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Hot Wheels hijinks

Matthew Sherman — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 06:14:30 GMT

Of all the toys that I was most excited to introduce Elliott to, I think Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars might have been at the top of the list. While G.I. Joe characters had flair (and guns) and Playmobil and Brio are timeless, there was something I always appreciated about the simplicity of a toy car.

I have come to realize that, for little boys, the No. 1 requirement for a successful toy is, undoubtedly, durability. And nothing beats a Matchbox car in that respect. Over the years we had Playmobil figures lose legs or their hair (which meant those characters could only be used when battling Indians where they were quickly scalped.) The connectors on Brio pieces broke and needed to be glued back together and I’m sure every one of our G.I. Joe figures suffered a snapped rubber band at some point in his life. This was a fatal condition until my little brother figured out how to reassemble them with replacement rubber bands (a day that probably ranks in the top 10 of my childhood.)

But Matchbox cars? Sure you could bend an axle and give them enough dents and dings to make them something less than street legal. But to do enough damage to truly take them out of commission you’d have to put one in the microwave.

Naturally, I took their fortitude as a challenge and put my entire fleet of cars through a set of endurance feats that probably ranks just slightly shy of sadistic. One of the earlier games I created involved holding a car in each hand and throwing them against each other as hard as I could. If one ended up on its back and the other stayed on its wheels, the surviving car got a point and the game continued as a best-of-three series.

One of my more inane games involved taking cars out to the backyard and throwing them down our slide one by one. The car that bounced the shortest distance away from the slide was eliminated and the entire process was repeated until a champion emerged.

As I got older, I became more and more well-versed in the intricacies of every car. I had my favorites and had extremely uncreative names for many of them (such as Fast Yellow). Shortly after I was introduced to the beauty and majesty of the NCAA college basketball tournament, I created my own bracket that pitted 64 cars in a single-elimination tournament, putting two cars at a time in a flimsy two-vehicle shooter (the best $2 my parents ever spent) and racing them across the room. Following each tournament I would then adjust my Matchbox car “power rankings”…. Yup.

I do not expect Elliott to have the same obsessions I did growing up. But, at the same time, I’m pretty excited about playing with cars again. We even put a Hot Wheels car on our registry before Elliott was born. He already has a decent arsenal and has recently graduated from simply putting them all in his shopping cart and then ramming the cart into a wall, to driving individual cars on our tables and walls, complete with vrooming sounds. In short, we’re getting close.

There’s only one problem. Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars these days suck. It’s a travesty. The cars are no longer entirely metal. Producers have instead opted for a flimsy plastic chassis. I am sure that this has made the cars cheaper to manufacture and it also makes them far less likely to give a younger brother a concussion when a well-aimed Corvette connects with his temple. Yet it also makes for a vastly inferior product.

These cars wouldn’t last 30 minutes with my 7-year-old self. And my 10-year-old self would be appalled at how the newer lightweight vehicles made their racing performance wildly inconsistent, leading to unpredictable spin-outs. To make matters worse, we were at Fred Meyer the other day and I was going to pick up a new Cars-themed vehicle for Elliott as an impulse buy. Another beautiful thing about old Matchbox cars was their ability to pacify a 5-year-old for 49 cents. I reached to grab the Hudson Hornet, I noticed the price tag at $4.99. Are you freaking kidding me?

I realize that my disillusionment with items from my past is only beginning but I am appalled at how much something as simple as a metallic toy car could have been botched in 20 years. Fortunately, my vast collection of well-used yet still perfectly functional cars still exists at my mother’s house and I can use them as a monument of the way things used to be to Elliott.

This is the kind of awesome technology the '80s gave us. Color Racers. Cars that changed color with the temperature. Necessary? No. Awesome to 9-year-olds? Yes.

My son the sadist

Matthew Sherman — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:44:00 GMT

While all 2-year-olds are naturally sadistic I have found recently that my oldest child has a particularly ghoulish streak in him. I am not concerned by the tantrums thrown when he is informed that he can't watch the mind-numbing "No more monkeys jumping on the bed" video on youtube. Nor am I really bothered by his new obsession with grabbing a piece of paper, showing it to me with an impish smirk on his face and then sprinting down the hall with me frantically chasing him before he attempts to flush it down the toilet.

What concerns me can be evidenced in the following pair of situations:

1. One of Elliott's favorite past times is to stack up blocks and then gleefully plow into them at full speed on his fire truck. He learned this game a few months ago when he was being babysat by my younger brother. (For revenge I will be getting his daughter Emma a subscription to Tiger Beat for her 8th birthday.) The other day Elliott brought his blocks out to our living room and dumped them on the ground. We were having fun stacking them and even more fun watching them fall over. Eventually Elliott brought out the fire truck and, after I completed my scale model of the Chrysler building with them, he destroyed it happily. I gathered up the wreckage and started the process over again, this time putting together a structure inspired by the Notre Dame cathedral.

"Oh, look at my pretty, pretty tower!" I said as I put the final block onto my masterpiece. ("Pretty, pretty" is one of Elliott's newer phrases. He likes being in the bathroom when Shelbi is putting on make-up and having her put moisturizing cream on his cheeks. He then runs down the hall to look at himself in the mirror saying "pretty, pretty!" while I say a silent prayer, pleading to God that he won't get the crap beaten out of him in a junior high locker room some day.)

Anyway, after I said "look at my pretty, pretty tower!" Elliott uttered a somewhat evil chuckle and then promptly destroyed it. Once again I repeated the process as any activity that keeps him entertained for more than 10 consecutive minutes is, frankly, better than sex at this point. I completed another structure and Elliott climbed on his fire truck. I awaited my creation's demise but Elliott didn't budge. "Don't you want to destroy it?" I asked. "No... Pretty, pretty," he said. I paused for a moment with a look of confusion on my face before it dawned on me. It wasn't good enough for him just to knock over the tower that I had spent a good 45 seconds creating. He wanted me to say how pretty I thought it was before he leveled it. This sick little turd wanted me to fawn over how much I loved what I had just built so that he could increase his level of enjoyment when he took it away from me.

2. Elliott is a bit of a picky eater. He's not as bad as some toddlers but he has a fairly limited diet. He is extremely vocal and animated about things he doesn't like or want to eat. (Another new word is "yuck".) And while we don't try and force Elliott to eat many things that he finds repulsive, the one habit we are trying to break is keeping him from tossing whatever he doesn't want or is finished with on the floor.

The other day, Shelbi and I weren't paying close enough attention during lunch when he heard the unfortunate sound of plastic meeting artificial hardwood floors. Elliott had eaten half of his pasta and discarded the remainder of the meal, plus the bowl, to the ground. I sighed as I got paper towels and walked over toward his high chair. I knelt down and began scooping remnants of noodles and parmesan cheese into my hands when I heard "What happened Dada?"

On the dignity scale, scooping up pasta into my bare hands off the floor already ranked pretty low but now I was being mocked as well. "What happened? Well, what happened you little punk, was that instead of saying 'all done Dada', you took matters into your own hands and tried to feed the rest of your lunch to the dog. But I'm fairly certain you already knew exactly what happened."

He was like a bully from an 80s movie who knocks the nerd's schoolbooks out of his hands in the hall. "Hey Merkowski what happened? Stop being such a klutz and watch where you're going next time." Oh well, I guess those guys are always fairly popular.

Hypothetical Sports Question of the Week (Volume 2)

Matthew Sherman — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:08:37 GMT

So, we decided to do it again. This question is one that my friend Pete and I probably could have talked about non-stop for 5 hours. Fortunately, thanks to an Oscar-worth editing job by Pete, he paired our discussion on how sports video games might change the way actual sports are played in the near future, down to a tidy 25 minutes. Here it is. Ready? Down! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut! Hut!

(For Volume 1 you can either scroll down or click here )

A diary of Sesame Street

Matthew Sherman — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:51:00 GMT

I know all of the new research out there says that children aren't supposed to have screen time until they're 2 years old. I know. And it's something that has been important to Shelbi and I. But, somehow, our son got addicted to Muppets a little while back. That's literally the most accurate way I can put it. So, a few times a week, particularly when there is housework to be done or a phone call to be made, Elliott gets to watch Sesame Street in the mornings. I grew up on Sesame Street. Most kids in my generation did. However, over the past few weeks I have been appalled at what has become of a formerly fine institution. So, the other day, I decided to sit down and record a diary of an episode of Sesame Street. With apologies to ESPN columnist Bill Simmons whose idea I'm stealing, here it is:

9:01 - The episode opens with Abby Cadabby, a fairy and one of Sesame Street's more annoying new characters in a segment about shoes.

9:03 - Abby tells Telly Monster that "everybody out there" pointing to the TV "is wearing shoes." Elliott, in his sleeper, looks down at his feet and sees he is not wearing shoes. "Uh-oh!" he exclaims.

9:05 - Celebrity appearance by Neil Patrick Harris who sings a song about being the Shoe Fairy. I look around the room furtively, desperate to make an inappropriate joke to someone, anyone.

9:08 - Neil Patrick Harris is actually one of the better celebrity guests I've seen recently although he's giving it a little TOO much effort. There are a few types of celebrity appearances on Sesame Street. There are the ones like Robert DeNiro who appear to be only 50% sure of exactly where they are and who go through their entire segment with a look on their face that says both "I'm going to murder my agent in about 5 minutes." and "So help me God if Elmo tries to freaking hug me, there's going to be an incident." And then there's the celebrity guests that are hoping to send their clip to the Emmys. These are usually B-List celebrities who mug for the camera aggressively as if they think Robin Williams might show up at any minute and replace them. A handful of celebs have nailed it over the years. The best one recently has been Ricky Gervais.

9:10 - The Shoe Fairy gives Telly multiple kinds of shoes, all of which backfire and cause Telly physical pain.

9:13 - Telly decides his feet feel better without shoes. Thanks for wasting 13 minutes of our time Sesame Street.

9:15 - A skit with Grover and a pair of ballet dancers. They are trying to teach Grover what the word 'pirouette' means. Really? Come on, give my son something he can use here.

9:16 - More puppets falling and hurting themselves, much to the delight of my son.

9:17 - Murray, another new character, pesters young children in a park about the letter Z.

9:17 - It's a clever segue into an animated short about ants looking for food that starts with Z. Spoiler alert: It's zucchini.

9:18 - A new daily feature called Abby's Flying Fairy School in which three young animated fairies attend a very poorly run school.

9:21 - Despite the exceedingly low teacher to student ratio at this school there is no lesson plan and very little learning so far.

