We went to Legoland this weekend for the kids’ first time and had a blast.  We’ve been promising Legoland for awhile now, so this was the kids big pay off.  We live just down the road from Legoland in California, so there really isn’t any excuse for us not to go.  Well, besides it being expensive and all our other normal day to day things we do.

We promised Super Michael that we would go for his birthday back in August and he’s been saving his birthday money to buy something special.  We finally had a free Saturday, so we headed down to the coast in Carlsbad and made a day of it.  Currently, Legoland is doing something called “Brick or Treat” where they have a lot of Halloween decorations up and have a haunted trail and all the Halloween fun.  The kids get a goodie bag, walk the Lego themed trail and collect their treats.  They got stuff like a Lego Club Magazine, a special Halloween brick, and an Apple.

Super Michael, in particular is quite fond of Legos, so this was really a cool trip for him.  The first half an hour he was kind of in awe and just walked around speechless.  We had to kind of prod him because he was just in shock and didn’t know what he wanted to do. 

As you can see by the pictures, EVERYTHING is made up of millions of Legos.  Some of the bigger things in the park have hundreds of thousands of individual Legos all by themselves.  The cityscape below is just one piece of a large area that reproduces places across America.  Everything from San Francisco in this picture, to Las Vegas, New York, New Orleans, and of course Southern California amongst other areas.

Since we live so close, and the fairly high price of the tickets normally ($65 for adults, $55 for kids), we opted for the annual passes for around the price of two trips to the park. The passes we have include the Aquarium next door which is normally an added cost to enter. I’m sure we’ll be back much more though, since there’s just no way with two small kids to see everything in the park on the same day.

I worked over in Carlsbad ten years ago when Legoland opened, and to introduce Legoland to the community, the park allowed businesses to tour the park for free a few times.  Oh COURSE we took advantage and went, but because it was so knew, it really wasn’t that exciting at the time. All the trees were small and they hadn’t really built the park out to what it is now.  They had a few rides here and there, and then a part of mini-land built (the Lego town).

I was completely impressed with how well the park has built up and the wide assortment of stuff they have for everybody to do.  Even the trees are all grown up now!  They have so many activities and the park seems so much larger now. 

If you have kids in the Lego age range, this would be a highly recommended trip.  This is probably as close to Lego nirvana that your Legomaniac can get.  However, save your pennies, because this is a high cost vacation.  And you couldn’t get a more scenic area if you were coming out here for vacation.  Carlsbad is one of our nicer areas.  It’s close to the beach and everything else going on down here in SoCal.

And what did Michael get with his birthday money?  A HUGE Star Wars AT-AT Walker!  Next trip we’re getting the Star Wars Lego Visual Dictionary in honor of Sci-Fi Dad! :)

So...

It appears that this blog thing still works, and yes, I can actually do a blog post longer then 140 characters long. :)

So...

Anyway, I haven't been much in the mood to blog for awhile now, even though I was starting to miss it a lot.  I've checked in here and there with people through things like Twitter, but it just ain't the same.

First off, it turns out that if a woman has a tubal ligation, the probability of a pregnancy being "normal" are very slim.  We found this out about a week after my post a couple posts back.  Super Mega Mommy started off with the normal morning sickness and it just got worse.  She started to have really bad cramping and then it turned into bleeding.  We immediately went to the emergency room and it was then that we were informed that this type of pregnancy almost never is successful and that her body was just reacting to this and rejecting it.

You would have thought that when we told the regular doctor that she was pregant the week before, some alarm bells might have went off, but apparently not.  Needless to say, we were both pretty depressed over the whole situation.  We had just gotten over the whole shock of the pregnancy and now it was being taken away from us.  In hindsight, we probably should have waited to say anything to anybody, but we both did get pretty excited about it and were looking forward to child number three.  I had always wanted three kids, but Super Mega Mommy wasn't in the same boat as me.  After she found out she was pregnant, she got pretty excited too and it was an exciting time for us.  Granted, we aren't spring chickens anymore, but it was exciting for us to start over again.  We're MUCH better off financially now and we have plenty of room for more.  Unfortunately, it just wasn't meant to be.

So, after that, I just didn't feel like writting anything and have just been really taking it easy for awhile now.  Add back to school, TaeKwonDo days, work, plenty of stuff on DVR, Gamefly games staring at me to be played, Netflix movies to watch, and it's just a recipe for disaster.

