daddymojo, Author at Daddy Mojo

The Worm on the floor

Jake, aka, Baby Mojo is right on the cusp of crawling; it’s a time that we’re simultaneously looking forward to and dreading. The Mojo camp is of three thoughts:

The crawling will be supa cute
The crawling baby will mean more work
We need to gird our loins because parenting is about to change.

Watching Baby Mojo writhe about on the floor made me think of a time back in high school. As with any journey, there are a couple stops, but I invite you to stay with me as it’ll take you in the way back machine as well.

The Setup

I spent the night at a friend’s house and his parents weren’t home. Stories that have a happy ending rarely start out like that, do they? We drank a little bit, but not enough to send anybody to the hospital or cause permanent damage. It was a handful of idiot teenagers doing the typical things that they’ll do when not properly supervised at an overnight party.

The next morning the story was that I had gotten too much of the sauce and flashed my naked Mojo to a couple of the girls at the party. The girls, seemingly unimpressed with my Mojo proceeded to laugh and call me PeeWee.

Of course that entire story was false and made up by a couple of my friends. However, as high schools operate, by 9:00 Monday, the (false) story of me flashing a couple of girls at a party was far and wide.

The Plan

High school is a petri dish for society isn’t it? It’s like your work environment without all social rules of behavior; you can say or do anything and it can do nothing or devastate you-all depending upon how you react.

My initial reaction to this story, and the suddenly bequeathed nickname of “PeeWee” was to laugh, deny and ignore, because it in fact did not happen. That was until one of the teachers made reference to the new nickname and then I knew something had to be done.

The high school elections were just around the corner and I had a plan. As PeeWee rhymed with V.P. (Vice President) I would run for Vice President of the Junior Class. It’s amazing how simple phonetics can help create a plan isn’t it?

The Execution

I registered my name, as well as, the newly ascribed nickname of “PeeWee” on the ballot for the Junior Class Vice President of Page High School, 1985. The campaign speeches to the class was something that were the culmination of the elecion season. They consisted of a brief introduction by somebody of your choosing then you’d go on to speak for a couple of minutes.

The person who did my introduction speech was one of the school’s break dancers named D.C. The schtick was for us to give each other a high five, then we’d each do the worm on the floor-with him going off stage and me going to the podium to give my speech as to why the students should vote for me PeeWee….errr, Trey.

So D.C was giving his brief introduction on stage and as he finished I approached the podium. We gave each other a high five and then each of us fell to the floor, wormed for a couple of yards and then stood up. He continued to walk off stage and I walked up to the podium and gave a two-minute speech about why I was deserving of their vote.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY-Y4mUKFN0]My crap dancing notwithstanding, I was elected Vice President of the Junior Class and that nickname slipped into the abyss of the school’s (and my) memory, until I saw Baby Mojo doing The (reverse) Worm.

Being a stay at home dad has triggered these old and forgotten memories lately. My wife has often been perplexed as to why I don’t remember anything from my childhood. The good news for her is that I’m remembering them and have something of substance to share during dinner. For me the good news is that video of that speech, The Worm or my Don Johnson Miami Vice jacket don’t exist.

The world’s worst screen window

Baby Mojo has been waking up at night lately. He had been sleeping for 7-8 hours, but with spring here we think he may be getting hot. It's too nice outside for the air conditioning to be on, half of our windows don't have screens and money is too tight to get a new screen professionally made. What's a stay at home dad with no time to do?

Duct tape across the window, even with the sticky side facing in, would look entirely too gauche.  Mommy Mojo stepped up to the plate, did the research and found out that for $5.35 we can purchase a roll of screen material that we can cut ourselves.

Technically, there’s nothing too difficult about the job. Granted there is 0% chance of the screen window actually looking good when it’s finished, but at least it wouldn’t be challenging or take too much time.

Measure twice, measure again, then cut once. The surface didn’t have the area to allow for actually duct tape (damn it…), so I used some painters tape on the exterior of the screen against the window frame. Screen window up, window open and Baby Mojo still woke up at 5AM. His little diaper had reached the limit of its absorbency and little Mojo was at his wit’s end, poor little dude.

My jury rigged screen window at least allows for a cross breeze to go through the house. It also has the added effect of a blue sticky surface that will trap some of the unlucky bugs. Their screams of pain will warn the others not to approach this steel grid of security.

Does anybody out there have a hammer drill? I needed one for a project a couple of years ago and my first thought was what the hell is a hammer drill? It sounds like some monster hybrid tool that can cure cancer. It’s best friends in the tool world are probably the grill router or pneumatic laser level.

