Parenting tips and tricks
Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash
In today’s episode we’re sharing our favorite parenting tips and tricks
During this episode we’ll discuss our favorite parenting tips and tricks for:
Parents of newborns/expecting parents
Mealtimes
Nighttime routine
School
Travel
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Transcript
[music]
Dave: In today's episode we're doing a quick rundown on our favorite parenting tips and tricks. Hey everyone, welcome to the PFDBD podcast, the podcast for dads by dads. We're going to take a break from some of our heavier topics to talk about our favorite tips and tricks covering newborns, eating, school, and travel, but first here's my deal. I'm Dave. I have an eight-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son.
Jim: I'm Jim. I've got two daughters, five and eight.
Dave: Jim, let's just jump right into it. Let's start off maybe with some of the newborn tips and maybe some of the tips for new parents. What have you got?
Jim: I've been interested to do this episode because there's a lot of things that aren't necessarily terribly unique or unknown. It's just nice to have them all in the same place. Little things that I didn't know and then when I found out, they were totally obvious and things that I wouldn't maybe discovered my own. A couple of things for the newborn parents, the WubbaNubs. Did you guys have those?
Dave: I have no idea what that is.
Jim: See, there it is. The WubbaNubs are these tiny stuffed animals that have the pacifier or the binky or the nipple at the end. They're great because it's harder to lose them, the kids love them. They've got a cute little teddy bear. They've got any animal that you could want. They're washable, which is great. What we did is we cut the nipple off and then eventually they just had a little stuffy, a little stuffy attachment device. They were very attached to these WubbaNubs even before and after they had binkies. Every time I hear that somebody is expecting a kid I'll send them a WubbaNub to just get them started on that because I think it's a great way to start.
We probably had five or six of them and we didn't have to worry about losing them. The other thing about having the binkies that are by themselves, they fall on the floor or they drop them. Stuffed animals just land on their laps so that's great. I was one of those parents who was determined not to have a mountain of stuff. I saw my other friends do that and I thought, "This is just ridiculous. Why would you want to do all that?" Yet somehow, I ended up with seven strollers. We had the jogger stroller, the umbrella stroller, the double stroller, another double stroller that we used for a nanny share, whatever it was. We ended up with way too many strollers. That's one of my tips. Don't accumulate too many strollers.
Eventually we got the bob for the jogger. We had a double stroller and then we had a foldup stroller for travel and that seemed to cover all our needs. The go-bag or what I call the go-bag was just pretty much just the dad's diaper bag. These are things that are pretty obvious, you think they're obvious and yet it took me a long time to get it dialed in. I had a backpack. I still use it actually. I got a backpack. I've put in a pack of band-aids. I had a bunch of snacks like fruit gummies and things like that, a water bottle, hand wipes, hand sanitizer. Everyone can figure out exactly what they need but just to put it all into that one pack. A change of clothes, I missed that several times. You had the full-on smoothie spilled down the front or the fall in the river or whatever and just didn't--
That's the kind of thing. You feel like a dad fail where you got your toddler walking around in soaking wet clothes and you're like, "All right, I just got to get him home and get changed." Anyhow, getting the go-bag set up and getting it dialed in, that was important for me and it made everything a whole lot easier.
Dave: One of the first times when our daughter, she was probably under a month old and so we're going back and forth to the lactation consultant and trying all sorts of stuff. She had a blow out and we forgot to pack clothes, extra clothes. Thankfully, we're at the lactation consultant, so they have tones of diapers, but we had to wrap her in a blanket, little fat legs sticking out and all we had was the blanket. When she was born, it probably wasn't too, too cold outside but it probably looked a little ghetto to walk with your kid outside wrapped in a blanket. That was something that we certainly-- We would always look each other like, "Oh, remember that time. Did you pack the clothes, the extra clothes?"
Sometimes, you learn what you have forgotten in your bag through some stories and that was one that we packed our bag better. There are some parents they're super organized. It's not that we weren't organized but we didn't always think things through. When especially our oldest was probably two or three, we were always the family when we would go out that we would forget to bring snacks. Thankfully, all the other families bring enough snacks for all the kids, but we're always the one that's like, "Oh, we're the ones that forgot, sorry. Sorry we can't offer anything to your child, thank you." After once or twice we were like, "Okay." We got that dialed in.
