The Playpen

You pick up a lot of buzzwords and jargon when you’ve trudged through Corporate America for as long as I have. Most of it makes my skin crawl, and I can never bring myself to say it. When someone tells me they’d like to “regroup on that and make sure we have our ducks in a row,” or that they’d like to make sure we “have all of our ‘i’s dotted and our ‘t’s crossed,” I actually throw up a little bit. I used to try to hold it in, but now I just yack all over the conference table, look up at the other meeting attendees embarrassedly and mutter “Don’t worry. We budgeted for that.” I can’t stand corporate jargon.

There is one catch phrase, however, that I have always liked and I believe its due to the fact that it can be applied to real life, family life, and that it actually means something.

“Do what’s in your twenty percent.”

The phrase, originally published by some financial guru who’s book I am supposed to have read but never will, is intended for companies who attempt to grow too quickly or spread themselves too broadly across to many areas with limited resources. According to the author, if companies take a look at 100% of their workload, isolate the 20% that is the most important and focus all resources on that, while forgetting all the rest, they will become successful. I have found the same to be true with myself and my relationship with my wife.

Sometimes, when I take a step back and look at everything that goes on in life on a daily basis, I have to chuckle at the absurdity of it all. Who in god’s name would be able to actually do everything we expect ourselves to do with any success at all? In this day and age, with family businesses, two working parents, day care, soccer, babysitters, piano lessons, doctors appointments, Dora…what am I forgetting…oh yeah, meals, there is simply not enough resource to get everything done. We set ourselves up to fail every single day. I am sure that many reading this will feel the exact same way.
The detriment of this situation is that we end up doing a whole bunch of things poorly rather than a few things perfectly, and this affects my relationship with my wife.

Recently, things between Aline and I have been going really well. We all have our ups and downs, but with she and I the ups are way the hell up there and the downs are really really down there. For quite a while now, there just haven’t been any downs, and that’s because we are focusing on our 20 percent. We have both discussed what is truly important to us and essentially arrived at the same conclusion: we need to be in love with each other and we need to have fun with one another, whatever the cost.

For me, that means communicating. It means concentrating on not keeping secrets or not telling Aline something just because I think it will piss her off. It means being open and forthcoming with her and giving her the benefit of the doubt. Letting her react to what I have to tell her instead of assuming she won’t be able to handle it or keeping it secret to avoid blowups. This may sound like an easy thing for me, but it doesn’t come naturally. I have to work at it. But guess what? It totally works. She hardly ever gets upset with me for anything I tell her after all. As it turns out, she’s actually a pretty cool chick and gives me a lot more freedom when I’m being honest with her than she would if she felt I was hiding things. The result is that I am completely open with her and our relationship is stronger for it.

For her, it means controlling her temper when we do have an argument. She has a tendency to fly off the handle and say and do things that are excessively vengeful. As a person who has always felt that an argument is simply a tool in order to arrive at a positive compromise, I am not ok with saying and doing things to intentionally hurt someone. Especially someone you have two children with who you share every single day of your life with. This may sound like an easy thing for her, but it doesn’t come naturally. She has to work at it, and it totally works too. I have felt much closer to her and more willing to engage her in discussions or disagreements in a healthy manner knowing that she won’t pop at any minute. Again, our relationship is much healthier for it, and I feel much closer to her when I feel that she respects me.

This is our 20%. For us, working on those issues, concentrating all of our energy on the most important 20% of what we have to do in this entire ball of chaos called life has made a mountain of difference. Instead of lingering at the office for a few extra minutes as I might have done a few years ago when she and I were in not quite as great a place, I rush right home to see her and my kids, because a smile on her face puts a smile on mine instantly. Likewise, if I have to run an errand late in the evening, she doesn’t have to deal with the insecurity of wondering if I might actually be out sneaking a cigarette or having a beer somewhere in secret because she knows I would tell her if I felt the need to do that.

So maybe it does still annoy me when takes the hand towel out of the kitchen and walks around with it, just as it annoys her when she has to ask me to clean the damn fish tank for the 45th time, but you know what? Wet hands, a dead fish and two people madly in love with each other after 12 years together is about as close to perfect as it gets.

