The Final Countdown…

With Greta’s kindergarten starting next Monday, today marks the official beginning of our last full week together before “big girl” school starts. And while I’m very proud of the impossibly sweet, funny, intelligent young lady Greta has become over the past five years, part of me is dreading the many changes to come. I know we’ll always have plenty of time together but I also know that things change when kids go to school. I guess I’m just kinda bummed that the first great chapter of our wild and crazy time together is coming to an end.

With a few notable exceptions, I’ve been by Greta’s side almost every day since she was born and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the world. I know it sounds corny, but, she’s been my favorite “production” of all. She has also been, quite literally, my life for the past five years.

And though I’m sad and happy and kind of terrified (especially of getting up early every day to get her to school on time! Yikes!) by the strange and winding road ahead of us, I’m looking forward to it as well. Every day with Greta is an adventure and no school schedule is gonna change that!

So, here’s to our last week of total freedom together, sweetie! Let’s get busy!

 

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Questioning our “Elf on the Shelf”

I don’t know if it’s her age (four and a half must be the magic number!) or what, but, Greta is totally Christmas-crazed this year. Everything about the holiday is new and exciting and wonderful and as you can imagine, it’s been a total blast. All she wants to do is bake and decorate and shop and wrap presents…it’s hilarious.

And another one of Greta’s favorite things to do lately is talk the ear off of our beloved Elf on the Shelf Christmas elf, Paul. For those of you who don’t know the story, Elf on the Shelf elves arrive at your home in early December to watch over the kids. Then, every night after everyone is in bed, the elf flies home to the North Pole to give Santa an update on the child’s behavior and every day when the little one’s wake up, the elf has moved to a new perch in the household.

Aside from being a really cute and very fun tradition, the elf is also very useful as a disciplinary tool…especially when your wee one is throwing an epic, candy-fueled tantrum. I simply have to ask: “What would Paul think of that?” and Greta usually shapes up straight away. So, thanks, Paul!

Anyway, like I said, Greta loves looking for him every morning and actually spends a lot of time “chatting” with Paul about her day, what she wants for Christmas, I even caught her showing him some of her superfly new ballet moves one time. It’s very cute.

And then, this past weekend, everything changed when a very concerned Greta asked Mrs. Yeti and myself why Paul (who she had been carefully scrutinizing all afternoon) has a tag on him. “I thought he was real, but he has a tag, like a toy.” Greta said. “Is Paul a toy?”

Stunned by the question, Mrs. Yeti and I shared a blank look and then I quickly replied that the tag was like the luggage tags that we put on our suitcases when we fly on an airplane and that Paul has one in case he gets lost on his way to the North Pole every night. Greta stared at us for a long skeptical beat and then muttered: “Hmmm…OK.”

I think she bought my story, but, Greta is a pretty observant kid, so, I’m afraid the magic of Paul might not last as long as we’d hoped. And I still can’t help wondering why the fudge Paul has a tag in the first place?! I mean, I know there are laws about all that stuff, but, surely the Elf on a Shelf could have a freaking removable tag! Urgh…

And on top of all that, we went to see our usual Santa this weekend and Greta said she needed to come up with something else to ask him for since she already told the low-rent Santa we saw a couple of weeks back at a street fair what she wanted. Thinking fast, we told her that the previous Santa was just one of the man in red’s helpers, and that seemed to work. But, wow, this magic of Christmas business is hard work, man…

Stay-at-home-Yeti on “Ricki Lake” today!

If you needed further proof that the Mayans were right and that the world really is ending today, look no further than this. Roughly four months after it was taped, myself and Mrs. Yeti will be appearing on today’s episode of “The Ricki Lake Show”. That’s right, the episode we never thought would air is finally seeing the light of day!

I’ll fill you in on all the behind-the-scenes drama later, but, for now, just wanted to give you time to set your Tivos and pop up some popcorn before the big show. I’m kidding, of course. Our appearance is so brief — Mrs. Yeti and I are shoehorned into the final segment on stay-at-home-dads — that if you blink, you’ll miss it. Seriously, it goes by really fast, so, keep your eyes peeled!

