Category: Family

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Family

A Day at the Beach

After our first rainy day in what seemed like forever, today’s forecast called for a nice day. So we got up early and took advantage of the weather with a trip to the beach. It ended up being a beautiful beach day.

Our beach trips are pretty low key affairs. It’s an hour or so drive to the shore and we pack a lunch and bring the bare necessities after that. The kids get a boogie board, some buckets and some shovels and that’s it. We’ve been using the same routine since the kids started learning to swim and it’s been a good formula.

The spot we go to normally has pretty tame water, which is nice actually because that means it’s clear and swimming is pretty easy. Also, there are a couple of stripers that frequent the area and the clear water makes them easy to spot.

Today was different. Possibly because of the storm that had come through, or possibly because it was still high tide when we got there, or possibly for some other reason that escapes me. Whatever. The waves were big enough that I got right in and started body surfing. I was soon joined by the boy and the lass, both of whom needed a little work. The boy was able to figure out the timing well enough as well as keep his body rigid enough that he was doing a pretty reasonable job. The lass just had fun tumbling in the water. By the end of the day, she was using the boogie board with pretty good results.

Aside from the water, the kids spend plenty of time digging holes in the sand. They’re both good at getting a layer of sand all over themselves. The lass even half-buried herself yesterday.

When it was all done, we stopped off for ice cream on the way home. It’s something of a ritual for us after a day in the Sun and sand. A nice way to cap off a beautiful day.

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Family

Parenting Will Never Be The Same

The 5-second rule has been scientifically disproven. What’s more, it appears to be settled science. I hear that’s the worst kind.

But getting dirty improves the immune system!

Sounds like a win-win to me! Perhaps we should be eating off dirty floors.

(hattip: Instapundit)

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Family

They Will Believe Anything

The Wife informs me that our niece and nephew were flummoxed by their inability to fly. Perhaps that requires a bit of background.

First, everyone remembers Dumbo, right? Feather in the schnoz, “But I’d been done seen about everything…” blah, blah, blah.

Second, the Grandma, or Mimi as he niece and nephew call her, has an African Grey parrot whom was kind enough to molt a couple of feathers the kids’ way.

So they took the feathers, tucked them under their nose and tried to fly. Because hey, it worked for Dumbo. But not so much for them.

It’s all in good fun.

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Family

Thunderstorms Are Intimidating

It’s been ridiculously hot the past few days, so the kids and I were out in the pool for a bit trying to beat the heat. Unfortunately, the pool is one of those small jobs so the water has warmed past the point of refreshing. That said, it was still better than nothing.

After coming up from a dunk, the boy asked “Did you hear that Daddy?”

He uses “Daddy” in a couple of contexts, one of them is when he’s working me for something. I can almost feel the high fructose buttering up in those cases. Another context is when he’s worried about something.

To answer his question, no I hadn’t heard anything and I told him so. Even so, I knew exactly what he was concerned about.

Thunderstorms.

So I kept going under the water, and every time I’d come up, he’d ask me again. His persistence sucked the lass in as well. “Yeah Dad, I heard it too. What is it?”

Finally, I told them “It’s a monster.”

“Really?” the lass asked. Honestly, she did. You gotta love 6 year olds.

“Yep, it’s a monster. He’s over there,” I said pointing at the woods behind our house. “I’d been hoping to keep him a secret from you for a bit longer, but you’ve forced my hand. He sleeps during the day and hunts at night.”

“Dad, I want you to be serious. Don’t joke around” intoned the boy.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you to, I really want to know what the noise is.”

Nothing like a fun sucker. Fine, OK. It’s a thunderstorm. Actually, by this time, they should have just known it was thunder. The rumbles were coming pretty steadily from the North, plus the clouds were slowly moving in. It was still hot though.

I stayed in the water for a few more minutes, and then figured it was time to get out.

“Are you getting out because of the thunderstorm?” they asked.

Jiminy friggin’ cricket. Sometimes it seems like I can’t do anything without some kind of explanation. Especially when they’re agitated about something.