We did forget that after a while because there's that transition after when they get out of the bottles and they're on their own running around and they can take solids and they do start to snack that you just lose track. I will say in our defense that one of the families in particular-- Our daughter's friend was the younger of the two siblings. They had already gone through it. It was their second, so they knew their way around and we were just getting into it. There are certainly things that you pick up from other parents and you go, "Oh, yes, that's genius." or "Why didn't I think of that?"
On my end, for the newborn, new parent stuff, we've sort of talked about these. I can't remember what podcast but don't stress the milestones. That to me feels like such the newbie parent thing. They're just guidelines. We just came back from camping and the people that we went camping with they're season campers and this was our first time. I'm constantly like, "How big is the bear box to put our food in? Will it fit all of our stuff? If we put it in the bear box, the bears can still smell the food, right? That doesn't calm me down."
There's a book that I read to my daughter. It's called Scaredy Squirrel. It's basically the squirrel that lives in a tree and he's scared of everything because he hasn't been exposed. He's scared of killer bees and Martians and sharks and he lives in a tree. He's got all these escape plans and one day he accidentally falls out of the tree and he plays dead and then he realizes, "You know what? It's not actually that scary out here once you experience it." For me, that was what camping was like. I was a Scaredy Squirrel but also like-- As parents with a new child, you think that your child's super fragile and they're not. As somebody who has had a kid who's has had a few bumps and bruises when she was growing up, they're not nearly as fragile as you think and those milestones are just that, they're guidelines.
Don't freak out if they're a little bit later than the milestones. Everybody's mileage may vary as they say, so it's just not that big of a deal unless you start getting way behind. Then talk to your pediatrician and they'll let you know what's appropriate. That's number one. As far as products that we talked about, I know not everybody's child easily adapts to this, but the baby swing for us was gold. We could stick her in that swing and the boy too. We could just pop him in the swing and that was it. We didn't have to do anything. Especially when they needed naps, sometimes it was easier to have them in the swing because there's that moment when you can get them to sleep, but then the minute you put them down they wake up. You go through that phase and so the swing was a good place if we just needed a little rest here or there.
Both our kids really loved the swings. I know people that they'll also have swings and the kids just didn't take to them. I would absolutely try it because if your kid takes the swing, it's a godsend to have that little bit of time where the kid's sort of occupied, and everybody can get a nap down, so I appreciate that one. The other piece of equipment-- I was obsessed with getting a bottle warmer for a little bit. Did you guys ever do the bottle warmer thing?
Jim: Maybe, probably. I don't know. It sounds familiar. I really don't remember.
Dave: It feels like such a luxury like, "Can I just have a dedicated device that's going to warm my bottle up?" but I will say that when your child is crying at three in the morning, every minute you can save to get that milk warmed up-- We actually didn't buy a bottle warmer. What we did was we ended up getting a hot water dispense and those also you can fix the temperature, but that was just a little bit more versatile for us because then you can use it for pasta or for tea or whatever. I think that just having an easy way to dispense hot water to get that milk up. Also, at the time my wife she was freezing breast milk so now you get this hunk of ice that you got to melt down quickly but it can't be too hot.
There were many a 3:00AM, 4:00AM kind of deals where I'm like, "Yes, it's totally worth it to save a minute here to have the hot water already going."
Jim: Somebody did buy us a wipe warmer. I'm like, "I'm not going to buy for myself." That seems pretty extraneous. It seems a little bit luxurious, but I guess it makes sense. You pull out these freezing cold wipes in the middle of the night, you know.
Dave: [laughs]
Jim: [unintelligible 00:10:07] I don't know. I don't know if it made a difference or not, but that was definitely one of those things that I wouldn't have bought myself.
Dave: Honestly, for a heartbeat, I was into that. I told my wife and she's like, "What? Are you nuts?"
[laughter]
Dave: "We don't need that." She nixed that pretty quickly and I'm glad she did. That's a good transition. In terms of talking about the sleep and everything, I firmly believe in trying to split up the night routine as much as possible so at least everybody shares in the pain. I don't know. I feel it brings together the parent unit to suffer together and that's what we did. My deal was I would, when the baby cried, and I've said [unintelligible 00:10:47] podcast before too is I was always nervous with our first one in particular that [unintelligible 00:10:53] was always on the cusp.