I've also been working on a little side project of mine over at My New Daycare .com.  I started that a few years back when I got pissed off with the lack of quality sites helping parents find daycare for their kids. I think I started that about a year before I started this blog originally (the ugly version, which shall remain hidden for all time).  We were looking for daycare for the kids and it was just incredibly frustrating for us.  We were both daycare virgins and just had no clue what we were doing.  So, I just started the website to try to help others locate daycare facilities as a part time thing.  It's still part time, but traffic is starting to really pick up on the site.  Man, I was even thinking of starting up ANOTHER side project with a great idea I had, but I figured I better wait until I know I have time to devote to it.  

So, anyway, I've been playing around with Twitter for awhile now, slowly building up followers, following people here and there.  Taking part in conversations when it seemed appropriate.  It's an interesting little application.  I didn't really understand how COOL it was, though, until today. 

Every so often, on Twitter, I'll ask for some advice on whatever is bugging me that day.  Normally, I'll get a response or two, and I thank them and move on.  Today, however, I must have struck a chord with people.  The question I asked?  We've been having a problem with our kids not sleeping through the night for awhile now.  It's not consistent, but it happens enough that it bothers us and keeps us up all night more then it should.  Super Michael's problem is he has nightmares and is afraid of monsters.  He won't even go into a room by himself unless someone goes in with him.  He is deathly afraid of the dark.  Princess K is starting to pick up on his fears and she wakes up in the middle of the night now with bad dreams and wants to sleep in our bed.  Now I would prefer that the kids sleep through the night and not sleep in our bed.  I rather like my privacy and just would prefer them not in our bed.

I asked for people's suggestions and explained that I've tried things like monster spray, limit what they watch on TV, giving them flashlights, looking into places monsters hide to make sure there aren't monsters there, and leaving their lights on at night and none of this helps.  With Super Michael in particular, he has Christmas lights around his window, has his bedroom light on, has the hallway light on, has OUR light on in our room, and is convered with stuffed animals to "hide" himself.  Nothing works.

Almost immediately, TONS of concerned parents started tweeting me with advice, retweeting to THEIR followers, and posted comments on Facebook (I have my Twitter feed piped to my Facebook page).  I think I counted somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 people that my original tweet made it out to besides MY 500 and some followers.  I was just floored by the response and I received some great advice from some really great people.  I'm going to try some of that advice and I'm fairly hopeful that it will work.

It just impressed on me what a valuable tool Twitter really is.  I had started my blog for a similar reason.  Both asking for advice from other parents, and possibly helping other parents as well.  While blogging, I've gotten into a really cool network of other parents that help each out and share stories of our kids and our adventures in life.  I've felt part of a lot of people's lives and had some really great "adult" conversation (compared to talking to my kids day in and day out.)

Twitter is like blogging on steroids!  You write an update, and you get immediate satisfaction.  Things happen in real time.  It's really something to behold.

I know a lot of you have already discovered this and do both blogging and Twitter updates, but I'm just a little bit slow and just discovered what powerful tools both of these things are.  I'm already doing some Twitter stuff, and I HOPE to get back into blogging.

Tomorrow we're going to Legoland here in California.  It's located over in Carlsbad near the beach, which is only about half an hour away from us.  This will be the first time either the kids or Super Mega Mommy has been there.  I've been there a few times.  I used to work over in Carlsbad and Legoland periodically had free days for companies in Carlsbad.  The company I worked for never gave up a free day off or time to party (did I mention it's not in business anymore?), even if it was a bunch of adults hanging out at Legoland.  Hell, we even spent a day at Disneyland one year.  I'll take lots of pictures at Legoland and, of course, will share them here with everybody!  The kids are pretty excited.

Thanks for stopping by and we'll see ya soon!

Comic Con 2009 has come and gone and only the memories remain.

Daddy Geek Boy has gotten me into the mood of posting my Comic Con Recap post.  It’s been a few  weeks, but we had a blast.  The crowds were just INSANE this year, and getting yourself from one side of the hall to other is an art form.  We went on Sunday, which is traditionally “kid’s day” and quieter then the other days, but you couldn’t really tell by the massive amount of humanity.  This is my second year going, even through I’ve lived in the San Diego my entire life. A buddy introduced me to this insanity a couple years back and it’s something that I’ve really enjoyed going to.  To be honest, I didn’t know Comic Con existed before a couple of years ago.  I’m more the computer nerd, rather then the comic book/movie/video game nerd.

The previous time, my buddy and I drove the half hour down to San Diego bright and early, spent some time competing for parking spaces, and all the fun stuff that went with it.  THIS year, I took my family and we stayed at a friends condo downtown San Diego, right next door to Pet Co park, and within walking distance of the San Diego Convention Center.  Having a place downtown allowed us to explore downtown much more and wander over to the convention center at our leisure.  We could get really spoiled doing it this way, and look forward to trying for the full four days next year.

