I Scream

My grandfather Al was a fastidious man. He would actually do work on his Colorado mountain cabin in a crisp pair of wool slacks and a pressed dress shirt. It’s why he will always be 100% more cool than I'll ever be.

When Steve and I were little, little tykes, he took us to Baskin Robbins for our first ever ice cream cones. Within 2 minutes of receiving our cones we both licked too heavily, sending the strawberry goodness tumbling to the filthy B&R floor. My five year old memory envisions his head popping off his neck as we wept.

What does this have to do with 2011? Everything.

Halfway through Mother’s Day, I suggested we go to our local ice cream parlor. I think I said, “Hey, no one else in Denver will think if this, given the fact that it’s 80 and sunny!” The ice cream was actually part of an elaborate bribe structure to get Eli to behave at Home Depot.

We arrived at Bonnie Brae Ice Cream and, gasp, there was a line around the block. Luca could care less since he didn’t actually know what the heck we were doing. Eli, on the other hand, tried with all his might to keep it together. He knew one wrong move and his hopes at getting pink ice cream would be dashed. He stood in the hot, hot line with his eyes closed, saying a little prayer.

Finally, we crossed the threshold and entered the madhouse that was an ice cream store on an 80 degree day. The high school aged staff had ceased giving a crap about the wants and needs of thousands of Denver yuppies.

While Luca put on a clinic of “How To Be An Adorable One Year Old” for the old ladies, Elijah sat at a tiny table, eyes bulging with anticipation.

1 pink cone. 1 mint chocolate chip cone. 1 cookies and cream waffle cone. Stat.

I handed Eli’s pink cone to him and turned to receive cone number 2. Then I heard it.

A scream that punctured the eardrums of everyone in the parlor. Eli had knocked his pink ice cream off his cone and was screaming at its meltingness on the floor.

Diana, the hottest mom in the room, scooped down and grabbed the pink blob off the ground and handed it to the sullen ice cream girl behind the counter.

“Can you just put this on a new cone?”

I grabbed her wrist. “Ew! It’s been on the floor! Give him a new one!”

Diana rolled her eyes at my ignorance of the 5 second rule and asked for a new scoop in a cup, this time.

I walked across the parlor to pay and to distance myself from Eli. I heard him scream again and shriek something about the difference between cones and bowls.

He was that kid! That kid who everyone stares at in the ice cream store. The tantrum kid! I locked eyes with Diana from across the room and we both burst out laughing.

Eventually, we got Eli outside to calm down and he managed to force down his ice cream. Luca commandeered Diana’s cone and inhaled it. But not before covering the entire front of her shirt in ice cream.

Mother’s Day

We’re on our third screen door. They keep getting destroyed. How? Well, our children cannot bear the thought of being without their mother. Elijah or Luca will spot Diana trying to make an escape to our garage and they’ll start crying and shrieking, “MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!” And, on occasion, Luca will rip through the screen like The Incredible Hulk and chase her down.

So it’s not like Diana needs reminding how much they love her. But we had to mark Mother’s Day in a non screen door way.

Eli and I brainstormed on Saturday.

“I think we should make her breakfast in bed,” I suggested. Elijah got excited by this. So I asked what he thought we should make. I said, “What do you think mommy’s favorite food is? We’ll make that.”

Eli thought for a moment and said, “She likes water.”

Menu complete, we moved on to the card making. I quickly drew some green flower stems and Eli beautifully scribbled some flower tops. I then asked him if he wanted to do a few more cards. I’d do the outlines and he could color them. But he had to suggest the subject matter of our drawings.

“What about ant traps?”

“I don’t know if mommy likes ant traps. Let’s keep thinking.”

“Cars? Star Wars? A train? Dora The Explorer?”

“Mmm. I dunno, pal.”

“Oh! How about a grilled cheese sandwich?”

We ended up agreeing on an elephant and a grilled cheese sandwich.

Mother’s Day was, as usual, filled with Diana’s springtime love; planting flowers without children hanging on her pants. We topped it off with a trip to the ice cream parlor, where Elijah had one of the most epic freak outs of his young life. I’ll describe that horror a little later.

Diana, you are the greatest mom in the world. You have raised two unbelievably kick ass kids. You’ve made me the happiest dad ever and to quote Lizzi Weinberg, “Your wife is a total knockout.”

I’d rip down a screen door for you any day.

First Bubble Bath

I’ve gotten really bad at marking Luca’s firsts. I made such a big deal about Elijah’s first poop, smile or murder. But as with all second children, the firsts (ALTHOUGH JUST AS IMPORTANT, FUTURE LUCA WHO READS THIS) tend to get glossed over in favor of louder, more violent events.

So I’m proud to remember to announce Luca’s first official bubble bath.

