DadCentric

The Last Supper: A One Act, One Scene Play Based on True Events

Setting: a DINNER TABLE at THE AVANT HOUSEHOLD. Around the table sit THE AVANT FAMILY: JASON (father), BETH (mother), ZOE (daughter, 19 months old), LUCAS (son, 5 years old), MICK (family dog).

ZOE: (banging metal serving spoon repeatedly and loudly against metal serving bowl). CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG

BETH (to ZOE): Are you done yet?

ZOE: (stops banging metal spoon) Nnnnnnnnnnnno! (resumes banging metal spoon repeatedly and loudly against metal serving bowl). CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG 

LUCAS: I have a wiener on my head! There's a wiener on my head!

JASON: (drains wine glass in one long gulp)

BETH: (drains wine glass in one long gulp)

ZOE: (grunts, defecates in diaper, takes large swig of milk from sippy cup, opens mouth and lets milk run down the front of her shirt soaking it, drops sippy cup on MICK's head)

MICK: Yipe!

LUCAS: Wiener!

FIN

Would You Like Some Cheese With That?

I'm thinking seriously about converting the basement into a whine cellar.  Yes, whine.

Our house is filled with two distinct, yet complimentary, vintages, a 2003 and a 2006, both of which are currently on top of their game.  However,  I'm afraid that the warmth and light might be spoiling them.  You see, I signed on for good grapes, not raisins.

Nothing a solid cork can't fix.

He'll throw up! We'll all throw up! It'll be anarchy!

It was bound to happen at some point, and happen it did. These words stand before you  as my personal representative to testify that this particular happening did indeed happen. It occurred, even. You are about to stop reading because I’m not getting to the point. Or maybe you’re not interested. Or maybe your boss just walked by and caught you on DadCentric yet again.

You know how in Battlestar Galactica -- and yes, this will contain a bit of spoilage, but only from season 1 which, if you haven’t watched yet, well then I can’t help you -- but you remember how basically the entire government was wiped out in a massive nuclear attack carried out by self-righteous monotheistic robots, which left the human race with almost no governance until it was determined that some mid-level administrator was next in line to take over the presidency, and even then there was only the barest of bare bones leadership structures in place to lead the remains of the human race through the galaxy with no tangible future in sight?

Well that’s basically what happened at my house last weekend.

Shooting Birds

This is my first post here at DadCentric and before I just kick the door down and start stomping around, I figured I should say... hi and that my name is Ryan. I maintain things over at my blog Pacing the Panic Room. You can also take a quick look HERE for a little more info about me. There. We are all properly introduced.

So let's get started.

When we offered to pack up the family and drive out to see our Midwife over on the East Coast of Florida and drink in her neck of the woods for an afternoon, my Wife and I thought this would be an awesome way to bond even more with her. After all, this woman is going to be teaching me how to check my wife's vagina so I can report the rate of dilation to her during the start of labor, the least we could do is go and see how she lives her life a little.

When Jason first asked me if I wanted to figure out a way to contribute some photography over here at DadCentric, I honestly couldn't think of anything that would be interesting enough for a first post to get things rolling for him. I have been racking my brain, and finally a couple weeks ago, while my my wife Cole and I were finishing up a visit with our midwife, she asked if we wanted to come out to where she lived to check things out. She had been bragging about a blueberry farm and chicken ranch that she and her partner had been working on for awhile (and immediately the lights were flashing and bells dinging). I would not only get fresh eggs and blueberries out of the deal, but an opportunity to get old school and tap into my manishness and actually slaughter and prepare my own chickens... there it was. My first photo project for DadCentric was born.

Fromage Rage

Scene:  Dinner.  Monday, 6 PM.  Casa de Cheeky.  Cheeky is assembling and disassembling Balloon Lagoon on the living room floor.  Her father is helping. Her mother enters from the kitchen.

Mother:  "Cheeky, what do you want for dinner?"

She is greeted by silence.

Mother:  "Cheeky, what do you want for dinner?"

Father:  "Cheeky, your mother asked you a question.  What do you want for dinner?"

Cheeky:  "Um, noodles!  And meatballs.  I noodles and meatballs."

Breastmilk: it comes from boobs

Peeps Gone Wild

Gives a whole new meaning to lustily eyeing the candy in your kids' Easter baskets, huh?

