Break a Leg, It’s Christmastime

     Christmastime brings about a myriad of gatherings, celebrations, revelry and chaos. Among the rushes to random retail outlets to dispose of one’s income on the latest sale, the office parties where someone invariably deteriorates to a level of inebriation that leads them to become the fodder of the upcoming year’s legendary tales and the hobos walking down the streets of L.A. dressed in random Santa Claus garments in varying levels of disrepair, lies the school Christmas pageant.

     To be more precise, it was the pre-school Christmas concert (and I use that word as it’s the closest representation of what actually transpired) that my daughter’s school had put on for friends and family. It became apparent about a month previous that her class had been practicing singing Christmas songs, as she randomly started singing a very garbled version of “Jingle Bells” around Thanksgiving. Shortly thereafter, a notice was posted in her class that they would, indeed, be putting on a show for everyone, which automatically led to words like “precious” and “cuteness” being bandied about our home, with, of course, slight reservations about how the program would actually coalesce.

     The day arrived and we made certain to be at the school as the doors opened so we could try to find a seat which could give us some vantage point to record the night’s events. The three hundred other people in the room had the same idea, and of course, they showed up five minutes before we did, so while we didn’t get the best seat in the house, we had a great view of the embarrassment that was about to pour forth from that little, tiny stage. The show was comprised of exactly five songs, and those were arranged one each by age group. As I’m sure you can imagine, the prospect of trying to get a group of toddlers and pre-kindergarten age children to maintain their composure for more than one or two versions of a single song is much like stacking all of your fine china as high as you can and then attempting to carry it all down a flight of stairs while blindfolded…there will be carnage.

     As my daughter’s class is the youngest, they were the first class to sing, but they were preceded by a brief dance demonstration by the school’s dance troupe.  Dressed as little Christmas hula girls, the tiny dancers performed a totally unsynchronized version of Bing Crosby’s “Mele Kalikimaka”. Half a dozen little girls trying to say mele kalikimaka, by the way, is a comedy in and of itself and they could have spent twenty minutes just on that bit and I think the room would have been happy. There was one little girl, right in the middle of the group who absolutely froze on stage to the point where she wasn't even blinking. Her face was contorted in what looked like the beginning of a scream that never escaped, and there she stood, like a Christmasy hula version of Edvard Munch’s painting, forever aghast at the surrounding scene of onlookers, fake grass skirts and the gibberish Hawaiian that was being shouted from every direction. At the end of their performance, she was gently helped offstage where I’m sure she collapsed into a heap of emotional wreckage. I bet her parents are re-thinking the cost of those dance lessons.

     Then it was my daughter’s turn. Her class was led onstage by teachers at both ends of the line of students, much like a pair of trainers would lead a line of monkeys into a circus performance. Once onstage, my daughter was at first a little overwhelmed and she shrank from the spotlight as if she wasn't quite sure what was happening. Then, she saw Mommy waving to her from the crowd, and all was well with the world. So well, in fact, that her spirits were raised enough to make her explode with joy and start jumping up and down and flailing her arms about as if she were trying to fly away. In her fit of spastic outburst she flailed errantly and smacked herself in the face, which made her erupt in a resounding scream that could be heard throughout the entirety of the auditorium. Then, the music started. She regained her composure again once she heard the jingling of the bells come over the boom box, and each member of the little class started their own random toddler shuffle as the chorus to “Jingle Bells” began to play. At about the middle of the line “Dashing through the snow…”, my daughter decided to embed her finger in her nose at a depth of about the second knuckle and dig for treasure. Her exercise in cranial spelunking brought a roar from the audience, which made my daughter smile and start jumping up and down again. She pried her finger free and began dancing and jumping and spinning and paying no attention whatsoever to the choreography that had no doubt been meticulously planned. Of course, nobody on stage was doing anything that even remotely resembled “Jingle Bells”. A few were dancing the two year old dance, a few were clapping to their own beat, a few were standing still and staring out into the vastness of the audience before them, and of course a few were in tears. My daughter, between bursts of jumping and spinning, would stick her tongue out at the audience to get a laugh. Then, the random, seven foot tall, inflatable Grinch Who Stole Christmas collapsed in the corner by the stage and broke everyone’s concentration.  Finished or not, the music was stopped and the performance was capped by a poorly played Santa Claus who burst into the room (bearing the conspicuous outline of a pillow in his shirt and who, I’m sure, smelled faintly of whiskey) ringing a bell over his head and shouting, “HO HO HO.”  To a group of two year olds, a giant, red, hairy, deformed figure who is ringing a bell and shouting is an object of sheer terror that could only have burst into the room to eat everyone. As the menacing Kringle lumbered towards the stage, the group of children naturally burst into tears and tried to flee for their lives. My wife and I sat dumbfounded and looked at each other in sheer disbelief at the scene that had unfolded before us. It was an absolutely surreal experience.

Apparently a month of singing practice with a class of two year olds is utterly meaningless, and they probably could have started the day before and achieved the same result.  Hopefully they’ll tweak the program for next year’s performance. 

Thanksgiving: A Terror in Three Parts- Part 3, Friday: Welcome to Thunderdome

     When it rains in L.A., you might as well assume that the world is coming to an end. I spent most of my life in Florida, the land of the afternoon thunderstorm and home to monsoon like rains that could easily wash Los Angeles into Davey Jones' locker. But, because rain in L.A. is such a rare occasion, the slightest sprinkle not only generates news reports for days before and after (the question normally posed to the random public is some variation of “What are you planning to do/ What did you do during all of the unimaginably terrible weather”...it's like the L.A. version of interviewing trailer park dwellers after a tornado) but it sends Angelinos everywhere into a frantic survival mode. I'll refrain from detailing how after such inclement weather the freeways are always littered with the hulking remains of cars whose drivers haven't the comprehension of how to navigate wet streets, mainly because they have no idea where the switch that operates the windshield wipers is located and their misguided logic dictates that the best way to get through the rain is to drive faster.

So, when it rains, mommies and daddies have to have a place to take their children to play, since children, especially toddlers, can develop cabin fever and transform into raging maniacs of destruction in the blink of an eye if their attention is not held or they are unable to expend the apparently limitless superhuman energy that they possess. The answer to this, of course, is the indoor play place. This is not the type of play area you find in a questionable fast food restaurant where unfortunate, sweaty people dressed as some overstuffed mascot try to coerce you into eating coronary inducing synthetic food, but a large and elaborate indoor area with various structures, pits, swings and slides on which children can potentially cause grievous bodily injury to themselves or those around them. This was our Day-After-Thanksgiving adventure, our own personal Black Friday. This particular play place was crafted by an ingenious sadist (a Japanese business man, who according to my wife, “rocks a Kung-Fu mullet”) who walks around in workout clothes apparently making sure that the play structures are still standing and that no children have been maimed on his watch. This place offers an interesting opportunity for adults as well, as there is a café inside where mommies and daddies can enjoy lunch while they watch from a safe distance as children go careening about.

As my daughter is two, she thinks she is capable of anything, especially if there are other children doing it, regardless of how big they are. She was quickly shown otherwise by the “Swinging Palm Trees of Death” as I like to call them. The device in question is a large rotating set of swings that spin around a central post and the whole thing is cleverly disguised as a giant palm tree with branches that hang to the ground. Instead of seats, however, the end of the swing arm is what looks like a medicine ball that the children sit on whilst holding on for dear life. Once it gets going, it resembles a beach themed G-Force simulator like one would see in an old NASA training video. My daughter thought it would be great fun to try to grab onto the ball as it was spinning, and she held on just long enough to build up the momentum required to fling her toward the nearest wall, where she smacked into it Wile E. Coyote style.

