Two weeks from today, you’ll turn 3 years old. Today Mommy picked up a few Hot Wheels pick-up trucks as party favors for your very small birthday party coming up; the theme is “Trucks.”
The intention was for you to receive one of these party favors yourself, at the time of your actual birthday party.
Yeah.
You convinced Mommy to let you “just hold” your favorite truck out of the bunch, a brown 1987 Toyota.
That’s right, you carried it, in the package, all day, out in public. We went to your school’s Halloween party today, with each member of our family having to hold your in-the-package pick-up truck at some point.
As you were receiving candy and prizes from your teachers along the way, there we were carrying around a packaged toy.
On the drive home tonight, you announced, “Somebody said I can open it.”
You’re unsure of exactly who it was, of course. Being that the only other two people in the car were Mommy and me, it really made the “somebody” a real mystery.
By the time we walked in the front door, Mommy left it up to me. The ridiculous compromise we settled on was that we would let you open your truck, but we had to keep the package in tact and “pretend” to open it in front of your birthday guests so it would seem like a surprise to you too.
Patience is a virtue… that you’re still working on. But hey, so am I. Honestly, who’s not still working on that one?
It’s so hard to hold back sometimes, even though the timing just isn’t right yet.
I know I’ve lived that lesson more times than I wish to count.
The good news for you is, I don’t see a lot of repercussions with you privately opening your own birthday party favor two weeks early.
No one ever has to know, especially since we managed to open the package without tearing it too badly.
The outcome: Mommy and I agree that my vegan cupcakes (the Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes With Almond Buttercream ones from the vegan recipe blog, Oh She Glows) were so good, they were actually better than those trendy “$4 cupcakes” that we used to buy.
We were able to enjoy all the physical and psychological thrills of eating chocolate cupcakes, but without the guilt hangover afterwards. (The fat in the cupcakes comes from almond milk and olive oil, not animal products or bi-products.)
They were so perfecto, we’re going to make them again this weekend. Lucky us!
(Yes, I meant to say perfecto.)
As a vegan, it is nearly impossible to find vegan chocolate.
It’s one thing to find chocolate that just so happens to not contain milk or eggs, or even honey, but that’s not good enough for most vegans like me.
I also will not accept high fructose corn syrup (Monsanto much?) nor food dyes derived from bugs (Carmine or Crimson Lake) or petroleum (Red 40, Yellow 5 and 6).
In other words, the public’s demand for vegan chocolate, as well as chocolate treats and snacks, has more than doubled in the past 3 years; in theory, at least.
So even if I sound extreme in my search for vegan chocolate, I’m clearly not alone.
Annie’s Homegrown, an admirable brand that keeps finding its name randomly mentioned by me on a regularly basis, is clever enough they actually have a “Vegan Snacks” tab on their website, featuring my personal favorite: Chocolate Bunny Grahams.
I should point out that Annie’s Homegrown is the only affordable and easily obtainable vegan snack source I have been exposed to so far.
For example, for my birthday Mommy bought me these awesome coconut cocoa ball truffles from some fancy vegan company, but they probably cost as much as a couple of bald eagle heads.
In other words, affordable vegan chocolate is a rare find.
Even if the major food companies ever pick up on this growing demand, I doubt they will be able to make a product in which vegans approve.
It’s probably not worth it to them to market to the 3% of the population who (I assume, if they’re like me) generally distrusts food companies who use petroleum and bugs in their food designed for children to eat.
We’ll stick with the plant-based stuff; even if we have to make it ourselves.
Having a kid will make your life stressful; that’s for sure. But a child also brings a certain joy and humor you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else.
Oh, hi. My name is Nick Shell and today is my birthday. I am now 31.
“Happy Birthday; may it be your best ever!” you might proclaim. And I would thank you.
But you see, April 20th is more than just a special day for pot heads to celebrate.
It’s more than just the day that Kony 2012 would have made its big reveal in the streets had society not outed the now infamous video as illegitimate.
My birthday is sort of like the cursed numbers are for Hurley in Lost. Bad things happen in the world on April 20th. Like on my 18th birthday:
Oh yeah, and guess who I share a birthday with: Adolf Hitler, born in 1889. Seriously.
(Also, Joey Lawrence; but I guess that’s not a bad thing.)
This is the day of the year that you should hold your breath as you check the news. If we can make it through this day without some kind of massacre, I’ll be amazed. In fact, by writing all this, I’m actively trying to jinx the “420 curse.”
So why did God choose such a dark day of the year for a an arguably normal and mild-mannered guy like me to be born? All I can say is that it’s comic relief to the world. It somehow provides balance in the universe.
And as I think about this concept of comic relief I can’t help but think of my son during the past 365 days in which I was a 30 year-old man.
Never has my life been more challenging, stressful, humiliating, exhausting, maturity-enforcing and unpredictable since he was born. It hasn’t all been easy.
