Category: Family

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Delusions of Grandeur?

On the way home from the tournament yesterday, the boy said something that’s stuck with me.

I had witnessed, during the tournament, his sparring opponent was being tended to by the judges and some master belt instructors. The boy was waiting for the match to continue while the adults seemed to be tending to the other kid. I asked the boy what had happened.

He said that his opponent had started crying for some reason. After a pause, he continued “I guess sparring against an apprentice belt must have been pretty stressful.”

I paused for a moment. Without more information, my own guess was the poor kid was overwhelmed by the environment and needed to vent his frustrations. The boy had jumped right to something along the lines of “he was trembling in the awesomeness of my being. LET ALL WHO LOOK ON ME QUAKE IN THEIR UNDERWEAR!”

I actually pointed out that there might be other possibilities. The boy was having none of is though. “Yeah, but I was, like, 4 bet levels above him,” he said in his defense.

I didn’t push any further.

The boy has many moments like this where he greatly overestimates his own capabilities and competence. He has other moments where he fails to recognize that his comparisons that make him look so superior to the person he’s comparing himself to aren’t fair. For instance, with the lass learning addition and subtraction, the boy will often test her by giving her a… multiplication problem. Then, he’ll claim “it’s so easy” to her. All the while, I can remember when he was in tears because he couldn’t remember the answer to the problems he quizzes his sister with.

Most times, I or the Wife will do our level best to give the boy a check on his ego. So far, no matter how many times we’ve done it, he comes up swinging for another round at some point.

More and more, I’m coming to wonder if there’s much point to pushing back against him. As long as he isn’t putting people down, I’m not sure I see the harm anymore. I used to think that his perception of reality was blinkered and often times, like yesterday with his sparring opponent, I still do. But I also think it’s just more of the myopic world view kids his age have. Most of his friends have put on similar displays at one point or another in my presence. I often call their bluff, and they just laugh it off and continue on their way.

In other words, I’m thinking it’s just the age, and the boy is just putting his own peculiar spin on the it.

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Family

Listen to Dad

On the way to a martial arts tournament today, the boy realized we didn’t have any boards for his breaking.  We were well passed any known hardware shops by that point, and certainly beyond “run back home and cut a few up.”  So, I started keeping an eye out for a Lowe’s or Home Depot.

Fortune smiled on us about 10 minutes from our destination.  I pulled off the highway and went into a Home Depot to get some boards for breaking.  I was able to get a 6 foot, 1×10 piece of pine cut up into 10 inch lengths in short order.  We were on our way in less than 10 minutes with plenty of wood to break.

On the way I asked him what he was planning to do for his break.  “A spinning side kick,” he replied distractedly.  He had his nose in another book.  The spinning side kick is his goto break because he knows he can do it.  It happens to be a good break for his level as well, so it all works out.

Then I asked him how many boards he planned on breaking.

“One.”

“Here, take another and break 2 boards,” I told him.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because you already know you can break 1 board with that kick.  There’s no challenge in it for you.  The point of the tournament and martial arts is to challenge yourself.  You like to break with that kick, so change the number of boards.”  I thought that was a pretty thorough case without any wiggle room for argument.

“Do you think I can do it?” he asked.

The thing about board breaking in martial arts is its less about strength and more about technique and courage.  Hit a board off center with everything you’ve got and it won’t break.  Hit a board near the center with good solid form, and it will crack like an egg.  It just takes some nerve to stand up there and perform the break with good technique.  I had no doubt the boy was physically capable of performing this 2 board break.

The bigger question was would he have the courage to actually do it?

I was waiting to compete in my own division when our instructor came up to me and said “Your son just won his breaking competition.  He did a 2-board break with a spin side kick and nailed it on his first try.  It was really good.”  He showed me a picture of the boy just as he’d creamed the two boards.  The boy had hit them dead center and his leg was fully extended through them.  It was a great picture of the break.

After I finished up with my competition, I caught up with the boy.  He was all smiles.  “I guess you can break 2 boards,” I said.

“I guess I’ll have to break 3 next time,” he answered, still smiling.

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Family

Math Troubles

The boy forgot his homework today, so I helped him out by improvising some problems for him.  It was just math work, double digit multplication in fact, so coming up with practice problems was easy.  I’ve already done this sort of thing with him.

As a side note, I’m not sure what to think about how they are teaching him how to solve the problem.  It’s easier to show than describe.  Take 35×41.  They have him solve 4 multiplication problems: 5×1, 5×40, 30×1 and 30×40.  Then those results are added to get the answer to the original problem.