“No, I just decided it was time to get out and dry off,” I told them.

“Should we get out of the pool?” they asked.

“Only if you’ve had enough,” I answered.

As it happened, I suggested to them it was time to get out one the clouds blocked out the Sun. The rumbles were growing and it had become clear that they would hit before too long. I did everything as non-chalantly as I could, not wanting to set them off any more than was necessary.

When the storm finally did hit, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world but it was pretty good for this neck of the woods. We had a brown out when it peaked and the majority of the lightening was hitting near us. A couple of times, the kids asked if the lightening had hit something. It said “Sure, the ground.”

Based on their reaction, that wasn’t what the meant.

But the worst of the storm passed in about 15 minutes and, as I stated earlier, the worst wasn’t that bad.

But it was enough.

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Family

You Hate Me

A recent behavior that the boy has begun to manifest is a strange sort of denial when we yell at him. It’s a strange amalgam of rage, frustration and rationalization that he’s the aggrieved party and we are always singling him out. It’s a straight up attempt at emotional blackmail to flip the script and make us feel guilty for telling him he acted foolishly, stupidly, carelessly or some combination of the preceding plus other things I failed to mention. Some of this is to be expected since the totality of his behaviors reveal a fairly myopic view of the world. Welcome to the world of 8 year olds, I suppose.

What his near-tearful fits fail to account for is that the yell is typically preceded by a notice that he’s pushing the line, followed by a warning that he’s going to get in trouble, followed by an ultimatum that disaster is imminent. I know while reading that you might be thinking “Hey, what about all the decisiveness stuff you’ve talked about in the past? Clearly, he’s just going along because he knows he’ll get several chances before he finally gets it.”

To which I say, it’s subtle. The fact is, the Wife and I can’t always be around to act as his brake for poor behavior. He needs to learn to slow down and stop himself. I like to think that’s what we’re exercising- his ability to identify that he’s getting out of control, to recognize his actions might have negative consequences, to stop himself before he really does get in trouble. It’s possible that those abilities are beyond him at this point, but we won’t know unless we try. Besides, am I supposed to believe that there’s a judgment switch inside him that at some point in the future gets flipped on and suddenly, he can do it?

Maybe so, but we’re just parents. So we’ll put him through his paces anyway, thank you very much.

Take yesterday as an example. Out on the deck, the boy had brought out his large beach ball. The Wife knew what was going to happen the moment it appeared on the deck, and she warned him “Don’t throw is near the plants or you’ll break them.” Not 30 seconds later, the boy carelessly kicks the ball and almost knocks down one of my desert roses. The Wife doesn’t yell, but gives him the firm “I told you so!” voice. A minute after that, he hits one of the Wife’s tomato plants.

BOOM. Ball confiscated. Plus the confiscatory speech about listening.

So the boy starts to get tears in his eyes and stomp around the deck. He starts making some annoying, agonized, whining noise in his throat. Then he yells “YOU ALWAYS YELL AT ME! YOU HATE ME!” Big flourish, flop in the chair. Arms crossed of course, for emphasis. Furrowed brow, stare daggers into the middle distance.

And the Oscar for best 5 Seconds of Fury goes too…

I head off to the garage for something. Several minutes pass and then there’s more yelling, and now the boy comes storming into the garage. The Wife had asked him to clean something up on the deck. When he hadn’t complied after several, escalating in intensity, requests, she yelled. See, we’re alway yelling at him.

So I took him aside and tried to explain the obvious to us, but apparently not to him. That we don’t always yell at him, that he needs to learn to listen. That he’s got his causation backwards- we yell because he doesn’t act until we yell. If he listened the first time, there’d be no yelling.

“But you never yell at my sister!….”

Hogwash. We yell at her for the same reasons. Learn to listen, learn to act on the first request and there won’t be any yelling.

“But we don’t hate you, we love you very much.”

Categories
Family

Comic Update

Last week, the boy picked up a couple of Star Wars comics. He read them both and wanted to try something else, so we took him back and he decided he wanted to try the new Superman storyline. That works well since they are only up to issue 8 or so, therefore we don’t have to hunt down hundreds of back issues.

