Updated Nov. 2020

If you can master one skill as a dad, it should be getting your baby to go to sleep.

Nothing else will have your wife sing your praises like a warrior returning from the heat of battle. You'll put that baby down to sleep and walk away from the nursery like you just dropped the mic on fatherhood.

A dad who can regularly find ways to get a crying or fussy or vengeful* newborn baby to sleep is one who is going to skip a lot of frustration and anxiety and also not look like a hobo.

* At some point in the middle of the night, the phrase, "I know she's doing this on purpose!" will come out of your lips.

I have fought the battle of baby sleep and lost. I have lost so hard that I've fallen asleep standing up after 40 hours without seeing my bed. I have lost so hard that I have babbled nonsense in the middle of the night because I was so exhausted that when I did fall asleep and woke up five minutes later, I thought hours had passed and that I had lost the baby who was, in fact, in his bassinet. I have lost so hard that I've seen the sun come up and thought, well, if I can go to bed within the next hour, I can still get 30 minutes in. Hell, I have lost that battle in the past week, because some days, it's just not gonna happen.

Don't be like me. Learn from my mistakes. I want you to know what has worked best for me getting my kids to sleep so that you may know the warmth of your sheets and not the cold of a rocking chair at 3 in the morning.

I'm going to give you the tricks I've learned that seem to work more often than not - there is no bulletproof method, despite what you've been led to believe. 

BUT FIRST, WE NEED TO COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING ABOUT NEWBORNS AND SLEEP.

Hey there, new dad. Or new mom who is reading this in hopes her husband will someday read it because you are so freaking tired.

We need to get something straight. Something that you don't see in articles about how to get your baby to sleep elsewhere on the Internet, maybe because they are afraid to say it or worried you won't trust their judgment if you say this one thing.

Here it is:

IF YOU ARE A PARENT OF A NEWBORN BABY, YOU ARE GOING TO BE EXHAUSTED.

Please take a second and nod with that statement, because it's a fact.

This does not mean being a new parent has to be awful - it isn't.

This does not mean being a new parent means you're going to be miserable - you'll have some bad moments, but for the most part you'll love it.

This doesn't mean you won't have nights that go great and you wake up in the morning and rush to the crib saying "Wait is the baby breathing? Why did he not wake up?"

It just means that for a month or four or 12, you are going to sleep a fraction of what you did pre-baby. Please stop assuming otherwise. Your baby is not going to be the exception who sleeps through the night after two weeks. Your baby is not a great sleeper. Nobody's baby is. Your friend who says their baby is a great sleeper is a damn liar. 

The lack of sleep you're going to experience is going to lead you to frantic online searches for "baby sleep methods" and "Why won't my baby sleep?" You'll go to Babies 'r' Us in vain trying to find some miracle product that guarantees your baby will sleep. You're going to watch a lot of Netflix while you rock for hours.

Straight talk? It's really tough. Sometimes, my eyes have burned because I'm so tired. I've had to pull over a few times to take a five minute nap so I wouldn't fall asleep while driving. I've taken a few 5 Hour Energy drinks even though in general I think it's terrible for you - but better than falling asleep holding a baby (Seriously. Do everything you can not to do that, even though you will a few times. It's super dangerous!).

But here's the good news.

Despite what you may think, your baby will sleep through the night at some point. It will happen when it happens, and there can be little tricks to help it happen a little faster, but for the most part, you just have to wait. And when it does, it's going to be awesome. You are going to feel like 5 hours of sleep in a row is a night at a 5-star hotel on 2000 thread count sheets. You may start singing.

And you'll wonder how you ever got through it. But you did - and you will. For as much as it's certain that there's an extended period of sleeplessness when it comes to a newborn, it's also certain that at some point, it ends. After all, you weren't crying all night when you were 5 or 12 or 22 years old, were you? 

But if you go into fatherhood thinking your kid is going to sleep through the night relatively quickly, you are setting yourself up to be very frustrated. Instead, go into it knowing you will do what you can to maximize the long stretches of sleep and minimize the bad nights.

HERE'S WHAT YOU DON'T WANT TO DO WHEN TRYING TO GET YOUR BABY TO SLEEP:

DON'T COMPARE YOUR BABY TO YOUR FRIEND'S BABY.

Your friend's baby is perfect. He fell asleep through the night at a month old. He takes 2 naps a day that last 3 hours each. He speaks French. That is not your baby. And also? I truly believe it all balances out. The baby that sleeps great now may be terrible at potty training down the road, or maybe eats a lot of glue or some shit. You need a long-term view. Just because your baby is 4 months old and hasn't slept doesn't mean the next four months will play out the same! 

DON'T KEEP CHANGING BABY SLEEP METHODS.

If you want to try co-sleeping (and are being really safe about it), awesome. If you want to try the method where you let your baby fall this close to sleep and put them in their crib and then back away, awesome. If you want to let your baby cry it out, cool, although I gotta say that's my least favorite method (newborn babies can't calm themselves so you're asking them to do the impossible). But whatever you try, don't give up after one night or 5. Give it a couple weeks. Let a routine develop. If it doesn't work, try something else.

DON'T ASSUME YOU ARE GOING TO SLEEP SEVERAL HOURS IN A ROW FOR THE FIRST FEW MONTHS.

If it happens, that is really great! Go buy yourself some fro-yo, you earned it! But expecting it to happen means when it doesn't - and dude, it probably won't - you are going to be so frustrated! You are going to be mad at a situation that wasn't realistic to begin with. If you assume that you'll just get as much sleep as the night allows and that it won't always be like this, you won't snap when the baby wakes up 3 minutes after you put her down. 

Without getting too scientific on you, newborn babies aren't designed to sleep through the night. They are, essentially, still supposed to be in the womb, which is why the first three months are sometimes called the fourth trimester. They want to be held, cuddled, swaddled, warm, secure - you know, like inside a belly. What they don't want is to be in a cold room by themselves in a strange crib for 8 hours in a row. Make sense?

My experience with newborn sleep

I've got a 2-year-old boy and twin newborn girls. As recently as the past week, I slept less than 20 minutes in a night. Some nights are fantastic. Some are a fun game where one twin wakes up and then the other twin wakes up as soon as the first twin goes to sleep and then that twin goes to bed and my toddler burst into the room needing water and then he goes to sleep and then the first twin is like wassup? and the second twin is like wait are we supposed to be up now? Cool.

When my son was a newborn, he was really colicy. Colic is this strange medical term for when the baby is super fussy and nobody really knows why. No joke. He would scream all night and was inconsolable some days. We tried all the methods, and nothing really did a great job of calming him down. And then one day? He calmed down. It took him the better part of a year, but he started sleeping in 4-6 hour chunks, maybe just needing rocked once in the night.

Our daughters were premature, so they spent more than a month in the NICU. Not great. Silver lining? We got to skip the first 6 weeks of newborn nights at home. Also, NICU babies in general are known for being a little bit better at sleeping because they get on a sleep schedule in the hospital and are also used to lots of lights and sounds. Still, it's not foolproof. Trust me, they've had many a long night.

Andy's Tips for Getting a Baby to Sleep

You don't think I'd write all that gloom and doom without some beacon of hope, do you? C'mon, dude. I've got your back.

There ARE some things I've found through much research - i.e., tried it on my kids like little lab experiments - that will improve your chances of getting your baby to sleep.

Baby Sleep Tip #1:

The 5 S's. Made popular by Happiest Baby on the Block, I've found that if I swaddle the shit out of my baby, shhh in their ear, hold them on their side (only while holding, not while in a crib), gentle swing them, and give them a pacifier to suck on, well, you can do miracles. Secret tip: The shhhing part can work wonders but you have to do it really loud. Don't be afraid; you won't hurt the baby. And guess what? This can help in the car, too! Sometimes, I'd sit in the back with my son while my wife drove and lean over to shh in his ear and keep him calm. Great dad stuff.

Baby Sleep Tip #2:

Read the Signals: Babies do try to give you signs they are tired. So if they are acting cranky but grandma and grandpa want to see their lil’ munchkin because they just arrived from out of town, and then you delay putting the baby down for a nap, guess what? The baby is learning you are ignoring his signal and he gets even crankier. Also, your baby wants your attention all the time. They might try to push through being tired if they think you might stick around a little longer. Figure out what kind of baby you have – will yours be OK if you rock them a bit and put them down? Do they prefer having their hand held (mine did)? Will they wake up every time the dog barks? (If so, you have to be realistic. If you dog always barks when someone comes over, and your baby wakes up from a nap, what did you expect?)

Baby Sleep Tip #3:

Consistent Routine: Just like not switching up methods, you also don't want to switch up the nightly routine, even if that's a short-term inconvenience. If one night you try to put the baby down at 7 p.m. and the next night it's 9 p.m., and one time it's by rocking and the next night you are in a rush so you just swaddle her and put her down ... well, yeah, of COURSE that's not going to work. When I started consistently doing a bath time/rocking and reading routine with my son, he started doing much better at falling asleep in a reasonable timeframe. When that routine got disrupted by vacation or crazy schedules? Yeah, I'd become 4 a.m.'s bitch.

Want more sleep tips? I've created a special list just for you! Get the 5 'Oh My God It Actually Worked' Tips to Get Your Baby to Sleep. And let me know how they worked for you!

You may or may not know this, but men cannot grow a baby inside their belly and then push the baby out.

We probably could if we ever bothered asking for directions, but you know we're not doing that, so our wombs remain barren.

Why point out what every 4th-grader who rides a school bus already knows?

Because increasingly, expectant moms are considering getting "push presents" for expectant dads. What's a push present? It's a token of appreciation, either small or lavish, you get a new mom as a way to congratulate her on childbirth and as gratitude for all that pregnancy involves. 

"But Andy! You just pointed out that men can't give birth! What pushing are we rewarding with a gift?" 

I get it! On the surface, that seems kinda crazy even though I'm a huge supporter of push presents for moms. But then I realized we're short-changing the idea by focusing on the name.

Do men need a push present?

You have to get past the phrase "push present." It's just because nobody knows what to call it when it's a childbirth gift for the dad and not the mom/ for the adoptive dads and not the surrogate mom. As one reader more aptly called it, a "support gift" is more accurate.

Push present is a simplistic phrase. Might be because "Thanks for grabbing the ice chips and offering words of encouragement while I pushed a baby out of my body and talking my off the ledge when I Web MD'ed every pregnancy symptom" Present doesn't have the same ring to it.

Here's why I think it's perfectly fine and even brilliant to get your guy a push present: Because the entire point of the gift is to celebrate a life milestone.

It's not about what moms deserve versus fathers deserves. There is no "deserving" when it comes to childbirth. We can all hope for a healthy, happy baby, and anything else is a bonus! It's about what we might opt to do in addition to that incredible, life-altering celebration. 

Having a baby is an unbelievably big moment for both of you! Yet it doesn't take away the mind-blowing accomplishment of the mom giving birth if you also want to offer something to the dad as a way of saying "Thanks for supporting me through this, being a loving and doting husband, and not biting my head off when I needed ginger ale at 3 a.m."

I've read and heard the arguments against getting the dad a push present. That this is the mom's time. That you shouldn't get a gift for "doing your job" as a dad. That the baby is the real gift. Guess what? You're not devaluing anything or anyone by getting your husband a childbirth-related gift! The baby is still loved and adored and cherished.

Couples get each other gifts all the time to show their love and appreciation! You wouldn't call an anniversary gift stupid because it celebrates someone fulfilling their marital duties! Unless the gift is a coupon for a free back rub. That's a stupid gift.

Don't think a guy needs a push present? No worries! There's no obligation to get one. He won't likely have even thought about it; it's much more of a surprise than if he got you one.

A guy does not need a push present. It's more like, if you want to celebrate the milestone achievement of pregnancy and childbirth with him, a gift is a sweet and thoughtful thing to do.

(Note: If your guy has been a total jerkoff for 9 months and whines about having to go to the OB-GYN with you and says "It probably won't even hurt that bad," then no! Don't buy him a gift. Instead ask him if he wants to be fisted and when he says no, say, "It probably won't even hurt that bad.")

It's pretty straightforward: If you think your partner deserves a gift for being awesome during pregnancy, get them one! 

Push Present Ideas for Dads

Fantastic! You want to get your husband a push present/whatever you want to call it. 

What do you get them? Let me run through some ideas, any of which would be welcome as a guy.

Want Vs. Need Dad Gift

This is the perfect time to go for something that's a want versus a need. This is a great moment to show that you've been listening to them when they made an off-hand remark about wanting some random item on Amazon. If they keep mentioning how they are worried that once the baby comes, they won't get to keep doing "X" (and by that I mean a hobby, not ecstasy; they really shouldn't be doing molly while rocking Molly), what about finding a gift that shows you heard them and want to find a reasonable solution?

• Example: They love bowling, but think they'll have to quit their league. You get him a gift card to the bowling alley with a promise that although it's too early to tell how the schedule will work, you want him to ensure he has time doing something he loves. He can use the card and not feel guilty about it. Guys worry about losing part of their identity when they become a dad, so something to hold onto part of that identity, even in a small way, can be reassuring. This is all with the understanding that he'll be really involved in the first place; if he's terrible about helping with the baby, see my above suggestion about fisting.

• Or you can buy the expectant dad a gift card for a particular favorite of his (movie theater, pro sports tickets, brewery, whatever). Tell him that the gift card is for when he needs a mental break and he can go de-stress from baby time with no questions asked. The benefit of this kind of gift is that it helps set up a mutually beneficial arrangement, because the more you support each other having your own time, the less you'll go crazy or feel like either of you have to "request" time to do something. You gotta still be you as a new parent.

Making Baby Life Easier

I recommend guys get their wives a push present that is both fun and helps make being a busy mom a little easier. Why not do likewise? 

• Kindle Paperwhite: For long nights of rocking, an e-Reader is a perfect solution. Why? You can hold it in one hand for long stretches while you pat the baby's back with the other. Having something to read means it helps you stay awake, since falling asleep while holding the baby and rocking is a huge, huge no-no. Also, unlike the regular Kindle, you can read in the dark, which is great for late nights (and also adjust the brightness so as to not to wake the baby). And by using this for entertainment, it means your phone battery won't drain. That's important. My wife & I have to text inside the house to each other all the time - hilarious, I know - to check on how the other person is doing with a baby. When your phone dies, so does your soul... I mean communication. Bonus tip: Preload the Kindle with some books he's been wanting to read!

• Dad diaper bag: I've got a diaper bag in my car, and that makes it much easier than constantly flip-flopping with my wife's bag. They sell amazing diaper bags over at DiaperDude.com, for instance. You could get him one that is exactly his style. Which means he'll use it. Which means the baby's diaper will get changed when he has the baby alone. Which means he is alone with the baby for hours and you are not there. Which means you are home drinking wine. Win. Bonus tip: Stock that bag with a few items, and include a note in a pocket that gives him a little boost of confidence about how you can't wait to see how great he'll be as a dad.

• Jogging stroller: If you're all about fitness, you've probably already put this on your registry. But if it's just the dad who loves to run, people might not think about the fact he'd benefit from a jogging stroller even if you would only use the regular stroller. I ran a 5k with mine! These can't be used for newborns - they don't have the neck strength - but when the kid is a little older, it's an awesome way for dads to bond while also getting outdoors. This can include when the infant has been a monster all day. You toss them in, start jogging, and you'd be amazed how quiet that baby will be. Seriously. Again, this is a win for both of you! Bonus tip: Make sure it's a stroller that collapses easily and can fit in one of your car trunks. You're not trying to gift him with a chore.

• Streaming services: Stay at home dad? That's sweet, man. But daytime TV is not kind to guys in their 20s-40s, other than Price Is Right, which is just the g.d. best. You don't want him just watching TV all day instead of playing with the baby, but it's also not fair to think he won't get bored when the baby does mercifully sleep - or needs long, long stretches of rocking - and he's stuck in the house. What about adding to the number of streaming services in the house? Adding Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, etc., means he won't be tethered to a TV, which is helpful, and even if it's cliche, guys do love technology. Just don't let him watch Breaking Bad while rocking his infant. Trust me on that one. It gets uncomfortable.

• And, of course, I’ve got the perfect book for them, too! The Guys’ Guide to Being a Birth Partner. It’s a quick but helpful read that helps him better understand what you’re experiencing, and that helps everyone out.

Reinforcing Their Manliness as a Father

It's not unexpected for a guy to have self-doubt creeping in when the baby is arriving; actually, that's the entire point of this site! 

Will I be a good dad? I don't know what fathers are supposed to do! How will I balance everything? Will I get peed on? (Yes. Yes you will.)

A push present for the dad is a perfect opportunity to show them you have full confidence they can handle this and that you wouldn't want to be going through all of this baby journey with anybody but them. If you want to wait until after the baby is born to get him something, what about a sentimental gift?

• You can use the baby's footprints to make a piece of artwork for his office/workplace so he has a visual for being a proud dad. Make it easy for him to show off! A proud dad is an involved and caring dad.

• Frame a maternity photo and thank him for doing whatever was needed to make you feel comfortable all those months.

• Offer to pay for a tattoo for him with the baby's initials – if he's the tattoo type. I'm assuming you wouldn't offer to get him a tattoo if he's scared of needles or has the delicate skin of an author of a web site for new dads. That would be a dick move.

If he's not the sentimental type, you could go the pampering route. Dudes like to be pampered. If you didn't know this, it's the subject of every fourth segment on morning talk shows. A cool men's grooming kit reinforces the masculinity, for example. Other ideas: Home fitness equipment for the gym rat type. A fancy coffee/espresso machine to make up for those long nights ahead staying up with you. Subscriptions to new magazines are always welcome.

You Know Your Guy. Show Off What You Know.

Whatever your budget, the point isn't finding the "perfect" gift. This isn't some Black Friday pressure-packed shopping frenzy.

Whatever you go for, do it because you want to congratulate your husband for becoming a dad and thank him for his role in all of it. You can't go wrong with that!

Want to run a gift idea by me? Let's talk! If you want to look at my free bonus list for push present ideas for moms - some of which could apply to dads, too! – here you go!

Disclaimer: Some of the gift ideas are linked to my Amazon Associates account; I would get a commission if you were to buy through that link. I'm suggesting the product because I've used it and liked it!