Now, it’s a perfectly valid way to go about it and I suppose the argument is that it’s easier to perform the multiplication on the broken down problem.  I think it makes the addition harder but no one asked me.  Typical.  Plus it takes longer and I don’t think it lends itself to being done in the head- too many numbers to remember.

Regardless, the boy wasn’t overly thrilled with my giving him problems to practice.  So I gave him a few extra just to be nice.  He finished them without anymore comments.  I checked them over and he’d made a bunch of mistakes.  Amusingly enough, it was the addition step that he’d flubbed for each wrong answer.  Does that count as an “I told you so” or was it too obvious?

So the boy came back and asked which ones he’d gotten wrong.  I wouldn’t tell him.  He wasn’t happy about that at all and several minutes later, he turned back to me and said “They’re all right.”

“So you found the wrong ones?” I asked.

“None of them are wrong.  I checked them,” was his reply.

I was speechless.

I knew he had several wrong answers, yet here he was trying to create his own reality in which that wasn’t the case.  Essentially, he was saying I made up his mistakes. 

I was at a loss.  Arguing with him would be futile, because he was going to get defensive and start yelling.  I didn’t want to tell him which ones were wrong because he’s the one that needs the practice.  So how to resolve this little standoff?

More than a little exasperrated, I handed him my phone with a calculator app running and told him to check his answers.  Several minutes later, he’d corrected all his mistakes.  When he was done, I asked him if he’d believe me the next time I told him he had some corrections to make.  He chose to ignore me.

I suspect it won’t be the last time.

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Family

Eggs Aren’t Always Good for You

The lass had a meltdown this morning, over eggs. Actually, it’s probably fair to say that everyone but the boy had a meltdown over eggs this morning. Ironically, he’s the only one who didn’t at least try to have eggs this morning.

She started with the best of intentions. She wanted to make eggs for herself and the Wife. She planned on making them scrambled with some ham and cheese on them, which the Wife has a fondness for. Eggs are easy enough to cook up and we let both kids prepare them all the time and they’re actually fairly decent at it anymore.

Trouble started brewing shortly after she started cooking them. She’d scrambled 4 eggs and she became convinced that 4 eggs weren’t going to be enough for her and the Wife. She started to protest that she should make more. The Wife tried to assuage her fears and said that what she had would be plenty.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t good enough. Somehow, the situation deteriorated quickly into a shouting match. The lass HAD to make more eggs, if she didn’t she wouldn’t have enough for herself. The Wife was insisting it was all fine. The lass stomped off, leaving the eggs cooking. The Wife got up in a huff, incredulous that the lass just left everything there. She finished cooking the eggs and prepared a couple of plates, at which point the lass returned.

And immediately made the situation worse.

Now, she was upset because she had meant to serve the Wife her eggs. Her mood became darker. With a great “harrumph” she folded her arms across her chest and stared at her eggs. I think she was trying to burn them, but I can’t be sure. The Wife tried to calm her down and get her to eat. They got as far as sitting down with the plate in front of her. But she refused to eat her eggs.

At which point, I finally got involved. And not for the better.

The lass bellowed about how her breakfast was ruined. The Wife bellowed back that she was being ridiculous and that there was nothing wrong with her eggs and all she had to do was eat. I bellowed above them both. The lass started crying. The dogs were cowering. The boy was somewhere else on the planet. I think the bird were staring in slack-beaked amazement the train-wreck before them. The cat was, well, where the hell the cat was.

Since she was refusing to eat the eggs, I grabbed her plate and started eating them myself. Now she cried harder because she suddenly really wanted the eggs. The Wife got smart and walked away from the whole thing. I continued to eat the eggs and told the lass I didn’t want to hear anything else from her until she’d eaten something. So she got up and prepared herself a bowl of cereal, which is probably what she should have done from the get go.

It will probably be a few mornings before she has eggs again.

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Family

Learning How to be Excellent

A couple of days ago, the boy’s martial arts instructor had a meeting with the parents of students who are up for their black belts. He made a comment that stuck with me: “The enemy of excellence is ‘Good Enough'”. He went on to say that many of the students probably weren’t going to like them very much over the next couple of months.

The boy got his first dose of that treatment today in his class. They were practicing their forms and the instructor told him and several other students that they weren’t putting enough effort into it. They continued practicing, and the instructor continued to ride the students, pointing out mistakes, flaws, missteps. He even made a comment to the effect that he could tell they hadn’t been practicing.

