My Son The Dare Devil (or How I Learned to Love Gray Hair)

IMG_4135 My son is only a year and three months, so he is still pretty little. Don’t let that fool you though, this kid is a dare devil. He started crawling early and started walking soon after that. Lately we have had the privileged to chase him around the house pulling him down and out of everything. There is no amount of baby proofing that can be done to keep this child contained. Alex has taken a liking to opening every cabinet he can get into. His favorite being the cabinet with all of our canned goods. He then will proceed to take all of the cans out and either throw them on the floor or make a nice line of them all. The sad part is that we have the cabinet locks on them. He figured them out pretty quickly and unless we put an actual lock on the cabinets he is getting into them. What are we going to do!

“…to him it’s FUNiture”

IMG_4140Alex also loves to climb on anything and everything. I have caught him on the kid’s table, counter top, bar stools, and even the high top kitchen table. He is a champion on figuring out how to get up. Not so much on getting down, which makes his climbing even more challenging. Once he is up he yells for help to get down. I would prefer he not even climb up to begin with but he doesn’t listen very well. I have gotten him to stop what he is doing with a loud and deep “What are you doing?”. That only works a third of the time. That leaves me with plenty of time to prevent a disaster. But it is tiring after the 54th time pulling him down from whatever obstacle he has climbed up on. What is a dad to do when his little boy is Spider-Manning over all of the furniture, or to him it’s FUNiture.

His antics have been causing some stress in the house. Mainly with just us adults. A few months ago we would have confined him in his excer-saucer, or his pack-n-play. Now a days unless we want to hear Alex caterwauling until we get him out of his prison we are basically stuck in this endless loop of baby bravery. What tips and tricks can you suggest for parents dealing with this type of situation? Our daughter Abby was nowhere near as ambitious as Alex. So we are open to any opinions. I just hope he doesn’t learn how to climb out of his crib.

IMG_4147
Hi Daddy!

Treats from Chewy (Not the Wookie)

chewy.comOur family is really big on taking care of our pets. We have two dogs, Miss Lady and Clark and we want to make sure that they get food and treats that they like. This St. Louis Dad has teamed up with Chewy.com and will be providing reviews on a variety of their products. To start off I want to thank Chewy for this opportunity to try out these great items with my pets. Chewy provided the treats for an honest review. The dogs are super excited about getting a chance to try out a variety of treats. They really appreciate it too.

IMG_3990The first item that we tried out with Miss Lady and Clark was a Dogswell Sweet Potato Veggie Chews. The package says these have Super Boost for Immunity Support and they are a great alternative to rawhide. I think that’s great. Rawhide is one of those things that is kinda okay kinda not okay. These on the other hand are perfectly okay to give to dogs. Both of mine love them too. These were Made in The U.S.A as well. That may be important to some dog owners. It may also be worth noting that these are gluten free. Personally, I had never thought of sweet potatoes being something used as a dog treat. Props to Dogswell for coming up with this product. My dogs love them and I highly recommend trying them out with your canine.

IMG_4022

The second and third treats we tried with the dogs were  both from Dogswell and were from the Happy Hips line. Duck Breast and Chicken Breast. Needless to say the dogs really enjoyed both. These are said to help with your dogs joints. No added hormones, no antibiotics, no fillers, no byproducts, and cage free animals. That is pretty cool.

Typically, we buy regular old milk bone type of treats and I figured we could try these out. Now I would be an idiot to ignore the fact that the duck and chicken treats were recalled back in 2013. These were not part of that recall, but I will be sure to update if I have any issues. For now, there is no reason to think there is any issue with these treats. Miss Lady and Clark enjoyed them, so we have two happy doggies, and that’s all I can ask for.

Chewy.com doesn’t only sell from the Dogswell line. There is a large variety of products from some of the top brands. Be sure to check out their website and see for yourself.

Do you have a favorite treat you give your pets? Tell me about it in the comments below!

IMG_4105

Eat Kid Friendly Around St. Louis

EatKidFriendly-logo-BetaLargeI was sent an interesting link to EatKidFriendly.com a few weeks ago and had been on my to do list now for a while of things to check out. I finally got around to checking it out. What is it? Well it appears to be a community driven website where members (parents, caregivers, etc) can flag and review restaurants that are kid friendly. One thing I found nice about the site is that you do not have to be a member or sign up on the website to use the features, only to contribute to the listings.

The site is still listed as being in beta, so I would assume there may still be a few bugs needing to be worked out. The service does require location data so you will need to either allow your browser to provide this information or you will just need to enter in your address or just a zip code. A map will show up with locations around you that have already been flagged. There is a little color key to the flags so be sure to check those out as well. I thought this was a great way to easily indicate if a location is kid friendly or not. However, I will say that the Not and Limited Data flag colors are a little close and might be hard for some to distinguish.

EatkidFriendly-Key

I can find this site extremely useful if you are a parent looking to check out some new places to eat but are not exactly sure how kid friendly it may be. The only drawback I see at this point in time is that the website relies on user submitted data. So if you do not have anyone participating you won’t get a lot of feedback. I see this as being somewhat like Yelp, but for parents/caregivers. Yelp will tell you a lot about what’s out there to eat and may have great reviews and ratings but this site is specific to kids. So it has a very specific purpose. Is the restaurant kid friendly, does it have high chairs, changing tables, etc… Without someone to fill in those answers you won’t know. The app shows you all the restaurants in your area, so there is data provided, many of those places may just have limited data available. It is really easy to create an account so, go for it, while you’re there.

All in all EatKidFriendly.com is a great startup that I can see a big potential in its value. I have tested it on my iPhone and it works great there as well as on my laptop. So be sure to bookmark the link and check it out the next time you are looking for a tasty meal with the family.