Why didn’t I call this one Dad Sign Language? Since it’s so obviously a necessary skill for a man who has sleeping kids in his life: to say things silently. The thing is, I realized that this applies to men long before they procreate.

Understanding this specialized communication method* should be useful to women. Trying to fathom what is rattling around in the heads of the opposite sex will always be an uphill battle for both sides, so reinforcements are always welcome. Consider this a clear look at the smart kid’s paper in class while the teacher is away in the bathroom. Take your time, in my metaphor she had some bad Mexican food last night.

Okay, maybe men and dads aren’t always the best communicators, even when they’re trying to do it with hand gestures. But we try!

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Our Facebook Page
When you Like us there, you’re saying “Aaaaay” like The Fonz from Happy Days. And that means you’re cool.

Instructional Diagrams
Hmmmm. “Instructional Diagrams”? Maybe only one of those words is accurate. Guess which one?
 

I don’t know many parents that would be pleased to hear their kid(s) would like to have a meeting and go over their job performance…

…And that’s precisely why we made this video.

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We usually have enough guilt, as parents, to travel to the sun and back on our rocket boosters of regret. We can barely hear our grown kids say “I hate you” without our soul crumpling into a speck. Both Andy and I know we aren’t perfect parents with our respective families. It’s obvious, to me at least, that I do an okay job but I would never kid myself about being the ultimate dad. If there were contests or spelling bees to crown someone as a great dad, I’d lose out to some fanny pack-wearing mommy-dad. Hands down.

I’d like to be better. Maybe we should actually institute these employee reviews because let’s face it: we’re employees here and our employers are tough customers.

To watch more of our videos, GO HERE

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Our Facebook Page
It’s a good place to tell us we’re dumb or smart. You decide.

Instructional Diagrams
We should probably read these over again, since we’re about to get fired as parents.
 

Cartoons are loaded with animals. They’re also loaded with lies! It’s true. Uh… I mean it’s true about the lying part, that there are lies. Anyway! Kids’ books, animated shows, toys, breakfast cereal boxes, restaurant activity mats, you name it, they are all filled with breathtaking inaccuracies about the Wild Kingdom.

“So what,” right? We all know that they’re filled with fantasy and artistic license. But at what point exactly do we know this? When we were little grubby grenades of youth ourselves, did we really think about it? We were being kids, learning and having fun using orange crayons to color in cute crocodiles. We knew they were super friendly because their mouths were so gigantic when they smiled, right?

I’m not trashing cartoons in any way—I love them! Probably too much. Waaaaay too much. And I’m in no way suggesting some kind of reform, like an Honesty in Cartooning Act. Frankly, I don’t want to live in a world without cartoons and the thought of “accurate cartoons” makes me want to throw up in my mouth.

However, there’s an interesting side-effect that can occur in life because of these brightly-colored characters we grow up with. I’m saying “we” because I’m really hoping that it wasn’t just me. There’s a point when you start to learn, for real, about some animals. Animals that have even helped to teach you the alphabet by representing a letter.

The opossum goes “Hhhhhhhhhgh!”		The first time I saw a one of these I said something like: “Holy sh#t!!! Radiation-mutated rat from New York!!!” The person I was with laughed and told me it was an opossum. I wanted to say something about the fact that I’d thought they were cuter, like in cartoons, and not so… mutant-rat looking. I may or may not have asked some supremely dumb question about why it wasn’t hanging from its tail in a tree. Ehem. Or something.
Kiss your picnic basket and your ass goodbye.		Winnie the Pooh, Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Fozzie, the Berenstain Bears, Care Bears, take your pick. I don’t have a clear recollection of when this reality hit me upside the head because even now I have to actually force myself, with great difficulty, to think of any of these characters being associated in any way with the beast shown here.
Hippo: “NOM!” Widlebeast: “Ohsh#t-ohsh#t-ohsh#t!”		I can chant the advertising jingle for the kids’ game Hungry Hungry Hippos, a fun board game set with goofy plastic hippos with levers to make them gobble up marbles. When I was about 20-years-old I saw a show about the hippopotamus. I was horrified. I tried to reconcile pictures in my head of the ballet-dancing hippos of Disney’s Fantasia with the documentary commentary, “one of the most aggressive and dangerous creatures in the world” and “it can easily outrun a human.”
Do NOT mess with George. Just hand over the red balloon and run!		I’ve loved Curious George since I was little. All my boys have, especially my youngest. So I recently got curious myself and hit the internet to see what George was. I read that one primatologist concluded that he’s an ape. That no tail plus knuckle-walking rules out all monkeys and narrows down the field to chimps and gorillas. At which point, all the daring episodes of Chimp Eden I’d ever seen came crashing down on me. And I had to shake off a picture of The Man in the Yellow Hat appearing on Oprah after massive reconstructive surgery to the remnants of his face. (Shudder!) I shrugged it off and popped on the TV, Lucas and I laughing as George constructed the worst tree house in the universe. Hilarious!