After a brief fit of screaming, she moved to the ball pit. This ball pit is only accessible by climbing a steep ramp, then crawling through hamster-like tunnels on the second level and then by descending several platforms down to where the pit awaits. Of course, everything on that particular structure is toddler sized, except for the distance between the platforms one must navigate to get to the ball pit. Two year olds are adept enough to climbs down the platforms, but they aren’t quite tall enough or strong enough to pull themselves back up when either they or their parents want them out. Since the ball pit is surrounded by mesh and separated from the rest of the play area, the only way in or out is to traverse the aforementioned labyrinth. Slightly overweight and out of shape fathers are not best suited for this particular environment. As two year olds are want to do, they may spend anywhere from five seconds to ten minutes in the ball pit before trying to fruitlessly climb out, which then results in screaming for mamma or dada who must come to the rescue by climbing up the ramp, squeezing through the baby tunnels, then contorting themselves so they can lower themselves down, level by level until they reach the ball pit of doom, there I would then pick up my screaming child who would absolutely refuse to walk and carry her back up the ridiculously narrow passage of levels, through the tunnel of despair until we reached the opening where the ramp leads back down to main floor. This junction of tunnel and ramp is often where my screaming daughter would decide to break free and run down the tunnel to the other end where a giant slide would offer her an escape route back to the carnage of the play floor. Then I, shaking my head, would have to continue to crawl on my hands and knees toward the ramp opening before I could stand up and walk upright again and then down the ramp where I would pass my daughter as she was careening back up the ramp to make her way back to the ball pit where the process would start all over again within just a few minutes.

Three hours later when my wife and I had decided we had taken enough abuse, it was time to go. My daughter, of course was in the ball pit again and I thought, foolishly, that I could ask her to come out since it was time to go home. A few moms had taken up residence in the ball pit as they apparently got tired of making the trek and were sitting on the ledges, so my daughter thought that since they must live in the ball pit, she could ask them if it was ok to stay and that would overrule my decision. They were kind enough to look at me and chuckle as I made my way back to the pit to fetch my daughter who was now in full melt down mode as making her leave the pit was tantamount to a death sentence in her mind. My wife collected our things and met me at the base of the ramp (taking pictures, of course) as I hauled my screaming daughter out of that infernal maze of insanity and took her home for her nap.



It was a busy Thanksgiving week, indeed.

     

Thanksgiving: A Terror in Three Parts; Part 2- Thursday: The Home Invasion

     I don’t really have hobbies, per se. In my mind, hobbies are things that require a hefty investment of both money and time (neither of which I have in excess), and from what I've seen, hobbies are, in many instances, a means to escape one’s family. I suppose if I were to try to categorize my interests and label one a hobby, I would have to say that cooking probably falls closest to that mark. It’s something I enjoy doing, something I grew up doing, and I even did it professionally for several years. So, when Thanksgiving approaches, I normally start gearing myself up for an epic cooking marathon.

     It was not to be this year. We were invited by some very close friends to spend Thanksgiving with their family, a change from the norm as we normally host the Thanksgiving festivities at our house. My wife literally danced a jig at the prospect of me not disappearing into the kitchen like some mad scientist, only to emerge days later covered in rendered turkey fat and having bits of exploded cranberries lodged in whatever facial hair had grown during my self-imposed exile. I, however, was not as enthusiastic about the prospect. As the days crept closer and closer to Thanksgiving, I felt more and more uneasy. Two thoughts weighed on me with an almost unbearable persistence: first, I had no idea what to do with myself since I wasn't cooking (Playstation 3 solved that pretty quickly). And secondly, what would be the ramifications of unleashing my daughter in someone else’s home for a major holiday? My wife had the same thought, so being the resourceful, organizational mommy that she is, she did some research (I was busy venting my frustration over not cooking with the latest Batman video game). The answer she came up with was a bag of new toys from the dollar bin at Target. The thought was that new toys would grab her attention and keep her focus on something other than waylaying destruction on a very nice home in a very picturesque Los Angeles neighborhood.  

     The car ride to our destination was without incident. It reminded me of a scene in any random suspense or action film where the protagonists are approaching their enemy’s secret lair, basically unimpeded, and one says to the other, “It’s quiet…too quiet…” and it turns out to be ambush of epic proportions. It was indeed an ambush. People without children don’t really grasp the fact that young children will get into EVERYTHING… especially your antique Peruvian charango because it looks like a really cool guitar and it makes noise (I really do hope that it isn't broken). And your piano because, hey it makes noise when you hit it. And, look, you left your laptop open, let’s see what you’re working on and how it can be improved. And, oh, what cute kitty cats you have. Oops, they ran upstairs, I shall run upstairs after them and scare the bejeezus out of them. Ooooh, there’s the kitty cats’ litter box…let’s look for buried treasure. And oh, Mommy brought bubbles…I WANT BUBBLES, I WANT BUBBLES, I WANNA GO OUTSIDE. It was an absolute nightmarish tornado of toddler and cats and pretty blue cat litter and the accompanying musical score was performed by the striking of random musical instruments. And we hadn't even sat down for dinner yet.

     Finally, dinner was served (really only about half an hour had passed since we arrive, but it felt like days) and everyone took their places at the table. My daughter sat in my wife’s lap with her own little plate of food placed before her, and we made it about three seconds into the blessing of the meal before she burst into a chorus of “I WANNA GET DOWN I WANNA GET DOWN I WANNA GET DOWN I’M ALL DOOOONNNNNNEEEEE,” which burst through the moment of solemn quietness like a rock through a stained glass window. I let out an embarrassed chuckle in an unspoken attempt to apologize to the rest of the party, and my wife and I exchanged exasperated glances. My wife then quietly carried our daughter into the living room and busted out her secret bag of tricks. Our daughter plundered through the bag like some little Viking who was ransacking an unfortunate village’s treasure box. She found her prize and exclaimed, “I WANT PWAY-DOUGH” as she pulled it from the bag and held it up in triumph like she had just won the gold medal in crazy at the toddler Olympics. Why we would bring Play-Dough into someone else’s home when we know what happens when it rears its mushy little head in our home is beyond me, we might as well have brought plastic explosives. When you’re two, what do you do when you have a handful of Play-Dough? That’s right, you tear it into little bits and chuck it everywhere. And what isn't launched around the room is formed into Dali-esque shapes and deposited on the dinner plates of those who are attempting to enjoy their Thanksgiving meal. My wife and I are used to living in chaos, but for some of the other guests who hadn't spent a significant amount of time around our daughter, I assume they felt that the experience was akin to trying to eat a turkey dinner on an active battlefield.

     Dinner was enjoyed, for the most part, despite being peppered with interruptions from a toddler who would crawl under the table at one end and emerge at the other holding a randomly shaped chunk of Play-Dough which would then be shoved towards someone’s face with the explanation, “I MADE DIS FOR YOUUU…EAT IT!!” Everyone was a good sport about it and pretended to eat whatever concoction was being thrust at them. We decided it would be best to take our dessert to go and get our circus of rambunctiousness packed up and headed toward home so that everyone else could talk about us as they enjoyed the rest of their evening. As our host was generously packing our dessert for us, I slipped under the table to collect the neon blue shrapnel that had been littered everywhere. I emerged from beneath the table to our host’s surprise and befuddlement.

“Watcha doing down there?”

“Picking up bits of blue, I didn't want to leave it for you to find later.”

“That’s very nice.”

     It wasn't nice. It was the responsible thing to do. And it was the least I could for the reign of mayhem we unleashed at his family’s holiday gathering. Thursday was waning to its conclusion, but we still had Friday to contend with.   

Thanksgiving: A Terror in Three Parts; Part 1- Wednesday

     For those of you who are either uninformed or thoroughly confused regarding American culture, or if you are in need of a refresher, Thanksgiving is an American holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. The entire country comes to a grinding halt so we can engage in unadulterated gluttony and eat ourselves silly as an act of remembrance for those pilgrims who came to this country long before it was civilized. As most Americans still are, these pilgrims were absolutely incapable of surviving outside of the pinnacle of luxury and were facing certain doom at the hands of a particularly cruel winter when lo and behold, they were saved by the local native population who were quite adept at living off the land (of course, as thanks for their kindness we later invaded their lands, rounded them up and tried to eradicate them).  At least that’s the version we are taught in school, so it may or may not actually be based on historical events.  

