This weekend I was working on a stroller review comparing our old UppaBaby Vista with our new Baby Jogger City Select. Searching for a few images to use in the post I came across a blog post about a homemade iPad mount for their kid a Mom made for her City Select. After reading the post I was, as a parent, well, not horrified but definitely annoyed. I understand that we all have that point at which we will do anything to shut up comfort our kids when they hit a high enough decibel or enough time elapses with the crying/screaming. Sure, No problem, I get it. But I think it’s a completely different story to preempt that potential situation by giving them something in the hopes of keeping them quiet.

To the author, Mrs. Graham’s credit she does point out that she knows that people are not going to be happy with her letting her 2 year old kid watch TV and invites “HAVE AT IT haters”. Well, this hater is gonna hate I guess.

This Hater Having at It

Photo from Laura Graham, Grizaland.com

So, I could go on about how tons of studies site the effects of TV on kids younger than 2, or how the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that kids under 2 years old not watch any TV and that those older than 2 watch no more than 1 to 2 hours a day of “quality programming” (like Baywatch reruns?). I could assert that “screen time”, such as an iPad or smart phone, should be treated the same as “TV time”. I might point out that The first 2 years of life are critical to brain development, and that you basically get out of your kid what you put into them intellectually during this time. I might go on to say that screen based media can easily replace time that kids should be spending playing and interacting with the world. Possibly, I would go so far as to point out that this time is SO critical in a child’s formation of social, intellectual and developmental skills that it is a shame to waste it by getting them hooked on Elmo (or whatever)…but I will not go there.

I think about it like this: I’m building my kids brain with information and experiences in the same way I am building his body with healthy food. Don’t get me wrong, I love Mountain Dew Code Red and Cool Ranch Doritos in the same way I love the internets, but neither of those things are good for my kid. I feed him food that my wife and I make to help him grow up healthy and strong for the same reason we read to him all the time and play with toys that don’t have lights or make sounds (another post topic).

Crying? There Is An App for That

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I’m a SUPER tech nerd. I’ve always got the newest phone, iGadget, Xbox, online game, fully-wired house or you name it. But when it comes to my kid, all my devices and screens get turned off when he comes in the room. I have to say, I honestly get more enjoyment from our time playing together with his unit blocks than I do using any of my devices. Anyway, the thing that really killed me about finding this post was scrolling down, reading the comments and finding this one: iStroll Kid wrote, “We are currently developing an iPad case that connects to a stroller – patent pending, called the iStroll Kid“. I was hooked at this point, so how could I not click the link?

But before I talk about the iStroll Kid I should say that I’m a product designer and I love it (LOVE IT!!) when I see people designing products for themselves, like Mrs. Graham did. While I don’t agree with her decision to to add an iPad to her stroller, I completely applaud her ingenuity and workmanship on putting this together.

Now, Christian Souza at iStroll Kid is a different story. Mr. Souza posts as his inspiration for this product on his site:

Paul Graham from Y Combinator once said that the key to good products is to look for problems and then try to solve them. I had a problem. Being a first-time dad, my problem was my son would not relax in his stroller. That’s the problem I solved, and I hope that if you have a similar problem, it will solve it for you too. Even if you don’t have my specific issue, having the iStroll Kid is still a great way to expose your child to the wealth of educational opportunities that exist on the iPad when he might otherwise just be sitting there.

Let me say that again in case you missed it: “a great way to expose your child to the wealth of educational opportunities that exist on the iPad WHEN HE MIGHT OTHERWISE JUST BE SITTING THERE”.

Just sitting there? If your impression of all your kid is doing while in their stroller out in the world is “just sitting there” then you have bigger issues as a parent, my friend.

PRO TIP: another approach to fixing your “not relaxing in the stroller problem”, 3 tablespoons of Nyquil. Just spit-balling design ideas here.

