If your happy and you know it hit a clown.

When a baby learns the mechanical joy that is hinges, a parent would hope that leads directly to something like, I don't know, a love of turning book pages. Or perhaps constructing his own kiddy-gates to save me another trip to Target. Instead, Kaden uses his newfound knowledge to open the top to the diaper genie and plunge his hand inside every chance he gets.

Yep, Kaden is busy, busy, busy. He's in full Louis & Clark mode, turning up every pillow and diaper to see what's underneath. And once he's gotten a good look at everything, he's entirely bored. That's one reason why our recent trip to Chapel Hill for thanksgiving was so great. It's a new living room, kitchen, dining room, and dog to explore. Back at the old home in Boston, he's seen it all. Kaden even has this bored look that he pulls out at about 5pm every day. He backs away from his play table, crawls to the middle of the room, and turns around and stares at Megan like, "come on, DO something."

Parenting at this stage is pretty much like being the activities director at a Club Med. You are constantly coming up with new things for him to do. This leads parents to do some pretty unfortunate things. For instance, I took Kaden to a music class the other day called Family Music Makers, and it was clear that I simply had not been driven desperate enough to appreciate this class.

What I found was a room full of otherwise healthy adults clapping and dancing while their children utterly ignore them. With the exception of one or two kids who were old enough to get it, this was basically an excuse for parents to see other parents. Only, with the unfortunate prancing around like it was campground karaoke. I know we are desperate to occupy our kids, but couldn't we all just play with toys and talk?

That's not half as bad as the horror show that I missed because Megan took Kaden. It's called Gymboree, and it is either just horribly out of touch with the modern world, or it's a cult.

Gymbo the clown goes up and down, up and down, up and down... until you are sufficiently brainwashed.

First, you take your kid to some office park and into a non-descript room. In this non-descript room is one very creepy man with a really irritating therapist voice. You know the kind - where he is talking so soft and monotone you just want to throttle him. And behind him is... wait for it... a massive clown's head.

The clown is apparently named Gymbo, which sounds like a junkie's name to me. The creepy instructor also has a stuffed Gymbo that he uses as his "baby" for class. So here you are, in the non-descript room with a massive clown's head hanging above you staring at you. And all the while Mr.child molester is playing songs on a ukulele while articulating a stuffed clown in the manner that you are supposed to touch and move your baby.

Then when your done with your half-hour creep-fest you walk outside where there is a white van with tinted windows that you get into so they can take you off to their clown-cult brainwashing camp. Okay.. so there was no white van, but it's still pretty ridiculous right?

But that's what the little bugger drives you to try. His processors are just running too fast and he needs to learn more. Thankfully, there is Isis Maternity. It's just up the street, offers a bunch of classes, and has a complete absence of clowns. Just yesterday while I was off in Germany on business, Megan went there for a perfectly normal music class.

As usual, Kaden was completely ignoring all the adults making fools of themselves right up until they started singing, "If you're happy and you know it..." And he sat up, looked around smiling, and started to try and clap his hands.

He missed terribly, but it made it all worth it.