GONE WRITING AGAIN

Trying to finish an outline and a script by Friday morning and then I'm off to the mountains with the family for a quick and much needed getaway. If things go smoothly I may try and put up an entry before I leave, but most likely I should be back to my regularly scheduled blogging Monday or Tuesday.

LI'L CORRESPONDENT

I can't believe it's been a year since I filmed this little pre-election video with Arden, but here's the little correspondent just after her third birthday doing "man on the street" interviews with people about who they were going to vote for in the "upcoming" election. I think this is some of our best work to date.

AN E.R. STORY

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a touch neurotic. Okay fine, Woody Allen and I are kindred spirits. Well a few months before Alex was born I started to get some serious heartburn - I was stressed out. We were having another baby. And I hadn’t worked in over two years. I think the heartburn was warranted. But when I tried to find some new kind of relief after the conventional meds like Prilosec and Zantac weren’t doing the trick, I ended up looking for answers online. Bad idea. If you’re the slightest bit of a hypochondriac, don’t look for solutions online because 9 times out of 10 those solutions are that you have some kind of rare and fatal disease. And in my case I learned that the symptoms of heartburn can often overlap with those of a heart attack. And since I have high triglycerides (which if not treated can lead to heart disease) I thought for a fleeting moment that it seemed like a plausible scenario. And then I remembered that I take meds for my tris and that heart attacks don’t generally last for three straight months.

Needless to say, when Jen finally went into labor in the middle of the night, my heartburn flared up. So much so that the nurse in the delivery room looked at me and said, “You all right?” I said, “Just some heartburn.” She then put her hands on her hips and said, “Well if you pass out, you’re getting a first class ride down to the E.R. even if that means missing the birth of your child.” I told her I was fine. Well, ten hours later, after Alex was born and I had shed a little tear of joy, the same nurse saw me still rubbing my chest and said, “When your wife’s asleep tonight, slip down to the E.R. around 4:00 AM. There’s never a wait then, unless a bunch of people died at the same time. Anyway, tell’em Shakina sent you and they’ll give you something for that heartburn of yours.”

3:30 AM rolls around and thanks to the Gestapo “wake up and feed your baby every ten minutes” tactics of the hospital’s La Leche League, I hadn’t slept in almost 48 hours and I still had some pretty bad heartburn so I dragged myself out of my uncomfortable cot and walked downstairs to the E.R. And just like Shakina told me, the place was a ghost town. I gave them my name and within five minutes I was sitting comfortably in a private station in the E.R. where a friendly doctor came in, asked me about my symptoms and so I didn’t sound like a complete idiot for visiting the E.R. for heartburn I told her about my high triglycerides. She said she would order up a G.I. Cocktail (a thick green concoction made of Prilosec, Zantac, Mylanta and lidocaine) and a quick E.K.G. as a precaution and send me on my way with a prescription for some new heartburn medication. Sounded like a plan. So I sucked that cocktail down like a shot of Jäger and was feeling better in literally seconds (the lidocaine numbs the whole system). And like a well-oiled machine, a minute later I got the E.K.G. and just like that I was declared healthy as an ox. While I waited to get released Jen called me on my cell and told me that her OBGYN stopped by and said she had the va-jay-jay of champ and the pediatrician gave her blessing to take the baby home a day early so Jen was upstairs packing. I told her I would be right up. Or so I thought…

So while the doctor is signing my release papers, I get up to stretch my legs, but I swoon. I tell her it was just a head rush from lying on the bed for a while or maybe it was from not sleeping for 50 straight hour, but the doctor didn’t want to take any chances and immediately orders blood work, a chest x-ray and an I.V. of fluids…all because I told her about my high triglycerides.

Six, count them, six hours later I get my diagnosis. “You’re tired.” She then signs my release papers, sending me off into the world to see my new baby…and my irate wife who was released four hours ago. That's when the heartburn returned.

CHICKEN DANCE

Sorry no zany stories in a few days. Was busy finishing up a script. But I do have a couple of good entries in the works as well as a video blog entry that will be co-hosted by none other than the 4-year-old menace herself. Stay tuned. In the meantime here's a recent video of the girls doing the chicken dance. Many of my Facebook friends have seen this already, but for those of you who haven't...

