Land of 1000 Blocks

With the recent news that a Legoland will be constructed in Kansas City's Crown Center, I've been stuck in a state of toy nostalgia, reminiscing on the countless hours of entertainment that Legos and Duplos (which, contrary to popular belief, are not a Lego competitor, but a Lego product line) provided me as a child.

Ava has just started playing with Duplos when we visit my parents house. Coincidentally, the big blue bucket of blocks that they have is the same one that I played with as a child. In fact, there are still faded remnants of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 'Pizza Time!' sticker that I had slapped onto the container. My parents may be mild hoarders of my old toys and kid stuff, but I am so thankful for it. The other day we brought up my 20+ year old Tonka truck that was still going strong. And sure enough, Ava grabbed it and started loading the bed of the truck with Duplo blocks.

As I watch my daughter explore the blocks now and learn how they fit together in infinite combinations, it takes me back to my thought process as a childhood Lego construction foreman. I always hated the 'kits' that gave you specific legos and instructions on what to build and how to do it. No way, I wasn't going to be held down like that. My ADD and rebellious nature wouldn't allow it. If I had the slightest knowledge of who Frank Lloyd Wright was as a child, I'm sure that's who I would have compared myself to.

Most kids built the standard collection of Lego creations: towers, castles,  houses, etc. Well, I wasn't most kids. In other words, I was a really weird kid and created a lot of strange stuff with Legos. So in keeping with the celebration of Legoland making it's way to KC, I thought I'd post a list of the top ten Lego creations I've ever made. Some succeeded, some failed, some left people scratching their heads thinking that I might have some sort of mild disorder. Either way, I had the time of my life. Without further ado, and in no particular order:



1) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Weapons

This might not seem so out of the ordinary at first glance. But, I was so determined to have the entire set of TMNT weapons (sais, sword, bo staff, nunchucks) that I took a piece of chain from my dad's workshop and attempted to super-glue it to the nunchuck "handles" so they were authentic. Pretty sure once my dad walked in and saw that going down, the nunchucks got the kibosh.

2) Skates

Our Duplo set had a number of pieces with 4 wheels, intended for use as part of a train. Well I said "Screw a train" and instead wanted to Kristi Yamaguchi my way through the house on a set of Lego skates. Naturally, this ended horribly, and thanks to a mild entryway-induced head injury, Lego skates were retired from action after the first use.

3) Dad's Face

I don't remember exactly what this was for, probably Father's Day or my dad's  birthday. But I thought that constructing my dad's face out of Legos would be a brilliant gift idea that would leave my dad indebted to me for years to come. The result was a misshapen, primary-colored Rocky Dennis/Picasso-on-acid hybrid. You're welcome, dad!

4) Genitalia

Kids think private parts are funny. I thought Lego private parts were especially funny. I ain't sorry.

Amazing Lego art or Simple Plan album cover?

5) Grenade

Though the purpose behind these was nefarious (to harass my sisters), the thought process during creation was actually pretty creative and is a testament to the problem solving skills that Legos can develop. Basically, I wanted to develop some sort of Lego bomb that would shatter on impact when tossed in the vicinity of my sisters. It was a multi-stage process, as I learned that I had to loosely connect the blocks in order for it to work. I also eventually learned that I could enclose smaller Legos inside the grenade to create extra 'shrapnel'. Yeah, I was sick.

6) Wolverine claws

Really more like Lady Deathstrike claws (for those of you non-comic book nerds, this means 5 claws, on one each finger), but God knows I didn't want to be running around the house pretending to be Lady Deathstrike. Again, an example of the creative methods used with these blocks; the holes on the bottom of the Duplos were the perfect size to insert my fingers and create enough suction to stay on. These were great for harassing the dog when the dustbuster was out of commission!

