But either way, staying home gives you an opportunity to get around to those “do it yourself” type things. Dad Center published an article last week called Maintain Your Electric Water Heater. It comes with diagrams and the whole 9. Even from a not so handy guy it all sort of makes sense. I remember last month our furnace was acting up and not our water heater but hey close enough.

But seriously check this out. Just a reminder that this is for electric and not gas water heaters as they have different components. Here is an intro:

An electric water heater doesn’t have a lot of components to it. Normally one to two elements, a line coming in, a line going out, some electricity, a thermostat and of course water. More often than not if you jump into a shower, only to be greeted by cold water, then your element is bad. Thermostats can go bad as well, typically not as often though. This article isn’t going to explain how to test and see which one is bad. Instead, I want to discuss a problem that leads to the elements going bad, and how routine maintenance can extend the life of your elements and water heater.

Read full article.

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Maintaining Your Water Heater

If interested head over there and contact them. I currently have written a couple articles so far for them. See them below:

The Top 5 Hardest Things to Deal With as a Stay at Home Dad
Getting Your Kids Involved in Sports

Post from: Blisstree

Dad Center Looking For Writers

Well, Dennis O’rourke, posted an article up a week ago at Dad Center called Preparing Your Child for Surgery. Dennis makes a list of suggestions:

# Visit the pediatric unit with your child to get them familiar with where they will be staying.
# Ask the doctor if your child can have their favorite meal while in the hospital.
# Use a doll to demostrate in simple terms where your child will be operated on.
# Bring along a toy that your child hasn’t seen in a while that they can play with while in the hospital.
# If the hospital room has a TV with a DVD player, bring your child’s favorite show or movie so that they can watch it while they recover.
Read full list

My brother in-law, age 15, just recently had a kidney transplant. Maybe he could let us know if this list would have helped him.

Post from: Blisstree

Preparing Your Child For Surgery

Over at Dad Center, Todd Krater who authors the A Man Among Mommies blog, writes an article about how it feels to be a stay at home father. It is worth a read.

What I did not realize was that I apparently had some terrible disfigurement that scared the local moms away. If I did not make it a point to go to the park when others did, my son would have never seen another child outside of his brother. After a few months it became clear that many of the moms were ignoring me, and the dads thought I was lazy. Even though I actually work from home, I would get comments like Mr. Mom , Work from home? Yeah, OK. and so on.

Read full article

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A Man Among Mommies

Blogging Baby features four Stay at Home Dads as part of the Tuesday routine of tidbits from daddy blogging.

Doug Neal from Christian Dads tells us what the meaning of a father is. “As strange as it may sound, just having a child doesn’t make you a father. Fatherhood is something much deeper and more profound than an adult male hanging around the house doing whatever.”

Dennis understands the ups and downs of naptime. Read his article called The ABC’s of a Toddler’s Nap Schedule…

Elizabeth over at Career and Kids touches on the supposed bill that would require employers to provide their employees with four hours of paid leave every month to go and spend time in their child’s classroom.

Post from: Blisstree

Speedlinking – January 23, 2007

Did you buy an infant car seat because it was the popular brand that everyone else had? If you did, you may not have bought one that is actually safe. According to a recent study from Consumer Reports, only two out of 12 infant seats they tested performed well (the Baby Trend Flex-Loc and the Graco SnugRide with EPS). The tests conducted by Consumer Reports were at higher speeds than those required by federal guidelines, but apparently one of the seats tested failed even at the lower speeds.

Read full article

Update: Daddy Types has more on this too.

Post from: Blisstree

How Safe Are Infant Car Seats?

OK it is finally official. I did jump the gun a week or so ago and announced its opening a bit prematurely. But at any rate, Don Leiser, a Stay at Home Dad has created another site called Dad-Center – Parenting with a Dad-Center Bias. It is a site devoted to dads with all the content written by dads. You can find tips about parenting, technology, DIY help and much more.

I will also be writing for this online Dad Magazine. Dadzine. Daddazine. Whatever you prefer to call it. So go take a look and browse through some of the articles.

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Dad Center Officially Launches

Today is the launch of a new online dad magazine called Dad Center. The founder of the magazine, Don Leiser, is also the founder of the well known stay at home dad forum at dadstayshome.com.

A group of dads have been preparing for this day to launch this new site. I have been a small part of this and have submitted an article. I plan to be writing more for Dad Center and look forward to it. My first article is called: Getting Your Kids Involved in Sports. My driving force behind this article was initially in response to so many people who have a negative perception regarding school sports. There have been several negative articles that pertain to kids and sports and, in turn, has brought on a fear of allowing kids to participate in sports.

I grew up playing sports and I am fully aware of the negative connotations, the problems and issues that arise, and not all situations are ideal. So should we just avoid problems or face them? Can’t we work hard to make things better? I find that there are less than ideal situations in every day life but that doesn’t mean we should go hide under a pillow. But with that said there are so many good things about getting kids involved in sports that don’t make the news headlines, and can really shape a child. I also would like to add that parents need to be involved responsibly. Without the parents involvement in your childrens decision to play sports can really make it difficult for children to overcome any negative aspects we all are aware of.

But, the benefits I address in the article are:

1. Teaches your child to be a team player (not a ball hog)
2. Makes healthy kids
3. Learn from failure
4. Improves confidence
5. Learn about yourself

So go read it and let me know what you think. Do you have anything else to add?

Post from: Blisstree

Dad Center – A New Online Dad Magazine