10 Year Blogiversary!

Back in 2005, just 3 weeks after my daughter was born, I use to do what any sane new parent use to do late at night - wonder if what my wife and I were going through was “normal”. Seeking advice and insights from other parents, online, not just relying on our own family or the decades-old traditional parenting magazines and books from people that hadn’t had kids in their own households for generations. 

In that time, I found so many parents in the same boat and some just off the boat from everywhere around the world. 

I in turn started blogging about my own experiences eventually becoming part of the daddy/mommy blogging community. 

I never imagined that I would still be doing this 10 years later. So much has changed during that time: my oldest is now in 5th grade and youngest just started Kindergarten and I've been married for 16 years now. 

Most other parent bloggers have stopped blogging altogether or continue to blog but are now exclusively product review sites instead. (In their defense, I do product reviews on occasion too!)

Some have moved to Facebook which definitely (still) isn’t my thing; some are exclusively on Twitter, which I do often now @creativeTypeDad. 

I’m not entirely sure how much longer I’ll be doing this as my posting has become more infrequent over the last 2 years, not like the old days where I would post 2-3 times a week. But between work, spending time with my family, I continue to seek advice of other parents and do enjoy sharing some fun stories along the way. 

Who knows? I may be granddaddy blogging...but hopefully not until my kids are at least 28 and married. 

Some favorite posts of mine over the years:

• If My Daughter Ever Becomes A Vegetarian 
• The Elvis Impersonator Was Late to My Daugher's 1st Birthday Party 
• An Open Letter to the Wife Regarding Father's Day
• I'm Preparing for my Daughter's Kindergarten Interview
• How NOT to get rid of Monsters...
• Potty Training Coloring Pages
• I Think They May Take Away My Man Card
• Easter Bunny Must Be Living Large In Beverly Hills
• Get Me a Beer...
• What to REALLY Expect When You're Expecting
• Where Imaginary Friends Go To Die
• Monopoly: Destroying Family's Since 1933
• The Problem with Cookie Monster
• A Letter From the Tooth Fairy
• The Elvis Impersonator At My SON's 1st Birthday Party 
• MISSING: 2 Imaginary Friends and Lionel Richie (*this image went viral and was even featured on TV news around the world!)
• Are You There God? It's Me Tony

Happy 10th Birthday!

(A letter to my daughter on her 10th birthday)

Happy 10th Birthday Miss B or as you call it, “finally in the double-digits.”

A few things you did and said this past year that I’m going to remember forever:

• Hearing all about your new adventures in your new school this year. 
• The day you said you can’t order off the kids menu anymore because "somebody might find out” and you are not a kid anymore.
• You’re still completely obsessed with stuffed animals. You don’t mind being, “the cat lady of stuffed animals.”
• You still like it when I put little doodles in your lunch and share then with your friends. Except the Olaf one, apparently he’s not cool anymore but Unicorns, Pigicorns, and Pandacorns are totally fine. 
• You play with your little brother, have better patience, and help him out. 
• Playing Minecraft together for hours.
• Speaking of Minecraft, your obsession with watching Stampylonghead videos (that english voice haunts me!)
• Your obsession with building things, be it crafts or contraptions out of random junk. Yes, your mother doesn’t like the 'mess' but I think it’s all creative and love the things you’ve come up with. 
• And your obsession with cute things - baby red panda’s, kittens, puppies, bunnies… whatever! All the cute posters have taken over your room.
• Handmade gifts you’ve created for Father’s Day or just any day "just because.”
• Your bravery this past year - you can now sail, surf in the ocean, and play the piano in front of crowds. You overcame your fears and now you know you can do anything you put your mind to. 
• The time we spend together on hikes, vacations, weekends, or just sitting around playing games. 

The saddest thing I’m going to remember - you excitedly said just before going to bed, “Say goodbye to your 9YO forever, because tomorrow I’ll be 10!”

I’m going to miss that 9YO versions of you, but looking forward to our new adventures when you’re 10.

Love, Daddy

Monopoly: Destroying Family’s Since 1933

My 9YO daughter asked me a few days ago, “Have you ever played Monopoly?”

“Uh, yeah…of course I have! Like, millions and millions of times.”

When I grew up we didn’t have the Internet. After the sun went down my family only had a few options for entertainment: 7 channels of TV with virtually nothing to watch (we didn’t have cable as that was for the “rich".) Read. Draw. Or played games with the family such as cards, usually poker, Uno, Parcheesi, Life, Battleship, and Monopoly.

Then I realized how crazy it was to be 9 and to have never played Monopoly. What kind of parent am I? Teaching her how to #hashtag, code, draw, tear apart and modify toys when every kid should have played Monopoly at least once by now. It’s almost like growing up without candy, birthday parties, or any (delicious) gluten. I immediately pulled out my iPhone and ordered it off Amazon.