7) The Totally Universal Remote

The raised bumps on the Duplo blocks were perfect remote control buttons. Connect a few of the large, flat blocks together and you have the largest universal remote known to man. I went so far as to draw a diagram of what each of the imaginary buttons controlled, which, if I remember right, had the ability to freeze things, mute people, and make a snack appear, among much more. I wonder if I can sue the makers of 'Click' for stealing my idea..

8) Fart Box

Yes, I made a box. For storing farts. Don't judge me.

9) Walker

My guess is that this was inspired by my strange fascination with my Grandma's walker as a child. The train pieces came into play here again, which resulted in a pimped-out 16-wheel walker. You know, I think when I'm 80 I'm going to recreate this one for actual use. And forget tacking tennis balls onto the bottom of it, I'll save those for chucking at the neighbors when I'm feeling extra senile. GET OFF MY LAWN!

10) ????

Okay, some of you might think this is a cop out. It's really not. I truly believe that my glory days of Lego building are not all behind me. With my daughter growing up and starting to cross the threshold into true Lego appreciation, I fully believe that I'll be diving right back into brainstorming sessions, figuring out a great new device to pester the dogs with pester my wife with fart into create.



I suppose some parents might look at this list and see it as a warning to monitor their child's Lego use. Well, if your kid is weird, then yeah, you might want to make sure he's not coasting through the house on Lego Skates while hoisting a pair of Lego boobs into the air. But if your child is fairly normal, then just look at this list as an overall representation of the creative possibilities that lie within a child's mind while playing with Legos.

So if you don't have any yet, get out there and buy your kid some Legos or Duplos. And if you do have a bucket of these miracle bricks, take some time to plop down on the ground and serve as your child's construction partner. Who knows, maybe your combined forces will create something that ends up belonging on this list.

And coincidentally, Eversave (see link below) has a deal today where you can get $25 worth of merchandise (including Legos) from Toyscamp.com for as cheap as $7 if you're a first time Eversave user. Go do it now!

http://www.eversave.com/online/toys-camp?sourceid=68117

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Lost In Translation

I've never been on a true 'international' vacation. Sure, my Senior year of high school, I spent spring break on a drunken boat ride through the Caribbean. And my then girlfriend (now wife) and I took a trip to Mexico a few years back, but 'cerveza' was the most extensive Spanish required during our stay. Despite my lack of experience when it comes to traveling abroad, I've got to believe that tackling a foreign language barrier has to be equivalent to deciphering a child's words when they first start talking.

Although you could say Ava has been 'talking' for months now, it's just been the past couple where she has really started to become a motormouth, offering jumbled commentary on pretty much everything she can. At times it can be like dealing with a drunk friend at 3 AM.

"You need what?"

"I'm sorry, can you repeat that? You're slurring again."

"No, that's not a puppy."

"Okay, hold on a second, did you just poop your pants?"

And sometimes, even if we can't figure out specific words, we have to resort to using context clues to help us figure out what message she's trying to relay. For example, when she's pointing at the coat closet, jabbering quickly and nervously, it essentially means: "Hey, that's where you keep that loud, floor-sucking machine right? Right in there? Yeah? Do you think you could open that door so I could look at it? JUST LOOK AT IT THOUGH. Because I SWEAR, if you turn it on or try to make me touch it, I will FREAK OUT!!!"

But as time goes on, my wife and I are gradually developing our own "Ava Dictionary" for certain words and sounds that come out of her mouth. And believe it or not, it's harder than you might imagine. Some words mean different things depending on the situation. And much like Mandarin Chinese, some words require close to attention to the inflection in her voice. So this morning, I scribbled down some notes on some of the words that might be misinterpreted by the common individual. In case you ever come visit, here's an introductory translation dictionary for our daughter:


Cock - Quack or Jayhawk. Yes, don't be alarmed if she yells out 'Cock!' randomly. She just sees one of these birds.

Cawcock - Jayhawk (formal).

Otch - Watch or Ouch. Is she pointing at that shiny thing on your wrist? Then it's probably the former. Did she just fall off the rocking ottoman after trying to scale it, YET AGAIN? Then the latter is a safe bet.