9:25 - While chasing an escaped gerbil, one of the fairies shouts "He's heading for the border!" Is this entire skit a subtle analogy of immigration rights in the U.S.?

9:27 - The gerbil gets away but decides he misses the fairies and returns on his own accord. Another 9 minutes of wasted time.

9:28 - Murray is back to teach is about the number 15. Elliott loves this part because he gets to count on his own. His counting goes like this: He holds up one finger and says "Two, two, two, two!"

9:29 - 15 dancing creatures in African masks stroll by. Elliott approves by dancing although it's obvious his patience is wearing thin with the lack of puppets.

9:30 - Murray gets his own segment called Murray Had a Little Lamb. It's Murray touring a school with his friend who is a lamb. And also, the lamb speaks Spanish for some reason.

9:32 - Elliott is bored out of his skull with the Irish Stepdancing class that Murray is touring and starts doing somersaults on the couch.

9:32 - Not surprisingly, Murray the puppet falls while dancing, briefly getting Elliott's attention back.

9:35 - Murray plays 'sounds of the street' in New York. He hears birds, a car horn and a homeless man urinating in an alley.

9:36 - Hey, it's puppets I recognize! Ernie and Bert talk about their toes. Ernie, also known as the worst roommate ever, disturbs Bert's sleep for the 500th time in the history of Sesame Street by singing a song about his toes. Here's what I don't get about Ernie and Bert. They obviously own an apartment together and have to be responsible enough to pay bills and buy their own groceries etc... but their discussions over the past 30 years are extremely rudimentary. Ernie is obsessed with his rubber duckie. Bert collects bottle caps and loves pigeons etc... A while ago someone caused an uproar by surmising that Ernie and Bert were gay but I don't think that's true. I think it's more of a George and Lennie type relationship. Bert has an affinity for Ernie the simpleton even though his life would clearly be easier without him. Needless to say I don't think anyone would have liked the results if Steinbeck ever had the chance to guest direct an episode.

9:38 - Time for Elmo's World which now takes up the last 20 minutes of every episode. Elliott immediately grins and dances and is more transfixed than he has been all day. He loves Elmo. All kids do. I don't get it. It's like a group of scientists got together in the late 60s and spent two decades doing research to create a creature that no child under the age of 4 could possibly resist. I'm convinced that Elmo has been spewing subliminal messages to children for 20 years. Play the theme song of Elmo's World back and it probably says "Vote Republican."

9:39 - The theme of this Elmo's World episode is going to be about getting dressed.

9:40 - Elmo talks to his pet goldfish Dorothy pretending to field a question from him. Shelbi and I have both wondered at separate times how many "Dorothy's" they have gone through in the last 10 years. To my knowledge there has never been an Elmo's World episode called "Elmo deals with death."

9:41 - Oh boy it's time for Mr. Noodle, a live-action clown-type character who is a mustachioed 45-year-old man permanently living outside Elmo's window. He is mute and scares the bejeezus out of Shelbi. I don't think I even need a joke here.

9:41 - Mr. Noodle is also the dumbest man alive as a group of 6 year olds always has to tell him how to do basic functions. Today Mr. Noodle doesn't know how to get dressed.

9:42 - Quick thought: If you're at a point where you think pants go on your arms, perhaps having suspenders and a dicky in your outfit is a bit too complicated of an ensemble. Maybe start small with an adult diaper and a poncho.

9:43 - Now a variety of kids talk to Dorothy the goldfish about how they get dressed. Dorothy all but screams from her bowl. "I'm a fish! I'm living in a madhouse with a 3-year-old! Why has there never been an episode about how to feed a goldfish?"

9:45 - Now Elmo asks a baby how to get dressed in a running segment on Elmo's World I like to call "Let's Mock an Infant."

9:47 - Elmo is supposed to be 3 years old and has been unattended for 10 minutes now. Sesame Street has a laundromat, a general store and a fix-it shop but apparently no Child Services office.

9:50 - Elmo leaves us briefly as a 7-year-old teaches us, again, how to get dressed. Elliott protests his absence by getting up and turning the TV off.

9:51 - Elmo wants to watch something called 'the getting dressed channel'. I think that show is on at midnight on Fridays on HBO.

9:53 - In another animated skit, a woman gets dressed and, at the end, says "Now does anyone know a song about getting undressed?" Umm... yes. Every hip-hop song ever.

9:54- Elmo speaks to a talking book. I'm starting to think Elmo's world might only exist in Elmo's mind like the autistic kid in St. Elsewhere.

9:55 - Elmo's World is done and so is Sesame Street. The letter of the day is Z and the number of the day is 15. Elliott waves bye-bye to the TV and immediately runs to get his Elmo book for me to read to him.

Magic kisses

Matthew Sherman — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 18:48:00 GMT

There are some things you end up doing as a parent that, no matter how much you swear you won't, are simply inevitable. You might find baby talk or, at the very least, talking an octave and a half higher than you normally speak, to be repulsive and grating but, maybe not as often as some people do it, you're going to speak to your small child that way at some point. You're going to spend an inordinate amount of time inspecting your infant's poop and talking about it with your spouse. You're going to memorize Good Night Moon. And you're also going to attempt to make your child's injuries go away by kissing them.

It's an odd phenomenon that can probably be traced back for centuries. It has always seemed a bit bizarre to me, not to mention a terrible diagnosis for the majority of injuries. And yet, with Elliott, it has been a common occurrence for months. My son is, to say the least, a bit injury-prone. Virtually every time we change a diaper we'll discover a new bruise or scratch on his legs. He also has yet to learn how to walk. Oh, don't get me wrong, he can run. His technique is lacking but he can definitely run. However, to my knowledge, he has never simply strolled calmly from point A to point B in his life.

That being said, scraped knees and hands are routine. He knows about 10 words and one of them is 'bonk.' Another is 'uh-oh'. We will often hear a small thud, look around the corner to find Elliott sitting on the ground, holding his head in both hands looking like he has just received horrible news from a telegram.

And ever since Shelbi first kissed his head following a 'bonk,' it has become the only remedy he'll accept. He's like a professional athlete who gets hooked on pain-killers. If he stubs a toe he immediately runs to mom for a kiss... then to dad, just to cover his bases, and then back to mom for another one like a patient upping his morphine drip. But, a few days ago, Elliott pinched a finger and quickly brought it to my magical healing workshop. I kissed it and he started to go back to playing. Then he looked back down at his finger and held it back up to me. I kissed it again. Again he stared at his finger with a somewhat perplexed look on his face. It dawned on me that, to my chagrin, he was starting to put 2 and 2 together. His finger still hurt. He was realizing that, not only was I not magic and all powerful, but, even worse, myself, and perhaps his mom as well, may have been putting on a ruse for months.

Obviously I knew the day would come when he would realize how fatally flawed I actually was. Tickling and swinging upside down won't always be cures for a bad mood and getting him untangled from one of Shelbi's shirts won't always draw a round of applause from him but I didn't expect it to start happening before he was even two years old. I guess I liked the power trip that came with my magic kisses. I've always been a big fan of stepping over and extremely low-set bar and receiving the accolades. Thank goodness we have another one on the way who will hopefully take a bit longer before he or she draws back the curtain.

Top 5 Depressing Moments in Parenting

Matthew Sherman — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 19:18:00 GMT

Shelbi and I made a brief excursion to Target a couple of weeks ago. (How's that for an opening line that makes you want to read more?) It was about 6 p.m. on Labor Day and we were shocked by the jammed parking lot. We figured there must have been some giant pre-sale on fake Christmas trees or something as we filed through row after row of packed consumers roaming the aisles. We were just about to chock up the store's overcrowding as another unsolveable mystery along the lines of why the Winco on 82nd street was jammed full of what appeared to be 500 of escaped convicts and/or methed out miscreants at 11:30 p.m. a few years ago.

But then we turned a corner and the puzzle was solved. In front of us was Target's Back to School display and it was inundated with swarms of frazzled parents and small children. The older children were a healthy combination of mortified and depressed at the concept of being out with their parents at Target on their last night of freedom. The majority of the younger children were in tears either from tapping into their parents' stress level or because, at such late notice, the store was out of Transformers folders meaning a handful of 7-year-old boys will likely be sporting Bratz dolls on their Pee Chees this year.

And, as we passed the chaos, I got to thinking about where this scene ranked on my list of Depressing Parenting Scenes I've Witnessed. Here's how I have them ranked:

5. The parents who waited until Labor Day evening to buy every school supply on their kids' list. It was sad and I was devastated for the children who didn't get the type of new lunchbox they were hoping for or, even worse, won't have school supplies that the store was sold out of but, at the same time, there is at least a small chance that this is going to happen to me at some point in the next 20 years. It is not out of the realm of possibilities that Shelbi and/or myself will put this off so I will cut this group a bit of slack.

4. The woman behind us in Safeway last year. She and her mother were arguing loudly with a child in the grocery cart. Eventually, after another slew of profanities from the mother, the grandmother snapped, saying "If you talk like that in front of my grandchild again I'm not going to buy any of your groceries." The mother snipped back, growing angrier and the grandmother simply left the store. The mother followed angrily, leaving her full cart in line and snatching away the book from her daughter that she was told she could have. Shelbi left the store in tears. It wasn't that poor kid's fault. Had it not happened so quickly Shelbi almost certainly would have bought the book herself and ran it out to the little girl.

3. It's far too long a story to convey entirely in an already too long blog post but here are the high points. Shortly after Shelbi and I moved into our house, a young couple began renting the house across the street from us. They had a 6-month-old child. Not long after they moved in, the woman knocked on our door needing to use the phone because her boyfriend was out and they didn't have a land line. This soon became a common occurrence for us and the rest of our neighbors. Visits came constantly sometimes as late as 11 p.m., every time with a new sob story until we eventually stopped answering the door. Over the course of a few months we learned that the girl's boyfriend was certainly cheating on her and that she was ready to leave. One night Shelbi and I even helped her pack up a cab to leave for her parents' house in Vancouver. Less than a month later she was back and... promptly got herself knocked up again. They finally moved out when, after a particularly big fight, she called the cops and informed them of the identity theft ring her boyfriend was operating out of the garage. It was like we were on simultaneous episodes of Candid Camera and Maury Povich.