Examiner.com writer Lauryn Escobar, who wrote one of the reviews on the iStroll Kid website says “iStroll Kid Lets Your Kid Be More Addicted to Your iPad Than You“. like it’s a good thing? Ms. Escobar adds “Let’s face it, normal everyday tasks like driving, running errands, standing in line at the grocery store, and shopping are boring to your babies and toddlers”

NO, NO, NO. It’s as if both Ms. Escobar and Mr. Souza are saying that if a child is not actively being entertained by someone, or in both of their cases apparently some device, then they are completely idle and will quickly become a nuisance to them. On the contrary, kids are the most amazing sponges on earth, and they are constantly learning at an astronomical rate. Learning things like “if I scream and cry, my parents will give me that opiate device again”.

Hold on, I’m getting distracted. Let me focus on Mr. Souza and the iStroll Kid for a second. As an Industrial Designer and former guest professor at Auburn University, one of the fallacies that I talked about in my classes, and I have to constantly repeat to my friends that call me with “a great idea for a product” that they want me to help them design, patent and produce:

“This design is satisfactory for me, it will therefore be satisfactory for everybody else”

Mr. Souza, your first mistake (as a designer) is assuming that just because your kid is unhappy if he doesn’t have a screen in front of him that this means that ALL kids are unhappy if they don’t have a screen in front of them. Your second mistake (as a designer) is assuming that if you as a parent make the decision to pacify your kid with a screen that ALL parents want to pacify their kids with a screen. And don’t even get me started on your really expensive 3D printed model with undersized mounting tabs and insufficient wall thicknesses…oh never mind.

Field Test

Mr. Souza posted a video on his site that says it all (at 3:56). His kid has the screen taken away and is crying, has no interest in sharing or interacting with the two girls standing there, meanwhile several kids are joyfully playing in the background on the carpet (screenless):

Screen capture at 3:56 of the iStroll Kid product video (click pic for video)

C’mon Dude.

Here is what I want to see from you Mr. Souza. Mount the iStroll kid on your stroller and turn on the photo app with the rear camera active, then maybe your kid will interact with the world around him?

P.S. to Mrs. Graham, WAR EAGLE!

Father’s day x2: I was really pleased when my favorite Dad blog 8BitDad broke the news (to me) about the upcoming JCPenney ad for Father’s Day featuring real life gay Dads as a center piece for their printed material. My wife and I are both strong believers in equality for alternative lifestyles (except for Obama Birthers, those people suck) and love it when we see a company not only go out on a limb (by selecting Ellen DeGeneres as their spokesperson) but then to stand 100% behind their decision and Ms. DeGeneres. So when we had a major purchase to make recently of all new linens as we went from a queen size to a king sized bed we agreed to go out of our way to shop at JCPenney and show support with our money.

Recalculating: Our first step was to figure out where a JCP was, since we really don’t shop at the mall anymore (bless you Amazon Prime), and when we do, it’s at Lenox Square which has never had a JCP. Google indicated that Southlake Mall had a JCP, so we loaded our son into the car and off we drove for our 30 minute quest southward. Upon arriving, we were greeted by a logo stained facade of a building where a JCP had been and a faded note taped to the doors saying that this location had closed on 5/28/2011. Bummer, but hey, we need to support this courageous ad campaign, and my Droid said that they have an outlet center nearby. Let’s go!

When we pulled into the JCPenney Outlet parking lot, I was a little skeptical. It is located off of a practically defunct access road, next to the highway and just past the “monthly rate hotel”. Looking at the parking lot it was hard to pick out the parking spot lines since the entire surface was stained from years of cars that leaked oil while their owners shopped for discount undergarments. None of these are ever a good sign for those seeking the 800 thread count sheets I was hoping for. After 15 minutes of walking around what looked like the Kmart-that-time-forgot we gave up and went to JCP #3 at Northlake Mall, which I called first to make sure it was still in operation.

After another 40 minute drive, we arrived and were at this point excited to get this over with. But entering the store, we were filled with gloom as the prospects of finding “nice things” seem to be an unobtainable dream judging by the vast unstocked floor space scattered across the main level. Once we found the home goods department we were presented with a 4′ wide by 15′ long section of sheets to choose from starting with the dismal 300 thread count “Easy Balance” sheets and running all the way up to the pseudo-luxurious-by-comparison 400 thread count “Cindy Crawford Style” sheets. Absent were the actual Wamsutta sheets that we picked on the JCP website that we now know are available “only online”. We then spent about 10 minutes looking for someone to ask if they had another section for sheets since the store seemed to be chopped up in to all different kinds of sections based on brands (we think) – but we could not find anyone. So, we did what any shopper in our position would do. We walked out the front doors of JCP and right into Macy’s.

