Episode 41: The first Christmas

Welcome back. I hope that everyone had a nice, relaxing holiday time, although I know that most of you didn't considering that it was, in fact, the holidays. I have been toiling over this 'First Christmas' post for about a week trying to decide how I was going to approach it. I wrote about five drafts, some of them with more pictures than words, others long enough to be converted in to a novel. Unsatisfied, I took a step back, had a drink and remembered why I am writing this blog in the first place. It isn't to brag about my kid or document her life like an Internet scrapbook, it is to document my own experiences and my fly-by-night parenting efforts. With my purpose realized (sort of) and Monica back to work this week, I am finally inspired to write again.

There have been countless times in my life where an event or situation has not lived up to the anticipation that preceded it, and after Av's first Christmas I can add another bullet to that list.
Since early December an entire room of our tiny second floor apartment has been devoted to Av's Christmas. Hundreds of dollars worth of toys and clothes sat wrapped under the tree for weeks. Bows and ribbons and Christmas cards donned the walls and every morning she would walk over to play with the wrapped boxes with no idea that there was anything actually inside of them.

All of the anticipation of knowing what was in the boxes made me excited to see her open them up on Christmas, hoping that my selections would bring a smile to her face. So, with this in mind and those same boxes now blocking the back window of my car, we made the trek to Dedham to celebrate the holidays with Monica's family.

In retrospect, Christmas was exactly how it should have been. It was pretty much just like any other day with the baby, there was just a considerably larger amount of people getting in her face. She woke up bright and early, played a little bit and was down for a nap before most of the family was even awake. She only opened one gift that morning, an unwrapped wagon that was sitting in the living room. She absolutely loved this wagon, as you can see from the picture above, and spent the entire morning sitting in it and laughing.

As for the rest of the gifts they were opened sporadically throughout the day with little fanfare. Eventually she figured out that the things in the boxes were for her, but her attention span is still a little short, so she would just play with the one toy and showed little to no interest in moving on to the others. I was pretty disappointed at first, as I was hoping for AFV-winning videos and stacks and stacks of cute, excited photos, but when I stepped back and thought about it Christmas was exactly as it should have been. Her biggest contribution was getting us out of both church and spending any significant amount of time at Monica's grandparent's house. Thanks, kid. Next year, as we head full speed toward the Terrible Two's, will me much more fun. I hope.

More important to me was the time following Christmas. I knew Monica had the week off and I was looking forward to both a break from having her alone all day and to some fun family events during the week. Unfortunately, this crappy New England weather that we have ruined much of the week and any chance of traveling somewhere extravagant was pretty much gone (and yes, I am at the point in my life where I pretty much consider anywhere outside the Salem/ Beverly area extravagant. Don't even get me started on going to Boston. It might as well be Australia).

So much of the week was spent in the apartment hanging out, playing, and learning how to walk (which she can do now, video to follow later this week). Also, it gave her a chance to become religiously attached to her mother again like she was this summer. Meaning, essentially, that I can only pick her up or go near her if we are playing or if Monica isn't home, and I am pretty much shut out at bedtime, snack time and at any point that she wakes up during the night. This has also taken a tole on what was starting to be a good sleep schedule. Now she wakes up at night calling for Mom again, and will not nap nearly as long during the day. This has made me nervous to go back to having her all day and reminded me that no matter how cool I think I am, I can't even hold a candle to Mom in her eyes. (In every other situation, of course, no one is cooler than me).

There you have it. An uneventful Christmas (at least for Av) and an uneventful week of nothing that followed. New Year's Eve was spent on the couch and the last three days of the weekend were spent at the Beer Works hawking beer... and so another 12-month journey begins. The next big event is Av's birthday in February, meaning I have about six weeks of mundane parenting ahead of me. Lucky readers!

Let's go make some memories...

The holidays are as much about survival as they are about celebrating. Good thing I have this kid of mine to keep me busy. Lots of hugging and hand shaking ahead in the next few days. I wish you all well. With any luck I will return with photos and video worthy of showing off.