He provided an amusing moment after deciding Superman would be his thing. He wanted “the first Superman.” Presumably, because you start at the beginning. Of course, he had no way of knowing what he was asking for, so I decided to let the clerk at the store bring him up to speed.

She said she’s never even seen the first Superman comic and that it would cost him about $2.3 million. She was very good natured about it all, and then informed him about the newly rebooted story.

Thankfully, it didn’t take any arm twisting to get him to go along with her suggestion.

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Family

For The Boy

Via Deadspin, this video is a more dramatic demonstration of what we were trying to do yesterday when he caught his little blue gill. I think his reaction would’ve been about the same as these people’s if something actually had taken than blue gill.

Payoff at the 41 second mark.

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Cub Scouts Family

Scout Camp

Spent the day with the boy at Scout Camp yesterday. It was virtually identical to last year, allowing for the usual sorts of modifications camps make in an effort to improve the experience year-to-year. All that by way of saying, the boy and I had a lot of fun.

The boy had the better of it though, as my day consisted of “herding cats.” Actually, to be fair, the boys weren’t as bad as that. Though the extra year does make for a bit of a different challenge. They’re all less googly-eyed in the presence of adults, a bit more standoffish when they’re tired. To make it through, a little more patience and finesse is required including “letting things go” that an adult might otherwise not.

As for specifics, the boy had an interesting day. Starting at the beginning, archery, he hit the foam wrapper on the stand for the target. Twice. It wasn’t anywhere near a bullseye, but all the other kids were marveling at the feat, unintentional though it was. After that we moved on to BB’s where he had the second-highest score in the den and hit 2 bullseyes out of 8 shots. Finally, at fishing he was the only one in the den to catch a fish. It was a tiny blue gill that the boy quite literally plucked out of the water near the shore. It was so small that one of the other den leaders decided it would be more entertaining to use the fish as bait to try and catch a big fish. No such luck ultimately, but we didn’t have to worry about re-baiting his hook.

He also learned how to tie a square knot and a Bowline knot. The latter took most of the hour session to figure out. Mainly because the Scout who taught the class had to work with each kid individually and it takes quite a few iterations to finally figure it out. It took me awhile as well because it wasn’t obvious, while watching him tie the knot, that the loop the knot starts with isn’t the loop the knot ends with. Once the boy learned it he retained it, as evidenced by his demonstrating how to tie it to the Wife later.

Of all the changes to the format, the biggest is the extra hour added to the day. I was pretty sure some kind of brawl would break out between the kids just based on general fatigue levels from hoofing around the camp all day. Fortunately, nothing of the sort materialized, though it was touch-and-go during their soccer game at the end. The activity leader their didn’t exactly regale himself in leadership skills as he basically sat and watched the boys argue over various rules about the game.

Today is “Crazy Hair Day” at the camp, and the Wife spiked his hair for the occasion. He thought he looked stupid, but the Wife and I thought it looked good on him. It was too bad the Wife didn’t have any colored hair spray since he’d have made an awesome punk rocker.

I told the boy that it’s also “Hump Day”, since after today the week will be past half-way over. Even though he’s enjoying the camp, he confessed it wasn’t as much fun this year as last year. I told him it was probably just because it wasn’t all new. It certainly wasn’t for lack of friends. Not trying to toot my own horn, but I also suspect part of it is because I can’t spend the entire week with him at the camp like I did last year, though he hasn’t said anything to that effect. My only evidence is a Father’s intuition. Whatever the reason, I think part of him is looking forward to having his own time again come Friday.

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Family

An Annoying Parenting Article

Here. Mainly because it’s more true than not, I suspect.

I wonder if we should start a “doomsday” clock or something. The boy is 8, so that means 5 short years until the Wife and I become embarassing, annoying and ridiculous.

Personally, if that is my fate, then I’ll aim for over achievement. Might as well give them their money’s worth. Or, perhaps I’ll shoot to be really annoying. I can do annoying. The others should follow suit.

