Dark Side of the Carton

I’ve really been slacking off on the whole blogging thing. You see, we went on vacation a few weeks back and I think I am still trying to catch up and recover from it.

When my oldest was a baby, we tried to fly out to San Diego to stay with my relatives that had rented a condo out there. Long story short, we got stranded in Denver with no baby food, diapers, and no car seat. Thanks United! From that point forward we were committed to driving ourselves to our vacation destinations of choice. This is relatively easy if you are travelling to the coast or somewhere near by. We weren’t and we haven’t. Since then we have driven to the East Coast once and the West Coast 2 or 3 times. I forget.

After last year’s trip I decided I was done with the driving thing. I just couldn’t stand 2 days of traveling each way. So this year we decided to head out West again for our first of 2 trips to the great state of California.

This trip was kind of impromptu and then blossomed into a full blown vacation. Whatever, it was a lot of fun.

One important distinction about this trip was that it was Ethan’s first real plane trip. He was far too young to recall the first one. He kind of freaked out about the whole thing all the way up until we got to the airport. My mom somehow managed to convince the gate attendant to let him go sit in the cockpit and meet the pilot. That went a long way towards making the trip start off easily.

We were staying in a condo on the boardwalk down in Mission Beach for the week. We had rented it with my mom and brother. My aunts, cousins, and grandparents also occupied 3 other condos right in that area. You could say that it was a big family reunion and that would be pretty accurate.

With the kids being 4 and 1, I was pretty excited to see how they were going to react to the activities we had planned for the week. The first few days were beach days and it was hilarious to see them run around on the beach. They truly had a blast. It helped that all of my cousins love them to death. I’m the oldest of like 12 or 13 cousins with the youngest of the bunch being 16.

Last year while we were out there we headed to the San Diego Zoo and it was a blast so we made sure to go again this year. I really wish the San Antonio Zoo was 1/2 as big and half as entertaining as that. I mean, I like our Zoo and all that, but it’s really in a world of it’s own.

One of the new things that we made time for this year was Legoland. I went about 10 years ago right after I got out of high school and I loved it. They’ve made a few additions in the last 10 years.

I was really worried that Ethan wouldn’t enjoy himself or appreciate the scope of what it takes to build a 15′ tall skyscraper out of real LEGO blocks. He did and he is still asking to go back. I think when we head back to SoCal this fall that we are going to make the trip down to Carlsbad for a day.

The trip back to San Antonio was pretty easy and I am seriously glad we did the air travel thing instead of driving.

I usually get pretty stressed out on vacation for some reason. I am not a strict timetable type of person, but I just tend to get up tight. This trip I really got to enjoy and didn’t feel up tight about anything. Maybe I wasn’t as worried about the kids since they are a little bit older.

Name: Bee
Manufacturer: Bugaboo
MSRP: $529

Now that I’ve gotten over the initial giddy feeling of this purchase, I am at a point where I can legitimately tell you about it. The Bee is the newest member of the Bugaboo family of products. It’s aimed at parents that live in the city and have reason to fold it up and toss it into a taxi or take it on the subway. For that reason, it’s designed to be stylish, but also very lightweight and compact.

The Bee features very solid but lightweight construction with it’s aluminum frame. The Bee also comes equipped with 4 wheel independent suspension. What that means is that each wheel is independently spring loaded to provide a very smooth ride for your child. The wheels are also very sturdy and foam filled. They seem to allow the stroller to just glide smoothly across any surface. Even a quick stroller around the block is a smooth as can be.

The Bee also features an adjustable handle bar so it can comfortably be used by parents of all size. This was one of the major drawbacks to most strollers with fixed handles.

Another great feature is the ability to have your child face the world or face you. With a few simple steps you can flip the lightweight seat around. One drawback was that with the seat facing you, the stroller didn’t seem to fold up as well. It is recommended to return the seat to forward facing before folding.

Folding up the stroller is as easy as pulling 2 slide locks on the frame. No tricky locks are necessary to keep the stroller folded up. It simply holds it’s position. To unfold, simply place your foot on the brake pedal and push and it pops right up.

The brake is in the center of the back of the stroller and is very easy to engage and unlock with the flip of your foot.

The Bee also packs ample storage space beneath the seat, especially in rear facing position.

In all, the Bee is a fabulous stroller that isn’t packed full of complicated features. It has a simple design that works well and is simple to use. It’s light and sturdy and the seat cover is machine washable for easy cleaning. The price tag is hard to swallow for many people, but if you are planning on having multiple kids then the cost of purchasing a new stroller for subsequent kids it isn’t all that bad. The Bee also has an adapter for holding Graco car seats for $50.

I highly recommend anyone considering a new stroller take a look at the Bee. It is available at Neiman Marcus and at many online retailers.