Merry Christmas if you celebrate that sort of thing.

Episode 40: Bubble video.

Just a video entry today. I am going to try and add more of these as posts. Noticing the baby making noises, Monica walked in the other room this morning to find her blowing bubbles with her mouth. Both disgusting and funny. Sorry if the entry title attracted any college kids looking for Spring Break videos.

Episode 39: Meat Basket

Above is an example of a line of novelty food toys manufactured by the Adornica Company, located in Mumbai. Recently, Target carried these and other varieties of the 'food basket' toys, classified on the Adornica website under 'dramatic play,' in its $1 value bin. Mostly as a joke but kind of because Av likes to chew on plastic toys we purchased the 'Meat Basket' (not shown, unfortunately), which contained small plastic meats such as hot dogs, sausages, what appears to be a lamb chop, a chicken leg and a hamburger patty. You can see an example of some of the meats in the Meat and Cheese Basket shown above.

Initially there was some debate over what exactly we were going to do with the Meat Basket. We weren't sure if we should give it to her for Christmas, let her have it right away or perhaps give it to someone as a novelty gift. No decision was made, and after a few days it just ended up sitting on the floor, still in the cellophane packaging next to the presents that had already been wrapped.

Unbeknown to us, Av apparently had her eye on the Meat Basket because yesterday she finally went over, picked it up and pawed at it until she could open a hole in the packaging and pull out the meat. Like most toys, she played with it for a while and then cast it aside.

Fast forward to this morning. Around 8:00 we were playing in the living room and she started getting cranky as if she wanted something. I tried feeding her, playing with her, doing all sorts of different things in an attempt to find out exactly what it was. Finally, after about 20 minutes of frustration, she grabbed my hand, stood herself up and walked me over to the Meat Basket. She sat down, let go of my hand and shook out all of the plastic meat. Who knew?

Episode 38: Come to think of it, Av's skin is kind of dark. DAMN YOU TIGER!

Having been a father for 10 months, and an expecting father for nine months prior to that, you would think that I would be used to the idea by now, or at least aware of it in my daily conversations, but every so often I am still reminded that I am now 'one of those people with kids.'

I'll explain.

Yesterday at work a customer at the bar was engaging myself and a co worker of mine in a conversation about Tiger Woods. As I mentioned in the previous post, I am obsessed with the Tiger Woods saga. It is my new favorite news story. The conversation was focused around how dumb Woods must be to agree to a $300 million pre-nup when he was, as we know now, a notorious womanizer even before he was ever married or fathered children.

The three of us agreed that paying off your ex-wife was an awful waste of $300 million, and were debating how he was going to clean up his image enough to make that money back in endorsements when another customer at the bar, who I know because he comes in frequently, chimed in.

'Guys, guys, you're missing the point here. He deserves to pay that money. He should have to pay money to all of the kids he let down who looked up to him. Dan, what would you tell your daughter if she were older? What if she was a fan of Tiger Woods?'

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This question shocked me back in to reality. I AM going to have to have difficult discussions with my daughter, and perhaps any other children who happen to come along in the future. So, I thought about it and it actually made me mad. Not that Tiger Woods 'let people down.' No, it angered me that so many people hold athletes to such a high moral code, in a way allowing their children to be let down.

One of my favorite human beings, Basketball Hal of Famer Charles Barkley, once said after throwing a guy through a bar window, or a DUI or something, 'I am not a role model.' Those words, uttered sometime in the early 90's, have never rung more true than they do today. Athletes are not, and should not be role models. Ever. Do they lead desirable lifestyles, getting paid millions and millions of dollars to play a sport for a living? Yes. Do most young children, especially young boys, strive to be like that some day? Of course. But it should be the performance on the field, not off of it, that those children look up to. Furthermore, it should be the responsibility of the child's parents, not the athlete, to instill the values that they want in their children.