-Matt

Do you know about Dicovering Dad? It’s a website dedicated to what it means to be a good dad, and the site’s editor and founder, Jeremy, has put in a ton of hard work to build it into a terrific resource, filled with valuable insights for dads, by dads. I’m a contributing writer over there, and even though I post so infrequently that I think Jer may want to give me the boot, I did manage to get this one to him. Check it out, Discovering Dad is just cool.

As I was browsing through his site for a while, checking out all the comments and all the posts, I was once again reminded of how lowly and small a blogger I am. An old art teacher once told me that “the very worst response once can receive to one’s work is indifference,” and I sometimes feel that may in fact be the case with The Playpen. Until now. All of my blog heroes get completely trashed in their comments on a regular basis. I mean, people just rip them up one side and down the other all day long. Its awesome. The few readers I am fortunate enough to have around here, by contrast, are all so nice. I have been secretly longing for the day when someone, anyone, will take offense with something I have written and flame me, thus signaling that I have, indeed, truly arrived. Yesterday, Danielle (scroll down to the fourth comment) made my dreams come true, and I love her for that. I’d like to personally thank her for taking the time to get to know us before commenting, and also for blasting our business, RedSparks, that we have worked so hard on in order for us to be able to realize our dream of kicking some of our profits back to neonatal care research and charities that benefit pre-term infants with special needs. Today, my friends, Matt has become a man. He has become….a Blogger.

And since she took offense at my plug and the prices of some of our items, I thought I’d throw her a bone. Check out some of our marked down merchandise at RedSparks. We have a huge sale going on and, regardless of what Danielle might think, we still consider most of what we carry to be pretty adorable.

-Matt

I’ve been trying to come up with something Earth-shattering and amazing for this, my 100th post on The Playpen. This morning, after dropping Nana off at the airport and watching Frankie sob a little in the car on the way home, I realized that the following was the perfect choice.

I’m not embarrassed to say that I’m close to my mom. I am. I think that’s a healthy thing and the older we all get the more I think a guy who is close to his mom might be seen as a good thing instead of cause for an old-fashioned beatdown by the tether ball courts.

Since a week after my son was born, my mom has been staying with us. Sometimes, at the end of her visits, I admittedly feel some sense of relief just by having the house back to myself. I don’t feel guilty saying this because we all know its true and she appreciates getting back to the comfort of her own home as well. But this time? No relief. My mom rocked.

I have been hiding my terror for some time with regard to having two children and what it is going to mean to my relationship with my wife. We are both very stubborn, headstrong, controlling and hot-tempered. Sort of like vinegar and baking soda. Either one, sitting by itself on the couch watching Next Food Network Star (can you believe Teddy lied like that? The meatloaf was totally a collaborative dish), would be completely benign. But we all know what happens when you mix and shake. In addition to our volatility, I have also quietly been observing our friends who have two children, most of them fairly recently. I have seen their sunken, bloodshot eyes staring lifelessly into the distance as if dreaming of beautiful, quiet places far, far away. I have seen their hunched, withered frames moping about, sometimes stooping painfully to pick up a Thomas train or dirty diaper, then continuing on their aimless journey to mediocrity. I have seen them flare up at each other, ignited like a gunpowder keg at a statement as innocent as “honey, do you mind holding him for a second?” They are the walking dead. They are husks of human beings existing only to provide an eternity of thankless service for tiny little demons.

This was my nightmare.

But having my mom with us taking care of things laid my fears to rest. She served as sort of a buffer for us during this period of adjustment and let us both see that we can handle this. I am also fairly certain at this point that we can do it fairly well, too, without either of us ending up chopped into little pieces and stuffed into trash bags behind the garage. Not having to maintain the home, take care of my older daughter 100% of the time and to be trapped inside the house for three weeks gave us time to breathe and it gave us time to adjust. We were able to just be a family for a little while and, in doing so, I was able to see what it can be like and how absolutely terrific it can be. Call me optimistic, but just having a glimpse of a really positive situation in one’s life makes it infinitely easier to weather the tough times. It allows you to focus on and strive for the positives in life and makes it easier to hunker down and just “get through it.”

So, for what its worth, thanks mom. You helped us out more that you can imagine. I love you, and I don’t care who knows it.

-Matt

I complain about being a father a lot. Lets face it, it can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. I always find myself on this particular Sunday morning looking back on my life as a dad and marveling at, not only how quickly it is all going by, but all of the challenges I have faced along the way. I mean, I have lost night after night of sleep over a hole in a heart, I have baked exact replicas of the very darkest part of the human anatomy and, of course, I have eaten poo.

