Pour only as much as you want spilled and especially after mopping the floor. The upside is that when chasing kids around the island in the kitchen it causes less accidents in the home when you can stick that right turn due to the movie theater floor feeling.

A comment over on my post at The Blogfathers pointed out a new campaign by the Ad Council, and I wanted to help them out and embed the videos. Enjoy!

Priceless!

Get out and be a Daddy.

Sitting in the middle of a conference call with a prospective client talking about how I could do great things for her and her company and the ice cream man jingle is heard in the faint distance, then the roar of a small crowd gathering in the front yard, which then breaks off into a full riot in the foyer of our home. I tried to explain that I was not in the middle of a war zone or that we were being invaded by young people, but all I could say was “please hold we have the ice cream man here”. The call was wrapping up anyway (read as so much for that prospective client) so I headed out to the sidewalk, kids cheering me and my wallet along the way.

It seemed that there were more than just my 4 kids present, and suddenly I realized the $10 in my hand was not nearly going to cover the man selling crack on a stick. He looked at me as he handed me my meager change as if to ask me what I wanted, and realized he had cleaned me out and only had one thing on his menu I could have for the change he gave. He had his jackpot, so I guess he lost interest in me and was looking to the other kids running from the next street over. I’ve suddenly come to hate that jingle.

This year we have started something new at the Genuine household, we have pulled out our green thumbs and decided to become farmers. Not in the sense of acreage but about 100 square feet of dirt and a few big pots. We wanted to have some fresh vegetables and be able to show the kids what it was like to have their own growing experience. We asked each child what kind of vegetable that they wanted to grown and in spite of one of them wanting to grow popcorn, we came to an understanding on which vegetables that we would grow.

Genuine Girl decided that she would like to grow “summer sausage” but assured her it was called “summer squash”. Genuine Boy wanted to grow some pumpkins but didn’t really grasp the idea that it would probably be closer to October before we would be harvesting anything. Genuine Toddler decided that he would be the carrot king which stands to reason as he ate so many carrots as a baby in the baby food jars his nose turned orange. Genuine Baby had no vote and had no interest in growing anything but mud pies so we decided for him and planted some radishes.

We have various herbs and other items like garlic, onions, a watermelon plant and mommy’s green beans and cucumbers. Daddy just wanted the fresh herbs. We did get a chance to plant in order, parsley, sage rosemary and thyme.

I have had a long week. It’s only Friday evening and I feel like I have been serving a 20 year hard labor sentence. I have had the first week of no school for the older two kids. They have been here wreaking havoc like the toddlers in spite of how much older they are. I hear that the older the get the bigger the messes or the worse the trouble gets. I’m really looking forward to those teen driving years!

I leave for Orlando on Sunday. I wish I could say we had a really cool vacation planned for Disney World since I’ll be staying about 5 minutes from there, but alas I will be working. That’s really the bad news. The good news is that I will be working at a very posh resort called the Gaylord Palms. I’m wondering if i might tell the kids where I am going and how far I am away from Disney World I’ll actually be, but I figured that I would surprise them with some travel gifts instead. Me being the nasty Daddy I can be will just tell them after the fact that since they are driving me so crazy I decided to take a vacation and tell them where I went.

I wonder how they would take it if I came home with the Mouse Ears hat.

No this is not a lesson in making sure you don’t conceive any children, if I was any good at that, I would not be in the mess we call Genuine parenting today.  Certainly not on the grand scale we are now.  If you are my children reading this we wanted all of you and love you completely, and you can now print this and take it with you on your weekly therapy session.

The 3 year old and 2 year old are all but a full time job, and throw into that being a full time business owner and you can imagine why I joke about having too many kids.  The best part though is the little gems during the day

Genuine Toddler:  I have bad news Dad.

Genuine:  What’s the bad news?

Genuine Toddler:  He [because toddlers never tell on themselves] spilled his Gogurt.

Genuine: Where?  Show me.

Genuine Toddler: [indicating] Right there Dad.  He did that.

Genuine:  Buddy you need to be a little more careful.

Genuine Toddler: [piling on] Yeah, you need to be more careful.

Genuine Baby:  Sowwy.

Genuine:  It’s okay buddy just try to careful please.

