Who plays where – battle of the babes

Note: This column appears in the 8/11 issue of The Glendale Star and the 8/12 issue of the Peoria Times



We have a Yankee room in our house. This is pretty much what it sounds like, unless you are a million years old and still associate Yankees with northern folk. It is a room filled with New York Yankee-related pictures and memorabilia. The room was not, amazingly, my wife’s idea, although she has never been opposed to it. One time, she even bought me, as a gift, a Yankee lamp. It was the greatest day of my life.



Having a Yankee room was a concept of the mind of a young, passionate Yankee fan with an extra room, no children, and a lot of Yankees stuff. Initially the room was a place to put all the team-related things I had acquired throughout my life, but it slowly morphed into a reason to acquire more stuff. That said, I had embraced a minimalistic approach—less is more, and I wanted to feature only the classier signed photos and nostalgic items, such as my box of Derek Jeter corn flakes. But once I made the conscious decision to stop acquiring, I found myself continuing to acquire items, as my extended family has embraced the room as a foundation for gift-giving. (My mom and mother-in-law share the very thoughtful characteristic of discovering what someone likes, and then getting them that thing forever. If you casually mention around them that you like, say, walnuts, my mother-in-law will put them in everything each time she cooks for you, and my mom will buy you a year's supply of cashews and say, "I know you like walnuts, but they didn't have any, so I got you cashews," while she laughs and my dad nods his head. Suffice it to say, they have been a steady source of merchandise.) Now I have more Yankee stuff than I know what to do with, and the room is more cluttered than classy. So, note to family: from now on, send money.



Another concept behind the room was to have it be a place to hang out with friends and drink beer and watch actual Yankee games or sports in general, as my wife and the wives of my friends hung out downstairs and watched HGTV and drank wine and talked about how frustrated they are with us. But this idea was flawed, mainly in that most of the few close friends I do have here don’t like the Yankees because, I guess, we live in Arizona, and, more importantly, because they have as much time and opportunity to do such things as I do, which is none. Not helping matters is the fact that the TV in the room, which came with us from New Jersey, is not HD and weighs three tons and, ummm, doesn’t get Yankees games.



Unable to utilize the room for its intended fantasy, we were forced to make it practical. It is now a Yankee-guest-workout-storage room which, quite frankly every home should have. The room, however, was recently threatened thanks to a separate concept—a playroom for our daughter.



Obviously, it was more important that my Bucky Dent-signed photo remain on the wall than my daughter be able to experience daily, real-life joy in a safe, contained environment amidst a bevy of toys. Eventually, it was decided an upstairs playroom for a girl her age was as impractical as the Yankee room has come to be. Instead we will attempt to morph a downstairs room into a play room/office, where stuffed animals and a shredder will coexist.



So the Yankee room remains, but it has been put on notice. To increase its chances of survival and ensure the light on that lamp is never turned off, I am in the market for an affordable HDTV. And time. Plus more friends. Apply within. Must love Yankees.

Oversized binder harbinger of unfortunate incidents

Note: This column appears in the 7/28 issue of The Glendale Star and the 7/29 issue of the Peoria Times



We have to sign our daughter in and out of daycare using two mediums—the modern touch-screen technology of a computer, and the ancient method of a pen and gigantic, alphabetized binder. It is the latter that most concerns me on those days when I am responsible for picking her up.

For you see, it is the binder wherein her daycare includes all parental notifications, and 90-percent of the time that means an “incident report.” There was a time—it seems so long ago—when our daughter played the victim in these reports, and I, the sympathetic father, simply signed the paper, opting not to press charges, and later consoled the precious girl. Somewhere along the way, this precious girl learned to fend for herself, then to defend others—one report detailed how she bit a kid because he bit another kid; hers is a vigilante justice—then to defend her territory—she once bit a girl for having the audacity to sit next to her on the comically small couch—then to defend … her honor? Country? I’m not sure. At this point, she plays the role of Jack in this Lord of the Flies-type environment. The conch is hers, and if you try and take it, expect teeth marks. (The conch is a stuffed animal, by the way. Or, anything.)

This is, of course, very embarrassing to us, her parents. I hold my breath each time I flip to her page in the binder, and I have run out of exasperated expressions upon finding a report. It’s impossible not to feel as though these incidents are some reflection of our ability to parent, although it should be mentioned she no longer bites us, so there’s that. Most of our extended family feels a sense of pride that their granddaughter/niece/cousin takes no prisoners, but I am not sure the parents of her daycare co-inhabitants—I would call them “friends” but, ya’ know—feel similar pride.

The teachers and employees at daycare have done an admirable job of deflecting our shame. “It’s the age, don’t worry!” “My kid was the same way!” But they are paid to say such things. And even faux optimism could not penetrate the binder thickness last week.

As I walked in, the daycare worker at the front desk kindly greeted me, then playfully nodded her head and said our daughter’s name three times. “What happened?” I asked, deadpanned. “Oh nothing!” she said. Relieved, I paged through the binder, eventually reaching our daughter’s page. “Except that,” the worker said softly, wincing.

Three incident reports. Three. All biting. All starring our daughter as the aggressor, for offenses ranging from “standing too close” to “holding a toy.” Black Wednesday, as it will come to be known.

Bereft of any more indignation and frustration—part of our frustration is that our home discipline methods are not exactly matched in daycare—I stared blankly ahead for a few seconds, then regrouped, signed the papers as quickly as if I were closing on a house, and picked her up. As we walked back through the lobby, the workers wore exaggerated frowny faces, and one of them assured me that she had had “a little talk” with our daughter. “Yeah, I’m sure that worked,” I thought, as I smiled politely. The thought never occurred to me to reason with the girl who recently pooped in the bathtub.

People tell us not to worry. That this will pass. I hope so. In the meantime, it would help if they got rid of that big old binder. That thing bites, big time.