It ain’t that easy.

But I also have met a lot of other really cool dads along the way, and knowing them has helped me understand that, not only am I not alone in my strife, but that most of my issues are no greater or more unique than anyone else’s. That really helps. There’s the dad that helped me out in the very beginning and that I promise to get a post to this week and there’s the dad that snuck me into his secret club. There’s a West Coast drinking buddy dad and the dad that makes me feel guilty when I do drink because I should have been working out instead of ordering an extra shot. (I had no idea that guy was all ripped and whatnot!) All in all some pretty cool guys.

Then there are those little events that happened this morning, where I woke up to find Grandma and Frankie making me this cool monster card,

I got a really nice gift and a beautiful card from my wife who somehow found time to get to the mall while sleeping less than two hours a night and I got to eat Burger King Croissan’wiches for breakfast. At the end of the day, really, does it get any better?

The truth is that the ageda, exhaustion, trials and tribulation are what makes being a father so great. If it were easy, no one would appreciate it for what it means. I love it, and want to wish a sincere and heartfelt “Happy Father’s Day” to all those guys who go out there and make it happen for their families day in day out. We’ve come a long way since our fathers’ Father’s Days, and I’m proud to be a part of such a great group.

Rock on, dads.

-Matt


There aren’t any real Father’s day specials on our site, RedSparks, but we have a few things with skulls on them. Check them out!

I am the worst kind of know-it-all. It’s a character flaw of which I have been painfully aware for years and, frankly, am not willing to change. I love acting smarter than everyone else. Even if I know absolutely nothing about a particular subject I will find some way to wax on about it for the next 30 mintes, and will leave you convinced that you came to the right place for answers, even if those answers were completely pulled out of you-know-where on the fly. Throw a word at me that’s not in my current vocabulary? I’ll sit there and mentally break down the root, origin and prefix until I can figure out what it means for an hour before I admit to you I had never heard it before. Yep. I am a total genius. I know everything.

My daughter is four years old and still isn’t potty trained. This bothers me on so many different levels I can’t begin to list them here, but the top two are probably having to change sheets, pants and underwear two thousand times a week and just the fact that I don’t know what I am doing in the least. We are flailing. I am certain that if we were to be evaluated by an expert in child development or some potty training guru, they would laugh hysterically and tell us to simply give up at this point. We have done everything wrong and I am frustrated beyond belief.

Here’s where we are right now: I am certain that my daughter possesses the physical control at this point to hold it in until its time to go. I know this because she will go for stretches of two to three days with no accidents at all, even at night. I also know she knows where, when and how to go because, when she’s having a good day, she likes to “show off” the fact that she’s doing it. The problem lies in her “bad days,” which can last for weeks where she goes in her pants or in her bed every single time. I’m talking 5-6 accidents a day. Maybe more. Regardless of what we read in books and what we have been told by friends, this creates a great deal of frustration for Aline and I and we admittedly let her see it. So now, thanks to our maturity and brilliance, when she is preparing to have an “accident” she goes to one of her hiding places where she won’t be seen. Usually under the dining room table or between the couch and the love seat. She actually prepares to wet her pants. To make matters worse, she will walk around with wet underwear all day long before she will let us see it. Because she wears a uniform to school, we sometimes don’t notice that she has had an accident (its hidden beneath her skirt) for hours. This causes rashes and can obviously lead to greater complications.

I consider myself a pretty good father for much of the same arrogant reasons I listed in the first paragraph. But I am lost. I’m frustrated, confused and flabbergasted. We have “potty training” my daughter for over a year. That, my friends, is not normal, no matter what anyone says. Apart from the personal embarrassment I feel for not being able to quickly master this skill and know all there is to know about it, I am really concerned about her. I am worried that there may be some deeper psychological issues at play here, and that just won’t do.

So here I am, the great and powerful Oz, letting you see behind the curtain. I don’t know the first thing about potty training, and would love some help.

-Matt

If there’s a silver lining to this story its that, no matter how many accidents she has, we never run out of fresh, cool baby clothes. Check out RedSparks, our online store.

