A new Bugaboo cup holder?

About a month ago I modified a cup holder to fit onto my Bugaboo frog. Although it's far from perfect, it's working out OK for me. I'm not sure what I started but it seems someone else has come up with a new solution. A Daddy Types reader has managed to make the Fold Up Stroller Drink Holder from Safety 1st work with the Bugaboo handle. There aren't any instructions for attaching it (maybe it just works with the Bugaboo like every other stroller), but there is a picture.

It looks a bit studier than my solution (which would definitely be an upgrade) but it doesn't look like you can take it off very easily; nor is the drink level.  In the picture he also has one of the bag clips turned inward, so maybe he tried my way and wasn't satisfied. I'll have to get my hands on one of these cup holders and try it out for myself.

MacGyver A Bugaboo Cup Holder, Round 2  [Daddy Types]

Shop for Bugaboo strollers at Baby Unverse.com

News links for Friday.

Paddling debate shifts to the home [Houston Chronicle] 
Like I needed another reason not to move to Texas, a state representative there has ” filed a bill that gives parents the right to use corporal punishment for "the reasonable discipline" of their children.” I guess it’s not enough that there isn’t any law in any of the 50 states prohibiting spanking your kid at home; in Texas some people need a law giving them the go-ahead. The representative proposing this is the same guy who (successfully) defended a grandmother who whipped her 14 year old grandchild with an extension cord. An EXTENSION CORD?

Dads Urged to Be Involved in Child Health [ABC News via AP]
In a new report, the American Academy of Pediatrics wants us dads to be more involved with our child’s health care, and wants pediatricians to listen to what the dads have to say. It seems obvious, but I hope it helps pediatricians realize they should listen to both parents at the visit, and not just what the mom has to say.

Parents search for family friendly games [The Age (Australia)]
Even though I’m addicted right now to Halo 2 on XBOX, I realize it probably won’t be a game I’ll be playing with Madame anytime soon. What surprised me though was that over half of videogames sold in 2003 were rated E (the lowest rating – “E”veryone). I would have thought it was less.

Oh my god it's Arlo.

A few years ago my friends and I got kind of obsessed with this obscure sock-puppet show on MTV called Sifl & Olly. The genius behind it was this guy Liam Lynch. He's done other stuff since then, but most people probably know him from his song "United States of Whatever" that got some radio play about a year ago.

Anyway, his sister (who runs a pretty cool website called Jenville) had a baby boy recently (named Arlo) and Liam created a DVD for him of songs he'd written called "The Uncle Liam Show." One of the videos (a theme song for Arlo) is posted on Jenville and let me tell you, it's pretty awesome. Not to sound like a super-fan or anything, but I wish she'd post the rest, or maybe Liam would sell a kid's DVD or something. I have a feeling the rest of the songs are just as good.

Via ideashak (if you're not checking in on ideashak every now and then, you really should be).

Change the baby on the road.

MDD reader Creaza tipped me to this interesting patent pending - the "Bucket seat fold out diaper changing table." According to this post on transportTrends.com, it was invented by the guy who created one of the first tilt steering columns, and he plans to build them into Chrysler minivans. Sounds like another bulky, cumbersome child care product no one really needs - in other words, the mother's milk of this blog.

The best part is the abstract, the majority of which is excerpted below.

... The table includes a surface member that provides a surface area, a first open end and a second open end. A first panel and a second panel are arranged within the surface member. The first panel slides out of the first open end of the surface member and retracts back into the surface member via the first open end. The second panel slides out of the second open end of the surface member and retracts back into the surface member via the second open end. The first panel and the second panel are used to provide additional surface area for facilitating the changing of an infant or other activity requiring table surface area.

Insert your own "surface member" joke here.

Bucket seat fold out diaper changing table. [US Patent and Trademark Office]

Gen X Dad.

