Daddy Dan

Since everyone else is doing it, and I hate to be left out, here are my New Year’s Resolutions for 2009:

1. Create (and stick to) a budget:  My wife and I have been TERRIBLE about spending money this past year.  We’ve already resolved to sit down together and create a managable budget.  Taking into account that we both love to buy things for ourselves, we’ll create small discretionary spending categories for each other.  Our goal:  debt-free by 12/31/09!
2. Teach Babito something new every day:  So far I’ve done pretty well with this one.  The Babito is a very fast learner and he seems to pick up on things very quickly.  He already knows his ABCs, how to count to twenty, the names of many different animals, his basic colors, words to a bunch of songs, etc.  My goal is to continue to help him (on a daily basis) learn something new.
3. Write my Book: The goal is to finish at least a first draft of the book and to share it with some people to get their thoughts.  Anyone interested in reading any rough drafts as I finish chapters?  Let me know!
4. Be a Better Blogger: I plan to post more in 2009 and to write more about my life.  Also, I definitely plan to be a better commenter.  I’m still reading your blogs, but hardly ever comment.  That will change in 2009, so get ready to get sick of my comments!

Did you set any resolutions for 2009?

Every family has their own special Christmas traditions, and every family does things a little differently around Christmastime.

For us, we’re pretty traditional.  We spend Christmas Eve with my family and then my wife’s family always comes to our house on Christmas Day.  My wife and I usually open our presents from each other on Christmas Eve night, after we get home from my family’s get-together.  We’ll be waiting for Christmas morning, of course, for Babito to open his.

We’ve told him all about Santa Claus, and how he’s watching him to see if he’s being a good boy.  Yes, we’re using the Santa Claus threat when he’s acting up, and he seems to understand the ramifications.  We’ve “called” Santa Claus several times to let him know Billy’s being bad.  I think we’ll need to limit that because it won’t be very effective come December 26th.  We’ll be leaving milk and cookies out for Santa Claus, and maybe some vegetables or something for his reindeer.  I’ll eat the cookies and Mommy can eat the vegetables before we go to bed.

We decorate the house by December 1st, and the decorations stay up until after New Year’s Day.  We make a special effort to make sure The Babito is aware of the reason for Christmas, the birth of Jesus.  I look forward to building many special traditions as The Babito gets old enough to understand.  He’s starting to this year.  He loves the decorated houses, and candy canes, and decorating the tree.  Unfortunately, he’s scared to death of Santa Claus.

What I’m always interested in hearing about is the traditions of other families.  What special annual traditions do you have?  Anything unusual or unique?

Please share them in the comments!

For some reason, I still haven’t hit that Christmas mood yet, and it’s less than two week away.  I hope I get that Christmas feeling soon.

We’ve been slowly decorating the house, and most of our decorations are up, including the lights on the house, which have been up since Thanksgiving weekend.  The one major missing piece is the tree.

Last night I got a burst of energy and decided to set up our artificial tree, with the thousands of lights that are conveniently already intertwined on the various branches.  My first task was to get to the Christmas tree box, which was thoroughly blocked in by the accumulation of a year’s worth of other junk.

Instead of moving the junk out of the way, I decided to bring in the tree piece by piece.  I had the bottom of the tree set up and plugged in the lights only to discover that only about half of the branches lights were working.  I spent a good hour trying to get the lights to work, to no avail, when my wife said it was time for Babito to go to bed.  As I was taking him upstairs to give him a bath, he said “Daddy’s mad at that tree.”  He was right.

After Babito was in bed, my wife and I tried to get the lights working for a while, but we had no luck.  We’ll be Christmas tree shopping tonight.

Wanna see what Santa Claus is bringing Babito this year?  I feel safe sharing it here with you, because Babito rarely reads my blog.  (Smart boy!)

Here’s his gift:

It’s the LifeStyle Grand Walk-In Kitchen.  He loves playing kitchen at his day-care.  We found this one at Toys R Us when we stopped in late last weekend to get my nephew a birthday gift.  The salesperson told us that if we applied for a Toys R Us credit card we could get 25% off on all our purchases that night, so we ended up doing ALL of our Christmas shopping for Babito and our nieces and nephews on that night.  The kitchen was on sale, plus we got an additional 25% off, so we got a great deal.

Here’s the product description from Amazon:

This deluxe kitchen not only has realistic features, but is modeled after today’s deluxe contemporary kitchens. “Oak hardwood” foam flooring gives the kitchen a warm, comfortable feeling, and over six feet of spacious “granite” countertops provide ample room for cooking and dining fun. Large sink has swivel faucet with push button, and “stainless steel” refrigerator provides valuable storage. Built-in cabinets and drawer feature authentic handle hardware.