Updated and revised Nov. 2020

For some reason, we've demonized the idea of getting a congratulatory gift for new moms after delivery. Screw it. Get your wife a freaking push present, dads.

What's a push present? It's a small but thoughtful gift you get the woman who just went through labor to give birth to your son or daughter. 

The baby is not to be confused with a gift. You'll hear that. "Why does she need a gift? Isn't the baby gift enough?" The baby is a miraculous addition to the family. A show of appreciation does not poop on you. Your wife doesn't need a gift. 

But you know what? You don't need Christmas gifts, either. It's just fun to get. And Christmas is as commercialized as it gets.

Things that are over-commercialized:

• Christmas: Although I do enjoy seeing "Keep the Christ in Christmas" stickers on cars parked at the mall on Black Friday.

• Easter: Not that anyone minds when they are eating a bucket of chocolate bunnies.

• Valentine's Day: You want to talk about commercializing a display of love? Jewelry store commercials for Valentine's Day make it seem like your wife will divorce you for anything short of a 10 karat necklace. Side note: It took me about a decade to realize "Every Kiss Begins With Kay" works on two levels.

• Presidents' Day: Whose sole purpose is to give you half-off mattress sales, when we all should be pausing to reflect on the great legacy of William Henry Harrison.

Things that people say are over-commercialized but actually are fine:

• Giving birth: Yes, some people think that the media/businesses promoting the idea of a push present for something as natural as giving birth is over-commercialized. Push presents have become a thing in the last decade or so, and it's causing much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. Moms shouldn't expect a present. Dads shouldn't be asked to give one. That's the argument.

You know what? New moms have earned a push present much more than I have "earned" a Christmas or birthday gift, and no one bats an eye at giving out those. It’s a celebration. So celebrate!

The case for push presents

If your wife wants a small material gift for doing all the hard work in labor, buy her a freaking gift.

If your partner thinks it might be nice if she got a little something for not seeing her ankles anymore and then passing a placenta out of her vagina like a slab of tableside prime rib at Texas Roadhouse, get her a necklace.

If the woman you love mentions a thing that would make her really happy to get and you're watching her sweat through hours of labor only to have to get a C-section and an eternal scar, maybe you should get on Amazon and spring for the 2-day shipping.

This is not the spirit of Christmas, a-holes. It's OK to be selfish, moms, and say that you think it'd be nice if your guy got you a little something. Nobody is going to think you're being greedy for wanting something nice that puts a smile on your face when you've performed a miracle. A MIRACLE.

Straight talk for new moms who want a push present

It's perfectly fine if you think it'd be nice to get a push present. Note there's a subtle difference in phrasing here that matters. You "think it'd be nice" is much different than "expect." 

You're expecting a baby. You think it'd be nice to see a gift sometime in your future.

When you start expecting a gift from your husband, you're setting yourself up for disappointment and also it's not going to sound so nice on Facebook. Don't be that person. Don't be the one who posts about how she better be seeing a diamond after delivering the baby except no one can tell if you're kidding and you're really not and then it's awkward and people do a lot of "haha ... yeah... you go girl" because they are embarrassed for you. 

You are not Beyonce. Or J-Lo. Making demands about getting a huge rock will make you sound like a diva. Your husband is not Jay-Z. I'm assuming.

Still...

You deserve appreciation after childbirth. You're blessed with a baby. You are fortunate if someone in your life thinks to show that appreciation with a gift. 

"But the baby is the gift. I don't need a gift," your pregnant friend says, making you feel bad for wanting one. 

She is not you. She also is probably a little full of it, the same way she said she was able to breastfeed no problem and her milk supply was great from the start. 

You are a full-grown adult and fully realize a pair of earrings is not the same as a human baby. That doesn't mean you can't kinda be happy that someone thinks you should get a pair of earrings for being so incredible.

Advice from a guy: If you want a push present, make it clear to your husband that you'd be happy to get one. If you know what you want and he's expressed interest in getting you something, just tell him what you'd like. This isn't the time to be coy. Let's not add disappointment to your post-birth experience. Likewise, it's not OK to demand anything or keep saying things like "I better get _____ for pushing this kid out." It's not his fault he can't give birth! But it’s not a bad thing to be appreciated.

Why new dads should get a Congratulatory gift for new moms:

It's OK that your wife wants a push present. We can't ever do what they are doing, whether it's a vaginal birth or a C-section. We just can't. A token of appreciation that they are doing the kind of physical/mental/emotional exertion we can't comprehend seems the least we can do beyond taking care of the day-to-day stuff.

Make sense?

This doesn't mean you should break the bank. Good God, man, you're having a baby. The bank is broken. It's a George Clooney and Brad Pitt appearance away from being Ocean'ed.

It means that if you've got a little something you've been wanting to get her but Christmas or her birthday or even an anniversary didn't seem the right time for it, this is a great time as a congratulatory baby gift.

A side point: This isn't like a Christmas or birthday gift. You don't necessarily need to keep it a surprise. If you don't know what to get her and you think she does want some kind of gift, it's OK to casually ask if she has any ideas, as long as she knows you are just going for ideas and may not get exactly that.

Still stuck for push present ideas for your wife?

Here's a list of push presents (also called post-delivery gifts) that could be great:

• Sentimental jewelry: While diamond aren't ever going to be turned down, there's no reason you need to go over the top. (Plus, dude, you're screwing yourself for upcoming gifts.) Try something that connects to the new addition to the family/has a baby theme. If you are dead certain of the birth month, a birth stone is always a good bet!

• New mom artwork: If there's a quote she loves about motherhood or she has a maternity photo that's her favorite, make it into framed artwork!

• Upscale baby swag: This one worked for me for my son. My wife got a Kate Spade diaper bag. It seemed a little silly for us to spend a lot on a diaper bag if it was just a random baby purchase, but I could spend more on it and get her a really nice diaper bag if it was for a gift. The nice thing was the design of the bag meant she could use it as a purse after we were done with it. See if your wife would be up for having her push present be a baby-related item she has been keeping an eye on and knows she'd use all the time, but thinks is a little costly (an amazing glider, a video baby monitor, a live-in nanny who raises your child to know what's right and wrong but sometimes uses the gift of song to teach them lessons about taking medicine and who may secretly be a bad nanny ... OK scratch that one and just go hire Julie Andrews).

• A fun, frivolous, non-baby related gift: From now on, every holiday will feature a big focus on gifts for your kid, and you and your wife will fade into the background. You'll love getting stuff for your son/daughter, so that's fine. But this might be one of the last times for awhile you get to buy something for your wife that's just for her. Maybe a spa day. Maybe a jacket. Maybe tickets to a concert down the road with the understanding you'll take the baby that night. Even though she's a mom now, she's still her own person, and you can take the opportunity to celebrate her.

• Digital camera: Rather than relying on her smartphone to take the million photos to come (you won't believe how many photos, trust me), get her something that's a step up in quality. Some cameras now have WiFi capability so you can share to Facebook right from the camera, a nice touch to eliminate a step when she already has her hands full.

• A photo album full of quotes about her: I’ve done this for my wife (try Shutterfly). You ask her friends/family to give you short quotes about what they appreciate about your partner, and pair it with photos of the two of them. It’ll be a great way for her to be cherished and celebrated, and to remind her she won’t ever be “just a mom.”

• Cash: Just kidding. Please don't pay your wife for delivering your baby. There is probably a law against this.

• The New Mom’s Guide to New Dads: You can get a paper copy autographed by me, or snag an eBook version for her cough new Kindle, eh?

Need more ideas? I've got just the thing for you! It's my free bonus list of Push Present Ideas! They've all been vetted by my wife and I am positive you will do great with any of them - plus there's a few gifts listed you should NOT get her.

Do you think a push present is a good idea? I'd love to get your feedback.

I remember how you held our hands on the way into your elementary school on the first day of kindergarten.

You were using that baby voice you sometimes used when you were nervous. We had talked about you going to kindergarten for months, and done all of the orientation, but now it was real. 

We made our way down the long hallway into the gym where all of the other kindergartners were being cattle called. Your principal spoke to all of us about the excitement for the year, and then dismissed the students by teacher. Your teacher’s name was called, and you made your way to her, and just like that, you and your classmates were out the door and gone.

It was just the parents left. Your mom and I looked at each other with a “Um, well, I guess he’s in kindergarten now” exchange, and listened to the rest of the presentation. 

Approximately 2 minutes and 7 seconds later, you finished kindergarten.

You don’t use the baby voice anymore. You grew several inches. You are too independent now (For some reason, when daddy says “Don’t run across the street until a grown up is with you,” you interpret this as “Do anything you want! No rules! Have a great time running with reckless abandon!”)

For the first five years of your life, I wrote letters for each of your birthdays.

But, at age 6, you’re done with kindergarten. And that also means you’re at the age where people refer to you by grade, not how old you are. When you’re an adult, you’ll learn that people refer to you based on how much delight or disdain they have for your age bracket. “A millennial. Ugh.” 

So I’m starting a new tradition with you of writing an end-of-school year letter, which just so happens to come just a couple weeks after your birthday. Dad is certainly not doing this because he didn’t have time to write this post on your birthday. It’s definitely because of this much better approach.

Daddy’s thoughts on you finishing kindergarten

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A post shared by Andy Shaw (@instafatherandy) on Jun 4, 2025 at 5:33am PDT

1. You can freaking read. I know that’s the expectation for kids your age, but it still blows me and your mom away that you can read. And not just simple books. You read everything you see. You had an amazing teacher, for sure, but I also know you worked at it. Now if I can just get you to read in between the lines when I say things like “Let’s try to have some quiet time,” we’d be on to something.

2. You take such good care of your sisters. They don’t even realize yet how fortunate they are to have a big brother like you. And it melts daddy’s heart when you hold one of their hands. Not enough melting to make daddy want to give you more sisters. But a solid melt.

3. Each year I’ve done this, I’ve said, “What an idiot I was for not believing you'd be even more amazing the following year.” I’ll say it again. Your fifth year in this world was so incredible. I miss some of the little boy moments that I know are gone, but I also love seeing how your mind works now. And I’ll assume year 6 is going to be even better.

4. Things you can do since you started kindergarten: Read. Ride a bike, which you were able to do on your first try (Tip: Have your kid use a pedal-less gliding bike for a bit first to help them learn how to balance. Elliott’s grandfather did that and it worked wonders.) Do simple math. Have deeper interests. Do more to help mommy and daddy around the house. Accidentally order an entire season of Curious George through daddy’s Amazon Prime video account because you memorized the passcode.

5. Things you can’d do yet: Take naps. You have just never been good at naps. Daddy would kill for a nap. I don’t understand how you’re not begging for one every day.

6. You got to go to Disney World for your birthday. DISNEY WORLD. Mommy and daddy were so glad to be able to take you and your sisters there.  You are a very fortunate boy to be able to go at all. One day you’ll realize that. But I’ll never forget the look on your face when you got to meet princesses, or how excited you were going on rides. You were the poster child for why people go through all the hassle and money.

7. You spent the entire school year trying to think of nice things to do for your teacher. Seemingly every time we went to Target, you found something you wanted us to buy for her. If everyone treated public school teachers the way you do, the world would be a better place.

8. Seriously, you can’t just run across the street. Your uncle got hit by a car once. True story. But I know you do stuff like that because you’re just so excited. You enjoy things to the fullest.

9. “Thanks for (Insert thing you want us to do).” - You have a funny way of passive-aggressively thanking us for doing something we didn’t even agree to do yet. I think it’s because you’re trying to be kind, but it also might be you trying to subliminally trick us into doing it. Real sneak

10. You still sleep in the same room as your sisters. It’s still adorable.

When mommy and I dropped you off for your last day of kindergarten, it felt at once so run-of-the-mill and so monumental. Daddy often says that you never know when the last time is of something until after it already happened. This wasn’t one of those times. I knew exactly that was your last day as a kindergartener, which is when a lot of people divide being a little kid to just being a kid.

And so when daddy drove to work, he listened to the “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” song with the ukelele, the same song mommy had playing when you were born.

And daddy teared up a little bit. Because he remembers holding your tiny hand when you were born as the nurses warmed you up. And how mommy cried with happiness.

And then daddy cried a little bit more. Because he remembers dropping you off for your first day of daycare, when you still fit in a car seat. And how dropping off your sisters for the first time at day care two years later - and how you made me carry you, too, with you on one side and two car seats in my other arm. You wanted a little bit more security, and daddy could do that.

And then daddy cried a lot. Because he wishes he had done more paying attention when you asked for it. And been more patient when you needed it. And enjoyed the baby giggles just a little bit more while they lasted.

Because you never know when the last time your baby does something until it’s already happened.

And so daddy cried. Most of all because he’s so very, very proud of you.

Dear Hannah and Quinn:

I’ll say this every year until it’s no longer true: I can’t believe you’re already another year older.

You’re 4!

You are little ladies. You are closer to kindergarten than you are to being babies. In fact, if I call you my baby, you say “No, daddy, I’m a big girl!”

Sure, there’s still a little bit of the baby side in there somewhere.

Quinn, the baby girl in you still sometimes seems to think her hands don’t work and requires to be spoon fed like the offspring of a monarch. But Quinny, you’re also the big girl who says “No thank you” and “I’m good!” like the most polite toddler in the world and it’s adorable.

Hannah, the baby girl side still wants her hand held as she falls asleep. But Hanny, I’ll hold your hand as long as you need me to. It fits perfectly in mine and it has since the day you were born at 31 weeks and your whole hand grasped half my pinkie. And the big girl in you dives fearlessly into bounce houses with much bigger kids, has solo dance parties, and potty trained herself the very first day we asked.

My babies for life

Can I be honest? You aren’t getting any younger brothers and sisters. Daddy took care of that. Don’t ask what that means. I am not mentally prepared to explain it.

But my point is that you two ARE my babies, even if Quinn you’re technically the middle child by five minutes. That means every new stage you hit marks the end of the last time I get to experience something as a dad.

Done with diapers? OK, that one was easy to let go. We spent a small fortune on diapers. A lot of Pamper’s fat cats went on vacation because of us, I’m sure.

But you’re already too big for me to hold you both at once. I used to be able to carry you both with one arm! And a daddy who can’t carry his daughters sounds like a very sad daddy indeed. 

You’re both getting so independent. You’re getting your own style; Quinn, you are trying desperately for the rolled up sleeves and pant legs look to catch on, even in winter, and Hannah, your favorite look is “Let’s wear everything!”

I’m getting more used to the lasts of things. Maybe that’s because your firsts are so sweet. Like how you started reading to each other inside the dog crate. Sure, that sounds insane and like I’m violating a law, but it’s incredibly cute and you are both so happy to have some books and blankets and have your own little clubhouse.

But, as always, I want to make sure I’m celebrating what makes you unique, too. You will always be twins, but you’ll always be you.

Quinn

Quinn, you sound like Glenda the Good Witch drank a mint julep at the Kentucky Derby. Your mom and I do not understand why you have that adorable voice and how you developed an accent, but don’t lose it. You are the best cuddler on the East Coast, and you get the most excited when I get home from work. We are so amazed at how quickly you learn new things. Do you say “That was me!” when you pass gas? Yep. But it’s part of your charm.

It’s been 4 years since you needed CPR and then a helicopter ride; it seems like yesterday. I know as you get older you’ll get tired of mommy and daddy mentioning it, but that’s the thing about mommies and daddies. We don’t ever get over stuff like that. Honestly, Daddy sometimes reminds himself of that moment when he gets frustrated with you. Perspective helps. You’ll understand later. You’re a Disney character brought to life, and I love you.

Hannah

Hannah, you sound like a tiger and a Care Bear had a baby. You request that your photo gets taken, you sing “Let It Go” with gusto and verve, and you laugh so loud sometimes that it defies logic. I want to find a way to spend more time with you, 1 on 1, because you’re such an amazing girl and I know that sometimes you feel like you have to be extra loud just to be heard. (What you don’t realize is that your sister, in fact, is the one who doesn’t get heard as much because you’re busy being loud).

I am flabbergasted at some of the things you can do. If someone told me you’ll be an Olympic gymnast or the CEO of a company one day, I’d say “Sound about right.” Some days, you know I get a little frustrated when you want to do things your own way even if you won’t let anyone know what way that is supposed to be… but we can also see how that fierce independence is going to pay off as you get older. You’re a sparkler at a Fourth of July picnic and I love you.

Happy birthday Hannah and Quinn. Daddy loves you.

For as long as my kids have been around, I’ve been on bedtime duty.

And the longer I’ve done it, the more I think it should be one of the primary routines any dad should take on. For one, we can’t nurse. And even if we could, we’d whine about it nonstop. For another, even a dad working full-time should be able to fit in bedtime to his schedule, let alone a stay-at-home parent. Dads get some much-needed bonding time, it helps dads and kids have time together that’s more relaxed, and you can’t match the benefits: if you do it well, your kid is asleep at the end of it! (Although sometimes you can do a great job and they are still staring at you because babies and toddlers do not care about your schedule.)

I spent hundreds of hours in a rocking chair. With twins, the fun challenge was trying to gently place them in a crib when your arms have fallen asleep. I don’t know what people with triplets do. Use a crane? A bounce house? Who knows. But, even though some nights the “Go to sleep already!” feeling was high, I wouldn’t trade those evenings for anything.

Sarah Cummings from Sleep Advisor is also a supporter of dads doing more at bedtime. She’s sharing her thoughts on why hesitant fathers should take over this routine below! It’s a team effort approach, and I’m all about it.

I’d love to know who handles bedtime in your house and why - hit me up @instafatherandy on Twitter or Instagram.

As parents, you are always pushed for time, putting yourself last and making sure everything is the best it possibly can be for your kids, right? Sometimes, you have to take a step back and realize that you’re actually pretty good at what you do, especially when you’ve got a tag team partner to step in and take over the bedtime routine.

Yes, we’re talking to all the other dads out there who might not be getting involved with this part of parenting as much as they should/would like; there’s no hiding on this one and we’re here to explain why you have to do your turns at the bedtime routine. It’s okay, stick with these tips and practical pointers and you won’t go wrong, we promise!

Parenting as a team is what we’re getting at here, so, with this in mind, consider these reasons for you as #teamtopparents:

1. Parenting is a team effort

Parents both have busy lives in various ways; whether you’re staying at home, going out to work a job, or working from home, none of it comes easy, so just remember that sharing is caring. By splitting bedtime routine responsibility, it allows the dad in the family to spread his part of the parenting love over to his children.

