DadMode: Parenting, Gaming, Streaming, Life
"DadMode" is a podcast where two gaming-loving dads discuss everything from live streaming to fatherhood in a humorous and relatable way. Join Josh aka Moorph and Bearded Nova as they share gaming adventures and parenting anecdotes, offering a unique blend of entertainment and insight for fellow gamers with kids.
DadMode: Parenting, Gaming, Streaming, Life
Christmas Recap Escapades in Self-Gifting and Family Fun
Josh aka Bearded_Nova
I'm from Australia and am what you would call a father who games. I have 5 kids so not as much time to game as I used to. But I still game and stream when I can. So come join me on Twitch in chat as we chill out.
Business Inquiries: Bearded-n0va@aussiebb.com.au
Josh aka Moorph
I'm a US-based husband and father of two boys. I work full-time and have been a content creator since 2000. I'm a YouTube partner, Twitch and LiveSpace streamer who founded a content creation coaching company called Elev8d Media Group (elev8d.media). I'm a blogger, streamer, podcaster, and video-er(?).
Business Inquiries: josh@elev8d.media
turning off normal human male mode. Switching to dad mode. Welcome in to dad mode with your hosts bearded nova and morph all right.
Speaker 2:So we're in january now. Happy new year and the holidays are past. I know that. You know we kind of took a little bit of a hiatus around the holidays. But how, how was it for you? How did it go?
Speaker 3:it's good. It was a nice casual one. You know, our lunch for us at my mother's that's where we went to this year not as big as what I thought. A lot of people didn't make it covid's like making a spike again in some ways, so some people didn't come because of covid again. Yeah yeah, that caught me off guard, yeah, covid, but you know it was pretty good.
Speaker 3:I will say I was surprised with, like, the gifts, because gifts are always interesting when the family's giving me gifts, because I don't know what. You know we do the Amazon thing, like I have the Amazon list of I'll put stuff in there over time. You know, this year I was like late. It was Amazon list of I'll put stuff in there over time. That you know. This time this year I was like late. It was like mid-December where I'm like, oh shit, I need to put stuff on the Amazon list for them to know you know what I'm interested in buying. And then the wife said I brought it, it's coming. You can't see the box, etc. I had no clue, because normally if you buy something off Amazon she tells me don't look at Amazon, so I don't see what the order is. Right here I am fingers crossed.
Speaker 3:Tobii eye tracker. Tobii eye tracker it wasn't Tobii eye tracker because I've been like having this thing. You know it's $500, $600 eye tracking that I've had on there for who knows how long now. Probably a year, two years now. Yeah, obviously I need to buy it myself, but no, it was good. I got some stuff on my Steam deck which was nice. Family always surprised me, which is when I don't know what's coming. I have definitely no clue what's coming because I'm probably the worst person to buy for Probably similar to you, no doubt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I tend to buy my own stuff and then when the holidays come I'm like, oh crap, I already bought the cheap stuff for myself, at least all the expensive stuff for people to buy me. But I, unlike you, I don't get any surprises, because we do the same thing. We fill out Amazon lists and then I know people, we just rifle down and buy everything on the list or whatever. You know what I mean, so there's not a lot of surprises.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, it's a surprise on what item out of the Amazon list you're getting.
Speaker 2:Like am I surprise on what item out of the amazon list you're getting? Like, am I getting all of them? Are we getting some of them? If I put cheap enough stuff, I'm probably gonna get most of it, you know. Yeah, I put a 3d printer that you have on mine and that didn't get touched.
Speaker 3:Yeah, obviously I didn't get a message about it, so that yeah the.
Speaker 2:The only surprise that ever happens is if my wife is always curious did I wrap my gifts or did I just have them put in an amazon gift bag?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, because I detest wrapping presents I did differently for the wife, though this year, because normally it's like a bit of jewelry or something like. I've pretty much been like rinse and repeat similar items for the last I don't know how many years 10 years but this year I got her glasses, like went in surprise with like a nice pair of glasses, and then today that's why the co-host she's got a like a four hour spa day thing, so she's off to do that before she returns to to work next week. So I was like I've done something different, nailed it, spent more than you, um um.