When she would swing an arm out and hit the bed, I would be up and like, "She's dying." There were many, many times that I would wake up standing in front of the crib having no idea how I got there. As far as the first, I was a super, super light sleeper. I think what you can do to help out if your wife is nurse, and if you guys decide you want to nurse is at least to get up, change the baby, or at least check that diaper and then hand the child off. Luckily for me, I can get back to sleep pretty easily. It wasn't too, too bad, but I think that sharing that pain, at least it brings the two parents a little bit closer together so that nobody feels they're getting shortchanged in some respects.
Then the last thing is, I firmly believe that the most useful thing that anyone can give you as a new parent, certainly in that first month, is food. Food for yourself because you're going to be so tired that you will eat cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if you can get away with it. Just having relatives or family friends, whatever, cook you some food or bring you some leftovers or spring for a pizza every once in a while, that's going to make your life so much easier because also then you don't have to do all the dishes associated with cooking and all that stuff.
There's so little time when you have a kid at the beginning that the cooking and the cleaning around mealtimes is tough to bang out. A lot of times when we have friends that have new kids, we'll get them a gift card to Uber Eats or DoorDash or something like that. I think probably at the time, they're like, well, this is the weirdest-- This is an odd gift. I guarantee you when that kid comes, that's the most-- It's more useful than the 20th onesie that you've gotten from your friend. You're just not going to need all those onesies.
Jim: With the gift card, I tried to do that for a friend recently and I thought that they-- Do I have to go to the store and go to Safeway and get a gift card or is there a way I can do an e-coupon?
Dave: The last time we do it, we just-- You can just do it digitally through the app.
Jim: [unintelligible 00:13:09]
Dave: Yes, it's been a while. We haven't had a friend who's had a kid in a little while [laughs]. Yes, we used to just do it through the app, I think was how we did it. You can also go into-- I think most drugstores have those gift cards and stuff like that. It's one of the most underrated gifts I think you can give anybody and I do think it's highly appreciated. That's maybe a nice transition to the eating section of our tips. What do you got over there, Jim?
Jim: I got very little. You got a whole lot more that I'm looking forward to talking about. Something that comes up just about every mealtime. I've got this thing that I make and the girls call it pink sauce. It's basically mayonnaise and ketchup, with a little bit of like vinegar, little bit of garlic powder. Is basically like secret sauce, right? The kind of secret sauce for the burger at the corner store, whatever. I swear if they put that stuff on anything and they'll eat it. [chuckles] Broccoli, eggplant, anything. I don't know I want to call it a hack, but man to get them to eat something just put a little bit of sauce on there and they just devour it.
Dave: Yes. There certainly is something to the presentation of food and whether the kids are into it or not. One time, we tried to make green eggs and ham because my daughter was curious. It didn't work out real well. We used to add some food coloring. What you say brings up something that we do over here. The first time we made banana bread-- My son likes bananas, and he likes bread, but the combination of the two together he was like, "I don't know about that." I think it was my wife who had the genius idea of calling it banana cake and literally all of a sudden he was like, "Let's eat that."
[laughter]
Dave: Sometimes you just have to call something, you just give it a different name or you just make it look slightly different or just add a little bit of food colors [unintelligible 00:14:57] and the kids are all into it. Yes, as somebody who has a picky eater, we will change names for stuff like that. No problem. It does seem to go down easier. What is it? A rose by any other name.
Jim: Right.
Dave: Go with that. In general, what I do for just breakfast is I'll make a full batch of baked goods, maybe on the weekends. Sometimes if it's pancakes or crepes, I can bang that out on a weekday, but I've realized that what, at least for us, what makes the most sense is even if they're only going to eat a quarter to half of the recipe, now that it's all cooked out, I can simply freeze it, and over time, give them stuff. When I make a batch of pancakes, I'll just make the whole thing at once.
Then I'll keep some in the fridge for that week, and then I'll freeze the rest, so he doesn't get sick of it and I can still give him some variety. There will be some days where I could just kind of pull that out or muffins. What helps too is when they cook with me. I also like to have, in particular, the son cook with me because he's picky. I find that when he cooks, he's just more interested in, "Hey, you made this. You should try what you made." I feel like that opens them up a little bit more. Not quite as much as I would like, but it does open. I would say bake with the little kids and the picky ones, and then also freeze a bunch of stuff, so you can go back to that.
One of the other things we did and I've talked about our struggles with our youngest. He's a picky eater, and there was certainly a time where he wasn't eating dinner a lot. What I've realized is that we needed to reevaluate how much snacking he was doing and when he was snacking. Actually, what we've started to do is, when he comes home from school, first of all, hey, if you're-- For a while, when he was snacking, we would say, "Okay, first you have to eat your lunch. You have to finish any lunch before you can have a snack." That worked.