It should also be the responsibility of parents to expose their children to REALITY. Yes children can, and I think should, play sports. Yes, I think sports are a great outlet and a great way to drift away from real life for adults, too. That being said, my favorite athlete growing up, and still to this day, is Shaquille O'Neil. I have always loved the guy. He is a dominant basketball player and he has a personality bigger than his 7'1, 320 lb frame. I have seen all of his movies (Man of Steel is my favorite) and I even listened to his rap album (once). As a child I wanted to be a basketball player. Unfortunately, I stopped growing up at 6'2 when I was about 16 and I started growing out at about 20, expanding (or, as I like to say 'filling out') from 170 to about 205 lbs. Parents should take note. Tell your kids to keep working hard at the sport they play, but know that they should probably study for their English test, too, because they are probably going to have to consider getting a real job some day.

One of the reasons that I like the Tiger Woods story so much is that Tiger, more than any other athlete ever, has made millions upon millions off of this 'I'm a great guy' persona that he puts forth. In a time when Pacman Jones is showering strippers in cash, Ray Lewis is avoiding murder charges for a Superbowl night stabbing and Alex Rodriguez is fake-crying because he used steroids, Woods was held on a pedestal as the 'holier than thou,' perfect pro athlete. All this story does is expose Woods for what he is. Another lying, cheating, money-hungry athlete enjoying his life and the endless supply of cash and promiscuous women that it provides.

It is for these reasons that I do not feel bad about the blatant invasion of privacy that the media displayed with this story. As a former reporter, one of my least favorite things about the profession was the amount of time that was spent digging in to people's lives. I despised stories where I had to call a person's family after they passed away or even worse, had to try and dig up dirt on a person suspected of doing something that was perceived wrong or inappropriate. I don't know exactly why I became a reporter, but I know that it wasn't to ruin anyone's life.

On the national level, I feel like nothing is more inappropriate than the sports media digging in to and reporting on the personal life of athletes. Reporting that Tom Brady had a baby is one thing, but why do I need to read on ESPN.com that the aforementioned O'Neil got divorced? Or that CBS football broadcaster Jim Nance has to pay his wife $600,000/ year in a divorce settlement? I don't care, and neither should you.

On the other hand, the Woods story is different. The media has stroked Woods' ego more than any other athlete in history. Painted him, like I said, as the greatest thing in sports. Splashed him on every magazine cover and never once said a bad word about the guy. Well, he fooled the media just like he fooled his wife, and now I am not sad that he is paying for it.

Do I think Tiger is a scumbag for what he did? Sure, I do. Not necessarily because of what he was doing, however, it is more because he has two young kids who now have to deal with the situation moving forward, and because of the false persona that I mentioned above.

What would I tell my daughter if she were a Tiger Woods fan? I would tell her the same thing I would tell anyone who looks up to these athletes: sports are entertainment, and the athletes are getting paid- a lot- to do it. You can strive to do what they do, you can wish to be like them and make all of that money and get all of that glory, but what those people do off the field is no different than what the guy next door does when he isn't working at the bank, or the construction site or wherever he works. If the man at the grocery store deli leads a secret life and cheats on his wife, how is that different than if Tiger Woods does it? It shouldn't be if you instill values in your children rather than allowing popular culture to do it for you.

Consider this. I hear the tired old argument all the time about 'today's professional athletes' or even in the entertainment world, 'these actors today' or 'these sluts on TV today.' This is far from unique to today's culture, it i just reported more because we are in the age of the Internet and 'instant' news. JFK slept around. Mickey Mantle was such a drunk that it shortened his career and eventually killed him. Judy Garland had a massive drug problem. It isn't the era. It is the lifestyle. No matter what anyone says, no one can predict what would happen to them if they were handed millions of dollars tomorrow. I can call Pacman Jones every name in the book for what he has done, but if I was awarded NFL first round draft pick money, lets say $8 million just for the argument. If I was handed $8 million at age 20, there is no telling what I would have done with it. I went to my first strip club when I was 19 (sorry Mom). How would I have acted if I had $100,000 in my pocket instead of $100? I would like to think I would have acted civilly, but there is no guarantee.

