The first year my sons were alive, like every infant, they were complete blobs. They ate, they shat, they pissed, they cried, they screamed, they threw up all the time, and their heads rolled around on their necks like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Most of the time, I could barely get close to them. Pamela is one of the most efficient, anal people I know, so she had the situation on lock before Dad could get in to lend a hand. I did change diapers and feed them though, and let me tell you, baby poop is as gnarly as they say it is—even when it’s your own child. A few times, not even a diaper could hold in all the poop. That’s when you just pick them up and run to the nearest sink or bathtub, as the crap runs down their legs.

In those early years, you spend most of your time trying to figure out who they most look and act like—and so does everyone else. People would constantly point out how each of them was like Pamela or me in ways I just did not understand. It’s a weird time, because they’re changing month to month. The bone structure changes and so do their personalities: When my boys were born, both of them had light hair and I thought they would be blond like their mother. Slowly their hair got darker and turned brown to the point that it’s more like mine.

By the time they were a year and a half, they were little people—little people we had to chase. Once they learned to walk, they were like blind guys driving a Ferrari: an accident waiting to happen. They’d blast off full-speed ahead with no idea of how to drive or where they were going. We had child-proofed the house already by installing locks on the cabinets they could reach, but we weren’t done. The tile in the kitchen had to be replaced by carpet after a few faceplants left dents in their hoods.

Brandon’s first word was “pickle.” He’d say it over and over, just “pihkl, pihkl, pihkl.” I don’t know where he got that because he wasn’t eating them then—there ain’t no Gerber strained pickles for babies. Dylan’s made more sense, it was “da-da.” Both of the boys learned the word “pool” right away. They loved the water and I loved swimming with them. They’d splash around and giggle and then freak out for a second when I’d dunk them. It was amazing to see that much joy and surprise in their expressions. To this day, I can’t keep them out of the pool. I’ve had to invent a rule, the raisin check: The little guys show me their hands and when their fingers are more wrinkled than an elephant’s ass, I say, “All right dudes, out of the pool.”

My two boys are so close in age that it didn’t take long for them to become a two-man army. I really noticed it when they were four and five. They started getting into sports—karate, T-ball, basketball, soccer—and it brought them together. It also fired up the old sibling rivalry, which is, to this day, a constant struggle for superiority. I should just buy an official WWF referee uniform because not a day goes by that I’m not breaking up a smackdown in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter that they know what comes next: a time-out. I put each fighter in his own corner, where he can’t speak, can’t move, and can’t do anything but think about why he’s there. They get a minute for each year they’ve been alive. Every once in a while I give myself a time-out when I’m dying for some peace and quiet. It’s the only way sometimes to guarantee sanity—and forty minutes with nothing to do.

My boys each excel in different areas. Dylan is the more physical one: He is amazing at sports and goes at it like a pro. His coaches have all mentioned that he’s got something special and when I hear that, I fast-forward the movie in my head and watch him play at either Dodger Stadium, the Staples Center, or in the Olympics some day.

Brandon is verbal; he’s a great storyteller, even when he’s lying. He’ll admit it too, if you ask him. He’ll come out with all kinds of things, like one time when we were sitting at the dinner table and he said, “They’re filling people’s heads with nonsense in school. Nonsense about brushing your teeth.” Where the hell does he get this stuff? Across the table, his little brother started brushing his teeth with a lambchop. We love him, we call him Random Brandon. At times like that, I see him becoming either a comedian, a writer, or a lawyer—they’re great storytellers and liars too.

Our boys, like all little kids, are into everything they can get their hands on, like a pair of monkeys—so that’s what I call them: the Monkeys. Those two little maniacs pounce on me at seven in the morning and keep me running until they fall asleep at night. They make me love life—and I already do love life. They’re nuts, and they have more energy than children should be allowed to have.

Right now they’re still at that age where everything is a wonderful adventure. I love watching them trip out, whether it’s about the new fish in our fish tank or riding dirt bikes. It’s amazing, and their enthusiasm sends mine into overdrive. Here’s what I’m talking about: Brandon’s favorite drink is cherry Kool-Aid, so for his birthday I filled the bathtub with it and set him down to soak it up. He was in heaven, just filling his mouth with his favorite drink and marinating in that flavored bathwater. He couldn’t wait to tell everyone at school that his dad gave him a bath in Kool-Aid. I’m thinking, “Great, that’s a parent-teacher conference waiting to happen.” After ten minutes, he started to turn red, which cracked me up, but I scooped him out and washed him off before it got too bad. A dyed-red kid is not good.

I have a koi pond and a Japanese garden in the back of my house, which is usually where I like to take my time-outs. One day, Brandon decided that he and his brother should get in there and swim with the fish. I put their masks and snorkels on them, and we all jumped in. The fish freaked out and, of course, both Monkeys chased them around, trying to catch them, ride them, hug them, or whatever. Between their speed and the natural slime on their scales, there was no way the boys were going to catch any koi. It was funny watching them try. It became a tradition until I got eleven more fish, some of which are forty years old and about three feet long—nearly the size of my boys. Once they saw those Japanese whales, they stayed away from the pond for a while.

I hope that when they’re older they’ll tell people how their dad was just like them when they were little. I want them to say that their dad was just a big kid who gave them all kinds of insane experiences and did the craziest shit with them. I also want to do something involved with their world before they get much older, like do a voiceover or create music for a cartoon, or get one of my songs in a video game that they play. Getting inside their little kid world that way would be amazing. I’ve got to do that now because before I know it, they’re going to be sixteen and asking me for the keys to my car. They’ll be coming home with sixteen-year-old hotties asking me if the girls can stay the night. I’ll have to just tell them to be safe. Jesus, they’re going to be wanting to have parties in my hot tub! I know when I tell them they can’t because they’re too young, they’re going to just look at me and say, “Are you kidding me, Dad?” I still have a few years to work out an answer and I’m gonna fucking need them. (I just hope that the Mötley Crüe autobiography, the videotape of their mother and I having sex, and this book are all out of print by then.)