To scare a monster with a monster

Note: This column appears in the 6/16 issue of The Glendale Star and the 6/17 issue of the Peoria Times

It has recently been revealed that our daughter is scared of Cookie Monster.
I can’t say that I blame her, with his aggressiveness and broken English—I’m not so sure that “Me want cookie!” is the best educational resource for young children—not to mention his wandering eyes and the fact that he is a self-described monster. Nevertheless, this evolved fear has been wonderful news for us.

You see, virtually nothing scares our daughter. In fact, she is greatly amused by the rare occasions when she is scared, like when I jump out from nowhere during a game of hide-and-seek. More, more! As parents of a child who, not yet two, is still too young to grasp the consequences of discipline—we still valiantly try though, which typically worsens the behavior we were attempting to correct—we are more than ready to employ scare tactics.

Is this wrong? Probably. But I think that, as parents, we are often asked to set down the moral compass in the interest of greater goals, like ending a hunger strike or being able to move about normally in a public setting. Plus, if we lose our sanity, nobody will be there to parent her.

Last weekend was one mini-disaster after the other. Constant mayhem, unnerving selfishness, and borderline malicious defiance, all of which had us both, but my wife especially, on the verge of a breakdown. (My in-laws, by the way, insist that my wife is raising an exact replica of herself, to their utter delight.) This terrible behavior resulted in my wife looking furiously online for a Cookie Monster mask.

For reasons that transcend corrective behavior, I was really looking forward to seeing my wife, amidst the chaos of the latest tantrum, jump out wearing a Cookie Monster mask and yell in a deep voice, “Cookie Monster say, ‘Eat your dinner or else!’” I would have definitely taken a Flip video of that to send out to the family, and to Parents Magazine. But alas—she either couldn’t find an adult-sized mask, or, more likely, abandoned her search on second thought.

One day after our exhausting and self-reflective weekend, my wife was working late and so I put our daughter to bed. After she had fallen asleep, a landscaper working next door, but right by her bedroom window, turned on his extremely loud blower. It scared our daughter out of her sleep. Like, really scared her.

“Dad-DEEE, Dad-DEEE!” she desperately and repeatedly screamed from her crib, and while we normally make it a point to not go back into her room if she cries, this was a special exception. Plus her “Dad-deee” scream is my kryptonite.

I rushed in there to comfort her back to sleep. It’s a strange feeling to see your child genuinely scared—you feel sad for them, but there’s an overwhelming feeling of happiness at being there to comfort them, and joy that they called you to do so.

I told my wife what happened when she got home, and she put her hands over her heart and made extra certain I went in there. I’m pretty sure she abandoned her search knowing that whoever wasn’t playing Cookie Monster would cave and immediately console our daughter, rendering the whole operation useless. I guess we’ll continue parenting the old-fashioned way—persistent love, discipline, and constantly questioning whether or not we’re doing the right thing.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dad-dees out there doing the same. Enjoy your kryptonite.

Hear ye, hear ye—Ear tubes are normal, will make your child more popular*

Note: This column appears in the 3/31 issue of The Glendale Star and the 4/1 issue of the Peoria Times

Things that seem crazy and that I knew nothing about are pretty standard in parenthood.

One of those things: tubes in kids’ ears. Around our daughter’s 17th ear infection, my wife lamented that it may be time to have tubes inserted into her ears. I was like, “Ha, ha … good one. Tubes.” And she was like, “No, seriously.”

She explained to me that tubes are frequently inserted into some children's ears as a means of preventing the frequency of ear infections. I immediately pictured our daughter walking around the house with straw-like tubes projecting out of the side of her head—sort of like the knobs in Frankenstein’s ears—which would leak ear fluid all over the carpet. This did not seem normal to me.

I later came to learn that the tubes border on microscopic, and that their insertion requires a very minor surgery. I began to ask other parents if they had ever heard of such a thing, and the common response was something along the lines of, “Tubes? Pfftt. All five of our kids had tubes. Billy over there had three sets of tubes because they kept falling out. He’s the tube champion. Now he plays the tuba. Weird. Anyway, it’s totally no big deal. Who ya’ got, Dr. Johnson? Good dude. Tell him the Murphys said ‘what’s up.’”

That’s the thing about parenthood. I have lived on this earth for over 32 years and had never heard of something that is apparently very common. It makes me feel both dumb and oblivious. Did I have tubes? Do I have tubes? I need to call my mom. I don’t know what to think anymore. It’s like when we first got our dog and the vet said that he’d obviously need to have his “anal glands expressed” every now and then, and I looked at the vet like he had eight heads. I thought I knew enough about kids—whiny, hungry—and dogs—furry, hungry—but I realize every day that I do not.

But I am learning. In fact, the doctor informed me that a common misperception is that the tubes just drain fluid, when in fact they mostly relieve the pressure in the eardrum which in turn lessens the fluid. This information alleviated my earlier fears about ear fluid carpet stains. So I said, “I’m sold—pop ‘em in there, doc.” My wife interjected to say we would talk it over.

Before we could begin talking it over, our daughter got another ear infection, and our decision was made for us. She had the tubes inserted during a minor procedure last week, which lasted, literally, about 10 minutes. Afterwards the doctor came out to say she did great, and that there was “extreme puss” in both ears. Apparently, we made the right decision. Also, there would be “considerable leakage” for the next 24 hours, so … yeah.

She was zonked and zombie-like from the anesthesia immediately afterwards. This morphed into a brief bout of confused anger, and she destroyed everything in her path. Our little Frankenstein.

Now she’s just another kid with ear tubes, and I’m a wiser dad, and our dog just scooted on the carpet, and I know what needs to be done.

Eventually, we will need a new carpet.

*may not be true

Full moon, allergies contribute to loss of focus, sanity

Note: This column appears in the 3/17 issue of The Glendale Star and the 3/18 issue of the Peoria Times

You know how things tend to happen all at once, and you reach a point where you either break down completely or blindly plow through all newfound dilemmas with purpose? Well, I did both.