These were just some examples when the real Circle of Life was brought home to me. I’d like to think I’m not a moron. I tell myself that these mistakes and misconceptions are perfectly understandable when you compare the super boring detachment of school textbooks against the sparkling, sound-effected allure of Saturday morning cartoons. There’s no contest! Those books were made by people who may not have even studied animals in their actual natural habitats, and definitely didn’t color them in with orange crayons like the people who make cartoons do.

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Our Facebook Habitat
Don’t worry. Facebook can not easily outrun a human.

Instructional Diagrams
There are some pictures here that are way more misleading than cartoons. Enjoy.
 

So, here’s idea #7. Enjoy…

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Facebook is an adult amusement park.
It’s got rides and flashy things and drama. And that’s just your ex-boy/girlfriends.

Instructional Diagrams
Because we will learn the dumb out of you.
 

Years ago I bought a leather executive chair that was blonde-colored. Within a week, Cody (at age 6!) wrote Xuck on it (he missed the top line in the F). He used permanent marker and scrawled it in large letters on the broad expanse of the chair’s back. Amid feeling super bummed and being totally confused about how he could have even known that word, let alone write it, when it was never said around him and he could only just barely spell his own name, a small part of me was proud. A VERY small part of me.

You see, it’s not just that your “nice things” get ruined. Yes, that’s the biggest factor, but it’s also the nice things you DON’T buy any more as a sort of preemptive defense tactic against the “fun-spiritedness and creativity” of a kid or the “natural instincts” of a pet that basically amount to the systematic destruction of everything you possess.

Here’s an example. My wife and I are out shopping. I say, “Hmmmmmm-no. Let’s get the cheaper one.” She reassures me we can afford the better, more expensive one, no problem. I turn to her and say intensely, “Look. I will not be able to withstand discovering a peanut butter and jelly sandwich crammed into this really nice DVD player. Let’s get the cheaper one.” We got the cheaper one.

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Our Facebook Page Is Kid-Proof
They can mess up your account if you leave your computer unattended, but you can Like our Facebook page, it’s kid-proof.

Instructional Diagrams
We’ve lost count of how many beverage nasal sprays and woken up babies all the laughter at these has caused.
 

Attention: Adults trying out new things tend to suck pretty badly at them at first. Kids are the same in this respect, only smaller and more energetic. It’s this smallness though, that happens to create a dramatic increase in Peril for nearby adults. You see, for a child, when something goes wrong while learning or practicing, it’s going to happen at a lower height. Hence PERIL! “Hitting foul balls” takes on a new dimension. A really bad dimension.

Remember, it’s hard to teach anyone anything when you’re lying on the ground writhing in pain, so wear the proper protective gear. Feel free to over-do it. Duct-taping a catcher’s mask to the front of your pants may seem silly, but it won’t seem silly the moment you hear the loud clunk of a baseball bat striking it at full speed.

Peril is everywhere children are. Play safely! Teach safely!

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Follow Us on Facebook
Liking our Facebook Page is the BEST way to stay connected to our madness.

More Warning Signs
You’re going to need ‘em.

Instructional Diagrams
You just hit the jackpot.
 

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Previous “My Wife Just Said…”
 

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So, we thought that today, marking the birth of our channel on Kin Community, would be the perfect time to show you our video version of that chart and give a chance for anyone with less of an attention span to get the same “helpful” advice. It’s a channel designed just for women, so this is our contribution. Our channel is like “The View” except with a jock strap and NERF guns. Go figure…

The two of us wouldn’t trade seeing our respective sons come into this world for anything. I know I wouldn’t have let anything stop me from watching my son actually being born. It changed my life.

You can also read my son’s birth story HERE.

SEE THE ORIGINAL DIAGRAM HERE

HAPPY
VALENTINE’S DAY,
VALENTINERS!

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Join us on Facebook
Facebook is not a book of faces. Duh.

Instructional Diagrams
You need diagrams. We need to instruct you. Win/win.
 

It’s both remarkable and inspiring what you guys do, even the trolls. Writing a comment doesn’t just happen. Sharing our stuff on Facebook isn’t by accident. So, please… know that it keeps us going to hear from you when we’ve had 30 hours of sleep between the two of us for over a week.

Feeling like someone is listening is one of the most profound feelings a writer/artist/creative can have.

OUR LINKS – PICK YOUR POISON
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THEIR LINKS
Kin Community YouTube
Kin Community Facebook
HTBAD Babble Dadding Page

I don’t want this to come off like a humblebrag, but inevitably someone will accuse us of it. We’re busy. We’re more alive than we’ve ever been and probably tireder than ever before (with the exception of the birth of our respective sons).

So, all this is meant to say that we’re working hard to try new things and bring you more fun stuff to interact with…

But we want to hear what you think and where you’d like to see this train go. Write a comment below and tell us. We mean it.