The last couple weeks I haven’t been posting as much because my wife, son and I have been anxiously awaiting the birth of a new baby boy. On Saturday morning that birth finally happened. I am pleased to announce my second son Connor has been born. With my first son, my wife was induced so the labor was a slow process that lasted around 14 hours. This time around was the complete opposite. Her water broke around 1:25 am and Connor was born at 3:43.

When my wife woke me up we started to get ready to go quickly, but didn’t rush things. We made sure that everything was ready to go, called my mother in law to come watch my son and waited for her to arrive. About 20 minutes after we woke up, my wife said the contractions were around 2 minutes apart. At this point I really began worrying. Luckily my mother-in-law got to our house and we were headed to the hospital.

For those of you who haven’t done this yet, the drive to the hospital was one of the strangest and terrifying experiences. Since I was obviously driving I had to weigh in so many things such as how fast should I drive? Should I run a red light? Are we going to make it? I wanted to drive safe, but I had a bad feeling this labor was going much faster than expected. The last thing I wanted was to be delivering my own son on the side of the freeway at 2am.

We made it to the hospital and I could tell my wife was starting to experience a lot of pain. It seems like the hospital staff was just moving so slow. We had to get checked in, wait for someone to get us in to triage, wait for the examination, etc. While sitting in triage, all I could think about is the pain my wife was going through. I would feel so much better when we got into the room and she received the epidural. Unfortunately we had to wait to get a room and she needed to get a whole bag of fluid in her through the iv before she could get the epidural. Looking at that bag and seeing the amount of pain she was in, I felt that things were just moving too slowly by the hospital staff and too quickly with the labor.

Finally we got into the room and my wife was begging for the epidural. First she had to sign papers and consent forms. It was awful for her to jump through so many hoops to get the relief she needed. I stayed back trying to make her as comfortable as I could knowing my hands were completely tied.

Eventually the anesthesiologist made it to our room. Just as he was prepping her, she felt the need to push…..Looks like we….she had to do this the old fashion way. I was mortified as was she. It felt awful wishing there was something I could do, but once again my hands were tied. I stayed by her side and just said everything I could to encourage her. I looked at the anesthesiologist and felt bad as I could see he wanted to help but at this point there was nothing he could do. I thanked him for trying and turned back to my wife.

About 3-5 min later she gave birth to our son. After a couple minutes of intense screaming and pain it was over. I was so proud of my wife. I will admit that I had a tear or two in my eye, not from the birth, but more for the courage that she displayed. She didn’t like the idea, and did everything in her power to avoid it, but once she knew she had to do it, she gave it everything she had and fought through the pain.

In the end it worked out as she actually recovered a lot faster than she did with our first son. Once the baby was out things were downhill. To all of those future fathers out there, do everything you can to support the future mother. You may not feel like you have a lot of control, and you don’t, however make sure you are at their side and give them as much love as you can. Whether they get the luxury of an epideral or have to do it naturally, they are going through a lot to give you that kid. Make sure you let them know how special they are for doing so.

While some problems with your toilet can be quite serious and require a plumber or even a replacement, one issue can usually be fixed for about $5 and 10 minutes of your time. If your toilet flushes and the stops after the tank fills you are probably dont’ have any issues, however sometimes the quiet doesn’t last. If your toilet begins to run again a couple minutes after it has stopped refilling the tank, you probably have a leak somewhere. If the leak is in the tank itslef, you could have a little bit more expensive replacement on your hands, but 95% of the time you just have a coroded stopper (also called a flapper valve).