Not helping this unexpected influx of oddness was the general state of funk I found myself in over the past few weeks. Between work, family, outside projects, appointments, commitments, or whatever, I was suddenly zoned out, proceeding through life in a zombiesque state. Also, all of a sudden I have allergies. I haven’t been able to breathe for three weeks, and whenever I blow my nose I almost pass out.

It probably began when my wife came home one day and informed me her car was hit while it was parked on the street. No big deal, but still something to take care of. Thing is, nothing ever seems to proceed smoothly for us, and this led to a series of calls to various insurance companies—always a pleasant experience—and as a result my wife is now driving a small red rental clown car that is filled with cat hair and smells like an ashtray.

Around this time, our daughter set the world record for consecutive ear infections—surpassing the mark set by a 4th-century Roman boy—forcing us to reconsider having tubes placed in her ears. A minor car accident and minor potential surgery were giving me a major headache.

Then, a local crazy person followed up an interesting voice mail in which he repeatedly asked me questions—on voice mail—by coming into our office to see me in an attempt to place an ad that literally forced me to contact local authorities. When I informed him that we would not place his nonsensical yet threatening ad, he began a rant about the local library and demanded to speak to the mayor, who—this is surprising—does not work here.

At least the weekend had arrived, and that Saturday my wife and I had dinner plans with friends. Before dropping off our daughter at the sitter, we decided to go to church, and when we arrived at church it was discovered that somebody, who was me, forgot the diaper bag that contained pretty much everything we needed for her. This greatly improved my standing with my date for that evening, and our daughter helped matters immensely by acting like a lunatic in church to the point where my wife was forced to remove her from the premises.

Rock bottom occurred later that night when, after we arrived home, I decided to hop on the ol’ computer. Then I decided to take a sip of water. I failed at the latter, and water spilled all over our laptop, shutting it down.

I don’t want to say how I reacted to this occurrence because it is embarrassing, but I will say it was as close to an emotional breakdown as I have ever had. Hearing my tirade from upstairs, my wife thought someone had died.

I and the computer miraculously recovered. My funk began to wane, even if the constant flow of random events did not. The next day I watched our daughter fall off our backyard lounge chair when, instead of removing her from the chair, I told her to “get down from there,” as if she were older than 18 months, and as if she ever listens anyway. It was then I decided it was time to refocus myself. Enough was enough.

At work last week, a different crazy person came into our office nervously looking around for “a job.” After she left, the cops swarmed her outside, and the next day we discovered a crack pipe hidden in a stack of papers at our front desk. We had to call the cops to come and pick up the evidence. “This is perfect,” I thought. “I have to talk to the cops anyway about that other crazy person.” Things were starting to go my way.

Now if I could only breathe …

No rest for the weary, sayeth the dragon

Note: This column appears in the 2/17 issue of The Glendale Star and the 2/18 issue of the Peoria Times

One of the things fatherhood has taught me is that sleep is overrated. Eight hours? Pfft. I have not slept eight consecutive hours since college (back then I called that a “nap”).

Sure, it’s frustrating to wake up every morning and be immediately reminded that this cycle of diminished sleep will not end for the foreseeable future, if ever. I combat this by lying to myself. On weekday mornings I think, “I will sleep-in this weekend.” On weekend mornings I think, “I will nap when she naps.” But on weekend afternoons, as she naps, I think, “Now I can finally take a shower.”

I’m not complaining though. There are positives. For starters, getting to sleep takes zero effort. There used to be a time when falling asleep wasn’t so easy. Now? I could fall asleep while waiting at a red light. And by “could” I mean “do.” Also, if the quality of one’s sleep is relative to the weirdness of his dreams, then I am getting the best sleep ever. The other night I had a dream that I was best friends with a hilarious dragon who urged me not to take myself too seriously. I was like, “Don’t worry, dragon—I don’t!’ Then my alarm went off. I miss him.

I feel a sense of pride in being able to function on less sleep than is clinically recommended by people much smarter than I. In fact, the men of our family have a long-standing, proud tradition of not sleeping. As a kid I used to believe that my dad was the first person up in America every morning. He was at work on his lunch break when we were getting up for school. Even now, when he comes to visit us here in AZ, he is always up at some ungodly hour, for which he will blame the “time difference,” even though he has been here for a week. One night last summer our dog got me up to go out at like, 3 a.m., and I walked downstairs and my dad had a pot of coffee brewing and was on his second “SportsCenter.”

My father-in-law does not sleep voluntarily. For him, sleep = not getting something done. As a result, if he stops moving for two minutes, he will simply fall asleep where he stands. This has been a constant source of hilarity for the rest of us. A few years ago he fell asleep on the couch during a Yankee game. He woke up suddenly hours after the game had finished, incoherently yelled something about Derek Jeter, then fell back asleep. When we were back east a couple months ago, we had to get him up super-early to drive us to the airport. My wife gently nudged him, whispering, “Pssst, Dad, time to get up.” He shot up quickly and yelled, “I’ll take the call!”

The common theme of these great men is fatherhood. Years of being conditioned to be up at a moment’s notice for any conceivable reason and spending all waking hours intently focused on work and/or another’s well-being has made sleep almost optional. And I am proud to follow in their weary footsteps.

That’s certainly not to say it’s just the men. My wife has probably slept less than I have over the past year or so, and she works, and she does more for our daughter in a tired stupor than I do wide awake. Plus I don’t even think she ever gets a good sleep, as her dreams are totally realistic and usually involve me doing something stupid, so she gets up exhausted and mad at me. I just remind her to not take myself too seriously.


... and another thing, Mike -- you should stop wearing overalls. What is this, 1990?

Honorable mention

Many months ago, I entered a Real Simple magazine writing contest. SPOILER ALERT: I lost.