My mom, who is staying with us for a couple of weeks to help us keep the house and ourselves from completely falling apart while adjusting to life with another Matt in the house, recently brought me this article from the LA Times. Its from the “Ask Amy” column and, in this particular instance, I don’t think Amy did a very good job of responding to “Concerned Party Pooper’s” comment. If I was my high school writing teacher, I would have scibbled “Take a STANCE!” in red pen by her reply. In any case, the gist of the article is that Concerned Party Pooper (CPP) is upset by how birthday parties at his childrens’ private school have become all about “shock and awe,” and force them to delve more deeply into their pocketbooks than they are comfortable with. I think that Amy missed an opportunity to hit on an issue which I can not only identify with, but find completely disturbing and frustrating, just like CPP.

The problem with parents who attempt to “show up” the other parents by hosting gigantic catered birthday galas for every kid their child has ever known is twofold. First, and most obvious, is CPP’s main gripe. Expense. My daughter has around 25 kids in her preschool class. Not only is it expected that each and every kid attend each and every birthday party, but it is expected that the parents will provide a gift to each child as well. There also exists an expectation about what said gift must be. A five-dollar whoopie cushion from the corner drugstore won’t cut it. These kids wear Prada. I believe that, in addition to wiping out my 401K so that I can outfit some child I barely know in the latest UGGs, this sends a very negative message to the child themselves. No one I have ever known gets 25 gifts, fancy gifts no less, on their birthday, not including what they receive from family. It teaches the child to expect royal treatment throughout their life in addition to spoiling them and making it almost impossible for the child to learn the value of their possessions. A kid that age simply can’t play with a toy or put together a puzzle with any focus at all when there are 24 other presents waiting to be unwrapped. The puzzle ends up lost or on the floor.

The second reason has to do with the parents’ motives and their commitment to the life experiences of the child. I may get in trouble for saying this, but I actually believe that these children enjoy these parties less than they would if the parents took a step back, forgot for a minute about how impressive their kid’s party could be and started thinking about how fun they should be. Half of what I see when I attend these parties is for the parents and not the kids. Sure, they get to run around and play and have a blast. Kids can have fun anywhere. But typically the events are thrown in some rented venue where there is supervision supplied by the people who work at the venue. The parents generally congregate around an elaborate spread of food designed to impress while they discuss the 100-dollar centerpieces in their Burberry scarves.

Color me old school, but I think it should be about fewer guests and more about what the child truly loves. Forget the mini-quiches and the grilled eggplant with mozzarella cheese and roasted pine nuts. Have pizza and hot dogs and spend some time having a birthday blast with your child. There was one particular party thrown by my mother that, some 30 years later, I remember like it was yesterday. She sent out invitations that she had made by hand. Little scrolls rolled up with the edges burned so they would look medieval. She stayed up all night rolling up newspaper and painting it silver to make an entire armory of swords and lances. She made knights helmets out of cardboard, each one complete with a feathered plume form the craft store and its own unique face plate design. We had ourselves a tournament. There were sword fights and hammer throws, Guineveres and Lancelots. She wrapped it all up with a good old fashioned Big Wheel jousting tournament and to the victor went the first slice of cake. It was absolute heaven and I am fairly certain that, while it cost her a lot in effort and sleep, it barely made a dent in her checkbook.

People will do what they do, and I really don’t have any right to judge them. But I what I can do is make sure my daughter understands the difference between excess and quality. I want to give her the gift of blissful nostalgia when she thinks back to her birthday parties, and there won’t be any Louis Vuitton in sight, I promise you.

I think now I know why dear old mom gave me that article, and I’m glad she did.

-Matt

Would it be totally lame if I now asked you to click over to our online baby store, RedSparks, and spend all your money?

My wife and our newborn son have been home and resting comfortably for about a week now. In contrast to our experience with Frankie, this one has been incredible and everyone is enjoying being together.

A couple of days ago, I went back to the hospital to fill a prescription for Aline, who is still under doctor’s orders not to drive. Upon leaving the pharmacy, I stopped in the tiny vending machine area, popped a dollar into the coffee machine and, without thinking, pressed 1-B-7, the little code for a large cup of black Brazilian Roast. As I was reaching for the cup once it had been filled, I froze for a minute and the oddest sensation swept over me.

