Posts Tagged ‘shopping’

Preggers Take Over Live Show

By Daddy Danny Monday, January 30th, 2012

Miranda and I are taking over the DadLabs Live Show on February 15 at 2pm CST/ 3pm EST.  We are calling it the “DadLabs Virtual Baby Shower Live Show”.

Miranda and I have been fortunate to already receive such great products from Baby Bjorn, like the Babysitter Balance, Baby Carrier Air and Spirit, Soft Bib, Dishes, Travel Crib.

The items that we still need are as listed:

Infant Car Seat

Infant Stroller

Diaper Pail

Breast Pump

Hip and stylish Diaper Bag that will make a dad look awesome.

Infant Vacuum Cleaner…no wait, that’s not a real item…yet

Here’s the cool part about the “DadLabs Virtual Baby Shower Live Show”:  Whatever Miranda and I receive on the Live Show, we are giving away the same thing to a lucky viewer.  Now, I don’t know how many of you have been to a baby shower where you get gifts too, but that sounds like the perfect place to be.  So, we are inviting you to watch and win on the DadLabs Virtual Baby Shower Live Show” on February 15th.  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/dadlabs

Dad at a Car Show: Personality Disorder?

By Daddy Clay Thursday, January 12th, 2012

Attending my first car show (as I did this week — the North American International Auto Show in Detroit as the guest of Ford) stimulated three facets of my personality: the inner  child, the dad and the businessman.

Inner Child
When I travel, I grab a handful of car magazines. When I get the Sunday New York Times, the first thing I read is the car review at the back of the sports section. I’m never happier or more keyed up than when I’m in the throes of researching, testing and buying a new car. My love of cars is childish — having fallen head over heels when I was a kid and my dad pulled up to the house in a new, silver 928. I loved that car, and cars in general ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

Smashing: DadLabs at ABC Kids Expo, Day 2

By Daddy Clay Monday, September 26th, 2011

You know you are staying in a class hotel when, after dropping and detonating a bottle of home brewed belgian tripel ale in the foyer, the night clerk wheels up and mop and bucket and says, “here you go, son.”  So there Brad was, mopping up his own karma.

It was the second broken bottle of the day.

When not sponging up the cold one he put on the deck, Brad and the rest of us spent a considerable amount of time hauling ass around the Kentucky Expo center chasing the elusive creature known as “the internet.” The convention center wireless that had been robust enough to carry a live stream video show on Saturday was suddenly struggling to support a single tweet — driving us out of the SCI booth, an into the wilds. Read the rest of this entry »

Viva la Pocket Protector! School Supply Self-Expression

By Daddy Clay Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

“Wow, Dad, you’re being really nice to me,” my son bubbled as he placed an item on the growing pile, and I immediately diagnosed him as suffering from some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Thanking me? For school supplies? A good dad would have screamed, “Run for your life boy! Seventh Grade will not claim another Nichols child as long as I am up and taking nourishment!”

Instead I asked him if he needed a protractor.

I guess that as a boy, I too got excited about buying school supplies. I was nerdy about mechanical pencils and binders and backpacks. Was. Am. I wasn’t any better than Bubba at recognizing the tools of my own oppression. I cruised up and down the aisles at the Kmart and marveled at the lack of push-back I got from my mom each time I produced a new ultra-fine pen and matching pocket protector (yes, I wore them). Maybe she felt a twinge of guilt as well.

As I was working the Staples, so tarted up with garishly colored and patterned school supplies as to be unidentifiable as an office products store, I realized that my kids had been deprived of this ritual in the past. The one mitigating moment in the onrush of the school year had been stolen by our local elementary school booster club. At our elementary school, the students arrive at school on the first day and begin to unpack the hermetically sealed and identical crates of school supplies that the parents had paid for the previous spring.

I know that there are good practical reasons for pre-bundled school gear. Like uniforms (which our school should look into), standardized supply decks keep the super rich from lording their junior Mont Blancs over the merely wealthy and their pathetic Cross ballpoints. The common kit assures will have the precise supplies that the teacher knows that he or she wants. And it does spare busy parents one more trip in an already hectic time of year.

Still. Bubba sweated over exactly what packets of pens to select, fussed over what kind of pockets and brads were the best, and generally managed to work up some enthusiasm over going back to school. Perhaps a little self expression is called for in school supplies, even if it means the return of the pocket protector.