Howefitz Blog

Calli can help you conquer the world!

Yesterday I was stressed at work. The day before that, I was stressed at work. Last week: yeah, more stress. I don’t want to get up in the morning. I don’t blog but once a week (FatherHood Friday, as seen at dad-blogs.com! Be sure to check out all the cool moms and dads who selflessly share the lives of their families for your entertainment and delight!) I can hardly take making a decision anymore, because somehow it’ll be wrong to someone.

The air smelled of stale pages and small children. The teenagers jostling in to the room reminded me of the wildebeasts that make short work of Mufasa, leaving Simba fatherless. I shed a tear for my daughter Calli and my unborn son. They will never know what it is like to have a father. My oldest, Kat, had betrayed them. She had led me to this pack of wolves, this den of geeky jockularity. I stood before them, notes quivering in my hand.

I was going to teach comic books to teenagers.

Kirby help me.

Calli and Daddy crack each other up! Ok, Calli cracks Daddy up...

It has been said that laughter is the best medicine. I am a huge advocate of this. I laugh all the time.

I laugh when I’m happy.

I laugh when I’m nervous.

I laugh when something’s funny.

Most of all? I laugh at my kids.

It’s funny how kids know exactly what to do. They are probably more in tune with your likes and needs than any of your adult friends.

Just a few examples:

What does a daddy blogger write about on Memorial Day? Absolutely, this is a day to remember our fallen Military heroes, but as fate would have it, this year, Memorial Day also falls on May 25, which is recognized as National Missing Children’s Day.

This day was recognized by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, following several high profile missing children’s cases. These cases included the murder of Adam Walsh, the son of America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh. John went on to found the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center. Later, the Adam Walsh Center merged with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children(NCMEC), where John still serves on the board of directors.

Calli achieving warp velocity within an inflatable castle...

We had another adventure at the rec center today. We decided to wake Calli up at the wee hour of 10am (we’ve gotta do something about her sleeping pattern…) and took her to Tumble Tots!

Tumble Tots is a time when toddlers can have free play in the gymnastics area! We had a blast! Calli got to jump into a hole in the floor filled with foam blocks, into which her daddy promptly got stuck, much to the embarassment of her mommy. She bounced on trampolines, swung from rings, and achieved at least Warp 3 running around an inflatable castle.

I think I’ve mentioned before that we have become more active at the rec center lately. We at least swim there almost every day. When our schedules allow, my wife and I drop Calli, the two year old, off at the child sitting service, workout for an hour, pick the little one back up and go swimming. We always have a good time. (I’ve gotten rather adept at reading comics while on the stationary bike!)

A lot of the time, it feels like having kids is just about the worst thing you can do if you are trying to be ‘sustainable’ or ‘green’ or whatever label a treehugger has to use to avoid ‘treehugger’! If they’re young enough, there’s the constant production of dirty diapers, the feeling that snacks need to be more ‘convenient’, so that even if you don’t buy prepackaged snacks, you’re putting them in snack size ziplocs. If your kid’s older, you’re still producing a lot of trash to the point that you find yourself saying, “Didn’t I take the trash out yesterday? Seriously, what could we possibly be throwing away on a daily basis?”

“Who came up with pancakes?

‘No, Dear, you can’t have cake for breakfast, you can have fried cake with syrup for breakfast.

Load up on that and try not to nap.’”

-Jim Gaffigan

I can remember getting up in the morning to the smells of my father cooking breakfast. One of his favorite ways to break the fast was by cooking blueberry pancakes. He didn’t use just ordinary pancake mix however. Oh, no. That wasn’t good enough. He would fry up blueberry muffin mix into the shape of a pancake. These blueberry monstrosities were then covered in butter and syrup. These things were so thick, so heavy, and so rich that two bites were usually good for me. As a kid, I remember enjoying those first few bites, and then I’d be sorry. A few days later though, I was at the breakfast table awaiting a serving of blueberry muffin-pancake hybrids.

We had BLTs last night for dinner. While there’s nothing extraordinary about a family sitting down for some Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato action, what was remarkable was the lettuce.

The lettuce?

Yep! The lettuce. The lettuce I used last night was a first for us: sustainably grown by the company Tanimura & Antle, this was Living Lettuce. Living Lettuce is the best lettuce that I have ever eaten. Period.

An ad for Living Lettuce