Strollerderby : daddyblogging

Strollerderby Playdate: San Francisco Dads

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:01:00 GMT

One of my favorite dad bloggers, Doodaddy, just came out of the closet. He hid his secret life so well, but you can only ignore nature for so long. So, he did what he had to do. He told his wife.

"Honey, I'm a blogger."

Good for you, Doodaddy!

If you haven't been reading him, check him out right. now. Doodaddy shares his life as a stay-at-home dad in San Francisco with honesty and humor and plenty of late nights. Thankfully, he's not alone.

There are plenty of great dad bloggers in Baghdad by the Bay, even if the best of us struck out for warmer climes not too long ago.

Henri's Corndog and Rootbeer details what it's like to spend all your takeout money on childcare. And he's got fabulous, fabulous photos and captions.

It's not a blog, per se, but Great Dad still has wonderful resources for SF dads and those in other areas, too.

Daddy Dialectic is a great dad co-op featuring the best in current events and parenting insight.

Wired's Geekdad offers the best in ultra-cool gadgets. And snark. I love it.

I know I'm missing many, many others. So if you know any great dad bloggers in San Francisco or the Bay Area, please list them in the comments. I promise to buy them a drink. So long as they buy the next 32.

Top 10 Must-Haves for New Dads; Now with Urinals!

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Tue, 01 May 2007 12:04:00 GMT

The Today Show recently ran a piece about the Top 10 products for new moms. Cribs. Diaper bags. Sleep sacks. Pretty normal stuff. But still, are these items restricted to moms? What about dads, yo?

Thingamababy answers back with a post about the Top 10 must-haves for new dads -- besides the obvious gin flask and vasectomy, that is. I mean that just goes without saying, right?

First up, an inflatable bed. Know it. Use it. Love it. Just make sure it's conveniently parked on the far side of the house -- where you can't hear your newborn cry. Massaging recliners. Portable urinals. Golf carts. The list just gets better and better -- although I can see why the Today Show would be hesitant to show a portable urinal ...

Strollerderby Playdate: Daddybloggers

Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 11:03:00 GMT

Any of you that follow my personal blog know that I love me some Daddybloggers. (You also may know that I don't often use the phrase "I love me some" but it seemed to work here) There aren't as many of them as there are of the Mommybloggers (I apologize to those of you who are offended by this term. It doesn't bother me.) but there are a lot of them out there, and there are a lot of really great Daddy Blogs out there. Let's see what my interweb boyfriends are up to this week:

Cynical Dad thinks he is raising a kindergarten aged sociopath.

Rude Cactus had a very strange day. (This involves an illustration of a public restroom. You should really go look.)

The AARP is trying to recruit Dad2Twins even though he is not yet "of age".

Somebody lost Kemp's airplane.

Matthew's kids keep talking about their butts.

There are more out there, I assure you. Don't be sad. I'll be back next week with some more Dad Blogs to keep you busy.

At-Home Dads Have It Way. Too. Easy.

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:28:00 GMT

I'm totally going about this stay-at-home dad business the wrong way. Apparently instead of shopping for dinner and cleaning the kitchen and quelling tantrums and mastering that $#@! sippy cup and passing on language and praying to dear lord sweet jebus for nap time, I should be watching as many sports programs (matches? meets?) as possible, finding new hobbies, like surfing and building rocking chairs, and not worrying about "wasting" that college degree.

Uh huh.

This particular vision of the at-home parenting lifestyle is by a Stanford college student who penned a column -- "It's sad we don't consider becoming a SAHD" -- about all the glories and free time at-home dads have suddenly wandered into.

I'm not going to rip apart this poor, deluded lad -- despite the gravy boat of opportunities:

"Aren’t you going to be bored staying at home all day? Not when you have more hobbies than a ten-year old. I will definitely need to live by the ocean so I can surf and have a garage where I can watch “The New Yankee Workshop” on PBS and make cool furniture with fancy tools. I’ll sing lullabies on my guitar and take lots of pictures while practicing my black-and-white photography skills. Then there are the things I still want to learn: chess, French and car mechanics."

For starters, that's pretty funny -- and I think he was trying to be funny. I hope. But also because Rebel Dad has already linked to this particular story and at-home dads are ganging up on him like it's Dollar Day at Baby Legs. (The comments are the best part of the whole thing.) But the real reason I'm not going to rip him apart is because this particular vision is, sadly, shared by many.

I can't tell you how many single friends I have who think I've got it made -- and I do, to a degree, because I am watching my girl grow -- but wow, learning French? Going surfing? Being bored? Do people really think at-home dads shove their babies in a closet all day? Would they think the same about a mom?