Then now what I'm realizing is we cut out the snacks over the summer, and he eats a lot better for dinner. It was just one of those things where I was like, "Well, he snacks at school that he-- They're hungry all the time." They don't really need to be. In the summer, it wasn't like he was coming up to me saying, "I'm hungry." I would say, "No, you can't snack. Wait till dinner." Well, there are a few times, but then he goes, okay, and then that's the end of that. He eats so much better because of that. I think that if your child's not eating, just reevaluate all of the stuff that's happening in between because that's the other thing too, is when he's snacking, it's not nearly as healthy as what I'm serving for dinner. It does double negative duty, and that he's not eating dinner, and then the snacks are less healthy.
Then the last thing is that don't do what we did. We're still trying to work through this. Early on, I think I set the tone for turning mealtimes into the restaurant. "You're not going to eat that. What will you eat? I can make this, this, or this." Don't give your kids a choice. I think that's when you get into trouble. That's where we are where we trained him that, "If you don't like what I made, don't eat it and I'll make you something else." We're still trying to get on the same page as to how strict to be because I think it can be difficult when you see your child not eating anything for dinner.
The way that I think about it is honestly if he's hungry enough, he'll eat something. What I now have recognized is instead of giving one thing, "Here's a plate of pasta." Then if he doesn't eat that pasta, well now you still want to give him something but you shouldn't. Instead, what I do is I'll try and put maybe four or five different things on the plate, so that even if he doesn't end up eating the pasta, I know he's got fruit, I know he's got a veg or something. Ultimately, he will eat something. He might not eat as much as I want, but I at least know he's eating something versus saying, "Okay, you didn't eat the pasta, you don't get to eat anything now." It's this all-or-nothing deal and that seems to have worked out pretty well for us. Let's transition over to any nighttime routine tips and tricks that you might have.
Jim: Here's a couple. One of the things I learned early on about toddlers, in particular about toddlers. Babies, you don't really have to worry about but toddlers and then and even now with my eight-year-old and my five-year-old is to dim the lights. Start to turn out the lights and dim the lights at least an hour before bedtime. Maybe even two hours before bedtime and no screens within two hours of bedtime and it's-- I don't always remember but usually, it's like alright let's think about it's time to start getting ready for bed or it's bedtime and that's where I'll start to dim the lights and turn everything down and just kind of make it ready for bedtime. There's some physiological reasons about why that's important. It's also just sets the mood. They get the idea that the day is ending and it's time to go to sleep. Strongly recommend that. That's a great way to start the bedtime routine. The other thing that I mentioned the other day was the Calm app that both my wife and I have on our phone. I think it's like $60 bucks a year, which felt pretty spendy, [laugh] when we first-- I don't know. You're used to apps being $1.99 or $6.99, whatever. $60 felt a lot, but we-- I think it was my wife, she got it one of those nights where we were just desperate. For whatever it was, we couldn't give them to sleep and so she tried it out. She probably got a recommendation from somebody else. Anyhow, it's an app that has sleep-time stories. They've specifically got a section for kids, kids sleep stories.
Some of them are fairy tales a lot of them are just original stories. The narrators speak in that nice calm, monotonous, melodious and it's magic. It just puts them to sleep in no time at all. There's also some stuff for grownups and meditations and stuff that adults can use to listen to go to sleep, but that's been huge and usually we put it on just about every night. We'll read a book or something and be time to time to wrap things up and go to sleep and we'll put it on and it's usually one that they've listened to a thousand times. They just drone out and crash out in just a good matter of minutes.
Dave: I was reading this article. This was a couple of years ago. There are these guys that started a podcast where all they do is they read the name of Ikea products, in a very monotonous way and so people use it to go to sleep. That's what they're doing. They're just reading a bunch of Ikea stuff. We all love Ikea. For me, for nighttime routine stuff, I have, I guess one for the younger kids and one for the older ones. When we started to train our children to sleep on their own-- I don't know how you guys were sleep training and my wife-- Actually, at the beginning when my kids were young, she would sleep with the kids or at least get into bed with them and then when they would fall asleep, she would wake up and come out.
