Christmas wish lists 2009

If we kept a monthly tally of the phrases most often spoken to our kids, "What are your socks doing there?!" would probably win eleven times a year. But not in December, when "Put it on your Christmas list" would easily top the ledger.

The crush of pre-holiday commercials and resulting desire for toys and games (I don't need a Ph.D. in social science to find a causal link) is too much for most kids to bear. The suggestion to "Put it on your list," said with a lilt to underscore its subtext -- that a loving relative or perhaps Santa Claus, the ultimate wish-fulfiller, may deliver the goods at Christmas -- is a parent's best hope for maintaining some level of sanity.

Our boys have been compiling their lists for weeks. They've flipped through the Toys 'R' Us catalog a million times, scoured various websites (especially Lego.com) and narrowed the field of choices down to the most captivating.

In the old days, these lists would have been written in crayon. Well, it's not the old days anymore. We create Word docs to keep things a little tidier and make it simple to email the lists to aunts and uncles and grandmas across the country. Our nine year-old includes the price of each of his items with corresponding links to Amazon.com. (He conscientiously limits the number of big-ticket items on his list to one or two and always includes more books than toys or video games; he gets it.)

This year, we went one step further. We created a master document on Google Docs, enabling Aunt Maria in Brooklyn to make note of any item she has picked up and help Aunt Linda in Phoenix to avoid making a duplicate purchase. It's a gift registry, with Santa authorized to both view and edit.

In theory, it's a convenient and logical system. But after having implemented it, something doesn't feel quite right. It's as if our boys are getting married and are registered at Bed Bath & Beyond. It feels just a little mercenary. We have no expectations that they will get everything or even most things on their lists, and we offer them to our family in the spirit of helping them know what the boys like. It's a step toward efficiency, but perhaps a step away from what Linus would say is "...what Christmas is all about."

So, to help us feel just a bit more comfortable with it, we're going to send Santa a hard copy as well.

The dangers of televised golf

It's tough to watch golf on TV with young kids (in this case, boys) in the vicinity. Why? As Jack Donaghy said last year on 30 Rock, "This is my show, and once a week I rent it out to the good people of the erectile dysfunction companies." Viagra and Cialis are major sponsors of golf, an old guy sport tailor-made for their products. A couple of years ago these commercials were all innuendo. No more. You better have your remote in hand when Johnny Miller throws it to a break or else be prepared to explain what an erection is. Tough also because golf on the couch lends itself beautifully to a slide into a nap on the couch. A drowsy state of consciousness, brought on by beer or by the Greater Hartford Open, affects your awareness of the need to change channels.

And now there's a much bigger landmine. Thanks, Eldrick.

Update on Batter Blaster

So I did a post recommending batter blaster and about 14 minutes later they used some kind of social media magic to find me and offer us some free samples to give away to the Dadspin audience. We've seen giveaways before at blogs and find them tedious affairs but Batter Blaster seems good and goofy enough to qualify as something most of the dads or i guess moms who read us would like.

That means we're throwing a batter blaster party! Hopefully it won't be as sad an affair as Pops last birthday party. that was like a scene out of an early Christopher Walken movie. Sad ugly people sitting around drinking copious amounts of cheap, hard alcohol and the night ends with the inevitable gunplay.

Anyway, back on topic.

We had some batter blaster with the boys last weekend (see post below) and liked it something fierce and want our kind and graceful readers to get all fattened up on the juju of Batter Blaster.

So post into our comments section something you either like about pancakes or dislike about the lameness of Pops' posts and we'll pick five from the batch to get free batter blasters.

Now go and do likewise gents. Go and do likewise.

How Batter Blaster made my kids love me a bit more than my wife

Batter Blaster is a can of pancakes.

Organic pancake batter in a co2 recyclable can. Found it at the whole foods in SF and threw it in the cart because my wife is the pancake batter maker so if I'm in charge of bfast I always default to french toast cause I can't do the pancakes. As a result my children love my wife more than me (she puts chocolate chips in the homemade batter) and I want to turn the tide a bit. Not so much that they want to play with me incessantly but you know, some.

Anyway, I got the can home and Saturday morning while she was doing some kind of overpriced, Yogalates thing, the boys and I got after the cakes.

I had them spray out the batter onto the griddle (except the little one who had to steer a bit clear of the heat). and they tried making them into kind of funny shapes but ended up using the chocolate chips we put on top as the decorating mechanism.

We got them cooking, heated up the syrup (everyone heats syrup right?) and ate them up.

We made about 20 from the can. we usually refrigerate extras. They were good. A bit more sugar or salt in the taste perhaps and not up to mom's homemade but a hell of a lot better than the frozen waffles that would have been the alternative that morning. They seem to be a good alternative to just about everything but homemade. So if you like the pancakes, and you want to be able to get them made faster, easier, cleaner etc. than homemade then go out and get a can.


Enjoy!