Athletes are not, and should not be role models. If you want to argue the merits of paying these young men and women that much money that is fine, but just remember it is our fault that it is this way. Sports and entertainment are the Great American Getaway, and we are willing to pay $12 for a movie ticket and $200 for a good seat at Fenway Park. That is telling movie studios and and team owners to pay away because we want the best. We want to see Brad Pitt in that bad ass leading roll and God Dammit I don't care if you have to pay $100 million each, I want the best player at ever position on the Red Sox.

My point , if there is one, is that sports and entertainment aren't going anywhere and they surely are not going to change, so instill values in your own kids and don't be fooled by the 'nice guy' athlete, because you never know when you are going to wake up to find out that he or she was carried out of a hotel room in handcuffs covered in blow and trying to explain what happened to that hooker.

Sorry if today was a little off topic or at all preachy, but, after all it is my blog. Don't worry, the holidays are coming up. You will all get your fill of Av tearing up wrapping paper and the like.

Episode 37: The one where I realize I have lost touch with reality.

Despite the fact that I am arguably working harder on a daily basis as a stay at home dad than I have ever worked at any 'real' job, the general feeling of anxiety and worthlessness that comes along with being virtually unemployed has done nothing but increase in recent weeks, and once again it is starting to consume me.

I am not sure what started it. Maybe it is due to a recent increase in successful high school classmates 'reconnecting' with me via Facebook. Maybe it was the conversation my manager at Beer Works had with me last week where, among other things, he said I had the 'mindset and work ethic' needed to become a 'successful' restaurant manager. Maybe it is just because I am sick of not having any money. Whatever the case my be, and as much as I enjoy staying home all day, I am going to have to do something to get my life back on track soon.

The problem, really, is that I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. I said I wanted to be a teacher when I went to college because it seemed like an easy career path to take (and aside from nursing it was the program with the highest female enrollment). When I realized two years in that I didn't care enough about other people's kids to be a good teacher, I chose journalism because everyone said I was a good writer and the professors in the Communications program seemed less snooty than those in the English department. So, I rode it through, abandoning my dreams to be a sports writer early on and settling on a life as a news man. Now, five years and about 200 involuntary cat naps during municipal meetings later, I am back doing what I was doing before college. Working in a restaurant and slowly nursing a hatred for the human race.

For weeks I have drowned my anxious feelings in a sea of Jim Beam and racked my brain to try and come up with a worthwhile career. I stalked through Facebook profiles and asked friends with 'real' jobs questions. I have reviewed every career and college website in existence and watched my fair share of commercials for Everest, Le Cordon Bleu College and Bryman (which are all very convincing). But it took a news story that I would have both loved and hated covering to bring everything full circle for me.

I am speaking, of course, about the Tiger Woods saga. It has everything that anyone could want in a news story. A compelling, rich, world famous public figure, long believed to be golf's version of Jesus, is all of a sudden destroyed by a bizarre series of events that include massive international infidelity. As a newspaper reporter I would have had a good time covering this story for the first few days, and then probably would have started wishing for it to go away around week two. But as a bartender, I couldn't help but read every article and stay glued to the TV, basking in satisfaction as the 'golden boy of golf' was embarrassed publicly in a way only legends in perversion like Marv Albert can relate to.

It was during one of the many (completely unnecessary) 'breaking Tiger news' cutaways on ESPN last week that I had a professional epiphany. The 'breaking news' involved a press conference outside of an Orlando area hospital. A gentleman, perhaps slightly older than myself, with a beard and similar build was answering questions from reporters. He was titled 'hospital spokesman.' He answered what he could, said 'no comment' a lot and joked with reporters. He was wearing a suit. He looked nice. Now THAT is a job I could do. Spin some PR for whatever company or organization I work for, face the crowds if something happens and look good doing it.

Now, public relations has long been considered among reporters as the 'evil empire', but that is primarily because they make about twice as much money and do about half of the work of a journalist, and at this point in my life, I am totally willing to kneel at that crossroads.

Yes, I had it all figured out. Take the GRE, go back for my master's in strategic communications, get a job. The end.

