RMers with kids

[washing machine]

Zootopia is great! Jason Bateman's character has the best fucking expressions.

My kid calls that movie "Bunny House" btw. Don't really know why. He also calls "The Family Madrigal" song from Encanto "Floor song" because Stephanie Beatriz opens it up by shouting "Floors! doors!"

[lennytheweedwhacker]

How is your kid, Reid?

[washing machine]

Doing great

[spike]

Zootopia is great! Jason Bateman's character has the best fucking expressions.

My kid calls that movie "Bunny House" btw. Don't really know why. He also calls "The Family Madrigal" song from Encanto "Floor song" because Stephanie Beatriz opens it up by shouting "Floors! doors!"

haha, my kid always says, "watch the bunny?"

and for whatever reason, the scene with the weasel always seems to get her excited.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Doing great

Awesome. Tell it Uncle Lenny says hi and has candy.

[washing machine]

It's the sloths in the dmv window for us over here.

[wease]

[spike]

It's the sloths in the dmv window for us over here.

Great gag.

[washing machine]

It's the sloths in the dmv window for us over here.

Great gag.

Enhanced by the Kristen Bell cameo, considering she's apparently on record as being obsessed with sloths.

[Mickey]

Any of the RM dad crew have a carseat/stroller system they recommend?

[washing machine]

Gracco LiteRider.

It's affordable and the stroller fits a detachable infant seat but also converts to a front facer for when they're a little older.

Learn the secret side arm car seat carry maneuver early. It's on Google.com

[spike]

Any of the RM dad crew have a carseat/stroller system they recommend?

We went with this stroller, as it’s smaller and all we needed for the urban lifestyle.

https://www.babyjogger.com/city-tour.html

You can buy attachments that make it compatible with car seats, then remove them when the kid’s older. We still use this stroller.

I will say, since the wheels are small, it’s not a great for rougher terrain or for jogging. But we opted for the portability.

[washing machine]

Echo the features on Spike's pick. After the first year, you'll figure out what you want them to grow into (bigger wheeled wagons ftw), but that type of stroller and the Greco I recommended are versatile enough to get y'all going. Year one parenting is all about car seat portability.

[washing machine]

Underrated and overlooked feature: cup holders.

[Monkey_Driven]

We barely used the pumpkin seat with our second kid outside of the car. I wouldn't choose a stroller solely based on that factor, but that's just me. Baby wearing is much easier at that age.

I recommend going to a Buy Buy Baby store and testing out strollers to look for the features you want. I'd recommend one that is easily collapsible, has a big shade cover, at least two cup holders, good underneath storage, and a three wheel setup. Feel free to wheel them around the store and adjust the handle to you and your partners preferred height.

[daft twat]

TL;DR - I had maybe the best week of my life with my youngest son.

I bought my now 15-year-old a guitar when he was younger, thinking he’d find it an outlet that wasn’t an Xbox. He took lessons for a year. It didn’t take. He wasn’t into it. He’s just not into music, really. Even now he lifts weights in silence like a fucking psycho.

One day his younger brother, who was 10 at the time, asked if he could take lessons. It was totally unprompted. I said yes, but I tempered my expectations. He went to lessons and diligently did 20 minutes of practice every day - no more, no less. It was like reading.

In the past year, he discovered Metallica. It had nothing to do with me. I was never into them, really. I finally saw them in concert in 08 or 09 just to say I saw them. Through YouTube, he was turned on to more songs and in trying to foster his love for music, I started listening to them more. Meanwhile, he started having days where he’d play until his fingers hurt.

In February, they announced two US shows in Buffalo and Pittsburgh. I bought tickets for both, knowing we couldn’t afford to fly and that Buffalo is a 14 hour drive.

Today I made the 13 hour drive home from Pittsburgh after what was possibly the best week of my life.

We drove 10 hours last Tuesday and stayed in a shitty days inn. We woke up, drove the remaining 4 hours to Buffalo, and went to the Def Leppard/Motley Crue/Poison/Joan Jett show. They were mainly playing hits, and he mainly knew them all. Aside from Vince Neil, everyone was great. It was an appetizer show and it delivered like a main course. Def Leppard does not get enough credit for delivering the hits while still being a legitimate working band (they dated to play 4 songs off their new album).

On Thursday we went to Niagara Falls, crossed the border into Canada for better views, had a great meal in downtown Buffalo, and then went to his first Metallica show. Here are two things I will remember: 1) While waiting for them to come on stage he said, “Let’s play I spy.” I sighed. He said, “I spy with my little eye someone in a black t-shirt.” I laughed hard. 2) After the show as we were walking to our car he said, “I can’t believe I was just in the same building as Metallica.” I had that same thought about PJ in 95.

On Friday we backtracked to Cleveland and visited the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. They have a garage band level, and there are some musicians there with a menu of songs you can play with them. My son played For Whom the Bell Tolls with them. It wasn’t perfect, but it was public and his first time playing with anyone else. He was buzzing and it was the high point of the trip for me. So proud!

Saturday we went to Pittsburgh and visited the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History. The first thing this kid ever loved was dinosaurs. He was fucking skipping around the exhibit. We ate lunch in the cafeteria called “Fossil Fuel.’” My God, I love that. We then rode the Duquesne Incline before going to the Airbnb to watch Lightyear and Toy Story immediately afterward.

On Sunday he watched Toy Story 2 in the morning and then we visited the Heinz Historical Center to check out the Mister Rogers sets. We walked down to the big fountain where the 3 rivers meet and then returned to our room to rest up for Metallica. Watched Toy Story 3, and when Andy’s mom had that little hitch in her breath as she realized he was heading off to school, I was a crying mess. I realized then that I was in the midst of maybe the best time of my life and that it would be over before I knew it.

The concert that night was turning into a disappointing song-for-song repeat of Buffalo. Then in the encore they made one change. They played Battery, which was the song both of us were hoping for. We hugged in realization as the first few notes played.

We got back to our room at 11. I finally fell asleep at 2. We began our 13 hour drive at 4. I’m leaving some personal details out of this too long narrative, but if you read all of this and you’re a parent, I hope you’re encouraged by it. I feel some guilt because I know my oldest son and I cannot have this same experience, but that isn’t either of our faults. It was such a privilege, though, to be able to spend this time with just my youngest son. My dad is a better man than me, but he would have never done this. If I’m lucky enough to have a death bed scenario, I bet I think of this week more than anything else.

[Bammer]

Mick, I had a good one but I sold it after the brakes failed.

Daft that’s awesome and I look forward to similar shiz with my boys.

[tragabigzanda]

There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot's hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

[Monkey_Driven]

More parents need to share stories like that. Thanks for the long post!

[Bammer]

More parents need to share stories like that.

When our twin boys were born, a buddy told me I won the kid lottery. He was right and I try not to make everyone else too jealous.