The Boston Globe ran a great article this past Sunday about "Gen X" dads (ages 26-40) and new attitudes towards fatherhood. It's well worth the read, if only because it takes a complicated subject and treats it like a complicated subject (unlike the NY Times' Desperate Househusbands article last month). There all kinds of dads and fatherhood situations, and most of us are doing the best job we can, albeit differently than our fathers did. The article interviews thoughtful dads who neither complain about or glorify their situations, but just explain how they've managed their dad-life. It's great - the best article about fatherhood I've read since I started paying attention to fatherhood articles.

Gen X Dad by Patricia Wen [Boston Globe]
link courtesy of Daddy Types and the imminent dad (and fellow Red Sox fan apparently) over at new dad blog More Diapers.

Darth Tater.

Call me a geek, but this rules me so much I want to buy three. One for Madame, one for me, and one to keep in the box.

OK. I'm a geek.

Darth Tater (goddamn that's awesome) link via Boing Boing via Wonderland.

Fathers 4 Justice evicted.

All the time I've been writing this blog I've been avoiding writing about the UK father's rights group Fathers 4 Justice. Not that I don't think what they are doing (philosophically) is a good thing, but mostly because I don't live in the UK, and I think scaling Buckingham Palace dressed as Batman is kind of lame. But OK, OK. I give in.

Instead of climbing stuff, they've now taken to storming compounds. Protesters from Fathers 4 Justice raided the set of UK reality television show Celebrity Big Brother early this morning. (You know the show - make a bunch of celebrity strangers live in a prison house together and tape their every movement.)  They didn't get into the house, but caused a stir and, once again, got their antics in the newspaper. I can't decide if what they are doing helps or hurts their cause, but it sure is getting them exposure, which is I guess what they want after all.

Favorite quote: "[Big Brother security was] a damn sight tighter than at Buckingham Palace."

Men arrested for Big Brother raid  [BBC News]

To bib, or not to bib?

Babies spit up. Of all the gross things involved with an infant, in my opinion spit up is low on the list. But now that Madame is eating solid (well, kind of solid) foods like sweet potatoes and carrots, the color of her spit up has gone from a nice white that can be wiped away to a bright, staining orange. Not wanting her to puke all over her clothes, recently I've started to put a bib on her in the morning with the rest of her outfit.

But yesterday it occurred to me that this technique is kind of like covering your sofa in plastic so you won't ruin the sofa. Putting your little girl in a cute outfit that your friends gave her for Christmas and then putting a bib over it kind of defeats the purpose of the outfit in the first place. But then, when she spits up all over it when you're out at the store, there's really nothing to do but change the outfit.

These are the kind of ridiculous dilemmas I never expected before I became a father. I guess I gotta go buy some better looking bibs.

News links for a Wednesday.

Study advises limiting children's use of mobile phones [Computerworld]. Here's another vague and not particularly useful study about cellphone use. Just another reason that cellphone toy software isn't such a great idea.

Kraft to announce curbs on food ads to children [Boston Globe]. Corporate responsibility (especially when it comes to advertising to children) is always a good thing right?  I guess my bologna won't have a first or second name anymore.

Relief worker starts at the bottom [The Age (Australia) - subscription or BugMeNot]. If you're like me and still cleaning up after your child's dirty diapers (and still not really happy about having to do it), don't even think about complaining - at least we don't have 100 babies to change. And don't forget to donate.

Mini DVD.

A lesson I learned: when you’re at a convention of thousands of electronics vendors, if someone tells you they are the only people making a particular type of product, it might not be true. After reading on Gizmodo about the Samsung DVD jr. I decided to check it out for myself. It’s an OK idea for a kid’s product: take the somewhat useless mini DVD format (smaller 3 inch discs, up to 80 minutes of program time) and put children’s movies and cartoons on them. The rep at Samsung said that they already had Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, New Line (and unofficially Disney in a week or two) making mini DVDs with their kid’s movies. The Samsung product looked OK. It’s kind of bulky and has a small screen, but the rep assured me that it tested well with the kids. Oh, and it will retail for around $129.99.

