Happy Easter with one Eggception (sorry)

It is Easter Sunday, birds are chirping, the dawn is breaking and we are gearing up for what I consider the "magic year" for Benjamin going on an egg hunt. The "magic year" is when he is old enough to understand the premise of collecting eggs and excitedly toddles after each and every one he sees. But, he isn't old enough yet to be ultra competitive, chukking elbows at the competition in order to snatch the candy coated treasures.

My gut was right, it was a magical year. And you'll just have to take my word for it, because I don't have the pictures to prove it. Except this one taken on my phone.

In the mad dash to get out the door and to the family festivities, I packed the car with about 40 things, none of which were my camera. You know the camera that I splurged on buying so I could take pristine pictures of events like, oh I don't know, Easter. I may have said a cuss word. Actually there's a chance I said two.

I did, however, remember my camera for a practice-run egg hunt held at a local church the day before. They touted a hunt with "22,000 eggs!!" We knew there would be a crowd, but this looked like a Wal-Mart Black Friday combined with a Wiggles concert. The kids were SUPPOSED to be corralled by age, but anarchy prevailed and you had 13 old dudes with the 3 year olds.

When the "hunt" started there were entire families with trash bags sucking up colored eggs like they were putting on a Dyson vacuum demonstration. Heaven forbid these little toddlers, trying to carry baskets as big as they are, get in the way of these pros. So out of 22,000 eggs, Benjamin liberated 5 from the herd. And I took zero pictures, because they would have been of other people's shoulders and mullets.

Like all parents, we were more perturbed by the situation than Benjamin. In fact, he marveled at the 5 eggs he did get and had a ball popping them open to see what was inside. And best of all, you could tell his fires were stoked for future eggpeditions (zing!).

Our Easter Sunday started off smelling like Hell, literally. Emily is always responsible for preparing deviled eggs for our family luncheon, and they stink like an open vent from the netherworld piping in sulfuric gases. With a dash of a yetti's butt. I can't believe people eat those things. To balance that out, we went to a fantastic service at church, reminded ourselves of the true meaning of Easter, and then hit the road to spend time with the cousins.

The food was eaten, the bushels of eggs were hidden, and Benjamin got syked up with the Kryzak kids for the hunt. It was so funny seeing Benjamin holding his basket in his little preppy outfit, screaming "YAY!" over and over again as he stumbled across another egg sitting in the grass. Each egg was like a fresh Christmas morning to him, only to be topped by the next one he spotted.

It was such a neat, parent-y moment following him around, pointing out eggs that were right in front of him that he somehow didn't see. In fact, there were some right in front of his face, surely he was faking it just to make me feel good. "I'll pretend I don't see the egg so the ol' man feels like he's helpful. You know, to make up for the camera thing."

In this egg hunt, Benjamin came out a winner. His basket was so heavy that he could no longer carry it himself, and he can bench a lot for a baby. Like all kids, he used his spoils as currency to trade with his cousins, and by "him" I mean

"we." Chocolate for fruit snacks. Hard candy for lollipops. Because that's the way Daddy "no fun" Alexander rolls. Next year I'll be crazy and give Benjamin a Lorna Doone®.

Thankfully the event won't go completely undocumented thanks to other family members who didn't forget their cameras. I'm just hoping for that one magic shot that captures the vibe of Benjamin's "magic year" of Easter (I attached two favorites from last year).

Worst case scenario, I stage the first ever Mother's Day egg hunt.

Vintage Photos

This is a quick little popcorn entry. I like my iPhone. I hate the iPhone camera - the image quality is terrible.

A friend, however, pointed me toward an iPhone app called Hipstamatic that instantly applies effects to your shots giving them a 1960's-70's look. It takes the iPhone camera's weakness and turns into a benefit, sorta.

I don't know about you, but nearly all of my baby photos have an instamatic, 35mm feel to them, so I've enjoyed taking a step back in time while taking pictures of modern day people.

The photo to the right is a picture of Benjamin taken a few nights ago, but it seriously could pass for a photo of me when I was 2 years old. Some days Benjamin looks like me and some days I think I put the wrong baby in the car from the grocery store.