2. The line 60-deep of parents and kids waiting in Party City as the store's suicidal teenage employees try to find specific Halloween costumes the afternoon of October 31. I have had the misfortune of being in Party City on the day of Halloween twice in the past six years. If I was making a list of the things in my 30 years of existence that I am least proud of, I don't think I could top that last sentence. It is an awful, awful experience. The first occasion occurred while Shelbi was still working as a server at Chili's. The wait staff was all dressing up for their shift that day and Shelbi wanted me to pick up something simple like a cat mask and maybe a tail. No problem I thought. I walked into Party City and it was sheer madness. Every single aisle was torn to pieces, the floors littered with items that had been pulled off shelves. There was screaming and crying and shouting. The row of costumes was completely impassable. The format at Party City is that a child or parent selects one of the 100+ cheaply-made, pre-packaged and surprisingly expensive costumes, then waits in line while an employee heads back to the storage room and retrieves it. On normal days, it's not a bad system. But, on Halloween, and with the oldest of the store's four employees on duty checking in at 19 years old, it's a monumental cluster$#@&. The absolute worst part is having an employee walk out from the back to announce "We just sold the last Batman and Princess Jasmine costumes!" setting off a barrage or groans, tears and curse words. Then a handful of parents have to get out of line, search for another costume, get behind another 60 people and pray that their new selection will be in stock by the time they get back to the front. It took me close to an hour to pick up a tiger mask and an extremely long unmatching tail that proved to be very impractical for a waitress. Four years later I had forgotten about that experience when, again on October 31, I wanted to purchase some Halloween-themed cheap glasses for our annual party. Sigh.

(Note: Narrowly missing the top-5 were the parents who were trying to piece together their kids' Halloween costumes at the Value Village thrift store on Oct. 30 only because, if you're savvy, you can actually come up with a decent costume there.)

1. As difficult as it was to top the Party City fiasco, it happened a couple of years ago. I found myself at Rite Aid late at night on Christmas Eve. Again, not my finest hour but this was before Elliott was born and I believe I was purchasing some cheap champagne for mimosas the next morning. I made my selection (a lovely $5 bottle of Cook's if I remember correctly) and, on my way to the counter, passed the row which I feel should be labeled "Cheap crap, Stuff that will break on your way to the Car, Easily Solvable Puzzles, Rip-offs of more popular toys." And, in this aisle are a pair of individuals in their early 40s who perfectly fit the bill of what you would expect to find at the 24-hour Rite Aid at 10 p.m. or later. The man was in sandals and a pair of very short, blue cotton athletic shorts, a medium-sized tank top that had come to an agreement with the man's gut that it would be best to not even attempt to cover it and a mesh cap with a Budweiser emblem. The woman was also in sandals and some semblance of a robe. In essence, it was what you would expect a couple to look like shortly in the moments following a late-night earthquake which sent them scrambling into the streets in a panic.

But, from this couple's conversation, they were clearly doing their Christmas shopping. To be fair, there is a chance that the shopping was being done for a niece and nephew but, there is a fairly high chance that it was for their children. Now, don't get me wrong, I like the cheap crap aisle. I may have even purchased a goofy stocking stuffer or two from this aisle in the past. When, on a previous trip to Rite-Aid, Shelbi told me to "bring home a present" , I may have walked out with a set of jacks for 99 cents which saddled her with a silmultaneous look of confusion and melancholy. But these people were not making a last-minute venture for stocking stuffers. No, this was their Christmas shopping. The fact that the items being considered were so crappy didn't bother me that much. Perhaps it was all they could afford. I can understand that. But it was also evident that these people knew absolutely nothing about the people they were buying for. "How about this dinosaur? Christopher likes dinosaurs doesn't he?" Shrug. "Here, what's this? Dora the Explorer? Would Emily want to color on this?" Ugh. I'm hoping this stays at No. 1 for a very long time.

Hypothetical Sports Question of the Week (Volume 1)

Matthew Sherman — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:53:00 GMT

Caution: Proceed at your own risk. For at least a year, my friend Pete would call me on his way home from work and, often, one of us would hit the other one with a random, hypothetical sports question and the ensuing conversation would then eat up the next 20-30 minutes of Pete's commute while I paced in front of my office, holding a notebook so that it would look like I was conducting an interview. A few weeks ago we got together and, for some reason, decided to formally record one of these conversations. Below is our inaugural attempt. It's imperfect but, hey, we made ourselves laugh a few times.

Summer Vacation Part 2

Matthew Sherman — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:53:00 GMT

So we started driving. We made our decision so quickly that we didn't take a lot of time to process anything. But, in essence, we were trading in our four-hour flight (a flight that we were exceedingly worried about Elliott being able to handle while maintaining his sanity) in exchange for 32 hours stuck in a car seat. But, at least this way, if our kid went crazy, he would only be bothering two individuals instead of 200. On our first night, we arrived in San Francisco at around 9 p.m. Elliott handled the nine hours relatively well. The portable DVD player was our savior although Shelbi and I can, quite literally, recite all of Muppets Take Manhattan and The Great Muppet Caper verbatim.

We checked into our hotel and were planning on heading to bed rather quickly in preparation for a full day on the town beginning next morning. After a long car ride, the phrase "I need to burn off some energy" is always used liberally and I had always believed that they were basically figures of speech. Just because you've been cooped up somewhere for a long period of time doesn't mean you've somehow accumulated an excess amount of energy that must be evacuated, right? Well, we learned our lesson fairly quickly. Elliott got into our hotel room and instantly took on a form that I have never seen before.

He dismantled the hotel room telephone, unplugging it from the wall and the receiver from the console and dragged both pieces around the room. He crawled up on the bed, spun around in circles before flopping down face first and giggling uproariously. He yanked at the blinds, he changed the air conditioner settings, he knocked over a lamp, he turned the TV on and off 56 times. He somehow figured out how to open the door and was halfway to the elevator in just his diaper before we caught him. And all of this was done to the tune of high-pitched screams as the majority of the hotel was likely trying to sleep. That night he refused to calm down. We put him in his Pack and Play and he promptly pulled off his sheet and then folded up his mattress before tossing it over the side. He ran around in circles before eventually stopping and staring at us like a creepy kid in a horror movie. After a minute of this we got: "Dada? Dada? Dada! ... Mama! Mama!... Mama. Mama?" We put him into bed with us and he promptly started a one person game of steamroller. I have no idea how long it actually took him to fall asleep. Shelbi and I were so tired that after midnight, for all we know, he could have been dancing on our faces for hours and we could have slept through it.

The day in San Francisco was fun . We went to the wharf, ate chowder, saw the sea lions etc... Early in the day I achieved what, until that point, I had failed to realize was a mandatory step in parenthood. I stood outside a carousel, waving at my child and taking blurry pictures. It is absolutely one of the 20 most likely things you will do when you become a father right between "begrudgingly accepting the fact that, no matter how annoying, kids freaking love Elmo." That night I purchased tickets to the Giants game and we sat in the third deck at a cold at windy AT&T Park. Again the portable DVD player saved us. We estimated that it only had around 80 minutes of battery power left and, in my mind, I would have been thrilled to make it past the fifth inning. But somehow, like the Hanukkah oil, the battery miraculously lasted 3 hours, making it possible for me to see my team lose a heartbreaking game.

The next morning we headed down to Yucaipa, California. For the uninformed, Yucaipa is roughly halfway between Los Angeles, Palm Springs and Hell. From April through October when you wake up in Yucaipa, there's a good chance that A. it's going to top 100 degrees and B. you're going to question every decision you've made in your life that has led up to that point. Fortunately, our hosts were extremely gracious. Over the course of four days, my brother and sister-in-law endured

A. Shelbi dropping a few Froot Loops under a recliner which, in turn, attracted 6000 ants into their house overnight.

B. My sister-in-law's shorts getting ruined while riding in my car because, for some reason, I had a votive in my back seat that melted.

C. Both Shelbi and I getting snippy and childish during games of Settlers of Catan.

D. Elliott dumping an entire bottle of water on their bed.

E. Elliott breaking their show rack within 30 seconds of our arrival.

On our second day, we ventured down to San Diego to give our hosts a much needed respite from us and to take Elliott to Sea World. I was skeptical about Sea World. But it turned out to be an incredibly fun place for little kids. Currently, Sea World has an entire Sesame Street exhibit which we immediately went to. Elliott rode a few of the very tame rides, pointing at all of the drawings of his favorite characters. Then, just as he and Shelbi were stepping off Elmo's Flying Fish ride, a handful of live-action characters appeared for a short performance. Elliott saw them and his eyes got huge. He squealed and pointed at them and ran over to them with the most insane smile on his face I have ever seen. He watched, entranced as they sang their few songs, occasionally glancing back at us as if to say "Are you seeing this?! Holy crap! They're real!" We then stood in line for a chance to meet Elmo, Cookie Monster and Zoe. Shelbi and I weren't sure how Elliott would react. In the past, he has been curious but generally petrified by people dressed up in furry costumes. And, I estimated that about 40% of the little kids in front of us either refused to go within 10 feet of the enormous Muppets or started bawling uncontrollably when Cookie Monster reached out to take their hand.

It was Elliott's turn and we set him down. He took off toward Elmo like a shot and, for the next two minutes, walked up and down the line, giving all three characters hug after hug, pausing reluctantly for a few seconds to get some pictures taken. It was, unequivocally the happiest day of his entire life and likely will remain that way until he sees his first pair of breasts.

The drive home was relatively uneventful. We were smarter this time around and let Elliott out periodically to run around like a madman. Our only casualty occurred on the home stretch. After what was to be our last stop before home in Roseburg, I let Shelbi take over driving as I had handled those duties for the entire way back from Yucaipa to that point. She took the wheel, promptly drove past the on-ramp to get back on the highway, realized her mistake, did a U-turn, and slammed into the curb, knocking off a hubcap and denting the rim of my tire. Only the grace of God kept my poor tire in tact. After I let a supremely rattled and perturbed Shelbi calm down, I equated her performance to that of a terrible relief pitcher. To that point I had thrown eight scorless innings, walking just one batter, yielding two hits and striking out nine. I left with a three-run lead and she gave up back-to-back-to-back home runs on three straight pitches. She was the Armando Benitez of our road trip.

Summer Vacation Part 1

Matthew Sherman — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 05:25:00 GMT

Two Wednesdays ago was supposed to be a monumental step in Shelbi's and my life as parents. We were ready to attempt Elliott's first ride in an airplane. From the moment our trip to Chicago had been conceived many months ago, I had literally played out every scenario of our flight in my head. Situations ranged from:

Elliott being an utterly delightful toddler for four hours, happily eating his snacks and charming everyone in the cabin including, by monumental coinicidence, the CEO of Huggies who happened to be riding in first class and offered us millions of dollars to make Elliott their new poster baby.