Then later on that day I saw mini DVD player from Cyberhome (pictured above). This was basically the exact same thing (same small screen size) except the player had a clamshell design like a Gameboy, didn’t have the rechargeable battery, and it will retail for $99.99. As long as the discs aren’t that expensive it might be something a kid would enjoy, I’m not sure. Both should be available nationwide in March.

CES hodge podge.

Sorry. I’m too tired to write up a great post about my time at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Suffice to say I walked more than I have in a long time looking for cool products to share, but I really wasn’t able to come up with much. I plan to write about a few tomorrow, but for now here are some quick post-trade-show-floor thoughts.

• Like a guy from Olympus (seriously) told me while in line for lunch at the snack bar, if you’re not selling a cell phone, camera or an MP3 player then you need to reevaluate (Olympus is coming out with an MP3 player – the m:robe which looks just as boring as all the other iPod “killers”). Case in point: Oregon Scientific (the people are really known for telling you what the temperature is outside) are now making a Barbie digital camera. Huh?
• Last year it was all about high definition TV, and this year it's the norm. Staring at plasma TVs pumping HDTV signals all day makes my 32 inch RCA at home look kind of sad. But a lot more affordable, that's for sure.
• There were celebrities at CES. I saw came close to many but didn’t speak to any of them. I saw Ted Nugent (the Nuge), Conan O’Brien, Steven Tyler, and Tom Arnold. I was right next to Conan while checking out a pimped out Cooper Mini but didn’t talk to him, which I regretted later. He is going to be the host of the Tonight Show eventually – which is Smithsonian famous and pretty cool – but I feel weird in these situations and I usually just pretend the celebrity I’m standing next to is just some normal seven foot tall red head that I see on TV all the time.
• Tivo is in serious trouble. But the new DVR DirecTV will be coming out with later this year actually looks pretty cool.
• The place couldn’t have been more devoid of children. Hundreds of thousands of attendees and not a single kid. Then at one point I’m walking past a booth and I see a crib, pram and changing table (see picture). Sweet! Someone pimped out a crib with built-in DVD and a booming sub-woofer? No. It’s just a marketing gimmick. (Hitachi disk drives are small like a baby. Duh.)
• Every single electronics company you can possibly think of makes an MP3 player. And all of them aren't as good as the iPod. No matter how much Creative wants you to disagree.
• Don’t even THINK about bringing your stroller or the CES police will beat you down. I have no idea why.

Convergence! Modern day dad at CES.

I’m spending this weekend attending the Consumer Electronics Showcase convention here in Las Vegas. This year I’m going under the auspices of trying to find new products that dads would be into, but really I go to look at the cool TVs. At 1.5 million square feet of space, the convention showrooms are really unbelievably large - think of the biggest car or boat show you were ever dragged to times twenty. And every square foot is full of the latest (and not-so-latest) gadgets, televisions, cameras, and pretty much anything with a computer chip in it. For some it might be hell, but for this gadget freak it’s a lot of fun.

So far I’ve spent a day looking around, and it seems the big buzzword this year is “convergence.” Getting your TV to talk to your refrigerator to talk to your front door to talk to your MP3 player to talk to your digital camera is what apparently everyone is looking for, but no one has. Bill Gates spent a good amount of time talking about how Microsoft is going to get all of this accomplished in his keynote address on Wednesday, and I saw two separate presentations from Panasonic and LG today about how the home of the future is going to be all interconnected, but quite frankly it’s all kind of underwhelming. So I’m going to be able to program my Tivo remotely on the internet? Cool, but I should have been able to do that two years ago. And I can get a refrigerator from LG that will tell me when I’m out of milk and when someone is at the door? Um, I’m actually getting that done quite well on my own, without a computer embedded in the freezer door believe it or not.

