Thingamababy

As the father of a daughter, I despise girl-branded toy karaoke machines and all manner of toddler glitter pop performer toys.

My wife brought home a couple toy microphones last week, blue and green, devoid of any labels or visual clues as to whether they should be played with by a boy or girl.

I was prepared to unleash a scornful look anyway, but she cut me off by mentioning the toy is to our encourage are non-talking 23-month-old son to vocalize. The second mic, well, it’s to avoid power struggles with his big sister.

As microphones go, this one is pretty cool. It requires no batteries. Rather, it’s an echo toy with a vibration that reminds me of using a kazoo. The deeper you make your voice, the better echo-vibration you get.

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I received my Super Bowl dose picking up a pizza at a pizza parlor Sunday evening. I’d brought a newspaper to read during my wait, but got the distinct impression a drunk patron was going to take offense at my reading during his time of inflated excitement.

Later, I tried explaining the special day to my 5-year-old daughter. Namely, the difference between the football she enjoys playing and handegg that most Americans enjoy watching on TV once a year.

I wish I could lay claim to that image, but I found it floating around social networks today that were blissfully devoid of handegg news.

My daughter’s insightful observation: naming the handegg tournament the Super Bowl makes sense because football’s big tournament is called the World Cup, and a bowl is close to a cup. She spent the day cleaning her room and making valentines when not playing with the family.

Sorry, it’s a Wal-Mart commercial. Double sorry if it’s old news. It seems new if you’re among the 1% of the population that doesn’t have a Wal-Mart in your TV viewing area.

In other news, yeah, a couple video posts and a car diaper pad — busy week for me.

This is a question more than a declaration. If you designed a product to assist with changing diapers in a vehicle, what features would it have?

My inspiration for the question came from seeing the Dipe-N-Go website, a product from another mom-inventor.

This mom rightly recognized that it’s usually a lot easier to change a diaper in the trunk of your parked car than it is to try your luck with a random public restroom when poop strikes.

The Dipe-N-Go is billed as designed for an SUV or minivan. I look at it and just see an ordinary diaper bag, at least the sort of diaper bag a seasoned parent carries — pad, diapers and wipes.

It’s 15.5″ x 12.5″ closed, has three pockets and folds up. The pad is easy to clean, of course. From the product photo, it seems like the portion of the pad containing pockets might attach to the trunk wall to keep the pockets upright, but I saw no mention of such a feature on the website.

I’m not sure it qualifies as a “diaper station” unless you never remove it from your car. It’s just a diaper bag that unfolds instead of being a bag.

My family uses a fanny pack containing several diapers, diaper wipes, sanitizing hand wipes and a pad. It’s easily swapped into our other car, or carried over a shoulder, and has room for a lot more stuff if the need arises.

We usually use the car trunk, but have changed diapers in a passenger seat, infant seat and the hood of our car.

If you could design a changing pad for use in cars, or a specific type of car, in any of those locations in your car, how would it be any different than what you’re using now?

A lot has happened, and not happened, in the past month. To recap, our 22-month-old son isn’t talking. We’re still waiting.

Insurance doesn’t cover developmental delays, but our state has a network of regional offices that will help any parent with these issues through age 3. Great, right?

Two specialists assessed our son. The office held a case conference to review its latest applicants and at that meeting – which we were told we could attend, but that it wasn’t necessary — our son was denied treatment.

It turns out a behavioral expert said our 20-month-old son’s speech was at a 6 month level. A speech pathologist said his speech was at 14 months.

Yeah, umm, we filed an appeal and requested a reevaluation by a different speech pathologist.

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Drieyes is a bug-eyed alien mask for bathtime fun.

No, wait, it’s a peculiar looking shower visor for keeping water out of your child’s eyes when you rinse his hair.

Unlike other rinsing solutions, this one your child holds up to his face on his own, gripping the visor’s eyeball stalks. It’s not held on by any fastening device.

The advantage of this design is that the water shield doesn’t touch the hairline, allowing for a complete rinse. Most cap-type products leave an area of the head covered by a band or a hat brim, forcing you to still do an un-shielded quick rinse at the end of bathtime.

Drieyes is recommended for preschool-age children, so, sorry, you just have to endure four years of terror. Another potential problem I see is when a nervous kid panics, drops the visor and total wet mayhem ensues, but maybe it’s smooth sailing after your kid gets used to the idea.

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The Booby Booster is a breastfeeding aid for women with large breasts. A hammock. A platform. A breast nest. A bada-bing sling.

The big idea of this invention is that if you have big boobs, it’s a pain in the wrist to hold those things for so long so frequently throughout the day every day for a year (or hopefully longer).

The booster is billed as attaching to any breastfeeding bra, designed to hold the breast higher during feeding with no slippage. Your babe just lies there sucking away in bliss.

Boy, I wish I had this when I was nursing my two kids. I’d unhook my nursing bra, and my whole boob would come cascading out. They’d get their faces squished because my boobs were sloshing over on them. Oh, no, wait, that’s my wife. I’m a guy. I wear an under-the-butt nut hut.

