But last weekend, we traveled a ways up north to attend a rather unique event with a few friends, the annual Enchanted Beaver Lake, a festival of lights the likes we had never seen before.  Beaver Lake is a county park in central New York, based not surprisingly around a lake, possibly filled with beavers.  As such it features a rather sizable nature center, and several trails that wind through the woods, ostensibly for “city-folk” like myself to “get me some nature.”

But this particular night, the park was transformed instead into a maze of Jack o’ Lanterns, hundreds in fact, that lined the two trails that wound through the dark forest.  It was actually a spectacular experience, for we were pretty deep in the pitch black woods, guided only by the glowing remains of these hacked gourds, featuring carved visages of every conceivably variety.  Pop culture icons, cartoon characters, ghoulish figures, gap toothed faces, even NFL and MLB logos graced these orange orbs, each providing a small beacon of light in an impenetratable forest.

Justine, for her part, was not particularly a fan of this whole affair.  This was partially our fault, because it was well after her bedtime before we even hit the first trail, and partly her fault for normally heading to bed so early.  It also became apparent that dragging your 18 month old toddler into the dark, dank woods with only ghostly images as a source of light was not a particularly good idea.  But we muddled through, enjoying it despite her protests.  And we were able to get her to sit next to a few of them, the rather intricate dragon pictured below my favorite of the bunch.

Happy Halloween!

At least that’s how I like to recount the tale.  In actuality, it played out a bit more like this.

After a third round of nagging, my wife threw a rake in my general direction and pointed at the backyard.  After about 10 minutes of chain-gang-esque manual labor, I had gathered a small group of leaves and came upon a fantastic idea –  I could use my daughter and some decent fall weather to get out of finishing the rest of the yard.  I went and found her, called for my wife to get the camera, and returned to my miniscule pile of mostly rotting leaves.  Justine stood, contemplated bathing in odorous yard detritus, and instead made a beeline for her playhouse instead.  Under the assumption that “she didn’t know what she was missing,” I coerced her back to me, picked her up and placed her into the leaf pile while my wife snapped “candids.”

Justine pulled herself up and ran as far away from this “fun fall activity” as she could.

Smart kid.

Unfortunately, most of our excursion reminded me of the first half of Jurassic Park, where the soon-to-be-screaming/eaten visitors sit idly in their fancy Jeeps wondering where all the extinct dinosaurs are.  I guess it was nap time, because 90% of the animals were passed out after an undoubtedly long Friday night at the trough, or hiding (and probably passed out) which made for a somewhat lackluster zoo experience.  I briefly considered, as an homage to the movie, knocking out a squirrel and dangling it in the tiger habitat in hopes that Tigger might spring to life.  Sadly, the squirrel got away.

There was a few flurries of animal activity however, the first an unexpected treat near the wolf enclosure.  Fortuitously (for us at least), some disaster befell someone nearby and fire trucks were dispatched, sirens blaring, to help.  The wolves mistook this aural explosion as a rival pack howling wolf ethnic epithets (“your mother is a Siberian Husky”) and immediately responded with endless wailing and West Side story-esque prancing and snapping, much to everyone in the vicinity’s delight.  After all, how often do you get to hear wolves howling?  In Syracuse, at least?

The penguins were also reasonably awake, and demonstrating their unique brand of flying-less bird fun.  Justine’s a big fan of them, excitedly tapping on the glass and laughing as they unceremoniously pooped in the water.  And the monkey house was a flurry of activity as well, with the various species of apes happily swinging about, flinging poo, and checking each other for suspicious lumps -the latter prompting a young boy to ask him parents if “that is the doctor monkey” – which the stethoscope around its neck made pretty obvious to me.  Stupid children.

Justine did her best to give the appearance of having fun on our little daddy-daughter excursion, happily pointing at the various animals and muttering random syllables in their general direction. But nowhere was she more excited than outside the lion cage, which in this particular zoo is surrounded by (what i assume is) one-way glass. Her eyes lit up as we arrived, clamored up to the window and of course began to point and pound, too young to realize that waking a sleeping lion is probably not the safest course of action.

But to her, it was just a super-sized version of our house cats.  Although I doubt these cats would tolerate her kind of petting.  Or any kind of petting for that matter.  At least not without a squirrel as a peace offering…

Nap time.