During my year of being 30, in addition to the culture shock of learning by immersion what to do with an infant, I was unemployed for the first part of it, then I got a job, and I also got this gig writing for Parents.com writing The Dadabase, then had to move my family back to Nashville because of financial reasons, my wife’s car broke down half-way during the move and we had to buy a new car, and our roof caved in the week we tried to move back in our house in Nashville.
We eventually got back on our feet here in Nashville. Then we became vegetarians. And not that long ago, Jack had a febrile seizure.
Um… what else? I’m sure I’m forgetting something.
It hasn’t been a forgettable year; clearly not.
I’m ready for 31. I’ll just say that.
But back to my son serving as comic relief in my life. It’s the little stuff that gets me; in a good way.
Like when I watch him chew viciously on his toy plastic vegetables though he knows they’re just for pretending to eat.
And how he likes to sit in the fridge after he mows the carpet each day.
How sometimes on the drive home in the car, he’ll start randomly making donkey sounds after 20 minutes of silence.
My kid makes me laugh; even during some days or weeks or months I wish I could just fast forward through.
Here’s to hoping the world doesn’t end today. [Insert laugh tracks here.]
My current favorite song, as it relates to all this:
Is the integrity of “reality” compromised because it’s different for every person on Earth?
One of the subconscious questions that we movie watchers love to deal with is “What is reality?” Maybe the main character was actually dead the whole time. Maybe the whole thing was a computer-generated reality that took place centuries after the main character died. Maybe the setting wasn’t really the 1800’s, but instead current day the entire time. These movie twists are interesting because they reveal our fascination with the fact that “reality” is more of an idea and less of a certainty. Even if most people agree that this world we all live in is indeed reality, there is still the afterlife (or “after reality”) to consider, which completely complicates and enhances the importance of reality.
These thoughts about reality, the meaning of life, and the afterlife are unavoidable at some point in life, for most people. When someone we are close to dies, our thoughts have to at least consider for a few minutes what happens next for that person. But even in its simplest form, it’s still difficult to grasp the fact that reality, if nothing else, is different for every person on Earth- and therefore, reality is a static thing, even if most of us agree what reality generally is. So why is reality so different for each individual?
Sometimes when I read, I come across a quote that I wish I would have thought up myself. Last week as I was reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman, hidden somewhere in the middle of this random yet organized book (page 169) I found this nugget of epiphany: “The strength of your memory dictates the size of your reality.”
For a guy like me who is arguably only a few notches away from being Aspergers, with a vibrant memory of details of my life all the way back to my 2nd birthday party in 1983, my obsessive habits regarding pop trivia, and my natural ability to memorize Wikipedia highlights, it could be said that if the above quote is true, then the size of my reality is pretty large. But even if you’re not a walking Wikipedia like me, you still have used your memory to save meaningful information (like certain things you learned in your highest level of education, as well as social cues and expectations) along with meaninglessinformation (like who won the Super Bowl in 1997 or who Jake Pavelka chose on the finale of The Bachelor). The purposeful along with the pointless are both mixed together along with memories from your life that for whatever reason are not forgotten. These are some of the major ingredients that make up an individual reality.
But even if we can’t all share the same reality (which would be beyond boring), through our meaningful human relationships we can form a similar version of reality. For life to have meaning, life must be shared: The more shared experiences people have with each other, the greater their shared reality is. Our friendships, our families, our political affiliations, our religious organizations… they all help make reality a reality.
In my first “dad from day one” post on April 13th (dad from day one: She’s Having a Baby), I told the almost spooky story of how my Mexican grandma dreamed she was having a granddaughter two weeks before we went public with the news that my wife was pregnant. Since then, we have been asked on a near daily basis if we think it’s a boy or a girl.
I have found it easier this whole time just to assume my grandma’s dream is right. And in the past couple weeks since my wife has began “showing”, it’s become pretty obvious she’s “holding the baby high”, which is typical for a girl in the womb.
I would never go see a psychic myself. But… what happens when someone else goes to a psychic and their fortune is about you instead?
That’s exactly what happened. Today, one of my wife’s coworkers went to a psychic as a sort of “joke birthday gift” to herself. The fortune told: “One of your coworkers is pregnant with a girl.”
So it’s settled. My grandma and a psychic have both had a vision about this baby girl.
Only one way to know for sure- wait until next Thursday (June 17th). That’s when we’re officially finding out whether we’re having a boy or a girl- given that our baby isn’t crossing its legs during the procedure.
In a week’s time, I will have posted “dad from day one: The Gender of Our Baby”.
Here’s what The Bump says about our baby this week:
“Your fetus has become amazingly mobile (at least compared to you), passing the hours yawning, hiccuping, rolling, twisting, kicking, punching, sucking and swallowing. And, baby’s finally big enough that you’ll be able to feel those movements soon.”
Family Friendly Daddy Blog 