Snow Day!!!

The most recent sign that Hell is close to freezing over is the 9" of snow that our north Texas-burg received last week. These white flakes were as pure as... well snow. Vancouver wishes it got this pristine powder for their Olympic games. Sorry hosers.

There is just something about snow that brings the kid out in people - the whimsical side wants to build a snowman, the mischievous side wants to chuck a snowball into someone's back, and the romantic wants to curl up in a blanket and watch the flurries.

Benjamin, on the cusp of turning 2, couldn't get enough of the stuff. Sadly his parents (or just me) opted to not buy $100 of winter weather gear earlier in the year. "We don't need that, it's not like it's going to snow in Dallas!" I think this was a direct quote. Here's snow in my eye.

So Benjamin has a decent coat, hat, scarf, but only has fabric mittens and a pair of cowboy boots to slosh around in. I didn't help the situation when I dug out my ski jacket and ski boots ready to hit the slopes while Emily is Scotchguarding her fashion over function Ugg® boots and Benjamin is doing a line-dance in his kicker-boots. Gotta pay to play people.

During the big snow day I was actually at work while Emily and Benjamin were playing outside with the neighbors building a snow man. I've never cared for snowmen, mainly because it is really depressing to me to see a snowman on Day 3 of the meltdown. He is discolored, mishapened, and is clearly dying a slow, wet death. "Kids, KIDS! Remember playing with me? I need...your...elp... (drip-drip-drip)... Rosebud..." Poor guy.

The next day was the official no-work, no-school Snow Day! We dressed up the family and headed outside and you wouldn't believe you were in Texas. It could have easily passed for Valley Forge circa 1776; never mind the houses with snow covered satellite dishes.

And it was so bright, like flash grenade bright. I had to squint even with sunglasses on. There were times Benjamin looked like a little blind boy walking in the snow with his eyebrows raised and eyelids shut, like he was trying to use extra sensory perception.

We took a stroll to the park where there were nice patches of untainted, picturesque snow for us to take pictures and taint ourselves. It was beautiful and still and one of the moments that I look forward to remembering with Benjamin in a few years via our pictures. It reminded me of pictures when I was little in Virginia after 2' of snow - where I'm standing in a Hoth-like trench of dug out snow that is as tall as I was. I don't remember the actual instance, but I have fond memories of the pictures.

Benjamin also had the chance to perfect his snowball throwing skills, but they kept rolling off the back of his hand during the wind-up. Now I know why most pitchers choose not to wear 2 pairs of mittens when they play. After about 10 tries and 100 botched pictures, he launched one successfully into the sidewalk, but it was so fast I think it actually evaporated before impact. Nolan, call me, let's talk.

The cutest moment was Emily dropping down to the ground to make a snow angel. Benjamin looked at her and immediately followed suit without any questions or regards. He plopped into the snow and started waving his arms and legs as he giggled. And then, much like the kid in A Christmas Story, he couldn't get back up from all of his layers. Good times.

I look forward to more global warming snowstorms in our city so I can hear Benjamin's excited little voice yell, "sNOo, sNOo, sNOo!!!"

Christmas in Pictures

Despite having 2 weeks off, the holidays were a blur - because time flew by and Dallas had its first white Christmas in 80 years. People in Dallas freak out when it rains, so imagine when snow actually sticks to the ground. I think people were burning their furniture to some how survive the cold in their climate controlled houses.

Benjamin still wasn't into the whole presents thing. We had to half unwrap each present for him to see the neat gizmo underneath, THEN he was interested. But even that was fleeting. Thinking back, Schmax was more into opening presents to the point where we had to pull him off a package or two. Mental note, don't wrap gifts in bacon.

I think what Benjamin truly enjoyed was having two people dote on him all day - which sets up nicely for a future entry about a soon to be 2-year old's budding attitude and pushing of his parent's buttons.

And now for the part that some of you are more interested in - pictures instead of my ramblings. If a picture is worth a thousand words, consider yourself rich in words!

We often read together as a family sitting side-by-side. Benjamin threw in the nice touch of looking up at me as if to say, "Pa-pa, I do love you so..."

Something about this pic reminded me of the first Superman movie, where little baby Kal-El is in his asteroid ship wearing a super-absorbent red and blue diaper.

Clearly the hilarity of fake sleeping for a picture is lost on Benjamin. Again, nice touch at least putting his head down on the blankie. Maybe in his mind he had 1st watch.

I love this photo. It says "Christmas Morning" to me in so many ways. And you can never tell that Benjamin had a dirty reindeer diaper.

EXTREMELY rare footage of a baby yeti.

Benjamin loved the idea of snow, until it blew into his face. And his shoes started to get cold and wet, because we don't have baby mucklucks. He also hated getting pelted by snowballs. To be fair, I did tell him numerous times to duck.