Dads Are Bloggers, Too

JasonAvant — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 15:39:00 GMT

When I first started blogging, shortly after the birth of my son, I was sure I’d find a legion of fellow dads, sharing their experiences with the rest of the Internet. My reasoning seemed logical; since the print publishing world pretty much ignores the other half of the parenting equation, there must be some other source of great writing on fatherhood. Well, I didn’t find anything close to the sheer volume of mommybloggers – in fact, for a while there were only a handful of blogging dads out there, the few, the proud. These days, I’m happy to say that there are quite a few of us, and many of them are producing some excellent writing. Many of them are also very well known, and while I was mulling over who I should include in this list, it seemed to me that this would be a good opportunity to put the spotlight on some of my favorite bloggers who are flying under the radar. A dad’s world is just as compelling as a mom’s; perhaps more so, as one is not likely to find our stories on the bookshelves or the magazine racks. So I give you four of my favorite sites, in no particular order. Each brings a unique take on fatherhood to the virtual table, and each is definitely worth your time.

Flailing My Arms: Jonathon Morgan is a twentysomething Austin dad; he deserves a medal for raising a toddler without a dishwasher. His posts are what you'd expect from an Austinite: down to earth, cool, with a heart as big as Texas itself. And you know you’re in good hands when Cleveland seems like a magical place.

Velcrometer: You may know him as M. Giant; in real life Televison Without Pity's master recapper is known as Jeff Alexander. He brings the same razor-sharp wit to his tales of fatherhood, and provides the occasion bit of good advice. For instance, here's his take on why you should not go see the movie Take The Lead: "Take every ballroom dancing movie and every teacher-makes-a-difference-in-the-lives-of-inner-city-kids-who-in-real-life-would-have-knifed-him-in-the-first-reel movie, scan them all into Final Draft, print it out, throw the whole thing off a freeway overpass and pay homeless guys a buck each to recover as many pages as they can, cast Antonio Banderas, and there you go."

The Blue Sloth: This one sneaks up on you, with quiet, subtle prose that pulls you in. No surprise that the author is a soccer player; the payoff here is not necessarily the goal, but the passing, the footwork, the movement off the ball. The anonymous author shows us the difference between mere blogging and honest-to-God writing.

Mother-Woman: Wait a sec, you say. That doesn't sound like a daddy blog. Ah, but it is. Mo-Wo and her husband P-Man are the co-parents; they divvy up the blogging chores. I'd say it's high time for some parity in the title - this is 2007, after all, and dads are more involved in raising their kids then ever before - but that doesn't keep me from making this very smart and very quirky site a regular stop.

So there's my Four To Watch in '07. What daddyblogs are you reading?

USA Today Showcases Hipster Dads

JasonAvant — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:18:00 GMT

Some backstory: I was stoked to join the Babble collective, not because the writers were "hip" and urbane (it can be argued that I am neither - the last accessory I bought for myself was one of these, because it's the same bag used by Agent Bauer, and now I have a JackSack! Cool!), but because the site devotes an (almost) equal amount of bandwidth to dads. This is a rare thing in the world of parental publications.

Today's edition of USA Today offers up a brief take on the "hipster dad phenomenon". With Neal Pollack's Alternadad hitting the shelves, there's been a bit of murmuring in traditional print media about the nature of modern fatherhood. Olivia Barker's piece, unlike some of the borderline snide "reporting" on "hipster dads" that we've seen of late (I'm talking to you, New York magazine), presents a pretty positive take on this segment of the dad population.

One of my biggest beefs, as a father and as a writer, is the almost complete lack of media attention paid to dads; even so-called "parenting" magazines skew heavily toward mothers, and as Rebel Dad Brian Reid points out, it's hard out here for a daddy writer. Whether or not you buy into the concept of the hipster dad (I kinda don't), it's good to see that there's (fingers crossed) a growing interest in the other half of the parenting equation.

Tips For Successful Parentblogging

Karen Murphy — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:01:00 GMT

In my ~~time wasting~~ serious Internet research of blogs, parent-blogs specifically, I've noticed that the best of them seem to have some things in common:

1. Long posts, with dialog.

2. Use of caps.

3. Use of that word that rhymes with "duck".

4. Poop.

Case in point: This post of Mr. Nice Guy's (can you go wrong with a title like "daddypoopy"? Instantly, you know where you are with this one). Here's a small snack from the post: mr and mrs nice guy are asleep, dead to the world in their connubial chamber. it is, unfailingly, somewhere between 6 and 6:30. out of nowhere a child starts yelling. "MOMMY? moooooooooooommy! poopy! DADDY POOPY mommypoopymommypoopy! poopydaddy!" then whoever's turn it is to take the morning shift drags his/her sorry ass out of bed and goes into the baby's room. let's say it's me. i walk into her room and the child lights up with glee: "DADDY! IT'S A POOPY!"

Daddybloggers, take note! We mommybloggers have it somewhat easier, as all we have to do is talk about how big our asses are getting, what footwear our spouses have on, the new eyerolling capabilities of our tweens, or what we drank at playgroup yesterday, and we have a post! Daddybloggers, on the other hand, seem to need to balance humor with sensitivity without actually being Sensitive.

A much harder job, if you ask me.