I was like, look at some point they got to do this on their own because it's disrupting everything to have to sit in bed with them while they sleep because we actually do a lot of work at night and so what I realized is what we started to do was, or what I started to do because I was the one that was pushing for the sleep training was to first you read the book and then you just sit next to them in bed, and then they go to sleep and then you do that for a week or two and then you move a little bit further away from them and then you just every week you keep moving a little bit further physically away from them until eventually you're outside of the room and it just over time it gets them--
I think it gets used to them being on their own but also they know that even though they can't see you that they're still there because at some point you're probably going to be out of their visual range. Towards the end, I was literally in the hallway, but she knew that if she needed something that I would be there. Then over time you just okay, you're ready to go on your own. That just physical movement just little by little weaned them off. I think that was pretty effective to get them used to that. Then I have an older kid's tip which is I really like to use books as ways to start conversations about reinforcing good habits or any other lessons that you'd like to impart.
When I look for books at the library, there's always a reason that I'm checking a book out. It's very rarely am I like, oh, let's just randomly draw books from the library. I also like them to be able to do that, but when I'm help picking the books, there is a reason for every book that I choose. What I'm doing now at this point with the eight-year-old is I will tell her, "Okay, why did I pick this book for you?" It also gets her to pay attention and I've actually started to do this. We just came back from a, like I said, from the camping trip and it was seven hours. I even did this for a bunch of podcasts.
There were two podcasts that we listened to and I'm like, "There is a common thread between these two podcasts. Tell me what it is and tell me why I want you to learn that lesson." Sometimes these conversations are difficult to start. You don't know where to start them and I think that a book can introduce that and it also gives you something to engage with your child about rather than just out of nowhere, coming up with a topic. It gives you that excuse. It's the same way like you go to a movie. You can talk about it on your way out the door. I really enjoy that and also that bedtime, I think it just all flows together. To have the book and then have that quick conversation about it and then off to bed and off to the next thing. The next group of topics we have here, or next group of tips are going to be about school. What kind of tips you got on school, Jim?
Jim: "So, tell me about your day. What happened at school today?" I get nothing.
Dave: Right, nothing. "I don't know."
Jim: A couple of things. First, early on, I started modeling that for my kids when we were driving back from school. I'd be like, "All right. I dropped you off at school and then I went to work and I had lunch with a friend." and I'd walk them through my day and just modeled what that was just telling somebody about what was going on. I don't know that it took, but at least it was an effort to try to get them to understand that that's what I was about. Two things that I've started using more recently are to ask specific questions. Things like, and these are my go-to's like, "Did anybody get in trouble today? Did anyone make any bad decisions? What was the funniest thing that happened today?" Gossipy things or very specific things, and usually it gets them to talk about something, "Did anyone get in trouble today?" "No." "Did you get in trouble today?"
It's something that starts a conversation and then for my younger one who's now in kindergarten, we've been playing two truths and a lie about their day. Tell me two things that happen today and that were true and one thing that's a lie. They giggle and play the game and it's fun and then I get to find out something that they did at school that day. I like to know that and we've recently started a new school. There's a lot of transparency, a lot of communication with the teachers, which is great, but in other situations in daycare or our prior school, in some ways, it felt like a black box where they just-- I didn't know what was going on a lot of the time during the day.
It's nice to have that nice to have a way for them to report to me what their school day was like. Being proactive with playdates. It took me a while to figure out that that was really important and it's just the one-on-one socialization's helpful. Having a relationship with one of the classmates outside of the classroom or having that connection outside of tghe classroom, I think, really helps bolster that social development and probably helps them feel more comfortable in the playground. We've tried to do that. We try to get in touch with other parents and offer to do the play dates, go to a park or have them over to the house and it's fun and I think it's really positive.
Dave: We just got done with the sleepover podcast and we were talking about how we would really want to know the parent before we had our child sleep over there and I think this is ultimately what that's leading up to is if you have the play dates at kindergarten, well, you feel pretty comfortable when second grade rolls around, you've known these parents for a couple years. Yes. You want to go sleep over, knock yourself out. We know those parents well, so I think it does lay the foundation for the future socialization as these kids get older, so yes, I like that one.
I always like to volunteer for the first activity or field trip of the year. If that's something that is available in your school, it's-- I always find it very interesting, especially when they're young. You see how they're adjusting to the school. Also, where we are at, they constant they're changing the classes and I remember a couple years ago. I guess it was first grade. I looked at the class list and I don't even know 80% of these kids and we had been at the school at that point for three years.