2. Change is as good as a rest

If applying this idea of daddy taking over at bedtime is new in your family, then the old saying that a change is as good as a rest is really applicable here.

Chances are that you’re both super tired nearly all the time from being awesome parents and grafting at your job as well as attempting to have a half decent social life, stay fit, eat well, and all the other things we’re supposed to do as adults these days!

When you put this into perspective, being able to give one another that little slice of time to enjoy being alone as your significant other takes care of the nightly routine can do so much as far as a recharge is concerned. Just think how much of your sanity can be restored when you switch it up!

Really take on that tag team element so that you can each look forward to that slot of time every other night when you get to have some alone time to do whatever you like (probably sitting down with a cuppa (ed. note: I had to look this up. It’s tea!) in peace and quiet!)

3. Sharing quality one-to-one time

You’d be surprised at just how much your children will take away from the one-to-one time with each of their parents.

At SleepAdvisor.org, I often refer to just how much easier it will be for children to have a feeling that they are special and important when their dad is focusing just on them at bedtime, which can help them slip off to sleep much easier.

That’s not to say that they don’t cherish their one-to-one time with their mum just as much, but typically, it’s their mum who puts them to bed, so, once again, here’s where the sharing aspect comes in because it benefits everyone in the family. These bonding opportunities will last a lifetime, quite literally!

4. Everyone enjoys the special bedtime moments

The idea of getting your little bundles of energy off to sleep at night might not be massively appealing, but when you experience some special moments that would otherwise have been missed with your partner on bedtime duties, you realize how cool it is to have this in your life.

The things that happen, are said, or just having the chance to appreciate a frame in time where you just think ‘I made this’ before they chuck bath water out of the tub, will go a long way to making the bedtime routine something to savor and look forward to.

5. We’re all about flexibility

It’s vastly important to have a reliable routine, especially when you have children as this will help with their sleep, but having a schedule also provides an unexpected level of flexibility because the little ones develop the skill to recognize and take on board what to expect when one of their parents isn’t around.

Letting dad step in on the night-time routine every other day can thwart any potential impending tantrums and screaming matches if one of you is unable to do the bedtime duties.

You won’t have to fend off the ‘I want dad reading my story’, or ‘Where’s mummy?’ lines.  Instead, the kids will know that this flexibility is there for you all to bask in and they’ll soon get used to it.

What’s more, you can chuck a grandparent into the equation and it’ll make it just as easy for them to get them off to bed and through their pre-bed routine when you’ve instilled this flexible behavior into their lives. This will leave you free to go and have a night out; remember those? One thing we can promise is that you will be home by 10pm to enjoy some quiet time because it’s just invaluable!

You can read more from Sarah over at Sleep Advisor, such as her buying guide for mattresses. They review everything sleep-related and there’s even a coupon section. Thanks, Sarah! You can also find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Why are you getting that photo of your kid with Santa Claus?

Is it because you really want to, and your kid is so excited to see Santa? Or is it because you assume that’s just something everyone expects you’ll do, like sending out Christmas cards?

That thought crossed my mine as I stood in a lengthy line curled down a New Jersey boardwalk toward a short, candy-cane striped queue not long ago. Ocean winds whipped around our bundled three-year-olds and five-year-old, all doing an admirable job of keeping busy as my wife and I had promised them the wait wouldn’t be too long.

After all, at the end of this brown boarded road, Santa awaited in a lifeguard boat.

(Hey, when in Ocean City, N.J., right?)

An hour later, our kids were dangling off of us like a barrel full of monkeys, although my wife did an admirable job of entertaining them with impromptu games. Other parents in line could be overheard offering terse warnings of what was to happen if their kid didn’t behave.

The spirit of Christmas, everyone!

Our kids piled into the boat for the photo op with St. Nick. Hesitant? You bet.

And in one daughter’s case, it was just a “nope.” But we had waited that long, and Santa was ready (and, as far as Santa's go, he was pretty legit and jolly).

We got a photo… in the sense that a picture was taken by a camera. My son was all smiles - the fact that Santa somehow knew he wanted a remote control car surely impressed him - but Hallmark won’t be calling us anytime soon to use that photo in a greeting card. 

(By the way, I’m not posting it because I generally don’t want to share pics of the kids when they aren’t at their best, because they have no say in it. So imagine a smiling boy on Santa’s knee, a confused 3-year-old girl, and another 3-year-old who wants to abandon ship.)

Should we have skipped it?

It was worth a shot, since we had some time and hadn’t tried the year before. But it made me remind myself of something we all would do well to think: Just because it’s a tradition doesn’t mean it has to be your tradition. If you think it’s going to be an obligation, skip it! You’ve got a little kid! They don’t need to feel pressure to smile on command (or whatever other tradition they don’t seem to love), and you don’t need to feel like you’re living up to someone else’s standards.

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A post shared by Sarah Von Bargen (@yesandyesblog) on Nov 28, 2025 at 6:11am PST

The holiday season has enough pressure. Traditions shouldn’t add to it. They should make you feel like you’re adding to the enjoyment of your family.

Don’t add more on yourself if you think it’s likely that picture time with Santa will end in someone crying (either the baby or you.)

Or that sending out Christmas cards to every family you’ve encountered at a play date is going to stress you out.

Or that having a cookie decorating party with tons of families will overwhelm your holiday spirit and turn you into Scrooge. (In fact, we scaled ours down this year so it’s more manageable and we can enjoy it more!)

Like so many of you, the picture with Santa, a holiday staple as much as listening to Mariah Carey and complaining about parking, was not all we had hoped for that blustery November day. Sarah Von Bargen of “Yes and Yes” posted about how we all need to let ourselves be OK with this, and I couldn’t agree more. Is it a little frustrating in the moment? Of course! But it shouldn’t make you feel like you failed as a parent.

You are hoping for beautiful smiles full of merry delight when you get to the end of that line. Sometimes, you get the Grinch.

Have you thought about this: It is very strange that we tell children all year long to be wary of strangers, let alone hug and smile with them… and then once a year we all go “Never mind! Go hug that bearded old man! Do whatever he says!”

But we do, don’t we?

Year after year, you see photos of kids with Santa fill your feed, and you start thinking “Yeah, we better get that done,” maybe without even thinking of whether you want to do it.

Like many of you, the post-Thanksgiving traditions include:

1. Regretting how much you ate.

2. Eating leftovers anyway.

3. Getting a pic with Santa.

I can’t help you with the first two. Hell, I’m vegan, so I’m not the one who should give advice on eating turkey.

But that pic with Santa seems like it’s the first big tradition in a month full of them.

Maybe you luck out. Maybe the line is brief, your kid is well-rested and well-dressed, and you have an eyes-open, smile-adorned photo that’ll melt some hearts. Ho ho ho! I hope you cherish that moment and it's added a smile to your face this season.

If that’s not you, or if you are already dreading the potential tears and pleas and whining, I’m here to tell you that you do not have to take your kid to get a photo with Santa.

And if you do (because the holidays are nothing if not traditions, and those are hard to break), your kid isn’t obligated to be in a smiling photo. 

Are you really celebrating the season if you know you’ll need a few well-placed under-the-breath threats to make it happen? Are you setting up your baby or toddler for success? 

Part of it is knowing your kid. If your baby/infant can get passed around like a party favor and love every moment, you should be golden. Or if you have a magical window every afternoon that always seems to find them in a good mood — perfect! 

With three kids, it’s nearly impossible for us to find that kind of window. So we try to be realistic with our expectations.

Make a promise about your holiday traditions

I want you to tell yourself you will not get frustrated if your toddler doesn’t want to smile or sit on Santa’s lap, even if you waited a long time. 

My wife and I just kinda shrugged our shoulders when we realized it just wasn’t going to happen for all of our kids. It would have been great if it did work, and you bet I would be showing it off everywhere! But we’re not going to make any of them feel like they were “being bad” or not listening. 

That would be a weird standard, right? Because then we’re saying Santa is more for our ability to show off to other parents than he is about the spirit of adding joy to the season.

If you have a baby, this is especially true, because babies don’t even know what you’re doing! It’s not like the baby thinks “Normally I would cry if mom lets me go, but this time, I know we’re counting on a card out of this so I’m getting my shit together!”

Christmas won’t be ruined if your baby cries as soon as you try to hand her over to the jolly man in the big red suit. It just means you might’ve wasted an hour.

You may try some tricks to pull a photo off, anyway, because you’re brave and hopeful, and for that, go for it! Nobody gets to say how you celebrate the holidays. Just don’t let the result be too crucial to how happy you are.

Some parents time it out with nap time, or they sneak out right before the photo is taken. Maybe you could rent a baby that smiles all the time! Is that a thing? Maybe that should be a thing.

Hey, I know parents who try multiple Santas so they can get a good one, and it works for them.

Just don’t tie in your ability to enjoy a part of the holiday season or your worth as a parent with the quality of a picture with Santa.

Alternatives to getting a photo with Santa

If you want a magical moment caught on camera in December that doesn’t involve having your kid sit on a stranger, try taking a pic:

• At a holiday light display. In our area, there’s a mammoth light display you can walk through. With a decent camera (or something like Pixel’s new Night Vision option), it shouldn’t be hard to snap a pic of your kid admiring the lights.

• While cookie decorating. A few gingerbread cookies (or a gingerbread house if you’re a pro!) and your kid with the icing means photo magic. 

• With some garland by the tree. You can’t go wrong having an infant play with some garland. It’s adorable every time! They love playing with it.

• Having one of YOU in a Santa outfit. You can tell your kid you just want to dress up as Santa for fun, and get the same photo, now with added hilarity. 

We flat out skipped even trying to see Santa last year, in fact.

Strangely, no one texted and demanded a Santa photo. Because it’s not a big deal.

I hope December turns into a memorable month for you. I’m in the prime years of Christmas wonder with my kids, and we’re trying to soak up every moment. They were thrilled to put up Christmas lights, and by that I mean pull out every strand while I kept telling them to put them down until I was ready. They are pumped for their “Christmas snockings” (not a typo… that’s what they call it!) to go up. 

And my daughter, the one who wasn’t thrilled with Santa? She’s very excited to see two unicorns under the Christmas tree. I can’t come through with a great Santa photo, but two unicorns? I’ll see what Christmas magic a dad can pull off.

I was aimlessly and joylessly wandering around a Target by myself one late summer night.

The kids and my wife were out of town, which, if you’re a new parent, is a rare opportunity to do whatever you want! The world is your oyster! Maybe you could even take a nap or watch an entire show without interruption!

But I wouldn’t be enjoying anything that night. Earlier that day, another knockout round of bad news came in - a professional setback this time - that seemed like one more final blow after month after month of things just not breaking my way. Each set back made it harder to parent, let alone take care of myself.

I was pushing a cart like I was lost in a corn maze. The wafting siren song of Starbucks and the bright red markings on the floors all seemed faded.

You know how you at least fake smile when you’re in public so you don’t see psychotic? I wasn’t even doing that.

And I didn’t know what to do to snap out of it… and that’s how I ended up drifting around a Target trying waiting for a solution to months of frustration.

I remember trying on a jacket and thinking “I do love this jacket…” and not being able to muster the enthusiasm to buy it. As if I already knew I wouldn’t be able to fix things with some red-basket therapy.

I somehow walked out of there without a traditional Target slashing of my bank account. What happened next was a revelation. The next day I almost felt like a switch had flipped and I needed to put in the work to make sure I didn’t go back to that hollow feeling again. Because even when you’re a parent, there’s so much more to your mental health than how your kids are acting that day. You’re still you. It’s important to remember that it’s OK to put in the time to improve yourself. You’re not just a mom or a dad.

And that’s why I need you to know the specific routine and practices that have made a huge difference for me over the course of a month. I’ve found more joy. I’ve found a better sense of calm and a greater ability to handle the frustrations of parenting. And I have felt more like myself. Dads need to take the approach that self-care is not optional or somehow not “for guys".” Moms, of course, can benefit, too!

Self-care is manly. Feeling better about yourself is manly.

Mindfulness and self-care have been the perfect route for me.

• It directly addresses what I needed to work on

• I could adapt it to my life without a ton of money or time

• I’d get so many side benefits, like being a better husband and friend. (I detailed in Part 1 why I needed to find more time for mindfulness and self-care in my routine; I didn’t want to go down a bad road again.)

Mindfulness, if you weren’t sure, basically comes down to being present. You’re not worried about what you have to do or what’s to come, and you’re not rehashing yesterday or last year’s events.

You need to know that when I decide I’m going to change something, I do it. I decided to become vegetarian while on a flight to Florida. That was about 8 years ago. I haven’t had meat since. So believe me when I tell you, when I did this routine for the past month, I did this routine.

You can do this, too. Don’t take any of this as an all-or-nothing. Maybe some of these routines would be perfect for you! Maybe none of it fits your life. What I’d love for you to take away from this is knowing there’s someone else out there who is trying to find more peace and calm, too, and that there’s a way to get it in a relatively simple way. I would love to hear what you’re struggling with, what’s going great, and what simple routines you put in your day to get your own piece of calm!

Mindfulness morning routine:

• Wake up between 5:15-5:45 a.m. This requires me to be in bed by 10:30 if I want to be up on the early side and by 11 at the absolute latest. Otherwise, I’m setting myself up for failure. That has meant stopping a TV show midway through, but you know what? The show is still there later because it’s 2018. And I need to do my thing by 5:45 because my daughter consistently is up by 6-6:10 a.m. She’ll stay quiet for a little longer if I bring her downstairs, but the point is for me to have a head start. What time does your kid usually get up? Can you get up 15-30 minutes before that? Imagine you waking up on your terms, not theirs. That’s a lot of motivation.

• I give myself about 10 minutes to “wake up.” I’ll read an article or two, check Instagram, and remind myself of the schedule for the day. If I need an extra wake up? I do something kind silly but it helps - I do a quick face spritz of Saje Rainstorm, which has cedarwood, orange, and myrtle. 21-year-old me cannot believe I just typed that sentence, but 21-year-old me was also an idiot. Kasia from Ampersand recommended it and she was right - it’s refreshing! I’ve got no problem admitting this.

• I do not turn the lights on! That may make you sleepy still, but for me, it keeps things relaxed. I want the sun rising outside our bay windows to be what really wakes me up. Think how cool that is to experience rather than slapping at the snooze on your phone alarm. Do you have a spot in the house that’s your reading nook or that catches the sunrise? Perfect! Even a seldom-used chair can feel like its own little meditation spot.

• I turn on my Calm session. They have a variety of 7 or 21-day series; those are cool because you get a theme to focus on (such as, uh, Focus) and you get a sense of accomplishment when you’re done. But The Daily Calm is their most popular, and it can be done in 10 minutes. C’mon. You have 10 minutes. And I have to say, the guidance offered by Tamara Levitt is so, so, so good. She has the most soothing voice I’ve ever heard. My son likes to say he “wants to hear Tamara read a story.”
  

  Give it a try! See the video for one sample of a 10-minute meditation. You know what’s great? There are constant reminders that you can’t mess this up. If your mind is racing, OK! Acknowledge that and eventually, you’ll start slowing it down. If you can’t quite focus on what to do, no problem! You are making progress by simply making the time to do this. Parents get enough pressure. This is the opposite. This is parents practicing self-care.

• When my session is done, I absolutely feel more at peace and relaxed. And second, I’ve had 10-15 minutes to clear my mind. Now I’m ready to jump into the day. No matter what, I’m already off to a good start.

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A post shared by Andy Shaw (@instafatherandy) on Sep 20, 2025 at 2:34pm PDT

• I start getting breakfast for whomever is up (as they start lumbering into the upstairs hallway, I run up and grab them). Meanwhile, I’ll finish dishes/sweep/get lunches packed. My goal is to have as much done as I can so when my wife comes down, she can focus on getting the girls’ hair done (which I am bad at!), getting them dressed (which they prefer her to do because they are in Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! mode), and getting herself ready. This balance seems to work better, at least for the past month! This is all great for dads as a way to get more involved if you’re the one who works full-time, or for either parent as a way to get a jump start on a busy day without feeling rushed.

• Usually, this means I can get ready for work on my own in a more leisurely pace because we’re not all running around on compressed time. See? One more victory, and I haven’t even left for work. If I can remember to bring my laptop charger with me, that’ll be two victories.

Mindfulness during the day:

• I don’t even know why I started doing this, but I dab a little lavender essential oil on my wrists and neck throughout the day. It’s like a Pavlovian thing - it reminds me to take a breath, it has a calming scent, and it gives me a multi-sensory sensation. That’s what mindfulness is about - being present. Easy to do. I like this doTerra version because there’s a roller ball for easy application, but whatever brand works for you. Try keeping one in your car. Dap a little before you do your commute. See how you feel after taking a deep breath, rather than instantly backing out of your space and driving.

I may bust out the Calm app if the kids are being a little extra. I’ll use it in two ways:

• For them: I’ll ask my oldest if he wants to do a breathing exercise. He’s usually game, especially “Belly Breaths.” If I can get him to wind down, the others usually follow. At the least, it makes us all take a moment to pause, even if they won’t necessarily stay focused the entire 4-6 minutes. I am not claiming this is an every day thing; I have my doubts that every family blogger that claims they are having their toddlers meditate all the time are really doing that. But as a change of pace? Yes! They even have free Calm for classrooms, if you think your teacher may be interested.

• For me: If I need it, I’ll do a Take 90. It’s really great if you’re having issues letting frustration get the best of you - it’s a 90-second reset that I can easily do by going to another room for a minute. I get to do some guided slow breathing and return. Sure, you can do it without an app to help, but you weren’t already doing that, were you? Sometimes, it helps to have a thing. Here’s what you can do for 90 seconds of sanity:

  • Set a timer on your phone and close your eyes

  • Take a deep breathe. Do not think of anything. Just focus on the breathe. How it feels. How the air moves inside you. How your chest rises.

  • Count to 4 while you are breathing in. Hold it for four seconds. And release for four seconds.

  • Repeat this pattern. It’s OK if a thought comes into your mind. Don’t get frustrated. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just return to thinking about your breathe.

  • Near the end, breathe in thinking “I am calm.” Breathe out thinking “I am at peace.”