To give you an idea of how crazy the weather was, this picture was taken the next day. Benjamin is sitting in his sweet new ride - a spacious wagon complete with cup and snack holders. It gets terrible gas mileage though.

Doesn't it look like Benjamin and Emily stopped to admire a stuffed dog in this person's yard?

Turkey Day Without My Turkeys

Yeah, yeah, this is about Thanksgiving, which was a few months ago but I am a “businessman” which by definition means I’m a man that is busy. If this is too old for your reading pleasure, you have the freedom to stop reading here.

That’s what I thought.

The main delay for this entry is my instinct to combine prose with pictures of the event, and this is the only picture I actually took on Thanksgiving Day.

The Alexander’s called a last minute audible for the holiday where I would go to the Texas A&M vs UT game in College Station with a buddy of mine, and Emily and Benjamin would fly north to reenact the first Thanksgiving with her extended family in Shee-cog-goe.

When we put this plan into action there was an excited Dale getting to see the game and having the house to himself to do with what he pleased, and a excitedly reluctant Emily dreading traveling with an 18 month year old by herself.

I did the best I could packing up bags, giving what little tips I had to help weather the flight and loaded up an iPod Touch with little videos to act as visual morphine for Benjamin. Seeing him with white earbuds in his ears was cute, but it also looked like he had remedial hearing aids from the 80’s. I’m told the Touch worked great… for one flight. I’ll leave the rest of the “hilarity” for Emily to retell some day.

For fun I posted on Facebook something to the affect of “Hey it’s time to bachelor-it-up!” This was misinterpreted by many (including my wife) that I was setting sail on some kind of booze cruise through the sacred holiday break with a collision course toward sloth debauchery. The reality of course was me using the time to clean the ENTIRE house and do a metric ton of laundry.

I did this project, I did that thing, and I put everything back in its proper place in order to create what I would consider the perfect living environment. I succeeded, and yet failed. Everything was just “so,” but it looked like a runner’s up photo entry for Modern Living cover. It looked empty and surprisingly void of color. Like when you take your Christmas decorations down and things seem acutely barren.

I had thoughts like, “Wow, that’s what that chair looks like without a diaper bag and seat cover strewn over it?” And, “Man, the hallway is really dark with Benjamin’s door closed during the day.” I actually pondered a couple of times if this is what it would really be like if I never married and was just a 32 year old schmoe living by himself. At one point in my life this would be the gold standard of living.

But man, it was quiet. I mean qui-et. Too quiet, like the kind of quiet where some dude jumps through your back door with a hatchet. I’ve just grown accustomed to the controlled chaos that is our house with all of Benjamin’s chirps and chatters. This is what I now knew as my gold standard of living, albeit the gold is a little stickier.

All of these thoughts brought me back to a few days earlier when I dropped Emily and Benjamin off at the airport. I took them to security and stayed to watch them pass through and it was so funny seeing tiny little sock-footed Benjamin walking through the metal detector, excited to see all of these new sights. Once they made it through, Emily picked up Benjamin and they both waved one last goodbye and I could hear a faint, “bub-bye dad-da…”

That’s when it hit, I choked up and my eyes instantly glistened. I was going to miss those guys. I’m usually the one leaving for work and you get so busy trying to get to your destination and do your deal or whatever and you never really reflect on the “missing someone part” until maybe that night. But this was instant and would last for 5 days. What seemed like the “coolest” Thanksgiving holiday suddenly felt like it would be the “coldest.”

Feel no pity for me, I made it through just fine but my maturity muscles are still a little sore from being stretched. I don’t want this to turn into an epilogue from “The Wonder Years”, but their absence allowed me to recognize how much I appreciate having them around. If I am the clean black lines on a white piece of paper, they are the colors that fill in the blanks and add vitality to the picture even if it goes outside the lines. Though we weren't together to break bread on Thanksgiving, my family is definitely what I was most thankful for.

P.S. A&M lost the game - boo.

P.P.S.S. Thanksgiving week was without a doubt Schmax's favorite week all year.

Happy Halloweiner!!

I have fond memories of Halloween as a kid, before it was dubbed the devil's holiday. Back in the 80's it was about kids dressing like The Hulk or Wonder Woman and frolicking around the picturesque neighborhood, whimsically asking people for some candy. Everyone seemed happy and everyone was filled with the crisp autumnal air.

Over the past two decades, however, Halloween has lost its luster with me. It has become another highly marketable event for people to drop some serious coin on candy, deco and booze. And is an alibi for women to dress up as "a sexy (fill in blank with any occupation or character here)." At work I had built a rapport for some inventive costumer-y, but even that has faded a bit. I am pleased to announce that thanks to Benjamin, me and Halloween are back!!

