If You Want To View Paradise ...

Once upon a time there was a living room filled with nothing but a comfortable couch, a coffee table, a few pieces of artwork and a large TV. These days, though, that couch is covered in toys. And that coffee table is covered in toys. And those pieces of artwork are covered in toys. And that TV is covered in—well, you get the picture (but I don't because it's covered in toys).

At 9 months old, Ella has effectively collected nearly 7 billion plastic playthings. Some of them were gifts. Some of them were hand-me-downs. Some of them, my wife says, "Must have appeared out of thin air"—though a drawer full of Toys R Us receipts begs to differ. I'm pretty sure that if we liquidated Ella's Fischer Price collection we could retire, move somewhere on the Pacific Coast and still have enough cash leftover to support an unhealthy gambling problem.

NO WHAMMY NO WHAMMY NO WHAMMY STOP!

The chief issue here isn't even that our baby has too many toys (though she does); it's that she doesn't care about them. She ignores them. Slinky? Pass. Building blocks? No thanks. Spinning Wheel that Makes Animal Noises? Ba-humbug. It's as if she'd already outgrown them all.
So what does she want? I'll tell you, but you better sit down and brace yourself for this shocking revelation:

She wants to be picked up and placed inside a $5.99 blue Rubbermaid tub. And no, I am not making this up.

When my folks first told me about the phenomenon, I laughed. It had to be a joke. They'd watched her for a couple of hours one night and placed her in the tub for "funnzies," and, according to one independent observer (my mom), she took to it like my wife took to Rico the Snoogle. But my parents, like any set of parents who have been promoted to grandparents, can be goofy sometimes, so I chalked up Ella's initial enjoyment to just playing with grandma and grandpa. Yet two mornings later I found my wife on the floor and Ella back in the tub.

"What can I say, she wanted in," Brittany said. "She's been squatting and slowly raising her head, playing peek-a-boo with me all morning. It may be the cutest thing I've ever seen." (And that says a lot, as my wife sees about 17 cute things a day.)

Over the next two weeks we spent a majority of our time at home playing in the Rubbermaid tub, exiting only for feedings, diaper changes, baths and drool mop-ups. Ella'd disappear for minutes at a time, then suddenly peek two eyes over the rim. We'd occasionally throw toys in the tub for her, but she'd lean down, pick them up and remove them like a taxi driver cleaning out his cab.

I didn't know what all the hubbub was about, so I figured there was only one way to find out: I got in the bin. It was a tight squeeze, sure, but after 20 minutes of bending, folding and dislocating parts of my body, I made it. I also learned a valuable lesson: Always pee before entering a Rubbermaid tub.

So I got out, peed, and got back in again. As I sat there surrounded in a sea of blue walls, I tried to envision why Ella enjoyed this so much. Maybe she loves the tub because it feels like her own little kingdom. Maybe it allows her privacy that's tough to come by when you're 9 months old. Maybe she's preparing for life in a cubicle. Who knows? Or maybe, just maybe, it gives her imagination a chance to run wild—and each time she enters there's a new adventure to be had.

Whatever the reason, this experiment made me realize something that Ella has already learned in her young life: You don't need fancy toys to have a good time. You don't need to spend ungodly amounts of money. You don't even need to leave the house. All you need is a little imagination.

And maybe a $5.99 blue Rubbermaid tub.

The Life of Dad is updated every other Friday (barring the call of family duties). Thanks for stopping by and following my attempts to be a good dad, husband and co-ed softball player. I hope you visit again. -- Brian

Swing Into Action ...

According to Bible, God built the entire universe in less than seven days. By my count, five of them were spent assembling a baby swing.

The Graco® Lovin Hug Swing (Bermuda style) is cute, convenient and easy-to-carry—and was obviously designed by a woman who hated her husband. It comes in 4,000 pieces, most of which aren't pictured in the instruction manual. The booklet is the size of War and Peace and written in four different languages, not one of them being English. And, while there isn't a warning against it, I'm going to give you some very sound advice: Don't sit on the floor without looking first. Trust me, it can be very, very painful.

After several hours of studying the directions, I was finally able to complete step one. I opened the box. Laugh all you want, but that sucker had nearly 18 layers of tape keeping it shut. My wife suggested cutting through it with a knife, but after the CD Rack Assembly Incident of '01 that cost me close to a pint of blood, I think it'd be safer to burn the tape off with a lighter.

(Note: A little advice for future dads out there—don't throw the box away. You'll need something to punch much later in the process, and I found that cardboard is fairly soft on the fist.)

The next step is to pull the seat cover over this intricate web of metal rods and snap it into place. Simple enough, right? I'd like to see you delicately pull a banana peel over, say, the Batmobile, and seal it shut. And do it without Batman kicking your ass.

So, the next 45 minutes went something like this:

Pull.

Tug.