  • The timer will end. You will have had 90 seconds of focusing on you. You can go back to the craziness, but you’ll be better equipped to realize it’ll pass. Nice work!

Mindfulness at night:

• For my kids: First off, you should know all my kids sleep in the same room (my son has his own room but loves sleeping on the floor by his sisters. Who knows.) My son regularly asks for either a breathing exercise or a Sleep Story. With the lights off, we listen to one or the other. The Sleep Stories are great because they truly are relaxing, with slowed pace as the story goes along to induce drowsiness, and they are kid-focused so my 3-year olds and 5-year-old can follow along. Several times I’ve started the story and left the room instead of doing my usual waiting around until everyone is asleep. Try using a bluetooth speaker so you can leave the room after the story has started

• For me: I haven’t had to use it, but I’d imagine if you are the type of person who has trouble sleeping because you have a million thoughts going through your head, Sleep Stories should be your jam. I recommend “Blue Gold.” Mindfulness is perfect for people who have racing minds because the entire idea is to get you to stop planning or rehashing. And parents, naturally, are going to have racing minds because we’re worried about so many things!

You may be asking, “Why Calm? Why not another app/book/service?” From what I can tell, it’s the best at what it does. So rather than give you general advice on trying to find mindfulness with a bunch of suggestions that I haven’t used, I thought it would be better for me to just get right to it and tell you how I use Calm, which, from what I can tell, so many of you already do!

I’m not getting any promotional angle from them; I just dig what they do. You can use it for free and get a lot out of it; the paid version is worth it to me for all the extra stuff you get, like additional kid content. They have stats if you like to track your usage, and their Instagram account is great about adding reminders to be mindful.

Hear directly from the Calm team with the free download below! They talk about why parents need to fit in time for mindfulness, why mindfulness & meditation has grown in popularity, and what new parents would find the most useful on the app.

What’s worked for you as a parent in releasing stress? How do you see yourself applying any of these strategies into your routine?

What would you, new parent, give to have a moment of solitude?

To feel like there aren’t a million things going on?

To feel like you aren’t worrying about what’s going to happen, and regretting all the parenting blunders you just made?

What would it feel like if you didn’t get quite so angry at the latest toddler meltdown? Or saw more smiles on your partner’s face because they can tell you’re more present with the kids instead of going through the motions?

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

(Just making sure you’re still with me.)

I can’t say I’ve found some magic solution. I’m assuming the magic solution is being super wealthy and having nannies and butlers; rich people have problems, too, but they have the money to fix it. At least that’s how it worked on Fresh Prince.

But I do have a method parents should consider trying to alleviate stress, increase energy, and feel like you’re more in control. It costs next to nothing. It can most most any schedule. And you can even involve your toddlers, too.

For the past month, I’ve made a huge commitment to mindfulness and doing things with intention. Here’s the payoff:

• Less stressed: I just feel better. Even if I have a day that’s full of “NOW what happened?” I’m more aware of how I’m feeling and that it won’t last forever.

• Less worried about little hiccups of life: While major aggravations are still, of course, going to cause stress, I’m not spiraling on little things as much.

• More energy: I’m sleeping less and feeling better. I know. I KNOW.

• A better feeling of being connected and not just going through the motions: Have you had weeks go by and you hardly feel like you were ever really there? Like you were just getting the next thing on the list done? This approach is the opposite of that.

Does that sound like something you’d give your first born for? Well, first, don’t give up your first born, although I suppose that also solves an issue.

I can tell you exactly what I did that has helped me become a calmer and more at peace father. I’m far from being perfectly harmonious and all sunshine, Let’s make that clear. But I can feel the difference and I feel that I can make it continue, and in a world where most of the time we all just talk about change, this is me doing the work to make change happen.

Up front, the biggest change was driven by using the Calm app, which helps you meditate and practice mindfulness, every day. In fact, it’s been every. Single. Morning. Before 6 a.m. On purpose.

Now before you tell me to go stick my New Age essential oil hippy claptrap where the hooka don’t shine, stay with me for a moment.

First off, mindfulness isn’t a dogma thing. There’s nobody you’re praying to, so you can easily adapt it to whatever religion you practice or lack thereof. There’s no chanting, no burning incense to Mother Nature, and no $10,000 weekend retreats to find your zen (I am sure someone offers one, but you don’t need it). It’s about being present. Truly present. Not stuck on what didn’t go right before. Not worrying about what you have to do or what will happen. Just being in the moment. And when you have kids, we have an overabundance of both of those emotionally-fraught areas, so being present sounds pretty sweet.

I’m saying that as a dad of three — 3-year-old twins and a just-started-kindergarten 5-year-old — I think we can agree that when I tell you I understand parental stress, you know I’m not exaggerating. I get what it’s like to feel a lot of anger and that you can’t snap out of a funk, and how that rolls downhill to your kids. I’ve written about it.

I’ve had a long journey in the past few years to find more peace in my life, and I’m not done yet; my 30s have absolutely been a period of constant personal growth. I’ve met with a therapist, and that definitely helped. There’s so much value in just talking out what you’re feeling to someone who isn’t immediately trying to fix it or put in their 2 cents. I’ve also been more vocal with my wife about when I need a break as I learn what my limits are, and she’s been fantastic about helping me, which in turn, helps her. And I’ve started to work on my routines as I’ve figured out my trigger points that set me off.

Does that resonate with you?

Do you feel like somedays you could just blow a gasket over something tiny? Do you feel frustration boiling inside you and you can’t even pinpoint why; maybe it even starts as soon as you get out of bed?

If you’ve ever thrown a toy across the room, slammed a door, shouted into the void, or found yourself trying to out-argue a toddler, just know you aren’t alone. So many parents have reached out to me in the past and told me they’ve done all of the above and more. At the time, I told them what I had been doing so far to help, but I couldn’t quite figure out what my next step should be. Enter: Next steps.

What I’ve Done As a Dad To Feel Calmer and More At Peace

I had a really rough summer. It was full of fun beach trips and playing with my kids in our yard and date nights with my wife. But professionally, I hit a lot of setbacks that seemed to pile on to each other and eventually, I hit an emotional wall, and when you factor in being a dad on top of that (did I mention we were potty training?), it was a lot to handle. Something had to change so that I wouldn’t go revert back to a bad mental state.

I knew I couldn’t just push through it. I needed to revamp my approach. And I came back to my need to control the things I can control.

So here’s what I’m doing now:

• Waking up every day between 5:15-5:45 a.m. Depending on your job and your kids, this either seems late or insane. My kids generally can sleep through the night now (at least after they crawl in our bed), so I’m not dealing with the 5-times-a-night wake-up like I used to; I’m not advising you to do likewise if you have a baby cause dude, you need sleep. But instead of trying to squeeze every last moment of sleep and getting up around, say, 6:45 a.m., I’m waking up pre-dawn on purpose. Here’s what I get out of this:

  • Quiet. On most days, I can get anywhere from 30-45 minutes before my middle daughter gets up (she’s an early riser). That means absolute quiet; I’m not even turning on the lights. It’s been there for the taking, and all this time I kept complaining that I never get enough of it. Sometimes you have to take what’s given.
    Each morning, I sit in the same spot and turn on the Calm app. The app is super easy to use, and they have a lot of guided meditation (if you’re like me and have no idea what to do, you want to go that route!). I did a 21 Days of Calm guide and by the end, you find yourself being more aware of how you feel, more alert of your trigger points, and more capable of finding that perfect spot of “now” - not worrying about what’s to come, not regretting what’s happened. If that doesn’t describe what all parents need, I don’t know what does. I’ll have more about the Calm app in a follow-up post, including comments from the Calm team, my favorite routines, and what specifically I do throughout the day with the app and other mindfulness techniques! Give me a shout if that sounds interesting!
    The payoff of peace makes it worth getting up, so I don’t need a ton of motivation. While you may think “Wow, I would just fall right back to sleep if I try to meditate that early!” I found otherwise. It’s more like that’s an easy excuse for us to make so we don’t have to put out some effort. Now, if your baby is up all night, sure! You gotta get some sleep. But if you have a decent sleep schedule, it’s more a matter of prioritizing going to bed at a decent hour.

  • Starting the day on my terms: The thing is, I had known for a long time what one of my toughest moments is each day. It’s the morning rush. It’s getting everyone dressed and fed and brushed, get the house back in order, and dealing with all the inevitable “where did that thing go we need?”, plus trying to get myself ready. But what if, instead, I had a 30 minute head start? Even with 15 minutes for meditation, I could bang out the dishes, tidy up the den, maybe get a kid or two dressed as they meandered downstairs, and have a bite to eat, all before I normally would be getting started. I used to think in my 20s that nothing is worth getting up early. This is.

  • Being awake before the kids are awake so I’m not annoyed. With babies, it can be impossible, given that most are waking up at all points in the night for no reason. But once you’re in a routine, you start to be so protective of the sleep you get because you are now so aware of how valuable it is! So if I heard one of my kids come into the room crying because they’re awake at 6 a.m., I’d get resentful and a little ticked since they woke me up. But if I’m already up? Problem solved. I’m greeting them with a smile, and both our days are better.

  • More time for my wife to sleep. This is just a nice side effect. For the most part, she can keep sleeping a little longer, and that energy pays off mid-afternoon when I’m at work and she has all 3 kids by herself. There’s not enough Starbucks in the world. My wife is one of the hardest working people I know, and she spends every day trying to be a super mom. If I can make her life easier, I need to do it.

• Getting busy. No, not that getting busy; that’s how we got into this mess in the first place. I’m talking about making sure that as much as I can, if I’m with the kids all night by myself (likely, as my wife and I have opposite schedules), I’m resisting the temptation to just lay on the couch and relax. “Andy, you’re saying that dads should not try to relax after work if they want to feel more relaxed? Are you high?!” Stay with me.
  
  What I realized, at least for me, is that the act of trying to unwind after work only has benefits for me if I can actually unwind. My kids, who haven’t seen me all day, want to play and bounce around and read and show me things. This is not unwinding! This involves a lot of energy. Sure, I could do that for a few minutes and let them cuddle up with me and we can watch a movie, do dinner, and call it a night (and some days, that’s all I can do… like I said, this isn’t magic, and parenting isn’t Instagram).
  
  But what happened a lot was that I’d sit down and instantly feel like I didn’t want to move for awhile, and of course, that’s not what my 3-year-olds and 5-year-old had in mind so I’d get frustrated and a little ticked (do you see a pattern?) that they weren’t down for my plan, and nobody would really get what they wanted. Instead, here’s what I am doing much more often:

  • Picturing them happy: Before I enter the house after work, I do a trick my therapist taught me: I picture everyone smiling. That puts a smile on my face, and even if it’s hectic in there, I’ve got a better attitude to deal with it.

  • Doing something with them right away: Before my brain has the chance to tell me to unwind after a long day at work, I try to do something active with the kids. Maybe it’s just playing around. Maybe it’s a walk. Maybe it’s doing a puzzle. But it ensures that I’m starting off positive, for them and for me, and that’s already going to help stave off those frustrated feelings. After all, it’s not their fault!

  • Get chores done all night long. If you’re like me, mounting frustrations can lead to you losing energy (you know how some days, you just feel drained all day? That’s probably more a stress thing than a sleep thing). If you lose energy, one of the first things to go is your will to do chores around the house. But all that does is just create compounding problems — those chores don’t go away, and now you’re mad about having a shit-ton of things to do.
    Instead, often after doing something with my kids on a weeknight, I’d completely clean up from dinner so my wife wasn’t coming home to a bunch of dishes (we all know the visual isn’t exactly welcoming, so that would suck for her to come home and see dinner wasn’t cleaned up yet). Or instead of relaxing while my kids played (God, it’s so much easier when they can start entertaining themselves, but if you’re not there yet and can strap your kid on you, it’s the same idea), I’d vacuum or do the laundry or weed wack. And by staying busy, I wasn’t allowing myself the opportunity to get mad and frustrated; I was being productive, and being productive for me is something I really value. This isn’t wanting a pat on the back for doing the freaking dishes, by the way; Jesus, don’t be that dad. This is about being intentional in making chores part of the way I’m channeling my energy.

  • Taking a breath. This isn’t all bulletproof. Did I mention I have 3-year-old twin girls? In recent months, I’ve watch them lose it over not getting to close a door; not brushing their teeth first; not moving a sock where they wanted it to be; not being the one to hold the dog food scoop; and so many other things I lost count. (The #WhyMyKids AreCrying hashtag is dead on.)
    Even with all the mindfulness in the world, you’re still going to lose it sometimes. But I am making sure, more and more, to pause before I react and even step out of the room if needed. It’s OK to say the moment is overwhelming, step out, count to 10, and go back in. They aren’t going to remember. (Calm even has a Take 90, which is a 90-second meditation solely intended to help you calm the f*&@ down).
    A great example: We took all the kids to the National Aquarium, which I highly recommend. As toddlers are wont to do, there’s always some tears and whining mixed in, even if they are having a great time. Taking some mental pauses to reset myself helped a lot. I found myself enjoying everything more because I was getting away from a “Oh great, now this thing happened” mindset and just appreciating that stuff happens and let’s move on. I’ve got more work to do, but it’s a step in the right direction. In other cases, I’ve even closed the door on my crying kids to go to another room and take a minute to pause and breathe before returning. Let yourself simmer down. It’s OK. You’re human.

I don’t know where you are on the “Need to Chill Out” index. But I think a lot more parents than we know are dealing with a metric ton of frustration, anger, doubt, worry, and so many other day-ruining feelings. Parenting is a lot! Babies and toddlers do not make sense, and they won’t make sense, tomorrow, either. They aren’t going to take it easy on you because you’re at the end of your rope. They may, in fact, grab that rope and light it on fire and then shit completely up their backs just for the thrill. My daughter has pooped in her underwear while laughing in my face! It’s psychotic!

Please take it from me. I am far from being at a perfect place, yet I’d take the past 30 days, though, over most any I’ve had as a parent in terms of finding inner peace and quiet. You can’t control how loud your kids are, how many things you’re asked to do at once, or when the next round of the preschool colds are coming your way. You can’t control much of what your kids do at all (we pretend we can, but it’s all an illusion; how often do you say “I think it’s just a phase” to describe some devious thing they’ve done?).

But you can find some peace with how you react to it all. Whether you pick and choose some of the things I’ve done or come up with your own routine, the key is just doing it. Maybe it’s mindfulness. Or prayer. Or rotating duties. Or using a babysitter more often for nothing more than having a night off.

I love what Jen Sincero says about priorities (and if your mental health isn’t a priority, you need to reconsider your approach). A priority is only a priority if you actually do it, she says. It’s not a priority if something else always comes up and supersedes it. Then what you’re talking about is a wish. A desire. A hope. And your won’t find inner peace and quiet that way.

If you’re serious about changing your life, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse. - Jen Sincero

Priorities get done. It’s a priority for your toddler to have lots of social interaction, so you drag them to soccer every Saturday when you’d rather be sleeping. It’s a priority for your baby to have organic food, so you spend hours custom-making pouches for them rather than just buying them at the store.

Priorities. Get. Done. Make your own mental health a priority for the next 30 days. I think you’ll find the benefits go far beyond just feeling a little happier.

Let me know what you’re trying and how you’re feeling! Give me a shout on Instagram or Twitter.

We helping a friend by babysitting their baby (who was a joy). I found myself all strapped up with a baby carrier. A neglected baby gate found new purpose at the bottom of the steps, like a Toy Story toy pulled down from the attic. Diapers and baby bottles dotted our home like they used to, like we had stopped celebrating Christmas and all of a sudden decided to put wreaths and Santas up.

Did we find it easier taking care of a baby than our 3-year-olds and 5-year-old?

You so quickly forget how different things are when you're dealing with a crawling infant versus a kid who already knows how to use the Tivo remote.

I looked through our minivan in preparation for babysitting, and I couldn’t believe that what once was a car full of baby seats and breast milk bottles and Cheerios is now full of ... well, still, Cheerios, because those will never come out even if you dissassemble the van and burn it to the ground. But with twin 3-year-olds and a kindergartner, life is different. It’s a booster seat. It’s books they can (somewhat) read to themselves. It’s wrappers from snacks they can feed themselves.

What phase is easier: Toddlers or babies?

You often hear from new parents how they are sure the next phase will be easier. "We just have to get through this (Insert hair-pulling/teeth-gnashing/anxiety-inducing baby activity) and things will get calmer. Does that sound familiar?

With a baby around once again, it was like old times. I was seeking hidden dangers like an open door to the basement steps, tiny items that could go in his mouth, and hard edges to a coffee table. I almost forgot how for a few years, we essentially abandoned our living room (hey, it stayed clean!) because it was easier to do that rather than babyproof it.

Babysitting went smoothly. In fact, out of the 8 (EIGHT) toddlers and elementary kids we were watching that day, the baby was just about the easiest. For me, it was like learning how to ride a bike again… you find yourself bobbing as you hold them just like you used to for hours on end.

But what if we had a baby every day? (We can’t, by the way. I took care of that!) I don’t think I’d be saying the same thing.

So where are you on this journey? Are you swaddling and burping and five-point harnessing? Or are you scouting out booster seats and dealing with a three-nager and learning all the nuances of the PBS Kids lineup?

If you're just starting with a baby, I've got good news and I've got bad news. What do you want first? The bad news? What, you aren't already stressed enough? OK, but I warned you:

6 Things That Are Harder About Having a Toddler Versus Having a Baby:

1. Toddlers can run away. While a newborn isn't going anywhere (it's set it and forget it if you've got a bouncer... for a solid 2 minutes until they cry), an infant can certainly cause some mischief by crawling to the top of the steps. But with a few baby gates, you're OK. Toddlers? Toddlers can open doors. They can run down the aisle in the grocery store. They can decide today is a good time to sprint toward an oncoming car in a parking lot. Being a parent of a toddler is an ongoing string of internal expletives while you try to keep them alive.

2. Toddlers can get into much more trouble. With babies, you're mostly focused on the next thing they need - fed, changed, bathed, etc. Toddlers add a new wrinkle, as you become Batman trying to stop vigilantes from overtaking your home. We haven't had the "open a door and discover Sharpie all over the bathroom" kind of kids, but they still get up to some hijinx. They are testing limits. They will find your limit and pee on it.