Pay - Play. So if you're out at a restaurant and she's telling you she wants to 'pay', don't think she's about to whip out the plastic any time soon.

Momo - Elmo, as in the red furry one. Don't talk smack about Elmo around her, because you're liable to get a size 5 Circo sandal up your ass.

Boo - Boo or Blue. Note whether she is yelling it or if she is pointing to the ball on page 8 of 'Baby Needs A Hug'.

Sorry KU fans, my daughter thinks you're all cocks.

Awsh - Wash. Not to be confused with 'Otch', this is generally heard during bathtime or right after an especially messy meal.

Popeye - Happy. Makes sense, I mean Popeye always had a half-smile on his face, right? Granted, it was probably due to a neuromuscular disease caused by contaminated spinach, but let's look at the silver lining here.

Beebee - Baby, bye bye, or blueberry. This can be a real tough one. First, try to tackle this one contextually, but you have to also understand that Ava tends to reference babies even when they are not present and don't pertain to the subject at hand. If stumped, feed her a blueberry, pretend to be an infant and wave goodbye simultaneously.

So there's a sampling of what you can expect in the Ava Translation Dictionary. Of course, this is just a starter's guide, the free version, if you will. I'm still trying to pitch a full-blown, paid version to Rosetta Stone, but for some reason, nobody has returned my calls or e-mails. What a bunch of Jayhawks.

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The Mother's Day Paradox

I know, you are sitting there thinking "Come on Pat, Mother's Day isn't until Sunday!" Yes, I know. But, like so many of you out there, I don't anticipate having a single free minute this weekend, let alone time to sit and commiserate over a well-thought Mother's Day blog post. And for those of you sitting there thinking "You can write it ahead of time and schedule the post to go live on Sunday!" well you are just a smart ass and can shut that mouth of yours.

Every February when Valentine's Day creeps up us, there's a dedicated group of individuals that cry foul and make sure to broadcast their distaste for the holiday.

"It's a fake holiday!"

"It was created by the greeting card companies!"

"It's a crappy holiday if you aren't with somebody!"

"Why can't St. Patrick's Day just be moved up a month so I can get wasted and have Shamrock Shakes sooner!"

Totally valid points. But really, isn't Mother's Day the same sort of contrived holiday? Now before all you Moms out there form a pitchfork and torch-carrying lynch mob, let me say that I feel the same way about Father's Day. And for legitimate, heartfelt reasons, believe it or not!

The history of Mother's Day in North America is actually a pretty strange one. It was first conceptualized by Julia Ward Howe in 1870, who wrote a 'Mother's Day Proclamation' calling for women to join together in a peaceful movement to stop their sons from killing one another in wars.

Now Mother's Day as WE know it was started in 1908 by Anna M. Jarvis in honor of her mother and later signed into national observance by Woodrow Wilson in 1914. Interestingly enough, as time went on and commercialization of the holiday began, Jarvis fought it tooth and nail. She even sued to stop a Mother's Day event in 1923, and was arrested in the 1930's for protesting the sale of flowers at another event.

But here we are, almost 95 years after Jarvis' first Mother's Day, and it's nothing BUT commercialization. Mother's Day cards, Mother's Day flowers, Mother's Day restaurant specials, the 93% off-plus-$20 bonus bucks-and-a-free-tote-bag Mother's Day Sale at JC Penney; it's all a bit much, and probably has Anna Jarvis steamrolling in her grave, ready to send Gloria Allred after all of us.

My other qualm with Mother's Day is the sheer emotional, mental and physical logistics of it. As a kid, Mother's Day is easy. All you really have to worry about is your mom. You slather some rotini in gold paint in Art class, thread it with some yarn and BOOM! you are about to make your mom's year. Beat THAT shit, Dad!

But as you get older, it becomes so much more. Once I turned 18 and as I grew up, I REALLY learned what it meant to appreciate my mother and the many years of love and lessons that she bestowed upon us. Suddenly a spaghetti tennis bracelet just doesn't do the trick anymore.

