Dadapalooza.com

Today was going to be a normal everyday school day.

He was playing and having fun, we were counting buses in the car, and talking about silly things on our way to school.  We hadn’t even had our usual fight about what to bring for show and tell, or that he should eat more (he ate two mini pancakes and some cereal)

At the front of the school, it was cold and windy, he let go of my hand, and runs over to go hit the button  to open the doors (he has a bad habit of always wanting to hit the “open door” handicapped buttons at the school).  Just as he reaches out to hit the button, he trips and hits his face directly into the brick wall of the building.

He immediately starts crying, I pick him up and bring him inside. He looks fine– I take off his hat, and in the middle of his forehead is a huge contusion/goose egg with two little holes. He literally looks like one of the aliens on Star Trek the Next Generation. (Or like Angel when he becomes a vampire on Buffy)

I calm him down, and he’s sore and cranky, but not acting weird in anyway. I get some ice from the school, and ice his head down.  (I also use some hydrogen peroxide to clean off the wound)

About 15 minutes later, the swelling has gone down quite a bit, and he’s playing and cheerful, and doesn’t seem effected by his contusion at all.

The question now is– do I leave him here to go to school, or do I take him to the doctor?

I spent another 20 minutes at school, and he’s pretty normal, so I decided to leave him there, but with instructions to have them call me if he starts acting loopy or anything else.  I am pretty sure it’s nothing other than a contusion.

But it sure was a pretty scary moment!

Early in the morning at  the inlaws, and we are in the playroom.

AA: Daddy, I want to play music on the (Casio) piano.  Dance!

ME: I don’t want to dance.  I’ll play music and you dance.

AA: No, I want to play music!

ME: How about if I videotape you playing music, and then I’ll play it, and you can dance?

AA: Okay!

Here’s the video of the music playing– I couldn’t videotape the dancing, but I assure you it was equally extravagant!

I somehow forgot to mention that the boy and I saw Cirque Shanghai. at the New Victory Theatre on Sunday.

In a word:  AWESOME! (Read my full review at http://www.clownlink.com)

I highly recommend this show for anybody who wants to see a great show in NY this December.  It’s amazing, awe-inspiring, and filled with spectacle and virtuosity.

Aaron of course loved it!

Here’s some photos I put together from some online sources

Bai Xi at the New Victory Theatre in NY. Don't miss this show!

DISCOUNT ALERT!  Theater Mania is offering a 20% discount on tickets to 7 pm shows, if you use the code: TMCirq266
and purchase before December 9.

I’m happy to say that I’m the dad of the day at The Parent du Jour!

Screenshot of my Parent Du Jour Interview

In case you don’t know, The Parent Du Jour is an online book featuring 365 moms and dads, who answer questions about themselves and their work (and play) as parents.  I tried to answer the questions pretty honestly, but I’m sure that if I took the questionaire on a different day, I’d have all different answers.  Which is, I suppose, how it should be!  Leafing through the interviews is pretty fascinating, and I’m in some excellent company!

Anyway, enjoy the interview, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Movember is over, and I’m happy to say we did a lot of good.  My team, comprised mostly of  Dad 2.0 guys and the NY City Dad’s Group guys, managed to raise over $18,000 to help fight men’s health issues.   I was right in the middle of the pack- #36 out of 64 guys.  The top guy raised $2K by himself, my friend Matt Schneider (and fellow Penn grad! Go Quakers!)

But wait– that’s not all!  #Norelco, good guys and brand that they are– has added a twist– they are donating an ADDITIONAL $15,000 TO OUR TEAM’S TOTAL!  That’s a whole lot of moolah!  Thank you Norelco!

What they’ve asked our team to do is create a video of shaving off your moustache– something I may have already done anyway!  And they donated Shaving Equipment to do it! And they are going to compile all of the videos.

These are the tools of the trade that Norelco sent me!

They sent me via overnight a package containing a Vacuum Stubble & Beard Trimmer and a SensoTouch 3D Shaver .  (They are also offering a holiday rebate off the SensoTouch, if you are interested.)

The package was beautifully wrapped.

I should disclose at this point that these items were free to me, but my opinions are my own, and I promise that I am not in the pocket of Norelco, nor am I just saying things to shine you own, prevaricate, or otherwise mess with you.  Well, I might mess with you about some things, but not this.

It was good to shave, although I’m usually facially haired anyway.  The new shaver is pretty good!  They also sent a beard trimmer with vacuum that I didn’t use yet.  But I hope to!