“Daytime night night,” has always been a big part of the day, because in many ways it’s the only uninterrupted time we adults get to actually accomplish anything in the house of consequence, whether it be cleaning the rotting mass of pine needles out of the gutter, painting the 70′s era wood paneling in the basement, or hand-stitching baskets out of thatch we grow in our backyard.  We also occassionally (ok frequently) use this time to relax, watch television shows that include words with more than two syllables and/or do not feature talking animals, or pass out while endlessly repeating the parenting mantra of “nap when they nap.”

When Justine was just a baby (an astounding 6 or 7 months ago), nap time was a twice a day affair,  once shortly after breakfast and the second shortly after the early afternoon re-run of “What Not to Wear.”  Over the past few months, though, it became increasingly harder to get her to fall asleep in the morning, as evidenced by the loud screaming and shattered mirrors caused by angry pacifier tosses.  We finally transitioned to what I refer to as the “epic nap,” where, on a good day, she sleeps for two plus hours, and even occasionally passes out for three.

And I can’t stress enough how important that nap is because it plays a significant role in how shaping our post-nap atmosphere. After many months, my wife and I have devised a simple formula  when it comes to napping – basically the length of a nap is directly proportional to our daughter’s afternoon mood.  Simply put,  the longer the nap, the happier she will be.  The hour nap leads to much consternation, general fussiness and requires a significant “tele-vention” to solve, while the three hour leads to unbridled laughter, dancing, and in some cases full-bore Olympic tumbling run.  And that’s just by us – you should see how Justine acts after one of those babies.

Yes, nap time will probably always be a sacred time for us – at least until the next one comes along and they sleep at separate times.  Then black morass of pine needles will finally and inexorably gain the upper hand…

In any case, the “business” end of the visit took place Friday and Saturday, leaving us Sunday morning to engage in some prerequisite Central New York fun festivities. First up was spending some time working as a family on my pet project to try and create a “pine syrup” craze by tapping the numerous pine trees in the backyard – we didn’t make much progress this day as (once again) everyone tried to ignore me and/or questioned my sanity as I drove metal pipes into our trees. They’ll see the brilliance one day. Them and those impudent squirrels.

That task completed, we headed south to LaFayette to visit Tim’s Pumpkin Patch, an annual destination for us to pick up some massive gourds at dirt cheap prices. We weren’t particularly interested in actually bagging any pumpkins this time, as we figured a month and a half is a lot of opportunity for the neighborhood hoodlums (and those damn squirrels) to destroy our rotting Jack-o-Lantern’s, but we wanted my mother-in-law to experience the magic of the vast, vine-filled fields of orange.

Justine, for her part, was duly impressed with the sheer number of pumpkins that lay around her as we ventured off the path and into the vines. She made some half-hearted attempts at picking them up, before realizing that each was either too heavy or filled with venomous snakes, a fact that I frankly just was not aware happened in this area. We wandered about for awhile, pointing at the various shapes and sizes, and trying to guess how many jelly beans we could stuff into each one. After a little while we headed out of the patch, by way of a forest of sunflowers that begged a photographic interlude.

Beyond the pumpkins, Tim’s also boasts a number of other activities, including a covered hay maze that had “allergic reaction” and “humid disorienting puke-fest” written all over it, a barn full of animals (including a few pigs that were, uh, feisty in the biblical sense) and the crown jewel, a shack that offered an astounding, lard fried pumpkin funnel cake. Without too much exaggeration, I can say that consuming the goodness that emerges from that tiny wooden building is possibly the greatest experience in the history of mankind.

Finally having had our fill of pumpkins and pumpkin-themed amusement, we did what everyone else does on the weekends in LaFayette. Apple picking. Again.

Our last summer at the shore was with a 3 month old infant in tow, who was neither mobile nor particularly excited at the prospect of sun, sand and fun.  She spent much of the day sleeping inside of her fancy ocactagonal “pack and play of doom.”  This year was markedly different, owing largely to Justine’s newfound ability to walk, semi-talk and flash the ‘gnarly’ hand gesture with her tiny fingers. (Tubular, no?). We were excited to reintroduce her to the beach in the hopes that she would be instantly smitten, throw herself into a career of beach volleyball and finance our retirement with lucrative Baden sponsorships.

Alas our first day at the beach was reasonably disastrous, with Justine entirely averse to the rolling, medical waste infused waves and dirty sand, both hallmarks of the Jersey shore. Our ambitious hopes were dashed with the epic frowns that dripped from her face, her vehement aversion to her sandy predicament, and the nasty looks from the poor folks at the receiving end of her tantrum-induced sand throwing.