Genuine Toddler: [again getting in his shot]  He’s just too little Dad.  When I spill I promise to be careful.

It’s good to know that while he is spilling he will be careful.  In fact now that I think about it that is exactly how I had kids.  Bitter irony.

There are many things that make a parent roll their eyes, shrug their shoulders and give the look of “oh well they are after all kids”, and I have those moments usually daily.  Those moments sometimes make me chuckle like a 6th grade boy all over again.

Genuine Baby, or I guess he is actually the toddler now and I should change the moniker, has been trying to be potty trained but for whatever reason he kind of lost hope one day and stopped trying to earn our praise.  He is currently in the Huggies Pull-ups.  Part of the problem is that he is completely obsessed with his “Kachow”, or for those of you that have not seen the movie Cars 45,678 times like I have, the character of Lightning McQueen.  He has the Hot Wheels car of Lighting McQueen and he refers to it as his Kachow.  He had “The King” but for whatever reason he wanted to see if that car could swim and flushed it down the toilet, but I digress.

He wears the pull-ups and refers to the characters as “My Sally”, “My Kachow”, “My Mater” and well you get the idea.  I tried once to tell him that he cannot pee in the pull-ups because he would be peeing on his Kachow but he only looked at me like I was smoking crack.   The makers of Huggies Pull-ups make it easy to determine if the child has peed in the pull-up because they have little cups on the front. These cups are made to look like the Piston Cup that is the award in the movie for winning the season, not unlike that of the Cup in the real NASCAR season.  The cups on the front will disappear when the diaper becomes wet.  I am forever giggling when looking at or thinking of these cups disappearing, not because I enjoy my child not being potty trained but because of the movie quote of Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy):

Lightning McQueen: I’m serious! He’s won three Piston Cups!
Mater: [spits out fuel] He did WHAT in his cup?

Even the three year old is getting into the game as he ran to me this morning and shouted:

Genuine Toddler:  Daaaaad, his cups are gone again!!!!

Genuine:  What?

Genuine Toddler:  His Piston Cups are gone.

Genuine:  “He did WHAT in his cup?” [giggle, snort]

See it is the little things that keep us parents going some times.  I do suggest that if you don’t have kids or have not yet seen Cars, you run out and see it right away.  To the makers of Huggies I love your sense of humor in putting Piston (pissed in) Cups on the front of your diapers.

You may be wondering why I suddenly started posting here at my Daddy blog and I guess it was more than time for that to happen. I suppose you could say that I was made to feel guilty for not posting by actually being honored as a top Daddy blogger.

I was first listed on Guy Kawasaki’s site called Alltop Dads. This site was dedicated to listing some of the top names in niche’s listed in many different categories. This blog was listed in the top 50 of Dad bloggers. You can find many other (and in my mind better) bloggers in the Daddy niche just by clicking through to those listed. They also have Alltop mommy bloggers and many other niches. I suggest you take a look. I suppose it got me off my butt to not suck anymore.

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The other reason was the Parent Power Index. I am listed on the Parent Power Index and I guess if I am an influencer in this space I should probably at least blog about the subject I’m supposed to influence. This is a great list of parenting blogs with all the usual suspects but then many others that I had never seen or heard of before. I think its a great way to get some good exposure for your blog and at the same time a great way to find like minded bloggers and increase your own readership. Submit your site if you are a parenting blogger.

Technorati Tags: Daddy Blogs, Daddy Bloggers, Alltop, Parent Power Index

I have often said that I bang out the movie quotes with the best of them.  Usually it is spurred by saying something in relation to something someone else has said, or situational comedy fun.  I am happy to say my sons are following in my footsteps.

My 2 year old son acting like he has been smoking loco weed and making funny sounds and bouncing off the walls today made me mutter under my breath “freak.”  Yeah, his hearing is better than I thought, and he decided to bust out his own movie quote from Alvin and the Chipmunks singing:

“Don’t you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me…” ~Genuine Baby

*sigh* 

I had tears well up a few times thinking about that one today.  He is such a little Genuine man.

A few years back my friend Mindy of the Mommy Blog sent me a video that she had been sent about children’s valium called Kidstoned. I ran across it again on YouTube the other day and I had to share it again. I need to find out which of my local pharmacies sells this over the counter.