Unfortunately, I hit yet another snag in my plan almost immediately.

Apparently, and without realizing it, it appears that I have somehow missed out on the past 5-7 years of technological advances. I still have a tiny, crappy flip cell phone. I run Windows ME and know little of operating computers beyond Microsoft Office. I still have a Playstation 2, which doubles as a DVD player, and I have to ask for help before I upload videos and pictures to this blog. I do not own an Ipod or a GPS system, and, like an old man, I just don't get this whole 'Twitter' phenomenon. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. I feel like my 51-year-old father who had dial up until 2007.

Part of the problem is that I am more interested in how the Chia Cat Grass Garden works than I am about computers, and I only have like six friends and half a job, so I don't exactly need the newest touch screen communication technology either.
Still, this is going to be an issue, considering my role as a stay at home dad will require me to get this degree online, and I don't even come close to meeting the technology requirements listed in the course catalog. Looks like I have a longer road to travel than I thought.

So, for now it looks like I will just have something new to worry about as I watch others continue to get high paying jobs and schedule dinner dates with groups of friends on Friday nights, where they will inevitably make me fetch them 1,000 things and then tip 15 percent. I will continue to sit on my couch and watch ESPN 2 while other bearded spokesmen get the glory at important press conferences, and I will keep being envious of that minority with the GED who is installing HVAC equipment thanks to his courses at Kaplan Career Institute. I will just have to pick up some extra shifts tending bar and keep punching away at the blog until I find time to take a computer course or two. That said, my kid is crying (again) so I had better get back to work. I wish this job paid better (or at all) because I kind of like it.

Episode 36: THERE IS FISHWATER IN MY *$#%^*@ BEER!

Tuesday was Christmas Tree day on Roslyn Street, a long anticipated (by some) moment as it marked the first time our baby would experience the festivities from this side of the womb.

By all accounts, Av has already made one Christmas special, making her first appearance last year in Monica's descended stomach, creating backbreakingly sober moments for Mom and a lot of forced awkward family conversations for Dad. Now that she is here, we are hoping that she embraces the holiday with childhood joy and vigor and such. Like, the kind of vigor that wins you $20,000 and a bad voice over from Tom Bergeron.

For essentially my entire life, Christmas Tree Day has been little more than a mess of aggravation, angry drinking and family dysfunction. As a child the annual trip would typically end in some sort of fight. Sometimes about the tree, sometimes about the trip to get the tree. Eventually, someone came to some sense and just bought an artificial one and called it a day. As an adult, the experience has not been much different, although the aggravation and fighting has been caused by other factors.

Before moving to Roslyn St., Monica and I lived in one of those 'period-centric' apartments in Downtown Salem. You know, the ones that people covet because of their 'history' or 'charm.' If I were a single guy on my own with a decent job it would have been a 'sweet pad' or a 'phat crib' or whatever the kids are calling them these days, but if you wanted to do anything beyond the Four S's (shower, shave, shit, sleep) you were in trouble.

The problem come Christmas Tree Day, along with the low ceilings, was that the floor was all slanted and warped. I actually think it may have been the original floor. I am not really sure because the whole place was covered in carpet (including the kitchen and bathroom), but the small glimpses of wood that I did see were not in good shape. The slanted floors made it difficult to put up the tree, naturally, because you had to try and cut the stump to fit the warps in the floor. Yeah. Last year's tree was tied to a hook in the ceiling just to keep from falling over.

Luckily, the floors here are perfectly level and the space we cleaned out is plenty big enough for a good sized tree, so we were off on a good foot there. I still had concerns about getting the tree to the second floor and still had bad memories of when I was ripped off at the Christmas Tree place last winter, but I promised myself that I was not going to lose my shit this year.

Tuesday night we packed up the kid and took the Ford Escape to a new tree place next to the mini golf course in Salem. The tree was a little pricey, but it was clearly marked and the men who worked there were nice, so I didn't mind. I am not hard to please. Actually, the entire experience went pretty well until I tried to get the lights up. That is really where it took a turn for the worst.