Elliott running up and down the aisle the moment the plane took off, spilling drinks, ripping headphones out of businessmen's ears, biting flight attendants and developing a raging ear infection.

Everything was on the table. Many parents who have what I like to call "boring babies" don't have to worry about things like this. They have toddlers who are perfectly content to sit still for hours at a time, slowly and politely flipping through the pages of book after book without uttering a sound. This is not our child.

Ours is the one whose idea of coloring is to see how many crayons he can fit in one hand before beating the crap out of a picture of Barney with them like a meat tenderizer. He is also the child who recently started climbing up on our small coffee table, counting to three in gibberish with his fingers in the air and then stepping off into the nothingness on his way to a spectacular fall. Clearly a calm four hour flight was not something we were banking on. But we were prepared. While we have tried to limit his television watching, we fully planned on letting him gorge himself on Muppets. After all, he was on vacation too. We were armed with a CD case full of Sesame Street and Muppets (even the crappy more recent ones) and Shelbi had even made Elliott practice using headphones for a week prior to the flight. We were as ready as we possibly could have been.

But a funny thing happened. You see, we were flying standby. I knew that flying standby was a risky proposition but I really never anticipated the eventual results. We arrived at the airport at 4 a.m. on Wednesday. Elliott was fantastic waiting at the check-in line and through security. We got him a blueberry muffin and cracked open a new Sesame Street book. So far, so good.

I first sensed problems when a handful of other travelers straggled up to the ticket counter to ask questions about standby. Then came the announcement where the attendant referred to the 6:12 a.m. flight as "extremely full". Perhaps the worst sign was when a pilot approached the desk hoping to hitch a ride and was quickly turned away. An actual pilot was not getting on this flight.

No big deal. We figured we might miss the first flight to O'Hare. Hopefully a handful of seats will open up on the 8:30 flight. After multiple loops through the terminal and even a 20-minute nap in his stroller, Elliott was more than happy to play on the moving sidewalk for 45 minutes. It was so successful that I'm having one installed in our house this weekend between the couch and the refrigerator.

Passengers started arriving to catch the 8:30. The first announcement was made. "Ladies and Gentlemen this flight is oversold." Not encouraging. "If anyone on this flight would like to give up his or her seat for a $400 voucher please see the front desk." But then came the kicker. "Please note that if you are giving up your ticket, your travel plans should be flexible, and I mean EXTREMELY flexible." What this basically meant was: "We can get you to Chicago at some point but it might not be during this equinox, you're going to have to bring a parachute and, I'm going to be honest, one leg of the trip is going to be on a camel."

This was bad news. As it turned out, two passengers who had paid full-price for tickets and had reservations were bumped from the flight. Then the fun started. Actually, it would have been a lot more fun to watch if Shelbi and I hadn't been in a constant state of panic that our tired and confused son could, at any minute, blow a gasket and sprint down the ramp while waving his hands in the air, causing the airport to shut down entirely for two hours.

Airports are fascinating places. People are constantly on edge and often at their absolute worst. While Shelbi took a turn riding the sidewalk back and forth, I watched the pair of ticketed passengers go through the 7 stages of grief with the airline employee. Well, actually, it was pretty much just seven different levels of anger.

It was interesting to watch the two passengers' approach. After the initial shock wore off, one went with the well-tempered, "how can we work this?" approach. The other went with full-fleged venom and personal attacks. I'm still not sure if this particular airline attendant simply had no soul or if she was just brilliant at her job. Nothing fazed her. These people were not getting on the plane and, frankly, were probably not getting on any plane until at least tomorrow. There were a few insincere apologies and then a lot of loud typing at a computer, minimal eye contact and shoulder shrugging. I'm pretty sure if I had been in the same situation this woman would have somehow made me feel guilty for her company's enormous gaffe.

A few minutes later, when the counter was clear, I very nicely approached and asked what our chances were of getting to Chicago at any point today. The woman clicked a few keys and read the verdict. The 10:30 flight was also oversold. The 1 p.m. flight was completely booked. The evening flight was oversold and the red-eye had one seat left which would assuredly be taken soon. In fact, in seven hours at the airport we had actually lost ground on the priority list behind overbooked passengers. It was the equivalent of waiting all day in a half-mile long line at Disneyland and taking 5 steps backwards by the time the park closed.

There were only two pieces of good news. First, our bags had not been sent to Chicago without us and were easily retrieved. Second, there were a handful of people at our gate who were having a worse day than we were. And that's always nice. Here are the people we encountered who had the worst days:

1. The middle-aged woman and her wheelchair-bound mother who were in front of us on the standby list. One seat opened up on the first flight of the day and the woman's husband took it as the group assumed it would be easier to get two people on a plane later in the day than it would three. Who knows how long that man spent in Chicago awaiting the rest of his party. At least 48 hours. Probably longer.

2. The man who missed the first flight of the day by exactly 12 seconds. The doors closed, he walked up to the gate with a stupified look on his face. Not only did he miss his flight, he was immediately placed behind every oversold passenger for the rest of the day.

3. The first woman who was overbooked and bumped off the 8:30 flight. She was hoping to get to Chicago even earlier and opted to try and fly standby on the 6:12 flight. But what this did was take away her confirmed seat so, when the next flight was oversold, she had no seat reservation and was bumped for at least the rest of the day.

Shelbi and I were discouraged. That evening, we had grandma watch Elliott while we went to dinner and plotted Plan B. If we couldn't get on a flight the next day, we weren't going to spend all of my vacation time figuring out which Seattle's Best coffee shop made the best mochas in the airport. We thought about driving to Chicago, which would have been six days of solid driving and only two or three actually spent in Chicago. We thought about staying close to home and doing a few day trips. We thought about Seattle but had no place to stay. Eventually we decided that we would make a trip to California, spending a day in San Francisco and another in San Diego with the bulk of our time being spent with my brother and his wife.

With that plan in mind, we got up at 3:30 the next morning, headed back to the airport and, after making our way to the ticket counter, encountered another surly employee. But, this time, I was happy to see her. She, very blatantly, told us that there was a 0% chance of us catching a flight that day. She pointed to the flashing red lettering on the computer screen that described our stanby chances as "very risky". The only way it could have been less encouraging is if it also had a little skull and crossbones icon next to it. But that was the best thing that could have happened (aside from actually making the flight). We held onto our bags, didn't have to go through security and I could quickly call my mother and ask her to turn around. Plus Elliott got to ride the luggage carousels which are empty at 4 a.m.

We got home, took quick naps, and then promptly threw all of our bags into my car to start our drive to California.

Mall games

Matthew Sherman — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 05:28:00 GMT

I took Elliott to the mall this afternoon for a couple of hours or until he completely melted down, whichever came first. We were getting out of the house today to give my sick wife some rest. (And yes that sentence was included as a gratuitous plug at showing what a good husband I am.) I needed to price new refrigerators anyway and I didn't feel like pirouetting Elliott away from his myriad noise-making toys for two hours while Shelbi was sleeping.

As I've mentioned before, I've ventured to the mall with much greater frequency since Elliott has been around. It's an easy way to get out of the house periodically and there's plenty for Elliott to enjoy. He loves those awful cars and trucks and make noise and move back and forth when you put money in them but, fortunately for me, he still doesn't have 50 cents worth of an attention span so he is more than happy to simply run between one vehicle and the next whether they're moving or not. He loves soft pretzels and he loves the plush Sesame Street characters and Barnes and Noble and he loves people.

I, however, am not much of a mall guy. I admit that I take a modicum of enjoyment out of going to the mall shortly before Christmas by myself with a set list of items to buy and seeing how quickly and efficiently I can accomplish my task. I weave in and out of Victoria's Secret bags and men holding 50 ounces of orange julius like a nimble running back. There is an adrenaline rush to simply embracing the holiday madness and then kicking it up a notch. It is also the one time of year that I will venture into certain stores. I hit up Bath and Bodyworks for approximately 5 minutes every Dec. 23rd. That's my limit. Any more than that and the skin starts peeling from my face. I had to go into Hollister a few years ago for a gift card for my sister and it was like I was hooked up to the machine in The Princess Bride that sucks your life force. "Not to 50!"

But it's simpler times in the summer. And today I actually found Elliott to be a valuable asset to my experience. It's always interesting to see people's looks when I am alone at the mall with Elliott. They range from 'Oh, isn't that cute?" to "Is that guy stealing a baby? Does some authority figure need to be contacted?" He is both an attention magnet as well as a deterrent which, to me, is far more useful. Clackamas Town Center is packed with kiosks which house the facility's most useless commodities. You've got your smokeless cigarettes, your cheaply built remote controlled helicopters and your calendars featuring impossibly cute cats and dogs. And the salespeople at these kiosks are always incredibly aggressive. You can do a masterful job of avoiding eye contact but, suddenly, one will still somehow be completely in your face asking if you have a minute. Usually I have to resort to making a fake phone call through this section. But today, while awkwardly pushing Elliott's stroller with one hand, holding his cup of milk and a Starbucks coffee cake in the other, I managed to not fit into these peoples' demographic which, prior to today, I thought consisted of the entire human race. Nope. They avoided me like the plague.

A similar thing happened in The Children's Place. I picked up a cheap pair of pants for Elliott and, right as the clerk was starting her speech about how I should sign up for a rewards card to save %5 blah blah, Elliott launched into one of his favorite games. I call it "Yelling to see if this room echos." It's not unhappy screaming. Far from it. But it's loud screaming nonetheless. And if he doesn't like the results, he's a persistent bugger and starts Level 2 of the game in which he yells louder in an attempt to force the room to echo. The sales clerk stopped dead in her tracks. I didn't even have to politely reject her offer with a "Maybe next time." Three seconds into her speech she realized that she wanted me out her store as quickly as I wanted out. So thank you Elliott. You're getting better ever day.

"All of our Japanese Cherry Blossom body butters are 30%

off today!"

Intelligence is overrated

Matthew Sherman — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:32:00 GMT

There is a terrific scene in the movie 'Parenthood' where Rick Moranis is talking about how his three-year-old daughter is starting to learn Spanish and has flashcards of Latin roots. Steve Martin then looks over at his own son who has a bucket on his head and is repeatedly headbutting the wall. Even before he was born, Shelbi and I were convinced that this was going to parallel Elliott's first few years. Cue last week.

