Flip the Calendar

2012 has been quite a ride, though I am very ready for it to end and the journey of lucky 2013 to begin. This has been a notable year around the Dude’s House for many reasons:

·         The blog completed its’ first full calendar year: Now that I’m just about 1 ½ years into this blogging fun, I’m finally starting to get the hang of it. I went to my first blogging conference where I saw old friends and made some new ones. I learned things that helped me improve as a blogger (or at least I think so).  I went from posting once every 7 to 10 days to 3 or 4 times a week. The last few months have put a hitch in all that, but I’m planning on ramping back up in the new year. Unless I win the lottery. Actually, I’d probably blog more if I won the lottery thanks to all the free time I’d suddenly have. So if you want to see more of me next year, cut me in on your next Powerball win.

·         The Littler Dude was born: In late September we were joined by another happy smiley little guy. It’s been a major adjustment for all of us, but now 3 months later, we are finally getting into a good rhythm. (Or as much as is possible while running on 4-5 hours sleep per night.) Let’s hope his schedule evens out when he moves into a crib early next year. Otherwise I may ask to come crash on your couch.

Me & the Littler Dude, 5 minutes old

·         The Little Dude started preschool: We didn’t know what to expect with a major transition not even 3 weeks before his brother was born, but our now-3-year-old handled everything like a champ. Not that I ever doubted him, with his debonair good looks and winning laugh. It hasn’t been entirely smooth, though.

·          I was published on the Huffington Post! No autographs, please. Seriously though, it was quite an honor and I’ve been on there a few times. Very cool. Still haven’t met Arianna yet.

·         I went camping. If you know me in real life, you understand how preposterous that sounds. It wasn’t bad, though I might have felt differently if our HD TV hadn’t been working.

·         I lost the only grandparent I ever really knew. Hard stuff. I know people often say “death is a part of life”, but I’ve learned the hard way that it’s the really crappy part.  

·         I created and celebrated the inaugural Dudes’ Day. It was epic. Looking forward to many more to come. IHOP, watch out.

·         I wrote my most personal post early in the year. As I mentioned, death sucks. But sometimes good things come out of it, like this blog.

It’s been an eventful year with life and death. Good music and birthday parties. And pancakes. Lots of pancakes. And I appreciate you joining me for the ride. If there is anything you want to see more of next year (or less), please let me know. I love hearing from you all. You are what makes this page keep running. Well, you and my two boys and wife. And laptop. Let’s just say it’s a joint effort, but I’m glad you’re here. See you in 2013!

Your Pal, 

The Dude

The Little Dude's Birthday (at IHOP, naturally)

New Years Eve 2012:
Little Dude (3 years) & Littler Dude (3 months)

The Evil Child

At the recent birthday party of one of the Little Dude’s friends, I learned that some kids are just pure evil. And I didn’t know how to handle it.

Like the majority of parties we’ve gone to over the last few years this one was at an “indoor play place”. If you are a parent of young kids, you probably know the type: a very brightly fluorescent lit room filled with primary colors and runny-nosed kids. And some toys.  

Some kids are better sharers than others. My Little Dude happens to be an excellent sharer and I’m not just saying that because he’s my kid. In the interest of full disclosure, my son is a Thomas the Train addict and every time he goes to a place with a train table, he usually spends the majority of his time there. He likes to carry the trains around as he checks out the table, sometimes six or eight trains at a time.  But whenever another kid comes to play, he shares what he’s holding.

At this particular party, after the requisite cheese pizza and sheet-cake, the kids had free play time. The Little Dude spotted a Razor-type scooter and was enamored by it, despite never having been on one before. I watched him as he watched some of the older kids riding and knew he wanted to try it out.

He followed one boy who rode the scooter to the back of the playroom. The boy stepped off the scooter and laid it on the ground nearby as he went to play air hockey with another kid. Clearly he was moving on to something else, as kids tend to do frequently at places like this that offer myriad opportunities for play.  The Little Dude spotted the scooter on the ground from about 25 feet away and eagerly started running toward it. As he was getting close, the other boy noticed him, turned around and stuck his leg out. My Little Dude crashed to the carpet.

The boy, who was at least double my son’s age, looked proud of himself. “Ha, I tricked that little kid”, his face screamed. Until he noticed me watching.  I ran to my son, who was shaken up and confused. Probably more shocked by his fall than anything, he was clearly upset.  At 2 ½ he was too young to verbalize what he was thinking, but the sadness on his face which had radiated pure excitement 20 seconds earlier was heartbreaking.

I turned to the boy and asked him why he did that. He had no response. After a few carefully chosen words from me, which he shrugged off, he turned back to his air hockey game. We took the scooter and headed in the other direction. I was baffled. I’d seen kids play rough before, but never so blatantly toward my kid.