A DAY IN THE LIFE

SUNDAY

5:30 AM – My alarm clock goes off. And by alarm clock I mean the Sunday paper smashes into the front door, stirring Alex awake which then signals the cat to start meowing for her breakfast. Alex has been asleep for ten hours so I can’t really force her to cry herself back to sleep. We’re also trying to wean her off the morning boob, but 5:30 is too damn early so I say eff it and just scoop her up and hitch her right to Jen’s breast. Hoping to try and get a few more zzzz’s myself I quickly feed Cupcake before her meowing wakes up Arden and before I fully wake up. But on the creep back to the bedroom I realize I missed my window. I’m awake. So I crack open a Coke Zero, throw a bagel in the toaster, fill a sippy cup with water and another with Cheerios. I then unlatch Alex from Jen and we head downstairs to my office so everyone else can keep sleeping.

5:45 AM – Alex is watching the Wonder Pets on Noggin and picking up Cheerios off the floor using her newfound pincer skills while I update my Facebook status which reads, “5:30 AM *shakes head*”

6:45 AM – Arden slowly descends my office stairs. Even though she’s rubbing her heels on every step along the way because she likes the feel and the noise, she still thinks she’s sneaking up on me. I ask why she’s up so early and she says, “Because I dreamt about cookies and unicorns and now I’m hungry.” Hopefully for cookies and not unicorn milk. So I pack up the baby, the Coke Zero and we all head upstairs to the kitchen.

7:00 AM – I set up Arden in the family room with a mini-box of Apple Jacks and some chocolate milk. We argue (quietly so we don’t wake up mommy) about what show she’s going to watch. She wants Spongebob, but it’s one of the rare half hours of the day it’s not actually on. She gives me some lip and says, “There’s always episodes On Demand.” Alex starts squirming and needs to eat so I just put on Handy Manny. Arden pouts, but I know she likes it because she asks me to find her plastic tool kit in the toy box.

7:15 AM – I feed Alex who’s not really into eating these days so it ends up being yet another exercise in how to waste a jar of Apple Chicken Delight.

7:45 AM – I gotta go to the bathroom. I mean really go. Arden refuses to let me use her bathroom (“No boys allowed”) and instead of having her yell at me and wake up Jen I sneak into my bathroom with Alex in the bouncer, hoping Alex can keep quiet, but Arden beats me to it and whispers in a voice that’s more of a loud rasp, “Can I wake up Mommy now?” I look at my watch and see that I’ve been up for over two hours watching the kids and say, “Go for it.”

8:00 AM – Jen’s going to a bridal shower at noon and volunteered to make a quiche and a blueberry buckle cake so I have to watch the girls while she cooks. Jen offers to have Alex hang out with her in the bouncer while she cooks. Meanwhile Arden and I play school. She’s the teacher and her armada of stuff animal and myself are the students. She takes me through her entire day at preschool. My favorite part is “naptime.”

9:00 AM – Alex isn’t digging the baking, probably because she’s already been up for three-and-a-half hours so she joins our game of school for a bit, but she’s unable to abide by the “teacher’s” rules, gets fussy and I heat up a bottle and put her down for a nap.

9:45 AM – Guess who decided they didn’t need a long nap?

10:00 AM – Jen has to shower so I play with the girls and try and sneak in a few minutes here and there of Paul Blart: Mall Cop which I had pay-per-viewed the night before and fell asleep twenty minutes in. (Don’t judge: we had a free coupon from DirecTV. It was that or Tom Cruise wearing an eye patch and attempting a German accent.) And even though the movie sucked I still felt obligated to finish it before the twenty-four hour viewing window closed.

11:15 AM – Jen kisses us goodbye and I attempt to hop in the shower - I set up Arden with some Phineas and Ferb and I put Alex in the bouncer in the bathroom, but she starts screaming like I’ve never heard before. It’s unbearable. But I’ve gotta get clean because we’re due at a 4-year-old’s Transformers birthday party at 12:30 PM, so I jump in for one of my legendary 30 second showers only to have it cut short by 29 seconds when Arden starts screaming from outside the bathroom. With the water running I can’t tell if she’s hurt so I whip open the door to find her there with a scowl and a spoon saying, “Gimme some peanut butter on this spoon.” I slam the door shut, try and sooth the baby for a second and then finish my shower. All damn 29 more seconds of it.

11:30 AM – I get Arden dressed, change a diaper and pack the diaper bag.

12:00 PM – We hop in the family SUV and head off to the party. Arden wants to listen to her CD, but I’m too frazzled to listen to Eric Stoltz sing “Snuggle Puppy” so I tell her we can only go to the party if we listen to my music. For some reason she actually buys it for a change. With a 40-minute drive I slap in my Bluetooth and call my folks to find out what’s been going on in suburbs of Boston. My father golfed well for a change.