I knew that I had to have a hammer drill. When I got to the tool store I also purchased a reciprocating saw, which is equally as practical and also has a kick ass name. That salesperson had struck novice home improvement gold. If he said that all the rage in testosterone home improvement was a gas-powered alarm clock I would’ve signed up for that too.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who would fall for manly sounding gadgets. Did you hear that the federal government gave a Four Star Energy Rating to a gas-powered alarm clock, cleverly named Black Gold? Somewhere Jed Clampet is grinning at the gullibility of aspects of our government.

In my current reality, the hammer drill and all of these things sound like B-grade movies on Syfy. They’re filming Sharktopus, recently showed Mega Piranha and will air MothMan in a couple of weeks. You know you want to watch them, quit denying it.

In a couple of years if they get really desperate they can shoot Screen Hole, the story about the world’s worst storm window and how it created a worm hole to another dimension. I just hope they get Michael Cera to play me and not Shia LaBeouf.

I can't weight

Ladies, there is no easy way for us guys to answer the following questions.

“Is she more attractive than me?” It’s a loaded question and hopefully your fella knows to proceed carefully by answering, “Of course not honey. Oh and did you see that outfit? She’s gotta be over 30 and she’s wearing a news boy cap?”

“Honey, am I getting fat?” Tricky, tricky this question. Women can tell if the number on the scale is getting larger. They know the answer of the question when they ask it. “No sweetie, you look great to me, is everything OK?” This answer allows her to state whether her pants are feeling tight or if she just needs a hug from you. Sure, that answer is a punt of sorts, but it helps keep the peace.

Mommy Mojo officially lost all of her baby weight this week. She celebrated by wearing some pants that I hadn’t seen in over a year and doing her version of the happy dance around the house. I noticed that she was getting close, in addition to her frequent progress reports and in hindsight I should’ve said, “hey, you’re getting close to losing the baby weight I see’!

A statement of fact like that is laced with potentially dire outcomes, be careful here. We want to encourage her, but we also want to let them know that we love them regardless. For the record: we want to encourage them because, if they’re commenting on how much weight they’ve lost post pregnancy, then they want to lose the weight. Again, ladies, the encouragement isn’t from a male vanity point of view, its general encouragement, c’est sa. Sheshhh, even writing this I could feel the building wrath of moms giving me grief for encouraging them to lose weight.

30 sodas in a month — That bag of sugar is equal to one soda a day for one month.

So Mommy Mojo finally lost the weight by doing normal exercise and not drinking her daily sodas. How much is one soda a day for a month? This photo is a nice representation of what exactly that sugar looks like in bulk after 30 days. A friend of mine, Jolene Park at Healthy Discoveries has that image on her flickr stream.

In frustrating news, for my wife, I’ve actually lost weight since Baby Mojo came into the picture. As a stay at home dad I pick up the car carrier, stroller and all of the other activities that necessitate keeping up the house and taking care of Mojo. The other night mentioned to the light of my life that I was going to go for a bike ride this week. She asked me if I’ve been losing weight and demanded that I go weigh myself.

She then uttered words that I could never say, “I liked how much you weighed when we got married, so if you exercise just be sure to eat more”, she said.

Bacon Star Wars — Star Wars AT-AT, made of bacon, hmmmm.

“Sure, I’ll have lots more bacon, red meat and beer”, I said.

“I don’t want you to clog your arteries, just gain a little weight”

Thanks sweetie, so I won’t be eating this delicious AT-AT….you can see loads more bacon and guy time wasters at http://www.tifr.us/

Living with David Banner

The hospital where Baby Mojo was born sends weekly emails telling us what they should be experiencing. The one last week was spot on as it said something like “your baby may cry suddenly, with their face turning red”.

The Hulk — Baby Mojo, with a shade of green

Sure enough, not long after receiving that email our happy little Mojo would go from zero to 60 at the drop of a hat. He’d be happily playing with his favorite toy and then become a red-faced angry soul that can’t contain his rage. This red-faced hulk in diapers can only be satisfied by a quick and ironic version of “If you’re happy and you know it”.

After a day of watching Baby Hulk it appears that the culprit is the Vegetable Roast Beef & Dumplings. Today we had to finish that jar, however knowing what was observed, it was immediately followed up with some Hawaiian Blend, his favorite.

Crisis averted, it appeared that the gamma have been turned off.

Feeding Baby Mojo and watch him change from normal to freak out, a la, David Banner, made me think of second tier super heros, i.e, She Hulk. She’s like The Incredible Hulk, but svelte, ass kicking and has an oddly attractive aurora about her. Granted, she was no Catwoman, but She Hulk served the Marvel Universe well.

