Older Dads vs Stanley Mugs: A Near Parenting Mistake: Episode 31 Part 1

0:00 So we're sitting down, I had cooked dinner, and Kelly was kind of putting together her plate, I had my plate, baby's in the high chair facing me, so I kind of sit at the end of the table, she's off on that side, and we have a tablecloth. She now has grabbed, so she will grab, so she tries to do literally the pull-away, except on the table is, Kelly has one of these Stanley Cup tankard mug things, the really big ones, and it's metal, and I look up to see her like tug-of-war style pulling the tablecloth toward the edge, and that thing is on the literally about to fall on her, jump up, catch it, and you are in that moment, you have to watch that baby, oh yeah, and you're still lucky enough where they're not walking around, but already she's found a way to endanger herself.

1:18 This is the Gray Hair and Day Care Podcast, with a combined age of 111 years, and a combined IQ in that same range, your hosts, Frank Cereo and Carlo Russo. Welcome back, I am really now suppressing a murderous rage, I should keep the outtakes, and you probably enjoy that more than what I actually have to say, anyhow, some technical issues have been plaguing us, and we're hoping that everything's gonna work. If you could see what's on our equipment right now, you would laugh, but literally I had to put an ice pack on one of my cameras because it keeps overheating, let's hope.

2:04 Hollywood baby. Yeah, this is how you get it done, get it done, big budget, so here we are, as always I am Frank Cereo, I am 56 years old, and my little girl baby Josie is six and a half months old. Wow. Welcome back. Six and a month. Six and a half months. Six and a half months. We're all losing our minds right now, six and a half months, you're 56. I'm 56, we're getting old. Yeah, I just, two days after your birthday was mine, we had a discussion before we were recording, that I'm starting to feel like I'm an older gentleman. A senior statesman.

2:44 Yeah, 55 plus is not 40s anymore. No. And it's weird because when I was in my 40s, I said, God, I can't believe I'm 40, it's not like I was 30. You always feel younger when you're 10 years older than what you just left. I think when you're in your 40s, I think the ravages of time have just started to show up, and you really start to feel it, but you also have a lot of things figured out for the first time in your life. I know for me, because I'm a very, as you would know by the fact that I just became a parent, I'm a late bloomer, so it took me until my 40s to figure out some of the more basic things about life, and so it's like a, it's an okay trade.

3:25 Yeah. You wouldn't trade, and you're in your 40s, you wouldn't trade, you wouldn't trade places with a 30 year old. No, because 30s was for me. But now that we're in the back half of 50s, you start to go, you start to, it's not that you resent young people, but you just, I think you have less, I know for me, I have less patience with the younger people sometimes. You know what I noticed? That in my 40s and 30s, obviously, I didn't even think about, even if it was happening, I wasn't thinking that it was happening. In my 50s, when someone younger says, thank you, sir, I honestly believe that, oh, they're, they're talking to an old man.

4:07 Right. Like when I heard that in my 40s, like, sir, who, what are you talking about? You know, but now when I hear that, I hear something, you know, opening a door for me, or I open a door, thank you, sir, I'm thinking, they just, they're probably like, look at this little old man, how nice of him, opening the door, and I never felt that before. You know, it's funny that we say that, because one of the things that I very rarely, but lately I've been going there a lot, there's been a Chick-fil-A around here for a while, and I never really used to go there, and I went a couple times, and it was such a stark contrast to the service you get everywhere else, because these kids are all, like, they're not, and they say, like, how they're delighted to help you, and they're always, please and thank you, and sir, and ma'am, and it's kind of, it's a throwback, it really is, you feel like you've gotten into a time machine.

4:59 Welcome, oh, thank you very much, oh man. Sadly, there's a marked difference in the service, so, but you know, yeah, you know it's different, because we're seeing it, and going, oh, I'm not used to this anymore, yeah, that's how you can tell that people are not doing that anymore, you can walk into Chick-fil-A and go, this is weird, yeah, I go back, because I want to experience it again, and it's so funny that you say that, you would think other companies would look at that format, and go, people have really not a lot bad things to say about customer service at Chick-fil-A at all, no, why aren't we doing the same thing, right, you don't have to be all religious, but why aren't we following that, like, courteous, clean, and the whole thing with, like, the religious thing, because they're closed on Sunday, yeah, that was a big, everybody was used to be closed on Sunday, and you know we're old when we're reminiscing, back in my day, back in the days when you got good service, yeah, that does sound pretty old, yeah, that's okay, I don't mind, I like reminiscing about the good old days, but have you seen these AI videos that say, hey, come back to the 80s, we, when we, and I look at that and go, everything hits that they say, these kids, if you don't know what I'm talking about, these, a video of these children, they're probably like 12, 13, 15, and they're riding their bikes, and a kid

