The Second Annual Halloween Park Trip

We've decided to make it an annual tradition to visit our town park on Halloween. Last year it was unseasonably warm and I looked a little like this:

My favorite part of that day was later when I answered the door for some trick-or-treaters and a little girl (at eye-level to my belly) asked,

"Are you having a baby?"

I just handed her an extra piece of candy and replied,

"I certainly hope so..."

This year it was a little chillier than last, but was much more fun, at least from my perspective...

Boisterous parents

We were at Babies "R" We the other day, and I was letting Hendrik crawl around while Melanie studied various car seats for the better part of an hour. The Babies R We crowd is very similar to the Utah crowd, which is to say that everybody around has their own babies and they don't think that other babies are all that cute or amazing. Hench would approach people, as is his custom, and climb up on their leg, looking up for a little hint of humanity. Some people were amused, others gave me this look like "How dare you let your child crawl around in here and touch me! Do you realize how many germs he has!!! For shame!" This one particular grandma gave him a little more attention.

"Oh, how cute! How old is he?"

"11 months."

"Oh, wow! He's so tiny! My grandson is 4 months old and is also his size! He's growing like 2 inches a week!"

Then, the Babies R We employee assisting them also put in her 2 cents: "Oh, yes! What a little peanut!"

"Yes!" said the grandma, "a little peanut! Are you a little peanut? Yes, you are! Come here, peanut!"

End of conversation.

Let me just put this on the record: There is nothing more annoying that boisterous parents/g-parents when discussing the size of their chunky offspring, especially when comparing to other kids. It's like they take personal credit that their kid has a slow metabolism or whatever else causes fat babies to be fat. They like to extrapolate their kid's size, thinking they will be 6'9 offensive linemen or whatever it is that large women aspire to be (plus-size models? talk-show hosts? birthing machines? garbage-women?). They like to pass judgment on the parents of smaller kids, whispering to their spouses, "Do they even feed him? Can they not afford food? Are they just spending all of their money on booze? They probably lock their kid in the closet when they go boozing! What awful parents!"

They might as well just come out and say it: "My baby is larger than your baby, and, therefore, better. That is a direct result of my superior parenting, which implies that I am a better parent and, therefore, a better person than you are or probably will ever be. I win. I win at life."

In full disclosure, Hendrik is not a small baby. He's average. 50 percentile in height and weight. I have no room to brag or complain. I point that out to everybody who says he's big ("Actually, he's exactly average."), or small ("HE'S NOT A &#%$ PEANUT!!!"), if I have the chance. The grandma who says her grandson is 22 pounds at 4 months is probably either batty or blind (or both), so I didn't bother clarifying that Hendrik isn't a "peanut", in fact, he's an orange, which seems to be an average-size food.

Hendrik also eats ridiculous amounts of food, so much that we have to just stop feeding him when we think he's had enough, otherwise he'll just keep eating. We thought he'd be bigger than average, but it turns out that the food just goes in one end and out the other.

If he was huge, I'd probably be taking personal credit for his hugeness and rubbing it in all the sad sacks' faces that my kid was destined to a successful life without need for step stools or platform shoes, and their kid will probably give into a life-threatening disease as a direct result of their poor parenting (calm down-this is a joke).

Actually, I wouldn't. I made a pact to myself before Hendrik was born that I would never brag about the things that I couldn't take credit for. Which is pretty much everything, because I don't do any parenting. I just give a lot of "performance feedback" for my wife. So I'll just take credit for how great of a mom she is.

Our latest love

Hendrik is a BIG fan of Special Agent Oso on Playhouse Disney. He particularly enjoys the main song of the show, "3 Special Steps." We think he might have a crush on Paw Pilot, who is singing the song.

Ocean City

We decided for our family vacation to get a beach house this year. Mel and I are both beach people (from Planet Sandusky), so we figured it would be worth it to get a place for a week and just laze about on the beach. We did this for our honeymoon, as well. The problem with our honeymoon was that it was in Florida in late June, and the weather was stupid hot and crazy humid. Also, we didn't have a cute little boy to entertain us then. At least that any of you know about.

We started looking around at the websites and found that the most affordable places with the least amount of Guidos on the East Coast was Delaware/Maryland. The beach houses in Mass, which are much closer, are ridiculously expensive, plus you can't really count on the summer weather here. This is my 7th summer here, and each one is pretty different. Last year's was pretty rainy and cold, so I didn't want to get stuck paying a huge chunk for an abysmal week on Cape Cod.

