DadCentric

Baby Unneccesities: Highchair Excess

As a public service to the DadCentric community, we occasionally look at items parents are brainwashed into thinking they and their little ones can't live without when -- trust us -- they really can. This series is called Baby Unnecessities. Our latest installment looks at overly expensive and complex highchairs.

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Since I lived in a galaxy far, far away from my parents back in my children's days of Gerbers and dry Cheerios, we'd hop on a plane a few times a year so the wee ones could have some grandparent time. To make these adventures easier on us, we bought or borrowed a few duplicate pieces of essential baby gear to leave at their place for these visits.

Among these items was a highchair.

Was it some trendy French designed/German engineered model featuring space-age alloy plating and titanium trimmings?

Did it have 64 height settings and 37 reclining options?

Was it turbocharged with solid-state, digitally fuel-injected DroppingsAlert!^TM Seating that automatically sets off warning lights and sounds to notify you when certain items find their way onto the cushions (food -- whole or partially chewed: green light, bike horn; beverage or urine: yellow light, waterfall effect; vomit or poop: brown light, 128-decibel air raid siren)?

Say What?

 It was a quick visit from my parents this weekend but they always seem to leave me with something.

My mom has been a bookkeeper at local parochial high school for over twenty years. She told me over brunch of quiche lorraine and eggs benedict that she was going to retire at the end of the school year.

I asked her what she was going to do with herself after she retired and my father answered, “Bug me.”

She laughed and then said she didn’t know. I told her she might need a hobby. My mom’s Scottish decent does not allow her to sit idle for very long. A busy body who is best satiated when either on the move or in the midst of something.

My dad’s vocation takes him around the world so I’m sure many travels await them. I say vocation because from my understanding my father does not draw a salary for his position, yet most of what he does is expensible. He, for all intents and purposes, is basically retired and has been so for years. He whittles away his free time on crossword puzzles and watching Phillies games during baseball season.

And then sometime goes to places like Korea, Lithuania or Australia.

My mother said maybe she’ll be like my father, who meets with a group once a week at Panera Bread for conversation.

“We’re Romeos,” he informed me.

“Say What?” I said.

“Retired Old Men Who Eat Out,” he said.

And once again the old adage rings true: you learn something new everyday.

Thoughts That Count

They are shades of me. They are living, breathing and bittersweet memories of an innocence past and an ignorance lost.  There is Christmas in their hearts and they keep it always.

Bells - they ring.  Songs - they sing. I watch them in their revelry from a far away place, floating like fog through their treetops.  Their smiles are laced with icing.  Their breath is of candy canes and gingerbread.  Their hair sparkles with glitter beneath lights strung forever.  They know nothing but merry.  They know naught but the now.  They nestle snug in their beds and they breathe in the magic. 

I exhale slowly.

What to Buy Dad For Christmas: DadCentric's 2009 Gift Guide For Dads Who Are Awesome

This year, as we've done in the past, we're offering up some suggestions on what to get for that special dad in your life. Some of the things listed below were sent to us for review, some we purchased ourselves (don't worry, People Who Worry About Disclosure, we'll sort it all out at the end of this post), and some are just things that we dream about (those will be painfully obvious, like last year's Scarlett Johansson Robot Maid). And now, with the wonder of cell phone Internet browsing, you can peruse our suggestions while nursing a tryptophan and Pinot Noir hangover and waiting in the line to get into your local Wal-Mart, a line that's approximately the length of the Great Wall of China. Happy Black Friday!

A Mother's Arms are Made of Tenderness and Children Sleep Soundly in Them

Heat, as an extreme, exists only in a relative sense.  It is the hottest thing they have ever known and therefore it is the hottest thing ever known.  I tell them that it is not, that my coffee is actually hotter, but that doesn't soothe them, it only makes them question my sanity as they slowly dare a second sip of their lukewarm chocolate.

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My back hurts.  I've been carrying too much for too long.  For six weeks I've been living as a single father - a single work-at-home-dad.  It has been incredibly hard and surprisingly easy.  I am better for it and I am tired and I am badly beaten. 

My work has suffered.  My 70 hour work week has been cut to less than forty - compiled from a series of minutes torn apart from hours and tucked between goodnight kisses and the taste of warm whiskey across my lips.  The clock moves always forward.

Chores once shared have become mine alone.  All nights are long and lonely.  All mornings are early and full of songs and frustration.

I do not believe that I have achieved anything worthy of praise or pity, only reflection.  Others face obstacles greater than mine on a daily basis.  They make the most.  They do their best.  They are stronger than I ever thought I was and when I sip from my glass the toast is to them.

But this is not their life, it is mine and while I was prepared and up to the challenge, it was unexpected in both timing and time.  From the frying pan to the fire is not a lateral move.  The heat is extreme and it is all relative.

Tomorrow my wife comes home after six weeks sitting at the bedside of her ailing father.  Six weeks of tears and whispers and shouts in the night.  Six weeks of walking in the shoes of a girl much younger.  Bedside seats are lessons in love and fear and the art of turning fond old memories that weren't. That is a chapter not yet closed.  Those wounds are still open.  He will still have a beside in need of sitting and she will carry her thoughts accordingly.  Her back will hurt.