With the baby isolated in the kitchen at dinner time I attempted to string a set of lights around the tree, which was pulled in to the middle of the floor. I tested the lights before I put them on and they all worked. Great. Simple. I started to get aggravated about half way around the tree when the lights started to tangle up, and from there it was a downhill slope. Before long I had wedged myself in to a corner, tangled in lights, holding on to a fish bowl that I had almost knocked over. I don't even know how this happened. It just did. To make matters worse, while wedging myself in the corner, I spilled a good amount of fish water out of the bowl, and directly on top of my beer. I couldn't hold it back any more.

So, I yelled and swore a little and blew off some steam. Got un-wedged and finished the job. A bit calmer, I plugged in the lights. Only half of them lit up. COME ON!

My guess is that in the tangled mess I got myself in to I either A. Stepped on a bulb and broke it, or B. spilled fish water on one and it seeped in to the bulb. Whatever. The point is that th elights didn't work. I quickly ran to the Family Dollar, only to come back with a box of colored lights instead of while. Merry F-ing Christmas.

Actually, the light saga was pretty mild compared to past years, and I was able (with the help of some bourbon) to relax and regain my composure. As for the baby, she liked the tree and laughed at the lights, which she was then tangled in, but all-in-all she didn't really seem to acknowledge that anything was different.

Later in the week we decorated it, largely without her as she really just tries to eat everything and gets in the way, and we wrapped her presents and placed them under the tree. It would be a lovely Christmas if she knew what the hell Christmas was. Hopefully this will be the start of a new holiday trend, where things go smoothly and the kid has a good time. Although, it is only Dec. 11. I wouldn't put that bourbon away quite yet.

Episode 35: Family road trip

For only the second time in 10 months of life, Av was subjected to the serene wonder that is Western Massachusetts last Sunday- forced to endure the three hour car ride down the Mass Pike and all the pleasantries that come from a day of visiting distant family.

Nearly all of my family members still live in the western part of the state, including my mother, who due to car troubles and general laziness has not seen the baby since spring. Just as important as visiting Grandma Mary was paying a visit to Great Grandma, my grandmother, who I have not seen since she moved to a nursing home this summer. So, with the holidays coming up and many a grandmother to visit, it was time to pack up the family for a day trip and make the rounds.

Av was extremely well behaved on the ride to The Pitt, as we planned it to take place simultaneously with her morning nap. Being in the car always helps extend the length of the naps and she pretty much slept straight through the trip. She arrived at my mother's house with great fanfare, as expected, and was presented with gifts almost as soon as she walked in the door.

I came inside and said hello to my mother, who informed me that my sister, Bethany, had taken their dog for a walk. I had completely forgotten that the family had obtained a new dog since the last time I was home, and I immediately had visions of Av dragging the poor thing around the house by its tail. Or punching him in the face like she does with our cats.

In the mean time, my father and his wife, Carol, came for a visit and the living room quickly filled up. He and Carol get out to Salem every few months and were over a few weeks ago to visit the baby, but wanted to stop over and see her while we were in town as they live about 45 minutes away. (At this point you are probably wondering how awkward it must be for my father and his wife to spend part of the morning at my mother and her boyfriend's home. Surprisingly, it is cordial and friendly. Almost no awkwardness at all).

In any event, my sister returned with the dog, who my mother described as a 'barker,' which both excited and confused the baby. The dog did bark, quite a bit actually, but it seemed to have little effect on Av.

The real highlight of the journey for me was heading up to visit my grandmother. She is in fairly good health for a 93-year-old woman, but does have trouble seeing and hearing, along with being a diabetic and a host of other ailments that are pretty much unavoidable when you are in your ninth decade of life. Up until a fall a few years ago she was still taking the bus downtown by herself and going for walks, but age finally caught up to her and it became too much for her to remain at home.

We walked in to the nursing home, which is located next door to the middle school that I attended, and met her in a small family visiting area in the lobby, as we did not want to subject Av to any potential transfer of disease in the nursing home hallways.