     As all good American children do, my daughter’s pre-school had a class Thanksgiving feast on the day before the actual holiday. Schools are normally closed on Thursday for the holiday, as well as Friday, since who wants to go back to school on a Friday after you've eaten more in one day than what some small villages eat in a week, unless you’re a retail shop then you don’t really close for the full holiday as for some reason modern American society thinks you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO do your Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving night and overnight into Friday (which, since we are American, leads to riots, fights, arrests, and general anarchy so you can get a good deal on the latest television or whatever…civilized society, indeed), but I digress…Absolute chaos erupted at about 5:15 that evening when my wife and I picked up our daughter from her pre-school. I stayed in the car, so I only have second hand information regarding the events that actually transpired inside the school walls as my wife went in to fetch our daughter, but the evidence presented as they walked out confirms everything that was alleged. Apparently the floor of our daughter’s class was littered with toddler vomit which was being sopped up with towels by a very unlucky teacher. It appeared that a feeding frenzy had erupted at the pre-school celebration and some poor child (or children) had engorged themselves to the point of eruption. I was notified to my family’s exit of the school building by my daughter’s blood curdling screams, so as a concerned father, I exited the car and made my way to the school entrance to do what I could to help. Apparently, my daughter’s class had made Native American style feather headbands out of colored paper and she wasn't wearing it, but really, really wanted to. She wanted to so much that she had to scream. I’m quite certain that the metric tonne of sugar she consumed at her school party was a contributing factor to the behavior she was exhibiting. This was further clarified after I put the headband on her head for her as a gesture of love and kindness, and she in turn ripped it of off her head whilst screaming “NOOOOOOO” at the top of her lungs. So, into the car we went so we could get to the market to pick up some things for dinner that night. It wasn't until everyone was securely strapped in and we were pulling away from the school that my wife turned up her nose and said, “What is that smell…” We then collectively realized that our still screaming daughter must have stepped in the puddle of sick in the school and it was now polluting the sweet, apple scented air being generated by the air freshener in the car. The smell of apple scented chemicals mixed with toddler wretch was quickly becoming more than my wife could stomach, and as her face was turning green like some kind of Bugs Bunny cartoon, I could tell she was reaching critical mass so I rolled down the windows to air out the car before her lunch came up as well.

     By this time we had reached the market and our daughter was still screaming over the headband that she wanted to wear but wouldn't let us put on her head. As it was the night before Thanksgiving and most Americans will procrastinate until the very last moment, the traffic to get in or out of the shopping center where the market was located was an absolute nightmare. We didn't make it in…screaming child plus stomach churning stench of death plus standstill traffic meant we weren't going to the market and we would forage whatever was edible from our fridge for dinner that night. I was fine with that decision and set our heading for home. Shortly thereafter the screaming stopped and was replaced by a rustling sound. Our daughter had found a bag in the backseat area of my wife’s car that contained random items that my wife exchanges in and out of her purse depending on her needs. So, "Whatever," we thought, our daughter was quiet, she wasn't screaming and the open windows were doing a fairly decent job of sucking the foul stink of upchuck from the cabin area, so it looked as though the remaining few minutes home might be peaceful. Moments later, the rustling sound from the back seat was replaced with a distinctive “shakey-shakey” sound. Our daughter had discovered a bottle of ibuprofen in the bag of random bits. I sounded a mild alarm at the discovery, but the consensus was that it wasn't a big deal since the bottle had a child proof lid and we were mere seconds from being home. Well, guess who can open a child proof pill bottle in the dark whilst strapped into a child seat in a moving vehicle…of course she can…and as I pulled into the garage I heard the nightmarish sound of pills being poured from a plastic bottle. I turned around and grabbed her before she could eat a handful of them. Thanksgiving, indeed. And it was only Wednesday. 

Beauty School Dropout

     Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of caring for my daughter on my own. It may not be with the same finesse, daintiness, organization or level of hygiene that my wife brings to the table, but I figure that if there is no bleeding, there are no broken bones, fires, explosions, vomiting, car crashes, nuclear mishaps or zombie outbreaks, I've done pretty well. I’m finding that mommies and daddies have very different standards, and when left to their own devices there may be markedly different processes, but the end result is the same: a healthy, happy baby and family. 

     My wife has gone to visit her sister for a few days and that means it’s Daddy’s turn. And by Daddy’s turn I mean that Mommy planned everything out before her departure. Lists were made, activities were suggested, lunches were planned and there were coordinated outfits plainly laid out and organized for every day of the week. I was told specifically what should be worn on which day and on penalty if death DO NOT dress her of my own accord lest her daughter look like a little ragamuffin that’s just disembarked from some rickety train on which goats and chickens make up half of the passengers and the people ride on the roof. I kindly explained that I was capable of dressing our daughter and if need be, I would just dress her like I dress. That idea was quickly crushed because apparently I dress like a hobo. It was agreed that I would use the prescribed outfits on their corresponding days.

     My daughter has a lot of hair. It’s very long and wavy (I called it curly, but was corrected). Hence, something needs to be done with her hair in the morning. I have had the same hairstyle since I was seven years old: short and relatively maintenance free. So, as you can probably imagine, doing hair is not really in my repertoire. I do, however, try to do our daughter’s hair on occasion, which normally leads to my wife taking her back into the bathroom to fix the horrendous rat’s nest that I've created. Before her departure, my wife suggested that I watch some YouTube videos on how to do a toddler’s hair, and I agreed, so I indulged. I quickly noted two issues with my research: first, most of the children shown in these “instructional” video have wispy little tufts of hair that are easily tamable, and secondly, all of the little children in these videos sit perfectly still and quietly smile for the camera. My daughter possesses neither of these qualities. To the first point, her hair reaches about halfway down her back and apparently, late at night, little gnomes crawl in her bed and tie knots everywhere in her head (and there is evidence to suggest that they also hide some of my socks). And to the second and more egregious distinction, if my daughter were to attempt to sit still for more than five seconds she would begin to shake violently and then erupt into a reaction of nuclear fission that would engulf the entire known universe . So, when you combine a toddler whose movements are measured on the Richter scale with a father who has the hair styling skills of a monkey, nothing but calamity can ensue.

     Not half a second after my daughter was seated on the bathroom counter top at a height perfect for reaching her hair, she was trying to open the medicine cabinet and dig through the sundry of items inside. Then she was picking up Mommy’s make up brushes and saying, “I WANNA PAINT.” Then she was opening the jars and taking out all of the cotton balls, then the cotton swabs, then the tooth brushes and the tooth paste. Then, of course she would drop everything in her hands and bend down into the sink to pick them up, but as I was holding a handful of her hair at the time, she didn't quite make it all the way down. She did however, yell and scream at me for pulling her hair as she kept trying to bend down into the sink to retrieve her lost treasures. I tried my best to explain that when Daddy is holding your hair, you can’t bend down, because it will pull. I do believe, at that point, if her vocabulary contained any expletives she would have been hurling them at me like a drunken trucker. Fifteen or so grueling minutes of screaming and fidgeting later, we had achieved some rudimentary form of pigtails. Perfect or not, we had to get out of that bathroom before she burnt it down out of spite and anger. I quickly realized, however, just how poorly a job I had done on her hair. I thought that with a quick undoing of the rubber band that was holding the hair in place I would be able to administer a fix, reapply the rubber band, and we would move on with our day. Little did I know that those little, tiny rubber bands are apparently quite volatile and when you attempt to re-use them, they explode and shower you with tiny, stinging bits of brightly colored death. Of course, I had no other rubber bands in my possession, so we had to make our way back to the bedroom. I had to pick her up from the counter in a still seated position whilst holding her errant pigtail in place with my other hand, carry her back to her room, sit her on her changing table, and grab an extra rubber band without letting go of the pigtail. With rubber band in hand and pig tail in other hand, I grimaced in disbelief as I again picked up my daughter to take her back to the bathroom where I realized I had left the hairbrush. We both just wanted to put the madness to an end. Sometimes, the things I do end up looking like they should be in a Three Stooges short. I just hope that when we go out today, people won’t think I've kidnapped some poor, little homeless girl.

