Daddy Humbug!

Call me Grinch.

I’m not a holiday guy. Never have been.

If not for my wife, my kids would have a far different holiday experience, one that resembled Whoville before the Grinch grew his heart.

As they get older, Sydney and Tyson will no doubt add to their nightly prayers, “Thank you God for sending us a mommy who gets excited about holidays.”

I don’t know when or where my ambivalence for holidays started. Sometime after I graduated college, I decided wrapping gifts was a waste of both time and money. Why spend so much effort for something that will be torn away in seconds?

So every year, I showed up at mom’s house with a garbage bag filled with toys and just handed them one by one to my mom, siblings and nephews.

“Merry Christmas! God bless us every one!”

It is not that I hate holidays. Well, maybe Halloween. Who likes dressing up in a costume and spending all night barely able to move?

As I grew older, I found ways to be comfortable during Halloween. Throw on a University of Cincinnati sweatshirt and a pair of shorts and carry around a basketball and pair of handcuffs – these were the Huggins years – and you are a UC Bearcats basketball player.

So I now have a rule on Halloween. If I am going to wear a costume, it actually has to be more comfortable than if I were not wearing a costume. It is a hard goal to meet, but as long as there are shorts and sweatpants, it is a possibility.

I do like Thanksgiving. You get to eat a lot and watch football. That is like any fall Saturday or Sunday for me.

But the rest – ambivalence. New Year’s Eve hasn’t been fun since I was 30 and Dick Clark rocked like a 65-year-old. Now, I rarely make it to the ball drop.

Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day – nice to have a day off work.

Christmas? Seems like a lot of work.

But now I have kids. And they want – no, they deserve – a nice Christmas.

That’s where mom comes in.

Since dad can’t seem to get his act together, she goes into high gear. First, there is the Elf on the Shelf. I never heard of this until a couple of years ago. It is a jolly way of scaring your kids into behaving.

When we were young, mom or dad used to say, “You better behave. Santa is watching.” Now, Santa has his own little spy who lives in your house the whole month of December and flies back to the north pole each night to report on the behavior of the household children.

Has anyone over 40 ever heard of this? I swear there was no Elf on the Shelf when we were kids. I think it has to do with the never-ending commercialization of Christmas. Sell an elf and the book about the elf.  Pretty soon, there will be reason for him to make his arrival around Labor Day as the never-ending Christmas season continues to bleed earlier and earlier on the calendar.

My dental hygienist said to me the other day, while not-so-carefully rooting through my mouth with a very sharp tool, “I’m thinking about doing the Elf on the Shelf this year. But it seems like a lot of work.” I almost choked to death on my own gum blood trying to gag out an emphatic “It is!”

Every night, my wife has to move that elf to a new place so the kids can find it again the next morning. Not a real difficult task, but try to remember to do anything every night. More than once, she has nervously spelled a “H-I-D-E E-L-F” to me as we are getting the children ready for pre-school in the morning, sending me scrambling down the stairs.

But the kids love it. They are like their mother.  They love everything about Christmas.

She has already hosted a Christmas cookie trading party. She has the house decorated in red and green. Every bedtime story in December must be a Christmas book.

Stockings are hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that lazy hubby will get off his derriere.

And the centerpiece of our holiday? The family Christmas tree.

I have managed to cut corners on the tree. We decided to start out with a fake one right from the get-go, so they would never know the difference.

All their life, they are going to have an artificial tree. Yes, this means they will never know the joy of trampling through the snow, searching the woods for the perfect evergreen, methodically checking for a bird’s nest – they’re good luck! – and measuring for a height that will fill the room without hitting the ceiling. (Or going to Home Depot, paying $20 and dragging a bundled, bedraggled tree to the back of the SUV).

I can live with that.

Our artificial tree is beautiful, a 7 ½ foot Martha Stewart given to me by a friend that would retail for about $300 at a store. The kids love it. The wife loves decorating it. I love not having to do anything. A win, win, win.

They also love Christmas lights. The chirping at dad has begun. “The neighbors have pretty lights, why can’t we?” Or the wife: “I don’t like colored lights, but it would be nice to have white ones.”

I try to drown it out. While they merrily think of the joy Christmas lights would bring, I picture myself falling off a ladder, ala Chevy Chase.

My wife finally conceded the other day, telling the children “the only way we are going to have lights is if mommy hangs them.”

Sydney and Tyson both turned to stare at me like I was the Grinch.

Say It Ain't So: My Life Has Become a Vacation Movie

My buddy, Joe Jones, once told me a man should be able to throw everything he owns into a duffle bag and hit the road at a moment’s notice.

I wish I could say it ain’t so, Joe, but those days are long gone for me.

A trip to see my family for Thanksgiving turned into one of those “Vacation” movies with Chevy Chase where everything that could go wrong did.

Let’s start with packing. Before Sydney, traveling was fairly easy. I pack my bag. Brooke packs here three. I pack some food for the dogs, put their beds in the back of the SUV and off we go. The dogs are in the back, the luggage in the back seat, Brooke and I captaining the ship up front.

After Sydney, life gets a little more difficult. Now, I pack a bag. Brooke packs ONE bag. Then she packs THREE bags for Sydney. Then she packs a breast pump. Then I pack a Pack and Play. Then I pack a stroller. Then I pack her bathtub. Then I pack food for the dogs. Then I pack the dogs’ beds. Then we pack Sydney herself.