Quote of the day: Morgan Spurlock

We’ve been Morgan Spurlock fans for years and he is the king of great quotes. But, while discussing manhood today on The Jeff Probst Show — which is awesome, by the way! — Spurlock said something that made me wanna stand up and cheer, especially since he was talking about stay-at-home-dads at the time!

Anyway, this is what Spurlock said in response to someone’s suggestion that staying at home with the kids was women’s work that somehow made a man less-manly:

“There is nothing more manly than being a good father”

Amen, brother!

Mom’s One Line A Day Memory Book

As a loud and proud SAHD, I suppose the title and even the pinkish color of the new “Mom’s One Line A Day – A Five Year Memory Book” should rub me the wrong me. But, the idea behind it is so cool, that, hell, even I — a lowly father without a toddler quote book of my own — have been known to write in Mrs. Yeti’s new book on the fly.

The concept is simple, every time your toddler says something sweet or weird or surprisingly deep, you now have a beautifully-bound datebook to write it down in. Cooler still is the fact that the pages have plenty of room to record not only the context of the quote, but also, a whopping five years worth of quotes. Awesome!

We keep our copy with a pen by the kitchen table and have been filling it up like crazy. A favorite recent entry was what Greta told us after she’d finished watching one of her Barbie movies. Sighing dramatically, she said: “What a sweet story.” and when we asked her what the story was about, she hesitated for a beat and then replied: “There are too many words to fit in my mouth right now…” Ha! Best movie review I ever heard!

Ooo, the other thing I really dig about the book is the little built-in gold bookmark. I like it because it looks all biblical and shit and is guaranteed to give the book a hip, historical vibe in the years to come. I can just see me in my tweedy smoking jacket quoting from the book at Greta’s wedding. “Ah, let me see, I believe it was way back on April 5th, 2012 when you said…”

Anyway, you can order this book all over the place online, but, we got ours at The Library Store, so, since Mrs. Yeti runs the place, you should too. Oh, and even though there is still not a Dad’s edition of the same book, Chronicle Books does offer a lovely blue-bound generic One Line A Day Memory Book for non-parents too. So, now everyone can write down and cherish all the cool, memorable stuff they, or their chatty children say. Hooray!

Strange days and sticky feet…

Yesterday was kinda weird. Woke up super early for a conference call with my “nemesis” and then had to wait one whole hour for him to call me back. Yep, one hour I coulda been sleeping! Nice. And then, was all set to feel vengeful and angry when I hung up, but, the truth is, I just felt kinda sad. I’ve known this dude for a while now and, yeah, he totally screwed me over and things are probably gonna get really ugly from here on out, but, all I could feel was sad when we hung up. Urgh…maybe I’m too nice.

Anyway, five minutes after I got off the phone the clouds moved in…literally! It had been sunny and nice all morning and then, the gloom set in. Perfect timing, really cheered me up…thanks, weather Gods. On top of all that, Greta wasn’t feeling well, so, we were housebound for most of the morning.

Tried to cheer myself up by cleaning — call me crazy, but that usually works — and then, the vacuum broke. Yep, our fancy-ass Hoover LiNX broke again. But one good thing about fancy-ass vacuums is that they have awesome, thousand-year warranties, so, all I had to do was drive it to a local repair shop where it should be fixed and ready to cheer me up again by Friday. Hooray!

To celebrate this news, Greta (who assured me she was feeling “much better”) and I swung by Toys”R”Us on our way home and admired all the shiny new “Star Wars” and Barbie stuff. Good times! Actually, really good times, we were there for almost two hours. I don’t know which of us had more fun, but, it was, by far, the best part of my day. Speaking of fun, did you know they have Darth Vader-shaped USB drives? Ingenious!

Headed home, made dinner, watched a little Tivo and then I hopped in the shower where I discovered a foam craft sticker stuck to the bottom of my foot. Lord knows how long it had been there, but I had to practically chisel that thing off. It was really, really stuck. I know, totally symbolic, right? Something stuck on me, feeling stuck in general, suddenly unsticking myself from a former colleague, wow…you could go on and on…but all I know is that, like a band-aid, once I ripped that thing off, my foot felt fantastic and I slept like a baby.