Speaker 2:Did you, do you get your shopping done early? Are you a last minute person? I'm a last minute person last. Yeah, I used to be more last minute and it bit me hard one year, so now I actually do things earlier. Yeah, yeah, because I remember there's one year I bought gifts like the day before.
Speaker 3:Yeah oh man, I wasn't concerned. Oh, we're turning cameras off here. Now we got about that. She's got buttons. She's got, but can stream deck buttons. We my my last minute gifts are never really a concern because they're not ones that are hard to come by. I guess half the time like I'm pretty pretty good and usually with work, how my work's always done. I'm finishing up a few, you know, a week before christmas, so there's a week there where I can pretty much go as it as I wish and walk around and I've got time. At the same time, the wife usually has me picking up gifts, like we. This year we did a lot of like click and collect with everything, where we ordered it all online at the stores and then I just went around to collect it, the order okay so so you had to pick it up.
Speaker 3:You don't have delivered, you can't even get delivered, but sometimes it's like the shop's five minutes down the road. Oh right, why pay fifty dollars for a delivery or whatever when I get to get it from their warehouse, when I can just go and pick it up from the shop and then, at the same time, that gives me an opportunity to have a look at the things that I need to buy too?
Speaker 2:right. So speaking of that, like when I go into stores or even looking online at stuff to buy, you know I'm like, oh wait, what should I get my kids? What should I get my wife? Whatever, and inevitably I will spend half the time. Oh, I want this and I want to yes.
Speaker 3:Yes yes, yes, that is me all the time. Oh, you don't need that. You can have that though. How do the kids go? The kids happy with everything.
Speaker 2:Christmas is, I hate yeah, they, they they were what's interesting is we were talking about lists. So, like my, my younger son, he has a birthday in september and then christmas. Yeah, he starts writing a list for each of those holidays, like two, three months ahead of time, right, and he's, he's putting item numbers down, he's putting prices. You know all this, my oldest son, yeah, just will not tell us anything. He wants ever, yeah, ever, yeah.
Speaker 3:We're just always guessing yeah, this, this was the first year ours actually gave us details on things that they wanted, which made it way more easier to buy. I guess, like it's just like, this is what I want. It went through, you know, one of the but actually one of the doors has got into star wars recently. Oh cool, yeah, yeah, it's cool, like, come out. It's like I like Star Wars. I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, come into my room and then I think I had like a I don't know. I want to say like a 12-inch Darth Vader doll that was still in a package, sitting sat on the top of this cabinet here. That's where it's been. I'm like, here you can have this, add this to start your collection, type of thing. Like you got nothing, here you go. It turns out I don't know how I feel she is a fan of the dark side. Oh, really, oh yeah, yeah, does it surprise you A little bit? Yeah, I wasn't expecting her to turn around and go. Darth Vader is my favorite character. I was like, oh, interesting, interesting.
Speaker 2:This says a lot about you. Yeah, that should be like a personality test for like a job or whatever.
Speaker 3:Like you know, do you represent with the jedi or the sith, you know, yeah, yeah, she, you know. She turned around in her list there was a pop, a funko pop, some luke skywalker limited edition thing that's no longer in production. She's like this is what I'd really like. It's like okay, cool. Now I gotta try and track down this couple hundred dollar pop out of where can I find it? Yeah, she doesn't listen to this, but found it online at a like someone had traded into like a porn store and they didn't know the value. So, yeah, yeah, so got it for that's cool, a quarter of the price that it's going for, because they just put it up as a pop, thinking it was a pop limited edition, but not actually looking into what the price of it is.
Speaker 3:Yep yeah what hat you child? My child has become the other child's, become a cat recently.
Speaker 2:I don't let me see if I can fix this up, just just to see if it's the wrong way don't realize that we have another co-host today, his infant daughter, his toddler daughter, and she is proceeding to unplug everything, turn everything on and off.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:She's cute, but she's causing havoc for him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the other day I had my coffee cup on the windowsill behind the couch and I wasn't looking. But she had actually got the cup and, like a ninja, took off across the room and then, like it was nothing, there was remnants of my coffee left my morning coffee there, but you hear this like clink of glass and that's like whoa, hold on, where is she? You find her stashed around the corner, just near this door. Actually, that cabinet behind me there there's like a little. She was sitting right there drinking coffee, thinking she was the best in the world. Yeah, she's become feral.