Curse.

Knock over beer.

Curse again.

Tug.

Stub toe on chair.

Curse some more.

Apologize to Steven, my 50-inch HDTV, for cursing—some of which, I promise you, were used in context.

Snap pieces into place, chug beer, throw chair out window.

Moments later, I began work on assembling the legs. This part was not nearly as easy as the seat cover. It came with four long curved polls, two straight rods, some brackety-things, a pile of screws and an Allen wrench. It also came with a bottle of Advil. After several hours of attaching, detaching, reattaching, kicking and smashing against the hardwood floor, Brittany came over to calm me down. I think it worked:

"Take a deep breath," she said.

You suck!

"See, it's simple. All you have to do is stick piece A into slot B."

I'll tell you where you can stick piece A …

"And voilà! The leg is together."

I hope you stub your toe.

I'd like to say that I was able to finish the project that night. I'd also like to say that Brittany let me find out the gender of the baby, but alas, neither of these was true. I did eventually get the swing together, and only had four pieces leftover. Not bad, by Klems' standards.

After conquering the swing, I finally had a chance to sit down and enjoy the moment. I was proud of myself. I usually leave projects unfinished, but I stuck by this one because I'll do anything for my child-to-be. It even brought a tear to my eye—not for sentimental reasons, but because Brittany handed me a box:

"Now put this bouncy seat together."

What Doesn’t Kill You ...

Babies have many needs. They need a loving family. They need an ample amount of sleep. They need to be rocked, fed, changed and burped. And, according to an online checklist, they also need “neck wings,” which I can only imagine come in handy when you’re too lazy to get up from the couch to pass the baby off to grandma.

Welcome to the world of baby registering.

At precisely 1:04 p.m. this past Monday, Brittany and I set foot in Babies “R” Us, the New York Yankees of everything created for, relating to and resembling babies. At 1:05, I was in a dead sprint for my car. Trust me, you’ve never feared for your life until you see an entire corral of hormonal pregnant women. Each one eyeballs you like a wild boar, ready to sink her teeth into your flesh; ready to tear you apart, limb from limb; ready to destroy every ounce of manhood you have left—all while totting two binkies and a potty seat.

If it wasn’t for Brittany (and her surprisingly strong headlock-grip), I would have been at home in front of my big screen, eating Doritos and sipping on an ice cold Zima. Instead, I sat uncomfortably at the customer service desk in front of Matilda, the Registering Czar. Not two chairs from me was another beaten dad-to-be, donning a ripped shirt and bruised ego. He gave me a sympathetic nod before being dragged off by his pregnant wife.

That man must be having twins.

Finally, with a list in one hand and a non-lethal scanning gun in the other, we began registering. It started off light and easy—monitors, outlet covers, Baby On Board bumper stickers—and took only a few minutes to register our first 10 items. Next, we progressed to bibs sporting witty phrases like “Don’t Wake Me … I’ll Wake You” and “I’m The Boss Now” and “If My Mommy Loved Me She’d Feed Me Bacon.” Apparently there are other cruel mothers in this world.

Aisle after aisle, scan after scan, I started realizing that this wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as I had imagined. In fact, I kind of enjoyed it. I put the scanner through my belt loop and acted like a cowboy in the old west, hunting lions, tigers and cookie monsters (Brittany points out that cowboys didn’t hunt any of these things—I guess she’s also smarter than a 5th grader).

As we turned the corner, I saw what appeared to be an oversized lunchbox with a blow horn in it. Seemed like a pretty odd combination. Since I didn’t know what it was or how it helped the baby, I asked.

“Hey hun,” I said to my lovely wife. “What’s this contraption?”

“That?” she said matter-of-factly. “Oh, that’s a breast pump.”

Cowboy fantasy is over. Resume dead sprint to the car.

How could a store full of cuddly animals, Bert & Ernie bowls and Spider-man sippy cups have such pornographic equipment? Shouldn’t this mega emporium built for toddlers be rated G? Shouldn’t there be a special room for pumps with a sign that says “Mothers Only”? Shouldn’t there be a “3rd Rock From The Sun” fan site? Unfortunately you won’t like the answer to any of these questions.

After several panic attacks, I calmed down. It was partially because I came to my senses, but mostly because of the evil eye I was receiving from Matilda. We continued registering for the next 3 hours, picking out diaper garbage cans, strollers and toys. When all was said and done, we had identified more than 70 items we needed for BK3. My brain could take no more. Neither could Brittany’s feet.

As we left Babies “R” Us and headed for the car, I couldn’t help but think about the millions of dads that had gone through this before me. They all survived and, apparently, so did I. This nightmare must have been a right of passage that was meant to make me stronger—and it did. In some ways, I’m thankful I got to take part in baby registering.

“Oh crap,” Brittany said. “We forgot the neck wings.”

God hates me.