12:45 PM – We arrive at The Jump Around, an indoor play gym comprised completely of bouncy houses. Arden’s in heaven, I have to pee. Fortunately one my best buddies Craig is there too so I do get to pee as well as engage in some adult conversation between the wriggling and squirming.

1:30 PM – Pizza and cake time. All the kids file into the birthday room where I’ve been feeding Alex infant Cheetos. Except there’s no Arden. I task Craig with entertaining the baby and find Arden in a corner pouting. She doesn’t want to eat, she just wants to bounce. I tell her she’s eating pizza or we’re gonna bounce, right on out of there. She marches into the party room. With Craig still watching the baby I take advantage of the moment, hop into a bouncy house shaped like a giant boxing ring, go a few rounds and then return to Alex.

2:30 PM – Party’s over and they want to do a group photo. Arden is sick of the paparazzi these days and refuses. I tell her no goodie bag if she doesn’t get in the picture. For some reason the threats continue to work today and Arden runs into the shot where she wraps her arms around the birthday boy’s mother who she doesn't even know and upstages the entire picture, complete with blocking the birthday boy from the lens. We head out to the car.

2:45 PM – I call Jen from the car and she doesn’t answer which means she’s still at the bridal shower. I notice in the review mirror that Alex has fallen asleep. She needs sleep bad so I bribe Arden and say that if she’s a quiet girl for the remainder of the car ride I won’t make her take a nap when she gets home. It’s a fake bribe because after the cake and three juice boxes I’ll be lucky if I can get her down at bedtime. But I at least sweeten the deal for myself and make her agree to let Daddy chill while she doesn’t nap. I'm aware this is wishful thinking.

3:00 PM – Arden only lasts fifteen minutes before she starts doing her (actually impressive, but loud) Spongebob impressions from the back seat and wakes up the baby. Meanwhile Jen calls, she’s on her way home from the shower. Apparently her quiche was a huge success, so huge she didn’t even get a slice. Her blueberry buckle cake, not so much. That one she tasted and now she knows why.

3:20 PM – We arrive home. Alex has just fallen asleep again. I re-up my deal with Arden and say she doesn’t have to nap if she’s quiet and lets the baby sleep. I bring the baby inside and she instantly wakes up. I realize she’s way overdue for a bottle so I start heating one up. Even though Arden won’t be napping I still secretly hope Alex will go into a milk coma from the bottle so I can at least veg out on the couch and finish Mall Cop. No such luck. The bottle renews Alex’s energy and I know we’re about to enter the No Nap Zone.

4:00 PM – Jen walks in the door. I hand her the kids and tell her I’m going down to my office for some “me time.” Normally I would say I was going downstairs to write, but she knows I just finished my latest script on Wednesday and I’m taking a break before I jump into the rewrite.

4:10 PM - I barely get a Facebook update in when Arden starts screaming from the bathroom upstairs. She needs someone to wipe her ass. I assume Jen is going to do it, but Alex is tapping the Jen keg again so I run upstairs and confront Arden. I tell her she’s 4 now which means she’s old enough to wipe her own butt. She says, “I never wipe my own butt, but I’m gonna kick your butt if you don’t wipe mine.” I can’t help but laugh, but I do tell her not to say things like that. Somehow things escalate to a meltdown and I give her a time out. She screams and starts throwing Legos across the room so I take away her TV privileges for the rest of the day. This kills me because that means I’ll have to play with her instead and it’s been a long day of playing already. But she screams louder so I take away dessert too. And then she screams even louder. I don’t want to take away TV for the week for my own sake so I threaten to take away her latest Happy Meal prize and she shuts up. I only wish I thought of that one before I took away the TV.

4:30 PM – Unfortunately for me it’s Sunday which means it’s Jen’s day to cook something elaborate because she’s home and she has the time. So I’m once again in charge of watching both girls while she cooks.

6:00 PM – We sit down for dinner. From scratch French onion soup and broccoli slaw with cranberries and toasted almonds in it. Both are amazing, though after watching enough Food Network we discuss how they really don’t compliment each other.

6:30 PM – Normally if Jen cooks dinner I do the dishes but we’re trying to establish a routine with Alex as part of her sleep training so Jen does the dishes while I give the kids their baths.