3. Toddlers mean it's time to potty train. We just got our last kid potty trained. It's a gamechanger when you're not worried about diapers and they can just go to the bathroom on their own. BUT to get there, you've got one hell of a journey. Secret poopy underwear. Rushing to a bathroom in a Target only for them to decide "I don't have to go." Pee on any porous surface they can find. The journey is worth it, but you will have a poop experience that will make you question God.

4. Toddlers can embarrass you in ways a baby can't. One time, in a grocery store bathroom, my 3-year-old Hannah was with me in a single stall. She peed, got up, and then it was my turn to go. I could hear a gentleman come in and start using the urinal outside the stall. It was at this time Hannah decide to point at herself and loudly proclaim "DADDY I HAVE A VAGINA!" with a big grin on her face. "Yes, you do," I quietly whispered. "YOU HAVE A PENIS!" she responded, this time to a loud chuckle from the stranger. Perfect. Just perfect.

5. Toddlers can ramp up the intensity and duration of a meltdown. A baby screaming can make you feel like you are losing your mind. But, for the most part, a bottle/boob/nap/pacifier/shiny object can solve it. A toddler screaming can feel so much more intense because, for one, they are bigger, and for another, they can make a stand over any tiny thing. The irrational anger over, say, you choosing the wrong colored shoes for them even though those are the shoes they picked out will make that tantrum all the more wearying. Jut follow #reasonsmykidiscrying and you'll see. Let's not even talk about how they will decide they must buckle themselves into their car seat without the ability to do it in under 3 hours.

6. Toddlers aren't as portable. They are easier to travel with by sheer volume (no Pack'n'Play!). But that little baby who once would spend hours in your baby carrier is now a 35-pound monster who demands to be carried down the boardwalk for two miles. And you damn well better do it or she's going to lose her shit like a Black Friday shopper who had the last discount flatscreen snatched from their hands. That's why we still use our Radio Flyer wagon when we have to do a lot of walking.

Phew. That sounds like things are going to get worse, but, like everything with little kids, it's not as simple as that. In fact, my wife and I often say that whatever phase of life our kids are in ends up being our favorite one thus far. Sure, I get a little weepy thinking of my son starting kindergarten, but I also love watching him grow and learn and discover who he is.

6 Things That Are Easier About Having a Toddler Versus Having a Baby

1. Toddlers can walk! Now if you've met my daughter Quinn, she will randomly swear to you that her legs don't work and she must be carried. Popping out of your car as your kids walk into a store with you is so much easier than hauling a stroller out or latching them into a carrier, or struggling with three grocery bags in one arm and a baby in another. I'm losing all that forearm strength I built up, but I do not miss constantly having to hold a baby to do anything . (Don't get me started about having twin babies.)

2. Toddlers can feed themselves/pee by themselves/move around the house by themselves. The independence will make you wonder how you ever did anything before. How did you eat dinner back when you had to spoon feed a baby at the same time? I had forgotten until recently about all the extra steps you have to take with a baby around; I don't miss constantly shutting doors, putting up gates, and worrying about random tiny objects becoming choking hazards. Holy shit, the amount of grapes I have cut in half. It's a bunch. #dadjoke

3. Toddlers can entertain themselves. It may be for 5 minutes. Or 2 hours. But you'll discover one day that they'll just play in their room for a while and you can... do whatever. Read a book! Watch a show! Start a fight club! It's never going to be as long as you'd like, but always remember at one point, your baby was within arm's reach 100% of the time.

4. Toddlers can start sharing your interests and gain new interests. We got to show our kids classic like The Little Mermaid and Beauty & the Beast and The Incredibles. "But Andy! The Incredibles isn't a classic. It came out like four years ago." No it came out FOURTEEN years ago. Toy Story came out TWENTY-THREE years ago. I digress. It is really fun to show your son or daughter something you love and see them love it, too.

5. Toddlers start revealing their personality. We all love to pretend that a baby has a personality as soon as they exit a vagina, but, uh, they don't. They also don't look exactly like their mom or dad on the day they are born, either, you guys. Right? But as your kid hits 1 and then 2, you'll see a personality emerge. By 3, you can almost picture exactly how that kid is going to be as an adult. My daughters couldn't be more different, personality-wise, and we love it. It helps you bond with them more, for sure! Example: My daughter Quinn recently started winking. I have no idea why. But now she winks at the end of a sentence, which turns into a fun game of "Is she messing with me?", like "I love you Daddy." *wink* Uh, you do? Or was that sarcastic?

6. Toddlers are probably sleeping better. I don't know if I can emphasize this one enough, especially as a dad of a former colicky baby and of twin babies. I am still far, far, far away from feeling regularly rested; I could fall asleep mid-sentence if you gave me the opportunity. But it is now normal for us to get six hours of sleep. Sure, a mini-pause or three occurs because a kid comes into our room or I'm settling them back down, but compared to being up an hour at a time rocking a baby back to sleep? And then doing that again 45 minutes later, all night? It can be a game changer. I'd say it's one of the biggest differences because you don't realize how tired you've been until you realize how much your eyes used to hurt simply by having them open. You're gonna deal with wet sheets and nightmares and the like, but that's not even close to dealing with night nursing or colic or general overnight fussiness that will make you lose your mind.

What are you most looking forward to about having toddlers? Or, if you're already at that stage, what's better or worse than you expected? Give me a shout on Twitter!

The day I created Instafather, I sat bedside in the hospital, my pregnant-with-twins wife not allowed to leave her bed as doctors ordered her on bedrest for a few weeks, although she made loopholes her mission.

We had no idea what was about to happen to us — if you’ve met someone with twins, they will all inevitably say nothing prepares you for multiples.

Every day after work, I’d drive 20 minutes home to pick up my son from my house, where my in-laws watched him, and take him to see his mom.

Elliott was about a month shy of his second birthday at that point. 

Each night, he’d sit hospital bedside and eat dinner with his mom. I can remember that image clear as day, despite the indescribable fatigue of keeping up a household and a job and a toddler and the stress of awaiting twins (and I only waited for them… my wife had to birth them!). I remember how we set him up right beside her bed so he could still feel like he had some normalcy, and then he’d cuddle up with her in the bed like a clumsy ninja maneuvering around ten billion wires monitoring the twins.

And then I’d drive him home so I could tuck him in — again, trying for normalcy — and hold his hand until the tiny eyelids closed on that little boy who was about to become a big brother.

I’d then drive back to the hospital and sleep on one of those famously comfortable hospital couches.

I’d get up early in the morning to drive back to the house, hopefully before my son woke up so it would appear I never left — a kid’s truth is what they see — and get him ready for daycare, then drive him there, then go to work, and the cycle would start anew.

Those were taxing days. Character building days. Starbucks-fueled days. 

For about five years, I’ve been picking up and dropping off my son. I remember dropping him off at daycare for the first time. If you haven’t yet taken that step, trust me when I say it is harder on you than it is on your baby. Your baby will cry for five minutes and then be fine. Say a quick goodbye and head out, because the longer you linger, the worse it gets. 

Soon enough, I wasn’t bringing in a car seat to pick him up anymore. And then he tiptoed down the steps on his own. And then he held some of his own things.
His sisters came along, and all of a sudden I carried two car seats in one arm and him in the other; I do not recommend this to anyone, but dads are nothing if not stubborn about proving how many things we can carry at once. Fill my van with groceries and in one trip I will carry in all the groceries as well as the van.

All of a sudden, he wasn’t the only focus at pickup and drop-off. All of a sudden, he became the older kid in the situation, the veteran, the been-there, done-that, Elliott-can-you-walk-a-little-faster-Daddy-has-to-grab-your-sister-oh-God-why-is-she-near-the-steps?!

Then his sisters went through that same progression, and before you know it, all of them are helping to buckle their own seat belts, hold their own lunch, and run down the halls (unless their legs don’t work. It’s amazing how often my kids’ legs “don’t work.”) Elliott moved to a booster seat this summer, and now he’s buckling himself in.

And then he wrapped up daycare for the summer.

The next parenting phase

And now, this week, my boy is starting kindergarten. The little guy who peeked into the clear plastic bassinets for a glimpse of his premature sisters. The baby boy who would get furious on long car rides and need me to sit in the backseat with him so he could wrap his tiny hand around my index finger to calm down. The growing-like-weeds child who some days thinks pants are merely a suggestion and underwear is overrated.

The blonde-haired, blue-eyed, empathetic-and-curious-and-funny boy, is in school now.

Kindergarten is not unlike daycare in that it’s going to be much harder on his mom and me than it will be for him. He’ll adjust quickly. He’ll have exciting things to tell us about what happened at school. He’ll get used to the full-day schedule and the heavy focus on learning how to read and add. 

And we’ll loosen our emotional grip on his childhood. Seemingly just a few hours ago, that childhood started with late-night rocking sessions and with tear-filled visits to the lactation consultant as we tried to get his weight up as a newborn. It was Michelin Man leg rolls and tiny giggles and the high-pitched, joyous way he would say new words like “apple” and “baby” like he was as excited as you were that he caught on to a new sound.

The kindergarten drop-off and pick-up schedule doesn’t align with my work schedule anymore. My wife will be able to take him to and from, which will be nice for her to have solo time with him; I’ll keep dropping our now three-year-old twin girls off at daycare.

But that means I will no longer get to hold his hand down the hallway until he bursts into his classroom. Or play “The 12 Pains of Christmas” and the “Chipmunk Christmas Song” for him well past December to hear him laugh at the lyrics at 7:15 in the morning. Or take the daycare drop-off photos I’ve periodically been taking for five years, first by happenstance and then on purpose as a way to chart the growth of the beautiful kids that my wife and I somehow created.

This is the thing about being the new mom or dad of a baby.

Eventually, a baby isn’t a baby anymore.

You’re not so new. They aren’t either.

And the next phase begins, one brand-new Lego Batman lunchbox at a time.

There’s a saying about parenting:

“You don’t know when the last time is until it’s already happened.”

I rocked him to sleep… until he didn’t need me to anymore.

I would lay beside his crib at midnight holding his hand because he couldn’t fall asleep… until he didn’t need me to anymore.

I took him to daycare… until he didn’t need me to anymore.

The next needs will gradually be revealed.

But I’d like to hold onto the old needs a little bit longer.

So you've decided to go for a beach vacation with your baby.

First of all, that is super adorable you are still calling it a vacation.

For your baby, it will be a wonderful vacation! He'll play in the sand, splash in the water, eat watermelon on the deck, and make memories that will last a lifetime and/or the next 2 months because it's a baby and they don't remember shit.

For you, dear new parent, this is not going to be a vacation. 

I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Sugarcoating is for those Instagrammers that only show photos of their babies giggling while they are drinking a quinoa and spinach smoothie in an all-white kitchen in full make-up.

Will you have absolutely heartwarming moments? Photos that you want to immediately frame? A fond memory of playing together on the beach? Sure! It's the beach, not prison.

But when you become a new parent, one thing that might be hardest to embrace is that for at least the short term, trips like this are going to be more about making sure your baby or toddler is having a good, safe, fun time and much, much (much!) less about whether you are relaxing and soaking in the sun.

I've been taking three kids to the beach for years now, and we are always learning what works and what doesn't. One thing that works: My wife is a fantastic planner and thinks of everything we could need, and also is the most patient and calm person I know. That's the kind of person you want with you for a beach trip with toddlers, trust me.

Are you heading to the beach this summer? We're about to go on a weeklong trip to Ocean City, New Jersey, a place that is the epitome of family beach vacations (the slogan is "America's Greatest Family Resort." I would also accept "America's Easiest Access to As Many French Fries As You Can Handle." What I am saying is I eat french fries nonstop on the boardwalk.). 

A weeklong beach trip means packing up the van — it is insane how much more stuff comes with you when you are bringing kids. At least they aren't babies anymore. Babies mean a stroller. Diaper bag. Highchair. Pack 'n' Play. 152 outfits. And on and on. It's crazy how much stuff you end up putting in your car. And then you use half of it.

A weeklong beach trip means you have to gird your loins for potential meltdowns without all of your usual tricks available to calm them down.

A weeklong beach trip means your house literally can't get messy for a week! You did it!

Whether you're planning to go for a week or a weekend, it can be hard at first to know what you should do. Is it worth packing everything you have? (No. You won't use it.) Should you plan for a full day at the beach? (Has your baby ever lasted that long doing any other out-of-the-house activity?) Read on to see what's worked well for me, and I'd love to hear your own tips in the comments.

Here's what I've learned about what works and what doesn't when you're bringing infants and toddlers to the beach:

• Works: Two different types of sunscreen. We use a spray for bodies and a sensitive skin sunscreen lotion for faces. Walmart's Equate sunscreen spray is top-rated (I know, I doubted it, too, but it works well). When you've got wiggly infants, using lotion is like asking you to fill up the gas tank of an Indy car while it's flying past you. And spraying the face is just asking for sunscreen to get in their eyes, which, if you ask my kids, is worth the death penalty. Don't forget that many baby/kid swimsuits have UV protection, so in this case long sleeves make your life easier. Do not worry too much about swim diapers if there is not much of a chance they will actually get in the water. Or bring one with you - you can always toss one on there.

• Doesn't work: Bringing tons of beach toys. Your average 1- or 2-year-old will not need 10 beach toys. You may have this vision in your head of building a giant sandcastle, complete with a moat. Your infant will be eating sand. Literally just putting that shit in their mouths. Temper your expectations. You can easily get by with a plastic shovel and a bucket. Max.

• Works: Brevity. Our first time on the beach with each of our babies lasted mere minutes. That was a lot of work for a few minutes on the beach, yeah, but this was about baby steps and I mean exactly that. We wanted them to enjoy it and leave on a high note. You get your cute photo for Instagram and move on. The next time, maybe 30 minutes. The next time, maybe an hour. If your baby freaking loves it, go nuts, but if they start getting cranky, remember that a beach is a huge environmental overload for them, and while you may know it's supposed to be fun, they are thinking "WHY IS THE GROUND MOVING BENEATH ME AND OH GOD IS THAT WATER MOVING TOWARD ME? ARE YOU SEEING THIS MOM? DAD?" Don't force a 5-hour beach session because you've committed to it in advance if after an hour your 1-year-old is done. We're hoping this year, with our 3-year-old twins and 5-year-old son, to do a few hours in a row, and that's considering they love the beach and splashing in the water. Make sure you factor in normal nap times, too. Will your wife nurse on the beach? Do you need to bring a bottle (which then means a cooler)?

• Doesn't work: Assuming you can do your normal beach thing. I have to admit, this was frustrating for some time. Especially in the early going, when your baby can't do much on their own, you will be in 24/7 patrol mode. If you're lucky, you'll get them to fall asleep for a quick nap on your chest (under an umbrella, I hope!) so you can read a magazine and sip on a tasty beverage. Most likely you'll be helping them process all of the new sensations around them — sand will get in places that don't even make physical sense. You'll get your time to sunbathe or toss around a football, I promise. That might mean taking shifts on who is watching the baby if that's possible. Or you just soak up the experience for what it is — a cool new thing for your baby and a great check off the parenting list for you.

• Works: Wagons. If your baby can fit in a carrier, you'll have your hands free to lug the chairs, umbrella, tent (just make sure bringing the tent is truly worth it. We once spent 30 minutes setting one up and had to leave 15 minutes later!), and snacks. A Radio Flyer wagon can do the trick if you want to make it easier to pull everything and don't have a beach cart. In fact, those wagons are fantastic for the boardwalk, too! A stroller may not do well in the sand and is likely going to be pretty heavy. The wagon can easily be rinsed off and won't be hot to the touch if it sits in the sun. Bonus points if you get the UV-protection canopy! It folds flat. My kids need all the sun protection they can get, as their parents are pale folk who burst in flames like a vampire at a glimpse of sunlight.

• Doesn't work: Being inflexible. Just getting to the beach can be an odyssey (wait, is that why they call our van that?). Traffic, crying, and heat can make you want to be done with vacation before it starts. I remember one trip where the whole first day I was in a bad mood over the rough ride in, and my wife had to basically say "Hey take an hour, calm down, and act like a grown-up" (which I did because she is very wise). You have to remind yourself over and over that even if you've planned everything out, things are going to change beyond your control. It'll rain and you're stuck inside. The beach is way more packed than usual and you can't get the spot you want. Your baby has a blowout after you got them in their new swimsuit. Your toddler gets a bad ear infection and needs to be rushed to the ER (this happened to us last time... poor Quinn.) Figure out what the point of your beach trip truly is. Is it to relax? Then don't line up a bunch of plans so that whatever happens is no problem. Is it to capture some memories? Then be ready to go with a backup plan if your big beach photo session is interrupted because your baby is having a tough day. Is it to enjoy the sun and sand? Then figure out the quickest way for you to get everything packed and ready to walk onto the sand so you spend more time outside and less time chasing down a can of sunscreen.

• Works: Appreciating each of your kid's beach excursions for what it is at that stage in life. I look back at my oldest's first beach trips and it is insane to me how time flew by. I distinctly remember jogging down the boardwalk with him in a stroller. And tossing him in the air when he was small enough to do such a thing, the sun behind his smiling face and the waves crashing around us. Now he's at the point that he wants to run around on his own, which means I don't have to monitor him as much but also I don't get to hold his hand as much, either. Enjoy the stage for what it is, because the cons will fade away but you'll miss the pros.

I hope you've been having a wonderful summer so far. If you see a dad on the beach chasing three kids around and telling them sand is not for throwing, that's me. Say hello.

It's Father's Day Weekend!

While my wife keeps telling me I am not allowed to stretch it into an entire weekend, it's my blog so I say yes. And as part of that, I'm celebrating with a special post about sitcom dads. I'm a big believer that, outside of your own family, pop culture can have the biggest impact on how you approach parenting. Think about it - how many situations have new parents faced that they would have never seen before outside of a television show? And sure, there are drama series dads, but let's hope you aren't taking parenting advice from Walter White. (Coach Taylor or Jack Pearson? That would be fine.)

