A box arrived from Hasbro yesterday containing some new toys related to the release of Iron Man 3.

When I came home after work, my boys were pumped to open it up. “It’s from Iron Man 3!” Zacharie exclaimed. “Let’s open it!!” Except he can’t read, and he’s never seen the movies. The sticker on the side of the box with the picture of Iron Man was all needed to put it together.

“How do you know who Iron Man is?” I asked. “He has a light that shoots out of his hands, and he fights bad guys. I saw it on tv.” Ahh, there you go. Even though the boys watch a cartoon channel with limited commercials, or Netflix, he still got the message.

So I opened the box and the boys went Christmas morning crazy. There was the Patriot action figure, the Assemblers, and their favorite – the Iron Man mask. Masks have been a popular tickle trunk item in our house. We have Darth Vader, Spider-Man, Batman, C-3PO, and Captain America. They’re an easy cosplay tool when playing with action figures and have been a lot of fun for even Mom to put on and proclaim “I am your mother.”

When I was choosing the toys, I tried to find ones that didn’t shoot anything. It was hard, and even then, I still ended up with 2 of 3 toys that shoot something.

The Iron Man 3 Arc FX Mission mask has 4 missiles that shoot out of the side of the head and a laser target that projects from the top. It’s a cool innovation, complete with sound effects, but .. really.. wasn’t just a mask enough?

The boys will not be getting the missiles.

The Arc Strike Iron Patriot is a pretty cool action figure. He’s 10″ tall, has electronic sound effects, lights, voice commands, and all that jazz, but also has a missile pack on his shoulder that fires double-headed missiles.

The boys will not be getting the missiles.

The toys I’m looking forward to are the Iron Man 3 Assemblers. Each figure has interchangeable armor, so the kids can create more than 2 dozen different armor combinations on each figure. They can also swap the armor between figures, so there are even more combinations. It’s like action figure Lego. I’m down with that. And +1 to no missiles.

Call me uptight, if you must, but I don’t get why everything needs to be a gun. Am I hyper sensitive after countless kids killing kids with guns? I don’t know, I just know that I don’t even like my son holding a pistol-shaped squirt gun. It just looks so violent. So no guns, and .. no .. they won’t be watching Iron Man 3 either.

Disclosure: Hasbro sent me an email asking me to choose 3 toys that are being released in conjunction with Iron Man 3. No strings attached. The comments are my own and not directed by anyone.

Zacharie visited Disneyland last month with his grandparents. His first visit. When he came home and showed me his autograph book, and as I flipped through the photos my parents had taken, I realized how little things have changed in nearly 40 years at the happiest place on earth.

Main Street looked the same in California as it did in Florida nearly 40 years earlier. Minnie was still cute, Donald still has no pants, and Goofy is still a ham.

It’s a land caught in time.

Cameras, on the other hand, have vastly improved. I still have the scrapbook that my grandmother made for that visit in 1975. She hand wrote a diary for me every night explaining what she did and saved everything from the airline ticket receipt to motel pamphlets. You can read part of that original diary here.

You can see more of his first visit to Disneyland at Babble.

Here’s a side-by-side look at at Disney then and now from my trip and Zacharie’s.

I’ve got a post on Babble that is getting people’s goat again.  The backchannel* is in full swing it appears, so I felt an explanation, rebuttal, and greeting to those who are googling DadCAMP for the first time would be necessary.

I wrote a very specific rant about 2 childless couples I know and how their lifestyle choices / complaining about those choices are frustrating to those of us with families. This is in no means a rant against couples who can’t have children, but rather a specific type of selfish couple that chooses not to have children and then complains about or campaigns against kids.

1 is a childless couple who moved into the inner city right across the street from a school. The school is now closed because of lack of children in the neighborhood. Empty nesters who never left, and nouveau chic child free couples have depleted demand. This while the fringes of the city burst at the seams and children spend up to an hour in each direction on buses to other schools.

Schooling is a major issue in Calgary, specifically the lack of available space where families are living while inner city schools sit empty, are closed, or are filled with children forced to spend up to an hour in each direction on school buses. The school my son will attend next year has less than 10% of its students within the walkable radius, the rest are bused in.

It’s frustrating. While families seek homes near amenities their children will need, those without need for said amenities squat. Grumble.

I also mentioned a colleague who has lamented about her lack of social life in the suburbs. The opposite of my inner city, friend, this woman and her husband moved to the far reaches of the city and then had the gall to complain it was nothing but strollers and school kids. They had a hard time finding buddies for random pub nights, and she couldn’t understand why people didn’t just “drop by” to her home 20km from the city centre.

If you don’t want to be near kids, don’t move near kids.

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It has finally happened. Zacharie has had pizza. And he liked it.

Zacharie is a picky eater. It’s noodles or rice pretty much every night for dinner alongside veggie dogs, or chicken strips. We’re lucky that he isn’t afraid of vegetables and will eat red peppers, carrots, and cucumbers without hesitation and corn, and peas with some pushing.

