Vegas for Kids

The LIGHTS, the SOUNDS, the hope and promise of turning your MONEY into thousands…of tickets. What heavenly place is this? Chuck E. Cheese, the Vegas for kids. Our niece celebrated her 3rd birthday at this pizza playland, which marked the first time I’ve been in a CEC since I celebrated my own 5th birthday inside one in Singapore (I remember a lot more Asians at my party).

This was of course Benjamin’s first run-in with Mickey’s very distant cousin Chuck. CEC has a very distinct smell – one part cafeteria pizza, two parts industrial cleaning agent, one part diaper. I’m not a germaphobe, but I wanted to run home and put on my hazmat uniform before I touched anything. All of the kids running around looked like little gremlins – wide eyed, showing off their tiny chiclet teeth and had mucus on their muzzles.

We took Benjamin around to check things out, but he was still too young to really do, play or ride anything. The cacophony around us did excite him enough to do his version of a touchdown dance a couple of times. I also put on a Skeeball exhibition for everyone there, 43000 points. I’m just sayin’.

My Skeeball efforts tallied up (drumroll please) a whopping 167 tickets. What can that get you from the CEC prize wall? A box of Nerds®. It is cliché, 80’s stand-up comedian material to complain about how the amusement ticket thing is a rip-off, but it is almost illegal how terrible it is. A $6.00 action figure costs 6000 tickets. I would have to Skeeball until Benjamin leaves for college to make that amount of tickets.

But just like Vegas is the siren’s call for middle age white guys, CEC revs kids up with the hope of walking out a winner. At least in Vegas the drinks are free and the food is subsidized. The CEC birthday show could also stand an update. I felt bad because they play a prerecorded version of the bash on all of the TV’s in the birthday area while they are doing the live version. And the TV version had kids doing cartwheels and Chuck was like Fred Astaire. But the live version had a 16 year old in a grey rat suit that either couldn’t see out of the suit very well or could care less about truly getting into the role of Chuck.

Again, I recognize that CEC is not for us, it is for the kids and they were eating it up. The party was a success. I gifted my Skeeball winnings to my nephew and Benjamin got his first taste of weirding out at the sight of a dressed up spokes-animal. I’d tell you more about the party, but what happens at Chuck E. Cheese STAYS at Chuck E. Cheese.

Happy Halloweiner!

There are three phases to celebrating Halloween. The first is when you’re a kid and you are hyped about your costume and acquiring as much candy as possible to ration out over the course of the next year.

The second phase is when you’re either apathetic to the event entirely and leave a bowl out on your porch so kids don’t kick in your gutters, or you’re a party guy who dresses up as niche characters (The Big Lewbowski?) or a party girl who dresses up as a sexy version of anything (Sexy Margaret Thatcher?).

The third phase of Halloween celebration is when you have a little kid yourself who is experiencing phase I. This was Benjamin’s first Halloween and truthfully he was too young to really understand or get any of what was going on. He did (we did) dress (him) up and he was easily the cutest cowboy at the Kryzak’s Halloweiner cookout.

Dressing up babies is funny. They look cute as a button dressed up a chicken, ladybug or a dragon, but they look beat down. Kinda like squeezing your dog into an x-mas sweater. They don’t quite like, but they don’t hate it enough to pitch a fit – so they just sit there propped as you paparazzi them the entire night.

Our plan was to stay at this party and head home when everyone else went trick or treating so we could pass out candy at our house. This of course didn’t happen. So we get back to our neighborhood to find a candy swept ghost town, and there is 10lbs of candy sitting in our pantry AND now our house is where crabby Old Man Alexander lives.

We did attend a Halloween party the following night at a friend’s house and brought Cowboy Benjamin along to help amortize his $60 costume (don’t get me started). I know what you’re thinking – being at a party with a baby is probably both fun and easy. Negative. Imagine the last party you went to. Now, imagine you were cradling a 25lb dumbbell against your chest the entire time. Now imagine this weight is squirming around you trying to touch everything. Now also imagine holding a drink in your other hand, oh, and you are dressed up like a Mexican wrestler.

So Halloween will forever be changed. But I really look forward to the next couple of years taking Benjamin trick or treating, I just hope he doesn’t mind being escorted by a Luchador.

Bantha Poodoo

If you are a Star Wars fan, you know what this about - poop. I have become unphased by baby poop, yet dog mess is still #1 one on the Yuck List. Seriously, what's in dog food, manure? Moving on.