Diana bought the boys some Dora The Explorer bubble bath the other day. It smells like strawberries instead of a small, Hispanic cartoon girl. Which is probably best.

Anyway, Elijah could not get his clothes off fast enough. He begged me repeatedly to let him turn on the tub’s jacuzzi jets and let the bubbles really fly. But I smartly ignored him.

I chased down Luca, nuded him up and held him over the tub. Based on the horror that crossed his face, I realized he had never been in a bubble bath before. I thought, “Meh, he’ll love it,” and dropped him in.

It’s not as though he hated it, but he did not like it. He stood in the tub with a perturbed look. He folded his little hands in front of his fat belly and minced around. I suddenly thought, “This is what my son will look like if he turns out to be a big queen when he grows up.” I also suddenly thought, “I hope he gets a better haircut if he turns out to be a big queen when he grows up.”

Eli sensed his brother was not happy with the bubbles, so he began smearing Luca with handfuls of the berry scented white stuff. Luca began shouting, “Out! Out! Out!”

I glared at Eli and hissed, “Can’t you see he hates that? Keep your hands to yourself.”

“Oh, sorry daddy.”

One of the things I love about Eli is his ability to take a joke to its breaking point. Seemingly oblivious to me just admonishing him about it, he grabbed two handfuls of bubbles and covered Luca’s fat belly, which resulted in fitful tears.

I yanked him out of the tub and quickly tried to towel off the bubbles. They were like a virus. Luca kept finding new patches of bubble and he’d shriek until I smooshed them with terrycloth.

Meanwhile, Eli poked his head over the tub wall and said, “Look daddy! I have a beard!” And he had a perfectly formed Van Dyke.

I had to admit, “That’s a pretty awesome beard, Eli.”

Puppies

Last night we went to dinner with some pals. When we got home, we paid off our sitter and I retrieved Elijah from our bed. As I carefully placed my arms under his body I noticed something. Wet. Real wet.

It seems as though Eli convinced our sitter that he didn’t need a diaper to sleep and she bought it.

The soaking was exclusively on my side of the bed, so Diana simply went to sleep and sent me to the daybed. In hindsight, sleeping on a half urine soaked bed was pretty gross of Diana. But sleep trumps everything.

This morning, I awoke to Elijah crawling into the daybed with me. “Oh, hi daddy. You scared me.”

Shortly after, I bottled and diapered Luca and set him lose on the floor. I then crawled back into the daybed and tried to fall asleep. Eli even let me hold his hand for a minute.

But then it happened. There was a third body in the bed with us. LUCA. He finally figured out how to climb onto the bed. Game over, man. Game over.

Eli and Luca immediately turned into two puppies, crawling all over my head. They fought slash tickled each other slash irritated the heck out of me. After a particularly loud bout of hair pulling, I shouted, “Get off get off get off! Go bother your mother!”

They both shouted, “MOMMY!” and raced into our bedroom. Within seconds, both puppies were all over her. Diana found it adorable for three seconds. Then a child sized foot stomped her boob.

“Get off get off get off!”

First Bike Ride

A few months ago, our office had a little happy hour where spouses and kids were invited. Elijah took this opportunity to go completely bonkers. He ran up and down the halls screaming and chasing every kid in sight.

At some point in the festivities Eli lost track of his bladder and whizzed all down the front of his pants.

I was standing with my boss when Eli raced up to inform me of his newly soaked sweats. I announced, “Who wants to take this kid home? He peed himself.”

My boss, who is an incredibly nice man, said, “I’ll take Eli. He’s cool.”

Eli looked him in the eye and said, “No, seriously. I peed on myself. Look.”

The point I’m trying to make is Hamann men have weak bladders. At any given moment, I’m about five seconds away from wetting my pants. And I’m willing to bet big money that my dad or one of my brothers is currently standing at a urinal.

Now hold that thought for a second.

Our buddies, the Goodriches, gave Eli a bike recently. I dunno if you’ve seen these, but it’s one of those bikes without pedals. It’s called a “Skuut.” But I refuse to call it that.

Last Sunday, Eli and I went on its inaugural run. He did pretty great. Especially since his sense of balance is that of me after several beers.

But he goes REALLY slowly. A woman in a motorized wheelchair literally passed him on the sidewalk. Eli convinced her to give him a ride.

And now the purpose of the pee opening. Eli asked me if we could ride to the park, a mere block and a half away. I suggested we take Luca in his stroller as well.

Suddenly and without warning, the gallon of water I had consumed earlier in the day came to full term. I announced urgently that we were heading home from the park. I shoved Luca to the end of the block and waited for Eli to catch up on his bike.

And I waited. And I waited. And I waited.

It became clear that I would not make it at the current pace. To encourage Eli to hurry, I turned to my old friend, Yelling. I shouted, “Get your ass in gear, boy!”

