Several weeks ago, I was contacted by the audience coordinator at the Martha Stewart Show, asking if I was interested in bringing some of the guys from Lehigh Valley Club Dad to NYC to be in the audience for the taping of a SAHD-centric episode.

The idea was to fill the audience with just dads and their kids  – initially aged 3 – 13, but they eventually dropped the age to 1 month. It sounded like a lot of fun, and a bunch of us decided to get tickets. The taping was this past Wednesday, and I thought I’d share my experience.

Tucker and I joined four other dads and their kids for a day trip into Manhattan from the Lehigh Valley for the show. The trip itself was quite the adventure; driving into Jersery City and taking the PATH into the Big City for the first time was fairly painless, and now that we’ve done it once next time would be even easier. We did get a little turned around trying to find the studio, but not too badly.

Even cynical New Yorkers couldn’t help smiling at the sight of all us guys with little kids walking together.

We found the studio, just in time, and joined the line-up outside. When it was time to let us in we got our tickets, went through security, and signed away our lives while we waiting in the holding area I called “The Corral.”  It was pretty nuts in there. In addition to our group of 13 there was a large contingent from the NYC Dads Group and a whole bunch of other at-home dads, everyone with at least one of their children in tow. I think in total it was about 90 dads and about 100 kids. Anyhow, this was our chance to get some food into the kids, change diapers, etc. before going into the studio itself.

Joey the Warm-Up Guy came out to see us, to give instructions on what to expect, signals he’d use to get us to do things (like “Ooooo!” “Awwww!” and “Mmmmm!”), hints that we’d be getting some cool swag, and generally just to get us all excited while we waited. He was nice and trying very hard with the unenviable task of warming up a bunch of dads and young kids for a riveting hour or so of soft-spoken meal preparation and craft ideas.

I must say, everyone working there was great, and at least on the surface seemed to be expecting the chaos. That said, I think maybe they underestimated just how much there would be. I talked to one of the crew and asked if they’d ever done anything like this before, and she said they had, but it was with moms and kids. Somehow I think that was probably a better behaved crowd!

Eventually our group was called upon, and we started the several stage trip into the studio space upstairs, where we were led to our assigned seats. We weren’t all seated right together, but we weren’t spread too far, and the audience area is actually not nearly as large as I had originally assumed. The set (which, at least in the kitchen, is apparently ALL functional) looked amazing and I would have loved to get to explore more of it. They’d converted part of the set into a very Martha-esque “play area”, but it was only large enough to handle a few kids/dads at a time.

Joey the Warm-Up Guy came out to go over everything again, and get everyone excited. I appreciated what he was doing, but I think this audience was SO different than usual it was a little comical how bewildered he was at times at how to handle kids and deal with the chaos. He spontaneously sang “WHO LIVES IN A PINEAPPLE UNDER THE SEA?” every once in a while, but didn’t seem to know the rest of the words (Joey if you’re out there and reading this, well first of all score one for vanity searches, but also feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). One of the NYC Dads guys started up a round of “Old McDonald” and Joey took over leading it. Pretty fun moment for Tuck.

Anyhow, eventually Martha was ready for her big entrance. We applauded wildly, as instructed, and the show began.

It was a ton of fun, but ”chaotic”, “insane”, “loud”, and “Oh Lord what were they thinking?!” would be the best descriptors for the actual taping of the show.

We really couldn’t hear very much of what was said, unfortunately. At a normal taping I’m sure the audience is suitably quiet to make up for how soft-spoken Martha is and the low volume on the speakers, but the noise level and distraction from the kids was enough that it was tough at times to hear her or her guests. Such is life with a toddler.

I caught a lot of it though. I know that at one point some SAHD (whose wife was the only adult female in the whole audience) was up there with Martha talking briefly about what he does, and they made some sort of…Minestrone pot pie? I think? Or something? I know he talked about making kale chops for his kids, and so Martha used kale in the recipe. In another segment a different guy talked about making fun/healthy lunch boxes.

At one point Martha said to the guy she was working the lunch boxes with something along the lines of “No one out there is even paying attention to us. They’re all focused on their kids. I guess that’s a good thing.” She was right, no one in the audience anywhere around me was actually watching the show being taped in front of them! I was reading a book with Tuck to keep him in his seat rather than rolling around on the stairs with the little girl “seated” behind us who fell in love with him. Others were fixing/feeding food, or drawing pictures with their kids, or whatever else to keep them distracted and/or calm.

There was a craft, too, but I don’t know what it was in the slightest — there was an area set up for kids/dads to play that we got to go use a couple of times and the craft segment was one of those time. I actually imagine there will likely be some shots of us from there in the final show. We’ll see.

I think that one of the things that makes a SAHD-centric episode of Martha a little different than when other shows do it is that, to their credit, it was simply a theme rather than some sort of Big Issue. It was just taken as a matter of course that, well, today the audience is made up of dads who have taken on the responsibility of being primary caregiver for their children! This was definitely a unique kind of show for them but there was no “Let’s dissect this phenomenon,” or what-have-you. While I love it when shows have serious discussions about what I do, it was kind of nice to have a situation where it wasn’t treated like that. Kudos to the show, and thanks for inviting us!

Tucker’s favorite part of the whole day wasn’t the show, but “riding the choo-choo train,” which is Tuckereze for “Taking the PATH into the city from New Jersey.”  He really loves his new Bento Lunch Box, and the Simon Flash game I’ve spent the day trying to figure out is pretty fun. I scored a neat book on crafts and homemade toy ideas to do with your kids called Made to Play (I think the author was the guest during the craft segment) and an AWESOME Kalencom Urban Sling diaper bag. Well, a gift certificate for one. But it’s free, and was one less thing to haul home, so, KEEN!

All in all, I think we made off pretty well in the Swag Department.

In the end, I just had an awesome day with Tuck. Now that he has a little brother we don’t get many opportunities to spend time with just the two of us together, so it was really nice.

Given how little we could really see/hear of the actual show I’m looking forward to watching it — Hallmark Channel on November 29th (which seems like a long time off, but whatevs).