Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan’

Puberty – and ‘The Talk’ – Scares the Crap Out of Me

My son's first crush was Alexa Vega (Carmen) from "Spy Kids."

My son Jonathan just started middle school and wouldn’t you know it?  Two weeks after the school year began and a month after he joined his new tween tackle football team, Jonathan casually called his sister an X-Rated word to get her to stop whining about something.   In front of my face, he told his sister Elena to stop being the slang word for a woman’s sexual organ.  Yep, THAT word!

“Where did you get that word!!!?”, I asked him.

“Oh, it’s just something we say on the football team.  I just said that to her because Elena was whining again.”

I was ticked and disturbed.

“Don’t you EVER use a bad word to talk about your sister or anybody else like that again,” I warned him.

It was in that instance of Jonathan uttering that Level 3 foul word (more…)

How we met NFL star Ray Lewis

Baltimore Ravens star linebacker Ray Lewis recently read the story I wrote about my son’s football dreams and decided he wanted to come watch him play yesterday.

Well, ok, maybe that’s not exactly true but he did come to a game and saw my son.  Mr. Lewis’ own son was on the team that played my son’s team and got blown out 26-0.  My son is allowed to play in blow outs so technically Mr. Lewis saw Jonathan take the field.

After the game, my son begged me to take a photo of him with Mr. Lewis but that was gutsy of him because my son was still wearing his opposing team football uniform and Mr. Lewis was giving the defeated team a pep talk.

As soon as Ray was done, my son pretty fearlessly approached Mr. Lewis as he walked briskly to his Ferrari with his son.  When my son asked him for a quick photo Lewis graciously shook Jonathan’s hand and asked him for his name but he didn’t pause.  Fearing that a throng of other people would hunt him down for photos and autographs, Ray politely told us he couldn’t pause but didn’t mind if we took some photos of him walking back to his car.  I took a couple of blurred shots of him with Jonathan and then told my son we also had to leave.

Minutes later my son and I prepared to board our car when lo and behold there came Ray Lewis, quietly behind our car inside his Ferrari.  He motioned to my boy and I to come over for the photo we couldn’t get earlier.  My son rushed to Ray’s side of the car, they both smiled and I snapped this quick photo you see above this story.  This football season has had a lot of pleasant surprises.  This is just the latest chapter.

The Benchwarmer and the Water Boy


Taking your 11-year-old son to be the benchwarmer on his tackle football team every Saturday for an entire season is infuriating.  That’s not why we paid $300 for him to join a tackle football team and it’s not why we take him to practice three times a week for two hours every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Yesterday, following a second consecutive game where my son did nothing but sit on the bench, his coach privately told me Jonathan wouldn’t be playing.  Actually his coach said something much more depressing about him but stay with me here because this story has a surprising twist. (more…)

Day 7 of Family Road Trip from Miami to Alaska: Crisis and Chaos in the PapiMobile

 


Day 7 of our family road trip from Miami to Alaska was a day straight out of vacation HELL.  Everything that could have gone wrong seemed to have gone wrong times two on our way from Memphis to Oklahoma.

There's a story behind these oven mitts.

A Double Shot of Pain

The day started in Memphis with my wife waking up with extreme (more…)

Wacky PapiBlogger web site launches to showcase creative parenting tricks

MIAMI, FL (May 11, 2010) – With all due respect to the wonderful mamis of the booming blog world, it’s time for a papi to step in to the family blogging action.

Today, Hispanic PR Wire founder, social media marketing expert and father-of -three Manny Ruiz announced the launch of PapiBlogger, a web site devoted to showcasing creative parenting tricks, at the opening session of the Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference in Dallas.
(more…)