Que the angel sounds: Walking into Macy’s after shopping at JCP was like coming home to America after 2 months in Taiwan: yeah it’s was cool at first and everything is so different, but at the end of the day you can only eat so much chòu dòufu before you start missing a good old fashion hamburger. We quickly found our department using one of the many clearly-labeled wayfinding systems around the store, the helpful staff (2 of them actually) simultaneously played with our kid and suggested the proper pillow based on our sleeping position. They even pointed out that we could save an additional 20% today if we signed up for a Macy’s card (then leaned in and said “pay it off and cancel it until next time you shop here” *wink*). It was amazing! Not only did we drop $300 on bed linens, we also spent another $100 on pregnancy outfits for my wife that we hadn’t planned on buying.

The Bottom Line: So JCPenney, here are my thoughts for you. To support you/”the gays”, my wife and I spent an entire weekend day, about 80 miles driving, and a lot of energy in your stores (that were still open) and didn’t buy a single thing. And I’m a straight guy. Do you even understand the demographic you are courting? The Gay-DINK (Dual Income No Kids) has no time for your sand paper like 300 thread count sheets or your complete lack of customer service. Plus it’s not like Atlanta is some back water market, in fact Atlanta is one of the gayest cities in America, so if it doesn’t play here, where will it?

I think it’s great that (for some reason) you are pushing the ”lesbian and gay” angle, but it’s like someone trying to leverage a smart car dealership to the middle aged/mid-life crisis guys when what they really want are Corvettes. Without the product, modern stores, properly trained staff and not to mention a website (and probably an app) that actually loads and lets me buy something, you are doomed.

Enjoy these last few minutes in the spotlight before it fades and your old stores become lazer tag arenas. Which I’m sure is what the “Million” Moms (actually count on Facebook: 40K) were thinking when they decided to move on to other gay culture destroying traditional values, like Modern Family.

P.S. why didn’t your Mother’s Day ad (below) get all this attention?

I guess America is cool with hot chicks being together (or were we up in arms about some other trivial news or reality show final that week).

I was completely caught off-guard when one night without warning, my wife, who was several months pregnant at the time, brought someone else into our bed. At first I was excited, I mean guys are always talking about having 2 partners at the same time as if it is the holy grail, so I thought we should go for it.

Plus, she seemed like she really wanted it, even more than I did, and said that it would make her sleep better afterwards. However this partner would turn out to be much more than I bargained for, and ultimately more than I could handle.

I should probably say before this gets too “Penthouse Forum” that the third party in our bed was a Leachco Snoogle body pillow.

Now, if you are one of those guys whose partner didn’t use one of these bed-real estate sucking monsters, let me clue you in. It’s a giant person-sized and 12″ wide extruded pillow with a curve at the bottom for “temperature control” and another at the top to cradle her head meanwhile running down her back (or front) for extra support.

And I get it: she is growing another human inside her while her body is doing all kinds of crazy things to make her uncomfortable. Besides, before the body pillow, we had 3 extra pillows in the bed that would get wielded like some kind of crazy tri-nunchuck in the middle of the night as she made adjustments to get comfortable. The problem was that as she would be tossing and turning and adjusting, it was only a matter of time before one end of that pillow would get thrust in a way that caused me to dream of being Ed Norton in the American History X NSFW prison scene.

I know that she wasn’t violating me with a pillow on purpose, and that the urgency with which she was trashing the pillow indicated the sudden level of discomfort that she was experiencing. If I drew a “me or the pillow” line, I knew I was not going to win that fight, and rightfully so. It should be said that it is one of my prime directives to make sure that my wife is happy and comfortable at all times, and especially when she was pregnant. So, off to the guest bed I went.

It’s funny how not sleeping with your partner can cause such an unexpected reaction.