This Training Doesn’t Have Wheels

    

     I like to think that my sense of humor has matured past that of sophomoric toilet humor. However, I’m finding that that type of humor is becoming more true to life now that there is a two year old in the house.

     Potty training, thus far anyway, can be summed up in one word: “NO!” That is the standard reaction from my daughter anytime the subject is breached. Whether the question is, “Do you want to try to sit on the potty” or “Did you poop? And don’t say no because I saw you squatting down and heard you grunting and your diaper looks like it’s going to explode and oh boy now I can smell it…” The answer is always, always, always a resounding “NO!” Everything, to her anyway, is more important than sitting in a pile of her own waste. Her pediatrician (whom I've mentioned before, and is still quite brilliant) suggested that we take her in the bathroom with us when we go, so we can really introduce her to the idea and get her comfortable with the process. For me, as I’m sure it is with most men, the bathroom is the inner sanctum, the last bastion of privacy, where you’re about 40% devoted to doing your business, and 60% devoted to playing games on your iPhone or reading the news or watching YouTube or whatever, as long as it’s a few minutes of quiet solitude. Not to be one to put my own interests ahead of the development of my daughter, I do my share of taking her into the bathroom so she may expand her knowledge and work towards becoming a civilized member of society.

     However noble that idea and as sound in theory as it may be, in practice it is pure chaos. I find myself, having gone in there with a purpose, unable to complete said task. To a two year old, a small, echoey room where Daddy is sitting is a great place to try to play "Ring Around the Rosey" and try to get Daddy to fall down too, or shout “I’m Dancing!!” at the top of your lungs and spin around in a circle so fast you smack into the wall and scream out in surprise, or run back and forth as fast as you possibly can in the tiny, tiny room until you misjudge the distance and run face first into the door and scream again, or you can see how much toilet paper you can unroll before Daddy can reach it, or you can see what cool stuff is in the little garbage can and put it in your mouth so Daddy has to get up and take it out of your mouth, or now that you’re tall enough to reach the light switch you can turn the lights off and on and off and on and off and on and off and on because Daddy can’t reach that far from where he is, or you can grab onto that one cabinet that was never baby proofed and lean back when you grab the handle so the door flies open and you fall backwards onto the ground and scream. And downstairs, Mommy wonders why it sounds like the apocalypse is being unleashed above her.

     I long for the day when buying diapers is a thing of the past. Not only so I can reclaim my quiet bathroom time, but also so we can take another small step away from our home being like a refugee camp. Case in point: As I was writing this and bouncing ideas off of my wife, she opened a bag of grilled chicken and was distracted because it “blew a good smell at her”.  It is very rare, these days, in my house that something actually blows a “good” smell in your face. As a prime example, I would like to briefly discuss the Diaper Genie. Kudos to you, the great mind that invented such a thing that will keep dirty diapers in one, convenient place. To dissect that idea, you are indeed keeping piles of human waste in a confined area inside your home. For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, it’s like a tall, somewhat cylindrical garbage can with a foot lever, that when you step on said foot lever, it opens the lid and you can deposit the soiled item inside where it is kept nestled in a plastic bag lined container, along with a dozen or so of its brethren, which is kept from direct contact with the outside world by a trap door that separates the charnel room below from the ribbons, balloons and Hello Kitty blankets surrounding it. Alas, for such a genius concept, there is a downside, as whenever you depress the foot lever and the lid to the abyss is opened, it belches out the most foul and gut wrenching emanation that few people outside the most derelict areas of the most impoverished parts of the world have ever known. This odoriferous offender, like the most advanced, government funded weapon of mass destruction, then attacks all of your senses simultaneously. Your nose, of course, is the first thing to go, your mouth then automatically slams shut, lest you breathe in any of the contaminated air (or get it on your tongue), then your eyes instinctively close to avoid the irritant that is being dispersed into the environment. You then grab your child and flee the area, returning only briefly to combat the biological agent with the nearest can of anti-bacterial aerosol spray. The room is then quarantined for at least twenty minutes so both the offending agent and the odor of chemical flowers are reduced to a level to make the area habitable again. I have found that there is a level of survival that we, as parents are willing to accept. Sure, there might be the putrid stench of decaying filth in one small corner of our home, but it beats going to the bin five times a day.  

    

Volare

     I've never really been a fan of flying. It's not that I'm afraid of flying, I don't like flying commercially. Every time I fly I get the feeling like I'm being crammed onto some cattle car with the rest of the herd and we're bound for oblivion. Invariably, I find myself on a plane full of people who act either like they have not crawled out from under their respective rocks in the last fifteen years or they feel like they're in their own living rooms and it doesn't matter how they act. The only thing that could possibly make it a more relaxing experience (and I'm being very sarcastic) is to introduce a ballistic two year old into the equation. 

     It's that time of year...time to load the family into a confined space that is suspended thirty-odd thousand feet in the air from which there is no escape and fly across the country to visit family. It turned out to be a much more eventful traveling experience than I had anticipated. My daughter apparently thinks that an airport is the ideal place to run amok. She broke free from Mommy's and my grasp and made for an escalator and was a floor above us before we could catch her. Then, she nearly caused the anti-terror task force to descend upon us as she broke free again and rushed the nearest security checkpoint, yelling in semi-intelligible toddler English. I do believe that she was the biggest security exercise the normally lacadasical TSA agents had ever had. If not for Mommy's quick reactions, I'm certain that I would be writing this from Federal prison. I no longer question why some parents put leashes on their children. 

     Then, it was airplane time. A three hour plane trip with a toddler might as well be a month long commitment to an asylum for the violently insane. My daughter's boredom set in about three seconds after we got on the plane, and then it was easily half an hour before we started to taxi down the runway. She had shifted into one of those moods where nothing would satiate her and nothing would calm her. My wife was considerate enough to apologize in advance to the people in the row ahead of us, and when the jack hammer like kicking started on the back of their seats, they were nice enough not to curse us to our faces. All was fine, however, once we reached cruising altitude and we were able to activate our electronic devices (that the pilots use during the entire flight, but for some reason WE can't). 

     She was quietly entertained for about two and a half hours whilst watching movies, but then, with about half an hour to go, her eyes sprang wide open, she flung her little, pink headphones off of her head and with a look of utter desperation and determination she started screaming, "I WANNA GO OUTSIDE!! I WANT OFF THIS AIRPLANE! TIME TO GO OUTSIDE!!" Her little arms and legs were flailing as she ripped off her seatbelt, slid under the seat in front of her and tried to commando crawl her way to the cockpit. I reached down and  grabbed her by her tiny ankle before she totally disappeared and I was able to reel her back in and get her back in her seat and strapped in before facing the wrath of the flight attendant. 

     Luckily, we were able to land without any damage or legal ramifications. And we get to do it all again next week when we fly back home. 

You don’t have the guts…

    

     I had always heard of the “terrible twos” but I really thought that with my daughter the terrible twos started when she was about nine months old. But now I really think I’m seeing a totally different type of terrible… strategic defiance.

     I find myself walking that line again of deciding whether I should choose my battles or launch an all-out offensive against the anarchy that is toddlerdom. Sometimes it’s an exercise in absolute futility, sometimes it’s a Pyrrhic victory and only in the rarest of circumstances is any type of understanding actually achieved. I am speaking, of course, of the attempt to discipline a two year old. I honestly believe that the most hardened of criminals have an easier time accepting right and wrong and understanding the impact of their transgressions than does a toddler. I don’t get the feeling that it’s my daughter’s lack of ability to understand, I really do think that she couldn't care less about what I have to say. And not to say she simply disregards my words, that’s too weak in its meaning; I think she, in her own inner monologue at least, actually laughs at what I’m telling her. She may have the form of a two year old child, but her mind is like that of the most cunning and wily beast ever to roam the face of the earth.