Amazon Prime is so awesome and dangerous. Every time I use it I feel like that Coyote in those old Roadrunner cartoons ordering from ACME. I really wish Amazon Prime would deliver in wood crates; that would be awesome…

When we got our package we began to play almost immediately. Then my childhood memories came back to me in a quick flash. I realized that Monopoly could be played 1 of 2 ways:

1. You let the kid win. 

2. You play as you would any other human.

Nearly 2 hours into the game, I had hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place, owned about half the board, and was trying to teach her how to negotiate with me before her mother was going to go bankrupt with everything she had earned in the last 2 hours. And just then, her big eyes welled up, she got up and said softly, “you’re a bad daddy” and walked away.

After I collected the rent she owed me from her stack of money, my wife nearly wrote out a divorce contract on a nearby used paper towel (which happened to be mine as well…)

As I lay in bed that night, thinking, I realized that my family ways might have been a bit too harsh. We had to play until the end no matter how rough life (on the board) was or how many hours had gone by. You couldn’t walk away. You weren’t allowed to give up. You played and learned how to negotiate into eventually winning (and destroying the other players) and when you finally won - it felt great - because you knew how long it took to get there. It meant something real. My family doesn’t fight about politics or religion; no, they fight over who won in the last game of Monopoly!

Game can’t all be like Candyland where the point is just to make it to the end without crying.  There aren’t even dice in that game, only colored cards and the only conflict is staying out of the molasses  “Oh look, I got stuck in molasses swamp… I’ve learned a valuable life lesson.” That doesn’t mean anything. Nobody learns anything from that other than just stay away from something called molasses that nobody ever uses anymore!

  

Now Monopoly on the other hand - Monopoly is life.

Word to your mother (and her paper towel.)

Why Do DJ’s Hate Father’s So Much? Depressing Songs At The Daddy-Daughter Dance

Maybe they don’t have daughters? Maybe they don’t have father’s themselves? Maybe they wake up each day and say to themselves, “today’s the day…the day I want to make father’s CRY!” and then laugh all the way to Trader Joe’s.

Like unicorns, I’ve only heard stories of these Daddy-Daughter dances by a few friends with daughters. I was pleasantly surprised when my daughter came home from school with an invite to one.

First of all whoever came up with the idea of this dance I’d like to personally thank. The idea of an event like this with your daughter is just great.  

My only issue was the DJ’s selections of songs – we walked into the ballroom and the DJ had this song playing:

Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlisle

Seriously? If there’s one thing a father doesn’t want to think about AT ALL, it’s GIVING his daughter away to be married when she’s little. Or DATING. Or BOYS.

Then followed by a few of these...

Cinderella by Steven Curtis Chapman

 The PROM? She came home with a RING on her hand? She’ll be GONE? Honestly, DJ man. Honestly.

My Little Girl by Tim McGraw

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s nothing more depressing than a country song about a daughter.

Later when we got home - me emotionally exhausted and my daughter physically exhausted, my wife asked me how it was. I told her about my newfound knowledge of DJ’s and reinterated my disdain for country music calling it “the devil’s music” and some other choice words.  She went on to tell me that the Mother-Son event was being held at a place that has lazer tag, games, pizza, and go-kart racing.

Mother’s have it so much easier…

The Man’s Man and the Modern Man

Men from generations past are much different than the ones today.

For example, my Dad was a mixture of Dwayne F. Schneider , Rambo, and MacGyver. He could fix just about anything with duct tape, the Swiss army knife on his key chain, and if needed the clothes on his back.
One time our car broke down and he used his own belt to substitute the broken engine belt. It lasted just long enough to go get ice cream and then pull into the car shop – our garage.

He looked down on people that used things like, AAA, power tools, mechanics, air-conditioning, or bottled water ("use the water hose!")

Now that I’m older and a Dad, well I get pretty excited when I can hang a picture on the wall straight. And I do it only so I can use the leveler app on my iPhone. I love that app. And I love my friends at AAA.
I’m not anywhere near as handy as my Dad especially given my track record the past few years – fixing that broken toilet (story link here) which is still kind of broken but I’ve learned to live with the hissing. And the time I changed the oil in my car (story link here) with assistance.

My iPhone now has a pretty good handyman on voice controlled speed dial. I programmed it - wait for the beep and say “iPhone, get me the handyman on the phone… now!” and it does. And then I say, “Now continue playing more Depeche Mode songs” and it does.

My daughter just got a bike for her birthday and the little girl next door got one on the same weekend too. So two other Dads’ and me were outside on the driveway trying to put these things together with no luck for about an hour. Why 1,200 pieces is beyond me! They might as well just pack the box with raw sheet metal, flower stickers, and pink paint.
Anyhow there we all were, me with my iPhone looking up the manufactures website to send a complaint email, and the other guys with all sorts of tools spread out all over the ground. Some still in fancy cases all shiny and new, perfectly organized by size, make, and color.
After I sent my complaint email, I looked up and realized how mortified my Father would have been if he were around.

“What's wrong with all of you!? AND with tools that are organized and NOT just thrown in a paper bags and jars? Bunch of communists!”
He probably would have run us all over in his 1978 truck still being held together with a roll of duct tape.

I felt ashamed.

Ashamed for not knowing what to do. Ashamed for not paying attention more to my Dad when I was growing up. Ashamed that these guys were my neighbors. Ashamed that my child is growing up without a Dad that can to put a simple 1,200 piece bicycle together in 12 minutes flat like the instructions say it should. Ashamed because the happy little girl pictured on the box probably has a Dad that put that bike together with raw sheet metal and pink paint in his sleep.