Not only that, but it stops just being your mom that you think about. For those of us who have children, the amazing work our wives/girlfriends/significant others do as mothers is insanely important. Plus, our mothers then become grandmothers and deserve dual appreciation. And then there are some of us that also include our grandmothers, godmothers, etc. into the mix and it suddenly becomes a struggle to show heartfelt appreciation for multiple people in a 24 hour period (and that's if you don't sleep). Yikes!

Anna Jarvis bout to get legal on yo ass.

Look, don't get me wrong. I love nothing more than showing my wife and mom signs of appreciation and letting them know how special they are to me. But I almost look at it as an injustice to THEM to try to cram it into a day or half-day's worth of events that has to meet the Kay Jewelers commercial standard of what Mother's Day is.

My wife is an absolutely incredible mother. I look at her like the LeBron James of parenting. And by that, I don't mean I anticipate her announcing that she's going to be taking her mothering skills elsewhere. But as someone who became a mother fairly young, it is truly jaw-dropping how great she is at it. From day one, she has shown the most impressive display of nurturing and care. It's an amazing feeling being 100% confident that my daughter will grow up to be a caring, loving individual with strong morals all because of the perfect role model she has in my wife. She approaches motherhood with simultaneous senses of seriousness and humor, determination and humility. Seriously, it's like she drops a motherhood triple-double every day of her life.

And when it comes to my Mom, what can I say? I think we could celebrate 'Mother's Day' every day of the year for the next 25 years and it wouldn't make up for all that she's done for me since I came into her life. As an adopted child, I've had people in the past ask me if Mother's Day and Father's Day are 'weird' holidays to celebrate. Typically, after I've resisted the strong urge to punch these people in the jugular for being idiots, it's an easy answer: ABSOLUTELY NOT. My Mom is my Mom. She's taught me so many incredible things in my life time and I owe her so much. Whenever I'm being stupid or obnoxious, my Mom always jokingly says 'I tried to raise him well, I really did!" Well you did, Mom. More than well.

Last month on my birthday, my Mom told me that her proudest moment of me so far in my life was one time when I bought a homeless guy lunch at Wendy's. That was it! Not graduating college, not this accomplishment or that, but something that represented values. And I hope she realizes that those values have been bred from the impeccable job that her and my Dad have done raising me.

My wife and Mom may not even read this, but if they do, I hope they really realize how much they mean to me, and how much the people they ARE mean to me. Will I do everything I can to make their Mother's Day special and show them that I care? Of course I will, because I love them. But will it still feel like 'not enough', and a poor compensation for the spectacular things that they've done as mothers every day since they had children?

Absolutely, and I think old Anna Jarvis would give me a fist bump on that one.

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Sidewalk Chalk - How Does It Work?

It shocks my eyelids that Insane Clown Posse didn't include sidewalk chalk in their list of magical mysteries in the smash hit song 'Miracles'. Granted, yesterday was the first time I'd touched a piece of sidewalk chalk in what I'm guessing is at least a dozen years. But something weird happened when I came home to find my wife and daughter drawing on the sidewalk in front of our home. As soon as that chalk tickled my hand, it's like I had a reverse-Tom Hanks-in-Big, Freaky-Friday-except-without-Jamie-Lee-Curtis moment where I regressed to a carefree child. Fortunately, not to the extreme of uncontrollable bedwetting, but enough to have an amazing time with some colored pieces of calcium sulfate.


I should note right off the bat that as a general rule, I HATE the feeling of chalk in my hand. In school, I always counted my blessings when I had a classroom with one of those new-fangled¹ whiteboards and dry erase markers. For some reason that initial touch always sends a weird shiver up my spine. But something about sidewalk chalk brings about an exception to the rule.