There exists a phenomenon in theater that I have felt many times, but have never been able to explain. I am certain that almost everyone has experienced it in one shape or form at some point in their lives. This phenomenon, this haunting and eerily wondrous awareness occurs long after the audience has filed out of the theater, when the curtain has been drawn, the lights doused and the stage emptied. It happens off in the wings as you gaze at the dim outlines of shadowy sets looming silently in the dark. Nothing moves yet everything speaks. It’s a tingle down your spine as, for a few brief moments, the ghosts of past performances and souls previously bared on that stage whisper to you chillingly. Its magic.

That’s what I felt, standing there alone with the coffee machine and I was filled with sadness.

It is a difficult thing to explain, but I realized at that instant I missed the hospital. The entire week I was there with Aline and the baby I was frantic and worried for everyone’s well-being. If you had asked me at any point during our stay if I would rather be anywhere else it would have taken me less than a second to respond absolutely.

But there with my coffee, almost a week later, I felt differently. I remembered the late nights, curled up on the fold-out “bed” in Aline’s room under a thin blanket, the almost inaudible sound of a television and the nurses’ muffled laughter down the hall creating a soothing soundtrack to the warm and loving conversation Aline and I were having quietly. I remembered us sitting together in silence as the room was bathed in the golden glow of the sunrise, happily gazing at our tiny boy sleeping contentedly in his bassinette. I remembered the bubbling laughter and noisy babbling of family members and friends congregating in the room while slapping me on the back, kissing our son and embracing Aline through tears of joy. I remembered the swelling in my heart and the tear in the corner of my eye as I watched my daughter lean over the rail of Mommy’s bed and place her hand gently on her brother’s forehead for the first time.

That hospital room had been our sanctuary. It had been our shelter from the realities of life and the real world where the only thoughts that drifted breezily through my mind were those of love and of closeness, of pride and happiness. As strange as it may sound, that hospital room had hosted my family’s own little adventure and, like the ghosts in the empty set, we all left a tiny little piece of our own souls there when we carted the last of Aline’s belongings out of the room towards the car.

I wondered, as I forced myself to leave the vending area and headed back home, if the man who entered that room behind us with his mop and his bucket of suds, felt some of the same eeriness I often feel in a theater. I wondered if he paused for a moment, both hands still grasping the handle of his mop, and looked around, perhaps feeling some of the warmth and love that had been left behind there.

Later that night I started to explain to my wife what I had felt, apologizing for admitting something as silly as missing being in the hospital and she stopped me halfway through. She looked at me softly and explained that she knew exactly what I meant, and that she felt it too. She missed carrying Dominick inside her. She missed his little kicks and hiccups and she missed every little bit of discomfort or pain she had been experiencing because those things reminded her that she was creating life. I believe that, while she loves being a mother, she misses the emotion and warmth that stems from becoming a mother almost as much. And, like me and my hospital, she knows that she will probably never experience those things again.

I take comfort in the fact that Aline and I have added our own miniscule branch to a tree that will continue to grow long after we are dead. But I also admit that I, the guy who joked with the nurses and with friends about never going through this experience again and made quirky statements like “two kids is two too many,” actually feel some sadness and a tiny little tug of regret in the back of my mind that, while Aline and I can nurture that tree for a while to come, we can no longer contribute to its growth.

Funny. Who would have guessed?

-Matt

You’re all bloggers. You get it. Do you ever have a post planned, down the the last, hilarious “zinger” ending, then something happens in your life that makes that post seem so foolish and irrelevant that there is no way in good conscious you can put it up? I’ll post the one I had planned later, when it is respectul to do so.

Everyone knows my son has been born, and that he is beautiful and amazing and perfect. The delivery was early and tough. I’m not going to lie to you, I found myself throughout the process thinking “Oh, man, we are NEVER doing this again…we just don’t do childbirth well. We have a hard time. We have bad luck.” It was an emotional process, to say the least.

Several years ago, after Frankie was born, I had a breakdown. Aline was at the hospital; it was late at night. I went out in to my backyard, worrying about my daughter’s survival. I leaned up against the back wall of my house, next to the bay window where no one would ever see me, even though there was no one there, and cried like I have never cried. There is something that guys do. They hold everything in and they don’t let anyone see that they’re hurting for fear of being viewed as weak or unsupportive. But they DO hurt. This particular time it just all came out. It needed to come out. I dried my eyes, took a deep breath, tried to make it look like I hadn’t just bawled my eyes out, and went back in to my empty house.