I mean, at this point I was still traveling 3-4 days a month for work and was sleeping in hotels overnight, but hotel sleep doesn’t count. It’s like a hall pass of the bed-using-world. And the guest bed was great at first. You have all this space to yourself and nobody is shining a light in your face to read by or stealing all the covers during the night. But then as time goes on you realize that you don’t get those sweet morning snuggles or the puzzled questions about who wadded up all the covers and tossed them on the floor on her side of the bed. I even tried getting in bed with her and waiting for her to fall asleep and then sneaking off only to return just before she got up in the morning.

Ultimately it became a mixed bag of sleeping arrangements that got me through that next 6 months.

It was a banner day in my house when a month or so after our son was born that she announced that the body pillow was going into storage (YAY!)…

…until last week.

Now that she is a few months pregnant again, it has reemerged from it’s closet shelf slumber and reinfested our bed. I was amazed at how quickly I had blocked out this part of the pregnancy that was such a part of my life only 18 months ago. In fact, it made me quiver for a minute as a stay-at-home-dad wondering what else I had forgotten about already?

After the first night, and a repeat performance by the pillow, we had a long chat about how we were going to deal with it this time. I know that her going without the body pillow was a non-starter for both of us, so this time we talked about getting a king sized bed. We had been thinking about getting a new mattress anyway, and since we are both over 6′ it makes sense. Not to mention that it will give the kids and I extra room to reenact the Apollo 11 landing.

Luckily, Memorial Day weekend was coming up, and what better way to show your gratitude for the troops than by saving some money on a mattress? (seriously, Thank You Troops!)

It has now been a week since we upgraded to bed 2.0 and so far it has worked out well for both of us. I still sleep on a 16″ edge sliver of the bed, but now my wife and her pillow have basically a queen sized mattress to themselves. Which seems to be keeping the three of us pretty happy, so far.

I know that not everyone can afford the expense or floor space to switch to a king size bed, so I’m not suggesting that guys do this. It’s just fortunate for me that it worked out this way and enabled me to stop wearing the chastity belt I had fashioned late one night from my pillowcase.

One of the things that we decided as parents early on was that it was important to us to continue to do the things we love to do (in our pre-baby lives) and to socialize our kid(s) into “our lifestyle” rather than completely restructuring our entire lives around them. This meant finding a way to continue to go out for meals at some of our favorite restaurants without being the parents with the screaming kid that everyone wishes would just leave (fodder for another post).

Our Highchair Dilemma: one of the first things we noticed was that a lot of our favorite places didn’t even have high chairs, and the ones that did were pretty nasty. So step 1 was to buy a fabric cover so that our son was at least sitting in a clean chair (not that we are freaky about germs or anything, but I wouldn’t sit in a chair if it were as dirty as what they offered us for our son). This worked fine, doubled as a shopping cart cover, but was bulky to carry around and no help when the establishment didn’t have highchairs.

Lobster in the Big City

This past winter we were planning a weeklong trip to NYC and I decided to leave the bulky fabric chair cover at home and invest in a clamp on highchair. After looking at a lot of models I settled on the phil&teds Lobster chair. I liked the compact and light weight design it offered and included travel bag, especially because I was planning on carrying everything on me or in the umbrella stroller. Once in the field I discovered that the Lobster was a real lifesaver…80% of the time.

The Good:

• The C-clamp style attachment design lets it attach extremely-securely to tables (from 0.8 – 3.75″ thick) with no concerns of it coming off.
• It folds up really quickly and compactly with one hand, is light (under 4lbs) and easy to slip into your tactical Daddy bag.
• It holds our load of a son comfortably with the built in 5-point harness and can support children up to 37 pounds.

The Bad:

• The C-clamp style attachment design does have limitations as to what it can attached to: tables with a support lip underneath the table surface, glass top or center supported. This ruled out about 20% of the tables we encountered.
• Like all clamp and hook on seats, you should never use them on tables with a center pedestal only. However, two of our favorite restaurants have these tables so we do and just keep our foot securely on the support leg with a chair under his seat (I’m not recommending this to others!).
• The plastic tray that comes with it is great so that your kid’s food can stay off the table, however the tray does not have a mechanical attachment to the seat, so after 15 seconds it gets removed and used as a toy. We threw ours away after the second use and have to pick up all his food off the floor (see below for response from phil&teds)
• Lots of people complain about the travel bag that comes with it because it has no closure, but we never had an issue with it (see below for response from phil&teds)

What’s New?