At first, we tried to get some friends to go in on a house with us. Around February/March, we had a group that was interested, but when it came time to sign the dotted line, everybody had commitment anxiety. I was disappointed, and didn't think we could afford a place on our own. I figured we'd wait until the last minute and lowball all the available houses for the week we planned on, and that's exactly what I did.

2 weeks before our trip, I went online and found all of the available properties near our price range and emailed them all, asking if they would be willing to negotiate. Most people came back with 50 or 100 dollar off deals, which wasn't nearly what I had in mind. I had overestimated their despair, meaning that the owners were obviously not as desperate as I was hoping.

However, one of the owners of a 2 BR condo, very close to the beach, gave me a 250 dollar discount, which barely squeezed into our budget. We snapped it up and sent them a check. It was in Ocean City, Maryland, 5 blocks from the Delaware border. Ocean City is more of a beach city than a beach town, with large blocks of apartments and condos set up from beginning to end, in contrast to the beach towns of Delaware. I would prefer the beach towns, with the less-crowded beaches and less riff-raff and all, but it just wasn't affordable for one family by itself. Ocean City turned out to be a pleasant surprise, as it was almost entirely families. Although it was crowded, we visited a Delaware beach and found that it was equally crowded, so no big loss there.

When we arrived, it was obvious that we were paying for the location. This place wasn't exactly luxury, featuring some 70's decor, a 13-inch TV, old leather couches, and A/C units in every room. The kitchen was redone and updated, but that was about it. The building was this sad-looking brick affair, in contrast to the brightly-painted stucco buildings surrounding us. It was a little disconcerting at first, with Mel and I looking at each other with these "Can we be happy here?" expressions on our faces.

Then we walked to the beach. 74 paces from our building, and we were on soft sand. After that, it didn't seem to matter that our place was old, and we just adapted to the firm beds and covered the cheap leather couches with blankets. (Is it just us who hates leather couches? They're hot in the summer, cold in the winter, stick to your skin, what's the appeal?) It also didn't seem to matter that we tracked so much sand inside.

From there, it was just beach, beach, beach. Our regular schedule was this:

7AM - Hendrik wakes us
8AM - After feeding Hendrik and watching his beloved "Special Agent Oso", we put him down for his morning nap
9-10AM - Hendrik wakes up and we make our way to the beach, which only takes a couple of minutes.
10AM-noon - Hendrik crawls up and down the beach, making friends, double-fisting sand into his mouth, crying when the waves get too loud, and smiling at the camera. Everything he touches turns to sand. He's the King Midas of sand. King Sandus?
Noon-2PM - Mel takes Hench back to the condo for lunch/nap. I stay out on the beach to body surf, do crosswords, eat grapes and Cheeto's, drink Gatorade, and soak up the rays. Mel volunteered to go back to the condo mostly because she likes to take breaks from the sun and she's a peach in general.
2PM-4PM - Hendu comes back out with his Mom for more of the same (see above).
4PM-8PM - Dinner/naps/showers/bottles/Phineas and Ferb
8PM-11PM - FREETIME FOR MOM AND DAD!!!! YESSSSS!!! FINALLY!!!!! (Usually we just watched a movie and went to bed early.)

Below are the pictures of our fun, mostly of Hendrik, of course. He is easily the cutest of us, although Mel has her moments.

Peering out from behind the castle that somebody else made.

"Ladies, ladies, ladies! There's plenty of me to go around!" Hendrik made friends everywhere.

These toys entertained him for 5 minutes, tops.

"Nice guns, Daddy!"

More attention, more friends. These folks we sat next to all week. As most people were there for a week (Saturday-Saturday), we pretty much recognized everybody by the end.

He loves his shoulder rides.

Don't ask what I'm doing in this pic, but Hendrik's smile was so cute I had to include this pic.

Trying to get out of the pit I dug.

Being cute. Easier than it looks.

This looks like a Far Side cartoon. "Water, water!"

"How many times have I told you, young man!"

We went to this place called J/R's, The Place for Ribs. I love ribs, so we tried it out, and it was delicious. I gave Hendu my rib bone once and he gnawed on it like a dog for 10 minutes. Turns out he loves ribs as much as I do.

This is the only good thing that came out of a overpriced trip to Nathan's.

Family Picture!

A week before our trip, on July 24th, the Carnival came to Whitman. They set up in the baseball fields and there were fireworks planned for 9:45. We kept Hendrik awake for it.

Ferris Wheel!

Spinny Thingee!