Speaker 2:She did all right at christmas, though she did all right at christmas, and they always do, and the older you get, the less you get.
Speaker 3:Well, it's not that's what we're trying to say to the other kids. It looks bad because when you're looking at all the kids presents hers are massive, like they take up the space of everyone else's. But little kids, you can buy these gifts and they don't cost much, but they take up a giant amount of packaging. You know we've got all this soft play, blocks and stuff so she can. You know stairs and triangles and stuff she can climb over and do what she wants. And don't turn off my mic. When you pack that up it's like the size of a tree. You know what I mean. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Stop that, stop zooming. Like the size of the tree. You know what I mean this, yeah, let's stop that, stop zooming.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can't wait to see the editing. This is gonna be fantastic. But then at the same time I actually got into like I almost got into a situation at christmas, like a real bad situation. Coming into christmas. I got onto I was watching tv and the facebook page popped up for like an auction and a real auction house. They do you know a lot of stuff, but they were auctioning off kids' toys like a kids' toy shop Toy shop was refurbishing or restructuring, it was, so they were selling lots of the inventory and it was all these little play kitchens. I'm like, oh perfect, I'll get her a play kitchen. It'll be great. Yeah, I put a bid on about 20 different play kitchens and accessories and at one stage I was winning all of them and yeah, they weren't they.
Speaker 3:Yes, they weren't going to cost much. I were like 30 each. Yeah, ten dollars each, some were ten dollars, some were five dollars. You know, it was all over the place yeah but it dawned on me at one stage.
Speaker 3:I'm like, cool, even if I win them, I'll pick whichever one we like the best. We might keep one or two, we might give one or two away, we'll sell the rest on Marketplace or something like that. You know, Craigslist Gumtree, get rid of it, you know. But then it dawned on me I hate dealing with people, so that was going to be my wife's problem. Even though I'm in sales, I don't like privately selling things because I hate dealing with the general public of oh, will you take, you know, one quarter of what you're asking for? I'll trade you this broken thing for that thing. Just shit like that. I don't want to deal with it. If I put up, it's 50 bucks, it's 50 bucks. Don't tell me that it's anything else. I'm not, I'm not interested. Yeah, turns out I didn't. I only won the one kitchen in the end, so I didn't have to. But geez, it was always starting to panic when it started getting closer to like oh crap, I'm about to win a whole lot of, whole lot of crap here.
Speaker 2:Yeah you know the one thing that did happen over the holiday, and you, this is my wife and I took a vacation and had my mom come stay with the boys, so we went to Mexico for a week.
Speaker 3:You didn't tell, we didn't talk about this.
Speaker 2:You know what About? Once a year my wife and I do that. We go on a vacation by ourselves. My mom comes and stays with the boys. It's usually during school, so Jersey lost home.
Speaker 2:Home was there in school all day anyway, and we usually do it for our anniversary. We go somewhere and they get mad. Now I get it because we're going and doing something and having fun without them. Yeah, but also, like when you're married, sometimes you just want to spend some time alone either. Today, you know, yeah, you think that's. Is that something you would ever do?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, trying to look at that actually by this year. I don't know the wife's looking at that. It's like, okay, cool, we can do that before now. Dakota changes that. You know what we do there. Please don't go into the corner again. Oh yeah, she's just dead to gone straight back into, but it's something we're looking at now. At the moment it's like, okay, now we're gonna trial run with her, we'll take her out to my mom's house, we'll drop her off, we'll see how she goes for a night out there or a day or something. You know we're not. She's been there before for a day, but be out the house should go overnight. We haven't done that yet, especially, especially this year.
Speaker 3:I've got a lot of celebrations, like a lot of 40-ups, to go to this year. Yeah, so already in January. I think I've got two or three this month to go to, so I'm going to have. I know I've got a lot for the first half of the year, so there's a lot to be. She's going to come to a few, but there's going to be times where you know, can I take her out, can we go? Yeah, it's one of those situations. I don't know what we can do there, but I know the wife wants to do that for the wedding anniversary this year. She wants to go away, so I think that's what this is all leading up to. How did your boys handle it? I guess I mean it's like a holiday for them, though, too. You know what I mean. Parents ain't done.
Speaker 3:The rules are out the window when grandma's here it's, you know, free for all they could do whatever they want.
