BEST BUY: MY PLAYGROUND

Despite the term “stay-at-home dad” there’s no way I could actually stay-at-home all day with the girls without going insane. There's just only so many times I can push Thomas the Train around the track or color pictures for my daughter in a ten-hour time span. And now that we have two kids, I have to be “on” at all times. Slapping in a Wall-E DVD may keep Arden busy for a couple of hours, but I still need to keep the baby entertained with a constant stream of “who’s the cutest baby in the world? Yes, you are, yes you are.” Now if Alex was a bit older and we had a yard where the kids could go outside and run themselves ragged while I lounged in a lawn chair and sipped mai-tais and surfed the web on my iPod touch all day, then I could see staying at home for the entire shift, but only every now and again.


So to break up my day I take the girls out. On Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays when Arden’s in preschool all day and I just have the baby, I try and meet one of my friends for lunch. On the other days when I have both girls I’m constantly trying to come up with fun and interesting things to do with the girls that doesn’t involve going to the park. I loathe the park, but that’s an entry for another day. Something that I used to love to do with Arden was go to Best Buy for an hour or two. I got to check out the latest gadgets while she studied the pictures on the back of an Elmo DVD and of course we would play Rock Band or Guitar Hero together. I would usually just disable whatever instrument she picked out while I got in touch with my inner Slash. And when there was a line to get on the machine I would whisper to Arden to say at the end of a song, “My turn!” No one could deny a three-year-old. With the new baby we still go to Best Buy from time-to-time, but I can only get my Guitar Hero on when the baby’s taking a siesta in the stroller. Otherwise I'm forced to let Arden play by herself and she's not quite as good with a working guitar. :)


Another thing I like to do with my girls is make silly videos. And yesterday I had the opportunity to marry my love for Rock Band and making movies. I wasn't planning on doing anything special, but I had put Arden in a new t-shirt with a guitar on it that said, “Girls Rock!” It reminded Arden of Rock Band and she kept saying, “I’m a rock star.” She then went through her toys and found her Mr. Microphone and sunglasses and said, “Let’s make a video, daddy.” So below is something I whipped up with about two minutes worth of footage and a thirty-minute window for editing when both girls were taking a nap at the same time. An extremely rare occasion, one worth a video celebration…