I was shocked that I didn't know any of these kids. I was a little bit concerned for her at a social level and when I went out to the first field trip, I could see which kids interact with who and how they interact with each other. Also, just to check in on how my daughter was doing and who she-- to make sure that she had a group to be with. What I did see is there was a huge group there, basically one massive group of girls because they had been together for a few years, somehow.
Then my daughter and a couple of the girls, which is fine. She doesn't need to be in this big clique. I don't care. As long as she's got a friend or a couple of friends, that's all I care about and so you're able to see that and how the kids interact. Also, it's always very interesting to see your child in the school environment because they're just different because they know that you're-- I mean you're there so they know you're there, and it's going to be a little bit different even then, but to see them interacting with their teachers and with their classmates, it's a window into the rest of their day and one that we are not privy to most of the time.
I really highly recommend that if that is something that you can do. The other thing is that I remember when our daughter started school, pre K3, you're so nervous about how's she doing. You have so many questions and thinking, "Man, parent-teacher conference isn't until this November. That seems like a long time. That's three months away." and you don't have to wait until parent-teacher conference to find out how your child's doing. I think in my head, I was like, "Well, that's the checkpoint." but there's no reason you can't just reach out to your teacher after a week or two weeks. Especially these days where kids are just going into school with a lot more stress, just check-in. It's okay. You don't have to wait for some formal invitation from the teacher and then this is how we're going to do it. You have to wait until parent-teacher conference. It's not how most teachers work. My guess is that most teachers are more than happy to talk to you anytime within reason about how your child's doing. That leads me to another tip I guess is that don't forget to leverage any resources that your school has. Where we are I believe it's a state requirement that we have SEL teachers, which is what social-emotional learning.
In the past when my daughter was having challenges, I would reach out to the SEL teacher to say, "How should I think about this?" or "What can we do to improve X or reduce y?" Besides your primary teacher, there may be other resources that you can leverage, and just don't forget those because sometimes not everybody knows that and that's actually something that I would tell other parents at school when they were telling me, "Oh, yes my kid this." I'm like, "You can talk to the SEL teacher. She's great." They're like, "Oh, I didn't think about that."
Then the last one is actually very similar to you in terms of the playdates is I always like to reach out to new families when they come in because I think it's helpful for both my child to be like hey, this is a new kid. Help show them around. Introduce them to your friends. I think it gives my child a sense of responsibility and also trying to say, "Hey, when this kid comes to school, they're not going to know anybody. You've known these kids already for four years. Make sure that you play with them." When I hear about new kids coming to school, I'll ask her, "Hey, did you have a chance to interact with X or Y? How are they doing? Do they seem to have friends? Are you asking them to play with you?"
To reach out to new families, I think they appreciate that but also, it just gives your child a way to have some ownership, and then also to just widen their circle beyond the people that they've known for the last whatever two or three years. It just I think gives them an opportunity to have a pretty diverse set of friends. We're actually looking to do some of that stuff in the next couple of weeks here since we've just started school as well. The last big group of topics. Oh, no, we have two more. Here we're going to talk about travel tips.
Jim: Again, you've got more than I do. A lot of these things that we've talked about before. I think we did do one on traveling I think, specifically about airplanes. Just another tip that we learned from my brother-in-law, who is a flight attendant, which is to bring a gift for the flight. If you got the crying kid-
Dave: [laughter]
Jim: -if you got the screaming kid on the plane, bring a gift for the flight attendants and it doesn't have to be anything serious, it's really more like a gesture. We would buy a bag of the Ghiradelli's chocolates the ones with the single-serving size.
Dave: Yes, with the Halloween style.
Jim: Yes, so the whole bag of those we'd bring it to the head flight attendant and be like we're new parents we're flying with the kids really sorry about this. Just from the gesture, you get the whole team on your side and so when there's the lady behind you who's complaining to the flight attendant, the flight attendant's like, "Hey, knock it off. These are new parents. Give them a break." It makes me feel less self-conscious. It makes me feel like there's somebody else that understands because they see it all the time, of course. That's a good tip and then getting a stroller at Disneyland and this is something my wife came up with. I think she probably found it through Facebook or something like that, but there are people who will rent their strollers to you. We ended up getting a double bob so we didn't have to travel down because both the kids were small enough that they going to have to be carted around at least a little bit of the day.
It was great. She met us at the front gate, handed it off, we kept it for three days, and then she came and picked it up and it was totally reasonably priced, and it couldn't have been more convenient. We didn't have to travel with a huge stroller like that. That one was solid gold at least for that trip.
