Happy Birthday Benjamin!

February 13th marked the one year mark for young master Benjamin. Being 1-years old, we was oblivious of the the significance of the date and gave no speeches that regaled his first year of life. So I wrote one for him taking some educated guesses at what he wanted to say.

"Greetings friends, and salutations to my family. Let me first thank you all for taking time out of your busy lives to celebrate me completing one of your Earth years. Why, it seems like only yesterday that I emanated from my mother's womb covered in humanity, and stared upon my gracious and extremely good looking parents. These two people, who for simplicity I will call "Mom" and "Dad", have sacrificed greatly to get me where I am today.

I look back at pictures of myself when I was first born and I hardly remember that kid, I was so young and naive. But now I'm pretty self-sufficient - except for feeding, drinking, diapering, bathing, dressing and walking. Baby steps, people, baby steps.

I would also like to thank all of my extended family and babysitters for giving me the highest level of care possible, outside of that Super Nanny woman or Mary Poppins. I cherish all of those moments that you sneak me soda pop and candy while my parents are away doing whatever it is they do. I would also like to thank Pampers - you are truly the superior diaper that lovingly cradles my bo-hiney.

I leave you with this, who's the cutest baby in the world and has two thumbs? This guy! I now realize this joke would have made more sense in person so you could see me pointing to myself with my two thumbs. I'll work on the delivery before I turn 2. Thank you for coming, drive safe and goodnight."

My personal sidenote is that I felt like Kindergarten Cop during the party to make sure kids weren't killing themselves or pulling up our hardwoods - "Dher horribull..."

Snip, Snip, Sniff

There is a first for everything and it was time for Benjamin's 1st Haircut. Emily and I had grown tired of reading in between the lines of people's comments like, "Oh, look at THAT hair..." or "Poor little guy, he's got hair in his eyes" or "He looks like a baby Blagojevich!" We actually thought his longer hair was cute and endearing, plus we had a business model put into place for creating Baby Toupees.

He is approaching his first birthday so we felt the time was now to embark on this rite of passage. After a little investigation we found three business chains that specialize in cutting kid's hair. By the way, that seems so American that we need baby salons AND that there is enough demand and profit to support three different chains. U-S-A!

The correct name of the place we picked escapes me, but it was something to the effect of "cOOl Kutz 4 Kydz" - the more mispelled the kooler, right? This place looked more like a daycare than a barbershop - video game consoles buzzing, Playskool toys strewn about and the distinct smell of bubble gum and fear filled the air. Obviously the theory goes that if your kid is distracted enough with bells and whistles, they won't shriek like a banshee during the haircut. I doubt a licensed sociologist came up with this theory, but it works.

A couple of weeks before the haircut, I posited the question to Emily, "what is it about a haircut that freaks kids out?" If it was the fear of the scissors, I recommended holding a pair of scissors in our hands while we fed Benjamin in his highchair, you know, to get him more comfortable around them. This was vetoed for reasons unknown. My other cause of our kid's fear, I think, is us. In our efforts to make it special or memorable, it looks less like a haircut and more of a coronation of the Chosen One.

Despite our own hype, Benjamin did really well during the whole process. He sat in a customized fire truck chair and was thoroughly intrigued by a comb, I think he was also wondering why there is a "b" in the word. The only part of the experience that stirred his pot was getting spritzed with water to wet his hair. After that he got back into his exploration of his comb, nearly oblivously of me taking over 120 pictures with my new camera. I think I'm turning Japanese.

After the cut was done and his hair dried, I looked at him and saw a version of myself from 1978 staring right back at me. The "Bowl Cut" was all the rage when I was kid and when you have super straight hair like myself (and Benjamin) there aren't too many cut options. Looking at him, it was evident that after a few snips he had gone from baby to little boy. Our onesie wearing baby with crazy hair had passed the baton on to this penny-loafer wearing toddler.

This moment of recognition of childhood's fleet-footedness almost got a tear out of me, luckily the $28 bill for the "1st Haircut Package" slapped me back to reality. Seriously? I could have performed the 6 scissor snips myself. It's not like they were stylish snips, it looked like she was cutting constuction paper with safety skizzors. I'm trying to talk Benjamin into starting a baby mullet trend or to become a really artsty baby whose in touch with his inner-inner child.

That or I'll just fire up the Xbox, grab a mixing bowl and start up "Dalez HaiR-Do's 4 Childrenz"