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

A Real Review of Dollar Shave Club

A friend sent me a hilarious video on YouTube called “Let’s Talk About #2” from a place called Dollar Shave Club. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend watching when the kids aren’t looking over your shoulder. 

I remember hearing about DSC a few years ago but didn’t think much of them. But after watching the video I thought, “hey, why not try it out... seems pretty cheap and useful” so I broke out the credit card and ordered the famous $1 razor along with some other items that were pretty reasonably priced.

The humor of the site really sold me over from the “real-world” humorous descriptions to the overall look of the website. These guys are clever to say the least. 

The order came FAST, like, Amazon Prime fast. The packaging felt similar to that famous 'opening experience' you get from opening Apple products. I was expecting some small envelope but they send a coolish-looking box with some messaging printed on the top lid. Included with the products were card descriptions of each product and a new member handbook that even included a membership card for a free drink at "any bar in America!” with an asterisk of *not really. 

Too bad, but clever nonetheless. 

I must admit the build-up to using the product was pretty exciting. I hadn’t even tried it out yet and was sold on this club. But how were the goods?

I hooked up the new handle to the razor, put on their Shave Butter and tried using it. Nothing happened. The blades barely picked anything off. Thinking it must be the blade, I pulled that one off and tried another. Barely anything again.

And then tried tapping the blade to get the Shave Butter off to rinse and the blade fell off the handle. The handle connector is really flimsy. That happened a few times, the blades don’t connect to the handle well at all. 

I tried washing the Shave Butter off and tried using a new blade, but again, barely any whiskers were coming off. 

I broke out the cheap Target brand single disposable blade and it worked just fine. I even tried the Target brand with the new DSC Shave Butter and all worked just fine. 

Highly disappointed with the Dollar Shave Club blades and razor to say the least. Their razor is about as effective as my 5YO’s fake Spiderman Razor he uses in the bathtub.

My 5YO's favorite razor uses Spidey-sense for the closest shave possible.

I do like the Shave Butter, I’ll keep that. But the membership is now cancelled as the blades are a bust. Sorry Dollar Shave Club, you sold me with the videos, humor, brilliant messaging, and even the packaging but in the end... your razor sucked!

Dollar Shave Club video. The bear's performance is top-notch!

UPDATE

Dollar Shaved club sent me the $6 razor in place of the $1 and wow, what a huge difference! It worked pretty well and the blade didn't fall off the handle at all. Dollar Shave Club should axe the $1 razor or maybe keep it around for teens that really want to shave but in reality don't need to. I bet nobody is getting cuts from that thing.

For everybody else, go for the $6 and the Shave Butter which is really like shaving with butter. Just don't taste it.

Where Imaginary Friends Go To Die

Sad news at breakfast earlier - my 4YO told the family that his imaginary friend of nearly 3 years had died the previous night while riding a tiger in Tijuana.

After telling us the gloomy news, he went about finishing his Frosted Mini Wheat’s while watching Woody Woodpecker on Netflix with his sister. Obviously, to say the least, the rest of us were more shocked by the news than he was.

I can genuinely say I’ll miss the 1’ 6” little guy.

Sneaky Gumball loved living life on the edge of mischief and danger since his appearance in 2012 when our son was about 2 1/2. I still remember the day he came into our home instantly appearing when our son was standing near spilled juice on the family room rug. When we had asked, “did you spill this?” he replied with, “I didn’t do it, Sneaky Gumball did it.”

Sneaky Gumball did all sorts of bad things. He stole French fries, lost Lego’s, threw balls indoors, broke toys, farted in closed cars while driving through the car wash and elevators; he even managed to steal our son’s pull-up at night, pee in it, and put it right back on him. Sneaky that Gumball was. 

In addition, Sneaky Gumball's parents had made lots of questionable life decisions as they let him do dangerous things our son was never allowed to do. For example: when our son wanted to light matches for a bonfire and we refused, he would instantly respond with, “well, Sneaky Gumball’s parents let him play with matches…all the time.”

The conversation never ends well when your parenting choices are compared to that of some other “cool parents.”

Well obviously riding tigers in places lacking authority was not an entirely shocking ending. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sneaky Gumball’s parents bought him that tiger for his 5th birthday and left him alone at his parents Tijuana timeshare.

When Your Kids Asks, “Have you ever heard of a vinyl record?”

My daughter asked me recently, “have you ever heard of a vinyl record?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

She went on to tell me how the neighbor’s 19YO had one and played them on this funny thing called a "record player.” 

I nearly died laughing inside just listening to her explain it to me.

She went on, “oh my gosh…in the old days, it was a lot of trouble to hear just ONE song. There was no Pandora. Can you believe that!?"

Then I went downstairs and hidden in our cabinet showed her my record player and around 200 records in boxes bought in the 80s and a good chunk bought in goodwill and antique shops while I was in college in the early 90’s because people were just giving them away. Most of then still had the price tags of $.25 to a steep $1.50! I’ve always had a thing for records as it always reminded me of my grandmother listening to records (mostly Tom Jones) on Saturday mornings while eating breakfast. 

Now nearly every Saturday morning she loves getting up early and playing records on this novel record player and telling her friends about her dad has this huge collection that she’ll get one day. 

Now I’m feeling like some hipster; of course before hipsters were cool. So does that make me a pre-hipster? 

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.)

The Unthinkable is Happening…

I’m coming to the realization that I’m slowly turning into my Dad.

At Kohl’s with my wife, I was browsing around and actually considered buying a pair of Dockers pants because they looked comfortable and very practical (wrinkle-free!! When did that brilliance happen??) When we eat at a restaurant and my daughter, or any other family member, barely touches their food - I end up eating the rest. And don’t even ask me to tell a joke in a crowd.
It’s like an alien is taking over my body and I don’t know who I am half the time. The next thing you know I’ll be wearing sandals with socks while mowing the lawn, have a beer fridge in the garage, and running into walls.

It was even more apparent this past weekend as I was nagging my daughter about every weird thing she was doing trying to break her horrifying 5-year old bad hygiene habits.
In my defense, I’ve been extremely paranoid about her getting sick since most kids around us seem to have some sort of weird zombie-type virus: the 7-year old next-door sounds like a 50-year old chain smoking man when she usually sounds like a 40-year old chain smoking woman. A friend’s 16-month old got croup and now sounds like she’s a de-barked beagle. And nearly all of my daughter’s school friends look like they need to hook up some Sears wet-dry shop vacs to their noses because they’ve got a constant stream of snot running down their faces that ends dangerously close to their…(gasp) mouth.

Yes, MOUTH.

I sometimes think to myself, “Wow, kids are really gross. It’s a good thing I was never like that. Ever.”

I’m determined to keep my house free of infections this winter, so I made a list on things my daughter should not be doing and hung it on the refrigerator.
Because everybody knows if it’s hanging on the fridge, it must be really important.

RULES FOR 5-YEAR OLDS AND THEIR FRIENDS.

1. Don’t pick your nose.
2. Don’t pick your butt.
3. Don’t put your fingers in your mouth.
4. Don’t put whatever that is you picked up in your nose OR your mouth.
5. Don’t put your mouth on the handrail.
6. Don’t walk out of the bathroom without washing your hands.
7. Don’t wipe anything on Daddy’s stylish Wrinkle-Free® Dockers.

(Click to print)

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!"

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