6:31 comes up to goes, hey guys, we're from the 80s, remember the 80s, when we used to, you know, stay outside until the light, you know, came on, all that, we used to go to the mall, all the girls look like Lori, and they were comparing, like, they were like saying, um, our Instagram was, like, taking photos, or we had a Polaroid camera, or something, and it's like, it's very reminiscent of our time at that age as teenagers, yeah, it does, it really does, it reminds you of that, I know back then we were all worried, I mean, there was still fear, but it felt so free, I don't know, do kids feel that right now, at 12 and 15, do they feel like we did?

7:13 I don't think they do, because we didn't have, we didn't have that constant distraction in our pocket, or in our hand, and you had to go, we've talked about this before, if you wanted a girlfriend, you didn't just go flip through an app, and swipe one way or the other, you had to make an effort, you had to learn how to dance, you had to go to a bar, you had to go get dressed up, you had to do your hair, you couldn't look ahead, you had to put on your expensive jeans, that were probably $30, you had to have a personality, unfortunately, you had to make one, right, if you didn't have one, you were probably home on Friday nights, or you had to, I've got to come up with a personality that I can solve myself, you had to screw up the courage to walk up to some girl, ask her to dance, and then they say no, and you can cry, and that's fine, and you just get drunk and pick a fight, but now you just become anything on these, on the internet, you can become, I'm a suave, and while you're sitting in your underwear, right, in your basement, you know, yeah, yeah, it's, it's very different, yeah, and I can just imagine what Josie, 15 years from now, or 12, whatever, the gap that we were talking about, 13 to 15, or whatever, yeah, I can just, what is gonna be there, hopefully, maybe it goes backwards, it goes back to like, okay, social media is not really good, what's been happening in the last week, we literally bookended, the last time we recorded, it was minutes after Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

8:40 Oh my God, true, yeah. And then earlier today, this, some crazy person shot up an ICE facility, and ended up killing a detainee, and, like, several people shot up, That didn't work out. Yeah, yeah, that's not, not the result they were looking for, but, I didn't even know that. It's, yeah, it just happened earlier today. And if this stuff keeps happening, I think it is, I think maybe for the first time, I think, in a long time, I think it could swing back the other way. Because I always say it's, everybody we used to, you'd always say there's, it's like a pendulum, right? It swings one way, it swings back the other way.

9:22 It never swings back, it's a ratchet. It swings one way, and like we, let's face it, from the first day of the Obama presidency to now, we went from marriages between a man and a woman to if you don't let this drag queen read to your kid at the library, you're a horrible person. Yeah, right? That's, in what, in 16 years. If you believe in God, you're a Nazi. You're a Nazi, yeah. Okay, as I'm wearing my crucifixion. So yeah, so it's not, it swings, but it never goes all the way back. It never goes all the way back. But now, I do think it's been so impactful. So many people have been affected by what's happening that I think maybe it will go the other way, and I think it would be good for it to go the other way a little bit.

10:09 No, yeah, I think we need a little bit of that. Yeah, without a doubt. A little bit of that in our lives, because I'm telling you, I remember the summer nights in the 80s and even the 90s, it just felt different. Social media made people antisocial with themselves, like face to face. Everybody's a war, everybody's like a tough guy. Other people's opinions back then didn't matter so much. Right, you had your friends, and you cared what they thought, and then if somebody else, if somebody in LA. I didn't even know anybody else's opinion. Right.

10:49 Because you couldn't, it wasn't on your face, right? The only opinion you heard about was people you knew, and you generally probably hung out with people like you, like yourself, and you might disagree with a friend here and there, but most of the time, okay. And we weren't talking Middle East, we weren't talking religion. We were talking, hey, you see the new video on MTV? It was such a different time, where now kids so young are talking about rights, I mean, which I'm not saying it's bad, but now there's 12 year olds talking about, what is it, gender, and I'm not, and the wars, and I'm like, is there any innocence left?