All of these thoughts brought about an odd dream. I was on an alien planet fighting in this battle, I broke through this wall and rescued the Martian Manhunter. Apparently he and I were friends as we continued fighting until I heard this beeping sound, turned to the rocks hit something then my alarm went off. So somewhere in my dreams the Martian Manhunter is super pissed at me for leaving him to go change a diaper at 3:30. I’m just glad that when I went to change the diaper some silly, yet very catchy song from Sesame Street was in my head.

Red faced baby — The rarely photographed, Red Baby Hulk, be careful if approaching.

I had another great dream this week. I was drafted to play in the Costa Rican Football League. All of our games were played on the beach and in addition to paying us a salary they served beer, pizza and ice cream during the games. We were in the middle of a game and the ref blew the whistle to go to the sidelines to get pizza, beer and ice cream, but I went to Baby Mojo’s room to change a diaper instead.

Somewhere in my dreams the Martian Manhunter is playing in the Costa Rican Football League, drinking my beer and dating She Hulk.

The darkside of children's music

The folks at Sesame Street have figured out how to auditize crack and they’re selling it on Sesame Street Platinum Too. It’s a disc full of songs that you remember from Sesame Street, as well as, a couple newer ones that will age very nicely.

Baby Mojo loves them-All of them. The songs are different from The Wheels on the Bus or other standards we may sing, because they’re like little musical skits. They tell stories, have characters that we remember or are just so darn catchy that we as parents can’t ignore them.

The darkside is that I find myself stuck on at least one of these songs every couple of days. That particular song will remain in my head all day and into the night. When I wake up to change Baby Mojo’s diaper at 3:00 AM, that song is still in my head like a sentinel waiting to wish me a good night.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TjX5r37V0Q]

What’s the Name of That Song is the one that was stuck in my head until a couple of days ago. It’s a great song. Ignore the fact that it’s a children’s song and it is still very rhythmic, funny and easy to listen to. That was the inadvertent soundtrack to my day for most of last week. I take a walk with Baby Mojo, change the diaper, prepare a bottle and it’s there. I suddenly find myself not thinking about the lyrics then the rhythm pops in my head!!

Until last Thursday. I woke up with the intent to not think about that song at all. I go into Baby Mojo’s room and put on the changing table and the first words out of my mouth were, “good morning starshine”.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl8O7NHkrPY]

Oh great. Now I’ve got this very catchy tune from Hair stuck in my head. Good Morning Starshine is an awesome song, however, with it comes the hippie visuals. The longhairs in the convertible going down the highway, traumatic hair shaving scene, clichéd war protests and a minuet of 60’s visions played during the bits that I could remember while singing to Baby Mojo. It was Berkley without that hippie smell going on inside my head.

Mommy Mojo and I have had this problem with songs getting stuck in our heads since Christmas.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOMmSbxB_Sg]

It all started with Santa Baby, because I care for you all I posted the original instead of the one done by Madonna. Everything we’d say regarding Baby Mojo was to the pace of Santa Baby. “Jakey Baby, lets take a bathy before it gets too late”, etc, see, even one line of it is annoying.

Now. Imagine. That. Being. Stuck. For. Four. Months.

We still find ourselves saying things to Baby Mojo to the pacing of that song. Sometimes we won’t do it for a couple of weeks, but then one of us will slip and bring that song front and center.

On the upside, any Sesame Street song is better than that. So what’s your worst song or longest case of something being stuck in your head? A warning, if you get your bad song stuck in my head I’ll send you videos of Santa Baby.

Mothers Day, Part I

I’ll probably have a couple affordable (see free) things to do on Mother’s Day, thus, this is Part I.

If your wife is anything like mine they are looking for something to do on Mothers Day. A gift is nice, but something to do is really what they want.

In Alpharetta at Scottsdale Farms they’re having horse and carriage rides from 11-2 on May 9. The rides are free and reservations aren’t required.

Babies, Aliens and Vanilla Ice-Everything is new

Today it was raining buckets, which was unfortunate for the dogs, Abby and Wilson, as they had to go outside and use the bathroom. They came tearing back inside, shook the water off them and went to lay on their pillows.

Baby Mojo found this hilarious and started to laugh that cute little baby laugh. He’s seen them come into the house before and I realized that he was laughing at their behavior when they get wet.

Everything is new to babies. It’s their first time seeing everything, so put on a good show, describe it well and enjoy yourself.