Let me introduce you to my blog partner for today. John Saeger is a blogger and freelance writer. He is a suburban Philadelphia cat dad who lives in Narberth, PA with his wife Janet. He has written the Philadelphia pop-culture blog www.flatcircleblog.com since April 2017. You can follow the Flat Circle on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

John has a great perspective on pop culture, and I thought it would be interesting to hear about what a guy who doesn't have kids thinks of sitcom dads versus how I might view them. It turns out that funny is funny is funny. While this is by no means comprehensive or ranked, it is a highlight of who has made a lasting impression on us. See who we love below, and then leave a comment about what sitcom dad has always been your favorite!

Honorable mentions to Philip Banks, Carl Winslow, and Frank Lambert. And a million others. We didn't even try to touch cartoon dads.

Phil Dunphy - Modern Family

Andy: Here’s what I love about Phil Dunphy. He just loves his family. A lot. His character’s entire POV is that he would do anything for them, but that he’s also a klutz and scatterbrained, so things don’t always work out. I can completely empathize! It’s refreshing to see a dad like him on TV that is cherished for wanting to be a more involved dad, and that, while he rides a Segway and owns a magic shop, he isn’t your traditional goofy dad like that can’t take care of his own kids. He’s big on providing for them, on finding new ways to hang out with them, and on soaking up every moment of childhood. Honestly, it’s unattainable! But cool to see, and hilarious to watch.

John: It’s interesting that the character of Phil Dunphy is in the same series as Ed O’Neill, who probably portrayed the worst TV Dad of all-time in Married With Children. Within a generation, O’Neill went from a series that showed a trainwreck, salt of the earth family to a show that depicts an anti-nuclear family. A raunchy series like Married With Children probably would not be on network television today. That series ran from 1987 to 1997. Modern Family would not have seen the light of day on a big four network in 1997, which was also the same year that Ellen Degeneres came out on television.

Tim Taylor - Home Improvement

John: Tim Taylor was always the dad who tried too hard. There was always too much power, but all of his efforts came from a place of love. He wanted to provide the best, biggest thing for his family (often to his own detriment).

A consistent formula of Home Improvement was that Tim Taylor would run into a situation from an unthinking, too-masculine perspective. Eventually, his misdeed would lead to a conversation with his neighbor, Wilson. Tim would think about it, grunt, and try to correct his mistake through compromise. Sometimes the plot would be reversed and Jill Taylor (played by Patricia Richardson) would find herself in a similar situation.

While those stories are exaggerated, I find this to be a very real portrayal of family growth. It is so easy to be wrapped up in your own perspective without taking someone else’s into consideration. One storyline that I find to be interesting is Tim’s struggles with Jill’s transition into becoming a psychologist. Even though he does not react well, a change in a partner’s status can be a very real thing that threatens relationships. Neither Tim nor Jill is perfect or idealized and I find that to be refreshing.  

Andy: I’m really glad you picked Tim Taylor, as I grew up watching this show and it was one sitcom my whole family enjoyed. I agree with what you’re saying here: Tim often came in stubborn and even sexist when he was faced with a situation, and he’d need an outside reminder. Jill trying to be a mom and hold down a career is a perfect example, and in hindsight, what a great storyline to put out there. They didn’t try to make it seem like Jill was in the wrong. Or that Tim would just automatically go for it. That's not to mention when Randy had that cancer scare and Tim had to let his guard down so that his son could feel OK being scared. Or a classic clip like the one above when he's trying to pass on his knowledge to his son, which was his way of showing affection. Now, in recent years, Tim Allen’s brand of comedy has veered much harder into the conservative/Republican territory. Maybe that was him all along. But when it came this show, all were welcome to grunt along.

Jesse Katsopolis - Full House

Andy: You’d think I’d want to talk about Danny Tanner. But I have a tougher time to relating to him - he was a widow with three daughters (and a childhood friend who, um, lived with him into his 40s?). Jesse? I get him. He has twins, like me. He has a beautiful, talented wife, like me. And he was trying to balance being a dad, making money, and finding time for music. In my case, I find time for doing comedy. Jesse represented a different kind of dad. A father who may not love the idea of, say, changing diapers, but still jumps right in. A guy who, as an uncle, held a birthday party in a mechanic’s garage for his niece. A guy who spent one entire episode trying to get his infant twins to say “Today is Mother’s Day” because he wanted Becky’s first Mother’s Day to be special. Sure, he messed up a lot, and sometimes had tunnel vision without thinking of consequences. But he did have a great head of hair!

John: It’s funny that you picked Jesse Katspolis. I probably haven’t watched Full House in 20-25 years and I always think of him as an uncle instead of a father. I think some of my perceptions are from John Stamos coming off as someone who relishes the bachelor lifestyle. I have a weird lasting image of Full House. There was an episode where the Tanner family was invited to be on stage with the Beach Boys at the Rose Bowl. Even at the time, I remember thinking that if I was at the concert I would be thinking “Why is this family on stage with the Beach Boys?” For some reason, that episode has stuck with me as being one of the oddest things that I have seen on television.

Louis Huang - Fresh Off The Boat

John: I love how Louis Huang tries to bond with his kids. He may be the most caring father on television right now. He wants the world for his children. Louis yearns to be the cool dad who is best friends with his children as they grow up.

Louis wields unwavering optimism, which is a stark contrast to his wife. From a television perspective, his character’s dynamic with Jessica Huand is interesting.

Both Louis Huang and Murray Goldberg (from fellow ABC comedy The Goldbergs) are reversals of the typical sitcom dad. In both instances, The Goldbergs and Fresh Off The Boat cater to the mother as being the more outlandish character. Even though Jessica’s storylines can be tiring, the approach remains refreshing. The dynamic of the mother being the primary originator of comedy is an unusual approach that we may see more of over time as sitcoms become more balanced.

Andy: I haven’t had the chance to watch this one, but I do appreciate that ABC is making a commitment to show different points of view and different family structures. Won’t it be interesting in 10-15 years when teens who are watching these shows with their parents now eventually become parents themselves? Because beyond your own parents, pop culture is what you lean on for references. The more variety, the better.

Andre Johnson - Black-ish

Andy: I had never seen a dad like Andre Johnson before, which I guess is the point — there aren’t a lot of black dads on sitcoms throughout television history. You’ve got your Cosbys, your Banks, your Winslows, sure, but the fact that you can probably name them all speaks to how little representation there is. I only recently got into Black-ish, and I’m so glad I did. It’s hilarious! Andre is constantly trying to remind his kids of their culture, which is not something you see on sitcoms too often — a POV about the importance of showing your kids where they came from, with frank conversations about race woven into slapstick comedy and pop culture throwaway lines.

Basically, every episode has some angle on what it means to be a dad in the modern world! And in his case, I love that they are realistic. He’s involved and loves his family, but his flaw is that he often tries to swoop in and solve everything (sounds like most guys, right?) without thinking things through. They don’t have his wife nag him like you often see in a sitcom. They are equal partners in parenting, just with very different methods.

John: ABC has a block of family sitcoms (Fresh Off The Boat, The Goldbergs, Modern Family, and Black-ish) that depict a diverse group of families. Black-ish is a unique show for the reasons you mentioned. Of those series, Black-ish brings political and social discussions into its scripts most often. Dre is definitely an overbearing Dad who frequently has to learn to take a step back every now and then. The show does a very good job of balancing those moments between himself and the mother, which is very real. Instead of the same parent constantly reining in the other, both have their moments where they have to do a little mutual evaluation.

Andy Griffith - The Andy Griffith Show

John: The Andy Griffith Show is dated when you compare it with television in 2018.  While The Dick Van Dyke Show challenged the status quo on multiple levels, Mayberry, North Carolina is milquetoast and ignored many cultural shifts of the time. The Andy Griffith Show’s premise was based on nostalgia and depicts the whitewashed television I tend to associate more with an earlier period, yet the series ran until 1968.

Andy Taylor, however, is a unique character relative to his contemporaries. He was a single father trying to raise a young boy. While Taylor was the smartest guy in town, his status as a single dad allowed him to avoid the “man of the house” parenting narrative that so often beleaguered family sitcoms of the time.

One recurring theme of The Andy Griffith Show was an emphasis on knowing right from wrong. Taylor consistently wielded a strong moral compass as a police officer and father. He also avoided the slapstick Dad routines that frequent family sitcoms. That fell to his deputy, played by Don Knotts.

Andy: I had no idea that series ran til 1968! I think Andy Griffith is the quintessential sitcom dad when it comes to “dads who teach moral lessons.” That’s who you think of. I wonder how a show like that would do today. Compared to Andre Johnson from “Black-ish” - aside from the fact that “Black-ish” would NEVER have been made 60 years ago - both are focused on dads who are big on teaching moral lessons. But the style is dramatically different.

Thanks for reading our list! Leave a comment below about what we missed, and please make sure to share this post! Special thanks to John for putting this together with me - give him a follow on Twitter. Also, if you haven't yet, make sure you take a look at the sneak preview for my upcoming book, The New Mom's Guide to New Dads.

What should a new dad know about parenting? How do moms get more involved? Why did you put highlights in your hair in college? (Everyone was doing it, OK!?!)

I’ve got answers to your burning questions about fatherhood and all things #dadlife in advance of Father's Day! I was thrilled to do an Ask Me Anything session over at amafeed.com all about parenting. So many questions came in after my session was done I thought I'd answer them here!

What is the best way to educate men who believe that fatherhood is being a breadwinner and bringing money into the family with no other obligations?

I’ve got two parallel thoughts on this one, depending on what the situation is.

The first is that you marry who you marry. If your husband has always been super traditional, has never shown interest in anything that doesn’t directly relate to him, and has a dad who never played with him as a child and spent all day at work, yeah, you might be in for it. But you knew that, right? Just the same, if you have always made your career a priority, have always wanted a family but never been keen on taking care of kids, and came from a family full of female breadwinners, it would be a lot to ask you to change everything you know.

There are many wonderful families who keep that traditional model in place - dad works, mom takes care of the house. If you are expecting a 50/50 split, my hope is that you have made that clear from the start so that the two of you didn’t get married assuming the other person would drastically change.

But what if none of that is happening? What if there’s nothing that should be holding him back? Let’s say it makes the most sense for him to keep his job and you work less to take care of your kid. But he also now just assumes that since he has a job, he can wipe his hands of any other responsibility. That, of course, is not how it works. There is no world in which a job (unless you’re like an FBI agent or a trench digger or something) is going to be that much more exhausting, especially mentally, than taking care of a newborn baby. That’s what you need to emphasize. You are not saying that what he does at work doesn't count. It matters! And you aren’t asking for him to entirely run the household, too. But when he gets home, you need to be able to tap out for a bit. And on weekends, you both need to take breaks. Otherwise, you are going nonstop - babies and toddlers do not believe in paid leave.

Money is a huge part of the equation, but only part. If he says that because he is making money, he doesn’t have to do anything else, ask him if money changes diapers. Or does the dishes. Or puts kids to bed. No? It doesn’t? Then him making money can’t be the only thing he contributes. If you are not earning any money, I know that can be more difficult than if you are still holding down a part-time job. But realistically, if he wants the best of you as a mom, he has to give you a chance to recover.

What should parents do when they disagree on a decision regarding their child? How should they resolve that situation?

Rock paper scissors.

If that fails, figure out what the disagreement is truly about. Is it how you are potty training or is it more about a fundamental difference in how you want your child to turn out? It’s one thing to argue about the merits of going no diaper for a weekend. It’s another if one of you insists on potty training this weekend, and the other wants to wait until the kid naturally picks up what to do. One parent wants to push their kid to achieve on a timeline, and the other believes in letting kids progress on their own terms. Can you see how that can spill over to how you want them to perform in school? Either method could work, but it’s helpful to know what you are really arguing about. If it’s not a big deal, then one of you will need to drop it because it’s not worth the argument. Pick your battles.

Why do you think men and women have such different approaches towards parenting?

You could take the end of that question and make it about a lot of things: “toward relationships… toward money… toward sports … toward The Bachelor.”

We do things differently. And thank God, right? I am really thankful my wife is around to give a different viewpoint and different approaches. For single parents, that’s a lot of pressure! You have to be the expert on everything and see all the different angles.

Rather than worry about the differences, embrace them. If the mom is more nurturing and the dad is more

How different was it having twins compared to having one kid at a time?

Jim Gaffigan has a great joke about this. “You know what it's like having five kids? Imagine you're drowning. And someone hands you a baby." That’s how it can feel sometimes when you go from one kid to three.

We have gone to Target and had people stop in their tracks and stare at us, holding hands the entire way across the aisle, and look with the same mix of reverance and confusion you would offer if you saw a unicorn riding a bear.

Coincidentally, a unicorn riding a bear is not that far off from what it's like taking more than one toddler to Target. Have we abandoned our cart and left the store. YOU BET.

With twins, the diaper changes seemed endless in the early years. My wife, a superhero, nursed them both for months on end; it was almost a surprise to see her with a real shirt on. And at night, as soon as one baby goes down, the other way wakes up. When someone says they know what it's like to have twins because they had "Irish twins" - two kids born a year apart - I want to laugh in their face and then hand them my kids and leave.

So yeah, it's different! One kid means you can put all your focus into them. That doesn't always mean it's better. With more than one, you stop worrying about the little things. You don't have time for it. You get much more economical with your time.

 I also get to see my son take care of his “babies.” And I get to soak in the girls playing with each other. And of course, there are the matching outfits.

It’s not apples to apples. It’s apples to a circus.

What is the key to successful co-parenting?

It depends what you mean. Co-parenting is often the term people use when they are talking about a divorced couple who has a child together and so they need to figure out how to split up parenting duties/sharing time with their kid. I don’t have that background, but for those I know that are dealing with that, communication seems to be paramount. That and keeping the needs of your kid above anything else. I'd love to hear what has worked for you, if that's your situation.

But if you mean splitting parenting duties up 50/50, like how my wife and I approach it, it’s all about expectations. She doesn’t hope I get involved. She expects it. Setting a low bar leads to low output. But in the end, it’s still on the dad to rise to the occasion. It can be very helpful for a mom to say “Here’s what I need/here’s what would be helpful.” But dads can and should just jump in and figure it out on the fly. It’s not like there is a manual. Just start doing things. Nobody would allow moms to just sit around and say "Nobody asked me to do anything! Why's that my job? Now go get me a beer!"

Do parenting books actually help when they're so different with so many techniques? How can parents decide which is the right parenting style for them?

Let me use an answer similar to what I said for a similar question in the earlier AMA feed.

Any parenting book is, at its core, a review of what has worked for that particular family, and then they show you how you can get similar results. Just like a financial advice or a relationship book, not every technique will work with every person. My wife and I like to use the envelope method to help save money for certain big financial goals. At least I assume that's what we do. I hand her money and she says she is "putting it in the envelope" but the more I think about it, I'm wondering if these envelopes are real. Hmmm. 

Some people research each of the popular parenting styles and pick one, almost like you're going to Subway and are choosing a sub. That can work - you weigh pros and cons. But the thing you can't ignore is that parenting is a natural extension of who you already are. Parenting styles can be less about finding an approach and more about being acutely and painfully aware of what you are good at and, more importantly, not good at. How does what you want to do impact your kid? How does your approach balance out what your partner is good at and wants to do?

My wife is super patient and empathetic. I'm very optimistic and go-with-the-flow. Depending on the situation, one of us might be a best fit. My wife really dislikes being up late at night, and I don't mind it, so getting up with the baby made more sense for me while she made sure to get up early in the morning so I could sleep. She's better at calming our kids down. You don't have to be everything to everyone.

It's just as important to know what you don't want to do. We didn't want to "cry it out." We didn't want to spank. We didn't want to be quick to punish. We didn't want to put our kid in a bouncer all day. So, while those are many of the qualities of "attachment parenting," really, it's just a set of criteria that happened to reflect what came natural to us. We don't wake up each day saying "Time to start attachment parenting! Come here, children. The attachment has commenced."

You see what works or doesn't work, and then you adapt. Please adapt. Don't be rigid or you will drive yourself crazy. We were too loose about nap time with our son (letting him lead us on when he wanted to sleep). That resulted in many long, long afternoons. We had to be stricter with our twins, and that worked.

Has your wife ever asked you to become more involved in parenting? Did you think you were doing enough before she asked?

I don’t remember my wife ever saying “You need to pick it up, slacker.” She did such a smart thing early on by constantly bringing me in on decision-making and information gathering with our firstborn that it was natural for me to be fully involved, even if I'd be the first to admit she is the one who keeps everything working.

Still, I never feel like I am doing enough. That’s not false modesty. That’s coming from a guy who watched his wife push three babies out of her body and then feed them for a year using that same body. There isn’t a good way to even that out.

Want to read more? Check out my full Ask Me Anything feed on involved parenting and fatherhood. And if you have a question, hit me up!

Dear Elliott:

I am not one to understand quantum mechanics. I barely can follow the time jumps in Outlander, or Back to the Future, for that matter.

So please allow me to confused as to how you, a newborn baby just born yesterday, are now five years old and going to kindergarten readiness programs.

That's not how time works.

But here we are. You're now five. You are no longer a toddler. Actually, based on the fact that you're in the 87th percentile for height, you're more like a 3rd grader, but whatever. Dude, I cannot believe how big you are. I mean it. Some days you come down the hall at 5:30 a.m. and not at 7 a.m. like dad asked super nicely but we'll just forget about that for a second, and I can't believe how much space you take up when you sprawl across the bed.

And by sprawl I mean immediately cling on your mom's body like you are trying to get back inside the womb for a permanent residency.

Elliott, I love you so much that it scares me sometimes. Your mom and I get scared, in fact, just watching the news and seeing other boys and girls get shot at because we know there's nothing we can do to protect you. That might seem like a heavy thing to say to a five-year-old, but then again, in the fall you'll be going to school and now school is a dangerous place to send a kid. I don't know, man. I don't have any answers. 

But you still have an entire summer ahead to just be a kid. You play so hard that you start sweating about 2 seconds into any activity. You have so much fun sometimes that you just start shouting at nothing because you're excited. You get so pumped to play with toys that you could have single-handedly saved Toys'R'Us from bankruptcy through sheer force of will. Also, Toys'R'Us is going out of business. Sorry.