11:30 I don't know. We weren't thinking about that stuff. No, at all. We really weren't. We were thinking about our own lives. And then in my family, it was so, the news was so not, I don't wanna say important, but because they didn't speak English, we weren't watching the news. You know what our news was? It was the weather. It was within a culture, right, yeah, exactly. My mother would watch the news to see what the weather was, because you couldn't see the, she didn't understand the local stuff, she didn't understand, you know, and then back then, there was no Italian TV, like there is now, Rye TV. So we were just, we were in a bubble. I mean, I don't know if that's, usually when you're in a bubble, it's not great, because then you think nothing else happened, but it was pretty good.

12:12 It was pretty good. Yeah, it's not so bad. It was pretty good. It wasn't so bad. It's very different now, but, and who knows what it'll be like with, with Josie. I always like to say this because, again, Josie is getting into this, my God, from 15 years from now, what are we looking at? Yeah, yeah. But I bet everybody used to say that. Oh my God, what are we, what are our kids gonna grow up to? Yeah, I think that the older I get, and the more things change, the more I identify with how, how disconnected my father seemed from what, the way things were then, right? He just couldn't understand how it could be like that.

12:54 You know, you never know. Maybe the pendulum will swing back a little bit. You know, it doesn't have to go all the way back. No, we're a, It shouldn't go all the way back. We're a real. The scariest thing is these recent polls that show that, like almost half of people under 30 think that sometimes political violence is okay. Yeah, it's tough. So. Let's bring it back to babies. That's right, well, so we do have, so we're gonna start off with the, what is always not a book report, but a book report. So the book report this week. Is it a book? It is not a book. Of course not. It isn't, but I get, there's a lot of.

13:35 It's just a title. A lot of it. Book report is just a title. It's just a segment to get over it. Just a segment. It was from the Detroit Free Press. Okay. This article. But it was through Yahoo News, and it's basically experts sharing why the first five years are so critical. It was an interesting article, and it talked about how essentially 90% of all brain development happens by the time a kid is five. Wow. So from five on, it's just 10%, the remaining 10%. And the analogy that I think at home, one of the analogies they made was, it's like building a house.

14:17 You might be able to remodel the house. You can change the windows. You can paint the shutters. You can do those things, but you can't rebuild the foundation. The foundation. If the foundation isn't good, you're gonna live with it. There's gonna be cracks. There's gonna be problems, right? But if the foundation is excellent. You can do great things. So I think Kelly really had this right from the beginning to a degree that I didn't. And that is being attentive to the child's needs. Kelly, much more so than me, is right there when the baby needs it. The baby starts making noises. She doesn't wait for the baby to start crying.

14:58 She doesn't wait for... She is immediately interacting and responding to whatever it seems is coming from the baby. And what the article talked about was that is super important because you're developing these pathways for the baby that's looking for kind of a call and response, right? I am expressing something and I'm getting something back. And in the opposite case, right, where the parent is really kind of disengaged, not paying attention and just letting the kid scream, they're continually in survival mode. So they're constantly just trying to find a way to get their needs met. Okay. And when they're focused on that, they're not focused on the world around them and all the other experiences and all the other input that they can have.

15:45 Yeah, being as attentive as you can possibly be. Could that be also bad though because you're not allowing child to like figure it out or? I think there is a tipping point for that stuff. And that would be exactly what would have been right out of my playbook, what you just said. Right. But I think what it is, I think there is that and it's not now. It's a little further, it's further down the road, right? Maybe not at five, but at six months, when initially right now with the amount of learning, her seeing that there is support, exactly. And also just the interactive stuff. When she's making goofy noises, reacting to her, having the fake conversation is actually very meaningful, right?

16:31 So, cause it's, again, it's creating the interaction that I do something and there's a reaction and I do this. Well, it does make sense. I mean, but again, there's that, like you said, that fine line of, okay, one, does it become dangerous enough where it's like, oh, now the child thinks I don't have to do anything. Yeah, all of a sudden you're waiting on an overweight teenage kid playing video games. You've just, yeah, you've always were there. We're talking about. To comfort, I guess. Yeah, in the very early stage, where we're living right now with baby Josie. Well, it makes sense. So I thought that was a good article and it just reinforces and you do, you see it. Cause now it's just things change so fast.