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Family

First Comics

Took the boy to the local comic store which, somewhat surprisingly for a small town, is well stocked with comics. In the process, we ran into his martial arts instructor whom, it turns out, is a comic collector wit over 10,000 comics. He prefers the 60’s and 70’s strain but doesn’t have any preference for DC or Marvel. He just enjoys his comics, even to this day.

So we wandered the store for awhile, the boy looking somewhat overwhelmed and not sure what to make of it all. I pulled down most of the familiar titles to see if he was interested, but he demurred. There are 2 challenges for picking out comics, as I see it. The first is it’s almost certain you’ll be starting in the middle of some kind of plot line meaning it’s likely you’ll need to find back issues to get up to speed. The second, which I think is more of a modern problem phenomena, is that story lines nowadays are more mature than is appropriate for the typical 8-year old, particularly with the Batman or Wolverine titles.

He finally decided something Star Wars related would do. We were able to find several titles for him to pick from. We left with a couple of them, so we’ll see if they are a medium that captures his attention.

Looking through the comics put me in mind of picking my own as well. While I’m no collector, I’ve always enjoyed comics. With my Nook, I figured it was worth a look at the B&N selection. It appears that rather than individual issues, you have to purchase graphic novel collections. That’s fine by me, since I’ll presumably get all of a particular story arc.

Why should the boy get all the fun?

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Family

A Last Hurrah

“Get off me!”

The boy was upset. He was playing on his DS and the lass had come over to watch him. If you’ve ever seen a DS, then you know that it’s not exactly and iPad. Heck, it’s not even an iPhone. So in order to watch someone play, the other person has to almost become a Siamese twin. It makes for an amusing spectacle when multiple kids are around watching some Mario-warrior to their thing. Five or six kids all crowded around another, all of them squinting at a sub 3-inch diagonal screen.

The lass was in Siamese twin mode, almost sitting on her brother watching him play. It was hot today so the boy demanded was clearly being unreasonable when he asked for a little space. The lass let him know about his unreasonableness by not moving.

The Wife then chimed in by telling her to go do something.

The lass, never one to be shrugged off so easily, commented “I don’t know what else to do.” She didn’t move either.

So now it was my turn. Luckily, the lass had provided for me them means of her undoing. I said “Well, let me tell you something not to do: watch your brother playing the DS.”

That did it.

With a great harumph and display of annoyance she got up and stomped away, muttering dark murmurings about “nothing to do around here.” The Wife rolled her eyes. I shrugged. The boy played.

The lass fumed.

She left the room, no doubt figuring to punish us with her absence.

After about 30-minutes of tranquility, I got up to check a batch of refreshed starter and figured I check in on what she’d been doing. I found her in the front room. Lying on the couch. Sleeping.

A good cure for grouchiness.

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Family

First Day Back

Got up around 6:30 this morning and had a big cup of Jo. That’s one thing I missed while abroad. All of the coffee was served in little cups. I guess it’s the simple things.

The boy was the first child up. Both of them slept in the basement last night. They’ve been doing that quite a bit of late because it’s cooler and more comfortable down there. The down side is they don’t really sleep. It’s a slumber party for brother and sister. The boy actually came up at one point last night to complain that his sister wouldn’t stop talking and let him sleep.

So while I enjoyed my coffee, I also pulled out one of the books we brought back and started showing him pictures of the ruins we visited in Athens. The book has renderings of what the Parthenon and so forth looked like in their hay day.

The Wife was next up, followed by the lass. So I then showed them pictures we’d taken while over there.

I was the first to unpack my bag and start the laundry process. Being a guy, my laundry was simple- two loads, colors and not-so-colors. The Wife had a little more work to do. After she’d started her loads of laundry, she went with the kids to the grocery store to pick up stuff to make a Greek salad and gyros. We weren’t quite ready to give up on the cuisine, and we figured it would be something different for the kids as well. She even bought yogurt to make tzatziki.