The Toddler Show

Today, my wife and I passed through yet another first in our lives as parents by attending the Thanksgiving program at our 3 year old’s school. I must confess here that prior to parenthood, I quite dreaded the idea of the school program. Any depiction of one in a movie or T.V. show always made me cringe. How could anyone possibly stand to watch a parade of munchkins dressed as trees, rocks, birds, and pumpkins toddle their way through songs about joy and happiness and all the beauty of the world, all the while surrounded by camera wielding parents intent on capturing every single solitary moment of this pivotal event in their children’s lives? Sure, their little out of tune melodies are cute, and it’s kind of adorable watching them all try to say in sync with the clapping and the little dance motions, and okay, it’s pretty funny when one of the kids just wanders off cluelessly, only to be herded back by some uber-patient caregiver. But how much of this can any one person really take?

Well, I don’t have the formula quite worked out, but based on today’s experience, such an event can remain enjoyable for approximately 30 minutes if the following conditions are met:

• One or more of the performers is yours.
• There is food waiting for you after it’s all over.
• It helps if the food includes pie. Mmm, pie.

I’m sure that the presence of beer would probably improve the numbers substantially, but nobody listens to me. Anyway, my son’s class came on as the opening act. There was singing, clapping, and funny hats, but my little guy preferred to be the stoic one, standing stock still, uttering not a single lyric. Perhaps he’ll grow up to play bass.

After that came the older kids. I think half the fun of the whole thing was watching the teachers direct all this chaos out onto the stage. The cast immediately dropped by several members when they stepped out onto the boards, saw the size of the crowd, and ran screaming for their parents. The remaining players worked their way through a medley of songs about turkeys and…um…turkeys. Yeah, I think all of the songs were about turkeys. Oh, and being thankful for stuff. Like turkey.

So lesson learned here. The little kid school program is not nearly as painful as I’ve been imagining it to be all these years. The high school musical, on the other hand, I am still certain is torture.

Friday Funny: $240 Worth of Pudding

I recently downloaded MTV's last good show, The State, from iTunes (I also bought a season pass to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog).  Here's a classic moment featuring Levon and Barry (Sagittarius):

Simple routines without all the fuss

So it may be a wee bit too early to tell, I may in fact be jinxing the whole thing by calling any sort of attention to it, but if the events of the last few weekends are any indicator, I may very well be on to some sort of father-son tradition kind of thing with my oldest boy. Not that it has to be just father-son, mom can join in too, and she has. And when the newborn son isn't so new anymore, he can get in on the fun as well. But for the moment, it's just me and the eldest.

It's not a particularly complicated tradition or anything. It doesn't involve trekking out to the badlands with three days worth of beef jerky stored away in our horse's saddlebags. There's no ceremonial garb involved and no animals have to be sacrificed. Nope, it's really nothing more complicated than a little ride on the city bus. See, a few weekends ago, we introduced Henry, our oldest to the joys of the bus, and it was a match made in heaven. Perhaps it's the fact that he can be transported at high speeds without having to wear a carseat. Maybe it's the community aspect. Maybe it's just the joy of getting to ride in a REALLY BIG THING. Whatever it was, he loved it, and ever since then, we constantly hear about how "Hemmy wanna ride the bussss."

So for the last few weekends, I've scooped the little guy up and taken the bus down the road to the grocery store. But not just any grocery store, it's the one with *GASP* a playground right outside! Of course, ask any kid about this magical destination, and they'll refer to it as the playground with the *yawn* grocery store inside. Whatever it is, it's a place where the kiddos can burn off some energy so that they'll be nice and docile for the grocery-purchasing experience yet to come. Once the kiddo's had his fill of the playground, we buy whatever we need for dinner that night and then catch the bus back home. We disembark, wave goodbye to the bus, and walk home so Dad can get dinner started.

As we waved goodbye to the bus last weekend, the little guy said "that was fun Daddy." Of course, I swelled up with that "holy crap, I'm getting at least one piece of this Dad gig right" feeling.

"You liked that, little boy?"

"Hemmy wanna ride the bus some more."

"Maybe next weekend?"

"Yeah."

Sappy perhaps, but I'll take it.

So what about you? Got any routines that you enjoy with your kiddos?