After the first day I haven’t really found any great products for kids or anything that’s made me say, “Ah ha! Now that’s going to make a dad’s life easier!” but I’m still looking. Next week I’ll give my full report. In the mean time if there is anything specific you’d like me to check out, <!-- document.write('email me'); // --> and I’ll see what I can do.

Find better blog coverage of CES on Engadget and Gizmodo.

Bugaboo cup holder. Round one results.

So I’ve been living with the cup holder I fixed onto my Bugaboo Frog, and I’m happy to report it works pretty well. I road tested it at the mall, in the airport and on the street where it held my drink (usually a bottle) within arms-reach and without spilling. I was also able to get it on and off of the stroller pretty quickly and stow it away in the bag underneath - even during the pressure cooker of airport security. The cup holder itself doesn’t feel that sturdy, but this is a function of the crappy Prince Lionheart cup holder and not the way I attached it to the stroller.

I did come across one issue though. Usually when I’m out with the stroller for a while I’ll hang the diaper bag over the handlebar of the stroller (using the Bugaboo bag clips). The problem is the drink in the cup holder gets in the way of the strap. This might not happen to your diaper bag (the strap on mine is rather wide) but it’s something to look out for.

In the end I guess I'd give it a B minus. It would be better with a cup holder that was more sturdy, a little better looking, and didn't interfere with the diaper bag. I’m still going to look for other attachable cup holder type devices to see if I can come up with something better, but for now this is working.

Previous: Bugaboo cup holder. Round one.

Shop for strollers and other products from Bugaboo at Amazon.com

News links for a Wednesday.

Here are three things I found online last night:

• More dads are staying at home [Seattle Times]. The Seattle Times wrote an article about stay-at-home-dads that doesn't suck. It's short and uses the ridiculous 2002 census number that Rebel Dad hates so much, but it's still pretty positive. (By the way, congratulations and good luck to Rebel Dad at his new job).
• Babies Recognize Face Structure Before Body Structure [Science Daily]. So I guess when strangers say, "See, she recognizes her daddy," there is some truth to it. Then again, she'll smile at anyone who smiles at her first.
• 'Who's Your Daddy?' sinks to new lows in viewers too [AP]. I have to admit, I saw the end of this show. It was as simultaneously lame and despicable as you'd expect, but also kind of boring. I guess this probably means there won't be a second. Good.

My favorite gift I gave.

Even though this was the first Christmas with my baby girl, I have to say the best gift I gave this year went to my 4 year old nephew - the Discovery Remote Control T-Rex. It's a dinosaur that works with an infrared remote control so you can make it roar, move it's head and mouth and walk forward. The buttons were really easy for him to figure out how to work, you just needed to make sure you pointed the remote directly at it. It even has rubbery skin and eyes that move when it moves it's mouth.

This was the dinosaur toy of my youth. Although it was rad, it's nice to see that things are improving.

Airplane successes and a question.

Happy New Year. We made it back and forth from the east coast for the New Year's weekend, which means Madame successfully completed her first airplane trip. I'm happy to report everything went very well - she slept, ate, and fussed about as much as we expected her to. In the end it wasn't as big of a deal as we feared thought it would be. The flight attendant even told us afterwards that "it doesn't get much better than that."

The only real difficulty we had at 10,000 feet was changing the baby. We managed to do it on our lap (which we were only able to do because there were two of us), but it occurred to me, what am I supposed to do when she gets bigger? For that matter, what would I have done if it were just the baby and I flying together? The bathroom in the plane is impossibly small, and unless you had a row of empty seats there aren't many options. I did notice one father change his toddler on the floor of the bathroom with the door open, which I guess is do-able but it seems pretty dirty. I would imagine it would depend on the type of plane you're on (we were on a 737), but are there any tricks I'm missing? Any tips in the comments would be most appreciated.

Urine luck.

At our house there are two things that save the day all the time during change-the-diaper time that we had no idea we would need before we had the baby.