This first image is from the balcony of the condo overlooking the San Diego Sky line.  If you could pan over a little more, you could see the convention center and the ocean.  We had a great view.

 

We got to the convention center FIRST thing on Sunday morning.  I woke everybody up at the crack of dawn and got everybody moving and we wandered downtown to eat.  Upon arriving at Comic Con, you couldn’t really see this was going to be a busy day yet.  Later in the day, it was WALL TO WALL people.

We decided to wander around the floor for awhile before heading off to the panels we had decided to attend.  The first thing that hit us was the Hasbro booth and of course, Super Michael’s VERY favorite Bumblebee from Transformers!

 

The next favorite on Super Michael’s list is, of course, Star Wars.  We had to check out all of the latest cool toys coming out of the new year.  His wish list is now longer then he is.

We wandered around a little more, bought a few toys, visited the boys at the Penny Arcade booth and had them sign their latest book for my collection.  Super Mega Mommy got herself a drawing and autograph from the Archie guy.  By this point, we were due for our first panel “How to Draw Star Wars For Kids”.  It was a real blast, and the characters were easy to draw.  Super Michael embellished on the designs a little and had a lot of fun.

Right after the Star Wars panel, we were due to attend a couple of other panels, but Super Michael decided he’d rather check out everything on the floor. So, of course we had to go and visit Snoopy!

 

And we just HAD to visit the Lego booth, too!

We also ended up getting a few signatures while we were there.  Super Mega Mommy, besides her prized Archie drawing, got a signature from Nicelle Nicols, from the Original Star Trek (she was a super nice lady), and Brent Spiner from Star Trek the Next Generation (who was also a really nice guy).  Super Michael, being a big Star Wars fan,HAD to get Peter Mayhew’s autograph since Chewbacca is one of his favorite characters.  Stupid me, however, had a Chewbacca action figure IN THE BAG I was holding while taking this picture!  Oh well, he’s there every year.

 

And, finally, to finish up the day, we played a little with an R2 droid!

So, all in all, it was a great day.  We learned that the secret is to go first thing in the morning, then maybe give it a break in the afternoon and go and have lunch for awhile, or even try to get as many panels as possible in the afternoon.  The crowds are just INSANE in the afternoons.  You MUST physically shove yourself through the people.  I had Super Michael with me the entire day and he just followed in my wake.  Super Mega Mommy, however, tried to be more polite and always said excuse me and had to be nice.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work.  She eventually learned to just stay behind me and follow my lead as well.  I’ve grown up in this tourist town, so I know crowds. However, Comic Con is just in a league of it’s own.

There were several times where we accidently found ourselves in one line or another and ended up getting whatever freebie was being handed out for the line.  I trained Super Mega Mommy to just say “Yes, we’re in line” when asked (unlike Daddy Geek Boy).  Edit: I'm not implying that Daddy Geek Boy was a bad boy here, if anything, I'm saying he was very polite compared to me.  I'm the one that was being bad by telling out of towners, sometimes poor English speakers from Europe that I was in line for free pencil erasers.  People will stand in line for ANYTHING.  One of the lines we found ourselves in accidently was a line for a free bag (one of those huge ones that you could sleep in).  The line actually snaked across the hall, but we got in it somehow near the end.  Super Mega Mommy was constantly on the hunt for these things, because she thought they were super cool, but I wasn't about to stand in line for ANYTHING.  Hell, I even gave up free Star Trek Tribbles and pictures with half naked Orion girls because the line was longer then two minutes long.

So, there’s my Comic Con update.  I feel much better now that I’ve finally shared. :)

So....

The family was sitting at the dining room table having dinner the other night and Super Mega Mommy looks at me and says that her tummy is upset and it's really bothering her.  "That's too bad...do you think you ate something to upset it?", said I.  She says to me that she didn't think so, but she just feels REALLY queasy. 

We get back to eating and after about five or ten minutes more minutes, Super Mega Mommy pipes up and announces that she's missed her "thing" this month.  Being a clueless male, I look at her with the look like "Missed what?  CSI?".  She looks at me with a mix of horror and pity and says "NO, I missed my MONTHLY THING.".  I have to think for a few minutes and I realize what "thing" she is finally talking about.  "OH!" says I.  "That's OK, they come and go, right?  Not like they follow any type of set schedule or anything?", I say which as much hope in my voice as I can muster. "No, I'm pretty consistant."