Anyway, I decided to create a little Moustachean Melodrama to celebrate the freedom of my lip from its villainous hair.

Enjoy!

We went to 2 wonderful (and relatively loud) places this weekend, and my son managed to take a nap at both of them.

Asleep (couldn't find one of him without a binky, which he's since given up)

I’m not bragging– he’s usually not a great napper, and it’s only in the last few months that he’s really gotten the hang of going to sleep all night and waking up at a relatively decent 6:30 am.  (And even if he wakes up earlier, we’ve trained him (sort of) to stay in bed until his clock turns green  (I thought I wrote about it here, but can’t find the post– I’ll have to write about it, as it is a gadget that’s really done the trick.)

The first place we went to was a Diwali feast.  Diwali is the Hindu festival of lights, and this was the first celebration that we attended.  It was at the house of social media expert and pundit sree sreenivasan and his lovely wife Roopah (sree lives the lowercase, but I’m not sure that Roopah is)  Sree is a colleague of my wife in the social media “space” — ooh, jargon!

  Their  apartment was beautiful, with a great view of the Hudson.  There were also about a million people there.  We got there around 12 noon, and in the car AA had fallen asleep.  A little bit earlier than his usual nap– 1:30-2, but hey it happens.  We wheeled him up to the 28th floor in the elevator, took off our shoes, and brought him into the party.

While the apartment was spacious, it wasn’t particularly large– and there were about 50 people crowded in, chatting about all kinds of stuff in a variety of languages, and eating some amazing food. He managed to sleep through a good hour of that before waking up.  He barely ate anything after he woke, and since he’s such a notoriously bad eater, we weren’t surprised.

After the feast (it went on all night, but we had to go, as the bear was getting antsy– I think S and I would have happily stayed there all night),  we went to a park to play, and then a children’s Havdalah service at a synagogue in White Plains that we are interested in possibly joining.  He didn’t sleep at either of those, and ate a fair amount of animal crackers, cookies, and grapes.

Having attended a Hindi Diwali feast and a Jewish Havdallah service, I thought we should go give our confessions at a local Catholic church, but in the end, we decided not to press our luck.

Scenes from Raw Metal's Untapped.

The next day, AA and I made another excursion into the city to the New Victory theatre to see Australian tapdancers perform a hip/hop concert.  The show, called UnTapped, by the Raw Metal Dance Company, was really great, and very loud.  5 dancers, 3 musicians, and Dr. Rhythm, a human beatbox.  That didn’t seem to deter the boy from nodding off.  He caught the first 15 minutes, and the last 5 minutes, and loved what he saw.  Sadly, he missed a top-notch 55 minutes, full of precision, comedy, and even some audience participation. READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE.

So somehow this kid is needing and getting his sleep, even in some very trying and loud conditions.

Maybe he’s in a growth spurt?

Some of the Groovy Mustachio'd Gentlemen Bloggers on the Ivillage page.

My moustache and I are featured on Ivillage.com!

There’s  a featured slideshow on ivillage:  “Why Our Favorite Dad Bloggers Are Growing “Mos” for Movember.”  And I’m # 16!
I’m in excellent company.  Check out all the other groovy dads, and their groovy mustachios. And most importantly, check out why they are ruining a perfectly good lip to save people’s lives.

SEE THEM ALL.

I met Laid Off Dad (Doug French) last month at the Dad’s Lounge of the New Parent Expo, and we got to talking.  Two things we talked about is our love of all things Deadwood, and about Movember, the moustache growing way to raise money for prostate cancer.  I knew a lot about Deadwood, but little about Movember.  (You can read more on LOD’s very nice blog post about Movember here.  And if you meet Doug in person, ask him to imitate E.B. Farnum.  He’s got him down cold)

At the time, he told me he was planning on growing a Full Swearengen, based on Ian McShane’s rough and tumble saloon and brothel owner.  He’s got quite a distinctive moustache..

At the time, LOD urged me to join, and my NYC Dad’s Group was also getting involved.  But I’m not much of a joiner. And I already had facial hair. And I generally don’t like my look in moustaches.  And I’m a lame-o that doesn’t like to do good by putting myself out in any way.