Having not seen Gram since April, I expected the worst when I walked in the room, but instead saw a rather healthy-looking woman with majestic white hair sitting in a chair waiting for me. (For my entire life my grandmother has dyed her hair brown, which usually came out looking pinkish, so seeing her with the silver locks was shocking). I walked over and gave her a kiss, at which point I realized she was having a very hard time making out who everyone was. She obviously knew my mother and sister, as they visit her often, and she knew me by my voice, but I am not really sure she even knew Monica (or 'what's her name' as she usually calls her) was even there.

I sat down next to her and noticed there was a sign on her walker that read in about 56 point font 'MARY. REMEMBER TO USE YOUR WALKER WHEN YOU ARE WALKING' clearly, and in typical Gram fashion, she had broken this rule many times.

We sat and visited for a bit which was nice, but I was disappointed in the lack of interaction between she and Av. Gram, obviously old and senile couldn't do much in the way of interacting with the baby, but whenever I tried to bring Av over she would just cry. It was sad for me only because I knew that Av would probably never remember Gram, and she would surely never get to spend the time with her that I did as a child. She will never taste her meatballs or pick flowers or stalk animals (like bears) in the field behind hr house.

We bid farewell to Gram, which was bittersweet because the visit was short, but at the same time you can only tolerate a nursing home for so long, and left for dinner. A few surprise relatives arrived with some second cousins and such and we ate dinner and departed. A fairly painless trip for me and the baby, not so much for Monica. Western Mass can be tough on a girl who grew up in Dedham, a town with no personality or open space. That is OK though. One day in The Pitt isn't much compared to the living hell that is holidays at her grandparent's house.

The trip home wasn't as smooth as Av had a few melt downs, but all-in-all it was a pretty successful mission. Everyone even left with gifts. Monica got a sweater for her birthday from my dad and my mom presented me with what I am referring to as the 'box of magic.' Two bottles of bourbon and two pint glasses lifted from the restaurant my uncle once owned right before it went out of business this summer. Thanks, Mom, you just got me through the holidays with that one.

Episode 34: There goes the neighborhood

Loyal readers, I am sad to say that some unfortunate events took place this week that signify the end of an era in this blog's history.

I regret to inform you that the obese sweatpants family has moved on from Roslyn St. Evicted by their landlord and sent away in the night, only to return the next day to retrieve a mere fraction of the hermit-like collection of junk that dominated their apartment.

Police have been coming back and forth from the green house since we moved in to the neighborhood, but we always suspected it was some sort of domestic violence involving 300lb sweatpants man, his wife and his (rumored) retarded brother. As the summer came to a close, however, it became apparent that the bulk of the confrontations took place between the sweatpants family and the building's landlord, who I believe lives in the apartment upstairs.

Loud battles in the driveway and in front of the house revealed that sweatpants family was living in squalor in a house filled with trash, useless trinkets and I am guessing some unkempt animals.

A yard sale soon followed (which I still kick myself for not attending) and soon after the circa 1988 Ford Bronco, sitting filled front to back with trash in their driveway, was hauled away by Bill's Auto Clinic- who were clearly just the middle men in a long, sad journey to the junkyard across the street that is polluting the water adjacent to the train tracks.

All of these signs pointed to an inevitable conclusion. The filthy, dysfunctional failures I loved to observe would be no more.

In what I like to think was somewhat of a classy move, but probably wasn't, the father took the two young daughters away in the night last week in a large, green minivan. The next day he sat in said minivan for upwards of three hours while a crew of movers removed his belongings from the house. Saddened, I watched the saga unfold from my window, hoping to witness something noteworthy. It didn't happen.

Yesterday the final chapter was written as a junk removal company pulled up in front of the house and proceeded to free the first floor apartment of any and all remaining evidence of the family's residence there. They were there for a long time, too, I can only imagine what they puled out of that place.