I wasn't going to post my entry here for a few reasons. One, it's a little bit on the sappy side (I figured a heartfelt piece about how we came to adopt our daughter, from a male perspective, would hit those ladies -- I assume only women work at Real Simple; is that wrong? -- right where it hurts: in the heart. Strategy fail), and I've had a few too many of those in the past few months. What can I say -- I'm getting sentimental in my young age. Also, I try not to write too much about our daughter here, because no one wants to read about other people's kids (unless of course it's me reading about your kids; they're adorably hilarious! And smart!), and because some of this I touched upon in an earlier piece about the adoption.

But then I figured, screw it. I worked really hard on this, and I didn't want it to go to waste, even if it wouldn't earn me the $3,000 first-place prize and trip to New York City (I could have seen the Empire State Building!) to share a lettuce wrap with several editors who would undoubtedly scoff at my impressive catalog of silly baseball card write-ups. Bitter? Not at all.

The theme was "I never thought I'd ..." I had originally written an entirely different piece involving an encounter with grizzly bears (which will appear somewhere else soon), but scrapped it in favor of something more ... non-bear-related. As usual, I should have gone with the bears. Anyway, here it is.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

“My wife is a strong Italian woman from Brooklyn.”

This is how I began our quest for a child.

We had been foster parents for about a year as we sat there in our living room, discussing our goals with our licensing worker. At the moment we were fostering a three-year old girl and her baby brother. With no kids of our own, fostering was our first foray into the wild world of parenting. Going from zero-to-two in 60 seconds—these children had literally shown up on our doorstep just months earlier—provided us a crash course. Normally a slave to routine and organized to a tee, I sat there on this day amidst the aftermath of Hurricane Toy, sleepless and just a tad overwhelmed, with spit-up stains on my shoulder and Dora the Explorer on in the background piercing my brain with its redundancy. We get it, Map. Barn, river, then castle. You only have to tell me once!

Sure, there was a bit of naïveté in our desire to become foster parents and make a difference in this crazy world. One week into it we were jaded by the system. Our first placement, a newborn baby boy, was unceremoniously picked up by the state after being with us for just a few days. Now we were headfirst into our second placement, which was not without its own challenges.

Just days earlier, our lovely foster daughter had spit on her teacher at daycare. Good times. Her little brother, meanwhile, had somehow managed to acquire almost every treatable ailment known to man, from acid reflux to respiratory issues. Many a night was spent trying to corral a three-year old girl while tangled in the tubes of her brother’s breathing apparatus.

Still, we had no regrets. And truthfully, our motives for fostering weren’t entirely selfless, as we had also hoped, through foster care, to one day adopt. Our current foster kids were going back to their parents, which we always knew, and which—even though we loved them dearly—gave us a sigh of relief during moments of mayhem.

In fact, the kids were in the beginning stages of transitioning back home, which is why we were discussing our future. We had hoped our next placement could be more of the fost-to-adopt variety, in that we’d have at least a chance to become a permanent family. Our licensing worker urged us to work on our adoptive profile—a quick family bio that the state uses in part to determine which family is right for any child available for adoption through foster care. Her advice to me was, “You’re a writer, Mike. Spice it up! Make it stand out.”

A writer. Huh. My writing experience at that point had consisted mostly of having a blog in which I made fun of my old baseball cards. Now instead of poking fun at 80’s mustaches and ill-fitting uniforms, I’d be writing, in effect, for a child. No biggie.

And so I began, describing my wife, then myself, and then yes, our dog, in all the glorious and dramatic detail I could muster.
__________

The way it works is this. Agencies will send out emails to foster parents with regards to a child who is available for adoption through foster care. If you choose to express interest, your particular agency will submit your profile and the state will then make its selection from the candidates.

The emails themselves and the children they describe are far ranging. It could be a newborn boy with no adverse medical background, or, more likely, a 13-year old teenage girl who has moved through seven foster homes and most recently burned down a nearby abandoned building. As someone looking to adopt, you cannot have a bleeding heart, and you must know the right fit for your family.

About a month after submitting our profile, we received an email about a child available for adoption. She was a one-month old baby girl. When we began the process of becoming foster parents, our agency asked us to write down our ideal situation. If you were able to adopt, describe the child you have dreamed about. As I read this girl’s profile, it felt like our ideal situation was being read back to me. I emailed our licensing worker back immediately, expressing our interest. My wife and I, however, curbed our enthusiasm. We were jaded, remember. Plus, this was a baby. Everyone wants a baby.

Our reservations were confirmed when, after almost two months, we had heard nothing. No matter, as we were now getting ready to take our little foster kiddos back home. With freedom on the horizon, we decided we’d take a break from foster care for a while.

The week leading up to the kids’ return home was hectic and extremely emotional to say the least. I thought I’d be whistling “Dixie” as I packed up the gigantic Dora play castle that had been sitting in the middle of our living room for the past eight months, but it was difficult to hold back the tears. This whirlwind of activity and emotion was interrupted when our licensing worker called my wife. She informed her that we had been chosen as the prospective adoptive parents of that baby girl.

It had been so long since that email that my wife didn’t understand at first. Once it sunk in, she excitedly asked ten more times if it was really true. It was. Out of twenty-one families, we were chosen.

We wouldn’t be taking a break after all. Just days after reuniting our foster kids with their family—a bittersweet moment that was helped immeasurably by the realization that we may have a family of our own on the horizon—we’d be traveling to go meet our new daughter.

After a sleepless night spent fretting over what-ifs and marveling at what-could-be, and now with jitters from both nerves and strong coffee, I took a deep breath as we entered a drab conference room full of caseworkers and adoption liaisons. Our eyes passed them all in our frantic search for her. There she was, her big brown eyes looking upward as she took her bottle. I’d always had a picture in my head of what she’d look like, and miraculously, she matched that image perfectly. Everything faded to white noise as I held her, and I looked at my wife, now a mom. Pure joy. Still, that voice in my head kept asking, “Why us?”

