TEN

And just like that, I have no more single digit children. Eli is 12. Grover is 98. And now Luca is 10.

Sigh.

In the weeks leading up to his big day, Luca painfully curated his list: One NFL regulation whistle. One NFL regulation referee flag. One NFL regulation football tee. 

I asked Luca about maybe loosening up his list a bit so he could actually be surprised by his gifts. “But then I might not get exactly what I want,” was his reply. Once a Hamann. Always a Hamann.

Elijah, on the other hand, likes to give his gift givers a thousand options, each more expensive than the last.

Soon, Amazon.com boxes arrived containing the exact things Luca asked for. Eli took it upon himself to open every single box to make sure the knowledge of the contents could be used to torture his brother. 

As punishment for said torture, I forced Eli to help me wrap. But anyone who reads the blog knows wrapping presents gives me great, obsessive compulsive joy. Measuring. Folding. Taping. These are almost erotic activities for me. Once Eli started in on his style of wrapping (balling paper around a present like a used tissue) I banished him to watch whatever he wanted on TV.

We agreed to allow Luca to open his presents on his birthday morning, ignoring Eli’s fact-finding efforts’ revelation that Luca didn’t, in fact, leave his mother’s body until 4:44pm ten years ago. 

This posed a few problems. First, it eliminated any chance that Luca would sleep. Diana’s approach to Luca’s sleeplessness was, “Tough Tinker Toys. Get yer butt in bed and stay there.” I, being the official pushover of the house, offered to stay with him until he fell asleep. I embarked on a long journey of watching Luca devolve into a blubbering monster. Shifting from bouts of rage to weeping to total spaz-outs. 

I tried everything to get him to calm down from rage to weeping to total spaz-outs of my own. Finally, I gave up and went to my own bed at 3am. What I failed to remember was Luca knows how to work a door knob and moved his sleepless fits to our bed. Diana wordlessly took her pillow and dog and moved to our guestroom.

Which leads to the second problem. No one told Luca when morning technically starts. He raced around our house at o-dark o’clock, waking everyone, his body oblivious to the previous night. Diana and I melted down the stairs and onto the couch. Eli flat out refused to participate since he already knew what was inside all the presents. 

Luca tore in. One NFL regulation whistle. One NFL regulation referee flag. One NFL regulation football tee. 

I have never seen a child run around a house shouting, “I got a football tee! I got a football tee!”

But then he got to Grandma Connie’s presents. She…gasp…went rogue. No presents from the list. A Bears jersey. A Bears game. Bears books. Cubs books. Bears gloves. Everywhere Luca’s gaze fell, Bears Bears Bears. He was elated. And actually surprised.

After I got ready for work, I found Luca reading his Bears book while sitting on a catatonic Diana, who was laying prone on the couch.

New Job

Sorry I’ve been negligent about the old blog lately. I had a kinda weird couple weeks. Mostly because I changed jobs. 

Bam! HamannEggs plot twist!

I won’t bore you with the myriad of reasons I switched. I am excited about the new move and hope this will be the last time you hear of me switching jobs for a long, long time. Because the little crystal in my hand is going to light up any day now and I’ll have to be Renewed from advertising (“Logan’s Run” – 1976).

I don’t love switching jobs. Figuring out the coffee situation, followed closely by figuring out the bathroom situation.  Plus I have to go through the whole process of selecting and viciously beating a weak inmate in the yard.

As much as I dislike changing jobs, Luca hates it a thousand times more. As we were discussing this move as a family, Luca was the lone dissenter. Often bursting into tears at the mere mention of me moving literally 3 blocks down Lake street to do the exact same job.

At night, I would lay with him in his bunk and try to both calm his nerves and figure out the core of his beef with the move. After several hundred “I just don’t like it” responses, I came to discover his real issue boiled down to…

Interior design.

He liked the way my previous agency looked. It was a cool place with bean bags and nerf guns and wacky junk on people’s desks. As a result, it made his father seem cool. 