I thought I would make it past the breakdown this time. Dominick was born early, but not that early. He was 7lbs, 6oz, and was out of the NICU in less than 24 hours. This was EASY compared to Frankie. I was still freaked out, and worried about my wife’s health, but it didn’t seem like something worth crying over. I was A-OK and in control.

About a week after he was born, and had just come home with Aline, I was at the market. I had let the house go, and there was no food anywhere to speak of. A new mom and her family have to eat, so I was replenishing the pantry. I heard the text alert go off on my phone, and grinned as I pulled it out of my pocket, expecting to see another congratulatory message from friends or family on the birth of our son. As I stood in line at the checkstand, listeneing to the New Yorker checker making jokes, I read the following message.

“Diana passed away tonight. Please don’t text me or call me.”

Diana was the one-week-old daughter of a girl I know fairly well. I remembered initially feeling that this girl was far too young to have a child, and even admit questioning her decision to keep the baby when she knew there would be complications immediately following birth. But, throughout the pregnancy, I looked at the little ultrasound pictures she had all around, heard some of the things she told my wife and friends about her excitement and came to realize that this girl was ready to be a mother. She changed my mind, and I admired her strength and dedication to her unborn child. She proved me wrong.

I had the breakdown again. Right there in the market. I hid it until I got to the car, then it just flowed. So badly that when Aline saw my face when I walked in the door she panicked because she thought something terrible had happened to me or to the new baby. I just couldn’t stop it. It was less than manly for sure but, once and a while, I need to be less than manly.

Once again I have been reminded, this time through this girl’s terrible and tragic loss, how lucky I am. There are people out there going through things so unimaginable that they would probably kill to enjoy the experiences in my life I call diffucult. My life – my friends, my children and my family are beatiful and perfect…even with what I consider to be faults. I have absolutely no right to complain about anything, and will wake up tomorrow with a renewed appreciation for everything I have, the experiences I have been through and the incredible people around me.

Life is beauiful and terrible thing; the more I live it, the deeper my love/hate relationship with it becomes. There is one thing of which I have become certain. If you don’t take a few minutes every day to love every little bit of it, you are doomed to go through the tiny portion of it you have left missing every single gift it has given you.

Rest in peace, Diana.

-Matt

As you may already know, my son, Dominick, was born May 28th at 7lbs 6oz.

Aline had some lingering health issues that have since cleared up and, although everyone is home safe and sound now, we did spend about six days in the hospital. Funny thing about hospitals, they make me all scattered and forgetful; I just can’t focus in them.

On the day we were discharged I was waiting for the elevator in the maternity ward, carrying my new baby boy proudly in his car seat by my side. An attractive woman wearing a silk blouse and a pencil skirt was waiting next to me, and was smiling and waving at my son, trying to get him to return the smile.

“He’s very cute,” she said to me kindly.

“Thanks! I think so too. I’m excited to be bringing him home. We all are.” I answered back cheerfully.

She looked away from him and up at the floor indicators above the elevators for a moment before she asked “Who’s his agent?”

My jaw dropped. There I was, having lived in Los Angeles for over fifteen years, and I had allowed my poor son to go six days without representation. I mean, I forgot everything. No agent, no media junkets and, worst of all, no auditions. Six days. I was shocked and embarrassed. As she got on the elevator I could only stand there and look away in shame.

As soon as we got home I developed my plan to catch Dominick up with the rest of the kids his age and get him “out there” as quickly as possible. I would have to move fast, which everyone knows creates a greater potential for over-exposure, but I had no choice. This first thing I did was to leave messages for Michael Ovitz and Joe Simpson. I told myself that whoever called me back first would represent Dom. Cross that one off the list.

Next, I had to create some Dominick buzz. The quickest way to get people talking about a celebrity is through the tabloids. So I quietly leaked these photos to Star, Globe and The Enquirer.

He’ll be the new “it boy” in no time.

Finally, he needed a makeover. He’s a good-looking boy, no question, but I was a little concerned that he may be a little too “hard-edged” looks-wise to land some of the more sensitive, John Cusack-type roles. I needed to soften him up. For a brief minute, I entertained the idea of giving him kind of a goth, sexy Adam Lambert kind of a look.

Then I thought to myself “What am I doing? Lambert hair on a baby?” It was just getting too silly, you know? Sometimes I take things too far and need to pull back a bit.