The tricky part of the situation was that I know Evil Boy’s parents. Not well at all, but extremely casually.  I don’t know them well enough to know whether this was his usual behavior or an isolated incident. I looked around and saw the parents on the other side of the room, not watching what any of their kids were doing.  I made sure my son was OK and as expected, within a couple minutes he lost interest in the scooter and headed back to see Thomas, Percy and company. He was over the incident. I was not.

I was faced with the dilemma of whether or not to say something to the obviously inattentive parents.  I didn’t want to cause a scene at someone else’s party, but the reality was, their kid acted like an A-hole. They needed to know. 

I debated various ways of broaching the subject with the parents. A few times I saw Evil Boy cross my path. Each time, I gave him a very stern look. And each time, I saw a nervous look on his face before he took off in the opposite direction.  If the kid and his family were strangers, it might have been easier. But they weren’t.

For half an hour, my mind raced. Would my confronting the parents lead to further confrontation? I knew that I didn’t want to cause a problem, but I was unhappy and they needed to know so that other kids wouldn’t fall victim to their son the bully.

As I debated internally, I watched my son playing with the trains. He had a chain of 3 going up and down bridges along the tracks & smiled each time they cruised down the hill. If he was already over it, maybe I should be too. I decided to not tell the parents.  Hopefully karma will someday.

What would you have done if you were in my position?

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Do Real Dudes Wear Pink?

For the Little Dude’s 2nd birthday party, we hired a guy in an Elmo costume to entertain the kids for an hour.  As part of his shtick Elmo made balloon animals for the kids.  Since it was his birthday, the Little Dude got first choice and was very excited when he saw the rainbow of options laid out before him in cheap latex.  There were myriad options: blue, red, yellow, orange, green, pink, purple, and pretty much every other color on George Clinton's head.  If it were me, my first choice would always be blue. My son picked pink.  My heart sank.

George "Crayola" Clinton

The following week, at one of his friend’s birthday party, one of the goodie bag items was a bottle of Mr. Bubble pink foamy bubble bath. Seems harmless enough, right? After we introduced it to his bath routine a few days later, every night he was clamoring for “Mas Pinky!” (Side note: he uses “Mas”, which means “more” in Spanish, more than the actual English word “more” for some reason.)  When that bottle ran out, we replaced it with a bottle of blue Mister Bubble foam which he now refers to as “Blue Pinky!”

There have been a few more instances like this over the last few months, which made me start drilling down on this. What’s the problem, you ask?  I guess the manly man section of my psyche yearns for my son to be a manly man, too, and choose blue instead of pink.  Is it my “fault” that he likes pink? Did I do something wrong? Should I have covered him in fresh animal pelts as an infant instead of a soft silky blanket?

I did some research to find out why we associate blue with boys and pink with girls. I figured the tradition dated back hundreds of years and had a purpose-driven origin. I was quite surprised to learn it’s only been since WWII and that pink was originally associated with baby boys, because it was recognized as a stronger color. Light blue was seen as better for baby girls because it was “softer”.  Whatever that means.

As a Dude who grew up in the 1980s, you might think I would like pink.  Most of the movies I grew up watching featured either a very cool or very wicked male character (usually Andrew McCarthy or Rob Lowe) who was invariably dressed in a Preppy pink polo shirt.  But the Preppy style died down when the ‘80s ended and Grunge styling took over. I don’t remember Nirvana wearing much pink flannel during the early ‘90s.

Do you think John Locke isn't a Dude?

So should I be bothered that my son would pick a “girlie” color, if given the option?  At first, I was frustrated. I want him to like the things that I like. A big part of parenthood is teaching our offspring. That’s why I play him the music I like and why he has Ohio State memorabilia all over his room. It’s not that I don’t like pink. It’s just that it’s not blue, which is my favorite color*.

The Little Dude’s affinity for pink is merely that: something that is pleasing to his senses. Does it make him  any less of a Dude? Not at all. I don’t understand why he would ever choose to eat 3 plain rice cakes instead of pizza, but I don’t think that makes him any less of a Dude either. 

After thinking about all of these factors, I think it really just means he’s more creative for looking outside of the box. He is very artistic in many ways so this is probably just an extension of how his unique mind works.  I don’t want him to be a conformist anyway, so I give him credit for blazing a Dudely new trail. Even if it leaves pink dust behind it.

I tried to think of things that I like that are pink and came up with a short list:

Pink Ribbons: Enough said. 

Pink Floyd: If you don’t eat your meat, how can you have any pudding?
Pink Panther: Not the crappy Steve Martin version, though.

Pink Lemonade: Though I have yet to encounter a pink lemon...
Pink’s Hot Dogs: Though their lines are always atrocious, the dogs are top notch.   
Pink Houses:  Ain’t that America? 