Unlike past instances of this sort, the boy weathered the storm well, but he was upset when he got class. Interestingly, it wasn’t for getting called out the couple times he had been during class. He was upset because he’d made so many mistakes.

That comment coming from him was, frankly, kind of stunning. In past instances, he’d made excuses or directed his anger at the instructors. Sometimes, he’d take it out on the Wife or I. Here and now, though, he was accepting that he hadn’t been good enough. A more sure sign of maturity I cannot think of.

Excellence is achieved not because someone is “awesome” at some task naturally. Rather, excellence is achieved by never stopping trying to improve. The drive for that standard can come so much externally. Ultimately, drive for excellence come from within and never accepting “good enough.” The boy has shown plenty of signs that he gets this when it comes to school. Perhaps now he’ll begin to accept it for other things as well.

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Family

The Glove Gremlin

The boy has been missing a pair of gloves for, well, most of the Winter now.

They are a fingerless glove with his name on them. The Wife actually got 3 pairs of them: one for her, one for the lass and one for the boy. She labeled them all so there would be no arguments about whose was whose.

Labeling them also had the side effect of letting us know who took care of their gloves.

The amusing thing is that, at some point this Winter, each pair of gloves was lost to its owner. The lass lost hers back in January and the Wife found them. The Wife lost hers and I found them, sitting on the bottom of our coat rack. The boy lost his and no one found them.

Until today, when the boy discovered them in his backpack.

“Didn’t I tell you to look there when you first lost them?” the Wife asked.

“Yeah, you did and they weren’t there,” the boy insisted. “I don’t know how they reappeared, but they did.”

“I know what happened…” I started. I looked him straight in the eye and went on “The Glove Gremlins got them. Glove Gremlins are famous for stealing gloves and using them, then returning them to a spot where you’ve already looked. It’s actually a good sign they returned them since it must mean that warmer weather is coming.”

“Huh?” the boy asked.

I continued “Glove Gremlins are close cousins of the Sock Gremlins, who go into drawers and make sure socks are either mismatched or missing their pair. I hate Sock Gremlins…” I trailed off.

“Wait. Are you being serious? Are there really Glove Gremlins?” the boy asked.

At that point I was tempted to do with something like “Alright, you got me. There are no Glove Gremlins, but the Sock Gremlins are their for sure. They leave a fowl odor behind that smells like…” But I didn’t. Instead, I tried to play it straight.

“Are Glove Gremlins real? Do you think I would make something like that up? Who would come up with something so ridiculous as Glove Gremlins?” I asked.

“You would,” he replied as we turned and walked away.

Oh well, guess he knows me well enough by now. But I had him going there, for just a moment.

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Family

Ticklish

I think one of the boy’s favorite moments of the day are the few moments when we tell him “Goodnight” prior to bed. During this time, we get a chance to torture him a bit with the threat of tickling.

To say the boy is “ticklish” probably doesn’t do the word justice. The mere thought of being tickled is enough to tickle him. Looking at him the right way can be enough to tickle him. Even mentioning the word can cause him to start involuntarily squirming.

Naturally, we try exploit these traits to the fullest extent we can.

Personally, I’ve found that the threat of being tickled is more entertaining than actually tickling him. The anticipation of being tickled can become almost unbearable for him at that point. He will jerk at the slightest movement by the Wife or I, grab at an arm or hand to fend it off before the tickle attack begins. He giggles constantly, closing his eyes and then squinting them open to see where the attack might come from.

Of course, in order to make the threat viable, he has to be tickled occasionally. We actually have to be careful at that point because he can flail so wildly and react so strongly, it wouldn’t be out of the question to catch a shot to the head. Usually, the Wife or I will use our size advantage to squelch his flailing a bit to keep things safer.

I have no real point to his post. It’s mainly just an observation I thought worth noting. One of those traits of childhood that might otherwise be lost to time as he grows up.

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Family

Hockey Season is Over

The season ended at opposite ends of the spectrum for the boy and the lass where hockey is concerned. Where as a couple of seasons ago, the boy was ready to say “Goodbye” to hockey and never play it again, he’ll be looking forward to next season for the remainder of the off season. The lass, on the other hand, is glad to be done with it for now.

The lass’ ended a tough league season with two straight playoff losses. This despite the lass’ best efforts through both games. Unfortunately, they just didn’t have the horses this season to get much done.