Dave: I think when we went to Disneyland, one of the things I was reading to you, somebody said something to the effect of, "Buy a balloon so your stroller is easier to identify because there's just lines of strollers and especially if you have a popular stroller just figuring out which one is your stroller." I remember that when we were at Disneyland I guess I "illegally parked my stroller" because when I came back, it was gone. Somebody had moved the whole group of strollers, and it took me 10 minutes to find my stroller which had I had a balloon floating above would have made my life so much easier because it's going to be within a certain radius because it was clear that I had illegally parked my stroller unknowingly.
All of them were gone when I came back, but I thought that was an interesting tip. Yes, so we travel a decent amount of travel, oftentimes to Asia and so, yes, we have gotten some hard-won lessons. The first thing is before went to Asia-- Our daughter, it must have been eight months, the first time we took her to Asia and we were a little bit nervous about that. I know other people that take their kid after just a couple of months. We took a test flight. We just jumped on a plane. I think our very first one was only 45 minutes away.
It's just to go through the process of do I put the stroller through the X-ray machine? All the things that once you're a parent, you know what the process is but the first time, like, " Who do I give the stroller-- Can I take it on the plane? Who do I give it to? Do I give it o the flight attendant? Do I go down the jet bridge?" Just all of the little things that you don't want to be stressing out about when you've got a big trip coming up, so just a real quick trip to test out the process. Actually, she jumped on that plane and she fell asleep and so we were relieved. We were like, okay this seems to bode pretty well and it put us at ease for when we did do the first real big trip.
When we traveled and the kids were in diapers, what we would do to save luggage space was just buy our diapers locally. The main thing that you need to know is your child's weight in kilograms because most places are going to use kilograms, but it's a pretty simple conversion, but knowing that is going to make your life easier because otherwise, it's going to be hit and miss. You don't want to buy the wrong diapers. If you're going to a country where there's not a ton of space, like most of Asia, I find it's totally worth it to buy the gb Pockit. I think that was the stroller that we talked about that you also had.
That's the one that apparently has the world record for smallest stroller once it-- You can fold it up and fit it underneath the airplane seat, so it's super, super compact. The other advantage to that is when you're traveling internationally if you check your stroller at the jet bridge, that's great. Everybody gets out of the plane. Now you're waiting for them to go retrieve your stroller. Meanwhile, the line at immigration or customs is building, and you're now behind all of those people because you're waiting for your stroller.
We did that a few times where I see this whole line of people going in front of me and I'm like, "Man, now we probably lost 30 minutes because we're just waiting for our stroller to come out here." Being in control of your stroller is huge if you're traveling international. When we travel even domestically, I always assume the in-flight entertainment is not going to work. I have actually seen that happen and there was a family next to me where the kids were going bonkers because whatever happened, the kids were clearly not prepared. They had no backup, and so it was wild for the six hours that we were on the plane.
That's the opposite of what you do right when you give the little gift to the flight attendant. Don't be that parent that didn't plan ahead. Other things for me, don't forget local libraries to get audiobooks and download them in advance. Like I said, we took our car trip, and while I had planned for the kids to do something in the car, we actually haven't taken a lot of road trips, and I forget that my daughter gets car sick. There were a fair number of things like she can't color. She obviously can't read. I got Tangrams. She can't do that either. She gets sick.
Because this was a seven-hour trip, I was super glad that I had five or six audiobooks that were downloaded and ready to roll that we could just pull out and that absolutely kept her dialed in for the seven hours which was great. Because I got them through the library, I didn't have to buy anything and audible has the same thing. The base audible subscription that we're on it gives you access to a bunch of just free audiobooks for kids. A couple of the things here just to wrap up the travel section. If you're in a foreign country, and I think especially one where you don't speak the language, I like to get an ID bracelet in case you get separated from your child and we do have that whole episode on what happens if you do get separated from your child.
Especially my kids when we go to Asia, if we're going to a place where we don't speak the language if the five-year-old gets separated, I don't want him to not only be separated but then on top of it, no one can communicate with him. They have no way to figure out what language does this kid even speak? I think it just makes life a little bit easier to just have a little bit of planning in advance. Then the last thing, combines a few different tips for picky eaters, especially when they're traveling abroad, is to not forget local convenience stores and supermarkets are fun places to get local snacks, but also can be a great source of food for picky eaters.
