First, a public service announcement for The Fatherhood Means Challenge. The National Fatherhood Initiative a.k.a. fatherhood.org is sponsoring a video and photography contest on what it means to be a father. Basically what they’re looking for are videos and photographs that expresses what involved, responsible, and committed fatherhood means to you. Since the sponsoring organization is a non-profit, the contest is not for commercial purposes but to spark discussions and interest in fatherhood. To enter, videos must be uploaded onto YouTube and photos uploaded to flickr. They must be tagged with “fatherhoodmeans” to be eligible. Videos need to be between 20 seconds and 2 minutes. The 1st place prizes are a DVD camcorder for best video and for best photo a point and shoot digital camera. The prizes are decent, but my main motivation for entering is to just to have a bit of creative fun while expressing my love for my son and the joy of being a dad. The contest ends May 14th and the winners will be announced on Father’s Day. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing some what my fellow fathers create.

More information at http://www.fatherhood.org/fatherhoodmeans/

Continuing along the culinary theme of some recent entries, a couple of months ago my 2 year old was jonesing for some macaroni and cheese aka mac cheese. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we ran out of the quick and easy boxed stuff. Since it was a cold and rainy Sunday, I didn’t particularly feel like changing out of my favorite fuzzy pj’s and trudge on over to the supermarket. So I decided to play Iron Chef and do a little improv cooking to see what I can make with the current ingredients that we had. We didn’t have any elbow macaroni, but we did have some twisty corkscrew style pasta. I use to live in SF’s Little Italy and a neighbor taught me how to make a quick and simple Alfredo style sauce in a pinch with boatloads of butter, gobs of grated parmesan cheese, and some milk. After cooking the pasta and scrounging up the ingredients at hand, I tossed them all in a big pan with a dash of pepper. No measuring, I simply mixed and stirred everything, adding more and more grated parmesan cheese until I liked the consistency. In our fridge I also found a Mexican style four-cheese blend made up of Cheddar, Monterey Jack, Asadero and Queso cheeses. I wasn’t sure if it would mix well or not, but it was all we had. So I heaped on a couple of handfuls and was pleasantly surprised to watch it smoothly mix in with the pasta and sauce. After a couple of smaller heapings of the cheese blend and a bit more grated parmesan cheese, I felt it was finally ready for the toddler taste test. The ultimate satisfaction came when his eyes lit up after sampling a bit of my gastronomic concoction and he loudly declared “Yummy!” He now just doesn’t ask for mac cheese, but specifically requests “daddy’s special mac cheese”.

His taste buds also extend into the realm of the exotic. A few weeks ago, we went out to dinner for sushi with some family and friends. My sister ordered grilled baby octopus for an appetizer and my son asked her what she was eating. When she told him, I thought he would be horrified since one of his favorite stuffed toys is an octopus. Instead, he asked if he can try some. With a bit of trepidation, we gave him a very small piece to try and much to everyone’s surprise he really liked it. He actually ended up eating more than half of my sister’s food and she had to order more. It was a little mind boggling watching my son eat octopus and seeing tentacles sticking out of his mouth. He even specifically said that he liked the tentacles because they were chewy. The most disturbing part for me was that he liked it so much that he said he wanted to cook up and eat his toy octopus when we got home. I was somewhat relieved when I saw him the other day pretending to cook in the kitchen and he said that he was making some special mac cheese for me. Hmmm...now that I think about it, it’s been a while since the last time I’ve seen his toy Octopus.

What are some of the comfort foods and crazy cuisine that your children like? 

Before I actually was a father, I pictured myself rough housing, throwing the kids in the air.  I pictured my wife cringing as I threw them a little too high.  I thought my wife would be the one who would hover as they took their first steps.  Turns out my wife doesn’t cringe so much when we’re rough housing.  She’ll get a bemused look on her face from time to time, but that’s about the limit.  And when BigBrother started walking, it was me who was bent over walking around with him to make sure he didn’t fall. 

When we let BigBrother out of our direct control for the first time as we sent him to pre-school (not counting him being baby-sat by grandparents), it was me who was anxious.  What is he gonna do for 3 hours?  How will we know?  What happens if there is some kind of incident and we don’t know who did what?  What happens if he gets hurt.  DearWife was much more calm.

It’s surprising how much of a motivating factor fear can be.  But when I was growing up (I’m entering grumpy old man territory here I know), it was seemingly simpler.  I grew up in a town of 10,000.  200 kids in my graduating class.  Gangs were something you saw on Hill Street Blues.  You’d never really hear about child abductions other than your parents telling you not to accept candy from strangers.  Today, I think there is a posted armed guard at my old HS.  Neighboring schools have metal detectors so I hear.

Now, you can’t turn on network television without hearing about something horrible.  One of those things hit home for me last week.  I grew up 5 minutes away from NIU.  My dad taught there.  I went to school there.  Met my wife there.  I still know a lot of people in town.  So it was horrifying watching video with aerial shots of Cole Hall.  A dozen ambulances were needed to help care for the gun shot victims.  It was almost surreal- even though I am 17 years removed from being a student.  In a flash, I remembered watching “Annie Hall” with DearWife in that auditorium.  I remembered a cute sorority girl flirting with me to let her cheat off of me on the COBOL final (I didn’t let her). 

I tried to think of sitting in the front row watching some kid come out of the stage with a shotgun pointed at me.  Then, I tried to picture what it would be like if that gun was pointed at one of my kids.  I can’t really even consider that right now.  My throat is tightening up just thinking of that. Yes, that’s a long way off, but the thing I keep coming back to is that there is really no way to stop some random looney from doing this.  Have we really made strides since Columbine? 