The first are waterproof changing pads that we put on her changing table over the terry cloth cover. When she (occasionally) has an accident mid-change, it more often than not takes the whole mess. Cleanup is way easier - just wipe it up and sanitize.

The second is way more simple but equally important: paper towels. Get a roll and keep it handy in the baby's room, because when the baby pees all over the waterproof pad, it's going to take more than baby wipes to clean it up. And keep reminding yourself that urine is sterile. Poop? Not so much.

Incomprehensible.

The death toll from the tsunami disaster in East Africa and South Asia is expected to surpass 100,000. It's really hard for me to wrap my head around that kind of number, but reading about it while listening to my daughter laughing with my wife downstairs has put some things in perspective. Help out if you can.

DONATE through Amazon.com.

(Thanks to the future dad over at ideashak for the link to donate.)

Toys OUT. Babies IN.

It seems that Toys "R" Us has decided to convert their Union Square store in Manhattan from a Toys "R" Us to a Babies "R" Us. And apparently it's a harbinger of things to come, as Babies "R" Us is quickly becoming the top dog of the "R" empire (though I was surprised to learn that this will be the first Babies "R" Us store in Manhattan). Anyway, I didn't need the Motley Fool to explain to me that Babies "R" Us pretty much has the market cornered on baby product superstores - especially baby shower registries. Maybe it's time to buy some stock.

Babies Take Manhattan  [Motley Fool]
Changing to Babies "R" Us  [NY Newsday]

Bugaboo cup holder. Round one.

As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to baby gear the one thing I hold above all else is my Bugaboo Frog stroller. It’s the best – even the alterna-kid at the car wash told me the other day that my stroller was “tight.” You’re damn right it’s tight. It’s the best stroller out there. My one complaint, and the complaint of other Bugaboo loving dads, is that it has no cup holder. Well, I’ve decided to try to figure something out for myself, and maybe for everyone else.

When thinking about the problem of how to add one, I decided it had to meet these requirements:

1. It needed to hold a drink, either a can or a soda/water bottle comfortably and safely.
2. It needed to be within arms reach while using the stroller.
3. It needed to be flexible enough so that you could take it off and store it without a lot of hassle.

The picture above is my first try at a solution. It came out fairly good, though I haven’t road tested it yet. Here’s how to do it on your own:

• Buy an extra set of Bugaboo Frog bag clips. Attach one bag clip to the left-hand side of foam top of the handle, so that it is facing inside the stroller, not outside. If you already have a set of bag clips attached to the stroller, slide the one facing outward up a bit to fit the new one facing inside below it.
• Buy a Prince Lionheart Click ‘n Go Insulated Cup Holder. I got mine at Babies R Us.
• Open up the cup holder and take the bracket off of the holder. Pull apart the bracket.
• This is the tricky part. Take the outside half of the bracket (the part that doesn’t attach to the cup holder) and file down the inside curve of the bracket. At the low point of the curve the bracket is about 10mm thick. File it down (or use a Dremel or anything else you might have handy) to about 5mm. It’s kind of a pain to file a concave surface (without a round file), but keep at it. Eventually it will be thin enough to snap onto the bag clip – keep trying until it fits on the inside bag clip securely, but make sure you don’t file it down too much so that it’s loose.
• Put the bracket back together using the screws nuts provided. Screw the bracket together completely until you absolutely cannot tighten the screws anymore. The two pieces of the bracket should not be loose.
• Reattach the cup holder to the bracket using the octagonal attachment side. Attach the bracket at a 45 degree angle (so the bracket is at 10 and 4 o’clock in relation to the cup holder).
• Snap the cup holder to the inside bag clip and grab a beverage to go.

So there it is. Feedback is encouraged. I’ll let you know later how it works in real life.

Shop for strollers and other products (NOTE: now including Bugaboo-made cup holders. -mdd) from Bugaboo at Amazon.com