In the meantime, I started yard work. In the time we’d been gone, the pines had shed their needles. Again. I’m seriously considering cutting all of the pines down, I’m so sick of the incessant pine needle precipitation. So I spent a couple hours raking the needles so the wouldn’t clog up the bag on the lawn mower. When the Wife returned with the kids, she threw them outside because they’d been after each other in the grocery store. The boy, particularly, was a real bugaboo, apparently. There’s something neither of us missed.

The area around the kid’s play gym outside had filled with weeds, so we sent them out to weed. That worked out like it always does, pull 2 weeds and then complain about how hard it is, or how the other sibling isn’t doing any work. I put the rake down to help them awhile. Once the weeds had been tamed, I picked up the rake and finished that job. Then I pulled out the edger and went to work with that. All of this in preparation for the main event, mowing the lawn. That’s something I definitely didn’t miss.

I also didn’t miss the humidity. The weather in Greece had been almost unreal. It was hot, but tolerable. Here, well, we’re right in the middle of the nasty weather season. High heat and humidity. Feh.

So by the time I was done and we’d eaten dinner, I was pretty pooped. I sat on the couch and did some light reading while the kid’s played out in the pool. I could barely keep my eyes open. The food coma was setting in on top of all the exertion. So I closed my eyes for a bit…

And snapped awake when I heard the unmistakeable sound of water dripping where it shouldn’t be. I was disoriented, so I got up out of the couch and listened closely trying to focus in on where the sound was coming from. At that point, the boy had materialized by my side. Where’d he come from? He was saying something, but I was still intent on pinning down the water drip. Where was it coming from? It sounded like it was in something.

Then I heard the lass, and she was panicked. She had that half-weepy voice where she sounded on the verge of tears, but wasn’t giving in. Finally, I realized what the boy was saying. The toilet upstairs had been clogged and the dripping was the toilet over flowing. The lass was responsible for the mess- that’s why she was half-weepy. She was afraid I was going to do something crazy, like stuff her in the toilet.

When we got upstairs, I considered it for a moment, but settled for having her mop up the floor. There was a nice puddle all around the toilet. Apparently, she clogged it with TP, attempted to rectify it with the plunger and then tested by flushing. Multiple times. I finished the plunging operation and unclogged the toilet, then set her to work sopping up the water. This took more supervision on my part than I’d have thought necessary but I eventually got her to complete the job satisfactorily.

When I returned downstairs, the dripping sound had stopped. It’s always nice to know a problem has been correctly identified and resolved. My only concern at that point was whether we’d have a water stain on the ceiling. As of this moment, there is none so I’m thinking it should dry out and the ceiling will escape relatively unscathed.

From there, the evening was pretty quiet until bedtime, where the boy was upset because he couldn’t find his favored blanket. He went to bed in tears.

Everything’s back to normal.

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Family

A Small Fat Greek Wedding

That’s a pretty sweet ride for a bride on her wedding day. Is it a donkey? mule? burrow? Does it matter? Let’s just say the bride had a great ass.

A lot of fun was had by all, well into the wee hours of the morning. There was food, dancing, more food, plate breaking, a cake fight, more food and laughter. The bride and groom were blessed with a lot of good people to celebrate with them on their day.

Congratulations to the brother and now the sister-in-law. May many happy days await you.

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Family

Thunderstorm Progress

Both kids have exhibited fear of thunderstorms for the past couple of years. We are, at this very moment, experiencing our first one of the year. Both kids are weathering it well.

Earlier, the lass made mention of the fact that she wasn’t afraid of the thunderstorm. She then asked her brother if he knew why.

He replied “Bowling?”

“Yep,” she answered.

“I know,” he finished.

Apparently, for the lass, Mother Nature is bowling and the thunder is the ball rolling down the lane. The rain is her crying. I guess MN is having a bad game.

The boy told me that God is bowling and that when it thunders, he gets a strike. When it’s quiet, he doesn’t. At this point, God has had quite a few strikes.

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Family

The Boy and The Lass’ Relationship

Went grocery shopping this morning with both kids for the first time in a long while. It’s old hat for the lass, whom has accompanied me on many an occasion. For the longest time, it’s only been her. With school now out, she was joined by her brother. All in all, they managed to get along well enough that I’d be willing to repeat the exercise.