Some good friend of ours were throwing a Star Wars themed birthday party for their 4 year old son Drew. We have close ties to them and Drew so we of course attended. I even reprised my role as a Jedi in full costume to help add as much legitimacy to this party as a 30 year old dressed like space monk can do.

So Emily had an awesome idea to dress Benjamin up as a Jedi youngling. First, let me acknowledge how great it is being married to someone who not only tolerates my inner dork, but enables it to thrive. She put together a very cute ensemble that invokes what a toddler on Tatooine might look like during a moisture farm harvest. I was glowing.

We show up to the party and our friends pulled out all of the stops putting together a production that would make rival parents cringe. The sights, the sounds, the festivities - the Force was strong at this party. My role was to help lead everyone in Jedi training, each kid received their own lightsaber to learn some moves. The Master then feels a disturbance in the Force, goes to investigate while I continue tutoring these kids in lightsaber skills, out comes Darth Vader, I fight him using the moves we just learned, then all of the kids get the chance to take on the Sith Lord. Super fun.

Here comes the curveball. Benjamin got a small ear infection earlier that week, and his medicine has a small side effect - loose stool. So the party is winding down, he's having a ball sitting and playing on their living room floor (white carpet, foreshadowing). We notice that he's missing a sock, and I spy it behind him, I grab it and there is some discoloration on it - 3 guesses what it was. Yep.

There is (ahem) "discoloration" all up his back and pants and he's just bouncing up and down listening to the Max Rebo Band as Emily and I have panicked looks on our faces and sinking sensations in our stomachs. I quickly grab Benjamin, butt-up, and carry him to their 9 month olds room. Benjamin's not a huge fan of being on his stomach so he freaks out as I'm trying to limit his "discolored" clothes from touching anything.

Now to complete the mental picture for you, I am still dressed in full Jedi garb with a huge draping brown hooded robe and sleeves. I probably looked like a wizard conjuring up some black magic as I hovered over a sacrificial crying baby. I am doing everything possible to keep Benjamin from rolling over, not get poo on the robe, pull off his clothes, unearth the vile source of the situation, clean him, change him and get him to calm down. Needless to say, it was a dicey process.

And in my head I wanted to go out and explain to all of the other parents that our baby wasn't always like this and that he usually doesn't create sasquatch-like messes on people's floors. But by the time I was done, the party was over and everyone had packed up and left. Literally making us the party-poopers.

I now open it up to you to come up with the winning concluding reference that ties up the story by using some form of "the Dark Side".

I am...a ninja.

Well at least between the hours of 9-11am, 3-5pm, 9-8am. Because like giants and dragons, you don't want to wake a sleeping baby. Not so much for them, but for you. I have seen significant Dad-duty the past couple of weekends to help Emily do some fun stuff and volunteer. These past couple weekends have forced me to move like the wind that stirs no leaf (cue Asian flute).

The biggest hurdle is that we have high ceilings and wood flooring - some people call that a concert hall. Sound carries in our house with ease. So you set a glass down harder than usual on the kitchen counter and it sounds like a blacksmith forging an axe. All of these factors have been the iron that sharpens my iron - I am now able to operate and function with Low Decibel Output (LDO for you science types).

I walk heel to toe. I level out a glass and slide on to the counter. I can navigate our house in the dark. When I pour Schmax's food into his aluminum bowl, you'd swear it was the sound of a butterfly flapping its wings. I fully turn a door knob so as not to stir the inner-tumbler. I have WD40'ed all of the door hinges to eliminate the haunted house factor.

Am I proud of these things? Maybe. Do I like doing them? Absolutely not. It ends up feeling like a monastic existence. I had to turn on closed captioning on our TV because I was tired of Emily and I asking each other, "What did he say?!" Sidenote - once you turn on closed captioning you can't not read the text. It turns a show your liked watching into a subtitled film you're forced to watch in high school English class. The typos are funny though. During a Packers game it kept coming up as "Bret Farth".

All of this has become a necessary evil. I am a doer and weekends are prime-time for doing stuff - albeit not fun stuff. Floors don't sweep themselves, things don't fix themselves, laundry doesn't wash itself. So a Saturday afternoon has become a Mission Impossible type operation for me where I covertly get things done as to not set off any alarms (Benjamin) in the base (house). If I don't try and make things fun, I'd go crazy. Like literally talk to Mrs. Butterworth crazy.

The net result of this equation is that the opportunities for that thing I remember having called, oh what was it..."fun" - are a little compromised. Yes, playing with Benjamin is a certain kind of fun, but I require activity that either works up a sweat or stretches my mind. At least playing with Benjamin sometimes makes my mind sweat.