I spoke to Lindsey Heckel, Marketing and Graphic Designer at phil&teds, on the phone this week and she told me that the travel bag that had come with the chair was “packaging” and never intended to be used as a carrying case. The new models that started shipping in April, 2012 were no longer going to include the bag as they were now being sold in cardboard boxes. She also said that customers can purchase the bag directly from phil&teds, however no MSRP has been set for the bag at this time.

I also asked her about the seemingly universal complaint from users about the unsecured tray design. Heckel said that she had not heard that feedback from customers and that she would talk to the design team about it and email me. Her reply said “I talked with our customer care in North America and they said they have never had a complaint about the food tray on the Lobster”. This is despite the fact that of the two reviews phil&teds posted on their own website, one of them devotes an entire paragraph to the tray problem once you click the link to the full review.

Heckel also wanted me to mention that the Lobster Chair won the 2012 Cribsie award in “The one thing you should never travel without” category. I’ve never heard of this, so I spent some time looking at the Cribsie website and it does not explain much, or show how many votes each product got, so I’m guessing it’s a mom’s popularity contest? Which is seemingly confirmed by the website’s non-Dad inclusive tag line: “You nominate. We select. Moms vote.”

The Bottom Line

At $70 it’s one of the most expensive seats on the market, (and is $20 more than the similarly-designed Metoo clamp on chair), but I would buy it again. I am a little frustrated that the travel bag (or “packaging”) is no longer included and that the price point didn’t go down at all.

However, I wish that when we were in NYC I had carried a case of these chairs with me, because I’m sure that I could have sold them to the parents that were constantly coming up and asking me about it in restaurants, wishing they had one too.

The real bottom line…

(this article originally appeared in-part on Huckleberry’s site – check it out!)

Diapers are diapers, right? As a first time dad thinking about all the things that you are going to need once you find out your are going to have a baby, diapers seems like they would be last on the list – they were on mine anyway. Especially with all the cool Daddy-Tech out there to play with, why would you even want to think about diapers?

Until, of course, that night at dinner when my (slightly crunchy) wife said “I think we should use cloth diapers.” This hit me from so far out of left field that I knew I needed to throw myself headlong into becoming a cloth diaper expert ASAP before answering her question…and it was a bigger challenge than you might think.

Research Phase

On one side, you have a lot of people that claim that disposable diapers take from 75-400 years to break down in a landfill. With a baby using 9-13 diapers a day that’s a lot of land fill – the 3^rd most common item by volume in landfills. On the other side, you have people claiming that all the extra water and electric usage to wash cotton diapers causes more harm on the environment. In the end, without finding any solid data to support either side, we went with cotton. Mostly because (honestly) I thought it was a hardcore bad-ass Daddy thing to do.

Cloth diapers have changed a lot since I was a kid in the 70’s when you had a piece of cotton that was safety pinned on and then a pair of rubber shorts were placed over it to try and stop leaking. While those are still available, most people have switched to “Pocket Diapers” which consist of a an outer liner that looks pretty much the same as a disposable diaper in configuration but contains a cloth liner capable of holding removable super absorbent fabric pads inside.

Pocket Diapers: also good in a pinch as oven mitts.

With lots of different companies making these pocket diapers – all with slightly different features and appearances – we decided to buy several types/brands and see what was going to work best for us. With prices running about $15-$20 each we decided to go with the “one size” design that adjusts quickly and simply between sizes as your baby grows from 1 month to the end of wearing diapers (as opposed to the fixed size option).

Game Day

All the different-color diapers looked so good arranged above our changing table, and I could not wait to use them. You, unfortunately, have to wait until your kids are about 1-2 months old before they fit into these diapers. So we started out using disposables, and I’ll admit – it was pretty easy, and took me a while to get used to cloth once we switched. However, once we did switch, both my wife and I noticed that our son’s rashes pretty much disappeared. Also, once you have a system in place, it becomes very easy to deal with reusable cloth diapers.