As the conversation wrapped up, and we prepared for our life as new parents, the meeting’s coordinator asked if we had any questions. I did, in fact. I turned to the caseworker and said, “I just have to ask—why did you choose us? We heard twenty other families were interested. What was it about us?”

She leaned forward, looked at us and said, “Honestly? It was the first line of your family profile. After I read the rest, I knew you guys were the ones.”

I guess it stood out. Wow. I never thought I’d write my way into fatherhood.

I can’t be sure what it was, exactly, that sold her. This woman was not Italian and was, in fact, a southwest native. So she wasn’t playing favorites. Had she been drawn in by the acknowledgment of a strong female presence, and a husband who vouches for her? Had another prospective father touted his strong Greek wife from Queens, but not followed up with the appropriate prose? It should also be mentioned that our profile, at the time, was bereft of our photo and additional family specifics, so it was our brief bio and only our brief bio that seemed to suffice. Indeed, it seemed, it was plenty.

I like to believe it was my writing that literally brought us together as a family. We were trying to conceive, yes, but little did I know what wonders the simple technique of placing my fingers on the keyboard would do.

Of course, I’d be a fool not to believe—considering the timing, the circumstances, and, well, her—that Divine Intervention played a much larger role. To that extent, we’ve stopped asking, “Why us?” Instead, we just say, everyday, “thank you.”
_____________

We officially adopted our daughter this past summer, but she had already become our everything, the center of our permanent family. Going from two-to-one wasn’t the breeze I anticipated, but it’s different when the one is the one. I remain perpetually a tad overwhelmed, but such is my new routine.

Every time I look at our daughter I’m reminded of the impact of the words I had written that night. I’ve been writing a lot more lately. What can I say? She inspires me.

That makes two women in this house who inspire me—a floppy-haired little dynamo and a strong Italian woman from Brooklyn. Without both, I wouldn’t be here.

Watching Dora.

Christmas, with a peppermint twist

Note: This column appears in the 12/23 issue of The Glendale Star and the 12/24 issue of the Peoria Times

We have a really good friend who is like a modern day saint. She is so insanely kind that it naturally exposes my own selfishness, yet being in her presence somehow makes me feel like a better person. She has adopted eight children out of foster care, and was the driving force behind our own decision to get involved as well. In that respect we have her to thank for our own family.

Her younger girls are all enrolled in dance school, and they had a big Christmas recital last weekend that ended with an all-important daddy-daughter dance. For this, the men of their family were employed for service, including our friend’s own dad and the girls’ oldest brother. Another brother was supposed to take part until it was discovered that this year’s dance included a lift. He was out, not yet big enough to lift up his sister. So …

I agreed to be the dance partner for our friend’s five-year old daughter with whom I have a special rapport. By that I mean every time we go over their house she jumps right into my arms, hangs around my neck, and implores me to go to the backyard with her and pretend that I am the monster and she is the princess.

Apparently, she had asked her mom from the beginning if I could be her partner. However, after it was decided that I would be, and I continued to feign an exaggerated level of excitement, she said to me, “I know you’re happy to be my dance partner, but you need to relax, okay?”

Okay. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to practice with her before the actual recital. Her mom provided a sheet with the dance steps, and so I practiced diligently the night before with my wife instead. It was very romantic, the two of us in our pajamas, with toothbrushes hanging out of our mouths, holding a sheet of paper, and botching dance moves to no music.

The girls had a “peppermint twist” number early in the show, so my dance partner was in her red and white striped peppermint outfit, with white gloves and a hat tilted to the side when I met her backstage. She jumped into my arms. I asked her if she knew the dance moves and she shrugged her shoulders. I was a little worried.
I needed to relax. When we all came out onstage to thunderous applause, I realized that all the girls and most of the dads were simply mimicking the moves of the instructors on the side of the stage. So much for practice. No one was in synch, but it didn’t really matter. The lift was successful. No one was dropped.

When the routine finished, I showed her how to wave to the crowd like a princess on a parade float, with a cupped hand. In that crowd was my own daughter, clapping happily. In that moment I did wonder how different both girls’ lives may be were it not for our friend, the saint. Mine, too. I’ve come to realize that “dad” is a role I very much enjoy playing both onstage and in real life, even if there is a lot of mimicking involved.

“Monster” is pretty fun, too. Merry Christmas.

A home filled with castles is my castle

Note: This column appears in the 12/2 issue of The Glendale Star and the 12/3 issue of the Peoria Times

We live in a modest home. It’s a considerable upgrade, however, from where we lived in New Jersey, which was a two-bedroom condo.

There was more storage than we had stuff when we moved in. This was great, as everything could be packed neatly away. As the years progressed, and we acquired more and more stuff, and my wife maintained her refusal to dispose of the stuff we already had, that extra space dwindled. Now, we have a child.

There is no more space. In fact, the walls are closing in. There is a trampoline in our dining room. Next to my side of the bed rests a multi-colored jumper thingee that our daughter no longer uses, which has a plastic sun on it that sarcastically smiles at me each morning as if to say, “Still here!” At the foot of our bed rests a plastic dinosaur castle. It has compartments for the dinosaur egg balls it came with—obviously—but now our daughter uses those compartments for other things, like my cell phone.

It has become an ongoing battle between my wife and I, which I am losing, as to why we keep acquiring so many things. Of course I want our daughter to have toys, it just seems that most of these toys interest her only upon their arrival, and then she moves on to other things. Were it up to me, we’d have a house full of only battery-less remote controls, which I could easily store away each night.

Last weekend we went to pick up a kitchen play set that was offered to us by a friend who was moving. I thought it was going to be one of those cheap, plastic Fisher Price toys, but it most certainly was not. Were it not downsized, I would prefer to it to our actual kitchen. I needed a screwdriver to dismantle it. It barely fit into the back of my car, and on our way home I openly wondered where we’d put it. “Don’t worry,” my wife said. “We’ll find a spot.”