What pink things do you like? Leave a comment below with your favorites.

*=Is it strange for a grown man to have a favorite color? Or just to admit it?

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The Gambler

I’ve never been a big gambler. When I used to go to Las Vegas for business, I’d occasionally take $50 to a blackjack table and when that was gone, invariably before my “free” drink arrived, I was finished.  I read a quote once from Alex Trebek where he said “I don't gamble, because winning a hundred dollars doesn't give me great pleasure. But losing a hundred dollars pisses me off.” And that’s a guy who makes millions of dollars a year for working something like 12 days.  

My wife and I faced an interesting situation last weekend. The Little Dude was invited to a 3^rd birthday party that was being held from 4:00-6:00pm, which is exactly when he naps. At first I replied Maybe to the Evite, hoping that we could make it, but knowing that we probably wouldn’t. But a few days before the event, my wife and I talked and we figured that maybe we should try skipping the nap and going to the party.  We knew the stakes were high, like possible blacklisting from future birthday parties if he was a super grouch, but figured we’d gamble with the possibility of free pizza and cake on the line.

One thing I can say about my son is that he has always been a good sleeper.  He was sleeping through the night just a few weeks after birth, which was wonderful news to a quasi-sloth like me, and still takes nearly 3-hour naps on most days.  So it was a big risk for us to pull those 3 hours from him, even if only for one afternoon. 

We tried to keep the day normal otherwise with a visit to a park that morning, then lunch at home and a little chill time with his new best friends Buzz and Woody.  Everything seemed like it was right on track for us to head out to the local My Germ at 3:30. We made sure he had plenty of snacks and even got him three sheets to the wind thanks to some lingering Valentine’s candy.  To make sure I was up to the task, I also ate half a bag of sugar-coated jelly hearts just to be safe. 

We didn’t want to make a big deal out of the nap issue and were prepared to leave the party early if the Little Dude appeared tired or grumpy or passed out under the giant parachute.  Why do they call that thing a parachute anyway? Isn’t it really just some sort of vinyl sheet? I’ve never seen anyone jump higher than 3 inches while holding one.

When we entered the indoor play place, the Little Dude was in a super-safety-cushioned nirvana.  He started running around, jumping on the trampoline and climbing all over the thousand-times-sneezed-on equipment.  It seemed like everything would be just fine and our gamble had worked out.  But we had two hours to go until the finish line. In a rare occurrence, and I guess the ultimate test of our gamble, we actually arrived at the party on time. If you know us, you know that is rarer than a nun looking for love on The Bachelor. 

After a while, though, we were faced with a double-or-nothing gambling situation.  We’d skirted the tiredness issue, but then the Little Dude spotted the giant ball pit.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with those things.  If you are into Staph Infections.  We rolled the dice and he jumped in. He had a blast but I would have dragged him out if I’d brought my Biohazard outfit from home. 

Doesn't this look fun (cough, cough)? 

Eventually it was cake time and he left the pit under his own power. He even went to bed early that night, so the wife and I got a little bonus quiet time for romantic activities like folding laundry.  And more importantly, if after swimming in the colorful orbs for an hour the Little Dude doesn’t catch some sort of illness, I may have to return to Vegas with a crisp $50 in my hand. It just might be my lucky day.

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Waiting till that Deal goes down...

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Get Ready to Rumble

Marathon + Childbirth = Loco

In honor of the Little Dude’s 2^nd birthday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the day he was born.  In movies you always see immaculately dressed women’s water breaking in the middle of the street.  Maybe you heard the recent story about the woman who ran the Chicago Marathon and then a few hours later delivered a baby girl. Our story was not hugely exciting like those ones.  Actually it was sort of boring. Relatively.

Because BC had been breach for much of his gestation we scheduled a C-Section in advance. And because we lived 20 miles from the hospital (long story) we scheduled it for a Saturday morning so we could hopefully avoid insane LA traffic.  I already told you about my biggest fear related to the pregnancy in "A Sticky Situation".  Even I think it’s pretty sad that my 2^nd biggest fear in regard to the birth was that my wife’s water would break and we’d have to fight traffic on the 405 to get to Santa Monica at 5:00pm on a Friday.

Little Dude ~ 20 weeks in utero. Looks cozy. 

Fortunately that didn’t happen. The whole process was actually pretty painless. For me at least. That’s not to say there weren’t complications. Things actually got pretty scary for a few minutes in the operating room. They told us the whole surgery would take 10 minutes, but it seemed to be going much longer. I thought I was imagining it, like how anticipation makes a short drive somewhere seem like it’s taking an hour. But then I checked my watch and it actually was taking a while.  I heard the doctors conferring and they sounded concerned so I got concerned.  So I did something really dumb.  I looked over the barrier drape they put up so that you won’t look at what they are doing. Bleccccccchhhhhhh.  After all the ultrasounds we’d had over the prior 9 months I thought I knew what my wife’s insides looked like. Boy, was I wrong! I’m not going to get too graphic but now I know to respect the drape and keep my eyes off the prize.  And the intestines on the table.  