     My daughter is starting to test the waters, so to speak. She is trying her best to let me know that she and she alone is at the hierarchical apex in our home and we, her mother and (especially) her father,  will either bow to her will or face her wrath and be summarily executed for crimes against the crown. I, of course, must remind her that she is a two year old and not Ming the Merciless and she, indeed, does not reign supreme over the universe and all who abide in it. She actually does, though, reign over the corner of the living room where her baby dolls reside as she likes to give them their meals, tell them when to go to bed, put them in time out and then beat them senseless when they disobey her. I think her little corner of an empire may be inflating her ego and giving her a little, tiny Napoleon complex. I will, however, meet her at Waterloo.

     Recently, we had an afternoon that saw three trips to time out in fewer than three hours. Trips number one and two were for hitting me. She thinks that whenever she disagrees with me, or I suppose more correctly, when I disagree with her agenda, she must strike me down. This could be for any reason such as: “I’m tired of holding my cup and you won’t relieve me from the burden”, “The food you placed before me is not fit to be zoo fodder even thought I specifically asked for it and was happy with it a moment ago” or, “This is the duckie towel and I will only be dried with the owl towel”.  The first two time out sessions this day had to do with an unannounced change in her lunch request that I should have been telepathically aware of, and because it’s her couch and she will jump on it if she pleases and who am I to demand otherwise.  Whenever there is a violation that earns discipline, my wife and I always explain the infraction, explain that there are consequences for actions and that we are not to do those things. Then, after the time out has ended, we re-cap and re-explain everything in an attempt to gain understanding on her part. It’s generally a fruitless endeavor, but we hope to lay the groundwork in her mind. Our daughter, however, is quietly planning an insurrection.

     The third time out of the day was doled out because of contempt and because she needs to understand danger. She was playing with her baby dolls in the living room and I took the opportunity to slip into the kitchen to start cutting things in preparation for dinner and my wife took the chance to sneak away to the laundry, unhindered by shouts of “MOMMY’S TURN! MOMMY’S TURN!” to take care of the million loads of laundry that a family with a two year old apparently needs on a weekly basis. My chef’s knife was on the board as I was putting some sliced vegetables in a bowl when my daughter came into the kitchen. She feigned interest in me and went straight for the knife, as anything within a foot of the counter’s edge is now well within her grasp. I grabbed her hand and explained she shouldn't touch that as it is dangerous and she could get hurt (I actually think her intention was to teach me a lesson, once and for all). She looked at me, bewildered, as if she could not believe I was telling her what to do, and she reached for it again. I, of course, a little more sternly this time, told her to stop and explained again the danger and told her that if she did it again, it would mean a time out. She stared deep into my eyes, this time with her brow furrowed and her eyes afire with indignation and slowly reached for the handle of the knife as I stared back at her. It had become a game of chicken. I would not be playing the part of the chicken, so up she went and was transported to the time out chair, which is an extra dining chair that is in the corner of the living room, opposite the corner where her dolls live. The result of my asking her if she knew why she was in time out and my attempted explanation as to the potential danger she faced and why it’s important to listen to Daddy was for her to literally dance around the issue. She responded with “Look, I’m dancing” as she stood up and tap danced circles in the chair, and said “I want some chicken nuggets.”  Either no comprehension or no desire to comprehend, I’m still trying to comprehend.

     It’s going to be a long road. Teaching my daughter right from wrong and even more so, trying to help her understand right and wrong and actions and consequences is going to be a lifelong task, and it’s one to which I’m totally committed. 

It’s your party and I’ll cry if I want to.

Firstly, I would like to thank everyone who helped with and attended my daughter's birthday party. You all made it quite memorable for her and she is still talking about it, so thank you for helping to make my daughter's day special.

Secondly...

    I have fond memories of my birthday parties from when I was young. I remember having my friends come over, having some cake, playing with everyone and being slightly disappointed with the presents that I got.  As a child, I thought a birthday party was a fun, stress free time when my family and friends could get together and have a blast.  I have seen it from the other side now and my life will never be the same.

     My daughter’s second birthday came and went like a plague of locusts tearing through my house, devouring and laying waste to my humble abode. Her birthday was actually on a Sunday, but the festivities started on Friday at daycare as they celebrated by pumping her full of carrot cake, which might as well be jet fuel to a two year old. As we had planned her party for Saturday afternoon, my wife and I, along with two of our dear friends, decided to decorate on Friday night after our daughter went to bed. The carrot cake induced nuclear reaction that happened that evening is too exhausting to put into words, but if you’re the slightest bit familiar with my daughter or any of the adventures that I have previously chronicled, you can imagine the screaming fit of hyperactive rage and attitude that exploded when it was time for night-night. The fight culminated after she was in bed with her throwing her blanket out of her crib in protest and screaming at the top of her lungs, “MYYY BWWWWWANNNKETTTTT!!! I WANT MY BWWWANKET BACK!!!!”  So, after a few rounds of fetch the bwanket, she and I had to come to the understanding that if her blanket made it out of her crib again, it would stay where it lay and she would be a bwanket-less girl that night. It was a shaky truce, but the adults were able to continue our decorating for the upcoming festivities.

     My wife had decided that an “Under the Sea” theme would be best for our daughter’s party, and in my simple, simple mind I envisioned popping The Little Mermaid into the DVD player and getting some paper cutouts of Ariel and her fishy little friends and hanging them from the ceiling or something to that cheesy and clearly unimaginative effect. I, of course, was laughed at and ridiculed for having such a poor perception of how a child birthday should REALLY be. I was shown the light when my wife and her friend spent week after week in preparation by building all of the decorations by hand, which included a four foot tall mermaid made of poster board that was fastened to the wall amongst equally homemade poster board bubbles and seaweed. Not to mention the seven or eight giant jellyfish made from paper bowls, ribbon and giant googly eyes. Then there was the school of a dozen inflatable fish that were hung from the ceiling. And the blue and green filtered lights reflecting off of the portable disco ball to give the room a shimmery ambiance.  

     After working well into the night to transform our living room into an underwater lair, naturally as we awoke the next morning and made our way back into our new aquarium living room, everything we had taped to the ceiling in an exhausted haste the night before was laying on the floor as if the birthday party gremlins had paid a visit (I’ll never buy cheap tape again). My daughter, seeing the newly transformed and dilapidated underwater living room ran screaming, “MY FISHEEEEEEEES” toward the pile of inflated fish that now looked like they had been tossed out by some cartoon fishmonger.   Then it was time to redecorate, get the food ready, wrap the presents and be all ready to go by just after lunch.

     The thought of having this birthday party in my living room brought to mind visions of an alliance of toddlers banding together to squelch the tyrannical rule of the adults by any means necessary, and the more violent the better. It didn't turn out much differently than I had imagined. Children everywhere…screaming…running…throwing…total and absolute chaos exploded at a soprano pitch in my living room. Food and drinks were splayed out like the aftermath of a tornado at an unfortunate state fair. Children love cheese. Children aren't very good at holding on to their food and have a general disregard for putting things where they go. I had put out little, tiny sandwich fixings as hors d’oeuvres for the adults and as actual food for the kids which meant kids were grabbing cheese by the handful, taking a few bites and then tossing the leftovers with reckless abandon and letting the remains lie wherever they happened to land, which was generally very close to their feet. Those feet then stomped and ground the saliva soaked half eaten cheese into the living room rug, the kitchen floor, the top of my ottoman, or it was smeared across the glass doors of the fireplace. The adults drink cups were routinely swatted off of whatever surface upon which they had been perched. It was almost like some sadistic childhood game where the adults had not been given a copy of the rules, they had just been dropped into the middle of knee-high mayhem and expected to survive. I don’t normally fare well in those types of situations, so I was running around like some kind of butler at an insane asylum trying to scrape soggy cheese mash out of my rug and cleaning up spilled drinks and crushed juice boxes the moment they hit the floor, all while humming the theme to “Doctor Who” to myself in an attempt to keep the raucous cacophony from the party horde from splitting my mind in two. Decorations were being pulled down and destroyed, inflatable, plastic fish were apparently dying from the shock of it all and were falling from the ceiling like flies and bouncing off of little kids’ heads, which of course lead the children to then pick up the deceased sea life and pummel each other about the head. This went on for three solid hours.