Three cheers for the unstuck!

The cure for troubled sleep?

OK, so, we’re only a few days into our vacation up here in Oregon and suddenly Greta is sleeping like a dream…actually, better than that. What’s better than “like a dream”? Um, like two dreams? I dunno, but, the point is, she is sleeping like crazy and it is totally awesome.

I don’t know if it’s the fresh mountain air or that hideous sleeping bag of hers, but she falls asleep and stays asleep almost the minute her tiny head hits the pillow.

Who knows, maybe she needed this vacation as much as we did? Either way, sleep has made a very welcome return to our lives…yay!

Family Road Trip Rule #1: When in doubt…bribe!

Hit the road last week for our annual road trip to Oregon to visit my wife’s family. It’s a long-ass drive, but we love road trips (yes, even with a two-year-old in tow) and the time spent just hanging out with the niece, nephews and assorted brothers and sisters-in-law on the family farm is kind of, well, rejuvenating. I don’t know if it’s the country air or what, but, man alive, do we go home relaxed!

Anyway, I firmly believe that a huge part of the adventure is the actual act of driving there — seriously, we have found that even short-jaunt road trips are great for the soul — and since no one wants to have their soul-cleansing road trip ruined by a screaming toddler, I give you, Family Road Trip Rule # 1: When in doubt…bribe!

I don’t care what your kid’s favorite thing is (be it a food item, a beverage, toy or DVD) but secretly pack a lot of them in your car before you leave. Emphasis on the secret part, if they know how many you’ve packed, your screwed. Bribery only works when your child thinks that the desired item they will do anything for is in very limited supply. So hide your loot well!

Right now, Greta will do almost anything you ask her to for a Trader Joe’s Organic Fruit Leather. I don’t know exactly why she loves them so, but she’d seriously take a bullet for the strawberry variety…it’s crazy.

So, we packed 25 of them in a secret stash in the car, and the minute she acts up or won’t finish her meal or, well, any time she’s just being a typical two-year-old on an eight-and-a-half hour car ride, we bribe her. “Greta…if you do blank, we’ll give you a fruit leather.” we purr in her screaming, red-faced direction, and she calms down almost instantly.

If I wasn’t so happy it worked, I might be a little freaked out by it, but at the end of the day…it works. Like a fucking charm. Every. Single. Time. So, who cares why?

With order restored in our car, we crank up the tunes and resume our lovely road trip in peace…or, you know, until the next big blow up.

Quote of the day: Eddie Vedder

Got my haircut today and while flipping through the magazines in the waiting area, read what just might be the best quote ever in “Rolling Stone” magazine.

Eddie Vedder was being asked about his ecclectic musical tastes when he was growing up, and the interviewer asked whether or not Vedder hid his huge James Taylor fixation from his punk-rock friends  at the time.

Not missing a beat, Vedder replied: “Oh, I didn’t give a shit at all. Punk rock is saying what you want and not giving a fuck.” So. Damn. Awesome. Now, apply that same quote to parenting and I think you could start a serious movement, baby.

Judge this Stay-at-home-Dad at your own peril, haters…I might act like I care what you think, but, trust me, most days, I just don’t give a fuck. Punk rock parenting forever!

Why a Yeti?

Many people have asked me over the years…what is your fascination with Yetis? And the simple answer is that I have been obsessed with Bigfoot and Yeti stuff since I was a kid.

Growing up in the mountainous southernmost regions of Bigfoot country, the odds were if you spent the night in the woods, you were either gonna see a Bigfoot or an alien. Unfortunately, I never saw either…but my love for impossibly-tall, hairy bipeds has grown by leaps and bounds ever since then.

So much so that I actually wrote a script about a Yeti a couple of years back. It never went anywhere, but, let me tell ya, doing research for that project totally sealed the deal for me. I cannot think of a cooler mythical (?) creature than an angry, furry, white, man monkey! So damn awesome!

And on top of all that, Yeti was one of Greta’s first words…nuff said. Yeti’s rock, yo!