The boy’s season ended on the highest of notes, with his team hoisting the league championship trophy. The won a close 1-0 contest yesterday, as I noted earlier, and then won in a blowout in the championship game today, 8-1. The boy didn’t score any goals today, but he got a different kind of reward. The coaches had him sub in on the A-line when, once again, one of the A-line players had to leave the game early today. It was a nice vote of confidence for him at the end of a season where he really started to come into his own with hockey. He’s not a star player at this point, but he established himself as a quality player that the coaches relied on to help win games and get good effort and quality minutes from for the 2nd half of the season.

If he ever decides to really take the game seriously, there’s no telling how far he could go.

For the record, I also note that when the teams were assigned back at the beginning of the year, the boy was convinced they would be the worst team. He didn’t recognize any of the players names and all the good players he did know were on other teams. Just like a 4th grader to declare that he knows how everything was going to turn out without even playing the game. One of the nice things about his team’s success is he can never again play the “I never win at anything” self-pity card. There’s no telling where his sports will take him or how far he’ll choose to go, but winning a championship at any level is a special thing. Most importantly because once it’s won, it can’t be taken away.

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Family

My First Youth Sport Argument

I was waiting for the boy to get changed up after his team had won their first round house league playoff game 1-0 when I overheard another father starting to gripe about the game.

He was furious that the boy’s team hadn’t played their B-line goalie.

First, a moment’s explanation. This local house league hockey and therefore has a limited pool of kids to draw from. This year, the league was unable to field separate Junior level and 9-13 level teams, so they combined the two ages to form a single league. Each team was comprised of an A-line and a B-line. The A-line consisted of the older Junior players while the B-line consisted of the younger “Atoms” players. Goalies are always in short supply and even with only 6 teams, 2 out of the 6 had only their A-line goalie to play. Games were setup such that A-line teams always played against A-line teams, and the same with the B-line. Further, while B-line players could be moved up to the A-line, the reverse was not allowed, except for goalies.

The team the boy played against yesterday sported only an A-line goalie. As far as mental advantages go, I don’t think anyone would argue it’s a big one to have an older experienced player lining up younger guys. But that was just the situation for our B-line players. Just for a little seasoning, I’ll add that this particular goalie was clearly the best goalie in the league.

So the boy’s coach, in order to give his team its best chance at winning, chose to play our A-line goalie for most of the game. The argument clearly being why give up that kind of advantage to the other team?

This father took exception to that. I pointed out that the one team only had the one goalie.

This father looked at me like I was some kind of child and then started explaining how the boy’s team had all the best skaters in the league. Notice, he didn’t exactly address my point. He went on to say that the boy’s team’s B-line players could skate rings around the A-line guys for the other team.

Talk about an insult to the skills of those players. First, it was demonstrably not true. The game ended 1-0. If the skill levels were that lopsided, it would have shown up in the score. Second, it was clear to me now that this guy simply had an axe to grind.

I pointed all this out and then went on to point out that the boy’s team actually had to rotate B-line players into the A-line rotation because one of our older players had left during the game. The father looked at me and said “No they didn’t.”

It was all I could do not to laugh. Now, it was my turn to give a dismissive look as I said “Do you even know who all the players are on that team’s A-line?”

Crickets in response.

At that point, he disengaged from arguing with me. Instead, he turned and started whining to some other poor sucker about he unfairness of it all.

It never ceases to amaze me how poorly parents react to sports. Competitive sports is inherently about unfairness and the ability to take advantage of it. Maybe on balance, the boy’s team were slightly faster skaters. But the team they played was clearly more physical- repeatedly knocking guys down in a league where checking “isn’t allowed.” Was that fair? As I stated, the boy’s team had 2 B-line players pulling double shifts- first playing their own normal shift and then subbing in to play on the A-line. Was that fair? Was it fair that the other team only had 1 goalie?

At the end of the day, it was a hard fought, 1-0 victory for the boy’s team and it easily could have gone the other way. Those two teams went out there and competed for an hour against each other. There was going to be a winner and a loser. That’s sports. Parents need to deal with that.

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Family

Ice Is Slippery

Even for kids.

Our driveway has a large sheet of ice on it.  It’s the logical outcome of all the snow we’ve had.  I couldn’t remove it all with the snow thrower, so the snow that is left behind gets crushed and compacted by the cars.  Throw in a couple warm spells with some rain and everything is there to turn the snow pack into ice.