I've heard before that when you have a child you get to relive some parts of your own childhood (hopefully just the good ones), and I can attest to how great this Halloween was seeing it through Benjamin's 21-month year old eyes. He had wide-eyed wonder trying to make sense of all these people running around with crazy wigs, rubber masks, and ill-fitting pantaloons.

We started off at his cousins' Halloweiner cookout where neighborhood kids gather to feast on salted meats before they chase it with sugary treats. He was able to debut his Itsy-Bitsy Spider costume for the family and get hugged to death by nearly everyone at the party - mental note: cute baby in spider costume could be the key to curing arachnophobia.

While Emily was visiting with some friends, I walked hand in hand with Benjamin to his first "ToT" customer. You could tell that he had no idea what we were doing or why he was carrying a plastic jack-o-lantern that was bigger than his torso. We quickly went over our lines, "Trick or treat" and knocked on the door. A nice lady answered and Benjamin peeped, "Tweet? Tweet?"

She "ooh'ed" and "aah'ed" and then she said, "Aww... she is the cutest little octopus I've ever seen!!" Candy obtained = (1) Tootsie Roll® midget

Little did Benjamin know that he just got about the worst loot you could get on Halloween - one inedible brown nugget. I'd rather get a penny. BUT, the fact that she dropped something into his little bucket, the entire "extort cuteness for candy" concept immediately clicked in his head. He was now a spider on a mission.

Benjamin didn't want to be carried, he wanted to hoof it on his own, but he was moving really slow for having 8 legs (RIMSHOT!) So he and I are holding hands while other kids and turtles are passing us, but I'll be darned if he never complained, never dropped his bucket and never threw a tantrum for the entire night. The funny thing to me is that Benjamin has no concept of candy and wasn't terribly interested in the stuff - he just enjoyed people putting stuff into his bucket. The one exception is when he scored a mini Play-Doh® container, he recognized the shape and thanked the couple with a, "Whhhhooooaaaa..." You'd think Indy had just discovered the Lost Ark.

We make it back to the house and ended the late night with the ol' candy dump to see whatcha got. I loved this part as a kid. Letting your eyes take in a treasure trove of brightly colored candies and discover new unknown treats (What's an O'Henry Bar?!). I have never been into candy, but it was the currency I would use to trade with friends in order to score an action figure or two. I may have been the world's first candy-launderer.

Benjamin dumped out his bucket and the little guy scored a nice mound of goods. We've never given him candy (except for a Dum-Dum® during hair cuts) so the fun-size bars were lost on him. The true delights were the stickers, a fake spider thingie, said mini Play-Doh® and a full size bag of Goldfish - which was definitely the score of the night.

The costume, the pictures, holding hands, walking down the dark streets and the smile plastered on his face were the ingredients I needed to welcome Halloween back into my good graces. After 20 years of Halloween being filled with scantily-clad vixens and various brews, I had forgotten who the night was truly for - the kids who get excited about dressing up like their favorite heroes, going on a quest for a bounty of treats, and blissfully falling into a candy-coated stupor.

Realistically Benjamin won't remember anything about his first "real" Halloween, but I will every time a midget Tootsie-Roll® is dropped into his bucket for the next 10 years.

"What'd you do this weekend?"

You know how Mondays go - easing back into the work week, remembering all of the things you put off on Friday, and sharing "happy talk" with coworkers about what you did over the weekend. I work with a smattering of single people and hear their weekend exploits and it goes a little something like this:

"Yeah I didn't really do too much, we went out for drinks on Friday night and then went over to this club and ran into a bassist I knew in this samba band. We went back to his loft with a couple dozen people and ordered $400 of tapas and feasted on the sweet meats until 4AM. Saturday we just cruised on my friend Theo's yacht and did some whaling. The weird part is that we met up with some Mer-people and they took us to this sunken ship where we found gold coins and precious gems. After that, we hot-air ballooned back to shore and walked across hot coals, straight into a trance-Goa rave. Sunday was super low-key, we just had brunch with Obama at The Hague."

As these people are talking, I'm trying to think back to the weekend and tally up all of the cool things I did. Let's see - looked after Benjamin, maintained my home, went to church, ate 7-9 meals and didn't get enough sleep some how.

Ta-da!!

Ordinarily my shoulders slump a little bit after we do this exchange, especially when their response is something to the effect of, "Oh, well that sounds fun too...(ahem)...(shuffling of papers)"

But things shifted into perspective for me Labor Day weekend. We got back to the office on Tuesday and I'm hearing of people riding on wild unicorns and circumnavigating the Earth on the Concorde, and I thought to myself "Man! I had a great weekend!"

