smonk you: the best freaking daddy blog ever

Since the a lot of folks ask about how the floor bed is going I thought I'd give periodic updates. Miloh seems to like it, although he knows no other way, and we're liking it to. He continues to roll of it but no longer gets upset when it happens. Last week I opened the door when I got up in the morning to see him lying off his bed, near his grey chair, and smiling as he tried to get his foot in his mouth. He doesn't cry when he wakes up because he can explore the room...but he's getting a bit more mobile so we're baby proofing it now. While he can't crawl yet he can roll across the room to get what he wants... One morning Staci heard clanging from his room. She thought a cat was banging on his door to get in. When she got up to shoo the cat away didn't see one, but she heard the banging, then she heard some giggles. When she opened the door she found that he's rolled across his room and started to play with the garbage can... That's the wh...

We're loving the floor bed...it's so cool to be able to lay down with Miloh when we put him to sleep. Once we put him to sleep we lie with him for a it until he settles down. Today Staci put him down for a nap and he started grabbing her nose and giggling. He's already playing games with us...it's so cool. And if you enjoyed this please click on the banner below so I get a vote...all you need to do is click...then it will ask you to click once more. But before you click make a wish as it is guaranteed* to come true. *not a guarantee

A lot of folks have asked Staci and I questions about the floor bed. What it is exactly, when to do it, how to do it. I tried to answer them in a post I did a bit ago. But the most asked question is what do you do if he rolls off. Our first answer was always that we didn't need to worry about it because he wouldn't roll for a while. But in reality the answer is that the mattress is 4-5 inches tall and there is a rug under it so if he rolls off he'll be okay since it's not long like the carpet. Also if he was able to roll off he'd have the ability to be mobile and get to his back. That's all in theory...on Mother's Day we were finally able to answer the question in practice. We had just put him on his bed for a nap...then we talked about how we were happy that we figured out a nice routine from him and that we were working as a great team. We walked downstairs and heard a little giggle on the radio monitor. So we turned on the video monitor...there wa...

Okay...I promised a post on our floor bed and the whole deal with floor beds in general. Honestly right now as I start this post I don't know a ton about them. Staci does because friends of her's have used them and she read the book Montessori from the Start ...plus it follows tenets of the Montessori philosophy which she teaches. I've absorbed some of the info from her and such but we'll learn together as I wade through some websites. That all being the case think of this as a Cliffs Notes version of floor beds...and I have learned from experience that teaches are correct that you can't pass the test by reading the Cliffs Notes alone. It's easy to explain what it is...just a crib mattress on the floor. You can add a floor bed frame, which is a 3 sided wood frame, but people we've talked to see them as a waste and a place for shins to bang into. You also need to set up the room so it's a completely safe place...every thing at reach is age appropriat...

I screwed up a bit in trying to stretch the baby room into three posts because I showed all the good pics of the room yesterday so this is a bit redundant, but I'm going to call out what we have in the room. So here goes... Marcel the Monkey from Design Public . We put the wood square so it's at eye level for our baby when we walk in the room holding it. Lot's of stuff here. The paint color is Robin's Nest from Benjamin Moore. It's no VOC but if I had to do over I'd have Sherwin Williams match it in their no VOC Harmony paint. I like the folks at my Sherman Williams better and stuff I've used in the past had better coverage than the Ben stuff. The wall shelves and cube bookcase are from a super exclusive Swedish design store called Ikea. We went there because it fits our design sense and because it's pretty inexpensive, plus their quality is much better than it used to be. We also want to let our room evolve with our child so we didn't want to...

This post comes with a crappy giveaway. The first person to leave a comment below with a correct guess of what inspired the title will get a $5 gift card to Caribou, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf or whatever your fave coffee place is. Yeah it's a tiny little prize but it's so no one cheats via Google or such and because I'd really just want to buy a drink for the winner but if you don't live in the Twin Cities it might be hard to meet up.

Some folks have been getting on me that my posting frequency has tapered off a bit. That's because really at this stage in the game it's a lot of waiting around for me...Staci's really going through all the shenanigans. SO I'm going to take what could be one post and make it into three. We finally finished the baby room and I thought I'd show the progress...today a little video, tomorrow some pics and then I'll point out some of the stuff in the room Thursday. As I started to paint I decided to do some time lapse of the process of getting the room together. As it this was my first try at time lapse with my Mac I was figuring out frame rate as I did this...so it's a super short (25 secs) little video. I think I'll add to it once we get baby M in there. Also I'm gonna try to re-cut it a bit as I have only worked with Final Cut and I need to figure iMovie out a bit. So think of this as a teaser to the room reveal and a trailer to something in progre...

We had our baby shower last weekend and Staci and I both bought gifts for the pre-kid. So I thought I'd show those because I like them. I bought a Sex Pistols 'God Save the Queen' onesie . It's a super soft. The crown in her hair, and the safety pin in her lip are metallic ink which is a nice touch...I was just schooled by folks at work for just saying metallic and not metallic ink...hence comment number 1. It also comes in baby shirts. Staci got an Ebulobo Woodours Daddy and Baby Bear stuffed toy. She wins because her gift is awesome and it was sweet that she wanted to get a dad and baby toy. The baby bear, which has a rattle inside, lives in the daddy bear's tree trunk stomach. The Daddy bear holds a removable fishing pole and flower. The flower has crinkle paper inside. The dad carries a bag that has a fish in it, you can pull the fish, which is on a string, and it wiggles back in the bag. This video shows how everything works. While I don't unders...