We agreed to babysit our friends' daughter for a few hours who is roughly two months older than Elliott. Our friends dropped Mila off and hurried off to a meeting. Elliott instantly ran over and treated her to aggressive hugs and kisses while Mila endured him and repeated "Baby's Sweet" while tactfully trying to pry herself from Elliott's grip. She then calmly walked over to our dog and politely pet him saying "Soft, friendly doggy!" Elliott countered by running to the dog, shrieking and waving his arms before landing two solid blows on Einstein's side, giggling and pulling him into a hug/chokehold.

The majority of the evening progressed similarly. Mila wowed us by asking politely for juice and played nicely with our blocks, stacking a few and then neatly putting them away. Elliott would vie for our attention by deliberately stepping on objects, intentionally tripping himself and then saying "Uh-oh!" before starting the process over.

The evening culminated with me reading a color and shapes book (appropriatrely titled 'Colors and Shapes') to the toddlers. I would point to an object and Mila would say 'banana' or 'heart' with perfect dainty diction. Elliott, with his mouth full of his own fingers, would simply grunt and indicate that he was bored with the current page. Mila's speech proficiency went from an amusement to disturbing when I pointed to a picture of some sticks of licorice and asked what it was and she responded with "rectangle." Now she was just showing off.

At that point Shelbi uttered "I think our boy's retarded" before quickly putting her hand over her mouth and glancing at Mila. The room went silent as our friend's daughter is a champion mimicker. For a split second Shelbi was convinced that she had just given Mila what was sure to be her new favorite word to be uttered profusely in grocery stores and at family functions for months to come. Fortunately she simply looked back down at the book, pointed to a picture of an elephant and said "mastadon!"

Visual evidence.

Elliott brings back the beach

Matthew Sherman — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 04:01:00 GMT

We just got back from our third beach excursion of the calendar year. This weekend it was to beat the "heat wave" which is probably a pretty strong term for three days in the 90s. But, when you live in a house that has no air conditioning and seems to suck heat out of the air to store in the walls during the summer, any warm day can become oppressive. Last year we packed up and left to avoid one of the hottest 5 day stretches in Portland history where temperatures topped out at 107. This year the forecast said 98 for one day and I thought "I always end up giving back vacation days at the end of the year, let's burn one on Friday." So it's becoming somewhat of a tradition. At this rate in five years it will be expected to his 85 in mid-May and we'll both say "Screw it, we're taking the rest of the school year off and heading to the coast."

Since Shelbi and I have been married, our beach trips have primarily been respites. The phrase to use when we're packing up for a long weekend should probably not be "We're going to the beach". Instead we should say "We are going to a town which has a beach" because, previously, trips down to the actual oceanside during our stay have almost always come more out of a sense of obligation. "Well, since we're here, we might as well walk two blocks to look at the majestic scenery for a few minutes."

It's not that I don't like the beach. Far from it. But here is a list of things you can do at the Oregon coast and, with my explanations, hopefully you'll see my point.

Lay in the sun and read/tan: (I hate feeling too hot and, for whatever reason, I haven't owned a pair of sunglasses in more than a decade, which means reading a book has the same effect as starting directly at an eclipse.)

Play in the ocean: (I'm probably a bit too old to be doing this by myself now. I loved playing in the waves as a little kid and could spend hours in the frigid water. But, to put it bluntly, I have nowhere near the testicular fortitude that I did as a 10-year-old and I mean that quite literally.)

Walk to the tide pools at Haystack Rock: (At this point I might know every starfish and barnacle in those tide pools by name.)

Throw the football/frisbee around: (These activities are also known as "Hit Shelbi in the face with a football" and "Stare dejectedly at Shelbi for a few seconds, sigh, and then wade into the ocean to fetch her errant frisbee toss.")

Have a bonfire: (I inherited the gene from my dad in which I believe that bonfires are exceptionally overrated. You've got the smoke in your eyes, the sand in your hot dogs and s'mores, the possibility that someone you're with brought his or her acoustic guitar. Etc...)

But, on this trip, I started to fall in love with the beach again. You see, Elliott has come a long way since his first trip to the beach which was spent as a gasping and squinting 3-month-old in a Baby Bjorn. When he was a little more than 1-year-old he could enjoy walking on the beach briefly before stopping to eat a mouthful of sand. This time it was a whole different ball game. There was no intentional eating of sand and our boy, whose attention span at this point is not one of his strongest characteristics, plopped down beside us and was content scooping, shoveling and smoothing sand for close to 30 minutes. It was remarkable. In a related story, we have decided to convert our garage into a 300-square-foot sandbox.

Elliott also loved the ocean. This didn't come as much of a surprise given his affinity for water but, I mean, he really loved the ocean. So much so that he kicked me repeatedly in the gut and screamed for the duration of our short walk back to his toys in the sand. He was completely fearless, charging full speed into the cold water, giggling with delight as I picked him up to jump waves and beating at the water with his shovel. He fell down once or twice, got a brief look of surprise on his face at the cold temperature, hugged my leg for half a second and that was all the coddling he needed to make another charge into the surf.

And, with as much fun as he was having, I realized it was probably the most fun I've had on the beach in more than a decade. All of the above-mentioned activities are made infinitely better by the presence of children and I can't wait to see Elliott develop his love of the beach in the years to come. I'm even prepared to make 50 more trips to the tide pools if it makes him happy.

Come on. These are just adorable.

Mr. Fix-it

Matthew Sherman — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:25:00 GMT

I needed to get photographic evidence of this today.

This is a picture I will need to show Elliott some day, perhaps when he is a teenager and Shelbi comes into the room saying that something is wrong with the dryer. I'll furtively look around the room and maybe pretend to check the time on my cell phone before Elliott eventually lets out an exaggerated sigh and goes to take a look at it.

In a perfect world, pictures as shown above would be the norm in our family annals. Flip through a photo book and there would be page upon page of Elliott and me building a treehouse together. Elliott and me putting a new roof on the house. Elliott and me with our legs sticking out from under the old family sedan. Unfortunately, scenes like that will simply not occur in our household. I am already looking forward to Elliott surpassing my computer knowledge by the age of 7 and then teaching me how things work. And I am desperately hoping that he will develop a curious mind that makes him want to learn the ins and outs of plumbing or wiring.

You see, I am not what you would call particularly handy. The above photo is of me piecing together a bookshelf we purchased from Target. The box said it should take 20 minutes to assemble. It took me an hour and that was even without the last two steps which were deemed unnecessary by Shelbi. (I think she just wanted me to quit while I was ahead.) About 30 minutes into the project, Elliott climbed off of his chair, picked up a screwdriver and pretended to help. He even stopped watching "Follow That Bird" to do so. It was utterly adorable.

This picture is offered as subtle proof of my lack of abilities. Yes, Elliott is holding a rubber mallet. Why? Because I couldn't find the one hammer I own and instead figured that this mallet that was left at our house by my brother-in-law following a Halloween party three years ago would suffice. Want some better examples of my ineptitude? Sure you do.

A couple of weeks ago, while doing dishes, our garbage disposal seemingly crapped out on us. The disposal was no more than two years old which made me livid. My two fix-it strategies involved A. Opening the cabinet under the sink and looking at the disposal sternly and B. Flipping the disposal switch on and off with varying degrees of intensity. So, after about 45 minutes, I was furious and ready to plop down another $150. Just like that. After about three hours of leaving our backed up sink full of enormous food particles to its own devices and me fuming in the other room, I finally came to my senses, figured it couldn't have possibly broken so quickly and discovered the reset button on the bottom of the disposal. Problem solved. But the kicker was that I was legitimately proud of myself for not throwing a large sum of money away and for pressing a small red button. So much so that I truly expected Shelbi to ooh and ahh over my accomplishment.

As another example, a section of our fence in the backyard fell down roughly a year before Elliott was born. It is still down no thanks to the 75-year-old grandmother living next door. I have every intention to fix it. I want to fix it. In theory, I should be able to fix it. But every time I go back to survey the potential construction site I realize that I literally have no idea where to even begin. Do I need to sink a new post? Do I need cement for that? Does Home Depot sell boards the size of my pre-existing fence sections? Do I need a circular saw? Are the chances that I could actually fix the fence higher or lower than the chances that I will wake up one morning and it will have magically fixed itself? There is part of me that wants to send Shelbi and Elliott away for a weekend, have my brother Luke (who is roughly as handy as I am) over for 48 hours with the intention of fixing the fence and then just see what happens. I would absolutely hire a film crew to do a documentary on those two days because the results would be fascinating. Pretty much any scenario is on the table including us burning the entire fence down, someone taking a nail in the head and dropping $1200 at Lowe's somehow. "You boys sure you need a soldering iron and a generator for this job?"

But, at the very least, I now can say that Elliott and I built something together, even if he was only interested for about 30 seconds before running out of the room with the screwdriver and stabbing his oversized teddy bear with it.

The S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G entry

Matthew Sherman — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:49:00 GMT

Shelbi and I have reached the point in parenthood where our conversations now resemble a 3rd grade spelling bee more than stimulating discussions of current events. We used to have to spell out a handful of words to prevent our dog from going ballistic. the words "treat", "walk", "outside" and "bye-bye" were catalysts for spastic barking and jumping to the point of Einstein giving himself full-on asthma attacks. But now, do to Einstein's old age and the adjustments he has made to life with a toddler, he is more difficult to rile up.

Say "treat" and he will lift his head curiously but now he'll simply rise slowly to his feet as if to say "Sure, I mean, I'll take one but, just to let you know, I've already had almost an entire banana, half a bowl of whole wheat pasta and I got into a dirty diaper that you guys haven't discovered yet so I'm pretty stuffed." And when we say "bye-bye" he has come to terms with the fact that, 97% of the time, we're talking only to Elliott and, in all likelihood, will be leaving him behind.

But, within the past month, some new buzzwords have developed that can generate a least 30 minutes of unpleasantness if they are uttered without the means or the desire to back them up. The most dangerous of these is "Muppets." Elliott can be in a full sprint in the opposite direction, en route to a toy or, more likely, to the try and splash in the toilet, and even muttering Muppets under your breath will cause him to turn his head violently in a way that would give an older person's neck a nearly fatal case of whiplash. Often he won't be able to stop his momentum quickly enough, causing him to fall over before frantically crawling back to his feet and running to the TV while saying "Mupp-ah?" over and over with increasing intensity."

And, if that word simply came up in conversation and we had no intention of actually putting on the Muppets (which is more often the case than not) God help us all. The boy will fall to his knees, sobbing and clawing at the television as if pleading to his own deity. A similar scenario occurs if we say the word "bath" and are unable to follow through with all that that word normally entails. You've got your wailing, your desperate pulling at the bathroom doorknob, your unintelligible shouting at us in anger that, most likely can be translated as: "Why? Why would you say that? You said bath and it's all I can thing about now! I'll never be happy again unless I can get in the bath!"