The carnival in its entirety. Pretty small. We didn't actually do anything, just walked around like cheapskates watching everybody spend their money on puke-inducing rides and games for crappy prizes. Mostly we were killing time waiting for the fireworks. I still had a lot of fun soaking in the Americana of it all. Hot, sweaty summer night, all the town folk out, smell of cotton candy, popcorn, and BO, cheap rides built in the 30's, teenagers trying to look cool, I loved it. I'm not being sarcastic. Seriously, I'm not. Why does everybody think I'm making fun of everything all the time! The fireworks went off at 9:45 and they were decent for a small-town production. The best part was that we could walk to the park to do all of this, and therefore didn't have to fight traffic or deal with parking or anything. Hench was scared by the loud booms and was too tired to enjoy anything.

One last happening: Hendrik was crawling around our room and found a "fun-size" Reese's underneath the bed and somehow got through the wrapper before Mom noticed. Here is the result:


He's never been happier/prouder of himself.

Hendu Hijack

I kept waiting for my lazy parents to get off their rumps and post about the big trip to Idah-er and Ut-er (forgive my Boston accent, I lived there when I was young) a few months ago, but you know that's never going to realistically happen. My parents are about as motivated as a 3-month old (take that, 3-monthers! Oh, to be young and foolish again...) on welfare when it comes to blogging. They probably won't even check the blog in the next month, so I can rip on them as much as I want.

Anywho, this was my SECOND plane ride in my life, which means I'm already 19 years ahead of my dad, whose second plane ride was going on his mission (which he won't shut up about btw--yes Dad, we get it, you can speak Polish. Get yourself a cookie. While you're at it, could you mix up some pureed yams and rice cereal for me? Thanks, you're a moose!). I was all set to whine the whole way, but Mom took some Dramamine and gave me some second-hand style, and I was out! The flight out was whine-free from my side, a feat I'm not particularly proud of. You win this round, Mom.

We arrived at Great-Grandma Ann's house in Twin Falls, Idaho, right around 1:30 AM. Dad was complaining about it being 3:30 AM Eastern Time, but what isn't he moaning about nowadays?

The next few days we spent running from place to place, my parents constantly shuffling me around. I got my deserved attention from the various aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and why shouldn't I? Have you seen me lately? I'm delicious! Seriously, check out these pics of me in action:

A bath in Great-g'ma's sink

Hangin' with Gramps

Sweet Aunt April - much nicer to me than Mom

Test driving a 2010 Jeep Wrangler. Couldn't find where the ignition was

A forced picture with my embarrassment of a father

Another forced pic

They wouldn't let me eat the flowers!

You're boring me with all the details of the reception, Auntie.

Look how tall I am! Rah!

A rare moment of fun with Mom

Hey, ladies! Over here on the grass!

You look like an interesting fellow, what's your name? You smell like mirror, though.

Havin' fun with a big stuffed dawg

Didn't exactly want to touch the carpet, know what I'm sayin'?

Help!

Forced to take a nap during the recepsh.

Say what you will about Dad's stank, but the man can tango.

Man I look cute here!

Great-Grandma rocks! Nnnneeehh!

After a few rousing days in Idaho, we drove down to Utah to visit Dad's side. You can tell they're all pretty desensitized to cute babies, as the fawning and adoration was down a few notches from Idaho. You can't blame them, I'm the 521st grandchild on that side, I'm just happy if they remember my name.

All my uncles and aunts at Joe's. Danged if I can remember them all.

Sittin' tall on Aunt Paula's counter

Hangin' with Camille, or as I like to call her, Camiracle.

Another pic with another Great-grandma! I look pretty cool here

We had a pretty good time in Utah, and my parents even ditched me for a day to go up to Park City. Talk about offended! JK, I totally needed a break. Mom was getting pretty naggy and Dad's stink can get to you after a while. LOL!

My cuz Drew was helping me break out of the exersaucer.

Good times!

Discussing economic policy

4 generations of handsomeness

Get used to this sight, Ma, flanked by women

Below are some videos that I'm not particularly proud of, but I don't mind looking foolish in the name of a good laugh:

It's great to be home again, back in the familiar crib with my favorite toys and gadgets. I don't want to get sappy here, but a few tears of joy crawled out my eyes when I saw my trusty mat. I don't want to ever be parted again! Well, at least not until I'm sick of it.

Until next time, signing off!


-Hendrik aka Hendu aka Henchman aka Henduriffic aka The Cutest Boy in Whitman