But somehow, the phrase “The Full Swearengen” has been rattling around my head for awhile.  I’ve made half a dozen thoughts about it.  But somehow, today was the day.  So today, I shaved my beard down to a Swearengen moustache.  Mostly on a whim, but I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while.  So I did. And I joined the Movember team for my Dad’s group (which is also linked to Doug French’s Dad 2.0 Summit team.   And here are the results.

Ian and Adam and their Full Swearengens.

While Mr. McShane and I are similar in many regards (a love of florid language, a love of Shakespeare,) alas, and alack, we do not share a bone structure.  Between the different colored hair,  a slightly shorter moustache length, I don’t think we look much alike. All things considered, I’ve got more in common with three other famous moustachioed men.

John, Bryan, and Nick all show their moustaches.

I’m not sure how much longer I’ll sport this (once my wife sees it, all bets might be off) But Hey, while I’ve got your attention, think about supporting Prostate Cancer research, why don’t you?

You can support me on Movember here:  http://mobro.co/dadapalooza

November 4 is Put Down the Pacifier Day and to celebrate, Sesame Street has released a new DVD called Bye Bye Pacifier! Big Kid Stories With Elmo.

Which is great, because my son AA has been struggling with giving up his binky. Or perhaps I should say, WE have been struggling to get him to give up his binky.  And I’m happy to say that the DVD worked, although in a very different method than the authors intended.   It worked without even watching it!  (How’s that for a testimonial!)

When we went to our first dentist appointment this summer, the dentist suggested giving up the binky.  We’d heard it from people before, and we knew we were going to have to get him off, but didn’t quite know how.  We got him down to only using binkies for sleeping, but couldn’t break him from the habit.  (Weirdly, he has been a 2 binky boy for sleeping his entire life.  He likes to have 2 binkies, and switches back and forth between them all night long.  Or I should say, “used to be” because this is Day 4 without plastic sleeping utensils.)

I asked for a review copy* of the show, and when they said it was coming, we started to prepare Aaron.  We watched some of the Youtube No Pacifier Videos and told him about the movie that we were going to get.  After talking about how he was a big boy just like Elmo, he agreed “I don’t need binkies any more.”   Of course that night he tried to renege, but after about an hour of crying he fell asleep.  The first night was rough. The next night, a little crying, and the third night almost no crying.  Today’s the fourth day, and at night he complained about not knowing how to go to sleep, he was asleep within 10 minutes and didn’t cry for his binky once!

Today we also finally got a chance to watch the program.  It totally reinforced all of the stuff we were talking about, and he loved being a big boy like Elmo.  We also watched the other two stories on the DVD, (Baby Bear getting his first haircut, and Abby learning to ride her bike)  He loved them all and wanted to watch them again.  Which I’m sure we will.

If your kid is going through something similar, I’d recommend the video.  Or at least recommend TELLING him/her about the video.  Hey, it worked for us!

You can also go to the Sesame Street Pacifier Page, which has a lot of the videos, and lots of great tips for how to get your child over the pacifier hump.

* DISCLAIMER:  I received this video as a promotional review copy, in hopes I would write about it.  I only write about things I like to write about it, and the free-ness of the product did not influence my opinion or review of the product.

AA as Buzz at the Halloween Safe Event

We attended the Safe Halloween Experience at Manhattan College yesterday, and it was absolutely a great community event.  I wished I’d known about it before, so I could have told more of our friends. (and written it up for this blog)

We got invited at the last minute by one of AA’s classmates.  Run by the Manhattan College chapter of Kappa Delta Pi, International Honor Society,  student clubs take over two administration buildings at Manhattan College.  Each room is run by a different college club, and activities include decorating trick or treat bags, participating in a scavenger hunt, games, walking through a haunted house, and of course trick or treating for candy.   Some of the rooms were so-so, but some were elaborately decorated and amazingly designed, esp. when you consider the lack of budget and time for something like this.

One of the many rooms of Fun at the Safe Halloween at Manhattan College

At the end, if you complete the scavenger hunt (answers to 16 riddles) you get to pick out an age appropriate book (Delta Pi is a literary society)  This was the fourth year of the event, and hundreds of kids and their families were on hand.  This was a great example of a college in an urban environment providing a great public service (safe trick or treating) in a cost effective and community manner.  We’ll DEFINITELY be back next year.

Where: Manhattan College Campus, 2nd floor of both de la Salle & Miguel Halls

When: 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM, October 28.  (It’s over now!)

Who: All ages. (Children must be accompanied by an adult.)

How: Just show up!

Cost: Free!