     It’s been nearly a week since the tiniest apocalypse unfolded in my home. There are still the remains of undersea decorations sticking to my wall, and a four foot tall poster board mermaid still lays trampled and broken in the corner by the fireplace like the sole, unclaimed soldier whose remains decorate the battlefield. My wife and I are still exhausted. Our daughter thinks it was the best day of her life. 

Excuse me, have you seen my marbles?

      Earlier this week, a gentleman who works in my office returned to work from taking time off for the birth of his first child. He bounded into the office early one morning with a spring in his step, a smile on his face and looked as refreshed and invigorated as one who had just returned from a six week stay at an all-inclusive resort and spa for new fathers.  I thought he had to have been lying about what he had actually been doing for the past month and a half. There couldn't have been a baby…he looked so well rested…

     Then he did the new father thing, whipped out his iPhone and started showing the myriad of pictures all new proud fathers take. “So, what’s his name?” I asked the newest member of the office’s paternity of fatherly brotherhood.

“Her..”

“His name is Her?”

“No, it’s a girl.”

Of course it was. There just wasn't any hair. I was so used to my daughter’s Rapunzel-esque volume of hair that it was an alien thought that any poor female child be born bald, so it must have been a boy, a boy no doubt foreshadowing his future, unfortunate hair loss. The uncomfortable moment between us passed quickly, although I did realize that I was probably the newest ostracized member of the office’s paternity of fatherly brotherhood. He continued swiping through the pictures on his phone and something rather odd struck me (other than the fact that I STILL thought the baby looked like a boy in a teeny, tiny dress). In nearly every single picture, which constituted the first six weeks of that baby’s life, the child was asleep. Asleep and looking like a bald-headed little angel.  

     In one of those “life flashing before your eyes” moments that usually only happen on bad television shows or to people on drugs, I was taken back to when my daughter was born and forced to recall my own experience. My wife went into labor on a Tuesday at about 11:30 at night, and that baby didn't get here until Thursday at about 4pm. We didn't actually go to the hospital until Thursday morning at about 8, which means we woke up on Tuesday September 20 thinking it would be a day like any other, and then we wouldn't go to sleep again until sometime in the second week of October while my mom was visiting and then only after I wheeled my wide eyed infant daughter out in her bassinet and yelled something to the effect of, “You’re watching the baby tonight”, although I’m quite sure it actually sounded more like, “Bwahhlrrggsa AAAAHHHHHH.”

     The day my daughter was born, I didn’t really feel the fact that I had been awake for two solid days, but then the following two nights in the hospital started to wear on me. A screaming newborn who hates the world because she has been unwillingly forced into it coupled with perfectly timed visits every fifteen minutes from nurses who are completely oblivious to the fact that the thing most needed by new parents is sleep does not make for an ideal way to get any kind of rest. And it all went downhill from there. By the time we got home with our newborn daughter, she had decided that she was so mad at the world that she would do everything in her power to bring it to its knees and wouldn't sleep a wink until she had had her vengeance. The two weeks I had taken off from work began as a time of family bonding and turned into a 336 hour marathon of insanity. There were nightly instances of me rocking like a madman with my daughter swaddled like a tiny mummy while she peered up at me with eyes full of fire and hate as I tried to put her to sleep at 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 in the morning. She and I once went for a drive at 1:30 in the morning because I got the foolish idea that the vibration from the car might lull her to sleep… a foolish idea, indeed. She would never take a pacifier, so one night I tried to tape the pacifier to her face so she might actually be pacified. All she did was scream and wish death upon me. At one point, I actually considered the idea that she might be possessed.

     As the weeks dragged on, sleep was becoming nothing more than a distant memory.  Day after day after day without sleep combined with the stress of trying to figure out why my daughter wanted to torture me made my mind deteriorate to the point of delirium and hallucinations. Every sound I heard: a passing car, a squeaking door, a faucet turning on, a cat’s meow, in my head sounded like a screaming baby. I would shudder at the screaming baby driving past me on the street, grate my teeth at the screaming baby hidden inside the telephone, gaze in utter befuddlement at the fat, gray cat who was screaming at me like a baby. I was snapping, losing touch with reality. Then I had to go back to work. I feigned comprehension when my coworkers would talk to me, because in my new reality, everyone either sounded like a screaming baby or Charlie Brown’s teacher.  I would stare at the computer for hours on end and watch the letters swirl around my face in a flashing vortex of confusion. I remember seeing myself from across the room and the me who wasn't me was pointing and laughing at me. I had come undone.

     So, to have such a cheerful, well rested new father show me pictures of his sleeping baby threw me for a bit of a loop and made me momentarily relive that which I had tried so hard to purge from my memory. I’m past all that now and facing new and bigger challenges.   

I'd like a shot of that, please.

     As someone who, until recently, hadn't exactly kept up with his regular medical checkups for longer than some people have been alive, I can understand the sense of trepidation surrounding going to a doctor's office to have a stranger do things to you which, in the absence of a medical license, would be a thoroughly inappropriate violation of personal space. I, a rational adult with a fair degree of cognitive ability, am aware that such things are for my own good and I am able to suppress any feelings of irrational fear and discomfort that may be manifesting in my psyche and making me want to either lie on the floor in the fetal position or lash out at the strangers around me like some kind of Neanderthal. Now, let's put a toddler in that same scenario and see how it plays out.

     I'm not in the business of advertising, so, as a caveat, let me say that this is not an advertisement of any kind for any specific medical professional, but merely a recognition. I have to say that my wife and I have chosen who we believe to be the best pediatrician in the entire known world. This doctor has been in the game for quite a while and she shows a genuine interest in not only her little patients, but also their parents. In one particular instance, my daughter came down with tonsillitis when she was about a year and half old, and we spent nearly eight solid hours in the medical complex running various tests to pinpoint the issue. The doctor could see the fatigue and wear taking effect on me and actually brought me lunch while I was waiting and took some time to make sure that I was okay. She is a genuinely wonderful person. So, if you're in the L.A. area and are in need of a pediatrician, I would be happy to pass on her info. That being said, it is with the deepest respect that I apologize from the bottom of my heart to her and her staff for any psychological trauma that my daughter may have caused during any of her visits.

     A visit to the doctor normally starts out like a visit anywhere my daughter goes: running full speed and leaving a trail of destruction in her wake. "I WANNA SEE THE GOLDFISH" can be heard by anyone in the entire medical complex as we make our way down the hall and toward the doctor's office. No sooner than I can swing open the medieval sized wooden door to the office, my daughter bursts in and leaves a DeLorean style trail of fire behind her as she screams toward the fish tank at the opposite end of the waiting room. A waiting room which is filled with sick children and beaten down parents who track my daughter in bleary eyed amazement as if they're watching a race car power toward the finish line as she runs full speed toward the fish tank screaming, "GOLDFISHES." While intermittently picking her up to see the "goldfish" (which are not actually goldfish as it is a saltwater tank, but my daughter has been lax in her marine biology studies), she feels that it is necessary to try to sit in every single chair in the waiting room (whether it's occupied or not) while simultaneously running from one end of the room to the other. This always makes for some very interesting glances from parents and occasionally a shriek from a less than healthy child who either has never borne witness to or simply cannot fathom a being of that size displaying that much unbridled energy. Needless to say, we aren't very popular in the waiting room.