Shelbi and I are constantly underestimating how much Elliott understands and, when in doubt, it is now probably safest for us to simply spell out anything that he would have even the slightest chance of comprehending. Yesterday evening we were at our friends' house and were attempting to show off the handful of words Elliott has in his repertoire. (By "words" I mean, the five or six things he says that sound slightly different than his usual shrieks and babbles.) One of his newest words is "cheese" (also perhaps his favorite food). While he was plowing through blueberries I innocently started trying to get him to say the word. He complied (a miracle in its own right as he has a tendency to give both Shelbi and I a withering stare when asked to perform, chiding us silently for treating him like a circus monkey).

This time he got the word out, which is simply the "ch" sound. But, after a few seconds, he squirmed off of his chair despite our protests and toddled into the kitchen. He then proceeded to run his hand along our friends' countertops saying "ch-, ch-, ch-!" because, in his mind, he had just been promised a delicious snack that was far more interesting than blueberries. So put that one on the spelling list as well for now.

Postscript: A special thanks to Mike and Toni for allowing us to absentmindedly treat their home like our son's nursery. Last night it suddenly occurred to me that we did everything from raiding their DVD collection in search of a rumored Muppets DVD to pilfer their fridge, without asking, for a piece of cheese. And that's on top of the normal eating-related messes that an 18-month-old boy has a tendency to create. With each passing day Shelbi and I become more and more like the parents we swore we'd never be. Perhaps that actually means we're finally discovering what it's like to be normal parents.

I'm posting this picture so that, when displayed side-by-side, Elliott will clearly prefer my blog to Shelbi's.

Las Vegas Part 2

Matthew Sherman — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:47:00 GMT

At some point during our first evening in Las Vegas, just a few short hours after we landed, I turned to Shelbi and said "We have to be standing in the most superfluous and unnecessary spot on the entire planet." I can't remember exactly when I said it. It might have been while we were standing outside a Coach store which also bordered the Venetian hotel's indoor canal, complete with singing gondoliers under a surprisingly lifelike artificial sky which made it always appear that it was dusk. There were so many moments similar to that one which just made you stop momentarily and say "Seriously? This is a real place?" I wonder if, for people who live near The Strip in Las Vegas, giving someone directions like "Oh, you just walk by the life-sized Arc de Triomphe until you see the bar with the cage dancers. Then you're going to see a 200-foot mosaic of Donny and Marie Osmond. Take a right past roller coaster and if you reach the volcano you've gone too far" eventually becomes commonplace. With that being said, I would go back in a heartbeat. So, as a means of boring people as little as possible, I'll try and sum up our brief vacation as succinctly as possible.

Gambling Highlights:

People's gambling stories rank just slightly above hearing about people's dreams and their fantasy football teams in terms of how much interest other people have in them so I'll keep these short. My biggest individual win was hitting 4-of-a-kind in video poker and netting a quick $50. I also made $20 on my lone baseball bet of the Yankees beating the Dodgers. Shelbi's highlights include having more faith in my Giants than I did and winning $7 on that game. Another highlight for her would be making it home without having to pawn her wedding ring. Not a strong showing from her.

Gambling Lowlights:

Shelbi and I played most of our blackjack at a small, cheap casino right next to our hotel that was dingy and comfortable. But, on Saturday, while walking The Strip, Shelbi and I stopped into Bill's Casino, which was one of the only places we found that offered $5 minimum bet blackjack during the weekend. The one cheap table was seemingly full as we patiently waiting for two seats to open up. Then we realized only one person at the table was actually betting. Eventually one of the men seated looked over his shoulder at us, asked if we wanted to sit down and, when we nodded, he and four other men got up simultaneously. It was then when I realized what had happened. The dealer was a quick-shuffling Asian woman with a thick accent and a sadistic smile and she had completely demolished an entire bachelor party in less than an hour. They were completely shell-shocked. Broke and, up to that point, physically unable to stand up from their seats. From the amount of money that the one remaining survivor was betting per hand, I wouldn't be surprised if the group lost $1000 cumulatively. I should have known just to walk away then and there. But the trusty Law of Averages told me that, at some point, her luck had to shift somewhat. We were at the table for no more than 12 minutes. In that time I lost $25 and Shelbi was down $35. We couldn't have seen more than 10 hands. Out of those 10 hands, she dealt herself a 20 seven times. She also hit a six-card 21 against my double-down 20. And, while most blackjack dealers at least pretend to be rooting for you, this one openly mocked her victims. That $60 debacle constituted the entirety of our losings for the trip.

The other lowlight occurred during the U.S./Ghana World Cup game. I was seated in a crowded sports book which proved to be a phenomenal atmosphere. Shelbi opted to hang out by the pool during this time and, in the two short hours when we were separated for the trip, she was invited to the secluded topless pool at our hotel and, after turning down that offer, had a one-hour conversation with an Israeli man who told her many racist tidbits about Muslims. But, moving on, during the soccer game, I had money on two long shots to score the first goal for the U.S. Neither came through although one of my selections botched a one-on-the-goalie chance that a professional soccer player should score 80% of the time. But that didn't matter to me. I just wanted to watch the game surrounded by a huge, energetic crowd. For the most part, I got that. However, there was an obese man directly in front of me who was loudly cheering and fist-pumping every time the U.S. missed a shot or turned the ball over. Now, it's one thing to have money on Ghana. Under the circumstances it was actually a smart bet. However, it's a completely different thing to overtly root against your entire country to win $50. If this guy was sitting in a London pub with $50 riding on Germany, he would have been drawn and quartered for his actions. It was even more despicable than you can imagine.

Hotel Highlights:

The Venetian is insane in about 100 different ways. It was, quite literally, two-thirds of a mile walk from the front lobby to our room. There are complete replicas of Michelangelo's masterpieces on the ceilings and, as mentioned, an enormous indoor canal winding from one tower to another. I told Shelbi on more than one occasion that I really don't feel like I need to go to Venice now because I'm pretty sure it's exactly like this hotel. Perhaps my favorite moment of each day came each morning. Due to our aforementioned inability to sleep in, we would saunter down to the lobby around 8 a.m. and, without fail, each day the elevator would open and we would be face to face with someone who could barely stand up and who, in all likelihood, would have vomited all over both of us had we stayed in place for five more seconds. These were the people who were just getting back to the hotel from the previous night.

Hotel Lowlights:

Unbeknownst to me when booking the trip, the Venetian also boasts the hottest nightclub in Las Vegas. So, every evening, it looked like a Boeing 747 loaded with sluts exploded in the lobby of our hotel. Also, with multiple bars, trendy restaurants and the topless pool, the Venetian was also a magnet for guys who liked to begin and end every sentence with the word "Bro". So I guess what I loved so much about the hotel was that it completely fit Shelbi's and my style. I also somehow managed to rack up an $80 bill at the poolside bar by ordering just four weak drinks and a plate of nachos.

Surrealism Highlight:

On our final night in Vegas, we opted to not see a show and instead went to a nice dinner. We scouted out one of the nicest of many restaurants in our hotel that Shelbi giddily informed me was a "celebrity haunt." Depending on your definition, I suppose that turned out to be true. As we were looking at the menu to make sure that the prices were only exorbitant as opposed to suicidal, Erik Estrada loudly walked by us and straight into the restaurant, despite what we were told was a two-hour wait to sit inside. Check out the guy's IMDB page sometime and tell me if he's really earned that treatment. We also encountered two soap opera stars (the Daytime Emmy's were apparently in Vegas the next night) and were later informed that Carrie Underwood was having her bachelor party at the attached night club. Shelbi and I were seated outside where the wait was considerably shorter, got a view of the utterly ridiculous Treasure Island pirate show across the seat and had deep-fried Oreos for dessert.

Surrealism Lowlight:

Earlier in the trip, we visited Bauman's Rare Books at Shelbi's insistence. It actually turned out to be pretty amazing. Sitting on the table as you enter, free to touch, was an actual copy of Samuel Johnson's original dictionary. That blew my mind. Shelbi was literally in tears at some of the items on display and for sale. As we were about to leave, a woman walked in saying that she heard this store was in possession of mementos from Winston Churchill. One of the employees went into a back room and brought out a few items, diligently and intelligently explaining each of them. One was a letter written to a friend during World War II etc... The customer explained that her husband loved Winston Churchill and, as if she was picking out a candy bar, pointed to one of the letters, hastily cut a check for $1,800 and walked out with it.

But now we're back and Elliott apparently didn't miss us in the least. He was fantastic as always and had what was probably one of the most fun and action-packed weekends of his 18-month life with Grandma and Grandpa. And I didn't even have to sell his birth certificate to an illegal immigrant to make sure we could still pay our mortgage this month.

Las Vegas Part 1

Matthew Sherman — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:07:00 GMT

So Shelbi and I went to Vegas last weekend in what was the first time for each of us. But, probably more momentous, was the fact that we were leaving Elliott for more than just one night for the first time. It was a strange and somewhat worrisome feeling knowing that we weren't going to see our boy for three entire days. I figured that the weekend was going to be a lot like what happens when there is a power outage. For the first hour or two you still instinctively switch on a light switch every time you walk into a room and are surprised for a split second before realizing that you're an idiot. I thought it'd be like that without Elliott. "Well, if we're going to go to the pool we'll have to do it after 1:00 because Elliott will be napping... Oh... I'm an idiot."

But, actually, that didn't happen much at all. If anything, the experience was a bit overwhelming due to the sheer amount of freedom we had. "We... we could stay up until 3 a.m. if we wanted to! We can go anywhere we want and, if we forget to bring a string cheese or a graham cracker with us it wouldn't be a complete disaster!"

Probably the hardest part of the entire process was actually preparing Elliott for a long weekend with Shelbi's parents. Shelbi and I have a tendency to over-prepare for things like this. This was evidenced in our first March Madness trip with Elliott in which it probably would have been more practical to simply throw the contents of our house into a huge U-Haul instead of pushing my Camry to obscene limits. This time around, Shelbi and I deliberately packed as lightly as possible, taking just one carry-on and no checked luggage to Vegas... And there was still no more than a few square inches of space in my car when we drove to drop Elliott off at Grandma and Grandpa's due to all of his essentials.

The strangest of these essentials was the hand-written note we had to leave which gave Shelbi's parents the right to make any and all medical decisions for Elliott over the weekend. I remember my mom filling these out for me when I was spending a week with a friend or my grandparents. It's a standard formality but, at the same time, I always had the miniscule fear in the back of my head that my friend's parents might take me in for a reverse circumcision and there would be nothing I could do about it.