The closest he would get to pizza was the crust cut off slices we would eat, as long as there was no sauce or cheese lingering on the edges.

Even pizza lunch at his school, when all his ‘les amis’ get a treat, is something he gladly skips without hesitation or remorse.

Then, this weekend, at a bowling birthday party, a tray of cheese pizzas was brought into the party room. Zacharie politely asked for the crust to be cut off his pizza, and he inhaled the salty bread (as expected).

Then, as he tells the story, he was still hungry, and picked up a piece of the remaining centre of the pizza. Without hesitation he bit into it and — liked it. He liked it so much, that when we picked him up from the party he asked if he could take a slice for the car.

Now, I don’t know if I should be throwing a parade to celebrate that my son likes cheese pizza, but it is, at the very least, a step outside his picky eater comfort zone and a move towards a more varied diet.

This is, after all, the kid that used to throw tantrums at the mere sight of sauce touching his noodles.

Image via La Piazza Pizzeria

This blog may be called DadCAMP, but it’s not because I’m a camper, or run a summer camp (like these people). I called it DadCAMP as a play on BarCamp, CupcakeCamp, DemoCamp, and other cool unconference style meetups that young tech enthusiasts were having and I could never attend because kids.

So I created DadCAMP as a way for Dads to get together WITH their kids, and do some networking. It worked wonderfully well in Vancouver, I haven’t put as much energy into organizing meetups in Calgary, and so this has drifted into a ‘traditional’ Mommy/Daddy blog.

This summer, DadCAMP will actually be about ‘camping’ as I have, so far, booked 5 weekends in the wilderness with the kids. My wife is not a camper, that’s why I say “wilderness with the kids.”

She’s one of those people that regards camping as paying to pretend to be homeless. “Why would you do that?” she thinks. I look at camping as a way to spend unplugged, adventurous time with my boys. We camped a lot when I was a kid, and even though I may not be particularly “good” at camping as an adult, I’m aspirational about it try and I enjoy it.

I’ve even got myself registered for a seminar on how to be prepared and have fun camping through Camper’s Village!

And sometimes the campgrounds look like villages.

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The showers on the men’s side of change rooms at pools are big open rooms.

This fact shocked my wife. Women’s showers, apparently, are all stalled off. You don’t go into a big room, each person can have a private area to shower. Not so on the men’s side – we let it all hang out.

That means old men showering naked next to kids next to teens. Most of the time, it’s no big deal. It looks a little awkward, but it is what it is.

My son has a shower after his swimming lessons each week, and he usually acts silly and sings and dances while he’s washing his own hair. Sometimes he’ll say “Daddy, that man has a big peeps”, and we’ll have a conversation about what is appropriate to look at and talk about in a room full of naked people. He’s a kid, and these things happen.

Last night, however, I almost lost it.

Zacharie was doing his thing and getting naked in the shower when he started staring at his peeps. (Yes, we call it a peeps) Usually he goes to the bathroom after the pool, this time he went to the shower directly. He was watching the water run off his body, and giving me a knowing look. I knew what was coming – he was going to have a leak in the middle of the public shower.

He started standing askew and pointed his stream at his feet as he faced the middle of the room. His spot in the shower was open to a long hallway to the change room. Two 12ish year old boys sucking back sugary soda started giggling. I stood between them and Z and it didn’t stop.

I turned and glared and marched right down to them. “Stop staring at little boys in the shower,” I growled.

I wasn’t necessarily worried about anything inappropriate, I know these tweens thought a 5 yr old pissing in the shower was funny, but it still rubbed me that these kids were watching my son. When Z makes a shower comment it’s awkward, but he’s a little boy. Tweens know better. They were doing a play-by-play of a naked 5 yr old in the shower for chrissakes!

Zacharie and I had a chat about “being discreet” on the way home. I reminded him that the potty is just a few steps away from the shower, and he should go if he needs to. If he absolutely must pee in the shower, he needs to be like a super spy and face the wall.

How do you deal with public showers with your kids?

It’s all he could talk about. When I did Face Time chats with him while he was away, when he got off the plane, in the car, when he got home, tonight before bed.. all Zacharie could say was “Daddy! I’m a DOUBLE Jedi!”

Last week Zacharie went to Disneyland with his grandparents, and my mom says that they could have gone to the Jedi Training Academy stage in Tomorrowland, watched the show, turned around and went home and he would have been thrilled.

Now that Disney owns the Star Wars franchise, The Jedi Academy is one of the first ways the experience has been brought to the park. At scheduled show times, 25 kids are invited on stage to be trained as Jedi masters. The kids put on brown robes that makes them look more like Jawas than Ben Kenobi, and they are handed a light sabre before being walked through a routine by the Jedi Master.

Then Darth Vader pops from the stage and challenges the new trainees to show they have mastered the Jedi moves before tempting them to come to the Dark Side.

Of course the kids refuse, they are handed certificates proving they are now Jedis, and they bound off through the rest of the park to chase an autograph from Mickey Mouse.