103-piece accessory set includes: frying pan with lid, boiling pot with lid, silver pan with lid, silver pot with lid, coffee pot, 4 stainless steel cooking utensils, strainer, 2 plates, 2 bowls, 2 cups, 2 knives, 2 spoons, 2 forks, peppermill, salt and pepper shakers, 5 spice jars, pot holder, 2 wicker baskets, electronic phone, and 64 piece play food set. Durable, poly construction wipes clean and lasts for years. Also includes an 11″-tall wood stool for countertop dining.

Lucky Daddy will be putting this thing together on Christmas Eve night.  I read the reviews on Amazon and a grandma said it was easy to put together.  A single mommy said it took her three hours and it was a total pain.  I don’t know which one to believe.  I just hope I don’t hear Babito say on Christmas morning that “Daddy is mad at that kitchen!”

On Friday, as many of you might have seen on Twitter here, I took the day off and took the Babito to Disneyland while Mommy was Christmas shopping.  I’ll take Disneyland over Christmas shopping any day.  It was perfect mid-70’s weather, with not a cloud in the sky.  When we got there around 10:00 it wasn’t very crowded, but it got crowded during the evening.

Here’s how our day started…

Next stop was the Matterhorn, and Babito took his first ride on the bobsleds.  He’s been eligible to ride for a few months now but I didn’t know the height requirement was only 35 inches.  I thought he might be a little scared, especially during the dark parts, but he wasn’t.  He loved it and laughed throughout the ride.  Here he is pointing at the mountain…

Can you see our excitement about It’s A Small World?….

It was all decorated for Christmas, and thankfully, they had Jingle Bells and a few other Christmas songs mixed in with the Small World theme song…

Finally, it’s over!…

After riding Pirates and Winnie the Pooh, we ran into Brer Bear and Babito showed him some love…

We went over to California Adventure next to get away from the afternoon Disneyland crowds and noticed that the big lake has been completely drained.  They’re putting in a new water show that’ll be debuting next year.  Notice too that the Ferris Wheel cars are missing.  They’re redoing that ride with a Mickey Mouse theme…

Our next stop was the Redwood Creek area.  Babito and The Bear (I don’t know his name) are apparently great pals…

This area is a great place to let your kids burn off some extra energy.  Babito loves to run across the bridges in this area….

Next, we watched the Pixar Parade….

With Mater bringing up the rear…

After a quick trip back to Disneyland to see The Tiki Room Show and take a ride on the teacups, we headed home.  It was a great day with The Babito.

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend…

Thursday we spent the day at my parents’ house with my parents, grandma, and my brother and his family.  We played a lot of Wii.  We had fun making characters for the games.  We made everyone in the family, plus some additional characters.  I made a spot-on Michael Jackson.  Once you create characters you can use them in the game.  My grandma thought it was hilarious to see herself racing cars and playing tennis.

Friday my wife and I took the Babito to Disneyland for a bit.  We went on It’s a Small World, and luckily the theme song was only a small part of the ride because they have it decorated for Christmas and play Christmas songs through most of the ride.  It hasn’t stopped Babito from constantly singing the Small World song, although it’s cute when he sings it.  I wanted to take him on The Matterhorn but the line was huge.  He kept asking me to take him on “The Mountain” but we never got on it.  The line was shorter at night, but I thought it might be too scary for him in the dark so we decided to wait.  I don’t want him to be afraid of it.  We also saw the Disneyland Christmas Parade, which Babito loved.

Saturday my wife’s family came to our house for a late Thanksgiving.  We once again played a lot of Wii, which was fun.  The Wii is a great family/party activity as it gets everyone involved.

Sunday we started decorating the house for Christmas.  My wife has accumulated a TON of Christmas decorations.  There are many storage boxes stacked up in our living room right now, but she’s made a good start.  I put up the lights on the house.  We went old-school this year with the big C-9 multi-colored bulbs like these:

We had these kind of lights on our house growing up, so they bring back some great memories.  I plan on adding more to the bushes and trees during the week.

We also brought out our singing Santa Claus. 

He’s 5-feet tall and sings Christmas songs while he dances back and forth.  He also comes with a microphone so you can make him talk.  At first, Babito was scared of him, but he warmed up to him by the end of the night.  He used the microphone to make Santa Claus sing, you guessed it, It’s A Small World, over and over again. 

And how was your Thanksgiving weekend???