While these people were ticking off things on their Bucket List I was able to hang out with Benjamin during the sweet "play time" part of his day. We had family walks, kicked around a ball at the park, got in a work out, made and ate some delicious meals at decent times, went swimming with cousins, had a night away with the Missus, saw a movie IN the theatre, and still got some stuff done around the house.

I didn't get into detail when so

meone asked what I did that weekend, because I think they would still give me the "you poor suburban schmoe" look. But I truly think I had the better weekend filled with laughs, baby hugs, naps, some more first words, kissing of boo-boos - all thanks to Emily and Benjamin.

So next time you feel like you're getting big-timed by someone comparing weekend feats, just conjure up a little moment in time where your

little one put their head on your shoulder, laughed at your antics, or just splashing around during bath-time. You've got them beat, hands-down.

Photo Fun

This is short and sweet and more about the pictures than anything else. Benjamin is a real hoot the more and more he attempts to speak. It is almost a little game trying to discern what he means when he blurts out "Dah..." Is it "door" or "dog" or "dock" or "dork"?

I do sense that he is on the verge of some major speaking breakthroughs. And I secretly look forward to answering the endless string of "why" questions.

Enjoy the pics.

"Hi, I'm a Hollywood baby. See how casual I am?"

Not a bad family pic considering it is 9AM and both parents were running on zero sleep.

"The siren's call of the sea beckons me. It is rivaled only by the call of my Goldfish snack crackers."

It is still undetermined which side of the family he gets his latent vampirism gene.

A Complete Tragedy

No, you haven't accidentally logged into a different blog. And no we haven't undergone Father/Son plastic surgery. This posting is dedicated to a truly great friend of mine that recently passed away - Shannon Childre.

I really have (and still do) the best intentions of posting more often, but his death has forced me to hit the pause button on a lot of things over the past two weeks. Shannon and I have been creative partners for a good portion of the past 10 years. When I was an intern, he was the first person to really give me a chance and show me the ropes around the agency. We had plenty in common so we hit it off and made some great memories over the past decade together.

Shannon and I traveled out to San Diego for Comic-Con 3 weeks ago with some other coworkers to help our client man their booth. The second day we were there, he went out for a jog along the boardwalk by our hotel and collapsed from a heart attack, at the age of 39. One of our mutual interests was eating the right kinds of foods and giving our body a good sweat when we had the chance (it's harder to work it in with kids). A total and complete biological fluke left him dead shortly after he got to the hospital.

To add to the situation, he wasn't carrying an ID and we didn't discover that he was truly missing until he was a no-show at dinner that evening. We raced around the city to try and put the pieces together, went to the hospitals looking for injured John Does, and we sadly discovered him as a deceased John Doe. My body went into a complete shaking shock, the only other time I experienced this sensation was right before Benjamin was born. Except that was shaking from excited shock, not sad shock.

The whole event is filled with a series of "firsts" that I never wanted to perform a "second." Packing up his hotel room, flying his stuff home, trying to find words that will console his wife and two children, planning a memorial service, trying to work with his blatant absence. The entire flight home my body was completely tensed up trying to fight off tears, and I couldn't wait to get home and hug Emily and Benjamin.

There is hope though. Shannon's death has brought people and emotions out of the woodwork. About 500 people attended his memorial and is was a time for tears, laughs and celebration of who he was and a chance for all of these people who he positively impacted to get together in the same room to say "thanks" to him. And "thanks" to everyone else there. Compliments came off the tongue easier, people told one another how appreciative they were of one another - it was a great evening.

The tragedy is that Shannon wasn't there to see it, and that it took his death to shake people out of their rat-race funk and rediscover their own humanity. I eulogized him at the service (another First) and I tried to leave people with a positive message that they were his legacy, and for them to recognize the traits they admired in Shannon and apply them to their own lives. I also tried to pass on a simple lesson that came out of a conversation Shannon and I had - he recently started to learn how to speak German. I asked him, "Why?" and his playful response back was, "Why not?" It was just something he had always wanted to do, so he made a move to learn German.

My challenge to the audience at the memorial and to you today is to say "Why not?" more often in your lives. Yank those things off the backburner and just do it - take that trip, learn that skill, take a class, volunteer somewhere, or suck it up and ask that person out that you've been eyeballing for weeks. Shannon's passing is proof that life is clearly to short to not roll the dice more often.

The saddest part of this whole incident, and one that I haven't cared to dwell on too much, is the fact that his 2 year old boy (Griffin) and his 1 year old girl (Lily) will have to learn about their dad through stories, old pictures and mementos from his past. Something no child should have to endure. This obviously makes my imagination go crazy thinking how that could have been me and what Emily and Benjamin would do if I were gone. And that really makes me sad.