So, at this point in time, time comes to a stand still.  Many emotions go through my head.  It takes a few seconds to tie queasy feeling together with missed "Thing", but then it hits me what that could possibly mean.  Logic grabs hold at last however, as I realize that it's IMPOSSIBLE for Super Mega Mommy to be this way since she got all tied up when Princess K was born.  Not to mention, we're too old.  I'm 38.  Super Mega Mommy is, well, she's not 18. (but you LOOK 18, honey!)

We share looks of complete and utter shock as well as OH CRAP looks.  We decide it would probably be a good idea to get a pregnancy test the very next day, just to be sure.  It couldn't hurt just to rule it out.

And so, the next day (yesterday), Super Mega Mommy stays home because the queasy feeling is really bad.  She sleeps in a little, but gets up around ten thirty to head off to the store.  She gets back and heads straight to the bathroom and emerges after about five minutes with "The Wand".  She shows me the wand, with the plus sign as bright as day.  There is no mistaking the sign, we are now PREGNANT.

We talk about the near impossibility of the situation, especially considering that her tubes WERE tied, plus us being on the farther side of 30.  I mean come on, my cousin is the same age as me and HER kids are near graduating HIGH SCHOOL.  Shouldn't we be thinking about grand kids instead of having MORE kids?  Granted, we started late in life with the two kids we DO have, but we just got through potty training Princess K and now you're telling me that we need to go through all of that AGAIN.  ARGHHH!

So, there it is.  We're PREGNANT with child number three.

Super Mega Mommy and myself have calmed down a little and we're both excited about the prospect.  The kids, of course, are excited.  Super Michael wants a boy, Princess K wants a girl.

Now we need to find a baby doctor and go through all of that baby stuff again after we thought we were all through with it.  And we just got done giving away or selling most of our baby stuff!

So, next time someone tells you that you can't get pregnant after having your tubes tied, or can't get pregnant past 40, you can say you know someone that has!

And I've been reading Otter, or some of the other new dads for awhile and remembering what it was like to be a fairly new dad with a little baby and thinking to myself, man, I'm glad my kids can poop on their own now and sleep longer then five hours at night.  Now I'm going to be reading a LOT more new dad blogs to remember what I need to do!

Stay tune for THIS exciting adventure!

And I still owe everybody a Comic-Con recap and I have a book review coming up at some point after I get a chance to finish actually reading the book and putting some of the concepts in action (hint, it's a book to try and help family dynamics...no more fighting kids!!!)

So, remember to come back to the same bat channel, same bat time!

I'm still trying to play catch up here and my good buddy Otter Thomas over at Life of a New Dad awarded me the Keepsake Blog Award a few weeks back.  Otter is fairly new at the whole dad experience, comparatively speaking, but he is a really great dad and a really great blog read.  I always feel so much nerdier after reading his blog, especially when he talks about all the manly stuff he does.  I usually go back to painting my toes and watching the soaps I recorded during the day while I was too busy reading Cosmo.

So, anyway, the rules of this award state, apparently, that I need to tell a "keepsake moment" in my life, as well as to pass on the love to some of my fellow bloggers.  I'm supposed to come up with ten of them, so let's see how this goes. I'm sure I can easily come up with ten, but most of the people I read are dad bloggers and I really don't think SciFi Dad will be putting this thing up on HIS blog. ;)  James over at LIAYF...hmmm, maybe, but let's just play this one by ear, shall we?

Let's go back to the day that I became a father for my story:

Intellectually I knew that I was going to be a father, of course.  It was fairly obvious the closer we got to the big day, especially since our house was getting filled up with baby clothes, baby cribs, and all the other baby accessories.  Emotionally, however, it didn't really hit me.  I went through life much like before not really understanding the huge change that was about to happen in our lives.  My wife and I took all of the different baby care classes to prepare ourselves and to learn how to actually clothe the child and change his poopy diapers.  I had never changed a diaper in MY life prior to this.  Diapers were what happened to OTHER people.  

We even bought all of the different baby books:  1,001 Baby Names, What to Expect When You Have No Clue What You Are Doing, Babies for Dummies, and This Side of the Baby UP, Stupid.  And we both faithfully read each and every book and marked the babies growth progress week to week.  We went to all of the different baby appointments and listened to the heart beat and cried (with joy!) over the different sonograms.

Still, to me anyway, it wasn't REAL yet.  Maybe it's because, as the father, the baby is not growing inside of me and I don't get to feel it moving around all of the time.  Sure, I got to feel him playing Rocky with my wife's insides on occasion, but it was still something that happens to somebody else.