Speaker 2:That's what I mean. It's like holiday and and so like I don't really feel that bad about it, but I do know, because this is like the third time we've done it. I think the third time, third or fourth time that we've done it, yeah, and they the younger one seems to be getting a little bit like hey, what the hell, man, you know he's cluing on yeah, yeah. So you know we we felt a little bit guilty this year, but that was mexico.
Speaker 2:It's important something it was. It was, so it was raining, a little bit more rainy down there, but otherwise it was beautiful it's totally different climate to where you are zero degree weather where I live, and so we go down where it's like 80 something plus every day. You know we're going swimming and all that stuff. It's more similar to my climate zone, I guess yes, yeah, without all of the insane creatures that you have roaming around australia.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we do yeah, we do, we do. She got fascinated with a spider yesterday, so oh yeah, was it a huntsman spider?
Speaker 2:the ones that like the size of my head?
Speaker 3:nah, it's a tiny little thing. I actually don't know what it was, but just push to the Look. We just don't play with spiders, okay we?
Speaker 1:don't need to do that.
Speaker 3:We don't need to do that.
Speaker 2:Do you mind Um just destroying?
Speaker 3:the printer.
Speaker 2:She's doing what?
Speaker 3:destroying the 3d printer at the moment.
Speaker 2:Oh, well, you know, there you go um, just become one like a cat.
Speaker 3:She climbs things, pulls apart things, climbs under. But just before we got to, this started recording. We're in the lounge room. I was watching tv. Next thing, you know, I see her laying on the ground and then I look at the ground she's gone. Oh crap, where did she go? Now our couch? Right, that's. This is this. You know, I see her laying on the ground and then I look at the ground and she's gone. Oh crap, where did she go? Now our couch right, this is a Pixel 8 Pro. Our couch is about an inch shorter than a Pixel 8 Pro. Off the ground, she had somehow squeezed her entire body underneath the couch and into the body of the couch. What? Yeah, I didn't think she was that small, but she is, so she could like just squeeze underneath the couch and then she was underneath there playing there for like 20 minutes how did she?
Speaker 3:I don't know how. It's like a rat. You know how like rats can like squeeze their skulls through tight gaps. I'm assuming, yeah, that's the situation that I'm dealing with here.
Speaker 2:She's a devil sounds like she is, would be good at like one of those escape rooms. Oh yeah yeah, she's getting out of prison yeah, yeah prison break. Really she's just yeah future prison break yeah, I can see, that I can see, but other than that holidays was great.
Speaker 3:I look forward to the rest of the school holidays. I myself have got about another week at a bit off work, week off work or something, before I need to return. Yeah, I did, I did plan on like doing streaming and like doing stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know you've not done anything. You know I've.
Speaker 2:I've had some time lately and I was gonna do some more streaming. Yeah, I have done it once, like, not not once, and I don't want to say that I'm just over it because I'm I still like it. I just don't have any motivation to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, it's cool. Like you know, we we did our first dad mode live stream, uh, about a month ago, I think. Right, yeah, this was great, we'll do it every week. We haven't done it since. No, you know, in fact, I'm wondering why we weren't doing it tonight, and I think I thought about it, but I didn't bring it up because I didn't really want to have to do it live on twitch. But it was fun. It was still fun. You know, we had people show up and it was, it was. It was a good time. We even had my moderator accidentally joined the live broadcast.
Speaker 3:That was great, yeah no, I think at some point that just takes way more organizing that neither of us, even though we're organized people outside of this, we are not organized people when it comes to streaming anymore not, not anymore.
Speaker 2:And, like you know, I play a lot of. I've been known to play a little bit of Call of Duty here and there, and if I were playing that on stream, the way you have to play it, it's not like a casual game. You have to pay attention 100% of the time, so there isn't like hey, how you guys doing, oh crap, I just died, that's not happening. I have to pay attention to a thousand percent. Um, and so, yeah, have you played rivals? Yet I played modern warfare 3, from season 2 on straight into black ops 6, and I played. I don't even know if I've played anything else since I started modern warfare 3 a little over a year ago you gotta try marvel rivals out I'm obsessed, try it.
Speaker 2:You gotta try it. I tried it. I've heard that it's fun. I've heard a lot of games are fun. I just I just never played them because I have this activision that has like a chip in my head or something. It's like you must play, you must play, must play more.