The packing experience was relatively traumatic but that had nothing to do with Elliott. With our flight leaving at 1 p.m. on Thursday we were determined to have as low-key of a morning as possible. We wanted to be completely packed and ready to go when we woke up. At around 8 p.m. we were well on our way. Elliott was asleep and most of his stuff as well as ours was neatly organized on our couch. Then, from the other room, I heard Shelbi ask: "Have you seen my license and debit card?" Now, in some households, that can be a jarring and even frightening question. In ours, it provokes the same reaction as the question: "What time is it?"

Shelbi 'loses' her keys and/or her debit card at least half a dozen times per day. And when Shelbi asks this question I always slowly get out of my chair and first check to see if A. she is holding onto them or B. they are literally hanging from a piece of string directly in front of her face. If none of these are the case, I usually check our bookshelf, our computer desk or a pair of pants she was wearing and the item is usually found in no more than 30 seconds.

I checked those usual locations and came up empty. I asked Shelbi what she was wearing when she last had her cards. She pointed to a pair of jeans that were now sitting in Elliott's Pack and Play. They weren't there. I looked throughout the entire house for the next 30 minutes without any luck. After more than an hour of searching, Shelbi has resorted to checking things like the freezer and inside the piano. At this point I stated, for the record: "I still think the most likely thing is that they're in a pocket of yours somewhere. Are you sure you didn't wear anything else with pockets to Rite-Aid?"

She claimed she had not. So, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. I did things like, search through our garbage full of coffee grounds and unmentionables twice and drove to Rite-Aid where I asked the half-comatose cashier if anyone had left a debit card and license a few hours ago. Her response was to look at me blankly for 5 seconds and then slowly open one drawer in front of her. She looked down, without moving anything, and looked back up at me. "Nope." I wasn't entirely satisfied by the search but the night security guard at Rite-Aid always looks like he has been waiting his entire life for someone to raise his voice at a cashier so that he can finally utilize his club and pepper spray.

I returned home to no avail and we tore the house apart from room to room once again. To make matters worse, the website for Shelbi's bank was down for maintenance that evening until 3 a.m. so there was no way for us to tell if the card had been stolen. At around 1 a.m. Elliott woke up and, instead of simply rocking him back to sleep, we let him come out to the living room with us, handed him my credit card and asked: "Elliott, do you know where mommy's cards are? Did you take them? Can you find them for us?" That was probably the low point. We spent the next hour finding Shelbi's passport to use for ID on the plane. She was finally able to log on to her bank account and see that no new activity had happened and so she planned on heading to the bank at 9 a.m. to see if she could get an emergency replacement card.

We went to be a little after 3 a.m. and, perhaps the most disturbing part of this entire scenario was the fact that both of us woke up, without the aid of an alarm clock, at 6:30 a.m. This kid has made it impossible to sleep in for the rest of our lives. I did a quick search through the house with the aid of the light of day, Shelbi took her shower. I then went into our bedroom and was searching through a clothes hamper to find a pair of my pants. Near the bottom of the hamper I found a pair of Shelbi's jeans that looked eerily similar to the ones she claimed to have worn to Rite-Aid the previous evening. Sure enough, there were all of her cards... in a pocket. I walked into the bathroom and showed her the debit card. The ultimate revenge would have been to never tell her where I found it. But, at the same time, I also wanted her to know that I had been right. I think, ultimately, that was more satisfying.

There will be more about Las Vegas itself in the near future...

Fire, whiskey, hatchets, soccer

Matthew Sherman — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 05:28:00 GMT

I've been off the grid for bit as, Saturday was my older brother's wedding and, to celebrate, the three Sherman brothers took a camping trip to Eastern Oregon the previous weekend. We rented an old ranger's station in the Wallow Mountains and it turned out to be as cool as it sounds. The website for the station said to be on your guard for rattlesnakes, bears and mountain lions. We were hoping to see all three of those animals fighting each other at some point but, unfortunately, didn't see any of those creatures. That was perhaps the only negative of the entire trip, however. Before I get to the main story I want to relay from a week ago, I feel I need to hand out a few brief awards.

1. The Martyr Award: While Shelbi constantly reminded me that I was leaving her alone with Elliott for three days and going to a place where I would have no cell phone reception, the fact remains that she allowed me to do this even before school was out for the summer. Frankly, she could have given me 50 times as much crap as she did and I would still give her a shout-out for ultimately signing off on this excursion.

2. The Magellan Award: To my little brother Peter. I'll put it this way. If my Peter and I were partners on The Amazing Race, we would probably get along swimmingly, make a lot of inappropriate jokes and advance a long ways until I completely choked during a competition to blow it for us. If my older brother Lukas and I were partners on the Amazing Race, we would have driven our car into a river, panicked and eaten our cameraman all before we even reached the first airport.

It's not so much that Peter's sense of direction is astoundingly good, it's just that, mine and Lukas's is so mind-blowingly awful that he comes across like Henry the Navigator. We left late Thursday afternoon which put us close to our destination at about 10:30 p.m. We had poor directions from the website and apparently the recession has forced all of Eastern Oregon to drastically scale back the number of road signs they're allowed to post. But Peter brilliantly pieced information together from two sets of directions to find the unmarked road we needed to take, all the while enduring multiple comments from Lukas and I about how he couldn't possibly be right.

3. The Whiskey Drinking Award: It was a three-way tie between the Sherman brothers.

So, the great part about three days of camping is that there is virtually no agenda. There was only one thing I wanted to do while we were gone and that was to watch the U.S. vs. England game in the World Cup. I googled sports bars within a 50-mile radius of where we were staying and got two hits, both in Baker City. Baker City is about the only thing in Oregon east of Pendleton that you could even justify calling a city. And, needless to say, I figured that the chances of a bar being open at 11 a.m. were slim enough in their own right. And, even if one was open, the chances of us asking to put on the soccer game and then being brained from behind by a pool cue had to be at least even money.

But I was determined to see this game. Heck, I was even prepared to ask to rent a hotel room with cable for two hours while enduring the bizarre look the three of us surely would have received from the front desk. You see, I love the World Cup. I might even love it more than the NCAA Tournament. It's really that close. I love watching the bizarre match-ups between countries with nothing in common or, even better, between two countries who clearly hate each other. I love the fans and the energy. I love making jokes about how Kim Jong Il has probably already had the newspapers printed in North Korea proclaiming his country's victory in the World Cup. "All other nations forfeit when confronted with North Korea's unbeatable soccer menace." And I love that the U.S. is actually an underdog in soccer.

Anyway, we drove about 45 minutes into Baker City on Saturday morning, turned the corner onto Main Street and the three of us let out a simultaneous gasp. Stretched out in front of us for the next two miles were hundreds upon hundreds of motorcycles on both sides of the road. And there were, literally, thousands of bikers lining the sidewalks, visiting the shops and checking out local vendors. We had unwittingly stumbled into the heart of the Hells Canyon Motorcycle Rally. The next two minutes resembled the final scene from The Birds as we crept down the road slowly, flanked by hundreds and hundreds of bikers on either side of us. My Toyota Camry already stuck out enough as it was in Eastern Oregon by the simple fact that it was not a pick-up. Now the only thing that could have signaled that we were clearly outsiders even more would have been if my car also had an Obama bumper sticker.

We parked on a side street and found our way to the sports bar I had looked up. It was clearly open and likely had been for at least three hours. With plenty of trepidation we squeezed our way through a sea of leather apparel and saw that the the two TVs above the bar were both turned to NASCAR. Not a great sign. But Peter bravely approached the bartender and asked if the TV in the back could be turned to soccer. After giving us a perplexed look, probably from trying to figure out what the word soccer meant, he handed us the remote. We hunkered down and ordered beers as it was one of only two occasions where ordering a beer before noon is socially acceptable.

1. While playing a morning round of golf.

2. While watching World Cup soccer.

There were plenty of double takes from patrons with fabulous facial hair as they walked by the TV to the bathrooms and one particularly crusty individual sitting on a stool muttered "If it doesn't have wheels it ain't a sport." Right before the game started, a trio of middle-aged women sat down behind us. I originally presumed it was because the front of the bar was packed and the only seats remaining were by perhaps the only ones in the establishment not wearing chaps. But, moments later, all of my assumptions went out the window. There was a loud and high-pitched: "Yeeeeah! Go England!" in what was clearly a British accent.

The three of us quickly turned around. The women behind us were all bikers but, not only were they also huge soccer fans, they were originally from Liverpool. Yep. We found a trio of soccer-crazy Brits in Baker City, Oregon. They knew all of the American players who played in the Premier League, they gave us a warranted razzing when the U.S. gave up a goal three minutes into the game. In short, they were awesome.

The joke was ultimately on them as England coughed up the win on a horrendous goalie gaffe late in the first half. One of the women's mother's texted her at the end of the game with the simple message: "What an utter disgrace." USA! USA! USA! But the three of were gracious enough to avoid making any Revolutionary War jokes.

Downtown Baker City during the rally. It's

apparently a pretty big deal.

Dad makes a sacrifice

Matthew Sherman — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 05:34:00 GMT

I'll say this upfront. I'm not entirely thrilled with a particular incident last week but, at the same time, I suppose I can't really argue with the results either. I have to say that, for nearly 18 months now, I've been pretty good at not pushing Elliott one way or another by inundating him with toy trucks or whipping Nerf footballs at him. And that's probably a good thing because I get the sense that he's pretty malleable. Pretty much the only things we ever show him on youtube are old clips of The Muppet Show and Sesame Street and, after getting to watch about 10 minutes of Muppets Take Manhattan not long ago and now that's the only thing he wants. Shelbi walked down an aisle at Toys R Us the other day with DVDs and he couldn't stop pointing at all of them, no matter what was on the cover saying "Mup-pah?" "Mup-pah?"

So I've let Elliott pretty much explore whatever he finds interesting at his own pace. And that decision has yielded some previously unforeseen consequences. Because, while Elliott has a wide variety of interests, ranging from adding new contacts on my cell phone and rearranging our computer desktop to climbing up on chairs, grabbing the cheese slicer and then trying to fillet off his bellybutton, he definitely prefers a few select activities.

First off, my boy loves to sweep and mop. He completely freaks out when he wakes up in the morning, runs into the kitchen and finds that we have moved our broom and our swiffer into the garage. Interestingly, this is almost assuredly not a habit he picked up from either Shelbi or me. Elliott is by far the most diligent cleaner in our home. Cleaning supplies are close to being his favorite toys in the world.