7:30 PM – I give Alex a bottle and put her to bed while Jen puts Arden to bed.

8:00 PM – The kids are finally asleep and I’m excited to watch some TV with Jen. I’ve been looking forward to this specific night of television all week long - Big Brother, True Blood, Next Food Network Star, Hung and the season premiere of Entourage. It doesn’t get much better for a TV junkie like me.

8:05 PM – I fall asleep watching last week’s recap of Big Brother. Mall Cop expires.

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD

I’ve already written about my “sleep karma” - how Arden slept through the night from day two and how Alex, though quite possibly the cutest baby on earth, with thighs you just want to sink your teeth into, is the devil child when it comes to sleeping. Well, after two solid months of Alex waking up literally every hour, on the hour, we decided it was time for some tough love.


The job of sleep training Alex fell on me because when Jen goes into the baby’s room at night the baby expects some boob and if she doesn't get it, she isn't going back down, so we had to take Jen out of the equation. We had tried various “no tears” methods, but they yielded little or no results so with much reluctance we decided to try the Ferber Method also known as the “Cry It Out” Method. If you’re not familiar with this method, basically what you do is put the baby down while they’re still awake and leave them there to cry themselves to sleep. Ferber calls it “self-soothing.” I call it mutual torture. Obviously the baby isn’t happy, but it also breaks your heart to hear them crying their little eyes out. You’re not supposed to completely ignore them, you have to wait various intervals before attending to them and by attending I mean further torturing them. You’re supposed to go in, rub their back for a minute and walk out and then let them cry for a longer period of time or until they “sooth themselves to sleep.” Well that first night was probably the most excruciating night of my life, mostly because my Time Warner internet connection wasn’t cooperating and I couldn’t do anything to distract myself. But after about 23 minutes she stopped crying. I wasn’t terribly impressed because hell, if I cried for 23 minutes straight I’d pass out too. But what was impressive was that she didn’t make a peep until 3:00 AM. Of course I was up that entire time waiting for her to cry. But when she eventually did I continued to follow Ferber’s instructions and waited the appropriate interval before I went in to rub her back and eventually she fell back to sleep, this time until morning. The next night she cried for about half that time and when she fell asleep she didn’t wake up again until morning. In fact I had to get up in the middle of the night to check and see if she was still alive. And to pee. I’ve got a bladder like a pregnant woman. Well within a week Alex was sleeping like a proverbial baby. Now I just give her a bath, a bottle and a bedtime story and she goes down without a fight. Which means I can finally write at night again and still have it make sense in the morning.


There are a lot of haters out there when it comes to letting your kid cry it out. And personally I thought it was kind of mean too. Maybe a month before we officially decided to go the Ferber route we tested the waters with it and lasted about three minutes before rushing into her room and stuffing a boob in her mouth. But that only kept her down for an hour or so. And after the aforementioned two months of no sleep I was starting to feel like Christian Bale in The Machinist. I couldn’t function. I was a zombie. And I swear I was starting to hallucinate. That or the cat really told me she was going to kill me. Anyway, now that Alex is sleeping through the night she’s a much happier baby, she doesn’t require a binky anymore and she’s napping like a champ. As a result we’re much happier too and finally we’re back to sleeping through the night as well. Well mostly, I still need to get up to pee several times a night. Maybe it’s time to get my prostate checked.

DADDY & ME

Monday marked the first day of Arden going to preschool five days a week and of course I had finally come up with a bunch of things to do with her on her no longer existent days off. And even though it was a Monday, a day when I normally only have Alex, I was already bored thinking about how I’m going to fill my days with her. While fun and cuddly, there’s only so much you can and can’t do with an eight month old. I can’t really do any chores these days because she needs constant entertaining and I can’t really take her places like the Children’s Museum because she’s too young to appreciate anything there. And I can only watch so many episodes of Chopped on the Food Network while making faces at her before I go insane from being cooped up in the house all day.

