When a newborn comes in, parents have to make adaptations to their lives. And to be certain, it’s a whole lot more than just baby-proofing the house. Even once beloved hobbies might have to evolve. But where there’s creativity, there’s a way.
Case and point—this brilliant dad hack for watching sports during naptime.
Makenzie Waters, aka @makwaters on TikTok, shared an adorable video of her husband—clearly, a Cowboys fan, as indicated by his shorts—avidly watching a football game while Coop, their little one, stayed fast asleep.
How was he able to pull it off? With oven mitts, of course.
As the game plays at a low volume, the clever dad can be seen cheering silently. The oven mitts come into play when he gingerly picks up his beer to take a covert swig, or when he simply must clap emphatically for his team—which is often.
@makwaters One half down and baby Coop is still asleep 👍🏼 #cowboys ♬ original sound – Makenzie Waters
“He learned his lesson,” Waters wrote in the video’s caption, indicating that maybe her husband picked up this hack the hard way.
The hilarious video quickly went viral, and ignited a variety of comments online. Many were applauding the unconventional parenting strategy.
“Respect for that. Find a way to do it,” a commenter wrote.
“This is so much better than the videos of the dad just doing it and getting irritated when baby cries. He’s adapting!” another added.
Others felt like the opposite approach might have been better. One person wrote, “This is why you train your baby to be around lots of noise and different sounds especially when asleep!”
While this might be true to some degree, experts do say that exposure to loud noise (above 80 decibels) can be potentially harmful. And in this case—given that even the mildest sports viewing can get quite loud—the oven mitt method might have been the safest.
Perhaps the best takeaway from this is that parenting doesn’t always have to mean total sacrifice of the other things that bring you joy. All in all, this seems like a win-win. Or a win-win-win, if you count the Cowboys’ victory.
With the Dallas Cowboys successfully making it to another round of the playoffs, it seems this dad will have a few more silent games to enjoy. And hopefully, those will also be filmed, giving us even more wholesome TikTok content to enjoy.