What does the car look like now? Well, the dogs are still kings. They are lying in the back by themselves. Sydney is in her car seat. Brook is now in the backseat with her. We stuff a couple of Sydney’s smaller bags on the floor of the back seat. This leaves the passenger’s seat for our bags, Sydney’s stroller, Sydney’s tub, Sydney’s other bag, the Pack and Play and the bathtub. When it is all said and done, I can’t see the side view mirror over there and we have to rearrange everything just to be able to pull out of the driveway.

We hit the road by 2 p.m. Wednesday. I know this is the biggest travel day of the year, but I figure we are leaving early enough to make the 3 ½-hour trip in 4 hours. I am allotting a half hour for bad traffic in Columbus.

The first hour is uneventful. But as we approach Columbus, I can see the cars lined up, bumper to bumper, like they’re waiting for the start of the Indianapolis 500. Interstate 71 has become a parking lot.

Now, those who know me know I am not a patient person. If we go to a restaurant on a Friday night and there is a wait, chances are I am moving on. I absolutely won’t wait more than 30 minutes. It is not just that I hate to wait, it actually makes me angry. I will start to notice open tables and wonder why the restaurant has not hired or scheduled enough workers to open up the WHOLE restaurant. After all, that is there business, right? Friday night crowd catch you by surprise? Were you expecting around the same numbers you have on Wednesday mornings?

Talk about letting money go to waste. Can you imagine the Bengals or Reds telling fans they can’t come in because those 20,000 seats over there are being left open?

But I digress.

So, we are sitting in traffic for about 30 minutes before I proclaim that every Wednesday before Thanksgiving for the rest of my life will be a vacation day for me. I will NOT travel on this day again.

I get the idea to call one of my Columbus buddies to see what my options are on getting through Columbus on a route other than 71. He refers me to 315 and that looks like it is moving fairly well, so I hop on. And for about five minutes, things are going smoothly. Then I hit another parking lot. Have you ever been caught in traffic after a concert? Where you crawl inch by inch toward the exit for about a half hour? That was my situation.

To cut the suspense, we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic for about two hours. We then were in slow-moving traffic for another hour. But that is not the interesting part of the story. Remember, I am traveling with a BABY.

Babies mostly sleep when they are traveling. But when a 3 ½-hour trip turns into a 6-hour trip, babies wake up. And they get antsy. And they get hungry. And they have to go to the bathroom. If all of this happens while you are angry about sitting in traffic and your two dogs are going crazy because they are cooped up in a small space….well, things can get a little tense.

Here, in no particular order, are the things that happened during our two hours of moving about 10 miles.

·        Brooke realized we were going to be in the car much longer than she had planned. She’s a breastfeeder. I don’t know the exact science behind it, but apparently you have to either feed or pump at certain times or you start leaking like the plumbing in a Section 8 rental property. She decides she needs to pump, because she doesn’t want to wake Sydney, and Sydney must remain in her car seat for safety’s sake. The problem is, we are sitting nearly still in traffic. It is bad enough she has to pump in a car, but nosy truck drivers can get a good show as they zoom by at 3 miles per hour.

·        Sydney woke up and screamed for food. Brooke gives her a bottle. She doesn’t want to drink a bottle. Sydney has a serious case of nipple confusion right now. She can go from meal to meal and change her preference, sometimes wanting the bottle, sometimes wanting the breast. This is particularly a problem when her dad is doing the feeding and she doesn’t want the bottle. Anyway, Brooke finally gets her to eat after much fussiness. Miss Crankypants returns.

·        Sydney spit up half her food. Now, this is not unexpected from Sydney, but it necessitated a outfit change, which was not easy to do in the back seat, but somehow Brooke managed.

·        The car filled with a horrible odor. I immediately accuse Brooke. She immediately accuses me. After quick denials, we look at the dogs. They are always likely culprits, but what if it wasn’t them? We have to check Sydney. A couple seconds later, I look in my rearview mirror to see a look of horror on my wife’s face. Then she starts gagging. It is clear. Sydney has experienced an episode of explosive ass disorder while we are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic with nowhere to turn off.

The highlight of the trip was Brooke changing Sydney while sitting in a back seat with a car seat, breast pump and several other bags stuffed back there.  It was as tight as my belt after a Sunday meal. She discovered that Sydney’s explosion had exceeded her diaper line and was actually half way up her back. Nice. Another outfit. At about this time, I say, “Honey, I wish I wasn’t driving so I could help you back there.” She shoots me a dirty look. By the time she is done, Sydney has poop in her hair and on her clothes, and Brooke has it all over her hands. And there is no bathroom in sight!

· Right about this time, the dogs decide they are too antsy and they need to get up and prance around the back of the SUV like reindeer on Christmas Eve. This was a great capper to Brooke’s diaper episode and she let loose her anger on everyone within earshot, including her innocent, just-trying-to-get-his-family-home-safely, nice-guy husband.

Suddenly, my impatience with the traffic was the least of my concerns.

About a half hour later, we had crawled close enough to an exit that I could take the whole family to the bathroom. Brooke cleaned up herself and Sydney, the dogs found a nice patch of grass in the parking lot of an office complex and I breathed a sigh of relief. We still had another hour in traffic and another hour and half of driving after that, but I had survived the worst of it. Even Chevy Chase never had it this bad.

I passed the next couple hours thinking about my buddy Joe Jones. I think he has a wife and two daughters now. I imagine he traded his duffle bag in for a Pack and Play a long time ago.