The state is, literally, out of salt.  I’ve tried several hardware stores on multiple occasions and they have none and further, they don’t know when more is arriving.  So the only option at this stage is sand, which I finally did after an infuriatingly embarassing spectacle I made of myself while trying to get our car up the driveway earlier this week.

It snowed a bit last night.  Not much- a good coating is all.  But that amount of snow on top of ice is like throwing ball bearings down on a marble floor.

I’ve told the kids not to run down the driveway on the ice so many times now that I don’t bother anymore.  So when we were walking down from the bus dropping them off after school, their usual shenanigans barely registered.  The lass paused for a moment and the boy and I continued towards the house.

I heard the lass start to sing a happy little jingle as she started to skip.

Then I heard the unmistakable sound of a food slipping, followed by the thud of the lass hitting the ground.  I have to admit, I was a little surprised.

I turned and there she was, on her side.  A little whimper popped out of her as the pain from the impact began to register.  She had fallen on her hip.  Not badly though, as when she got up to clean herself off, there were no holes in her stockings and there were also no blood stains from nicks or scrapes.

Nonetheless, she continued to whimper.

I consider it an “I told you so” moment but did’t say anything other than to ask if she was going to make it.  She answered by nodding while continuing to whimper.

We made it to the house and she went to her room to change and assess her injuries.  She came downstairs and showed me a slightly dinged knee, followed by telling me that she had all these scrapes on the side of her leg.  I asked her if they were bleeding and she replied “No, but they are all red.”  I told her if they weren’t bleeding then they didn’t count.  The look on her face was enough to let me know she wasn’t buying that.

But if nothing else, she knows now that ice is slippery.

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Cub Scouts Family

Easy Catapult Design

I and my Den of Cub Scouts WEBELOS built this little gem about a week ago. I actually built a prototype ahead of time so I could have a plan of attack for directing them through it. It is made almost entirely of Popsicle sticks and tape. The cup is made of paper and obviously there’s the rubber band to make it work. I used 2 inch packaging tape which makes the joints a little stronger, rather than the Scotch tape shown in the pictures.

When completed, it’s actually strong enough to fling a marble a decent distance, and I didn’t even try to seek out an optimal rubber band. Makes for a good half-hour project that kids can do with a little direction. The good thing is the same building procedures are repeated several times over and the only skill required it the ability to wrap tape around the sticks. So I simply demonstrated how to assemble a part and then told them “Do that X more times.”

It’s perfect for completing part of the Engineering WEBELOS Acitivity Badge requirement.

Full directions are here.

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Family

Rationalizing

At last night’s Blue and Gold Banquet, there was an appetizer table with a variety of food stuff from Rice Krispy Squares to pretzels to carrots.  We held the kids off from the table for as long as we could, then allowed the stampede to begin.

The lass had a bunch of cookies to start.  Then, she went and had an equal number of carrots.

She said the carrots were to balance out the cookies.

#Facepalm.

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Family

Get Used to be Uncomfortable

I heard this from an instructor at a martial arts seminar a couple of weeks ago. The instructor used it in the context of explaining an approach at improving ones martial arts practice.

It struck me as an apt phrase for dealing with life and a great lesson to try and instill into kids.

Get used to being uncomfortable. It’s a phrase that’s simple, yet seems applicable to so many situations.

Moving out of the parent’s house for the first time. Now you’re responsible for paying bills, buying groceries, dealing with trash, cleaning clothes and so on. It’s uncomfortable walking away from the comfy confines of Mom and Dad’s place and into the world and being responsible for yourself.

How about that first job? New people, new ways of doing things, new problems to solve. All with, likely, minimal training. If you want to excel, you’ll have to figure all that out. Of course, that’s just the job. What if a move was involved? It’s stressful and uncomfortable.

How about athletes training for a sport? Their entire life revolves around being uncomfortable. Constantly stressing the body to push it for performance improvement. Suffering pseudo-injuries that aren’t enough to sideline, but are enough to be a nag. Being tired all the time. Going to events and competing and putting your training to the test. It’s all uncomfortable.

Going to school. Learning how a new teacher operates. Learning new material. Practicing the new material and getting tested on it.

Having a kid and learning what their needs are. Deciding that one wasn’t enough and having a second. Dealing with the two of them and trying to raise them properly. Perhaps having more kids and dealing with that new reality.

Most of the major things that happen in life come with discomfort. Getting used to being uncomfortable may be the best life lesson a parent can teach.

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Family

The Lego Movie is AWESOME!

