working Moms.  Now that I think about it, Stay At Home Parents can possibly be getting screwed too.  So I guess I should have named this post “Everyone Gets Screwed”, but then it would have sounded like a porno entry and that’s not exactly the first thought you want in your head when coming to a Daddy Blog.  Therefore, since I’m a working Dad, we’ll just keep it at how us working Dads get screwed out of quality time with our kids.

Santa's Little Helper?

Hey there everyone, how have you all been doing? These past two weeks have been rough, everyone being sick and all, but for the most part things are better. I’m still not 100%, but I couldn’t stay away from blogging for too long. So did you guys miss me? Ah, why do I even ask, I know you missed me! lol.

So while Fefe & I were sick, battling colds, a new Ty emerged from the darkness and tried to nurse us back to health with kindness and generosity. It wasn’t really from the darkness, I’ve just always wanted to say that, you always hear it in movies and cartoons, but can never find an appropriate place to throw that phrase out. So anyways, Ty has been uncharacteristically good these pass few weeks, cleaning up after himself, taking naps like he’s suppose to, etc. It all seemed kinda fishy to me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. He swore up and down that he was only trying to be helpful and make things easy since we weren’t feeling well. In part, I believe him because the kid does have a big heart; I mean a BIG heart, watermelon size. But really though, how good can one kid be without incentive? Until yesterday, I was starting to buy into Ty’s genuine nature, until he slipped up and gave me a glimpse into his true motives.

Tre is ready to combat the Swine Flu

Some of you may have noticed the lack of posts last week, well that’s because we were all sick. Wait, let me rephrase that; my entire family was sick, and I was stuck taking care of them. That of course led to me being sick towards the end of the week. Fun times right? It’s always like that in our house, sickness is a domino effect. Once one person gets a cold, it spreads like wildfire to each member of our household until it has crippled each and every last one of us. No matter what we do to try and prevent it, there is no stopping the wrath of sickness! I have a few tips that may be able to help you, avoid the domino effect. In our home they never work completely, but I do think that they contribute to a quicker recovery.

Elmo & A Ninja (A Deadly Combination)

Happy Halloween!!! Oh wait, I guess I’m a little late huh?  Well, I’m just like “The Simpsons”, remember how they always aired their Halloween special on the Sunday after Halloween? Okay so here we go.  First off, I’m writing this post from the hotel room in Clemson, S.C. so I’m away from my normal blogging locating and it feels a little weird.  I’m out here on a business trip (which will probably end up being a blog post of its own) but I didn’t want to leave you guys without some delightful eye candy (get it? halloween, candy, eye candy, lol) to get you through your Monday!

Tre going in for the kill

Ever since Tre was born, people have been telling us that he needs to be a baby model; and as soon as they spend 5 mins around Ty, we hear “he was born to be on TV”.  At first, I just figured people were being kind, you know those are the type of things you’re supposed to say about kids.  After hearing it time and time again, I reconsidered the validity of what friends, family, and complete strangers were saying and thought, maybe so.  I went on a personal crusade to find a legit, reputable, modeling agency to represent the boys and needless to say, I came up empty on more than one occasion.  But yesterday, I thought we hit gold with the American Mall Model Search; sadly, in the end, it turned out to be just another rip off (in my opinion).  But this time, it wasn’t just Fefe & I who wasted our time and energy and got our hopes up for nothing; the kids were involved and lead to believe that they could be “stars”, and that pisses me off.  When I started this search about a year ago, I did tons of research that allowed me to determine that something just wasn’t quite right with the American Mall Model Search and I’m thankful that I was able to spot it out and not waste any money or additional time.  At the end of this post I’ll share some of the top things I’ve learned about the “industry” with you future Mommy & Daddy managers out there to hopefully save you some time & trouble.

A while back, I wrote about Ty using “bad dreams” as a way to gain entry into our bed at night; well, we solved that problem pretty easily and now if he has a bad dream, we know that it’s genuine.  But as you all know, once you solve one problem another one is bound to pop up sooner or later.  That new problem is Tre, I think he somehow picked up on how the bad dream thing was working out for Ty and decided to try his hand at it.  I must admit, his scheme is working out a little better than Ty’s did.  All Ty wanted was to get in our bed, but Tre wants his 40 acres and a mule!