That all changed one day back in August 2002 when my wife went to one of the only doctor's appointments that I missed and her baby level stuff was all out of whack.  The baby "was under stress" and they needed to induce labor a week early.  I had one of the few "oh hell" moments in my life (my wedding day was another, which shall be another post someday) and I promptly freaked out.  After a bit of pacing and trying to figure out what to do, I calmed myself down, called everybody I needed to call, got the wifes baby bag and headed off for the hospital.

We then proceeded to go through about twenty four hours of fairly brutal labor, before my wife's head nurse, "The Sargent", decided that my wife had enough and it was now time for a C-Section.  She was quickly prepped while I got dressed in my finest hospital white gown and booties and we headed off to the operating room.

They took her into the O.R. and made me wait in a very long, very lonely hallway until they called me in.  Being in that hallway, all alone, was the loneliest I have every been in my entire life.  I felt like I was in there for years of my life and this is probably where I gained most of the grey hair I have and lost the rest.

I was finally called in much to my relief and the whole procedure went lickety split.  The next thing I knew, I was holding our baby and showing him off to my wife.  On doing the c-section, the doctor had accidentally nicked Super Michael in the scalp with the scalpel, so he sent Super Michael and myself off to the intensive care unit to get a little plastic surgery.  We waited for what felt like forever, but I was put completely in charge of my brand new son while I waited.  For the first time in my life, I was solely responsible for another human being besides myself.  It was scary as hell, but I learned very quickly that I could do it.  I gained a lot of confidence during that time alone with him and the rest of the time in the hospital, I had no problem taking care of him if he needed to be cuddled or needed his diaper changed.

So, that's my keepsake moment in which I learned to be a dad and to take care of my children. It was one of the scariest days of my life, but also the day that I learned that I COULD be responsible for another human being and not break them.

And now comes the part where I award this great award to somebody else.  Although, like Otter, I feel that everybody in my blog roll deserves this, I still have to pick only a few.

First off, the mommy bloggers I really think are super cool women:

Country-Fried Mama - She was one of the first bloggers I started reading when I got back into blogging earlier this year and probably the FIRST mommy blogger I had come across.  She has really great, cute pictures of her kids all the time and has some of the funniest stories I've read.

The Kids Did WHAT?! - If I were a mommy blogger, I'd probably be Lana.  She is just a really great mom and is really very honest on her blog. 

Living It, Loving It. - And this is the OTHER Lana.  I guess I just love reading Lana blogs.  Maybe I need to talk to my shrink about this.

Life Notes - I think I started to read Maureen's blog when I did a search for bloggers in California.  At the time, I just felt like I was the only blogger in California because everybody I read was in Canada or someplace cold.  I felt guilty when people were complaining about snow while I just got back from having a swim (I'm looking at YOU Ian!).  I can't help it if it's 80 degrees F in the Winter here!

Whirlwind - Now, I live in a city.  Around people.  My kids do city things and are generally afraid of bugs.  We have Los Angeles just up the street from us.  Margaret, however, lives out in the country (at least to me) and has no problem with bugs.  Her kids probably COLLECT the things.  They EVEN have RAIN there!  Hell, our state barely has water.  He do have the Terminator as the governor, so I guess we have that.

Now the rest of these blogs are daddy blogs and I am by no means holding you guys up to having to display or take part in this whole thing.  But these are really some great blogs that I really enjoy and I just wanted to share the love.

Of course, everybody knows that my home boys SciFi Dad from Tales From the Dad Side and James at LIAYF are the first ones I think of when something like this comes up.  These two guys were some of the first blogs I read and I just felt really intimidated when I first started commenting on their blogs.  I just felt that they were both super professional and their blogs were so well done.  It was kind of like going up to a movie star and asking for their autograph.  SciFi Dad especially.  I mean that dude is EVERYWHERE and everybody knows him.  After reading them for quite some time, I really just feel both of them are really down to earth guys that I could sit around, have a beer with, and joke about each others kids. 

Which brings me to Daddy Geek Boy and Busy-Dad-E which are two of my newer reads, but still ones I try to frequent whenever the kids allow me to do something besides playing dolly and legos.

And FINALLY, yet another northern neighbor, Ian over at mare ad mare.  I think before I started reading blogs, I don't think I had ever talked to anybody from Canada.  See, I'm down here in Southern California and our closest neighbor is Mexico.  Mexico I know a lot about.  Canada?  It's cold right?  So, needless to say, I know quite a bit more about Canada know.  Namely that's it's REALLY, REALLY cold.

So there you have it, an award, my heartwarming story, and my favorite blog reads.  By the clock I see that I've taken WAY too much of your time and I still have a lot of DVRing to catch up on! :)