But (and you knew there had to be a “but” because why would I blog about grocery shopping?) there’s alway something. That “something” happened when we were all done. All bagged up and rung up at the register, getting ready to head out to the car for loading. The lass had pulled down the ream of useless coupons that our grocery store spits at me every time we check out.

The boy was upset about her coup. Yes, you read that right. He was upset because she had claimed all of the useless coupons. I know this for a fact because he came up to me just as we were starting to head out and said “Dad, my sister took all of the coupons and won’t give any of them to me. So she has all the coupons and I don’t have any.”

My initial, non-verbalized, reaction (you know, the immediate one that every parent has that we squelch 99.999% of the time for one reason or another) was, and I quote, “Seriously?” Followed immediately by “I can’t believe this.”

My verbal reaction to him a moment later was “You’re upset because she has a bunch of worthless coupons and you don’t? Do you know how lame that is?”

Not exactly the most, um, judicious response. But it was an honest response, which more and more I’ve decided to start offering to the both of them. Especially when it involved this level of inanity. Because, really, am I supposed to try and split-the-baby over coupons? Chinese water torture has nothing on these guys.

I highlighted this particular event because more and more it’s coming to define the relationship between the boy and the lass. Arguing over “the scraps at Longshank’s table.” Actually, if they really were scraps, I suppose I could stomach it better. Yesterday, the boy was upset because while he was getting in the pool, the lass started splashing in his general direction. The lass regularly gets upset because the boy decides to play one of his games and won’t let his sister have a turn. Because, you know, when you’re playing a 1 player game it’s really a 2 player game where you tag team it back and forth. That’s how it’s supposed to be done. Sharing and all that.

So I’ve decided that if these are the sorts of things they’ll argue over, and request that I referee, then I will communicate their pettiness by not taking them seriously. Or, by offering the most extreme penalty I can imagine on short notice. Anything to highlight the ridiculous level to which they have stooped.

If they want to make it a long Summer for me, I’ll just return the favor. In spades.

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Family

School’s Out

For whatever reason, the kids had today as their final day of school. It was only a half-day to boot, making it all the sillier. Of course, the school year started with them missing the first week of school due to the power outages because of the tropical storm. Then, we had a foot of snow in October that caused more delays. So, I guess ending with some scheduling weirdness was appropriate. Or at least normal by this year’s standard.

Both kids have moved on to the next grade, I’m happy to report. The lass is particularly excited because her teacher next year is a cat person and the lass’ favorite animals are cats. At least, they are right now. No sure what happened to the elephant in that hierarchy. The boy seems pleased with his teacher for next year as well.

Actually, that seems to be a consistent end-of-the-year ritual with the students around here. The boy went to a party today and upon arrival, everyone bellowed at him “WHO DO YOU HAVE?” I remember similar happenings last year.

Interestingly, I’m not really dreading the coming couple of months. I’m sure there will be moments where I wish they were back in school, but it’ll be a little change up for me having to deal with them. I suspect they will both be visiting friends a bit more this Summer as well. Besides which, there are things to do around the house, and there’s no reason that Summer can’t be a time for learning as well.

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Family

Happy Father’s Day Wish

Yesterday was a good day. We got to the Scout camp site around 3:30 and the rest of the day flew by. The boy and his friends ran around all afternoon, the parents all mingled and relaxed. Based on my experiences with it so far, group camping is about as good as it gets for parents. Infinite diversions and distractions for kids, none of them the electronic variety, along with low opportunities for getting in trouble.

About the only form of trouble that does come up is the inevitable friction that comes with being in close quarters with other personalities. But that’s a strength as well, since they have to figure out how to cope and make nice. Plus, other parents can usually step in a smooth the flare-ups over without too much fuss.

After dinner, the Order of the Arrow showed up and performed a graduation ceremony for the various dens. It’s a hokey ceremony, as these things go. The Boy Scouts show up dressed in Indian garb, excuse me, Native American garb and they recite some poetry. Then, I hand the earned rank badges to the head Akela and he in turn hands it to the Cub Scout.