Predictably, there have been complaints that the gun laws are too lax.  And in an odd coincidence (or maybe it’s not a coincidence), the nut job got his guns from the same place that the VA Tech guy got his.  There has been talk of more laws, tighter restrictions.  Even the Illinois Rifle Association supports some of them.  That’s all well and good.  I’m sure that will help keep guns out of ‘bad’ people’s hands.  But the problem of people killing students is not a gun problem.  It’s not a problem with lack of security.  It’s not a problem of lack of mental health support. 

The problem is one of people not really participating in society.  Not feeling like they belong.  When people don’t feel connected to other people, they don’t feel bound to any moral or legal system.  They have nothing to lose.  When someone is so totally disenfranchised, whether that is because of mental imbalance or any other reason, you can’t really control what they’re going to do.  And you won’t be able to predict it either. 

My fear is that this is going to get worse.  My fear is that there really is no good solution.  And I’m honestly very afraid for my kids.

This past week or so has been, well, one of the worst in recent history.

It all started with my wife going on a business trip. She left on Saturday and was to return on Tuesday. No problem there! Except when people hear that your wife goes away the first thing out of their mouths is, “Who’s is going to take care of the kids?”

HEY! I’m right here!!! What about Dad? Yes people… Dads can handle their children!

The weekend goes pretty good! We have some fun and the house is totaled. The clothes dryer stops drying and all is well. So we go on a hunt for a new dryer. No one has one in stock, not one appliance store anywhere, even the one that said they had one! Oh well!

Monday rolls around and I go to work and the kids to school. Pick up the little one for dance class and she doesn’t even want to move let alone go to dance class. Instead we go home.

The next morning the older one wakes up with a 102 degree fever and the little one has a 101 degree. No problem I have the next two days off from work. I end up getting what they have. Great, Now I Have the 102 degree fever. So now we have three sick puppies in the house.

Tuesday night my wife comes home to the sick house.

She is a 4th grade teacher and can’t easily get days off without having to jump through hoops. So it is me and the kids, coughing, wheezing, sneezing, and the rest of the fun that goes with it.

The next Monday rolls around and I finally decide that it is time for me and the older one to check out the doctors office. The little is now a happy camper.

After double doses of antibiotics and breathing treatments we are on our way to complete health. YEAH! Just don’t make me laugh or I will spend the next 10 minutes coughing my lungs off!

Just remember, Dads CAN handle their children, even with a fever! Moms are better at it, but we can take care of our own too! Darn it!!!

Last week our three-year-old daughter magically realized that stories--the same kind we’ve always read in books before bed--can also happen to her.

I don’t know how she figured it out--one night she simply said, “I want you to tell a story about me and Darci” [her same-age cousin]. And I struggled through it, as I knew I would, because even though I like writing, I choke with impromptu storytelling. I know a good story needs a few conflicts, shouldn’t have an overbearing moral, and ends with the protagonist having changed in some way.

“Once upon a time,” I began, “there were two little girls, Lexi and Darci. And they were jumping on a trampoline [we have a trampoline], and one time, Lexi jumped up so high that she almost touched a cloud, and she realized she could fly.”

It was a flat, vague, clichéd exposition, but the look on my daughter’s face, a foot away from mine, was wide-eyed suspense.

“What happened next, Daddy?” The same mystical source which prompted her to ask for a story about herself had also taught her the correct response to the parent who has stalled on ideas.

In that story, the conflict was that Lexi and Darci were flying around and going to be late for dinner. Over the next few nights I found myself struggling to come up with an antagonist who was interesting but not scary and a plot that also wasn’t scary and didn’t involve flying. My first five or so stories for and about my daughter all involved people or animals or cars being able to fly. I have no idea what that says about me.

What I knew I needed, I thought as I lay looking into my daughter’s rapt face, was a set of family myths. Some default stories, maybe modeled on the Grimm or Brer Rabbit tales, about people she loves and places she knows. And in that child-bedtime twilight, a silence broken only by her repeating the question, “What were their names, Daddy?” I imagined Greek parents, Egyptian parents, Mayan, Roman, Asian Indian, Chinese, Aboriginal parents, sleepily weaving a cosmogony and mythology as much for their desire to worship the ineffably grandiose above and all around them as to get the children at their sides to sleep.

My family growing up didn’t have many family traditions, outside of opening all our presents on Christmas Eve. So when I tried to think of some family traditions to implement with my own family, I was having a hard time. Then I remembered Grandpa’s Blintzes. Every summer, my parents would drop me and my brother off at our grandparents’ house near Asheville, NC, and we would stay for three or four weeks. Those times were just about the best times of my childhood. Free reign during the day, playing with my brother and cousins, traveling to cool places like Tweetsie Railroad, Gatlinburg and the Franklin, NC gem mines. But another more low-key highlight of my trips there were the blintzes my grandpa used to make. I have fond memories shoveling them in until I couldn’t eat another, and then asking for just one more. What better tradition to start here at home?

So now I make blintzes for the family every Saturday morning, and it’s already one of the things the kids really look forward to. Even when we travel, we have brought all the fixins (and even sometimes the pan and utensils!) so we wouldn’t miss out. On many occasions, we’ve doubled the recipe and invited friends or family to come over for breakfast. It’s a great tradition, and a very doable one for even the most novice cook. So without further ado, Grandpa’s Blintzes:

Grandpa’s Blintzes
* 1 3/4 cup flour
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 1 tsp vanilla
* 2 eggs
* 2 cups milk (to start)

Mix all the ingredients together. You want it the consistency of buttermilk or eggnog, so add enough milk to get it there. I start with 2 cups and add another brief pour, and that usually does it. Cook on a greased/buttered/oiled pan over medium to medium high heat. When the edges start getting golden brown, flip it. Wait about a minute and it’s done! Reapply grease/butter/oil as necessary.

Enjoy the food and the memories!