     That all changes, however, when the door opens and the nurse calls out my daughter's name. When we cross the threshold into what a nearly two year old mind must think is the place of nightmares and my daughter sees the nurse, fear and the overwhelming sense of self preservation takes over. This nurse, mind you, is one of the sweetest and kindest people I have ever met, but to a toddler, she might as well be wearing an executioner's hood and carrying a double-sided ax. She has one of the most unfortunate jobs in the world; she has to stab little children with needles and make them cry. At the sight of this harbinger of doom, my daughter usually reacts by shaking her head from side to side and screaming, "NO NO NO NO NO NAAOOOOOOOO" while fighting to climb over my shoulder so she can do a ninja flip onto the floor, run down the hall and dive through the third floor plate glass window in slow motion while simultaneously spinning around and shooting back into the office to make her Matrix style getaway. But, she needs her vaccinations, so I can't let that happen.

     As the door to the examination room closes behind the nurse who is holding her little basket of death, my daughter accepts her inevitable fate and realizes that her fighting is futile. The nurse, with all of the sympathy she can muster, administers the injections and slinks away, only to re-emerge sometime in the future when it's time for another visit. As I collect my sobbing daughter and parade her through the admin area to make our next appointment, she is showered with stickers and high fives from the rest of the staff like the tiniest war hero. She waves a teary eyed good-bye to everyone as we leave and knows that she will have to face this foe again...and swears vengeance.

The Accidental Hobo

     Many a weekend over the last two years have come to a labored, exhausting end, much like an over matched boxer who has been rope-a-doped for five or six solid rounds, then takes a right to the chin and gently slides down the ropes and into night-night land, unable to continue. As I look at myself in the mirror whilst getting ready for bed on any given Sunday night, I'm often in shock at what appears to be a weathered, homeless person looking back at me. After that moment of fright subsides, I then try to figure out why I smell like hot onions, why my clothes are crunchy and why my teeth taste furry. Then I remember...I haven't spent more than five consecutive minutes in a bathroom since Friday.

     It isn't just me. At the culmination of a weekend, my wife normally staggers toward the bed and collapses in its general direction, hoping to actually hit the mattress. For lack of a better word, our daughter is high energy (also for lack of a better word, I am not). On any given Friday at around 5 p.m. (although in reality this happens almost every day), I will arrive at my daughter's day care to walk in and find half a dozen children sitting calmly at a little table playing with choo-choo trains or dolls or whatever human children play with at daycare, only to see my daughter running laps around the room like some kind of tweaked out greyhound chasing an imaginary rabbit and screaming "I'M RUNNNNNNIIINNNNNNNGGGG." I'll give her a few more laps as I mentally prepare myself, then after I've explained that it's time to go home (and I'm really not sure how long it takes for my words to catch up to her as she's running at nearly the speed of sound), I'll scoop her up as she makes another pass and even though she is no longer in contact with the ground, her legs will still be moving at the same speed for at least thirty seconds as she screams "NAAAAOOOOOOOOOO" and fights to break free like some wild, baby piglet who is certain that nothing but her doom awaits wherever she is being carried.

     From the moment my daughter's eyes spring open on a Saturday or Sunday morning, she is moving at full speed and doesn't stop until she is put to bed. I liken the experience to attempting to avert a nuclear meltdown every single minute of every single day. My daughter wakes up before either of us do, and when we hear her in her room we know it's showtime, so we take a collective deep breath and go fetch her to start the day. We know that if she were to be left in her room alone for too long, she would probably pick up her bed, throw it through the wall, escape and wreak havoc on L.A. She would then subvert the local government and set up her own rule whilst gaining the trust of the general populous so that she could have millions upon millions of minions at her very command. As a responsible father, I just can't let that happen. In order to react expeditiously, I normally throw on whatever clothes I can see as I leap out of bed, which usually happen to be the clothes I was wearing the night before. Unshowered and unkempt, I move to the kitchen to start the breakfast proceedings which usually consists of my daughter telling me at least three different things she would like to eat, me preparing each of them and then her screaming "NAAOOO" at each plate whilst waving her arms like she's trying to knock circling biplanes out of the sky.

     Next on the agenda is the park. If my daughter hasn't made it out the door for the park by 9:30, pieces of furniture start to levitate and my living room develops its own weather pattern. Trips to the park are made up of running through the grass, running through the sand, running back and forth across the play structure, running up and down the basketball court and running circles around the swing set, which is why I try to keep her in the swing as long as possible. All that running means sweat for me, and that is on top of the already day old clothes that I'm wearing. Not to mention that parks in L.A. are hot in the summertime. Hot because the people who planned the parks didn't think about placing trees anywhere near where children might play, and hot because the sun always feels like it's three feet away from your face.

     A trip to the market usually follows the park since weekends are really the only time we have to do any shopping. And we all know who lives at the market...MUFFIN MAN. So, that's generally a fiasco. Amazingly, though, my daughter always takes the time to say "HI" and wave to random people wherever we happen to be, and the market is no exception, until we get close to the baked goods section. After the market, it's lunch and nap, which means a brief reprieve for Mommy and Daddy where Mommy usually passes out on the couch and I stare at the television in a semi-vegetative state while my body attempts to recuperate.

     After nap, it's another trip to the park, more running and sweating, then playing at home, then dinner, which usually goes about as well as lunch, then more playing in the living room which usually involves me lying face down on the floor while my daughter uses my back as a trampoline. By this time, it's approaching   7 p.m. and it's time for bath and bed. By the time it's all said and done, it's around 8 p.m. and my wife and I usually try to keep from falling face first into whatever plate of food we've been able to scrape together.

     Before I know it, it's the next day and the cycle starts all over again. The clothes I pick up on the way to start my futile breakfast endeavor are normally the ones closest to me and easiest to grab, which are generally the ones I had peeled off of myself the night before. By the time Sunday night offers respite from the weekend's perpetual activities, I am a haggard, beaten down version of myself who could easily be mistaken for someone living on a bench in Venice Beach.

But, my daughter tells me "Night-night, Daddy", so I don't really care how I look.

Take a picture, it'll last longer

     I have a brilliant idea. Why don't we get a professional photographer, my wife's wedding dress, a 75 pound wing back chair, a dozen helium balloons, and a toddler with the demeanor of the Tasmanian Devil and haul them all to a park and try to take pictures of the aforementioned toddler. And just to make it fun, let's give our daughter some coffee in the morning just because we think it's cute when she drinks it. That's how you should spend a Saturday.

     That is exactly how we spent last Saturday. My daughter loves going to the park. Living in L.A. makes frequent trips to the park quite a necessity as houses with yards aren't exactly easy to come by (at least if you want to live in a neighborhood where you can actually go out into your yard). Also, my daughter is not really known for her ability to do anything that requires standing still or sitting in one place for more than about a second. Needless to say, the idea of going to the park, or as she calls it, "PARKANDSWING" but not actually being able to go swing or run around in the grass didn't really sit very well with her.

     The photographer's idea for the photo shoot was actually pretty cool: have our daughter wear my wife's wedding dress whilst sitting in a giant chair in a pretty park making cute poses, then tying a sundry of balloons to the chair and having our daughter ooh and aah at the balloons, and so on and so on. I'm sure that this idea would have been magnificent had it been attempted with a human child, but I think what resulted was actually the photographer deciding that she never, ever wanted to work with children again.