Taking the Monkeys to the toy store is tough enough. I sound like a man much older than my years when I say the toys they got today, that shit is crazy. PlayStation 2, Xbox, all kinds of remote-control jeeps and cars, quad racers, and little gas-powered buggies. I had a red wagon full of rocks that I collected in the yard, and I thought that was rad. Being a little kid right now is insane, and I wish there were some way for me to communicate that to them—especially when they get bored. They’ve got it all here and they’re already over it. It’s all a matter of what you’re used to as your point of reference. Some days I think I’m way more into their stuff than they are. I’ll set them up with a new video game and in a matter of minutes I hear two voices in stereo: “Dad. Dad! We’re bored.” I can never believe it and say, “Dudes, entertain yourselves. You guys don’t have anything to play with? Let Dad write a song for a minute.” But you know that deep down I’m really pumped that they’d rather hang out with Dad than go off and play by themselves.

I am concerned though, and I talk to their mom about this all the time, that our boys have too much shit. You need to be careful, because if they’re all overstimulated this young, they might not ever use their imaginations. We need to stop buying them a million fucking toys! Let’s give them some pens and let them draw. Let’s give them whatever instruments they like and listen to them create. It’s crazy with these toys, dude. I mean, I had a fire truck—one fire truck. And I took care of that motherfucker! My kids have eighty fire trucks and they’re not afraid to break them. I’ll watch them just bash the thing into red plastic rubble and ask them, “What are you guys doing? You broke it.” They’ll turn to me and say, “It’s okay, Dad. We can go to the store and you’ll get us another one.” Great.

Before it gets any worse, I’ve been doing my best to give the Monkeys a sense of reality. I’m trying to introduce the concepts of money, earning, and spending into the program now. These days when they break their shit and want something new, Dad and the boys go to the piggy bank to see how phat they’re rollin’. And they’re not living off handouts either. I told them that any change they find lying around the house is theirs, but that’s not it. When their mom or I curse in their presence, we owe them a quarter. Since you’ve gotten this far in my book, you can probably guess that the boys have made plenty of bucks off Dad already. I’m getting better, but shit, I just can’t fuckin’ stop godammned cursing, you know? So the boys are learning about earning. In addition to their little trust fund built on Dad’s foul language they also get Tooth Fairy cash. When we go shopping now, they can buy whatever they want—if they can afford it. Brandon was pretty dumbfounded when he was confronted with how much the stuff he likes costs. Since they don’t know, they’ll just point at something in the store and I’ll say, “Well dudes, that costs forty-two bucks. Let’s see what you’ve got.” They’ll count it out and have like forty-one bucks and three cents. So I’ll say that I’ll loan them a dollar if they do their chores. Of course the toys they really want are like sixty bucks and they’ll just start pointing. “Dad, Dad, look at that. Dad. I want that. Hey Dad, Dad! Dad? We don’t have sixty bucks, but you do.” I stay strong; I don’t give in.

I hope our boys are starting to understand how the world works a little bit. If they’re not, at least they’re learning that toys don’t just magically appear. And best of all, this whole process is cutting down on the amount of toys around here, which, trust me, is getting close to ridiculous.

I’m so glad that Pamela and I agree that we will do everything we possibly can to keep them out of the public eye. We do not take the boys to events where there is going to be some dumb-ass red carpet bullshit and when we’re with them, we avoid photographers as best we can. Of course that makes all the leeches who wait in cars with lenses long enough to shoot professional sports or African wildlife even more hungry for pictures of all of us together outside my kids’ karate dojo. We’re like some endangered Siberian white tiger to them—a rare fucking big-game trophy that the paparazzi poachers could turn into a fucking gold mine. Hey, let’s send my writer, Anthony, to talk to one of those guys and find out what the hell is wrong with them.

Thanks, Anthony. We protect the Monkeys as much as we can, but they’re getting old enough to start realizing what Mom and Dad do. I mean, when they talk to their friends and hear what a lot of the other parents do most of the day, they’ve got to realize that something is up. And if they’re being bad by staying up too late watching TV, they might see Mom on Celebrities Uncensored —it’s definitely sinking in no matter what we do. I heard Brandon tell his schoolmate the other day, “My dad’s a rock star and he works really hard.” As usual, I don’t know where Random Brandon got that one—I didn’t tell him anything. I’m assuming that my being gone on tour a lot means, to him, that I work really hard. He doesn’t quite know yet that my work is fun. But it’s not as much fun as being home with my sons. I had so much fun in the summer of 2003 for just that reason. I didn’t tour for once—I just played with those guys in the pool, barbecued, and enjoyed my home life with them to the fullest. And those moments are better than any tour or any concert I’ve ever played, please believe.

It’ll be cool one day to sit down and show them their dad’s legacy. They’ve seen a few videos and things once in a while, but they have no clue. Dylan has a Mötley shirt that he wears. But he doesn’t even know who Mötley Crüe is, the same way he doesn’t know who Korn is—he’s got a little shirt of theirs too. He just likes the way those shirts look so he throws ’em on. I love that. Yeah, it’ll be cool to sit the Monkeys down and show them what their dad has done. Then again, maybe it’s not such a good idea.