Many years ago I worked at The Disney MGM Studios as a tour guide and character actor on The Great Movie Ride. The Great Movie Ride is a slow-moving vehicle that goes through famous scenes of great movies. Interspersed along the ride are various audio animatronic figures and live actors. Sometimes I was a tour guide, other times a gangster. As a tour guide you’re the stranger in a strange land and the gangster ‘takes over’ the vehicle about half way through.

The tour guide starts, vehicle gets ‘hijacked’ by a gangster or cowboy and then the hijacker goes to an Egyptian tomb where the tour guide returns. That’s the set up and it always runs like that unless the tour guide or gangster are friends and want to shake it up a bit.

One day when I was a gangster I was feeling especially frisky, adding lines to mess with the tour guides, loosely chatting with the guests and so on. On one tour I got in the vehicle, did my opening spiel, looked back and saw Vanilla Ice.

It was back in the late 80’s, Ice was in his prime and had a couple Disney suits around him. Before the gangster and tour guide switch back again there is a line where they say, “oh, would you get a load of that chunk of that ice up there, now don’t none of you move…I don’t think they’d notice a couple of bodies around here.”

I said, “Oh, would you get a load of that chunk of Ice, Ice Baby up there…” I won’t win any awards for creativity with that, but I knew the tour guide would get a kick out of it and it made my day go by with a smile. Walt Disney World is excellent at the guest experience and making certain that their employees know that it’s always somebody’s first time to the park.

It was just like Baby Mojo and his first time seeing a wet dog. After a couple of times the wet dogs may not be as funny to him, but for the first couple times, that and so much more will be totally new and unique to him. He’s truly a blank slate that relies totally on me to entertain him, show him what to do and what is special about the little things.

After a while, the tourists and questions like “what time is the 3:00 parade?” (yes dozens of people every day really ask that), start to pile and I had to leave the Mouse. By the end of it I had spent two years yelling at tourists, making fun of bad clothing and waving a gun at aliens.

I still have good friends that work there, they truly love their job and I’ll be hitting them up for free tickets when The Mojos visit.

Nostalgic stroller envy

The other week I was at Jungle Joe’s chatting with a stay at home dad. He said that his wife had a case of stroller envy. “Stroller envy, what do you mean”, I asked.

“Well, we have the one stroller, but now she wants a jogging stroller, as well as, an umbrella stroller, whatever that is”, he said. Suddenly it was as if my subconscious had manifested itself in physical form and was confronting me with feelings I was having too.

Internally my Id and Superego were laughing at me, 1. For being in a Jungle Joe’s… and loving it and 2. For understanding exactly what his wife was talking about.

When we were initially shopping for strollers I had no clue about what strollers were good for what purpose. In this case strollers are kind of like shoes, you need a couple different ones for where you’re going.

The Stroller travel system

That’s the bigger one on the left and has a baby carrier that snaps in and out. The baby carrier also pops into the base that will be secured in your back seat. The downside to this system is that the baby carrier can get heavy and the stroller isn’t really responsive if you’ll be jogging or walking quickly. However, the upsides far outweigh any negatives as it’s comfortable, folds flat, has loads of storage and has a shield to cover your Baby Mojo from the sun.

The Umbrella stroller

I was slow to embrace the umbrella stroller but am a big fan now. It’s very lightweight and folds up to the size of an umbrella. This is the great stroller that you’ll use when running a couple of errands or when you need to calm your little Mojo down with a couple of laps around the house. The down side is that your child has to be able to hold their head up, so it can’t be used immediately for infants, and it’s ride is a bit rougher than the bigger strollers. It also doesn’t have the shield to protect against the sun or have any storage space, but it’s the difference between a pair of dress shoes and hiking boots.

Those two strollers are the ones that occupy the Mojo garage for babies. Personally I would love to have one of those three-wheeled strollers with the inflatable tires. They look cool, you can jog in the them and they’re comfortable.

The Green Machine, circa 1975 — The new Green Machine looks the same

They also have the added visual impact of making your child look like they’re in Tron or driving their own Green Machine. Oh, I loved my Green Machine and was totally shocked to see that Huffy is still making them. Huffy, there’s a brand that I haven’t uttered since I was a child. It’s one of those brands that are almost exclusively regulated to children and parents. Since they don’t make Green Machines that are marketed to parents I guess I’ll be familiar with them for the next 14 years at least.

Back to strollers. You need more than one, plan on it and start scouring the yard sales now as these are great items to purchase used or from a consignment store. I know that we’ll be on the yard sale looking for a jogging stroller. If you have one that you’re selling for about $40 please let Daddy Mojo know, otherwise good hunting!