Strollers are not a very “manly” thing to be excited about and so it is with a heavy heart that I have to admit that I am currently geeking out over one of our most recent purchases, a Bugaboo Bee.

My wife and I have 2 children, and over the course of their lives we have owned far too many strollers. We started with a standard Graco travel system (#1) for oldest. That was one heavy stroller and before going on vacation, we bought a Graco Lightrider(#2). We picked up a super cheap umbrella stroller (#3), which we still have, for those quick on the go trips as he got older. Pretty soon he stopped riding in strollers, and then we found out we were having a second child. Time to buy a few more strollers!

We reused one of the strollers we already had, I think, for the first few months and then it was off to buy a Combi lightweight stroller (#4), and a Joovy Sit and Stand (#5), for when the kids are both tired, and then somehow we ended up with a second umbrella stroller (#6).

At this point, it should be obvious that we love buying strollers. After all, my poor ability to fully recall the number we have bought still left us with 6 of the things. I don’t know what it is about the things, but they can be addicting. We have been moderately happy with each of the strollers, but they were either too heavy, too bulky, or they folded in a manner which was totally nonsensical. Needless to say, we were stressing about what to take for the upcoming vacation. Our Sit and Stand is huge and heavy and would necessitate a rental van once we land.

My wife and I started discussing the ability to find a light stroller that was compact and easy to travel with. We were both aware of the Bugaboo brand, but had never considered purchasing one due to the cost. The Bugaboo Cameleon will set you back about $895. A hefty price to swallow for just about anyone when a much cheaper alternative is available.

On Friday, we found out that Bugaboo had released a much more affordable stroller in the form of the Bee. We also found out that they were sold locally at Neiman Marcus. Saturday afternoon we were off to Neiman Marcus to check this thing out and see what the fuss was all about.

After carefully navigating the kids through a maze of items that I can barely afford with an entire paycheck, we found the baby boutique. There it was, in all its glory. We walked out a few minutes later with a bright yellow Bugaboo Bee. Actually, the nice sales lady delivered it all the way to the car for us.

I’ll spare you the trouble of asking the obvious question, “How much was this thing?”

Just know that it wasn’t cheap.

The stroller is really as nice as it appears. It steers like a champ and is super lightweight. In all, if we would have just shelled out the $500 in the first place, we probably would have ended up ahead in the total equation. After all, the total price for all the strollers that have found their way into and then out of our household adds up to a lot more than the price of this single item.

If I haven’t already intrigued you enough to hit google and find out what this thing looks like, let me present you a nice little shot of the Bee:

If you have any specific questions about the Bee, feel free to ask in the comments section.

Having kids is a daily challenge. Most things you can get through by counting to 10 and taking a few deep breaths. On occasion, something happens that is a little more difficult to get through.

Rewind to yesterday.

My 4 yr old son decided to conduct a science experiment. I haven’t concluded if this was an intentional or accidental experiment, but it took place nonetheless. The experiment hypothesis would read something like this if you were preparing it:

Will a 3″ Lightning McQueen racecar shatter the display on my parents LCD TV if thrown hard enough?

What do you know, the answer happens to be a resounding YES! As proven by my son. I’ll take a picture of the damage later today and add it to this post. So painful.

UPDATE: Let me clarify that it was my son writing the hypothesis and, yes, it was my TV that suffered said fate.

When you have kids, most weekends tend to be eventful. This past weekend was a little more eventful than most.

Friday night was by and large a normal day. We spent some time cleaning up the house and sitting around. Saturday morning showed up far too early and we had a soccer game at 11 so there was no time to lounge around. Between some more cleaning and prepping the kids to get out of the house, the morning literally disappeared.

The soccer game was good. The kids were a little more distracted than previous games, probably due to the heat. We ended up winning 5-1 or something. They don’t keep score in the U4 age group, but as the coach it’s hard to not want your team to win.

Lunch and then a little more cleaning too us well into the afternoon. At about 3:30pm we jumped in the car and headed for the Hyatt Hill Country Resort & Spa. Lauren and I had a room for Saturday night to celebrate our 5th anniversary, which we actually celebrated back on April 5th. We took the kids up to the resort for the afternoon to play in their waterpark that they have.

Despite the warm temps, the water was a little too frigid to stay in. We ventured into the baby pool to warm up and found out that it was the warmest place in the resort as it was heated. With the hot tubs out of commission for the afternoon, we stayed in the baby pool.

Next we headed up to the room to get cleaned up and went back to the house to drop off the kids with family.

For dinner we ended up chowing down on the buffet at the Springhouse Cafe as the individual menu items didn’t seem to be all that interesting. I ate far too much and the bartender was way too generous while making my Margarita.