     As I walked from the parking lot carrying a giant, art-deco styled chair upside down on my head, my vision was really limited, but what I could hear was my twenty-three month old daughter screaming "PARKANDSWING PARKANDSWING" as her little voice faded off into the distance which meant she was already running, full bore, toward the play area. I rotated the inverted chair around on my head and could make out both my wife and the photographer running after her to prevent her from diving, face first, into the sand that surrounds the play area, because, of course, we were here to take pictures and a sandy baby simply would not do. I chose a spot that I thought would be a great spot for picture taking (mainly because I was tired of carrying that ridiculously heavy chair) and we set up all of the equipment. As I said earlier, this concept was great in theory, but trying to make my daughter sit in a giant chair wearing a full size wedding dress when the swing and slide were RIGHT OVER THERE just wasn't going to happen. Without fail, every time someone would sit her in the chair, and even before we would take a step back away from her, she was out of the chair and making a bee-line for anything that was not us taking pictures of her. A toddler in a full grown adult's wedding dress can't really run that well, so there was a lot of tripping over a wedding dress, face planting into the grass and yelling out "I'M OKAYYYYY" as she would bounce up and start running again. As to not potentially ruin the wedding dress, it was decided to put regular clothes back on her, when meant she was then totally unencumbered and could again run at her normal speed, which I have clocked at approximately Warp Factor 3.

     As the day was playing out pretty much exactly as I had dreamed the night before, I decided that I would not actively participate in chasing the littlest thunderbolt around the park trying to snap pictures of her, but I would watch from the relative comfort of a giant wing back chair that I hauled into the park like some hobo Sherpa. What I witnessed was a type of psychological and physical torture that I was certain my daughter was inflicting on her mommy and that poor photographer with absolute calculation. As the photographer would run ahead of my daughter, my wife would try to herd her toward the photographer so she could snap some pictures and try to salvage something out of this nightmarish day. Whenever the camera would be in a position to get a good shot, my daughter would either make a sharp turn and run perpendicular to the camera or she would do a quick spin, double back and totally evade my wife who was trying to catch her. This went on for a solid twenty-five minutes before I decided to meander over and suggest calling it a day. The now out of breath photographer said to me, "You know, this really gets easier when they're four or five years old". I asked, "Would you like to come back then?", which elicited an only half joking chuckle. The decision was made to keep trying to get pictures with the thought that if my daughter ran around enough, she would wear herself out and become docile enough to take decent pictures. What the general public is unaware of, however, is that deep in the center of my daughter's being is what I can only assume to be a neutron star which generates more energy per second than the entire population of the earth consumes in any given day. So much energy, in fact, that when our sun eventually collapses in on itself and then supernovas, my daughter will still be running around a park somewhere at several times the speed of light.

     I decided to wander back to where the chair was set up and contemplate the lessons learned that day. As if the day had not yet been crazy enough, I was struck by what I like to refer to as "Random Crazy", or simply "getting crazied." From behind the bushes near where the chair was set up, I started hearing, "Hiiiii-Yaaaaa" over and over and over with some very labored breathing. I peered over the bushes and was met by the sight of a rather old gentleman (and by gentleman I mean crazy person) dressed in black, tactical fatigues and wearing a silver helmet doing what was apparently a drug induced version of shadow kung-fu. He was Hiiii-Yaaaa-ing to nobody and kicking the air with all the fervor of seasoned martial arts master, except he was a crazy old white dude dressed up like a drug store soldier for hire.

     This was more than I could handle, so in utter, exhausted, amazement I picked up my armchair from the middle of the park and started the trek back to the parking lot. The others in my party of the damned followed suit and made it to our conveyance back to the world of the sane. We'll try again in ten years.

In case you're wondering how the pictures turned out, here's one that was taken in one of the split seconds where my daughter wasn't moving faster than modern cameras could capture her:

Do you know the Muffin Man?

     I sometimes amaze myself  with my total disregard for common sense. Being the father of an almost two year old daughter, one would think that by now I would have learned to pick my battles wisely when it comes to trying to teach my daughter the virtues of proper behavior. There comes a time when one must choose to stand his ground and fight or make a hasty retreat and avoid the oncoming destruction that is about to be waylaid upon him by such a seemingly innocent child. I apparently have a hard time making that distinction.
   
     Today's lesson in daddy decision making reared its screaming, malevolent head in the middle of a local grocery store. Ah, crowded public places...a child's favorite arena to test a daddy's mettle and rain embarrassment down upon him should the mood strike her. We had made a deal (and I say that with all of the misplaced confidence one should have when referring to a twenty-three month old's comprehension of making a deal) that if she were good in the store, I would buy her a muffin. My daughter has an inexplicably unquenchable mania for baked goods, ALL baked goods, but especially those in the muffin category, and these she lovingly refers to as "Muffin Man". Cupcake she knows, cake and pie are called by name, I'm currently trying to teach her "Bear Claw" and "Apple Fritter" (her mommy doesn't know that yet), but muffins are always "Muffin Man". She knows exactly where muffin man lives in every single store and whenever we cross the threshold into any given market, she invariably asks, "Muffin Man?", and the closer we get to the baked goods section, she begins chanting like a miniature swami on meth "Muffin Man Muffin Man muffinman muffinmanmuffinmanmiffinman" until she is either denied or is rewarded with Muffin Man. Today, since she had been rather well behaved in the store (and since I, too, love baked goods) I decided Muffin Man was in order. The chaos began when Muffin Man was placed in his little, brown bag and was nonchalantly tossed in with the rest of the groceries in the cart as we made our way to the checkout queue. To say my daughter protested not being given the opportunity to decimate the muffin right then and there would not really describe the mayhem that exploded when Muffin Man didn't end up in her hands. I thought, "this will be a great opportunity to work on teaching my daughter the concept of patience and how to behave in public". My daughter was thinking "MUFFIN MAAAAANNNNNNNNNNN". Except she wasn't thinking it, she was screaming it at the top of her little, yet super-humanly powerful lungs. I tried to rationalize with her and explain that we have to first pay for the muffin, and when we get to the car and get all strapped in she would be free to delicately enjoy her muffin like any proper twenty-three month child should, but she apparently didn't believe me. I actually believed at one point that this tantrum would culminate in a tiny, nuclear explosion that would obliterate at least my checkout lane and if I were lucky enough to be vaporized it would save me from further humiliation. That was not the case. What I did get, however, was a lot of awkward smiles and sideways glances from the other patrons. Like their children never had a complete meltdown in a public place. The nice cashier tore some stickers off of her Emergency Child Pacification Sticker Roll that she had stashed next to her register and offered them to my daughter in hopes of quenching the fires of hatred that were pouring forth. Upon receipt of the stickers, my daughter looked at them, screamed "NAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO", threw them at me and reasserted her demand of "MUFFFFFIINNNN MAAAAANNNNNNN".
   
     That's when the eighty-seven year old lady in line in front of me decided that she had no idea how to run her card through the machine at the checkout, which card to use, and I'm not even sure she knew where or who she was. What I do know, though, is that she was either ignoring or was totally oblivious to the fact that there was nuclear meltdown happening not three feet directly behind her. I don't care who you are, how old you are or what your status in life is, but if there is someone behind you with a screaming child and he looks as though he wishes he could either teleport somewhere else or spontaneously combust, please take pity on that poor parent and move on with your day so he can get the screaming baby out of that store. Alas, it was not to be. Moses' grandmother spent so long trying to figure out the machine that the cashier had to do it for her. AND THEN, once all was complete and her groceries were all loaded she had to analyze her receipt, whilst still standing in the line, to make sure she got her five cents off for using her own bag.

     The cashier was wise enough that as soon as the opportunity was presented, she scanned the muffin and handed it back to me, still nestled inside its damnable paper bag. The unrelenting scream of "MUFFFIIINNNN MAAAAAAAA___" was immediately squelched when I decapitated Muffin Man and handed my daughter the severed muffin top. A soft "Thank you, Daddy" escaped her lips as she shoveled said muffin into her face. As quickly and as violently as it had begun, it was now over and all was well with the world again.

     After packing everyone and everything back into car, whilst still frazzled, out of breath, and feeling like I had just been beaten about the head and shoulders by some overwhelming foe, I called my wife to recount the ordeal. Her only response was, "THAT'S WHY YOU GIVE HER THE MUFFIN IN THE CHECKOUT LINE". Yeah. Maybe not the best choice for a time to teach patience to someone who hasn't even the slightest concept of the idea. It's an ongoing process. For both of us.