But this photo brought me pause as I admired the details of the vintage look and how it seemed to seal this moment of time in amber. Seeing this photo brought back a rush of my own good memories as a kid in Virginia - playing in the snow, raking leaves, trick or treating. It made me realize that Benjamin and other kids will have a hard drive with 5,000 hi-res 10MB snapshots to look through as their "baby book." Which makes me think they won't treasure them as much as the people that may have 100-150 aging pieces of film that was their childhood.

So I'm going to try and take some antiquated shots to give Benjamin something vintage to look at when and if he cares to do in the future. The sad thing is that now I will truly look like a tourist when we go out with my SLR in one hand and my iPhone in the other. This is where "dad's a dork" starts I suppose.

Happy Birthday Benjamin!

It's official, on February 13th, 2010 Benjamin turned 2 years old. This is a personal triumph for Emily and I, in that we haven't screwed things up too badly over the past 24 months. In fact, some may say that we've done quite well with our first endeavor raising a child from scratch. I guess the only person that could really give us bona fide feedback would be Benjamin, but I saved him the trouble and filled out his evaluation form with "Exceeds Expectations" in all of the applicable categories.

Man, 2 years. Some days it feels like it's been 10 years, and some days it feels like 2 months. I treated myself to a little trip down Memory Lane and looked through my slew of Benjamin baby pictures (diehards should look at some old blog entries for reference).

My first reaction was, "Uhh, who is this baby?" There seriously are some pictures that look nothing like present day Benjamin, like someone inserted a picture of a stand-in stunt baby.

My second reaction was, "He was sooo tiny!" He was definitely larger than your average newborn baby, but there are some pics that it looks like I'm hugging a Kaiser roll smothered in blankets. A far cry from the 35lb squirming barbell that he is today.

My third reaction was the fact that I didn't really miss his super tiny days. Newborn babies, while cute, are more like nurturing a science experiment. You are constantly monitoring it, checking it for new data (or poo-poo), and anxiously awaiting for a breakthrough moment. The fun really kicked in 10 months later when you actually feel like there is some give-n-take between the two of you.

So what do you get after 24 months? Your first grey hair, seriously. I saw one on the side of my head today and it had Benjamin's new "personality" written all over it. In some instances he seeks total independence and self-sufficiency, in others he is lovingly holding my hand and leading me around the house to either show me something or so that I can help reach/get/grab/pour something for him. The trick is that his personality swings from moment to moment, and you're not sure which moment you're in until, well you're in it.

After 24 months you also get a 2 year old's birthday party. Okay, not to be a big-timer, but this little shindig some how eclipsed the $200 price tag. I GUARANTEE you I never had a birthday party when I was a kid that cost Two Bills. "But Dale, you must have flown everyone to the Bellagio and treated people to Pegasus riding lessons?"

Umm... we rented a church's indoor playground for two hours and had some chicken nuggets with juice boxes. Two Bills. And the playground violated my cardinal rule, don't swap a "z" for an "s" just to make it "kool."

Don't get me wrong, the Pajama Party themed event seemed to be a huge hit with a full compliment of pajama-ed friends and family having a squealing good time. I was just sticker shocked by what a modern day, somewhat modest birthday party cost. What made it swallowable was seeing a flush-faced Benjamin run around the playground, riding on slides, climbing up cushions and downing Capri-Suns® like a marathon runner.

And because I'm the no-fun parent, we only let him have about 1/3 of his presents and the rest went in the closest for a rainy day surprise or to donate during a toy drive. He has way too much stuff. I don't know how it happened, it all snuck in somehow and accumulated in various depots around the house.

His big birthday gift item was a tricked out handyman workstation with all kinds of little tools, bits and pieces. He is a little too young to actually build the projects, but he loves dressing up and hammering stuff. And his OCD comes out when all of the tools aren't put back into place at the end of a work session. Sure, I'll take the credit/blame for that behavior.

All in all, he is still my little baby boy right now, and I know that they will change pretty quickly. But I take comfort knowing that he will forever be my little buddy no matter how old he gets. Happy Birthday Benjamin.

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.