So today I decided to start Alex in “Rockin’ Tots”, a $35-a-45-minute session, Mommy & Me class where a teacher blows some bubble and plays the bongos while the babies cry and try to eat their maracas. It’s been about three years since I graced one of these classes and not much has changed. I’m still the only dad there and the women simultaneously welcome me and hate me. They welcome me because of the “Flirt Factor” I talked about in May and they hate me because most of them no longer feel like they can dress like slobs with me around. One woman had her child’s entire last meal on her blouse and when I walked in she quickly got up and put on a sweater. And most of the women didn’t expect a guy to show up to class so they didn’t wear any bras so every time they talked to me or smiled at Alex they would quickly grab their chests to make sure they weren’t pulling a Janet Jackson. And no matter what I do I come off looking like a letch because if I didn’t notice their boobs hanging out before, my eyes automatically followed their hands to their chests when they would randomly interrupt our conversation to check on their status. Needless to say I didn’t make any new friends or set-up any playdates after today's overpriced adventure. But we’ll be back next week to torture the ladies again.

I think I’m extra grumpy today because I’m missing Arden. Even though she’s been a real pain-in-the-ass lately, I mean real pain-in-the-ass, we always had fun on our days together and while my days with Alex never felt long or boring before, now that I have five of them in a row, they feel kinda lonely. I could talk with Arden and God knows she could talk to me. So as I've previously mentioned, I plan on taking Arden out of school early at least one day a week this summer, if not taking her out for a full day, so that she can go to the beach and do fun stuff and I can have my little buddy back.

Pictured: Alex at “Rockin’ Tots” doing her best John Bonham.

GONE WRITING

Sorry no misadventures for the past few days. Not that there hasn't been misadventures, but I haven't had time to write them up. I'm trying to get out a draft of my latest screenplay by Wednesday, but after that I have some juicy morsels for you. Until then here's a little video of me and my friend Craig making asses out of ourselves to entertain our daughters...

Reunited Around The Rosie - watch more funny videos

WHAT TO WEAR

I’m a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy and besides a brief stint as the fry guy at McDonald’s when I was in high school, I’ve never had a job where I’ve had to dress up or wear a uniform. And fortunately for me I live in probably the most casual, non-beach city in the world. With the abundance of stars and celebutards having a license to wear whatever they want wherever they want, it opens the door for the rest of us Hollywood peons to dress however we want. And in “the business” they expect creatives like myself to dress like a bum. I remember my first real meeting when I moved out here. It was on the Universal lot and it was about 95 degrees outside and I was wearing an ill-fitting jacket and tie. The producer I met with could tell I was pretty green and said, “Let me give you a piece of advice: If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, next time dress like you don’t care.” And I haven’t cared since. I’ve gone to fancy restaurants, movie premieres and other Tinsel Town events dressed like a writer. Of course there are times when I do feel like I should go the extra mile so I have a button-down from Banana Republic at the ready (read: somewhere hidden in my closet.)


When I became a stay-at-home dad there wasn’t much of a wardrobe transition for me. In fact there was none. So lately I’ve started to feel like the lines between my worlds as a writer and a stay-at-home-parent are blurring. I’ll find myself wearing the same shirt my kid crapped on last week to a meeting this week. And since we no longer have a part-time nanny I’ve actually been taking the baby with me to some of my more casual lunch meetings. In fact I did that today. I figure while the baby’s still cute and quiet, it can’t hurt. And who knows, maybe they’ll think I can’t afford a nanny and give me a sympathy assignment. Either way, I see my baby-on-board lunches ending very soon. I have no idea how I’m going to keep attending these lunches, which are essential in this very social business, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.


If you’ve read my most recent posts you know Jen and I are addicted to dining out. So I often meet Jen for lunch during the week with Alex and/or Arden in tow. However, Jen is a professional and she dresses like one. So for the first time since I moved to Los Angeles 15 years ago I’ve started to feel like a slob. So Jen suggested I start wearing some collared shirts. So I went out and bought a few polos (yup, it had actually been so long I had to buy some) and I started wearing them during the week. And you know what? I kinda liked it. But not for the reason you think. I was digging it because I kinda felt like I was wearing a uniform. A stay-at-home dad uniform. So instead of lamenting that I can’t write during the day, I started to feel liberated from my doldrums because I was in stay-at-home dad mode, collared shirt and all. And now at the end of the day, when the kids are tucked in and I can write, I whip off my polo, slip on my faded Empire Strikes Back t-shirt and start hacking away on the keyboard. I dunno how long I’m gonna buy my own bullshit, but for now it seems to be working.

MORE DINING FUN

I've got a couple of new posts in the works, but I've been busy trying to finish up a draft of my latest screenplay so unfortunately I didn't have time for a new post tonight, but in honor of my last post on dining out with kids, I'm posting a little video I took of Arden and her cousin Joey when they were babies, laughing it up at the Katella Deli in Long Beach. Enjoy...