By Guest Blogger, Richard Jones, A Dude’s Guide
Let’s face it. Most dudes are pretty much the walking definitions of clueless when it comes to family, parenting and taking care of babies for more than the five seconds it takes to pass them off to someone who isn’t completely freaked out by the thought they’ll drop the squalling bundle of joy. I mean, it’s not like you can fix up a dropped baby with a liberal application of duct tape. And you can’t quiet that squealing with WD-40. So what’s a dude to do?
Don’t panic. There’s always The Dude’s Guide To. . . well, almost everything.
The Dude’s Guide started three years ago when Barry Robert Ozer and Richard Jones (that’s me) realized we weren’t alone in our pre-child, child-rearing or child-fearing years. Together, Barry and I have helped raise seven kids, his two girls and two boys and my three boys. We’re sure our wives helped somewhere in there, but it gets a bit lost sometimes in the memories of crying and screaming. Oh, and all the noises the little dudes and dudettes made. That too.
We survived without any major injuries. To us. We’re sure the kids will probably come back and hit us with some pretty severe therapy bills somewhere down the line, but that’s a worry for another day. Because we survived, we wanted to help out the dudes who came after.
I know when my wife, known to me as She Who Must Be Obeyed, was pregnant, I wanted to learn what it took to be a good dad. But the idea of trawling through all those 1,000-page doorstop tomes she was lugging around frightened me more than the idea of trying to take away the last cup of coffee from a caffeine-addicted chimp on the bad end of a three-day bender.
I needed something short. Something practical. Something with a few tips and tricks. Something that would show me how to change a diaper without getting poo smeared all over. Unfortunately, I had to learn from experience, rather than reading. One thing I learned about? Gravity. Gravity is not your friend, dude. You’d be surprised what babies, little dudes and teenagers can excrete. And all of it will drip on you when you’re not looking.
So we bought some rain ponchos and splat mats and learned about the joys of baby wipes and diaper bags and found out why mini-vans really are cool. (We’re hoping if we keep repeating that enough it’ll eventually become true.)
At our site, A Dude’s Guide, we talk about it all. Everything from sex – how parents can still have it and how they can talk to the little dudes about it – to making your home safe from teenagers. Think of us as Smarty Pants, only without that pesky extra X chromosome.
We’ll be back here on a semi-regular basis with cool stuff, bad jokes and probably far too much talk about poop. If you’re in need of a more frequent fix, you can always visit us at http://adudesguide.com.