I assured him my new office would have just as much curated whimsy. I promised him a whole world of knickknacks and funky posters and inside jokes taped to cubicles. But he wasn’t convinced.

In the days leading up to my new gig, Luca did his best to be supportive. By asking me if I was nervous every seven minutes. “Are you nervous, Daddy? Are you nervous? Are you more excited or more nervous? Daddy? Are you feeling nervous?”

“I am now!” I snapped. 

On my first day, I took several digital photos of our super cool office to ease Luca’s anxiety. And my own. The giant eight ball that looks like it crashed into a wall. The “F*ck Yeah” spelled in balloon letters in the kitchen. The inspirational/scary messages painted in huge black letters everywhere.

But then I saw it: The Coke machine. One of those things you find at the movies where you can choose from a million different flavors and fill your cup and fill it again and again until you have the most glorious Diabetes ever.

When I showed this to Luca, his eyes lit up. “You. Have. The. Greatest. Job. EVER!”

Instead of the constant “Are you nervous?” refrain, Luca now asks, “When can I see the Coke machine?”

Baby’s First Humiliating Defeat

I woke up extra early last Sunday to surprise Luca with Bears tickets. One of Diana’s customers hooked us up with two seats and we all know Luca’s stance on sports. I found Luca on the blue couch that serves as his Youtube nest and showed him the digital surprise.

Luca tried his best to feign shock, but he totally knew. On their best day, the CIA can’t come close to our sons’ ability to surveil every pixel that enters our house. “Wow! I totally did not know you had purchased two 200 level tickets in the north end zone approximately three and a half weeks ago, father.”

Whatever, he was still excited. Because we are Hamanns, we left the house at 9:45am for the noon kick off. The day was simply glorious. Sunny, crisp, portending no last second coaching gaffs. We enjoyed a couple ice cold hot dogs before the fans started streaming in.

I’d forgotten the, uh, special disposition of most Bears fans. Luca and I had been to a few Cubs games, where the atmosphere is decidedly more country club-esc. Bears fans seem to communicate exclusively through primal screams. We were also seated among hard core season ticket holders who had been using the section as their personal VFW hall for decades.

After explaining to me he had missed only two games over the last 25 years, one man shouted across Luca to some fellow season ticket holders, “Remember when I stuck that hot dog down your coat? Watch out, ‘cause I am hot dogging you again today. You sonofabitch! You watch!”

The hot dog victim was an unironic cast member of the Saturday Night Live “Da’ Bears” skit. He was double fisting vodka tonics, surrounded by three generations of family. He looked wistfully at Luca, who was wearing a brand-new Bears ski hat.

“I think it’s great that you brought your daughter to the game. We need more daughters here. I’ve been bringing my girl to the games for thirty years. And now she’s getting married to this sonofabitch here. Maybe you will find your husband at the game, little lady.”

Luca immediately began to cry.

I tried to explain that these people were harmless and were going to make the game super fun.

Luca said, “I’m scared.”

I said, “Me too. But the good kind of scared.”

The game started and Luca settled down. And even returned a few fist bumps from the “Da’ Bears” man.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about my absolute favorite person in attendance, who sat directly to my right. He was the spitting image of my second SNL reference of the post, Chris Farley. Red haired and jolly, this man reacted to every positive play by either lifting me into his arms like an infant or sending me sprawling across three or four rows of seats. At one point, he removed a sack of hot meat from one pocket and several tortillas from the other. “Do you mind if I eat some pocket tacos, Richard?” No, I did not. Because I loved him.

If you recall the game from two weeks ago, the whole thing ended with a smattering of coaching snafus mixed with a game losing field goal miss. The whole disaster unfolded at our end of the field, which was exciting. The apoplectic reaction of our new friends was terrifying. Sixty year old women around us were hurling buckets of obscenities onto the field. Luca and I spent the last two minutes of the game exchanging exaggerated, “Oooo, did you hear that swear?” looks.

In the end, Luca loved the game. Almost as much as he loves the stupidly expensive jersey he conned me into buying on the way out.