The last time we were in Japan, we'd go to a restaurant. He wouldn't eat anything, so we'd have to go to the 7-Eleven or the Family Mart to get him a little rice ball which he was more than happy to eat. Actually, we were just going to get those every single time, but it's just an easy way to just get something in him if he's picky. I think the last thing is we've got a few just random tips and tricks that you've got.
Jim: Yes, things that don't really fit in the other categories. Again, a lot of these things for me were things that I wouldn't have known or picked up from other parents. Once I figured it out, I was like, "Wow, that's great. That's a game-changer." A couple of things that come to mind are the portable Porta Potty. You and I, we were out with another parent who had a pop-up tent that folded up and it had a really small little compartment and then a kid's potty. I think there's probably a plastic bag in there, or whatever. The kid had to go to the bathroom. It's COVID time. None of the public restrooms are open. Pop up the tent, put the Porta Potty in there, it's no problem. I was impressed with that.
There was another parent in our neighborhood that I got this trick from where he took the crank, crankshaft, I guess you'd call it the crankshaft. He took the crank and the pedals off of the bike. It was a regular, not toddler, regular kids bike that suddenly turned into a scoot bike. Then the girl could keep her weight on the bike and pedal with her legs or push with her legs and once she got the balance, then they put the pedals on. Anyway, just converting the real bike into a scoot bike and then putting the pedals on it so that once they learn how to keep their balance. Some things about birthdays. We've got a rule. We haven't really enforced it lately, but we had a rule anyway that the kids had to write a thank you note before they got to play with that toy.
Dave: Oh, nice.
Jim: Embarrassingly, we've had some thank you notes go out two months after the birthday [chuckles]. Sometimes it's just really hard to get. Anyhow, to have that motivation, you've got to write the thank you note before you get to open and play with the toy. That gets things done. Then buying birthday presents. I can't tell you how many times we'd wake up on a Saturday morning, my wife and I, and we've got a party at 11:00 AM, but the store is not open until 10:00 AM. Did you get a present? No, I didn't get one. Do we have any wrapping paper? We end up just swinging by the store and getting something, and putting it in one of those gift bags. It felt pretty cheap, so I got smart.
I go to the toy store at the beginning of the school year and buy 10 or 12 of the same present. With COVID we haven't a lot of birthday presents, but I think the last one we did was lava lamps. A functional thing, and get them all wrapped ahead of time because the store will do that for you. You sit there for 45 minutes, get 12 lava lamps, wrap them, and that's it. You know they're in the closet. Time for birthday, boom, just pull it out the closet, and you're ready to go.
Dave: I like it.
Jim: I have a feeling that we're going to be back into birthdays pretty soon, so that might be something I'm doing again.
Dave: Yes, it does feel that way. Yes, I like the balance bike thing. When our daughter was learning to ride, she learned on a balance bike. To see how quickly they can go from a balance bike to transitioning to a full-on pedal bike, for us it was-- We bought her pedal bike during COVID, right. Of course, this was the time you couldn't find a bike anywhere because everyone was out learning how to ride a bike, so we got a used bike, but we got it and within five minutes she had gone from a balance bike to full-on pedaling on a pedal bike.
I think it was a few months later. We were down in a park and we saw this kid who must have been, I don't know, 9 or 10 who was learning to ride a bike. You could just see he was frustrated with it because he didn't have training wheels. It was just going from zero to 60, just straight onto a pedal bike which is tough if you're trying to figure all this stuff out at once. I think, yes, actually just a general tip is start with a balance bike whether it's a regular bike that you've taken the pedals off or whether you just buy a dedicated balance bike, but the transition to a pedal bike is so seamless. It's going to make everybody's life easier when your child's ready to do that.
Jim: Yes, the training wheels never made sense to me because it's the learning how to pedal is not the essential part of learning how to ride a bike. Even if they've got the training wheels off just a little bit so that the bike leans a little, but that's not it. In order to learn the bike, you've got to learn how to lean into the corners, lean into the turns. The training wheels just take that off of it. The balance bikes, we've started with some that were really early and the girls never really took to them, but then when we got to the full-size bikes and we took the pedals off, they really took to that.
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Dave: We hope you found today's episode informative. If you'd like to support the podcast and hear more discussions around fatherhood, please subscribe and drop us a review. If you have any questions, hit us up on the Facebook page, facebook.com/papaestfatigue, that's P-A-P-A-E-S-T-F-A-T-I-G-U-E. Thanks for listening.
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