The stopper is the rubber piece inside the toilet which lifts up when you flush and then closes down on the drain connecting the tank to the bowl stopping too much water from getting into the bowl. You can get a new stopper at your local hardware store for somewhere between $3 and $10. Once you have purchased the stopper, open the tank, flush the toilet and grab the old stopper once the water has drained. Typically the stoppers come right off as they are attatched to the chain and a couple hooks at the base of the tank. Pull off the old stopper and grab your replacement. Sometimes the replacement has a rubber piece attatching the two arms of the stopper. Remove this piece and rehook the arms of the stopper to the tank and attatch the chain. Flush and you are good to go…..ummm bad choice of words…

About a year ago Nick Jr. launched a new show called Pinky Dinky Doo. Sounds kind of girly, but my son insisted on watching it. After watching it a couple times with him I began to realize what a great unique show it is. Pinky Dinky Doo revolves around a girl named..you guessed it…Pinky Dinky Doo. Typically there is some real life problem or issue that needs to be addressed. An example is what to do if you have to try a new food at a friends house. Once the problem is identified Pinky and her brother Tyler go to the Story Box where Pinky makes up a story and tells it to her brother. The story has to do with the current problem identified earlier and is resolved at the end.

What makes this show unique is its focus on language skills. Each episode features a vocabulary word, which is not your typical preschool word. For example, Tyler was really into playing his video game one episode. Pinky taught everyone that he was “engrossed” in the game. I have always felt it is good to challenge kids like this. If there is an episode they really like, chances are they will remember that word forever.

Each story ends with Pinky thinking hard and having a big idea. She goes through the process of how she came up with the idea and everyone is happy. The nice part about this show is that it doesn’t end there. After the story Pinky quizzes the kid with questions about her story, testing their comprehension. She will ask questions like what event came first; who was this character and what did he do; etc. After a few episodes the kids pick up on the fact that they need to pay attention to the story so they can answer the questions right afterwards. This concept really gets the kids involved and ends up teaching great listening and language skills.

I would definitely recommend this show for anyone with a kid between the ages of 3 and 6. It’s pretty gender neutral as some stories focus on things Tyler likes to do as well. Check out Nick Jr’s Pinky Dinky Doo site to learn more.

Most of us are in debt of some form or another. While debt is never a good thing, sometimes it’s just necessary such as mortgages, cars, school etc. Planning to get rid of your debt can seem very daunting. If you have a lot of it, you probably feel that you have no money to spare and no way to pay it off. There is a technique that you may be able to use to help get you on your way…snowballing.

Snowballing debt is how a lot of people get into trouble. Perhaps they take on more debt to pay off other debts and so on until there is so much debt that there is no escape. However, we can use the same snowball analogy in a positive way. Lets take on the instance where a family has a mortgage, a car loan, a school loan and a couple credit cards. The good kind of debt snowballing says to examine your loans and look to find a balance between the debt that is easiest to pay off and the one that has the highest interest with pay off ease taking priority. Once you have found that first debt, take every extra penny you have to pay that debt off. Continue to make payments on your other debt, but don’t go out of your way to do anything extra.

Lets say you typically spend about $200 a month on that first debt. Maybe with an extra $100 a month towards it, you can get it paid off in about 4-5 months. After that first debt, lets say your second debt typically costs you about $400 a month. Well now instead of just having that extra $100 to help it out, you need to take the extra $100 plus the $200 you were paying off the first debt with and put it towards this debt. Once this debt is paid off you now have $700 plus your normal payout for the third debt and so on.

With debts such as car loans, it’s good to pay them off, but make sure to store a little bit of cash in savings in the case that you need a new car. While you can pay off the car loan, eventually you will need another car. Hopefully by that time you will be well on your way to debt free and have some savings to pay for that car with cash, or a very small short term loan.

Many people enjoy annoying their kids. Previously we gave 5 great ways to annoy your kids as can be read here 5 Ways To Annoy Your Kids. Here are 5 more ways to annoy your kids.

• For those of you who have teenagers out there that like to slam doors. After they slam the door tell them they did it wrong and show them how to do it properly.
• Every time you want a can of soda or beer from the refrigerator, ask your son or daughter “Do I have a son, or don’t I have a son”. Of course if you have a daughter replace son with daughter.
• Become friends with your teenager on Facebook.
• Announce that you have to use the bathroom in front of their friends.
• When in the car, turn on your favorite radio station and sing…loudly

Do you have a fun way to annoy your kids? Post it below and we may feature it in our next round of ways to annoy your kids.