Christmas Newsletter

Dear Family, Friends, Neighbors and Distant Relations,

It’s the season of sharing, and the time has come for my family to share its annual achievements with those who have none.

This year, poop production has reached an all-time high. As you can see on the flowchart handout that was stuffed in your Christmas stocking, not only did our discarded diapers meet our 2013 quota – we beat last year’s number by 200 percent! But that’s not the only record that’s been broken. In June, the vinyl edition of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was destroyed during a temper tantrum. And in October, I lost my entire ABBA collection. In addition, 90 percent of our good china has been removed from circulation, and all electronic devices now rattle when you shake them.

Full disclosure: the preceding paragraph was a lie (the hint was the ABBA record. I own no, nor shall I ever own any, ABBA related merchandise). But you’ve got to admit, it was more entertaining than hearing about how my son is an honor student, my wife just earned her doctorate in Smarter-Than-You-ology, and I got that promotion along with a hefty pay raise so we can finally purchase that family farm we’ve been dreaming about and start growing organic vegetables, raising free-range chickens and drinking non-pasteurized milk.

Full disclosure: the second preceding paragraph also was a lie. The truth is that I am currently recovering from my traditional Christmas holiday head cold, which Widget2 generously shared with me, while we spend the last two weeks of December at grandma and grandpa’s house in the cold north. I have no interest in writing a real newsletter, and besides who needs them in this day and age of facebook, twitter, blogging and neurotically networked people. Does anybody really want to hear about Widget1’s superior reading skills (which he does actually have) when I can instead give them the juicy details about how he tickled the man in front of us on our flight, or how he demanded the wheelchair-bound elderly man in front of us at the security checkpoint to get out of our way (speaking of which, we are fundraising to buy a new car to drive ourselves home since we can never again be seen in that airport).

My Son the Salesman

“OxiClean is the good guy. Dirt is the bad guy.”

Now that Widget1 has mastered the science of housecleaning chemicals, his training is complete. I can retire from parenthood.

Diaper Explosion!

It looked like chocolate. It felt like chocolate. It smeared on his face like chocolate. But I’m guessing it didn’t taste anything remotely like chocolate. That final experiment was probably what set Widget2 crying for Mommy and Daddy this morning. I was the lucky parent who found him in his crib, desperately reaching out to me with poop-stained hands. It was like an avant-garde modern artist had snuck into my home last night and repurposed it as his personal canvas. So there I am, bright and early on a Saturday morning, sleeping in weighing the risks of physical interaction with the bouncing baby biohazard in the boys’ room, and just wanting to say, “Thank you. Thank you, most enlightened practitioner of the high arts, for splattering human excrement all over my child and his bed sheet so you could make a statement about race, gender or social class in a way that shocks the sensibilities of us dimwitted troglodytes. Most of all, thank you for waking me up early, because I was probably just going to dream lame troglodyte dreams about stuff like football, steak and oppressing women. Instead, I will now oppress my wife and ask for her help, because she’s better at this sort of thing than I am.”

The removal of the diaper was an unveiling too horrific to recount. We promptly gave Widget2 a bath and a change of clothes, and I have spent the rest of the day suppressing this singular parenthood memory and second-guessing that last bottle of formula I fed him late last night.

Worst…Joke…EVER

I’ve won the inglorious distinction of telling the Worst Joke Ever. When I say worst, not only did this abomination fail to elicit laughter or even a smile from my son – it was so horrifically bad that it actually made him cry.

It all started with Widget1 helping me wrap a Christmas gift for Mommy. After I placed the box under the tree, my son got so excited that he wanted to tell Mommy what was in it. This is the part where a responsible father would have said, “Now son, the surprise of the gift is what makes Christmas so much fun. Every wrapped box is a magical mystery that should only be revealed on Christmas morning. Then in one glorious moment, all the joy of the yuletide holiday shall burst forth, and rainbows and gummy bears shall fall from the heavens.”

That’s what a responsible father would have said.

What this father said was, “If you tell Mommy what her present is, you’ll spoil the surprise. And if you spoil the surprise, you’ll ruin Christmas. And if you try to ruin Christmas, they’ll make a Christmas special about you, and then little claymation dudes will come after you and try to stop you.”

Commence bawling and hiding under blanket. “DADDY SAID THEY’RE GONNA KILL ME!!!”

No, I never said that (my son has a flare for simultaneously taking words too literally and then exaggerating them) but setting aside the technicality, I apologized and told him it was just a joke.

His response: “THAT’S THE WORST JOKE EVER!!!”

So I’ve learned my lesson. Children’s entertainment is not my skill set.

The next day, my son was playing Mario Kart and selected the snow track. “That’s a crazy track,” he said. “Crazy like you, Daddy. You tell crazy jokes!”

I guess that means I’m forgiven.

Rudolf’s Shiny New Year

It just dawned on me that Rudolf’s Shiny New Year is the holiday equivalent of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Both feature famous historical figures joining forces to save the world, both feature a space-time continuum predicament, and both treat mankind’s glorious historical-cultural heritage as their personal Play-Dough ball to bend, stretch and mutilate as they see fit. Right now I’m trying to imagine the esteemed Rankin and Bass playing air guitar and telling my children to party on. Have a radical Christmas, dudes.

As Seen on TV!

Television was invented by advertising executives to get direct access to the ones who control the purse strings – our children. Now I’ve got a two-legged pop-up banner ad who follows me around the apartment. I’ve learned that Stuffies are the most awesome toy ever (we had to take our son into a toy store, pull a Stuffy off the shelf and show him in person how little stuff one can actually stuff into a stuffy before a stuffy has enough stuff), girls’ toys are fun for boys too, mucus has eyes and a mouth (thanks, Mucinex), and we need to buy OxiClean.

Bonus: if you ask him, “Who you gonna call,” he responds with the jingle from the local auto dealership that ripped off the Ghostbusters theme song.

I’m thinking it’s time to turn off Sprout and blow the dust off our Teddy Ruxpin DVDs. We need to make some changes around here before he sees too much and asks his pediatrician whether Cialis is right for him.