This was the moment Eli rediscovered his love of dandelions.

I raced down the block and grabbed Eli under one arm and his bike under the other. I then shoved Luca’s stroller the rest of the way home with a series of violent kicks.

I won’t reveal if I had an accident. But let’s just say Eli had the right to say, “Who wants to take this dada home?”

Easter Dad-ness

Until this year, Christmas and Easter and Birthdays with the boys have been for Diana and my benefit. Kids under 4 don’t really understand the magic of religion and its brother, present getting. But this year Elijah was all jacked up about eggs and plastic grass and JELLY BEANS! Oh, and the icon of Christianity.

I arrived back from a quick trip to Whole Foods to discover that Diana and Eli had already colored the eggs I spend the majority of the day preparing (According to the internet, you need boiling water and eggs). I whined and stomped for a while and demanded I be in attendance for any and all Easter related cuteness from now on.

The next morning I awoke from a coveted sleep in to find the Easter baskets demolished. My blood boiled at the idea of me not being in attendance, but I thought about what Jesus would do if his kids and wife never listened to him. It brought up too many theological questions, so I just shoved a fist full of jelly beans in my mouth.

Eli embarked on a day long jelly bean binge. Luca, on the other hand, couldn’t quite decide if he liked them. He’d toddle up every five minutes shouting, “Bean! Bean!” But after two or three chews, he’d spit it out onto the floor. I spent a lot of the day picking chewed beans out of my toes.

Eventually, we packed up the boys and went to another Easter Egg hunt. This one at our friends The Goodriches neighbor’s house. He was a preacher of some unknown denomination. I geared up for some good old fashioned religion. But like the Denver church that sponsored our last egg hunt, he never mentioned JC once. In fact, had I not known he was a cloth man, I would’ve thought he was just a dude. I wondered if this still counted as going to church. I decided yes.

Anyhoo, after an hour or so of trying to prevent Luca from eating peanut butter snacks, I was summoned to the front yard. The Dads were in charge of hiding the eggs.

This was my first real dad bonding experience. Most of my pals who are dads were my pals way before they were dads. So we have way more in common than poopy d’s. Well, mostly Star Wars in common. But this was my first time seeing a bunch of dads from vastly different backgrounds thrown together in Dad-ness.

It was pretty great. We swore. We spit. We hid eggs in dangerous places like car exhausts and rose bushes and on top of the house. We pretended we didn’t want our son to get the most eggs.

The mayhem of egg finding ensued and we dads went back to the shelter of our wives.

15,000 Eggs

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get Elijah to understand Easter on Saturday. Here is a typical exchange:

“Hey Eli. ‘Member when we talked about Easter five minutes ago? ‘Member? ‘Member God? And his son? The guy who Easter is all about? Who is God’s son? What’s his name?”

“The Easter Bunny!”

The sullen, tattooed barista at “Washington Perk” informed me that, “There’s gonna be, like, a million billion kids hunting for Easter eggs at Washington Park. It’s gonna be horrible.”

That sounded like a lovely way to spend a Saturday.

The New Denver Church, whose motto must have been, “We’re not going to get all churchy on you,” set up a massive egg hunt in a field just between the playgrounds. There was a huge roped off area, with delightfully pink police tape. Inside was 15,000, count ‘em, 15,000 Easter Eggs. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of kids milling around outside the tape, unaware they outnumbered the people keeping them away from candy 50 to 1.

I searched in vain for some kind of religious metaphor at play. Maybe the police tape was our sin and the…aw forget it. Let’s get some candy.

I found myself feeling that unfamiliar projection of competition growing in my bowels. I strangely needed Elijah to grab the most eggs in the history of the world. I decided to allow that feeling to manifest itself when he was in Little League, so I choose to accompany Luca on the hunt.

The announcer blared his 100th non-religious announcement over the loud speaker and we were ready to rock (Did, “We have a lost child over by the jungle gym” mean we were going to burn in hell?). The hundreds of kids suddenly grew very quiet.

Ready, set go and there was roughly 24 seconds of massive pandemonium. I lost track of Eli and Diana in the sea of arms, legs and plastic.

Luca toddled around the mayhem, occasionally pointing to an egg and saying, “Egg!” before a kid would swoop in screaming.

After the dust settled, I found Di and Eli. He had acquired three eggs. He was very proud of himself and I was very proud of him. But I was mostly proud he didn’t get trampled.

Suddenly, a 5 year old little girl came up to us. She asked very politely if Luca wanted one of her eggs because he didn’t have any. Now why on Earth did this bring tears to my eyes? What is wrong with me? I sniffed and said thank you to the little girl. And then cursed myself for being such a sissy.

She handed Luca an egg and he said, “Egg.”

And then the sugar rush began. More on that later.