Zacharie dragged my parents to the Jedi Training Academy stage three times during his visit to Disneyland. He wasn’t picked the first time, but made it to the stage on his second chance. Then, when the final hours of their visit to Disneyland had arrived and Nana asked him what thing he would like to see before going home, he insisted on going to the Jedi Academy stage again.

Hence his insistence that he is now a DOUBLE JEDI! We gave Zacharie a few dollars to buy himself a treat when he was in Disneyland and he insisted on buying a Light Sabre, not just for himself, but for his brother as well.

The rule in our home is you can’t go to Disneyland until you’re about 6, so Charlie has 3 years to wait before his visit. 3 years he will likely spend getting daily lessons from our DOUBLE JEDI!

Like many this morning, the first thing I did was grab my phone to scrol through twitter to see what happened while I was sleeping.

Quite a bit, apparently.

Then, as I continued to follow Twitter for news, I switched on CNN for pictures. It has been a terrible week for CNN. They have had names, numbers, and details consistently wrong. This morning, one breathless reporter repeated “Something has just happened. We don’t know what it is. Let me catch my breath. Something definitely went off.” That’s a verbatim quote, not snarky sarcasm.

So while CNN bumbled around breaking news, I followed links and information on Twitter in the early morning hours on the couch in the living room. It’s my morning routine, to get caught up on news, and get prepared for my radio show from 6-730 while the family sleeps. They get up at 730, come downstairs and we all have breakfast.

As I heard Charlie’s little feet on the stairs, I grabbed the remote and switched the channel to Treehouse. Bubble Guppies replaced the bumbling reporters and, instantly, this Friday was like any other Friday.

You don’t need tips to talk to your kids about the tragedies that have happened this week. You just need some common sense. It is terrible, tragic, and disturbing, so change the channel. Chances are the Bubble Guppies are going to teach you more in 20 minutes than CNN could in 20 hours.

Zacharie is in Disneyland with his grandparents this week. Charlie has stayed here with us. We’re back to having one kid.

I have said that one is sooo easy. I have said that I wished I had just one kid still. It may be true, but when you roll back the clock and find yourself with just one for whatever reason (camp, trip, sports) there is something missing.

Yes, the house is quieter, and I’m not splitting up fights. One kid fits in the bath easier than two, but the house feels somewhat empty (and that’s not because Zacharie is my ‘favorite.’).

At the dinner table, instead of breaking up arguments, encouraging kids to eat, and constantly being interrupted, Jen and I have had a chance to talk – at the expense of Charlie. When it is 4 of us, it is a family dinner, when it is just the 3 of us, it becomes so much easier to have adult conversation and Charlie fades into the background. I have to snap out of it and remember to engage him in the conversation as Jen and I catch up on our days.

While Jen was working late last night, I took the change to get out of the house with Charlie (of course). It was fun to have a one-on-one date night with Charlie at the Lego Store last night, but when Zacharie called us on Face Time while we were at the store (I love living in the future), the chaos returned as he reminded Charlie and me that the Batman Lego set Charlie was getting as a treat was going to be his to play with too. (Spoiled much, there Mr Z?)

For a moment, the negotiations necessary when dealing with 2 kids was back in my life. Then Z disappeared to go swim in the pool, or have beers with Goofy, or whatever, and it was back to me and The Chooch.

I think it was this sort of one-on-one time that makes me think Zacharie is my favorite. When Z was younger, my Not At Home Dad time was one-on-one with him on trips to the airport, and hikes. Charlie and I have never really had that sort of adventure time, so it was great to get out of the house with him, and then come home and have some Lego time on the kitchen table, just the two of us.

While it’s been wonderful to have just the Chooch in our house, and the quiet is a welcome relief, I need to have both of my boys in my life.

I can’t wait to have the chaos back on Saturday.

Last year, for a school project, those were the words written by 8 year old Martin Richard. Lucia Brawley, a friend of Martin’s former teacher, posted a photo on Facebook of him holding the sign.

“He was at the finish line with his family, waiting for his dad to cross,” Lucia wrote. “His mother and little sister were catastrophically injured. He was the student of our dear friend, Rachel Moo. His message resonates powerfully today. My prayer is that we all live by Martin’s words, paying tribute to his too-brief, but immeasurably valuable life by following his example.”

If you’ve ever run any type of road race, you know the finish line and course is filled with kids cheering parents on. It gives you so much energy to hear, or see “Go Mom!” and “Go Dad!” from your kids, or someone else’s.

I’d like to start a movement where we get our kids to write out this phrase, and we post the photos online. To do it to honor Martin, and to tell the world that the next generation will not stand for this senselessness.

Get your kids to write out a sign saying “No more hurting people. Peace.”, just like Martin did. Take a picture of them holding it and post it online. Please tell me about it once you’ve done it.

Call it slacktivism if you will, but it is a message that needs to be seen, and heard.

Image via Facebook