Honest Talk With You for Your Fifth Birthday

1. I always know when you have put your finger in your nose and then put it in your mouth. You are not slick. Please go use germ stuff. Thanks. No, really use it. I can tell when you don't use it. Don't ask how. Dads are smart.
2. Two years ago, I looked back at what I wrote a year before that: 'I wrote this last year: "When you turned one, I was so proud of you because I thought you were the best one-year-old and I couldn't imagine how you'd get better. What an idiot I was for not believing you'd be even more amazing the following year." What an even bigger idiot I was for not realizing you'd be even more hilarious, curious, loving and cool in your second year.' Last year, I wrote, "Well, I'm a grand idiot for not realizing the best was yet to come. Your third year was even more full of laughter and imagination and creativity and empathy." Let's just assume each year dad is a big idiot. You are getting more and more awesome.
3. You spent seemingly every day since you turned four thinking and planning your fifth birthday party. Your mom and I are so happy that, against all odds, the weather held out and you had an incredible day. A lot of people love you very much and showed up. You won't understand this now, but you need to value each and every person who takes time in their day to say "You are important to me." 
4. Speaking of which, although you kiss your mom's butt too much, and I mean that literally, I do adore how much you love your mom. You love her so much! One day that'll transform and you won't be as affectionate, so we are soaking that in now. I still love every single time you hold my hand. Even if your hand got a lot bigger.
5. I do not know how you got so good at Legos. You might be a genius.
6. I do not know how you can not flush a toilet and then look at me and tell me that it was your sister's fault when she wasn't in the room. You might not be a genius.
7. Your twin sisters are now three years old. You still call them your babies. I hope you do the same when you are all grown ups. Never stop taking care of them, dude.
8. Your mom and dad are professional comedians, but we can't ever make anyone laugh as much as you make yourself laugh when you say the word "toot" as a non-sequitor. One day, we hope to reach your level. And toot is a funny word, to be honest.
9. Dad has come a long way since the days when I had a tough time controlling my emotions and stress on your worst days. Even then, I still have moments of snapping. You are quick to forgive. And even if dad seems mad for a minute, I love you completely. That never, ever changes. Sometimes, dad needs to pull a Daniel Tiger and count to four.
10. I have never seen any soccer player talk to his coach as much as you talk to yours during practice. You are very big on providing updates on anything you are doing.
11. Things you can do since your fourth birthday: Get your own water. Use the toaster. Use the remote. Write your name easily. Things you cannot do: Wipe your butt. Have the ability to hear sound after the phrase "Elliott can you...". Stay still. I'd say overall, you're doing great.
12. You say very funny things: Me: Elliott, what do you want for your birthday?
    You: Peace and quiet.
13. Five, Elliott. Five more bites of veggies.
14. I'm sorry for all the times I was too tired to play or look at the thing you built. I love you for asking. 
15. You don't realize this yet, but mommy and daddy do a lot of different jobs in part to make sure you have everything you could possibly need to thrive and be happy. But more importantly, we like doing the jobs we have. It's possible to do both. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
16. I love how we play the game of you pretending you don't like to watch Sesame Street and yet completely stopping what you are doing to watch the entire episode. 
17. I can't fathom how you are going to kindergarten this fall. You are more than ready for it. But every parent of older kids says this exact thing: "Once they hit kindergarten, it goes by in the blink of an eye." All of them say it! All of them! I don't want to blink and miss it. But I also love seeing how you grow. 
18. What started as an occasional sleepover in your sisters' room has become a nightly trend - your old crib mattress on the floor at the foot of their beds so you can sleep with them. They love it, and I think you do, too. One day, that'll end, but when you all hit your 30s, remember that stuff. That's a bond that doesn't break.
19. We have come a long way since those colicky nights and endless nursing sessions and hours of driving you around so you'd fall asleep. You don't have a rocking chair in your room anymore. You get dressed on your own. But you're still my baby boy. Forever.

Dear Hannah and Quinn:

It is not unnoticed by me that I'm writing you a birthday letter a week past your birthday. As any toddler parent knows, the days of being on time for anything are gone. Being on time is for people who haven't spent 17 minutes searching for one shoe only to discover it's been in the car seat the whole time.

So much has happened with the two of you since you turned two. 

Hannah, you're potty trained now! Kinda! Mostly! In fact, the day we tried you just figured it out and peed on the potty no less than a dozen times in four hours, as you quickly figured out the M&M bribing system.

Quinn, you have turned us into those parents who keep telling anyone who will listen, "Our daughter is so smart!" But seriously, you have long been identifying letters like a Sesame Street character vying for the Letter of the Day solo. We cannot claim credit for this. Let's just go ahead and credit Super Why.

I don't know if it was easier or harder on me when you turned 3 compared to last year. Three is so firmly entrenched in toddlerdom. Three means daddy has to pay for you at Infinito's Pizza. Three means absolutely no one is mistaking you for babies, and in fact, the only person who calls you babies right now is your brother and I hope he calls you "my babies" even when you're 32. 

When you turn 2, though, you can wear 24-month clothing and mommy and daddy can still pretend you're a baby. No longer. Babies do not pee on the potty. Or know how to operate an iPhone and take photos of your nostrils. Or have elaborate backseat discussions about, well, mommy and daddy can never quite figure it out but you two know exactly what's up.

I wrote this last year: "I started writing Instafather waiting for you both to come out. Ever since then, you give me reminder after reminder of all the challenges dads face ... and why it's all worth it."

This still is very true! The years are passing quickly, but I could still give you every visual detail of the hospital rooms mommy stayed in waiting for weeks on end for you to arrive. You do not need additional reasons to say nice things to mommy, but don't ever forget that she waited patiently in one bed for you with no end in sight because that's what you needed to be healthy. And, as you've noticed, mommy is a very active person, so this was like asking an improv actor to stay on topic. Mommy has done more for you than you'll ever know.

Sometimes, the days are full of hair-pulling, crying, and whining, and that's just dad. I am quick to say sorry if I've let my frustration get the best of me, but I also know soon enough a sorry won't cut it and some words and actions won't be quickly forgotten. I promise to keep doing my best. If you could also promise to not ask for 378 cups of water at bedtime, that would be cool, too. People ask daddy all the time what it's like to have twins and I try to be very honest and say it's tough. It is SUPER tough, and that's considering you both are dreamboats. (Now, sure, I have said under my breath that one of you is being a real a-hole tonight, but we both know you were.) I also make sure to say to those people that I wouldn't have it any other way. Twin three-year-olds sounds like a sitcom plot.. actually, I think that was a Full House plot... but that also means you make us laugh a lot, too.

Sometimes, the days are so good that I can't believe you get to be my kids. Have you even LOOKED at yourselves? The two of you and your brother are all so adorable, but what I love most is how often you are so kind. Quinn, I've never heard a toddler say "Thank you" as much as you do, partly because you say "Thank you" for any nominal gesture. Your voice is so cute and girly and like it came right out of Central Casting that I hope I never forget the way it lights up my face. Hannah, you are so hell-bent on helping sometimes that you get mad when we don't let you, say, carry in all the groceries despite the fact you weigh under 30 pounds. 

Both of you are so unique that you are quickly becoming twins in shared birth date only. It's like I get the best of both worlds for daughters. 

Now, let's be clear: Right now you are in full-on Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy mode. Mommy and I are sure that, given the option, you would crawl back inside her. That can be tough for daddy, not so much because I feel "less than," but because not only does it mean mommy is rendered useless as she pries you off like a giggling blonde wetsuit, it means I can end up just being more of a hindrance than anything else. It won't always be like this, and thankfully you still are both quick to hold my hands and cuddle up on the sofa and hug me tight every day. But, and this may surprise you, mommy does not have to be the one to put your socks on. 

Quinn, there are some days I still end up telling somebody about your near-death experience, and it's both so distant to me now and yet I can visualize every single detail. The thought of you turning three, then, makes me so happy. You are a fighter who happens to wear ballerina dresses 42 hours a day. Seriously, it's almost like you were born to be three. Every person should have a Quinn.

Hannah, I am already so confident you are going to be an amazing, charismatic, everyone-pays-attention-to-you adult. I'm hoping by that point you don't make everyone pay attention to you by yelling "I do it myself!!!!!" to no one in particular and stomping out of the room, but to be fair, I've worked with people who basically do the same thing. You already are such a daring, joyful, empathetic kid. Good God, I love you.

It's telling that with every month I think of you less and less as two twin girls who were in the NICU and just my two daughters who are growing up. Don't think for a second, though, that mommy or daddy will ever forget how vulnerable and tiny you were in the NICU, or how your entire hand fit on the tip of my finger. Daddies don't forget those things. 

Your older brother is headed to kindergarten this fall, so in many senses, you will be the only toddlers left after years of the three of you doing everything together. I know you won't understand this yet but enjoy every single moment. And call out for Daddy sometimes. I'll always answer.

Happy birthday, Quinn. Happy birthday, Hannah.

Love, 
Dad

"What should my husband check out or read before our baby arrives?"

I get that question a lot more these days. It's cool because it's nice to be thought of when people are looking for answers to fatherhood questions! It's also kind of funny, since more moms than dads read this site, by far; every week I hear from a mom who says she passed on a post to her husband to read. Hey, whatever works! I appreciate it either way.

I strongly believe there is no such thing as a parenting expert - we're all just trying our best, except for the Duggars, because wow. Still, there are great new father resources out there that can help you (or your husband) feel prepared and confident going into fatherhood.

I'm really happy I get to put together posts and resources for new and expecting dads, but there is so much to cover and I'm just one voice. Below is a list of outside resources I trust and have found valuable* , plus a few that are, to put it bluntly, garbage advice. Bookmark this page - I'll update it as I come across great content! And you can always share it with a new dad in your life. Think I missed something? Let me know.

* I received no payment for these recommendations

Here's what I've relied on for new dad advice:

Dude, You're Gonna Be a Dad!

"She's pregnant. She knows that. You know that. And her 152 baby books tell her exactly what she can expect." Exactly! This book for dads fills in the gaps. Really enjoyed reading this, as John Pfeiffer dispenses advice on what a guy can do through pregnancy to help his partner.

Cool feature:  The book doesn't assume you're an idiot, which is a nice touch. There are lots of new dad books out there, but when I was an expectant dad, a lot of them seemed like I only cared about watching football and drinking beer and maybe I could fit the baby into my life.

Happiest Baby on the Block

Written by Dr. Harvey Karp. This goes through the 5 S's. What are the 5 S's? They might just be your key to surviving late nights with a newborn. I swaddle, shush, and swing a lot in particular, and although it's not foolproof, these techniques really did make a difference. This is prime stuff for guys, as dads can do any of these as easy as moms. Are there other methods of dealing with crying babies? Sure, and you'll find experts lined up swearing their way is the right way. I'm just saying this one worked, and I think it also reinforced bonding with my son in a way some other methods (crying it out) don't.

Cool feature: There's a movie that is basically the same content, so watch that if you're short on time. 

Dad's Guide to Twins (Also, Dads Guide to Raising Twins)

Joe Rawlinson, who wrote about twins for my site, speaks from experience. If you're having multiples, A) God help you and B) Check out his guide. There's plenty of practical, actionable advice, such as what kind of stroller to get and how to bottle feed two babies at once. As a guy, I like the fact it was more hands-on and less about the experience of twins - I wanted to know what to do, and this helped get me mentally ready.

Cool feature: He offers specifics on what baby gear is twin compatible.

Web MD Pregnancy App

Unlike regular Web MD, which will tell you that you've got rectal cancer if you list "cough" as a symptom, this app was straightforward, easy to use, and had cool visuals for what the baby looks like inside your wife's belly. Week by week, you can see what progress the baby should be making, and there are nice features such as a contraction timer and Pregnancy 101, a resource of FAQs about pregnancy. My wife and I would check this app each week to get excited about what our kids were doing at that stage.

Cool feature: It lets you specify if you're having multiples and adjusts the info accordingly.

Evolutionary Parenting

If you or your wife are really dead set on breastfeeding your newborn, using a doula, doing a homebirth, skipping circumcision or any other similar parenting styles - organic? crunchy? natural? whatever you want to call it - this site, created by a psychologist, has got what you need. I find it to be reasonable in how it approaches controversial topics, and at the least, you can feel more informed.

Cool feature: Research rebuttals. Basically, knocking down whatever you just breathlessly heard on Good Morning America.

Scary Mommy

There's an overwhelming amount of content on here about what it's truly like to be a parent. It's frank, honest, and some of the titles are just hilarious ("Why do kids suck at sleepovers so much?"). I think the site motto is spot on: "Parenting doesn't have to be perfect." Although the site has mommy in the name, there's lots of good stuff for dads - hey, they even let me write for them. Good page to add on Facebook, as they post often.

Cool feature: They do a solid job with categorizing their content, so you can find posts specific to your interest.

Bad Ass Breastfeeding

If your partner is going to breastfeed, you really, really would do well to know what she's going through, what problems she might face, and how you can help. Breastfeeding can be a really transformative, powerful thing - there's food coming out of your wife's boobs! But it's also difficult. Sometimes, it can seem impossible (as it did for us at one point). If or when your partner hits the breast milk wall, it helps to have some kind of understanding so you don't just say, "Well, that sucks." This site covers it all with resources and posts from moms who have been there, done that.

Cool feature: A certified lactation consultant answers reader questions. Almost guaranteed your wife will have one of these questions at some point. (Get ready for the word "supply" to be used every day.)

MomLoveBest

There are so many mommy bloggers out there. It can be overwhelming. If you're trying to get the mom's point of view - and you should! - go for those who don't make everything in absolutes (Life is not a Buzzfeed post full of "only's" and "best's"). For example, I love MomLovesBest.com's sleep guide for pregnant moms. I can tell she did her research and it's so thorough! She covers everything from pillows to positions. Do yourself a favor and read this.

Your Freaking Parents

Although I'm not great at it even now, it's kind of silly to not tap into the knowledge of your parents about how to deal with all of this. They may not realize that putting the baby on its back is considered the safe and only way to do it these days compared to when they did it, but they do know what it's like to go into labor. They do know what you might expect emotionally. They do know what challenges you might face. And they did a decent job raising you, right? Just don't discount the experts you already have in your family. Still, make it clear from the get-go that you are doing things the way you feel is best. Don't feel like just because your mom did it one way, you and your wife should try to do it the same!

Cool feature: They saw you naked a lot and can still hold a straight face.

Couples Who Have Kids

This is a guarantee: If you ask couple friends you have who recently had a baby in the past year or two what to expect about having a baby, they will talk your ear off. They are dying to talk to someone about it. But don't fall into a trap! What worked for them, what went wrong, what doctor they had that sucked ... none of those things necessarily would be the same for you. You should soak in whatever they can offer, but, just like your parents, if you try to follow every piece of advice you get, you will drive yourself crazy and your wife will start stabbing things.

Try asking this: "What do you wish you knew then that you know now?" Or "I'm excited to be a dad but I have no idea what to do. What was the thing you struggled with the most off the bat?" Beware the friends who remember newborns with rose colored glasses (If they say their baby slept all night right from the start, they are bullshitting you) or who are super jaded about it (If "the worst" ends most of their sentences, slowly backpedal).

Better yet? Offer to watch their baby for a few hours in a low-pressure way. That can be done by doing it while they do other chores around the house - the stuff they've been dying to do but don't have the hands to do it - or maybe have them take a long stroll or go workout at a nearby gym. That way they are there if you need them, but you can get a feel for taking care of a baby. One of the things I hear from guys the most is that they've never even held a baby and are terrified they will break them. Well, for what it's worth, I barely held a baby before my son was born. It's amazing how quickly you learn. But in hindsight, it would have been awesome to do a little babysitting to dip my toe in the baby tub.

Cool feature: You're helping them, they are helping you.

Other noteworthy resources: I've also used Parents.com and found it to be reliable with an exhaustive amount of content on anything and everything with babies on up. Weelicious is great if you're a culinary type and want to make your baby meals when the time comes. 

Good social media accounts to follow for dads:

I'm listing Instagram accounts because I've found that's one of the easiest ways to connect with dads, but they all do Twitter/Facebook too.

Dad or Alive - If you're gonna do the stay-at-home dad route, or if you'd appreciate seeing content from a guy who used to work for Adam Sandler and Chelsea Handler, this is your guy. Check out his site for lots of entertaining fatherhood stories.

Dadlifeclub - Good for motivational fatherhood posts. Also, the guy behind it just released a book about his experiences as a dad and what you can learn from it.

My Kid Can't Eat This - Hilarious. Maybe not as much when it happens to you, but while you're still in the pregnancy/newborn phase, you'll go "I can't believe their kid won't eat that." And then later on you'll say, "Oohhhh that's why." If there's one unexpected thing that'll be added to your life because of a baby, it's humor. Lots of humor.

Dadlifebrand - They do dad challenges (asking you to do this or that activity today with your kid), offer motivation, and showcase *ahem* awesome dads.

Avoid these pregnancy/parenting apps and sites:

• Baby Bump App: Only read this if you want to be pandered to in the worst way possible. One example? They regularly include advice for dads. Great! Except they must assume dads who use the app really, really don't want a baby, because the advice is usually "Try to ask your wife about how the pregnancy is going so she knows you're interested." No joke, that was the advice... for the 7 month milestone!
• Forums (Baby Center, What to Expect): Pregnancy/Baby forums are where facts go to die, fear mongering goes to thrive, and your neurotic worst fears are born. Everyone has a worst case scenario. No one has scientific data or researched-backed answers or rationale thinking. Stay away. That goes for your wife, too.
• Facebook posts of friends with kids: I say this as someone who often posts about my kids. You need to beware. It's very easy to see what a friend is posting and take it as the truth for better or worst, as if that's the real baby experience. It is not real. You will have friends who constantly whine about what the baby is doing to them. You will have friends who only post photos of their kid smiling and clean. Both are not realistic. Don't get anxious either way. Parenthood can't be summed up that succinctly.

I engaged with an online troll about childcare costs recently, and it led to me polling friends to get a sense how much we're all spending on childcare. If you haven't waded into the childcare waters yet, or want some reassurance that it's normal to spend the equivalent of two BMW payments a month on a 9-pound human, keep reading.

In this case, a woman posted on LinkedIn that she was sad to see an unemployed mom lose out on a job offer because she needed flexible hours to help take care of her baby. That sucks. Not all jobs can do this and employers aren't obligated to do so, but you kinda hope in a modern society, bosses realize that making life easier for working parents pays back in spades.