Finally I decided that less is more. I wanted him to land the big parts, but I also wanted him to be perceived as more than just a pretty face. If I made him up too much, I feared that he would end up going down the Matthew McConaughey road and would never again be able to play a role with his shirt on. So I decided to go with an intelligent, approachable head shot that would show his versatility as well as a certain level of refinement and character. Sort of like a cross between Anthony Hopkins and Judd Nelson.

I started by removing the bags under his eyes. We can’t have our leading man looking tired all the time, can we?

Then I added a simple yet debonair pair of Armani frames. Not too flashy, not too sophisticated.

Last but not least, an elegant and striking Dolce and Gabbana pin-striped 3-button suit with a Zegna tie rounded out the look.

With that I was satisfied. My baby boy, while definitely off to a late start thanks to my own neglect, was now officially integrated into Los Angeles society, and would be sitting across the desk from James Lipton in no time. Watch out Brad. Watch out Leonardo. There’s a new kid in town.

Break a leg, Dom. And welcome to Los Angeles

-Matt
You can dress your kid like a celeb too, you know. Check out the hot baby threads we’ve got at our online boutique, RedSparks.

Some friends help you clean your garage, others write posts for you when they know you don’t have the time. This one comes from my lifelong friend, Dave. Give it a read. You won’t be disappointed.
-Matt

Ok, this is funnier to me than anyone else, but I will share it with you as it has been making me laugh on and off for three days now.

Our son, who is three, is at the stage where playing is everything, but winning…winning is something different. For instance, no matter what place he gets when he crosses the finish line in Mario Cart Wii, he drops the controller, throws his arms triumphantly into the air and proudly proclaims, ‘I win!’

This, of course is greeted by a series of ‘Yeahs!’ And ‘Woo-hoos!’ from my wife and I. He is the happiest kid we have ever met and we want him to stay that way. When he is old enough to read, he’ll figure it out on his own.

So I came home from work three days ago, and went into the bedroom to shed my work attire and get comfortable. I hadn’t even gotten my shirt off when Ty came running into the room to enthusiastically announce to me that, ‘I watch Dodgers all by myself, Daddy.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘I turn TV ooonn. (spelled incorrectly to stress the emphasis he used) And then I watch Dodgers all by myself.’

I was a little shocked (and quite frankly very impressed) that he even knew the team’s name. He had never mentioned it before.

Now, I should tell you that from time to time, he has seen me flip on the TV in our bedroom to check the score of the Dodger game. And I have tried to explain the whole baseball thing to him many times. He tells me, ‘Yes, Daddy’ when I ask him if he understands, but I always felt he was just a little too young.

So when he tells me that he is watching the game by himself, I have to admit I was a little skeptical (our cable guide is not THAT user friendly). I laughed it off as his way of wanting to bond with me. We left the room, I turned the TV off and we went about playing with his matchbox cars, Mario Cart, etc. ‘Daddy. Play.’

As is often the case with my wife and me, Ty sort of floats back and forth between us both. ‘Mommy. Play.’ It was her turn and I moved on to other things. Those other things eventually led me back to the bedroom.

As I approach the bedroom door, I heard the faint sound of outdoor crowd applause. I stopped, turned my head to the side to find the source, and then I heard Vin Scully’s voice, ‘Three and two’s the count, bottom of the ninth, runners on first and second, two out.’ What the…?

I walk into the bedroom and lo-and-behold: Ty had planted himself directly onto my pillow, on the far side of the bed. The remote control was in hand and the TV was on the Dodger game. ‘I watch Dodgers all by myself, Daddy,’ he said with a grin. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and then pretended to take a deep interest in the game.

‘… not exactly by himself,’ I heard Valerie say from the closet (four feet away). He was far from alone, but in his mind he was in-charge and watchin’ the game…

I giggled like a child and jumped on the bed with him to savor this precious father, son (and mother – four feet away) moment. He pretended not to see me (as he was so-very-interested in the game). I stared at him until he broke a smile – but not his feigned interest in the game. He stared at the TV and in a straight face simply stated, ‘I watch Dodgers all by myself…with Daddy.’

I was giddy. I was strangely proud. I tickled the hell out of him and then we returned to the game. ‘What’s the score buddy?’ I glanced at the screen – our boys in blue were leading 2-0.

‘Nine, ‘he tells me.

‘Nine, Daddy. The score is nine.’

Classic.

It’s not the destination, but the journey. In the end, we all win.