Stop for just a minute and think about your childhood experiences with sidewalk chalk. Is there a single bad one? I'll bet you a Cheesy Gordita Crunch that there isn't. Meanwhile, other childhood sources of entertainment probably caused you some pain or grief at some point in your days of play. Falling off a bicycle, taking an aggressive bubble to the eye, getting strangled by a Skip-It²; few things provided pure entertainment and fun without risk of injury or strife, but sidewalk chalk was one of them. And not only that, but if you think about it, chalk could very well be the OLDEST children's toy around. Hell, little cavetoddlers were using chalk in prehistoric days to draw pictures of their friends getting eaten by woolly mammoths.

So when my wife went inside to get dinner ready, it was ON. I didn't even mess with changing out of my work clothes, I wanted to dive into this chalk action. As Ava dutifully drew her straight lines, I stared at my canvas with a complete lack of vision. How does one conquer over a decade's worth of chalk block? I decided I'd start with a circle. Ava looked at me and gave an approving fart. Or maybe that was me. It's not important, I was too caught up in the moment to pay attention to details. A few more well placed lines here, a little shading there. IT'S A SUN! FUCK YEAH! I was on a roll and wasn't going to let it stop. Now here's a moon to go with the sun! What a minute, forget celestial bodies, I'm switching it up: A MONKEY! Finally, after a sad attempt to draw a hopscotch court (is it called a court?) and show Ava how to play (you're welcome for the show, neighbors), my wife was back outside telling us to come in and wash up.

I nearly had an old-fashioned 'AW, DO WE HAVE TO?!' moment. I walked in a little dizzy, a little confused, and as my eyes adjusted to the dimmer light in the apartment, I realized just one thing: Sidewalk chalk may very well be one of the greatest sources of natural entertainment that God³ has ever graced this Earth with.

So whether you've got a child or not, I will make this one recommendation to you: Go get yourself a $3 bucket of sidewalk chalk and have a blast now that the weather is getting warmer. Even if you just use it to draw fake dead body outlines to freak out your neighbors, I'll still applaud you for bringing back a 'lost art'. And maybe if you're lucky, you'll find the magic piece of chalk, and all of your drawings will come to life in the ChalkZone (will anybody get this reference except me?).

Draw on!
_______________________

¹ I swear, I'm only 26.
² This statement is not representative of any former or pending lawsuits against Tiger Electronics and its subsidiaries.
³ Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Ram, whatever you're down with. I say God though. 'merica.

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I'm Baaack!

It’s ironic that my last post on this blog was just before Ava was born, and now I’m returning to write again at a point in fatherhood where I feel like I’m finally starting to figure it out. Now, I can hear the collective “HA!” ringing out from anybody reading this right now, and yes, I understand that I will NEVER completely figure out being a parent. But I do feel like I’m finally at a certain comfort level. While I spent so many of those first months scared shitless, I now feel much more at ease and get to watch my beautiful girl develop a personality and learn rather than worry constantly about the minutia of newborn necessities.

As tempted as I am to give you a 50 page, in-depth history of where the last 18 months has brought my family, I’ll spare you the awesomeness and just say that I am incredibly excited to start blogging again and have a good feeling I will be providing plenty of content. Somehow, not even Twitter and Facebook are enough to contain my diatribes anymore, so I expect this to be a great forum for me to spew my virtual verbal diarrhea on any topic that enters my ADD-riddled brain. Of course, the main focus will be on family and fatherhood, but let’s face it; I’m too much of a hip-hop head (see the new Tech N9ne song in the video window to the right) and beer geek (note the ‘Imbibing’ links above) to not include commentary on those as well. And chances are, every now and then something will piss me off enough to the point of ranting about it here.

So needless to say, you are all in for a treat, if you don’t mind me farting in my own tuba (that is the phrase, right?). This is just a sort post to say I’m back in action, so stay tuned because there’s more to come soon (I’m working on a riveting piece on sidewalk chalk).

Also, if any of you have some super exciting blogs you want to have placed in my blogroll, let me know!

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