Anyway, a troll posing as a working professional bluntly commented that people shouldn't have a baby if they can't afford it. (You'd almost assume a 20-year-old dudebro made that comment, but it was a woman who, according to LinkedIn, is a professional interior decorator. I would have guessed plumber considering how much shit she was spewing.)

I don't even know where to begin with that mindset. I didn't realize we started living in a society that believes you have to be wealthy to have kids; don't even get me started on the argument against paying for children's health insurance coverage.

But Ms. Troll does have one legitimate point: When you have a baby for whatever reason (IT'S NOT OUR BUSINESS TO KNOW!), the baby is going to be expensive.

They don't make cheap babies. You know how sometimes you've got an Old Navy budget, sometimes it's a Gap budget, and sometimes its a Banana Republic-and-not-even-the-clearance-rack budget? 

Babies only come in Gucci budgets.

Culprit Number One: Daycare

I got our annual daycare invoice for tax return purposes.*

* God, if I ever for one second forget I am a full-fledged adult, it's sentences like that. Also, moments like telling my son I just turned 35 and he said he "can't even count that high."

It cost $9,000 to send our three toddlers to daycare just three mornings a week.

It's a wonderful daycare with wonderful teachers and our kids love it, and we recommend friends use the same place. Money well spent! But, still, um... money.

It made me wonder what others are spending. A few polls of other parents with young kids (as it's much more expensive having a baby/toddler in daycare) and dozens of dad bloggers gave me the answer, and the 50 responses I got back up what national surveys reveal.

How much is it going to cost to send my baby to daycare?

You can expect to pay about:

• $10,000 per baby
• $14,000 total for all kids you send.

Many daycares provide a discount for the additional kids, although, no, despite the 15 million jokes I've heard, twins are not Buy One, Get One. So, in black-and-white, I can see that I have dozens of friends spending five figures a year for childcare alone.

"This thread makes me want to get sterilized. Oh god." - Recently married non-parent looking at my daycare cost thread

The National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies has similar info. The average center-based daycare cost in the United States is $11,666 per year ($972 a month), but prices range from $3,582 to $18,773 a year ($300 to $1,564 monthly... living in a city will get you). Think about that. As Care.com put it, nearly one in three families report spending 20 percent or more of their annual household income on daycare.

It's not like you can go cheap on daycare.

They do Dateline specials about daycares like that. Do. Not. Skimp. On. Daycare. 

"Great, Andy. We're about to have a baby and now you need us to come up with $800 a month?" 

I know that's daunting. And I know we're not even talking about diapers, clothes, formula, check-ups if your insurance sucks .... are you hyperventilating? It's OK! WAIT! OK, better? Deep breath.

Four Tips for Reducing Your Daycare Costs and Maximizing Your Childcare Dollars:

An NPR poll showed that nearly one-third of parents who pay for child care say the cost has caused a financial problem for their household. I can't believe it's only one-third! But still, if you know two other sets of parents, at least one of you is freaking the f#&@ out. The other two are looking for more wine, please.

Let's take that deep breath now, as we all laugh at our former selves stressing about being broke when we didn't have a baby around. Silly us. OK. Let's think this through. You can make this work. Here are ready-to-use strategies to cut costs on daycare and babysitting:

1. Use the benefits you have through work. My work offers a Dependent Care FSA. It's a pain in the butt, yes. You've got to download forms, keep track of your balance, submit for reimbursement, and so forth. What do you get for that? Pre-tax funding for daycare. It's like having a big 30% off coupon! Sure, 30% off coupons are usually more fun - Kohl's makes every coupon seem like a lottery ticket, and sometimes it's like Kohl's is paying me to shop - but it's real savings nonetheless.
   The trick is you need to know in advance how much you'll spend on daycare, because it'll be taken out of your paycheck and you're locked in for the year after you enroll. Honestly, since you never "see" the money, it's not as painful as you think. The first year, you can guess a little low, and then after that, you should have a good grip on it. I know people who squeeze out every dollar through this, and it saves them hundreds of dollars each year if not more. If you're not sure if your work provides this option, talk to HR. The money can be used for daycare, before and after school care, summer camp, and even babysitting. Once I submit my form for reimbursement, I get the money set aside in the FSA direct deposited in my account, like some magical money fairy.
   Some employers offer a daycare right at work, but I'm guessing you already know if yours does. One dad I talked to said he saves probably 50% on daycare costs by using his employer's center. If you had the option of switching to a company that has that available but can't pay you quite as much, you'd still come out ahead, right? 
   My wife got a part-time job teaching spin at a gym in part because it means we can use their child drop-off service for free when we're working out, saving us $45 a month. Also, she does it because my wife is a super human, but that's another topic.
2. Think beyond the standard daycare option. Word-of-mouth matters a lot when it comes to choosing who will watch that little angel of yours. That's how we found our daycare, which ended up being reasonably priced and our kids love it; without a recommendation, we never would have known it existed, and then you're doing Google searches for "Daycare baby cheap educational please help very tired".
   But it's not everything. A nanny who comes to your house might be the best option — you're not paying for overhead like you would at a daycare center, and you know your home is secure. Or a private sitter for drop-off, which can be much most cost-effective and offer more personalized care.
   We've had good experiences with private sitters, but you'll want to go above and beyond in making sure their house is baby-proofed to your standards, not theirs, and that they appear to have a long-term commitment to this. You don't want to be scrambling to find a daycare overnight. Referrals matter greatly, too, as does a confirmation that they won't suddenly take on 10 more kids and your baby is effectively in a zoo.
   Finally, there is the friends & family option. All of my nephews get cared for this way from grandparents. So many people I polled said that without a mother or aunt or friend watching the baby, they wouldn't be able to pull it off. If this is remotely an option, even if it's temporary, do it. We basically had my in-laws living with us for a long stretch after the twins were born. Without that, we would have been screwed, although that also meant my in-laws got to watch me in a severe sleep-deprived state mumbling to myself. Just another Tuesday, Andy!
   If you haven't yet had a real talk with someone you know about this option, start broaching the conversation. No one is obligated or owes you childcare; that's a lot to ask of someone. But it would be foolish to not heavily investigate the option! Many people will say "I'd love to take care of that little baby!" Few people mean on an ongoing basis.
3. Plan for all the expenses in childcare. Stuff that might come as a surprise: You still have to pay for childcare when the daycare is closed for holidays (otherwise, their workers wouldn't get vacation time). You can get charged if you are late to pick them up. You should also consider that there may be times when you need to pay for a babysitter when your regular daycare isn't available, so, yeah, you're paying freaking double on those days! Finally, are there any recurring fees for food? What if you forgot to send enough diapers? If you need to change your schedule?  Figure out the true cost, not the sticker price. Then figure out how much one of you would earn in a given month. If you'd save more by not working (insane, right?), then...
4. Have the stay-at-home parent conversation. I had had more than a dozen parents say they became stay-at-home-dads or stay-at-home moms because financially, it made no sense to keep working. "I couldn't afford to go to work if I wanted to"; "Anything I earn would go to daycare - not a joke"; "It's hard having an hour to see each other some days, but it's absolutely worth it."
   I can sympathize with that last comment. My wife quit her full-time administrative job in higher ed when Elliott was born nearly five years ago, and switched to a part-time teaching career. We're very fortunate she had the degree in place and the background to make such a switch. Coupled with some flexibility in my marketing career, we've cobbled together a schedule with me dropping off the kids in the morning, her picking them up and watching them in the afternoon, and me watching them in the evening when she goes to teach. It saves us thousands of dollars and gives our kids more face time with their mom. Not everyone can make that work, I totally get that. And, as I pointed out, so many guys are electing to be the at-home parent. Don't assume it's gotta be the mom. 
   Likewise, assuming you can work from home and take care of the baby is... well, I don't want to say it's impossible; I know a great couple who are entrepreneurs and parents of a baby, and make it work with some creative scheduling. But I'm sure they'd say that it's misguided to think the baby will just sleep or nicely feed from a bottle while you quietly sit at your lapthahahahaha I can't even imagine that happening. Good God. I'm just saying, there are certainly some jobs you can do from home while taking care of a newborn or a toddler, but counting on it all to work is not wise. It's better to have a back-up plan. Maybe you get a nanny for a few hours a day while you work upstairs. Maybe you work in the evening when your spouse is at home. The key is you have to be flexible and patient. Some bosses will let you work from home a few days a week, and you can work around the inconvenience enough so that it's feasible to be a productive employee and still be an attentive parent. You won't know unless you ask. 
   Ever since I became a dad, I have needed bosses who understand that I need an adjustable schedule - dropping kids off at daycare, switching the car for the van at daycare pickup with my wife, running home when someone has thrown up because someone is always throwing up. In return, I make sure I am ultra-productive in the hours I'm in the office. But I had to change careers first. I was a newspaper reporter, and the news doesn't care too much if you have to run home to take care of the kids. So there needs to be realistic expectations: Can your job be more flexible? Do you need to have a conversation with your boss (any boss who isn't a complete jerk should understand the long-term benefit of you stressing less about daycare costs and in being flexible in your schedule, so long as it doesn't impact your work or slow down the team)? Is it possible for you to switch to part-time for six months and come back to a full-time job afterward? You won't know unless you ask.

How many colds have you had in your life?

Eleventy billion?

That's still less than the average toddler. Little known scientific fact: Toddlers always have a cold. They get them from daycares and ball pits and playgrounds and terrorists. 

The big difference? A cold might mess up your week. But with infants and toddlers? Getting a common cold can get much worse, really fast.

If you're in any parenting text chain/Facebook group/cult, you've likely seen a frantic post from a parent wondering what to do with their sick kid. The giveaway? "Sounds like a barking cough."

That, my friends, is croup.

Croup, despite common belief, is not crappy soup that you sent back because it's bland. Croup is an upper respiratory infection that "obstructs breathing and causes a characteristic barking cough." It can come with a fever and hoarse voice and usually occurs in children ages 6 months to 3 years. It usually occurs a few days after the start of a cold and is worst at night.

My kids have had croup before. Forgive the pun, but it's barking cough is worse than it's bite. You know what? Don't forgive the pun. I don't need your forgiveness. Anyway, croup usually goes away on its own in 3-5 days, according to information from our doctor*.

(* As with all medical things, it's best to get information from doctors and nurses and not Facebook comments. Have you seen the dumb things people say in Facebook comments? That's how you want to diagnose your kid? From the same place where your uncle posts conspiracy theory memes? For this post, I'm using info that came straight from medical professionals and my direct experience.)

What stridor sounds like

Stridor? That's worse. My 2 1/2-year-old toddler, Hannah, got croup and stridor over the weekend. Stridor causes difficulty breathing. It's a harsh sound like your kid is sucking in air.

Imagine my poor toddler, barking like a sad seal and trying to catch her breath. And then imagine that this all happened within a matter of hours. After a restless night where we had hoped she'd get better, we called the on-call nursing hotline with our doctor's office.

They recommended 20 minutes in a steamed up room. If that worked? She'll be fine. If not? A trip to the emergency room. No pressure, steam. God, I'm killing it with puns today.

Anyway, I stuck my kids in a room with the shower and humidifier on. We had it going nice and hot like a fitness club sauna but with less elderly nudity. The steam didn't work — she sounded bad.

(Guys, I'll be really candid here. My wife and I don't take respiratory stuff lightly. Our other twin daughter almost died because of respiratory distress when she was a baby. This wasn't nearly as serious, but when you're going to the same hospital for similar issues, it feels more intense. Nobody wants their kid in the ER, but with us, maybe even more so.)

What we had hoped at the start would be a quick trip to the doctor the next day ended up being a marathon — an all-day stop in the ER that led to an overnight stay in pediatrics as Hannah wasn't responding quickly enough to medication.

In her case, doctors tried to relieve stridor with breathing treatments and oral steroids (We had it mixed into applesauce! They evidently had never done that before. That's how we roll.). The breathing treatments were similar to what I got as a kid growing up with asthma; fun fact - I had moderate asthma growing up that, as it turns out, seems to almost entirely have been caused by me not knowing I was allergic to cats! Cats=lung murder

It took more than 24 hours in the hospital getting treatments for Hannah to start breathing easy, which meant we could breathe easy. Hahahahaha just kidding toddler parents never breathe easy because toddlers are insane. But, you know. Easier. And we realized that we hadn't known much of anything about stridor. I'm hoping this post gives you a heads up in case you're facing the same thing. It's going to be OK!

What should you do if you think your baby or toddler has something more than just a cold?

Here's some things to keep in mind as a new parent with a kid who sounds like they have breathing difficulties:

What croup sounds like

• You're not being crazy. Your main job is to help protect your kids. Nobody else is going to be as good of an advocate as you are. So if you think your daughter's cough doesn't sound great and you want to get it checked out, get it checked out*! With respiratory issues, it's better to be on the safe side.
• If your child's rib cages are really sucking in when they are breathing, that can be a dangerous situation. If this is occurring or if they have a bluish tint in their skin or fingernails, seek medical help immediately.
• Call your doctor if your child:
  • Has new/worse trouble breathing
  • Has dehydration symptoms like being thirstier than usual
  • Seems very sick or is hard to wake up
  • Has a new or higher fever
  • Has a cough that is getting worse (This was our clue)
• With croup, the cough comes at nighttime and has a barking sound to it. It really is a case of "you'll know it when you hear it." My son had it before, and he was mostly fine during the day and at night sounded like Sea World.
• Things you can try at home first, according to a nurse: Steam (humidifier or shower does the trick) and getting cool, fresh air can do wonders if breathing seems difficult. Yes, that seems like contradictory advice. I swear sometimes doctors just say "Um, give that a whirl?" If those methods don't work, call your doctor.
• It's a viral illness, so yes, your other kids can get sick. HOWEVER, every person responds differently so it's not a given he or she would get as sick. One baby might just have a runny nose, and the other one might end up in the ER; we've had that situation.
• Little kids get croup and stridor because they have smaller airways. That's why you don't hear about grown-ups with this. Good thing, because adults would complain a lot more.
• Crying and coughing can make croup worse because you're agitating your airway, so it can be a bad cycle for kids. Keep them calm.
• Can you prevent croup? Well, like most things, it's all about handwashing and keeping your kids away from sick kids. Good luck with that! But common sense is your guide here. Oh, and your family history can make your child more susceptible to croup, so congrats to your genetics on screwing them over one more time.

* I'll get on my soapbox for a moment and shout THIS IS WHY ALL KIDS NEED HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE. No kid should have something like stridor and not get treatments that would make them feel better within a day because their parents can't afford the ER trip. We're fortunate to have excellent health coverage and already met our deductible this year (hello, three toddlers) so this trip was essentially free. We shouldn't make parents and guardians have to decide.

I have never, ever been a manly man.

To be very clear, I have always been quite aware of this. Growing up I didn’t do “guy stuff” well; I never rode ATV’s, didn’t hunt, didn’t watch pro wrestling, and I was a skinny, glasses-wearing nerd before being a nerd was cool.

As an adult, I never liked beer, never got into MMA, didn’t know much about cars, never got a man cave or wanted one, and generally always had more female friends than male friends because most of the time I’d have a difficult time bonding with guys.

My brother would be a much better example of “manly man.” When something breaks in my house, he’s the first person I call. Without ever receiving formal training, I’ve seen him completely take apart our dryer that had stopped tumbling, fix it, and put it back together. I know how to use the dryer. These are not equal skills.

He can fix most anything, drive a stick shift, change his car oil, and have lengthy conversations about tractors and agriculture. He has big, strong hands and a permanent tan from working outside all the time. 

I’m on the other end of the spectrum to the point you might be surprised we’re related. I spent college doing musicals. I enjoy clothes shopping. I will openly watch “Grey’s Anatomy” (and play a fun game with my wife of “Is this a sex-pisode?” by listening to what kind of music they use). I can do some basic car repairs — learning how to replace air filters has saved me a ton of money — and am not a complete idiot with tools, but no one will call me a “handyman.” I love watching and talking about sports, but more about the behind-the-scenes transactions and the stats. I have a beard, which took me 49 years to grow. I have dainty writer’s fingers and being in the sun too long makes me burst into flames like a pasty supernova.

My brother is absolutely a manly man. He also happens to be a pretty great dad and person.

What's the definition of manliness?

What I’ve learned since becoming a dad is that I can be a manly man, too, and still be very aware of Meredith’s latest drama while wearing a bow tie and reading Jezebel. Being a manly man, hell, even just being a man in 2017, doesn’t have to mean what we all grew up thinking it meant. It’s not “Mad Men.” 

You can be a manly man and have tattoos and drink whiskey and love Rambo. You can be a manly man and do none of those things. Because as it turns out, it's not a series of activities and body types and hobbies that defines your manliness.

It's how you act that makes you a man.

Have you been trying to figure out what manliness is when you're up to your ears in diapers and bottles? Being a dad can add to the confusion. You’ve been told for years everywhere you look that manly men-types shouldn’t be expected to do much as dads, you know, because they gotta bring home the bacon or something.

They should get praise for doing basic things like changing diapers and watching the kids (“Oh, is dad is “babysitting” tonight?). That being an involved parent is, on some level, not what a “manly man” does because that means choosing your kid over going out to a sports bar, or sometimes choosing your family over your career progress, or spending weekends taking your kid to birthday parties rather than spending time in your man cave. As if it’s an either/or proposition.

I’m only representing one dad. But for whatever it’s worth, I can tell you that I never feel as manly as I do when I’ve got my toddlers crawling all over me, or when I’ve got all three in our “walking train” holding hands as we go through a parking lot, or when I have them run toward me to give me a hug.

I could work on an oil rig. I could play for the Steelers. I could shave with a hunting knife while fighting Chuck Norris with a boa constrictor I caught with my bare hands. And that would still not make me feel as manly.

You don’t have to be a dad to be manly. Any guy can treat others with respect, look out for those less fortunate, and leave the world better than when they entered it. A glance at the news shows you how badly we need men to behave better; women aren’t demanding perfection, they are asking for us to behave the same way they are expected to behave.  And by the way, you don't deserve praise for not being a d-bag around women, the same way you don't deserve it for watching your kids.

Being a dad, though? That’s built-in manliness if you’re willing to embrace it.

Taking your baby out on your own and knowing you’ll figure out how to make it work. Being in charge of bedtime or getting your kid ready in the morning. Talking about your kid with others with the same excitement and enthusiasm you 

Being a guy is confusing. Being a man shouldn’t be.