That spot is now in our living room, next to the TV. It used to be the spot where our dog rested on his bed, but he has since, to his chagrin, been displaced.
As I was lamenting what new plastic wonders Christmas would bring, it suddenly dawned on me—why am I hung up about this?

For some reason, I have always fashioned our living quarters as, ideally, being ready for company. But 97-percent of the time it’s just us. When family is visiting, or when friends are over, it doesn’t even matter. Who cares? It’s not like we’re hosting wine and cheese parties. Although if we were, it would be fun to rest the caviar on the dinosaur castle.

For the time being, our daughter loves her new kitchen. Sometimes, we will drag the trampoline into the living room, because the best thing to do after cooking a fake pizza is to jump around on a trampoline.

I also realized that the best way to get her to play with the toys is to play with them myself. Now I’m the one scattering toys around. Apparently, she’s getting a wiffleball swing set for Christmas. I can’t wait.

On Wonderpets and wondering how I got here

Note: This column appears in the 10/14 issue of The Glendale Star and the 10/15 issue of the Peoria Times

Things happen fast when you’re a parent. There’s not much time to reflect on what, exactly, is happening. Therefore, there are moments when you look around, and say to yourself, “Where am I, and how did I get here?” Once such moment occurred for me a couple of weekends ago, as I sat there on a Saturday afternoon, watching live Nickelodeon characters dance around and sing onstage.

We took our daughter to Jobing.com Arena to see Nickelodeon Live Storytime. (For those of you who follow the column, yes -- I returned to Westgate. They called me personally to apologize for the farmer’s market fiasco, explaining how they were forced to cancel last minute due to the heat and valiantly attempted to get the word out in time. Tip of the cap to them.) Considering it was the beginning of October, and still one thousand degrees outside thanks to “the summer that wouldn’t die,” I was happy to get her, and us, out of the house.

Sure, dozens of college football games were being broadcast at the time, but these are the sacrifices we make as parents. And truth be told, I was kind of excited, considering I watch these shows more intently than our daughter does, as she has the attention span of a squirrel. I was also intrigued to see how these cartoons would translate to a live performance.

Sure enough, there was a not-so-audible gasp when Kai-Lan came onstage as an actual person and not the cartoon version. It was palpable, the thoughts of hundreds of kids simultaneously saying, That’s not Kai-Lan! This enthralled me to no end, and I turned to my wife and said, “These kids are like, ‘Whaaaat?!’” She quietly but forcefully shushed me. Of course, it took about three seconds for real-life Kai-Lan to win the crowd over. Myself included. (By the way, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, it is probably because you are not a parent of a young child, and your brain hasn’t turned to mush, overrun with the theme songs of various, inane cartoons. Feel free to move along.)

The Backyardigans and Wonderpets were equally entertaining, but every kid in the building was there to see the headliner, Dora. It’s insane, really. Dora the Explorer is like the Beatles, if the Beatles were the most annoying band ever. I’m not a big Dora fan.

Luckily for me, our daughter is still too young to process these kinds of things. There were only a handful of moments that grabbed her attention for more than two seconds, and those were when a new character came out and when the lights went off. Otherwise, she spent her time climbing on and off the seats and trying to play with the girls of our good friend, who joined us for this grand event. So by the time Dora came out, our daughter was finished. Meltdown. So I went out with her to the concourse while Dora went through the forest and saved Boots and became a princess or whatever.

It’s funny, genuinely being able to say you had fun somewhere if only because your daughter had fun. Wait, did she have fun? I think so. Who knows. At least we got her out of the house.


Ni hao! That's Chinese for, "Texas is coming back against Oklahoma, how are you not watching this???!!!???!!!

Fatherhood: Where grudges go to die

Note: This column appears in the 9/16 issue of The Glendale Star and the 9/17 issue of the Peoria Times

We embarked on a family drive to California over Labor Day weekend. We departed for this six-hour trip at around the same time our daughter usually goes to bed, as was our purpose, hoping that she would sleep. She did not sleep. Not for the first two hours, at least.

Instead, she cried, screamed, and whined incessantly. When her whining would settle down into what we thought would be a deep sleep, she would scream herself awake again and start from scratch. For two straight hours, while driving my car, not even one-third into a long trip, my ears rang and my head ached.

I go through stages of emotion during moments like this. Typically the more patient one in our marriage, I initially pride myself on that virtue, and try to laugh off the craziness with jokes and a lighthearted, one-sided conversation with our screaming child. When that inevitably does nothing, I sort of zone out, and stare ahead blankly for about a half hour and try and block everything out. This eventually turns into a burning rage, and I will then explode with a short, abrupt, verbal outburst that makes the situation ten times worse than it was. At this point I give up, and continue to do what I was doing, which was, in this case, driving while fighting the urge to turn the car into the desert and do donuts around saguaros.

In an effort to distract her and, more importantly, ourselves (and because my in-laws are not truly convinced that our daughter ever cries just because, but rather as a result of some uncomfortable situation we have placed her in), we called my mother-in-law to let her experience the noise for herself. This plan backfired when, in an attempt to soothe her through the speakerphone, my mother-in-law became so upset at hearing her granddaughter cry that we ended up listening to two emotionally distraught females on our way to California.

But this was nothing compared to the following night. We shared a room at our friends’ house with our little one, adjacent to the bedroom of their two-year old boy. On this night, our daughter decided to reenact the events of the drive there. Now, at home we can, and do, counteract this with earplugs, but as houseguests wary of waking everyone else, we were forced to take action and attempt to soothe her, which did not work. Never so frustrated in my entire life, at one point I was literally trying to pull my hair out.

