Dad Hacks for Making Life With Kids a Little Easier

I saw this video the other day of the dad who has to do his daughter's hair. He came up with a very creative way to get'er done and done quickly (and still look nice and neat). He slipped a hair elastic on the end of a vacuum cleaner hose, sucked up the daughter's hair and slipped the elastic off the hose and onto her hair. Presto! Perfect ponytail in seconds.

I saw this other video of a dad who put his daughter's hair up in a bun. However, he did it while she was spinning. He simply gathered up all her hair and told her spin while he held her hair, then clipped it to keep it up. Brilliant!

Then I got to thinking.
Hey, I've got my own little hacks that help me survive a day with kids. I have two sons and they both have 1/4 inch hair. No worries there. But I've got other ways.

First: Because life with boys is noise with dirt, keeping clean is tough. It's similar to a running blender with no top. Two boys in the bathroom is no different. The toilet bowl is what, a foot wide? The kids are what, 6 inches from it? How the HELL do they miss? I swear they are in there dancing with their wee willies going off like super soakers. So what did I do? I put a target on the bottom of the bowl for them to aim at. At first, it was a Spiderman band-aid because it was closest sticky thing I could find. It didn't stick for long. Then I put a real sticker in there thinking that it was good and sticky. It lasted a day (damn Ninja Turtle just couldn't hang on). Then I found out that my idea wasn't original. Just Google "toilet targets". 

 Second: Here's my next secret:

It is to me what Batman's grappling hook is to him. It's my go to tool for nearly everything. Need cut pizza into bite size pieces? Perfect. Need to cut toast into triangles? Perfect. Need to cut a pancake? Perfect. Since it works by applying pressure, the edges usually aren't ridiculously sharp like on most knives so I'm not so worried about the kids hurting themselves if I leave it out. But the speed at which I get the cutting done with this bad boy resembles that of a Lamborghini! If you have any other uses for this, please let me know!

 
Third: I like to let my boys be as independent as they want to be, provided they clean up their mess afterward (though, who am I kidding, I do most of the cleaning up, not them). So a while back, we were playing bowling and my only job was to be the pin setter. Let me tell ya, it's not the greatest gig in the world. They knock 'em down, I set 'em up. Repeat a hundred more times. It gets old quick. Then I figured out that I could put tape on the floor where the pins should go and they can stand up their damn pins! Geez. Why did it take me so long to figure this out? Bonus: Sometimes they'll set them up for me to knock down! Do you have any hacks that allow kids to play independently? 

Fourth: This one is perhaps my favorite because it's so damn cute and so damn helpful.
Short back-story: In the past couple weeks our three year old has learned to LOVE pushing the shopping cart. He wants to be the driver and he wants to drive'r by himself. But shopping carts are so big he can barely see where he's going.

Unfortunately, I can't take credit for this one, as much as I would like to. Wifey, this one's yours. He has a shopping cart that came with his toy kitchen one Christmas. He loves loading it up and pushing it all over the house. One day recently, he went into the pantry cupboard and loaded his cart with all the canned food (he said it costs three dollars). That's when the idea landed and twice we've gone shopping and twice he's pushed his little cart. He gets so excited that he'll take his cart out and put it in the car while we're still getting ready to leave! It's enough to make me look forward to grocery shopping! Do you have any grocery store hacks to make the shopping a bit easier?