That is until about a week ago. I'll just come out and say it. Elliott is now the proud owner of his own baby doll. Elliott loves babies. He can't see one in the mall or a picture of a toddler (even himself) without desperately needing to kiss it. The other day I phoned Shelbi at work and said: "Elliott just pulled out two bags of diapers and is now sitting on the floor in his room going back and forth kissing the babies on each package." She paused. "We might need to get him his own baby doll," she said. And when I didn't immediately start screaming while taking Elliott outside and whipping footballs at him, she took that as me giving my blessing to go out and buy him one that night.

Shelbi and Elliott went to Toys R Us that evening and into the giant aisle of baby dolls. It was Elliott's Valhalla. He eventually settled on one particular doll although, for a while, it was touch and go between his fairly innocuous choice and an anatomically correct baby that is used to teach potty training.

So, yes, my son plays with dolls. Or at least one doll. The day after we made the purchase, I put Elliott down for his nap and left his doll on the changing table. Elliott immediately popped up screaming and yelling "Ba-ba! Ba-ba!" I looked at him curiously since he has never slept with anything in his crib before. I handed him his doll and he immediately laid back down, cuddling it and was asleep in minutes. Now he can't sleep without it. The other night, Elliott was in the midst of talking himself to sleep when suddenly Shelbi heard piercing screams coming from his room. Instead of finding that he was pinned under a collapsed crib, which is what the intensity of his cries would have signified, she found that Elliott had simply dropped his baby (which I have named Fred) out of the crib.

Elliott also loves pretending to feed his baby which is, admittedly, adorable and makes me think he will make a great big brother someday. That is until Elliott is angry at something and then proceeds to grab Fred off the coach by the arm and hurl him across the room.

Elliott and Fred being cuddle buddies.

Dog vs. Boy

Matthew Sherman — Mon, 31 May 2010 15:53:00 GMT

It's a pretty big day in the Sherman household. Shortly after Elliott was born, I remember thinking what a monumental occasion it would be when my son was actually more intelligent than our dog. And I think that torch has officially been passed. Not in every aspect obviously but, on the whole, I think I would finally have to give Elliott the slight nod. Here is a tally sheet I put together comparing their intelligence levels in a number of important fields.

Communication:

Einstein:

Extremely effective but only in a limited capacity. He can tell us when he needs to go outside, when he wants food, when he wants water and when he wants attention. Four basic needs, all easy to understand.

Elliott:

While he is still barely talking, the kid is exceptionally talented at letting us know what he wants/needs. When he's thirsty, he will run to the refrigerator and bang on it. When he's hungry he will run to his high chair and claw at it. When he wants to read a book, he brings one to us. When he's tired, he rubs his eyes and turns into something resembling the demon baby that manifests itself at the end of The Incredibles. When he wants to watch the Muppets, he runs up to us, holding a Muppets DVD and, in an incredibly pathetic display, cries "Mup-pah!" Mup-pah!" over and over.

Verdict:

Nod to Elliott here but only recently.

Comprehension:

Einstein:

Tough to tell. He knows a handful of tricks but is also smart enough to know that, with the amount of crap he has to put up with now from Elliott, he doesn't really have to jump through hoops anymore to get a treat. Einstein does score big points in this category, however, for learning the phrase "All done" before Elliott. When we were trying to incorporate that into Elliott's signs and phrases following meal time, it only took Einstein about a week or two to know that when we said "All done", it meant we were about to get Elliott out of his high chair, which meant it was his new favorite time of the day since he got to scavenge for dropped sweet potato pancakes and blueberries.

Elliott:

Shelbi and I are both equally petrified by the fact that Elliott probably understands FAR more than we even give him credit for. He has great short term memory. When we ask him where his milk is, he will run down the hall, remembering that he dropped it and it then proceeded to roll under his crib. He can point to various objects in books with a decent percentage of accuracy. He has about five animals noises as well although, frankly, his dog, cat, tiger, cow and sheep all sound vaguely constipated.

Verdict:

Another narrow victory for Elliott.

Potty Training:

Einstein:

Even in his old age, the guy is the model of consistency. You can set your watch by when he will need to go out in the morning. And, when left alone for long periods of time, he has a steel trap for a bladder. He could be used in commercials for Doggie Flomax. Of course, he's only brilliant potty trained when he wants to be. When he's feeling neglected or, when it looks like it might be stormy outside and he might get his dainty paws wet, he'll just lift his leg by our front door.

Elliott:

Also extremely consistent. And, as another point in his favor, the sign in our house that says: "Elliott has gone __ days without peeing on anyone" is well into the triple digits. He is also very good at unintentionally alerting us when he needs to be changed. He will be in the middle of running around the house like a madman and, quite literally, drop whatever it is he's holding, bend his knees slightly, clench his fists and groan for a few seconds. There's not mistaking that.

Verdict:

Einstein in a landslide.

Ingenuity:

Einstein:

As smart as we believe Einstein to be, this is not his strong suit. This is a dog who will try and bury a bone in our love seat by clawing desperately at the cushion for 20 minutes straight. Also, if you put a laundry basket in between his usual route from the back door to his food dish, he's completely flummoxed and shows very little motivation to even try to find a different way around.

Elliott:

Practically since birth, Elliott's entire life has been spent trying to look at, touch and/or eat everything he sees. To this point, it's been a pretty frustrating 17 months. Even when he started walking there was a huge portion of his existence that was still off limits. The other day, he doubled his productivity. He discovered that he could get to twice as much by simply pushing our kitchen chairs around the house and then climbing up on them. To his delight this gave him access to our kitchen table, to 95% of our refrigerator magnets, to the window overlooking our backyard and to our computer where he has already renamed multiple folders and, somehow, accessed our hard drive where, I believe, he could have erased it with another click or two.

Verdict:

Elliott wins by a large amount

Sneakiness

Einstein:

What our dog lacks in ingenuity and motivation, he more than makes up for in deviousness. He keeps mental notes throughout the course of an entire day of things we've dropped and will lie in wait for hours for his opportunity. Although his nails usually make him sound like Fred Astaire's spastic and uncoordinated brother is in our house, I swear Einstein has the ability to retract them into his body because I never hear him when he slinks back to our bedroom to thoroughly lick our pillows. (It's even more disgusting than it sounds.)

Elliott:

Subtly is not really his strength yet. When he is racing toward our computer and I snatch him up, he will now point to the piano and say "Dada". Meaning: "Hey, I haven't heard you hack away on the piano for a while. That might be a treat for everyone. You just head over there and I'll hang out here. The fact that the computer is over here and you will be over there with your back turned has no bearing on my suggestion. I swear." Nice try chief. He does like to tease, however, by holding out a piece of food to the dog or a toy to us and then quickly snatching it back while shaking his head and laughing.

Verdict:

No one is sneakier than Einstein.

Final Verdict:

Up until the chair-moving incident, which is now a common occurrence throughout the day and has already resulted in a fairly spectacular fall, I would have called it a draw but, Elliott, at the age of 17.5 months officially passed our 10-year-old dog in intelligence. But, in a stinkyness battle, I think things are still too close to call.

An open letter to Huggies

Matthew Sherman — Thu, 27 May 2010 05:29:00 GMT

Elliott came down with a bit of a bug yesterday which meant I got to spend a much higher percentage of my day at or around his changing table. As I changed him over and over the smiling character of Simba from The Lion King on the front of each of his Huggies began to look more and more like it was just taunting me. And eventually I got to thinking. Why does every disposal diaper in existence have some form of childish cartoon character on it? I understand that the obvious answer to this question is that it is a basic marketing technique and is brilliant from Nickelodeon's standpoint to have a parent looking Dora the Explorer in the face 10 times a day.

But, from the diaper manufacturer's standpoint, I think they're missing the boat somewhat. No parent makes a decision on what diapers they buy because of what goofy character happens to be on the bag. And, obviously, for at least the first two years of a child's life, he or she is incapable of even comprehending or caring about what insignia he or she might be wearing. After the age of 2 I completely understand a child wanting a superhero or a princess on his or her diaper. When I was little I used to try and convince my mom that I had miniscule cuts on my fingers just so I could sport G.I. Joe Band-Aids.

But I would like to submit that, for the first two years of a child's life, what's on a diaper should be marketed to the parents. So, from a male perspective, and as the primary diaper changer in my household, here's my idea. Sports-themed diapers. It's simple and brilliant. If my San Francisco Giants drop a crucial series to the hated Los Angeles Dodgers, what could possibly lift my spirits more than waking up the next morning, getting Elliott out of bed, changing his first diaper and having the ungodly mess that he has created overnight be laying right on top of a Dodgers logo? And you could even kick things up a notch. How about a picture of Manny Ramirez on the seat? If you think I wouldn't shell out an extra buck or two to make that happen you're crazy.

Got a big bet down on the Super Bowl? Your kid's going to go through a pack of diapers in that two-week layover. And what could be better than having your kid push a little bad karma onto the opposition? And during a slow time of the sports year? I might have a hankering to pick up a package of Ben Roethlisbergers because, if anyone deserves to have their face crapped on, it's him. Perfect for Father's Day or a great stocking stuffer.

Now I know that men are not the primary diapers buyers in the market. But I think this can work across gender lines and could be very topical. Every season on The Bachelor there's always that one bitchy, horse-faced girl who sticks around week after week for reasons no one can understand. Kind of annoying right ladies? Would it make you feel any better to strap a picture of her onto your child after your kid has just eaten an enormous bowl of blueberries? You bet it would. And is there a celebrity who recently cheated on his or her significant other? Sounds like it's time to rush some Jesse James diapers into the market. (We've got your back Sandra.)

I searched the internet to see if my sports diaper idea in particular had already been taken and... it has. Kind of. Check this out.

Seriously guys? That's the best you can do? First of all, the skunk on both the front and back of the diapers implies that, in fact, both Boston and New York stink. Second, your favorite team, presumably Boston in this case, is still getting peed on. And third, the logos imply that while Boston is "No. 1" they also imply that, while not as good as Boston, New York is still second best. Amateurs. (Also, according to the website, it sells 12 of these diapers for $32. Yikes.)

I realize now that this post makes me sound far more like Andy Rooney than I intended. ("What's the deal with diapers? I wore them as a baby and now I have to wear them again!") But, as with many of my other half-baked ideas, I think I'm on to something here. So if anyone out there is friends with an executive from Huggies or Pampers, put them in touch with my people.