We relented at about 5:30 that morning –- because she did not -- after maybe two hours each of interrupted sleep. Might as well get up, we figured. My wife, exhausted, handed me our daughter, who was now happy as a clam because we had picked her up. I was so mad at her, that I attempted not to look at her, but she kept hitting me in the chest to get my attention.

Finally, I looked at her, and she smiled at me, flashing all six teeth in a wide grin. And despite all of my best efforts, I smiled back, and we went upstairs to play. All was forgiven in an instant.

As I attempted to overload myself with coffee and wait for the sun to rise, I watched this little girl wobble around our friends’ living room, unaware of just how tightly wound around her finger she had managed to wrap a fully grown man. Was I that much of a sucker, I wondered, or just a father?

From He-Man to just man – a cartoonish yearning for youth

Note: This column appears in the 8/12 issue of The Glendale Star and the 8/13 issue of the Peoria Times

I loved –- loved -– watching cartoons as a kid. In fact, I think I watched them just slightly past the time when I should have stopped watching them. Like, when girls started calling the house I was still watching Looney Tunes, which made it quite a surprise that girls were calling in the first place.

Nevertheless, cartoons hold a special place in my heart, as they harken back to the fond days of my youth, when I had zero responsibilities and I could sit in front of the TV at three o’clock in the afternoon with a bowl of cereal and watch He-Man before going to play outside, and when the Smurfs were the first people -- or, more technically, blue things -- to greet me on Saturday morning.

And so part of the reason I was so excited to become a father was to get reacquainted with cartoons through my daughter. I have already begun the process -- which isn’t very smart considering she is not yet one-year old, and really shouldn’t be watching much TV anyway -- of having cartoons on almost all the time. The Nick, Jr. channel is on a constant loop in our house and they don’t mess around. Even their commercials are cartoons. It’s a million times better than, amazingly, the Cartoon Network, which mostly targets hipster adults.

I’m hoping it’s because she’s still too young and not because she doesn’t care for them, but cartoons haven’t really held my daughter’s interest of yet. She can watch The Wonderpets for like a minute, and then the dog will walk by and that’s the end of that. But that hasn’t stopped me from watching.

(Side note: I got in trouble one day for having on Yo Gabba Gabba, which isn’t a cartoon, but which my wife described as “way too stimulating for her!” Sure enough that’s the only show that’s ever held her attention for more than a minute, and afterwards she looked like a zombie who had just seen a ghost. What can I say -- it was Brobee's birthday that day and I wasn't going to miss it.)

Indeed, much of my free time these days is spent playing with my daughter while simultaneously getting immersed in the plot lines of modern cartoons that are technically on for her, but for which she couldn’t care less about. Still, I love it.

For one thing, it’s a pleasant break from the trash that we usually watch on TV, which typically involves unrealistic and borderline X-rated realty dating/dance shows or accounts of real-life murders and/or drug addiction. On the contrary, cartoons tend to have a positive message, one that may seem corny and commonplace until we realize that lesson was somehow lost on our transition to bitter adulthood. For example, I could be really angry or frustrated with someone and then I end up sitting there watching a giant octopus tell me that I should be patient with others because everyone is different, and I think to myself, “Ya’ know what, Octopus? You’re right.” Also, some of these shows are legitimately funny. There was a Phineas & Ferb marathon on the other day and you can’t believe what those two get into! (And yes, I realize that show isn’t even close to her age bracket. Whatever.)

Plus, it makes me feel like a kid again. For at least a little while each day, I get to regain the innocence of youth via cartoons and chasing our little one around the ottoman. And as far as she’s concerned, I think she’ll get into cartoons one day. After all, it’s a loooooooong time until boys start calling the house. Right?

Right?!


Wrong, Mike. Those days will be here before you know it!


Shut-up you stupid octopus! You know nothing!

The plight of the flight

Note: An edited version of this column appears in the 7/22 issue of The Glendale Star and the 7/23 issue of the Peoria Times

There are few things that make my wife and I more uncomfortable than being the center of negative attention. I think it’s one thing that separates us from the east coast stereotype, where people take pride in not caring what anybody else thinks and act accordingly. This is one of the reasons that both us never talk on our cell phones around others, lest we become “obnoxious cell phone talker person.” (In the instance that we’re talking to each other and we’re forced to talk around others, it inevitably results in both of us whispering to the point that our voices are inaudible, and we end up getting mad at each other because we can’t hear and so we raise our voices to a loud whisper and then angrily hang up.) So, if I had to imagine our most nightmarish scenario, it would probably involve being the parents of a crying child on a five-hour plane ride.

Foreshadowing!

We traveled back east recently to introduce our daughter to the family. As excited as we both were about this trip, both of us quietly dreaded the travel. Neither of us likes to fly in the first place, and now we had a 10-month-old flying companion who could cry, poop, or both at anytime. The good news was that our original fears of the plane crashing or getting hijacked were replaced by the anxiety of corralling the behavior of our unpredictable little party-animal.

Overall, she did great. We took the red-eye on the way there hoping for sleep, a strategy employed by many other parents, as there were about 30 kids on the flight. And after a rough start, she did sleep the rest of the way. Even while we were back east, we did so much traveling via car, train, and subway, and she did fantastic. She was a trooper, and we were so proud of her.

Still, we worried about the return plane ride, which would take off right in the middle of her typical morning playtime. Now, not only is she at that age where she can barely be contained, but she also fights sleep like it’s her worst enemy, and her weapon of choice is uncontrollable, I-sound-like-I’m-being-abused-type wailing. After she was finished pulling all of the magazines out of the pouch and dropping them on the floor, crawling on me and waving to the other passengers, she started fighting to stay awake.

And so it began. I should also mention that she was the only child on the plane -– it seemed to me that everyone else was the type of seasoned traveler that dreads only the crying child –- and so there was nobody to drown her out. We had told each other not to worry should such a scenario play out, but the panic-stricken looks on our faces said otherwise. I wanted to stand up, point to her, and mouth to everyone with a forced smile: “This is just how she gets to sleep! Ha, ha! Kids, right?” My wife just looked at me and said, “We are NOT going home for Christmas!”