“Stop!” I yelled to the other guys. Then after the beep I shouted, “iPhone, get me the handyman on the phone… now!”

"Daddy attached the stickers!"

The Father’s Day Conspiracy

Why do people hate Father’s? The TV, Stores, Magazines, Organizations, Advertisers, America, Cats -- just about everybody.

It’s not difficult to notice that for Mother’s Day the entire month of May is devoted to ‘Mom’. There are pastel posters everywhere with all kinds of slogans, special commercials with fancy jingles, charity walks with celebrities raising money for all kinds of women causes. And who can escape the ads for gift suggestions:

• $10 Talking Greeting Cards
• Flowers with fruit in the vases
  
• Shopping gift cards
• $70 Champagne Brunches
• Jewelry
• Engraved anything
• Custom memory books
• Spa Makeovers
• Getaway Trips without husband/kids/anybody remotely related
• Lexus

In comparison some of ads I’ve seen for Father’s Day gift suggestions this year:

• Garage Floor Coating
• Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing
• Search and Rescue Headlamps
• Outdoor Storage Shed
• Whole House Air Duct Cleaning
• Free beer for Dad with purchase of 3 lunch entrees and 3 drinks
• Car Wash and Detail Kit (for Mom’s Lexus I guess…)

Huh?

Maybe by the end of the week they’ll be suggesting things like gas cards as the perfect Father’s Day gift.

It really is much simpler than that – I would be perfectly happy going on a family outing to my favorite eating place, taking a long uninterrupted nap, and getting some hand-made art that I can hang up at work with a note saying that if she becomes the first woman president it's all because of me.
And if I happen to get a floating waterproof table tennis, or a beer holster - that would be nice too.

Father’s Day – Things That I Love and Hate About Being a Dad

I was in my 30’s when my daughter came along and changed my life in ways I never (ever) could have imagined. Apparently a late bloomer in the parenting world. Did you know the average age of a new dad in the U.S. is between 20-24! (personally, I was nowhere near ready back then.)
Do you want to hear more? The average age of a first-time grandparent in the U.S. is 45! My kid will be in elementary school when I’m that age! I’ll be the old guy in the back drinking the Pepcid from the bottle. So that must also mean that when my kid graduates college (Art School...? fingers crossed) I’ll be sporting robotic limbs and maybe have an eye that can shoot lasers to help me cut my pork chops.

Now into my 2nd official father’s day, here’s a small list of things I hate and love about being a dad.

The “dislikes” (because hate is a strong word):
1. Not being able to find things (like my fancy little digital camera that could fit in an Altoids tin) because the daughter likes to “hide” things.
2. Always finishing off the food the daughter doesn’t finish, you know, because there are people starving in China… or Santa Monica.
3. A new movie opening this weekend? I betcha’ I won’t be there.
4. Expected to be an expert at putting together kids toys, play sets, furniture, electronics, fixing a “running toilet”, etc. (becoming a Dad didn’t change my previous status of ‘non-handyman.’)
5. Not much “mommy and daddy” time to do… uh “mommy and daddy” things.
6. The wife always spending WAY too much money on clothes for our daughter. Her reasoning “there are WAY too many cute clothes for girls.”
7. Finding crayon marks on the walls, floors, counters, furniture, those “cute” clothes…
8. Being woke up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning is just wrong.

The things I love about being a Dad
1. A reason to go digital camera shopping for the latest and greatest (how does it know what a face is anyways?)
2. Having an excuse to eat chicken nuggets, ice cream, and chocolate covered gummy bears (“It’s for the kid…not me”)
3. Not spending $50 to see a movie (like Big Mama’s House 2) in a theatre. I’m a big fan of Netflix (but not of Big Mama.)
4. Giving advice on how to put together anything without having any knowledge of what I’m talking about only because I somehow how clout as a Dad. Ask me how to build a cabinet – I dare ya!
5. When the wife and I are alone, it's a big deal and we enjoy our time together.
6. The wife not spending much on clothes for herself - which are much more expensive that clothes for our daughter.
7. Watching my daughter draw, handing me scribbles on paper, and proudly saying "Daddy! Look! Turtles!" (and I can see them too…)
8. Waking up to a little face staring at me saying “Hi Daddy!” followed by a kiss on the cheek or forehead and then maybe an “I LUV you”. I melt like butter. I swear if she were to ask for a pony at that moment, I’d buy one, spray paint it pink, glue-on a unicorn horn… and maybe duct tape wings on it too.

Is there nothing more amazing than seeing a speck turn into baby, and then into a kid - right before your eyes...? I honestly don't think so. Except maybe going to McDonalds, with Aliens, and them buying me lunch with their corporate Visa card.

O.K. what about all of you? Dads? Or Moms? (you can play too since you all outnumber the Dads by 1000 to 1! Or maybe the guys just don’t like to comment much) on what you "love" and “dislike” about being a Dad (or Mom.)

And to all my fellow Dads out there - Happy Father's Day