17:13 Just a facial expression and the level of engagement. I mean, just walking in today, she's sitting in her, that little activity center. Weeks ago, she would be in her arm. I never saw her standing there. When we first got her in there, she was so small. She was big enough for it, but her feet from the seat to the platform, her feet didn't reach. So I would have to fold up a, we would have to fold up a blankie and put it there so her feet would touch. Gotcha. And now then she didn't need the blankie. Today, Kelly just moved. You can move the platform down as they get taller. She just stepped it down because she's like surfing on the thing now. So yeah, like the changes are happening super fast.

17:55 And just like the other day, she's making faces and all of a sudden she did the first like eyebrow. Eyebrow went up. I'm like, there was eyebrow happening. She's so cute. She's an adorable little girl. Adorable, adorable. And we get these photos, these texts from the family here. And my wife just eats it up. She'll be at work probably in a hard day and then little Josie's face will come through. I'm like, oh. It's fun. I love taking the pictures. That's awesome. So that was our book report. Don't miss any of the fun. Subscribe on YouTube. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

18:36 And now we are up to the real meat of the show, which is what just happened. I love the meat of the show. The meat. I just grab it like a pomegranate. It's lean. It's lean. Sometimes it's fatty. Sometimes it's fatty. We have a lot of stuff that happens. Do we have a fatty one this week or do we have a lean? What happened? We have a lot of stuff that happened. We got some good juicy stuff. We got some fat on this meat. So this time, so developmentally, we're working on, so one of the developmental milestones, which I didn't know what it is. So the recent ones have been kind of the rolling over.

19:16 We talked about that last time. She does that very effectively. Holding, pressing up, sitting up unassisted. She's still working on that. Banging things together and banging things. That's fun. She has become very good at banging things together and banging things. I forget about that time. Yeah, they just hit everything. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting to see. And it's also surprising how strong she is because she is, at this point now, because of that, becoming a little bit of a threat, right? Like you gotta be careful. I will, like it's fun because she is, she's so laser focused now. So a lot of times, if we're hanging out together, I will be like laying back on the couch and I'll put her almost like she's, like her legs are up almost like she's right here.

20:02 And her face is right there and she'll be looking at me. And all of a sudden, I'll see it and you'll see she'll zero in and all of a sudden, like she's got my nose. She's got my chin chub. She's got my- Especially with our glasses. Oh yeah, going for the glasses, doing those things. And boy, she gets a good grip. And she'll reach right in, like grab, whatever. So she gets right in there and does that stuff. But she'll also do other stuff. Just last night, this was actually a little bit scary. So we're sitting down, I had cooked dinner and Kelly was kind of putting together her plate. I had my plate, baby's in the high chair facing me.

20:43 So I kind of sit at the end of the table. She's off on that side and we have a tablecloth. She now has grabbed, so she will grab. So she tries to do literally the- The pull away, yeah. The pull away, except on the table is, Kelly has one of these Stanley Cup tankard mug things. The water thing. Like the really big ones and it's metal. Oh God. And I look up to see her like tug of war style pulling the tablecloth toward the edge. And that thing is on the edge about to, literally about to fall on her. Yeah, that would not. And I'm like, jump up, catch it.

21:26 And- You are in that moment. You have to watch that baby. Oh yeah. And you're still lucky enough where they're not walking around or crawling. Already she's found a way to endanger herself. Stationary. Yeah, Kelly's like, what happened? And I'm like, you're tankard, almost clobbered her. Stanley Cup. Yeah, like you gotta be careful with that. And then she'll- So no more tablecloths for my next trick. That's funny. Yeah, no, I forget. I forget. And then the throwing, that'll happen. Oh yeah, there's some of that now. It'll get stronger. Yeah, right now it's more, I'm just gonna push things off my little table.

22:07 I'm gonna drop it on the floor again. There's that. But I'm sure it won't be long and things will be flying. The other thing that I think is fun is now, now there's enough hair that when she wakes up in the morning, it kind of does stuff. It's not where we can brush it or do anything with it yet. But it's up. But you can, yeah, it's there. So that- That's so cute. It looks like a little- She's a little cute little monkey. That's so funny. So there is that. The other pretty big news was her six month, her six month pediatrician visit. She was 85th percentile for height, 23rd percentile for weight. Now she is 83rd percentile for height and 16 for weight.

