The Defective Yeti Guide To Parenting

Tony Plant of Happystance has ruined my soft covers. The stains are all his fault because he introduced me to Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti who rapidly became one of my favourite bloggers. Tony's penance is letting me borrow one of his posts. Matthew would be a menance to traffic if he had a radio spot and I have long since given up drinking anything while reading his posts - I've had too many unexpected returns of tea/coffee/ginger beer that have burned or severely irritated my nose.

Matthew writes on a number of topics. He is an avid gamer and has made recommendations that make frequent appearances in both my own gift wish-lists (seriously, you still don't use these?) and my purchasing decisions for others.

One of Matthew's most frequent topics is his son, aka The Squirrelly. You will have a rough idea of Matthew's robust approach to parenting if I quote from the account of a check-up at the paediatrician's office:

So, yes, we're having the standard toddler War Of The Wills, but, fortunately, The Squirrelly is exceptionally easy-going. His tantrums are infrequent, and rarely last more than a handful of seconds. When we took him in for his two-year checkup, the pediatrician asked "does he ever have tantrums that last longer than half an hour?" and we were all, like, "Half and hour?! [**** (edited)] no -- if he did we would have just left him in your elevator, sprinted back to the car, and driven to Ontario at 85 miles an hour."

Matthew recently joint authored an hilarious parody of the Elizabeth Verdick children's books on ethics: if you haven't seen Files Are Not For Sharing, then take a look. I'm mentioning this because with the excellent Flea's occasional fantasies about staging a media event to destroy thermometers in his war against fever phobia, I'm sure there is an excellent spoof somewhere that is just waiting to be born. The Defective Yeti and Flea Guide To Child Health: they tell it like it is.