But it works. The boys are quiet and attentive the whole time and the ceremony is done in 15 minutes tops. The parents all enjoy it was well. A fun thing on a good day.

After that, it’s more running around followed by s’mores followed by more running around and the night for the boys ends with some songs by the campfire, as well as a skit where I’m the butt of the joke. I and another parent are human props holding a stick to act as a counter at a store. “Customers” come up one at a time and ask the clerk for candy, who tells them that he doesn’t have that kind of candy. Finally, the last customer comes up asks “Well, what do you have?” The clerk answers “Two suckers on a stick” and points at me and the other parent. Rimshot.

I stay up a bit later to help clean up while the boy goes down for the night around 10. By the time I’m done and the fire has finally died down, he’s fast asleep in the tent. So I settle down to join him.

Then, he’s awake and it’s early morning. He’s on top of me and shaking me saying “Dad!” in an urgent but hushed voice to get my attention. I shake off cob webs enough to acknowledge I’m not asleep anymore. I check my watch, it’s 4:30.

He says “Happy Father’s Day!” Then scampers off to the bathroom.

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Family

Graduation

Well, the day finally arrived. After years of waiting, the lass had her graduation today. We were so proud.

The ceremony was really nice, with a slide show highlighting moments from their past year of school. Pictures of them doing cooking projects and field trips and cuddling with rabbits. After that, they called the kids up one by one and handed them their diplomas.

The lass was so serious when she got hers. Looking like this was only the beginning of her long journey into the world. “I’m going to accomplish big things” the look said, er, looked. Then we all went to the cafeteria to have a pot-luck dinner. Followed immediately by 40 kids riding a sugar high. WHEE!

Yep, the lass has graduated. Now she’s on to first grade.

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Family

4 More Days

With only 4 days of school left, the boy received a homework assignment tonight involving his spelling words. He won’t be tested on them, as he took the test for them last week.

But this particular homework assignment has a writing element to it. He’s supposed to write something about a visiting a relative who lives far away. He’s got plenty of material to choose from, but the catch is he has to use 4 of the 10 spelling words.

He finally stopped crying after a marathon tear-fest of what seemed like hours. In reality, it was more like 15 or 20 minutes, which is still 15 or 20 minutes too long. The Wife and I both told him to step away and calm down. But he was inconsolable. We’re talking full-on balling, snuffling, sucking, tears and snot. All over a small writing assignment.

“I can’t do it….” he snuffled.

“Can somebody heeeelp ME?!?” he whined.

“This is hhhaard…” he cried.

In between there was the bleating and other sounds of sobbing. Unbelievable.

Maybe I should make him write a blog post. But first I’d better put some water protection over the keyboard.

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Family

Continuing the Tradition

It was a nice day today weather-wise, so it wasn’t surprising when the lass arrived home, around noon, that she asked to go in the pool. The water is still cold, my guess is it’s in the low 60’s. But that doesn’t stop them from wanting to get in it. Seeing as today was the first day since the past weekend where swimming was plausible, there was no real reason to tell her “No.”

But she had to have lunch first. She wanted a sandwich and chips. So I put that together for her. While I was doing so, she sprinted upstairs to put on her swim suit in anticipation of getting in the pool.

NOT so fast, she was told.

She had to wait 20 minutes for her food to settle.

This little parental stall tactic has to have been around since the cavemen: “Mmmm, Grog say no go in water until Sun passes tree to allow for good digestion.” This also provided the appropriate conditions for the cave-kid nagging: their kids pestered them into oblivion with “Has the Sun passed the tree yet?” or “The Sun has passed the tree from over here Dad!” Followed by the caveman losing his squash “Now wait until it passes NEXT tree!”

Thankfully (for all of us), it ended there.

Personally, it was an hour for me when I was growing up. For the Wife, it was 30 minutes.

It’s 20 for the kids. Why?

Why not. When dealing in the ridiculous, there are no rules.