22:51 So she's skinnier. She's still on track like they weren't concerned about her weight. She's gonna look like your wife and sister. Yeah, they said that's their family. Yeah, her sister literally said, that's our genes. Like- Without a doubt. Yeah, she's gonna be tall. Which is not bad. No, it's not a bad thing. No, you take that all day. Absolutely. Tall and thin woman. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with anything other than that, but I'm saying- That's right. So, yeah, so she's, she was doing well. Everything, you know, checked her all out and everything was good. We had a new PA that we saw this time. She got the last round of the vaccinations. Had a little bit harder time- Taking it?

23:33 With the vaccinations this time. And it was the same nurse who did a great job last time, but I think a lot of it, like many things with a kid right now at this stage, if she's tired, it doesn't go as well, right? She was ready for a nap when she got the shots this time and it was a little tough. I mean, you think about it, we're still like that too. Oh yeah. Right? I mean, if you're not, if you're tired, if you're- Oh yeah. You're not so light- I get very grumpy. The baby would be like that, right? Yep, same idea. So she had a little harder time. But then we did have kind of a little bit of conflict that happened. This was kind of hard, but I think we ended up in a good place.

24:16 But we were talking, I think we talked about very briefly on the last episode, in doing the baby led weaning, we had given baby Josie some apple and Kelly had seen something that she thought she had broken out after eating. Oh, a little rash or something? Right. Okay. So she had called, she had called the pediatrician and they said, okay, just no more apple until you see us. And so we went for the thing. And after all the kind of obligatory length and weight and all that stuff, Kelly says to the PA, well, I had called about, I was concerned about, we gave her some apple and she broke out and she had hives.

24:58 And I thought that was the first time I have never seen anything that I thought were hives. Okay. Now I did see there was a little, you know, she had a little. Which babies had all the time. All the time. I think, yeah. Now again, I don't have any more experience with living babies than my wife does, but it certainly didn't think, I wouldn't have described it as hives. Gotcha. So she shows the doctor a picture of what I saw. Okay. Then shows a picture of her back. Which you did not see. Which I have never seen the picture, nor did I see this on her back. And it was a larger area and red, but still not what I would call hives, right?

25:43 At least not what I've experienced, but I've experienced them as like an adult, I'd say. So, and it's not like I've had lots of hives, but so this is. New information. New information for me. And the PA is like, oh yeah, those are hives. No more apple, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, wait a minute. I didn't say anything, and yet again, but we were on the track of baby Josie's allergic to apple. Eliminating things already. Eliminate apple from, yeah. And it just. You get some snacks and then cakes. And it just, it just, I wasn't comfortable with it. And, but I didn't say anything. And then at the end of that conversation, Kelly kind of looked at me and said, is there anything else?

26:28 And then at that point I said, well, you know, isn't it possible that this was just because we have been giving her food and she's like covered in sweet potatoes for the first time and hadn't had a bath in a couple days? Especially baby's skin is so sensitive. Right. And of course I get the, here's the asshole older father. Questioning. The mother's instinct. Look from the woman. She's like, well, it's more common than, actually I'm like, she's not allergic to apples. Neither am I. Well, it's, it's, it's not that uncommon, but if you want to get some baby Benadryl, and if you want to try it again, give her a little bit.

27:10 And then if, if you see anything, give her the Benadryl and then you'll know for sure. Thanks again for joining us. We've covered a lot of ground and there's even more to come, but we're going to close for now. We hope you can join us next week and hear everything else that's been going on with baby Josie. And subscribe to this show on YouTube and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. We'll see you next week. Bye. Well folks, that's another episode of the Gray Hair and Daycare podcast in the books. Thanks very much for tuning in and spending this time with us. We hope it was fun. If you enjoyed this week's descent into the madness of dadness, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss any of our future adventures.

27:53 While you're at it, give us a like and share the cast with your friends on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Carrier Pigeon, whatever you crazy kids are using. Have any hilarious parenting stories of your own? Questions about navigating fatherhood later in life or even when normal people do it? Email us at ghdc.podcast at gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to.