She was –- as she often is when she’s overly tired and unable to move around –- inconsolable. There were only brief interruptions of her whining throughout, and I spent at least an hour just holding her at the back of the plane by the bathrooms, getting whiffs of delight while she patronized me by waving to the flight attendants.

After what seemed like five days, we landed. As we arrived at the gate the man sitting directly behind me stood up and said, “She reminds me of my daughter.” We turned around, taken aback that anybody wanted to talk to us at this point. He continued, smiling: “She’s 14 now, but she was just like her –- has to be a part of everything. Even her cry sounds exactly like hers used to. I wanted to call my wife to let her hear.” We talked a bit more, and thanked him for understanding our plight. He glanced around the plane and said, “Unless you’re a parent, you can’t understand.”

We walked off the plane feeling better, humbled again by parenthood and amazed that at least someone on the plane felt more nostalgic than annoyed. Eventually we reached our car, and put her in her car seat. Our unpredictable little one predictably fell sound asleep.

Aging at the speed of life

Note: This column appears in the 7/8 issue of The Glendale Star and the 7/9 issue of the Peoria Times

So the other day, for about three minutes, I literally could not remember how old I was. Am I 31 or 32? Granted, the fact that I honestly could not recall my age meant that my guess should have defaulted to the higher number. And sure enough, after actually having to subtract 1978 from 2010, it turns out that, yeah –- I’m 32. Hooray.

It’s been two months since I, apparently, turned 32. Now, I understand that’s not exactly old. One of you may be reading this and saying, “Thirty-two? Pfft. Try being 98, jackass.” And to you, sir or madam, I say: Wow. You are old. I can't believe you are reading a blog. But while 32 may not seem old to some people, for me it’s like: thirty-two! It pretty much just dawned on me, mostly because my life for the past few years has been a whirlwind, and partly because I try not to think about getting older.

I have also found that I no longer use the barometer of my own age to judge the passing of time. For example, my Godson turned seven last month, and I was virtually incredulous. Seven? What the heck? Just yesterday I was holding him as a baby and now I’ve lived in Arizona for three years and he likes Star Wars and plays Little League. How did this happen?

The truth that “they grow up so fast” is hitting home for me now. There are times when I look at our daughter and –- all of a sudden; it happens overnight -- no longer see a baby, but a little girl. Every new thing that she does accelerates time exponentially, and she seems to be aging in light years.

I would venture to say that every single parent, upon finding out the good news about our little one, had for us one initial piece of advice: Enjoy this time now, because it will be gone before you know it. This was one of those things that I knew to be true, but couldn’t quite process. I mean, I generally try to enjoy time anyway. It’s always been a rule of mine. But it took some personal experience for me to fully grasp the concept.

On weekdays there’s about an hour from the time I get home from work until the time our daughter goes to bed. There is always so much to do in this window of time – put things away, feed the dog, get dinner started, etc. -– all of which I attempted to accomplish while talking silly to our daughter and watching her crawl around the floor. Then by the time I was just settled in, she was off to bed.

No more. Far be it from me to ignore great advice, and I’m learning how to capture every moment. When I get home from work now there is nothing to do except play on the floor, and get my khakis covered in dog hair and drool. The rest can wait. Tomorrow she will be playing Little League, and I still won’t know how old I am. But I won’t be breaking the calculator out anymore, because it doesn’t really matter.

How 'hopefully-soon-to-be' came to be

Note: This column appears in the 6/24 issue of The Glendale Star and the 6/25 issue of the Peoria Times

You know how you always have a picture in your mind of what someone is going to look like before you meet them? Usually we soon discover that those visual images were way off.

When my wife and I began the process of foster care with the hopes of adopting, our agency asked us to write down our ideal scenario, right down to the details. We both preferred, if ever given the opportunity, to adopt a baby girl, and any other detail seemed silly considering it was all make believe anyway. Nevertheless we listed an ethnicity, age, personality attributes…all that. Our excitement at imagining this was tempered by the reality that things almost definitely wouldn't happen that way. After all, foster care has more horror stories than fairy tales.

If you had asked me to describe what our daughter was going to look like, I couldn't have told you. But I nevertheless had a distinct picture of her in my mind. So when we walked into that room on a late November morning and met her for the first time, I mean…it was her. Amazingly, it was her.

She was now our hopefully-soon-to-be-daughter. In our hearts she was our daughter from the moment we were made aware of her, but things need to be put to paper in this world. Our reservations as to when, and how, and if this would officially happen were a result of silly superstitions, our deep familiarity with the system and a general east-coast-imbedded skepticism. That everyone involved viewed this as a seamless transition proved more disconcerting to us than reassuring. We would take nothing for granted and we wouldn't rest easy for an indefinite amount of time.

The process of making things official did little to quell our concerns, as people move slowly or not at all within a system that moves slowly or not at all. Meanwhile we were raising our daughter and watching her make real a story we had made up. Still, and more so with each passing day, the thought of the unthinkable was always in the back of our minds.

Luckily for us, our allies in the process overcame our obstacles. Last week we officially became parents of our daughter. When the judge issued his decree, a feeling rushed over us like a wave of relief and joy and peace. All of our doubts -- though so real at the time -- seem so unwarranted in retrospect. She was, after all, always our daughter.

Why things work out the way they do is beyond my explanation. Nobody gave her a name when she was born, and now she is the center of our universe. She has big brown eyes and smiles all the time and looks like my wife. Go figure.

I can't help but think back to that day years ago in a conference room in Phoenix, filling out paperwork about an imaginary person. What would be your ideal scenario? That I can now say "this" is extraordinarily humbling and amazing. We are resting easy.