As it was our anniversary, the front desk was nice enough to send us up a bottle of sparkling wine and some chocolate covered strawberries. A nice touch.

For breakfast, we headed back down the Springhouse Cafe and indulged in an awesome breakfast buffet before heading home to rescue Lauren’s family from our children.

To our surprise, the kids did great and didn’t freak out at all.

Since it was still quite early, we decided to head out to the zoo. It was a nice day after all.

The zoo was a lot of fun and it was quite nice outside, even though it looked like it was going to rain. Some of the animals were inside while the keepers cleaned their cages. One animal that was not laying around was the Sumatran Tiger. This made me a little nervous, given last year’s San Francisco Zoo fiasco. The Tiger, who is normally asleep at the very back of the barless pit, was pacing along the front edge of the ravine as if something had gotten his attention. It was amazing to see him walk that edge, but at the same time a little frightening. We moved on pretty quickly.

We finished our usual path around the zoo and headed for the car. With Fiesta in full swing down here, parking near the Zoo had become a nightmare. Upon returning to our vehicle, I noticed a wonderful gift left for us by a fellow park/zoo patron. This gift came in the form of a 3′ long scratch down the side of the van.

Thanks douchebag.

Fast forward to dinner at Chili’s last night with my mom and brother. We come out after a very long dinner, think entertaining your kids for 25-30 minutes AFTER you place your food order, and I walk over to the van to point out the scratch to my mom and notice that instead of a long straight scratch, it was now a wobbly one. That’s odd. Oh wait, this was the wrong side of the van. While enjoying our meal, someone else decided to leave a mark on my van. This time the weapon of choice was a green crayon. *Mental note to finish cleaning the 6′ line of crayon wax off the car after work and then washing and waxing to hopefully remove the actual scratch.*

So that was our eventful weekend. Needless to say, we are all exhausted and in dire need of some rest. Maybe next weekend we can relax. Doubtful.

Well, I will as soon as UPS delivers it later this week. I’ve finally made the jump and picked up one of the ceramic white PSP units complete with Darth Vader’s awesome mug on the back.

With this purchase, I have solidified myself firmly in the video game world as a complete and total nerd. I now own every current generation console and handheld gaming device. I have 5 current gaming devices and the amount of time I spend on them seems to be on the decline.

Ironically, my son’s time with my gaming systems seems to be on the rise. Funny how that works.

I think this is payment for the way I acted as a child, but no matter how many times I tell my son something he doesn’t listen. Take for instance, sticking your finger inside an aluminum soda can. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told him that the edges were sharp and it was going to cut him. Lo and behold, on the way home from school today he rears up and rams his thumb into the can and slices himself good.

I hear him in the back seat mumbling “what is this red stuff? get this red stuff off me.” I turn around and see blood running down his thumb. I quickly grabbed a kleenex and grabbed his thumb to stop the bleeding.

It was at this point that he began to freak out. I applied pressure to his thumb, while driving, until we got to the house and I could wash it and put a band-aid.

Lesson learned? Doubtful.

Kids. Gotta love them.

My 4 yr old is allowed to play video games. We really restrict what content he is exposed to, but we do allow him some video game time. We let him play Sly Cooper on the PS2 until we saw a negative change in his behavior. He got obsessed and did nothing but talk about the game. This resulted in my PS2 having to “break” indefinitely. Sly Cooper and all the games generating an obsession mysteriously disappeared.

Right after Christmas I bought a PS3 and we told him it was just a big DVD player. He bought that explanation, up until today that is.

Lauren tells me on our way home from soccer practice that Ethan informed her that the PS3 was “a black system”, what he called the PS2 and that it plays video games. She asked him how he knew that and he says “because of this” and points at the PlayStation logo on the front of the console. Then he grabs one of his PS2 games and points at the logo and says “See, same picture.”

Silly kid. Sometimes he’s too smart for his own good.

I hate getting shots so I can totally symphatize that my kids also hate getting shots. Unfortunately for my oldest, yesterday was the fun Dr. visit that comes with having a birthday. This time it came with a 4-pack of shots. I don’t remember what the vaccinations were for, but I can still picture his screaming face as we had to hold him still while they delivered the injections.

This has to be one of the harder things to cope with as a parent. You know that your kids need these things and you also know that it is going to hurt, despite what you tell them. It just sucks in general.

Today my son turns 4. I can’t even begin to express what a roller coaster ride the last 4 years have been, but to see the person he is growing up to be is truly amazing. It’s hard sometimes to remember that he is only 4 years old. His vocabulary and mannerisms are that of someone much older, say 16.

As a dad, it’s sometimes hard to show your kids how much they mean to you. In between all the griping and protecting them from themselves it sometimes gets lost in translation. In case I don’t say it enough, I love you kiddo. Have a great birthday.