A little side note- when I was in the early years of college I spent my summers working for the Pittsfield Housing Authority where a large part of my job was to clean out apartments in the projects when families would move out in the night. This happened frequently, as it was the projects, where crack dealers and prostitutes need to leave in a hurry sometimes. The crap we found in those places was unreal. Sometimes disgusting, other times funny. Either way, I wish I could have seen the inside of that place because I bet it would be project-worthy.

After watching the junk removal company for a while I stopped to reminisce for a moment before saying my final goodbyes to one of my top sources of neighborhood entertainment.

Later in the day I saw my downstairs neighbor actually leave the house, somewhat restoring my faith in humanity. At the same time three college girls looked at another apartment across the street. It was 2:45 p.m. They were wearing sweat pants... and all faith is once again lost.

As for my kid, she can drink from a cup now and she ate spaghetti- o's today. Unfortunately, those developments did not make her tired, so I have to go tend to her needs again.

R.I.P. dysfunctional, obese sweatpants family. You will be missed.

Episode 33: Eating like a grown up

It only took 10 months, but Av is officially at the point now where she is too smart for me to fool her. This is especially evident when it comes to food. Always a fan of eating, she has been mowing down bottles and baby food at every opportunity since the day she was born, but we reached a point recently- I am not sure when exactly- where she realized the food that Monica and I eat is much better than what we give her. This has created some challenges.

Since she has an abnormally large amnount of teeth for a child her age, we started giving Av adult food a few months back, just simple things like bananas, dry, overcooked pasta or tiny pieces of toast. Lately, though, she has started to become more picky and pretty much refuses to eat most of what we try to give her. This is especially apparent when we try to eat dinner at the same time as her. Might as well forget about whatever baby food is in front of her, because she isn't eating it.

Now, weighing in at like 100 lbs, Monica gives herself a bad rap about her diet. For all of the sno-caps and tacos she eats she also consumes her fair share of Caesar salads and stir-fry. I, on the other hand, at double the weight, have potentially the worst diet of anyone in America. Essentially, I still eat like a 15-year-old. At the grocery store when Monica is off buying chicken, bread, milk and veggies, I am in the snack aisle collecting various chips, dips and snacks. I still eat fruit snacks and Bagel Bites like my parents are away for the weekend and I frequently get lost in the sea of novelty sodas in the Stop and Shop drink section. If asked, I would list my favorite food as 'Popsicle.'

Worst of all from a health standpoint is my disgusting addiction to cheese. I think that I am pretty much single-handedly responsible for keeping the Vermont Dairy Farmers in business. I love cheese and I will eat all varieties for a snack at any time of the day. If I lived by myself I would eat cheese and mustard sandwiches for lunch six days a week. (The other meals would probably be freeze pops). Now, I know that this diet is probably less than healthy for a man headed down the back side of his 20's, but up until now I really had no reason to care.

Enter my nosy daughter.

Now that she wants to eat everything that I do, I am forced to cut back on my single-guy lunch foods, like microwave nachos, bagel sandwiches and Cheetos. Don't get me wrong, I still eat the foods when she isn't around, but at lunch time I now have to pretend that we are eating the same thing in order to get her to try some. This has resulted in unwanted spoonfuls of oatmeal, baby food, pineapple and mandarin oranges. Worst off, she LOVES Popsicles. So I can't even eat them when I am with her.

I can now say, without a doubt, baby food is one of the most disgusting things in the world. Sure, the apple sauces and fruit purees aren't bad, but if it involves meat or vegetables, stay the hell away. I don't blame her for not wanting it.

Another side effect of her obsession with adult food is a love for the refrigerator. I don't blame her, really. It is where the food is and she always sees us opening and closing it. Not to mention, it is filled with plastic bottles, which she loves to chew on. Now she wants in whenever the door is open. She will sprint over in her little walker and crash in to the door so I can't close it. It is both maddening and hilarious at the same time.

I am off to go try and trick her in to eating some of her own food hidden within some pasta or maybe oatmeal so that she doesn't have an 'I'm hungry' melt down. I will leave you with this video of her trying to steal things from the fridge. Notice how she uses the index finger as an exploratory device.