OK so I'm a bit of a design geek and Staci is too when it comes to the house...having this kid is bringing it out a bit more. So as we start to fill the baby bedroom we're using it as an excuse to get some cool looking things. As you may have read I'm a fan of Eames stuff so one of our must haves is the Eames Molded Rocker aka rocking armchair rod (RAR). It's a really nice low rocking chair. And I need to stress low because some folks don't realize it's height. But really you wouldn't want it higher because it's a rocker. Any way the chair has beautiful form. While the original was made with a molded fiberglass seat they are now made of plastic...not sure why that is...maybe fiberglass is bad for you or the environment. The base is chrome that lead to maple legs. Like the Eames molded plywood chair this one is super comfy. But here's the deal. This is going in our baby room and that baby will grow and become a kid who will draw on, paint ...

A bit over a month ago I did a post about us finally getting the baby's room cleaned out. We were ready to start decorating...but the room sat...we did nothing. We knew basically how we'd decorate...no crib because we're doing a Montessori style floor bed....no chest of drawers because we're doing a closet system and probably won't get a chest until we get bigger kid furniture...we'd add a shelf system and seating and such. We planned to be way ahead in getting the room done...but things came up...travel, friends etc and the room set aside. That was until Friday when Staci got the bug to get the room together. After ditching a shelf unit from Room and Board we headed Ikea for something that worked better. It might seem odd to trade down, but whatever...the piece we got has good clean designed lines and is exactly the size we need. Here's the skinny on the why of a shelf unit...this is coming from the husband of a Montessori teacher...not someone ...

Staci and have totally different tastes in music but one thing we do agree on is that we don't want to play traditional kids music for our baby. I mean you hear the same stuff over and over I'd go batty listening to stuff I loathed. So we'll play real music that's kid friendly. Jack Johnson, She & Him and other stuff that's semi-mellow but good. But what to do when you need good lullaby stuff and you don't want to have to hear Humpty Dumpty or Mary Had a Little Lamb a million times? That's where the Rockabye Baby CD series comes in. It's lullaby versions of music you actually want to listen to. From bands like Green Day, Coldplay, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins and the Pixies. One of my favorite songs in the collection is the Pixies's Where is My Mind To me it was always a great song. Then 'Fight Club' came around and made it a bit creepier yet empowering. The Rockabye Baby version takes it to a totally different level. It makes i...

At some point we'll be teaching our baby to read. So the alphabet will probably be an integral part in that. I found some cool posters and prints of alphabets so I thought I'd share. Some are limited additions and may no longer be available, but they are all good eye candy. by Sigrid Martinez available on Laffiche Moderne by Burlesque Design scroll down a bunch by Eléonore Thuillier available on Laffiche Moderne   by Lorena Siminovich ( petitcollage on etsy ) by Aaron Hogg on Threadless by Jessica Hische This one is actually a name poster by Jennifer Ramos aka Made By Girl As a little aside, since our child will be in the Montessori environment it will learn cursive before regular. There are a bunch of reasons that they start with it, including it being more natural, the circles and such are mirror the way children draw and it helps them see the contrast in upper and lower case. I'll probably talk more about that when our child is doing that ...

This is one of those baby furniture pieces that you're not embarrassed to have out when friends come over. Bloom's coco lounger comes in a lot of color options. It is self rocking, light weight and could hold up to 26lbs (I just looked weight by baby age and realized that could be anywhere from 1-2 years old in case you didn't know.) Each single-piece frame comes in two material styles; patented stylewood (in natural or cappuccino ), which from what I can tell is Bloom's fancy word for bent wood, and plexistyle (in clear , ebony or ivory), which is their fancy word for bent plexi. The seat pads come in 9 color options and have a 5 point safety harness to keep your little one snug. Other cool features are that like all of Bloom's products the coco loungers are made from sustainable materials lead free bpa free phthalate free PVC free heavy metal free AZO dye free Sadly the coco lounger will not have a place in our home. A friend gave us their Jacad...

We live in a row house without a basement so storage space is at a minimum. That's why the room which will soon be the baby room was a freaking mess a month ago. It started out as our office but it was too sparse. Then it slowly became a catch all for everything we didn't want to organize or weren't committed to sell or donate. It was never included in the tour of our house. But finally after a bunch of trips to Good Will, a couple sales on Craigslist and 2 weeks of organizing we finally cleared out the room. Okay there are a couple things in there but they are baby related. Now we need to find the perfect shade of white and start painting. We're going with white because it makes the room really clean and any art we add will pop. We found a site called Modern Nursery . They offer some really well designed furniture, decor and gear. The furniture is simple/Swiss style so if you're into that check them out. That's where we picked up this tree wall sticker . Once w...