Disclaimer: I’m supposed to be the wordsmith in the family, but my wife is teaching me all sorts of new phrases today.

Anyhow, my nurse-wife tells nursing mothers to just tuck a rolled towel underneath their boob, but if you’re a gadget gal, here you go.

The sling is made of polyester quilting with a cotton exterior.It comes in sizes from Small to XXX large (16B to J through K cup sizes).

As with all innovative products, it seems, this one isn’t made in America. But for a change, the Aussie inventor will ship anywhere in the world, although the website could use some work. It seems you e-mail the inventor to arrange payment.

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Belkiz Feedaway is an Aussie-built cardboard feeding chair.

It’s composed of recycled cardboard, is decorated with water-based inks and is covered with a nontoxic food-grade coating so that spills wipe off.

Supporting up to 44lbs, a three-point polypropylene safety buckle and webbing hold your kid in place.

Assembled, the chair stands almost 25 inches tall with a 24 inch depth and width.

When folded flat it’s about 2.36 inches thick, 24 inches long and 26.5 wide.

Recommended usage is for up to 6 feedings per day for 30 days, then disposing of the chair. It retails for AUD $40 each. More bad news guys, yet again this is a product apparently not yet sold in America.

The company bills it as “the ultimate portable solution to traveling and eating away from home” and suggests it can be “used for temporary situations or where space is at a premium.”

GrowingYourBaby.com calls it “economical, easy to assemble temporary feeding chair that is environmentally considerate.”
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A plastic jug of distilled water failed, leaking said gallon of water inside a little-used cabinet in our laundry room. It happened sometime between December 1st and yesterday.

Next to the jug was a cardboard box of Borax purchased after we enjoyed our Magic School Bus Science Kit. It’s for the science experiments I’m going to be doing (really, any day now!) with my daughter.

The Borax absorbed the gallon of water. I just wanted to say… science, for the win!

That is all.

A regularly scheduled more substantive post will be coming along any day now.

Translated Dutch: “Mommy, (I want) that one, that one, that one. Please.”

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First an example of how ridiculous we have become, and then a suggestion on reinventing Santa as a tradition that survives into adulthood.

We’ve previously discussed commercial products and services such as text messages from Santa and Santa evidence kits. The following service tops them all:

For a fee, TheSantaVideo.com superimposes a video of Santa Claus on a photo of your living room as proof that Santa visited your home.  ICaughtSanta.com offers the same service, and also still photos.

Thinga-readers seem to agree that we want to prolong the magic of believing in Santa as long as possible, but elaborate deception is too much.

Here’s a question: What if the magic didn’t have to end?

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Behold Erwin the little patient from Sigikid. He’s a plush doll with a crooked smile and take-out organs. Measuring in at 16-inch (41cm) and machine washable, Erwin hides his special nature under a hospital patient gown. Lift up the gown to see Erwin’s nippleless rectangular torso.

Unzip his chest cavity to find six removable plush objects: lungs, a heart (Valentine shaped), intestines, liver, spleen and kidneys. The six count is a little deceptive because the kidneys include an attached bladder and the intestinal piece contains both small and large intestine and also the stomach and esophagus.

Oh, and my wife, who is a nurse, doesn’t know a cecum from a hole in the ground. Yep, I correctly identified the brown nodule on the lower intestine as the appendix.

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On this, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, let us reflect upon the mind of a toddler, steadfast in determination, resolute that he is defying an unjust law. As he acknowledges his coming punishment, his body goes limp and attempts to defy being picked up, flopping around like a wet noodle.

In that way, your child joins the ranks of Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr.

This approach to conflict resolution brought about the Velvet Revolution, Orange Revolution, and Rose Revolution. Oh, how wonderful you might think, but civil disobedience also brought us the Tianamen Square massacre and the 2009 Iranian election crackdown.

So the question is, what kind of parent are you? Are you loving, kind and considerate in your guidance and rule making, or are you a dictatorial thug who bends children to your will?

It’s a tough question, so I’ll answer a question too. No, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I wrote this.

In any case, Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays aren’t big in our family, but I do believe MLK Day is a holiday that should not go by unnoticed as our children get older.

My 2- and 5-year-old have enjoyed watching Phoebe, a Channel Island Allen hummingbird in Orange County, California. She has been laying 4 to 5 clutches each year for several years.  Her last brood fledged back in early December and she’s already back on the nest.

I love that this camera streams so fluidly with ambient sounds audible. Phoebe offers four shows: beak to the camera, tail to the camera, preening, and vacation mode where you watch her eggs. Oh, and then there’s nighttime which is sort of not very exciting.

Phoebe is a California gal. Her species is limited to the coastline, from Santa Barbara north to a small portion of southern Oregon.

Many thanks to my visually-impaired Auntie M who keeps our family informed on the latest webcams.

This week will be slow posting-wise. Between our work schedules, I have an elementary school newsletter to produce and a million preschools to visit to let them know about our awesome school offering an awesome opportunity for preschoolers to visit an awesome portable planetarium on our awesome campus. If your child’s school isn’t awesome, you’re doing it wrong.