Year 1 Findings

Now that we are one year in, we have really found our groove with diapering – which does now include using a disposable at night due to the amount of leaking we were getting from the cloth (no matter how many liners we were adding). We have also found that even though all of these different brands look pretty much the same, they do have subtle difference that become really important, and below is a summary of our findings:

• Brands
• FuzziBunz (one size): these leaked on our newborn despite trying all possible settings, and the fact that he was in the listed weight range. When I contacted FuzziBunz customer support, I was told that “maybe he is too small” (again, despite being in the correct weight range). We also spent a lot of time adjusting all of the elastic settings trying to find something that wasn’t too tight, because they were leaving red marks on his legs, and something that was too big and leaked…and just when we would find a perfect setting he would grow and we would start all over.
• bumGenius (one size): these function pretty much the same as the FuzziBunz except that they don’t have all the elastic adjustments, which we thought was going to be a negative but turned out to work better than we thought. The pad inserts were also a little bigger than the FuzziBunz, which gave them a bulkier look (to an already big-looking diaper) but they worked well and leaked much less than the FuzziBunz.
• bumGenius Elemental (one size): This is the latest offering from BumGenius and we have used 3 of these diapers for the past few months. The outside is the same as the previous bumGenius design but the inside now has 2 organic cotton flaps sewn into the diaper so you don’t have to stuff then liners inside the diapers anymore. It a great idea, and is more absorbent (because it has 2 liners) but is SO THICK that it can make it hard to get pants over the diaper unless the pants are pretty roomy.
• Flip (one size): When I was at the store, these looked like the worst design because they don’t have all the adjustment and insert bells and whistles of the other pocket diapers, and really just looked like a shell for the insert. As it turns out this is our favorite for just that reason! Unlike FuzziBunz and bumGenius pocket diapers with the sewn in polar fleece liner, the Flip can be reused several times before washing (which is not as gross as it first sounds) because it IS just a shell for the liner. As long as the soil is only on the liner and either does not soak through or you rinse it off, you can simply put a clean liner in and reuse it. This is not the case 100% of the time, but more often than not, you can. This also makes it much easier to change and keep him in cloth when on the go, and (we’ve not tried them, but) you can also get disposable liners for the Flip.
• Snaps vs. Velcro: Most brands of diapers offer the same design in both snap and velcro closures and when I was looking at them I was told by several cotton diaper veterans that the velcro is great until the kids learn how to undo them – then it’s a nightmare. So we started with snaps right off the bat and they are fine now that we are used to it.
• DIY: you can look on YouTube for many videos on how to sew your own pocket diapers from fabric available at most fabric stores, but I found the cost in materials to be not much of a savings versus just buying them. And frankly, once your kid arrives, sewing is about the last thing you have time for!
• Sprayers and Liners: Many sources recommend that you buy a sprayer head that attaches to the water feed line on your toilet to spray waste out of the diapers before putting them into the bin, but we heard a lot of negative reviews about them so we opted to just use wipes to push the waste into the toilet. You can also buy flushable liners that look like thick toilet paper to put in the diapers to catch the waste. We found these to be extremely useful once we switched to solid foods and they do catch 75%-100% of the waste and are simply removed, flushed, and have caused no problem with our sewer system.

(Our) Winner

Flip Diapers w/ organic liner

Everyone is different and has different likes/needs in products, but for us the Flip is by far the best product for how we live. If you can afford it, I would encourage you to buy at least 1 of each product and try it for yourself, as well as looking on Criagslist for used ones that you might try first before making the investment in 8-10 of the ones you like. And with our 2^nd child on the way, these diapers are really starting to pay for themselves versus all the money we would be spending on disposable diapers.

Why am I doing this? You can watch endless hours of reviews on YouTube and read days worth of “Mommy” cloth diaper blogs (like I did), but until you actually strap these things on your kid, you have no idea what you are really in for. Especially because I never found anyone that posted pictures or video of damage from the day after your kid had the bean medley for the first time! And on those days (like yesterday) when it’s really-really nasty and you are scraping poop off of the liner into the toilet, and it’s all over your hands, you might ask yourself “why am I doing this?” but the lack of rashes, early potty training and general good health of your baby’s parts are all worth it, not to mention all the money you save and can put toward vintage toys that you swear to your wife you are going to share with the kids.

Have a favorite cloth/reusable diaper brand of your own? Let us know in the comments below!