Speaker 3:You've been converted. I'm trying to resist all the microtransactions, but geez man. Everyone, every Call of Duty player, gets this weird obsession with the game where they can't break free and it seems like, you know, it's like Apple users. Really, Call of Duty players and Apple iPhone users are very similar in the sense that once they're in, they're in. They can't get out of it.
Speaker 2:They're completely stuck in the economy or the ecosystem. Yeah it, I don't know what it is. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of game modes and stuff you can do, but it's it's the same thing over and over and over again, you know? No, the matches are quick, the action is fast, and maybe that's what it is like. You get this rush of like adrenaline or whatever, and then like I need more of that, so you keep playing, you know and how are you going?
Speaker 3:what else I want to?
Speaker 2:be better.
Speaker 3:So I play a lot, you know are you getting up there your your gameplay skills?
Speaker 2:evolved. I'm getting up there. My overall kd and black up sixes is over a one now, so oh, I'm a little bit better than average now we, we'd uh take you serious now. That's what you're trying to say, yeah, I told you I had the 102 kill game a couple, like a month or so ago oh really yeah yeah, have you tried the warzone yet or you're still staying?
Speaker 2:no, I haven't. I played warzone once because my my son, who is an avid fortnite player, battle royale wants me, wanted me to do warzone, because you know it's a similar concept, and I did it and it was okay. I think I finished like top 10 or something. But it's so different than what I play because I play multiplayer and the maps are relatively small compared to war zone, so it was just unfamiliar to me, you know so but it was okay.
Speaker 3:So my son's actually involved. He's gaming recently too, sweet him. So he went from like your fortnights and all that to rainbow six siege oh yeah, nice. I was like, okay, so he's getting right into siege. And I'm like, okay, okay, that's pretty cool. I I get a message from him the other day asking me about Elden Ring. So he's now progressed to a Souls player recently. It's like okay, good luck. Oh, like, is it free on Game Pass or something? Is that how you're playing it? He's like you know the PlayStation. And he's like no, no, no, I brought it with my money. Okay, so I'm intrigued. I didn't see this. As you know, it's interesting watching your children's gaming taste evolve over time, how they change from one game to the next game you don't know where they're going with. You know, if you'd asked me if I saw my son playing a Souls game, no, I did not see him playing a Souls game anytime soon. He seemed to much like shooters, but now he's a souls player.
Speaker 2:You know you can kind of brag a little bit like if he wants some tips for elden ring. You know one of the best elden ring content creators youtube pastor gains pastor gains games yes, you know, I did.
Speaker 2:I did rub it into him a little bit that I'm still a better souls player than what he is, though yeah, yeah, I think I talked about it before my, my son, my older son, he, he watched whenever he sits down and watches me play cod or whatever. Yeah, it's just constant. You should do this. Oh, look over there, you should do this. Your aim is terrible. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's just like man, quiet, quiet down, quiet down. I don't need some vaccine cup gaming. No, no, he wants me to play fortnight with him and I think that's cool that he wants me to. But I've listened to him play with his brother and he is just barking out orders, you know, and it's all the crap and I'm like I don't want any part of that.
Speaker 3:No, thank you, you know. No, this is the other thing. I've got a box in my room here that I haven't been able to get away, get rid of for ages, because that's a go-to spot is to just randomly go and sit in the box like this right now that's it just sit in the box, then in the box, all right.
Speaker 2:Do you notice? That happens when you buy them, like tying it back to the beginning? Yeah, christmas gifts, you buy something fancy and they love it. I mean they like it. They love the box it came in. They do they do, they do? What the hell, man? I don't know, I don't know. Makes sense, makes no sense sense. So I mean, we had great holidays. I hope everybody who's listening to this had a great holiday too yeah and we'll talk to you next time yeah, you've been listening to dad mode.
Speaker 1:Our passion is navigating this wild journey of parenthood and modern life, from balancing family time to managing your career and still squeezing in some gaming and content creation. And no matter what the women say, they will never be able to pry the controller out of our cold dead hands. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, find us on Twitter, TikTok and YouTube at DadModePodcast and we can be found on every podcast site at DadModePodcast Y'all be cool. See you next time.
