By Bruce Teague on August 16, 2009
We had an exersaucer for Elijah. I loved it! The exersaucer provided hours of entertainment. I can’t tell you how many times I would throw the boy in it and leave him to do whatever else I felt like doing. I assure you it was always productive, like washing the dishes, doing laundry, watching sports or playing video games. Unfortunately we had to part ways when we made the big move overseas. When Jonas came of age we went on a search for one in our new country. Sadly we came up empty handed, but we noticed walkers hung from the ceilings of every toy store we could cram ourselves into.
Posted in Family | Tagged Jonas, kids, parenting help
By Bruce Teague on August 11, 2009
You’re arguing because he left the toilet seat up?
Are you kidding me?
How long does it take you to flip the seat back down?
How hard is it to look before you sit?
I never fully understood the whole toilet seat issue. It takes all of one second to either flip it up or flip it down.
Posted in Family | Tagged humor, marriage
By Bruce Teague on August 9, 2009
“Do you want to put up the light fixtures this weekend?”
“Uhhh, I think I better wait {quick think of an excuse} until we have the Internet up and running so I can research the best way not to electrocute myself. I have no idea which way they run the wires after it goes into the ceiling. I wouldn’t want to drill right into them. Maybe there’s some sort of standard?” Score, that was a solid reason.
Posted in Family | Tagged humor, marriage
By Bruce Teague on August 7, 2009
We all want our children to advance in their development, but when your kid first learns to roll over you will find some trouble. He will usually roll front to back, but he’ll most likely not know how to roll back the other way. Or vice versa. Now I, being the terrible parent that I am, at times already allowed my kid to sleep on his stomach. I use ‘allow’ loosely because he absolutely wouldn’t tolerate sleeping on his back. Once he learned to flip, my little flap jack would be stuck on his back.
Posted in Family | Tagged kids, parenting help
By Bruce Teague on August 3, 2009
This is a post I made on a website that my wife and I had a few years ago. One of those we just got married “so let’s put our names together to make a url and barf a million pictures from our wedding and honeymoon on it” sites. It was my first attempt to make a humorous post. I think I may have to do a version 2.0 on this one. To my surprise I received a lot of positive feedback on it. I hope you enjoy the trip back to my roots. This one’s for you Jeff.
Posted in Family | Tagged humor, marriage, tips
By Bruce Teague on August 2, 2009
Traveling with babies and small children is about as much fun as rubbing a jalapeño in your eye. Actually I’d prefer the pepper. Sure your eye swells shut, burns as if it’s on fire, and leaks like a busted pipe, but it’s over rather quickly. Kids can melt down for hours. Given our current situation my family and I have traveled a great deal ranging from quick 2 hour trips, driving from Boston to Houston, and 30 hour flights after layovers. I would say at this point if I never had to travel again I would be fine. There are a few things we’ve learned along the way that help make it easier.
Posted in Family | Tagged kids, parenting help, tips, travel
By Bruce Teague on August 1, 2009
Babies have really big heads which are disproportional to their bodies. They need their loving parents to help strengthen their necks and upper body so they can hold them up. Babies can usually start to lift their heads around 1 month, and hold them up in a sitting position around 4 months. Here are a few tips to help with their head control.
Tummy Time: Many children hate to be placed on their tummies, but don’t let that stop you.
Posted in Family | Tagged baby, kids, parenting help
By Bruce Teague on July 30, 2009
The Cry It Out Method is the most controversial. The idea behind it is your child will eventually get too exhausted to care that he doesn’t have the thing he desires to help him sleep and learn how to do without it. You can do it two ways. One is to let your child cry until he falls asleep. Sounds simple enough, but it can be really hard on a parent to listen to their child cry for long periods of time. In theory it doesn’t take as long for your child to learn to sleep on his own as the next option, but some parents find it cruel.
Posted in Family | Tagged baby, kids, sleep
By Bruce Teague on July 29, 2009
We now live in a different country. In the past we had done horribly with the whole date night thing, but our marriage was sliding down hill and we knew the excuse train had to stop rolling. Living in Africa had greatly reduced our options for baby sitters. The only way for us to go out on a date was to give up on the “go out” part. Not to say we would never go out, but it wasn’t going to be the weekly event we always pretended it would be. Even in the States setting up somebody to watch your kid for you once a week was more work and energy then we were willing to put into it.
Posted in Family | Tagged date, marriage
By Bruce Teague on July 28, 2009
We stood in front of the car. It was time for our usual decision. Who was going to drive? My wife always preferred for me to do it, but she also hated the way I drove. This inevitably led to fights in the car. It was only our second attempt in the 9 months since our first had been born. I made her promise she wouldn’t criticize how I chose to maneuver the vehicle on the streets of Boston before I would take the wheel
Posted in Family | Tagged date, marriage