So the next time we see each other and I just appear out of nowhere, don't worry. I mean you no harm, it's simply the way of the House Ninja (cue Asian gong).

**Picture explanation - despite our protests Benjamin has enrolled in the 1920's Navy. And his first words were "Yeah-see, you better show up at the docks with the money-see. Or it's curtains-see. Curtains-I-tell-ya!"

Where'd My Baby Go?!

There are tons of expressions that I've heard other parents mention in the past, but I passed them off as pure cliche. One notion has become abundantly true and clear to me these past couple of weeks - babies/kids grow up too fast.

Time is, however, extremely relative. Benjamin is 7.5 months old, but it seems like we have had him longer than that, like years - at least that's what the skin underneath my eyes tells me. Then there are moments where I find myself trying to shove the sand back into the hourglass and keep Benjamin right where he is.

He is on the verge of no longer being what we technically call an "infant" or "baby", closer to "toddler" or "safety hazard". I do look forward to hearing the pitter-patter of feet across the floor, playing chase and having kinds of fun where speaking or remaining upright are critical, but it comes at the cost of losing this snuggle cushion that contours perfectly to my shoulder. The rolls of baby fat will start to recede like the ice caps and sounds like "Gwatp!" will be replaced with "No!" Bittersweet.

I actually have a memory of my mom and I playing cards when I was little and she said something to the affect of, "oh I wish you could just stay this age forever." And I said something like, "Okay, but how about just a little older so I'm better at playing card games with you?" My kid-logic made total sense to me at the time, but thinking about it now it probably made my mom tear up with a mixture of happy/sad thoughts. In one sentence there was the promise of new things to do and experience with a child, but also the reality that you can't go back.

Here's some fun stuff, I am consistently being punched in the chin by a baby. It usually starts off as pats to feel my scruff, then it turns into some excited slaps, followed by a Sonny Liston 1-2-combo. I'll let you know if he ever leans in to take a nibble off my ear. I also learned the hard way that he REALLY hates the sound of a weed whacker, zero to death-scream in a nanosecond. And my simulated sound of an elephant whinny didn't go over so well either. He's either afraid of elephants, or my elephant noise sounds like a weed whacker.

Photo Update

Time is a treadmill and I'm struggling to not fall off of the edge. The problem with shooting so many spots last month is having to edit them all this month. So at the end of the day I don't even want to see my computer, oh and I dropped my laptop and broke the screen for a week - good times. The IT department is loving me.






I do promise to write something soon, but to satiate you for now here are a couple of recent pictures of Benjamin. He is in the midst of transitioning from baby-to-little boy, way too soon for my liking. Enjoy!

Endless Summer

In case you couldn't tell from the picture, we've installed a pool in our backyard complete with a 2' 6" lifeguard. The pool was a father's day gift to me and we finally busted it out this past weekend to get Benjamin crankin' on his training to shatter Michael Phelps medal record in the 2024 summer games in Baghdad (the place will look totally different by then, right?).

We of course take 25 minutes to prepare the water so it is the right temperature and slather him in baby sunscreen that was so thick you could have iced a cake. We get him in his trunks, put his hat on, bless the water, call the Coast Guard, etc. I'm sure the kid is thinking, "Uh, can you just dunk me in already!?"

It's always funny to me when you see a baby react to something that is so second nature to adults, like sitting in water, and how they spaz out in a good way. Benjamin had a fun time in the water and we had fun looking at him splish-splash and make wild noises. But you can't turn your back on a baby. You could stare at them for 30 minutes and they'll stay completely upright. Turn away to sneeze and they will have some how fallen over, pulled a towel on top of them, deflated the pool and step in an ant pile.

I embellish, but he did tip over once and was like a turtle flipped on its back. I think it's God's way of making sure you don't get too cocky, "Oh, think you got everything under control Hasselhoff? Watch this - ZAP!"

Seeing a baby in swim wear it hit me that a baby's physique has a lot in common with men's physiques when they're over the hill - little pasty, plenty of rolls and a wrinkly butt. Their taste in clothes are the same too - bizarre color combos, overuse of hats and pants that don't fit right. The difference is that all of these things are cute on a baby. Men, not so much.

The pool was a success. It will probably be the only time it will be used because of the impending changing of the seasons and Benjamin's growth chart. And by next summer Benjamin will be concentrating on streamlining his Breaststroke for the 800M medley. Go for the gold son and eat your Wheaties®!