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They do not expect her.  They have grown accustomed to the missing of their mother.  Six weeks is a long time gone and a father doing the best he can is still just one kiss goodnight no matter how much laughter fills the day or how much work is left to the forgotten.

Tomorrow will seem but another day to them, the routine of living with some parts missing.  They will be safe and loved and slightly lost.  She will be on a plane six weeks delayed and her dreams will be of little boy kisses grown wet with salt and the slightest linger of lukewarm chocolate.

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The title of this post is a quote from Victor Hugo.

Party Properly

With my eldest son’s 4th birthday looming in just under two weeks, the wife and I have been diligently plotting out the best way to celebrate. Of course all birthdays are special, but four seems like an important milestone, though for slightly different reasons. With three, the kid realized that it was his special day, that all these family and friends were gathered here in the Name of Cake! and Punch! and Presents! just for him. However, there was very little in the way of lead-up. He didn’t seem to recall that a similar celebration had been held just one year prior, or if he did, he didn’t quite make the connection between the two.

But we’re talking about four now. Four remembers three, and may even have a vague recollection of two, enough that a pattern is established. He understands that every year right around this time, we all get together to celebrate the awesomeness that is him. Thus, it stands to reason that whatever decisions we make about how to celebrate this particular birthday could have a lasting impact on the tone of birthdays to come. Go too far overboard and he’ll come to expect more and more grandiose gestures year after year, which will only lead to greater stress, increased expense, and eventual disappointment when we are unable to arrange a battle between a squadron of unicorns and a dragon for his 12th birthday party. Go too far underboard and he’ll end up a big anti-party lamewad. No, my friends, we are not simply talking about one birthday party here. We are talking about ALL the birthday parties. We are talking about the proper setting of expectations.

So with that in mind, I would like to share with you a list of activities that the Mrs. and I are considering for the impending festivities. Perhaps you’ll find some ideas here for celebrating the anniversary of your own offspring’s arrival, or perhaps you’ve some ideas of your own to share.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - A Rambling DadCentric Review

I had never heard of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs until it became a movie.  I had no idea it was a book.  It was like the collective works of Dan Brown and John Grisham all over again.  The conversations around the DadCentric water cooler were tense and awkward.  I was mocked. Openly.  Something cool and literary had escaped me- me, who is nothing if not cool and literary. 

Slow Food, or, The Spaghetti Incident

6:15 - Arrive at B*******'s, an Italian restaurant that we frequent when we want cheap food that the kids will eat. The place smells of marinara and old people. I'm so hungry I could eat an old person, provided that said old person was covered with marinara. (Fun Fact: if you braise an old person in marinara, it helps with the stringiness. Just make sure you cut against the grain.) The kids howled on the drive over; it is now 45 minutes past their normal dinner time.

6:20 - Our waitress arrives. She is perhaps 17. Her perky nervousness is a tell; I'm pretty sure that this is her first waiting job. We order quickly: personal pizza, cheese, no sauce for Lucas; kid's cheese ravioli, no sauce for Zoe; half spaghetti, half meat ravioli, meatball for me; half angel hair, half cheese ravioli, olive oil and garlic sauce on the angel hair, meat sauce on the side. The waitress looks frightened. "Er...you want the sauce on the ravioli? No sauce on the ravioli? Olive oil on the ravioli? Meat sauce on the side? I think there's a dollar substitution charge for the angel hair..." Zoe throws her kid's menu on the floor and yells "NNNNNNOOO!". Lucas: "Can I have chocolate milk? Can I have chocolate milk? Can I have chocolate milk? Can I have chocolate milk? Can I have chocolate milk?" My right eye begins to twitch.

You've Wet Your Bed, Now Sleep In It

We all know for a fact that every single solitary thing that goes wrong in a person’s life, every flaw in one’s being, every bit of sadness they experience, every shortcoming, every unattractive feature, every skill one lacks, every inch of height one fails to grow until one is of a suitable stature to become a basketball star and get rich and famous and yell at cameras that one is not a role model, ALL OF IT can be attributed back to one’s  parents. And of course one’s parents are only flawed because of their parents, who are themselves flawed because of their parents, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. Buried in the ground somewhere, or perhaps on display in some museum, are the bones of some caveman who is the source of all our problems. Boy, does that fucker need to get an earful.

Someone out there is reading this and taking me seriously. Sigh. 

A Pot to Potion

The fact that the potion existed, that, in and of itself, was not a secret.  What happened to be in it, however, was not openly discussed in polite company.  There had been the occasional murmur of this spice or that, and someone had mentioned an eye of something, but none of the pets had taken to wearing patches and those suggestions were quickly tossed aside.

There were cupboards left open that shed suspicion.  Bottles had been found emptied when everyone knew they had recently held something that someone considered valuable. Scattered backwashes of day-old beer and forgotten drops of rainwater - surely, those made the cut.

A bit of mud was key.  It helped maintain consistency. Mud was a given.