Flat Daddies

dad_tattooNope–has nothing to with man-breasts. Flat Daddies are cardboard cutouts of photos of dear old dad, designed for military fathers posted abroad. Now, I have no interest in making a statement about the military, heroism, public service, terrorism, apple pie, counterinsurgency tactics, Iowa, SUVs, or any of the millions of other things I associate with this sort of idea. But think about it: cardboard daddies!

Does he take out the trash? No! Does he change a diaper? No! Does he fix a leaky sink? No! Shit, sounds like me.

Check out (the admittedly poignant) pictures here.

And from the faq:

Taking and Selecting a Photo
Does the photo need to be in uniform?

It is best for the photo to be taken in uniform, but we understand that you might not have a good quality photo of your loved one in uniform.
Do I need to send a full body photo?

No. A photo that is waist and up is preferable. The Flat Daddy is printed life size, waist and up.
Does the photo need to be of my loved one alone or can you crop him out?

It is best if the photo is of your loved one alone, but we are able to crop the photo if there are others in it.
How big is a Flat Daddy?

The material is 26″ x 36″, but the actual printed image may vary depending on the size of the photo provided.

Further sign that I’m going to daddy-hell: Think I could use one of these fucking things to babysit for JP next time I go out?

Kill James. Or his mom.

I guess the video is a year old, but Brooklyn writer Phil Campbell passed this along over the weekend, so for me it’s brand spanking new. It’s about a toddler named James who has a talking Elmo that glitched into saying Kill James.

Ha ha. But when I watched the thing, I got caught about 8 seconds in when they pan this family’s living room and show a freaking army of Elmo dolls that this toddler owns. It’s a ridiculous number of toys for one kid to own.

Look, I know children can be OCD about their favorite characters. Dalia would live in a world of Star Wars action figures if she could. But isn’t it our jobs to push back a little, and not just buy every single Elmo toy in the world simply because little James wants it?

So yes, James may well grow up twisted, but it will not be because Elmo says Kill. It’ll be because mom can’t say No.

Sippy Cups Cause Impotence

Erection-friendly (BPA-free) bottles

Erection-friendly (BPA-free) bottles

A new HuffPost report from my former TIME Magazine colleague Elaine Shannon: apparently BPA, the synthetic estrogen that leaches out of plastics used to make many baby bottles and sippy cups causes impotence, or what used to be known as Whiskey Dick before we got so much book learnin’.

I am the first to admit that I usually let the mother of our runtlings worry about the harm that plastics might be doing to them, even when I heard that BPAs can make girls aggressive and has been linked to diabetes and cardiovascular problems.

But this is different. As if sex after kids wasn’t already dicey enough, now I have to worry about OD’ing on estrogen from cans of baby formula.

I am bookmarking this page and this one just in case.

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The Case for Needles, Part Two

An astute Dadwagon reader pointed out that my defense of needles didn’t really go into why nasal flu spray wasn’t an option for my kids. So, yes, FluMist is painless, but it’s not for kids under two (so my boy is too young), and it’s not for anyone with wheezing or asthma. I don’t know that the girl has asthma, but like any good New Yorker, she’s  a bit of a wheezer. So FluMist is out.

It’s also not for anyone with egg allergies, or people who don’t like the fact that the nasal spray uses live virus (as opposed to the syringe version, which uses dead virus). I don’t think there’s much difference.

Okay, that’s all I’m going to say about shots, at least until I go public with my claim that Rubella vaccines cause not only autism but also priapism and Libertarianism.