But we vowed to try again, like the poor fella who thought ‘I can turn this around’ as he was feverishly bailing water out of the Titanic. The next few days we avoided the beach, trying to gently nudge the bad memories of the first day out of her brain and replace them with the other treasures of Ocean City – the Boardwalk, amusement rides and shuffleboard.  Finally, later in the week, we made it back down to the shore, and placed our daughter gingerly on the sand, ready to snatch her up and race home in the event of thermonuclear toddler meltdown.

But much to our surprise she loved it. While still not a big fan of the ocean, she took heartily to the sand, romping around, flinging it, and as any good kid does, tasting fistfuls of it. (Much to my chagrin, she did not poop out pearls. At least not the kind I could sell)  We were fantastically relieved, and settled in to finally enjoy some fun at the beach, even if it did end up with my wife and I covered in those annoying bits of quartz.

The official sand activity of the extended family this vacation was ‘hole digging,’ (the ‘to China’ kind) and Justine loved to stand in them, especially the ones that filled with water. It was as she emerged from one of these my wife snapped this picture of our daughter, face full of sand and smiles, immensely enjoying (finally) a day at the beach.

We were beyond excited this year to head to the fair now that our little Justine is much less “squirming lump” and much more “mobile ball of unbridled energy,” old enough to appreciate some of the sights and sounds this fantastic event has in store.  We arrived early, soon after the gates open, and threw ourselves into experiencing the various shows and booths.  In quick succession we watched a troupe of acrobatic dogs, a family of bears capable of riding bicycles (although not bicycling backwards nor blowing bubbles) and a group of wakeboarders “shredding” some two by fours with the help of a modified lawn mower engine and a tow rope.

After a quick stop at the New York State Potato Growers Association booth for a nutritious breakfast (a loaded potato), we headed to the livestock buildings to show our daughter what all the animals look like close up.  While she found the 1234324 varieties of rabbits fascinating, she was less enthralled with the cattle, perhaps because of the nonchalance with which they relieved themselves, sporting a “so?  I pooped?” look of indifference on their faces. Frankly, I was surprised Justine didn’t identify with them.  She probably wondered what size diaper they should’ve been wearing.

We grabbed a quick lunch around noon, with Kim and Justine snacking on a chicken pita, while I decided on a slightly less healthy “fried sampler,” consisting of two fried oreos, two fried chocolate chip cookies, and a fried peanut butter and jelly (as a main course).  The particular booth I patronized actually offered a “you bring it, we’ll fry it” service, which I skeptically assumed was an empty promise until the guy in front of me was handed his fried hamburger.  Only at the fair.

After lunch, it became clear that our well-behaved toddler was quickly devolving into an over-tired “fussy monster,” and so we weighed our options.  We decided to try and find a quiet spot, nurse her (that would be my wife’s task) and then hopefully get her to fall asleep in the stroller.  That is how we found ourselves under some bleachers in the horse coliseum, pushing a stroller in figure eights in a vain attempt to bring about naptime while teams of horses pulled old fashioned stagecoaches around a dirt track nearby.  Judging by the knowing glances and snickers of passers by, our attempts at causing spontaneous napping was failing badly.  Intent on enjoying more of the fair, we fell back to plan B.  Ignoring her, and just walking about, in hopes she’d just pass out.

This failed too.

Finally we decided to leave the fair, and then ride the shuttle back to the parking lot in hopes she’d fall asleep on the bus.  After a few roundtrips and a chastising from the bus driver (“you can’t just ride the bus all day…”), we fell back to our final plan.  We went back to the car, laid our now inconsolable child into her car seat, turned up her baby tunes, and waited.

Two minutes.  That’s all it took and she was out cold.  She slept for the next hour and a half as we returned to the fair, visiting the dairy building for twenty five cent chocolate milk and frozen cheesecake on a stick, trying to find bathrooms that were not overflowing with fairgoers, and strolling through the two buildings full of vendors hawking everything from steam powered mops to ShamWows to Jesus.  (My favorite was The Right to Life booth, which was giving out plastic fetuses).  When she finally woke up, we visited the pigs and the petting zoo (with a real live giraffe!), let her learn the harsh truth about carnival games (which she didn’t – she wanted to take the rubber ducks rather than the prize), grabbed a quick dinner and headed out, some nine hours after we had arrived.

All in all, another magical day at the Great New York State Fair.  If you ever have the chance to attend, I heartily recommend it – and try the deep fried Milky Way.  It will change you.  Forever.

- MWF -

Happy Fatherhood Friday to all, and to all a good day!