The complication was nothing big. It turned out that BC’s umbilical cord was only about 12 inches long and normally it’s double or triple that length. I hope that’s not a sign of things to come for him. Anyway, the doctor was having trouble getting enough leverage to remove the Little Dude from his cozy sac of a home.  I soon learned why the doctor was covered head to toe in saran wrap before entering the OR.  

As I said earlier, when people give birth in movies it’s always way over-exaggerated. There was one thing that you see in movies that I actually wanted to do.  In movies the father always gets to announce the baby’s gender. We had waited 39 weeks to find out the baby’s sex and I wanted to be the first to know. Or at least one of the first two. Nope. That was squelched when the anesthesiologist had to open her big yapper and say “oh, he’s perfect” after the OB had finished playing tug of war with my wife’s uterus.  Of course the anesthesiologist was the person who made sure my wife didn’t feel anything that happened that day so I couldn’t completely despise her. But I was pissed. Of the 7 or 8 people in the room, I was 7^th or 8^th to find out.

Once everything was OK the nurses let me cut the umbilical cord, have a photo op with the Little Dude and take him over to my wife so she could see the fruits of her labor, sans labor. The end result was that my wife did an amazing job of laying on the table and we suddenly had a beautiful baby boy.  Everything went smoothly, we eventually picked a name and now two years later we have a toddler. I can’t imagine life without him, nor can I really remember life before him: BC, BC if you will.    

BC - just a few minutes old 11/7/09

BC - 2 years - 11/11

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--JJ aka The Dude of the House

Let’s party like it’s not 11am

I went to a birthday party today where everyone was running around half-naked, the females greatly outnumbered the males and the birthday girl ended up in the ER after the party.  Sounds like a blast, right? No, I wasn't running up and down High Street while visiting my alma mater. Rather, we took BC to the birthday party of one of his older lady friends.  She is turning 3.  

I had a feeling the party would be riotous when we received the invitation, but that was mainly because I knew it started at 9:00am on a Saturday.  Did I mention that it was held 35 miles from where we live?  Oh, I almost forgot the best part: it was a swimming party in an area where summertime temperatures regularly reach into the triple digits.  I know what you’re thinking: lucky guy.

Needless to say, 9:00am was never going to happen.  Even though my wife prepared everything we needed to take last night, the only way we would have been there at 9:00am was if we were kidnapped at 7:30, blindfolded and driven there in an unmarked van.  Promptness is not our strong suit.  There’s a pretty good chance we wouldn’t have made it to the party at 9:00am if it was held in our living room.   

We left the house around 915ish, hoping to make it by 10:00 to catch the second half of the fiesta.  We arrived right on (our) schedule and parked a mile away because there were apparently a half-dozen kid’s parties going on concurrently.  Yahoo! 

We made it inside, got into our pool gear and headed for the water.  When I heard the party was being held at an aquatic center, I figured it meant there was going to be a pool where I could lay on a raft for a little while and relax while BC splashed around a kiddie pool.  Boy was I wrong.  This place had slides of all sizes and some aqua-jungle gym equipment in the middle of water 2-3 feet deep. I almost forgot the best part:  there were these giant water cannons all over the place that sprayed water with enough pressure that they could knock the tattoos off of Lil Wayne’s neck.  And those cannons could be easily manipulated by anyone around them, like the smug 8 year old who soaked me.  He’ll probably think twice next time he considers doing that to an adult, as I had a few choice words for him afterward.  I think this place must have been designed by either professional Martha Stewart, water safety instructors or demented sadists. 

This is (a small) part of the actual Aquatic
Center  that we visited today.

There was some mishap with the birthday girl, her foot and her father.  I’m still not really sure what happened, but some woman came and told us the party was over, the girl was headed to the ER and not to let the door hit us on the way out.  Good times.

On the plus side, they served some pretty good cupcakes and we got to see a few old friends we hadn’t seen in a while.  BC had fun, and that’s really all that mattered.  Oh, and since the party ended at 11am, we got to have lunch at a nearby Five Guys Burgers and Fries, which is easily the best “fast food” burger in Southern California.  Sorry, I’m just not an In’N’Out Burger fan.  Their fries are just not good.

All in all, it was a decent day. I just wish it hadn’t started so early…

Thanks for reading! Your comments are appreciated. 

--JJ aka The Dude of the House

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