“You are so disappointing on so many levels,” intones Lego Batman to the movie’s main protagonist, Emmet.

Thankfully, the same could not be said for The Lego Movie. I laughed from the opening scene until the movie’s final moments. I laughed at scenes shown in the previews, because in context they were funnier than the preview promised, and I laugh harder at scenes that weren’t in the previews. The kids enjoyed the movie as well, although I think they were more amused by my level of amusement than the movie itself.

It’s a not quite classic good guy- bad guy story, with Emmet serving as the out-of-his-depth good guy trying to upset the evil plans of Mr. Business. Don’t let that name fool you into thinking this is some anti-corporate screed. In this case, it’s more about business meaning serious, rather than capitalism and the like. Mr. Business is trying to use a “super weapon” called “kragle” to freeze the Lego world in his image. He’s slowly been winning against the forces of the “Master Builders” whom have been trying to thwart his evil plans. Master Builders can make anything out of Legos without instructions and use their abilities to build fantastic devices to battle the forces of Mr. Business.

Into this battle steps Emmet, a plain-as-can-be sort of chap, with no building expertise to speak of. His only skills lay in following directions. He accidentally stumbles across the “piece of resistance” which is the one thing that can foil Mr. Business’s plans.

The movie features appearances from seemingly all of the Lego worlds: Star Wars, Batman, Superman, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the 1980’s space Legos, and many more.

While the humor keeps the movie going, there is a cleverly disguised story arc which is revealed in the last portion of the movie. The arc is predictable, but serves to tie the whole movie together while delivering a nice message as the same time.

Good story and nice messages aside, what makes it work though is the humor. I think the combination of hilarious dialogue paired with the unconventional animation make for a potent combination. The Lego characters move with the restrictions of the actual Lego pieces, plus there is a blocky quality to the movements that fits the subject matter.

The bottom line is The Lego Movie is an immensely entertaining movie that works for any age.

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Family

Stubborn

The Wife, the boy and I are currently watching National Treasure. We were looking for something fun to watch for a movie tonight and, since it’s Saturday, the kids get a little leeway on their bedtimes. The Wife and I figured this was a fun movie to watch since it was a mystery-puzzle type movie with a little action and nothing overly objectionable for a younger crowd.

Perhaps you noticed someone is missing from that list of viewers.

The lass wanted nothing to do with it. She doesn’t like mystery movies. She doesn’t like puzzle movies. She huffed. She puffed. She pouted. She harrumphed.

And when the movie went in the Blue Ray player, she left the room.

She went into another room with a couch and laid down with a blanket and did… nothing.

After the movie had been on awhile, I went in to check her. The blanket was wrapped around her head and laid across her body. She was facing the back of the couch with her arms crossed. She was fast, asleep.

I left her there in the room and turned the light off. Best to let sleeping monsters lie.

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Family

A 6 Day Weekend

The lass has been sleeping on top of her covers (and backwards) now for a couple months. Can you guess why?

So we got the call early this morning around 5AM that school was cancelled. The boy woke up when he heard the phone and turned off his alarm. The lass, sleeping reversed on her bed and on top of her covers, was oblivious to everything. I shut her alarm off for her.

This particular weekend was already scheduled to be a long one. They have both Monday and Tuesday of next week off for a Winter break. I’ll be making up some extra homework for them to work on so they don’t go completely stale. I find it remarkable that after 4 years of school with the two of them, neither has had any weekend homework assignments. I don’t get that.

Aside from a few more chores, today’s main accomplishment was shoveling the deck. After the bulk of the snow came down yesterday, we got some freezing rain late in the night into the morning. I hadn’t shoveled the deck yesterday and there was pre-existing snow from some of the previous storms. All told, there was about 16 to 18 inches of wet snow sitting on the deck, which was more weight than I thought was prudent. It took me a couple hours to ease the burden significantly.

Oh, and we’re supposed to get more snow tomorrow.

The kids got to watch a little more Olympic action tonight, watching the woman’s skeleton. They asked what the “skeleton” was and I said it’s basically sledding on your belly down a sheet of ice. The cheered on the two American competitors and were bummed out when the one was bumped out of the medals, and then bummed a bit when the other was bumped from gold to silver. But they got to see her excited reaction, so it all worked out.

So now we prepare for a weekend of hockey and martial arts. The boy has a technical review for his junior black belt this weekend, as well as his hockey game on Sunday. He won’t be at practice tomorrow. The lass, on the other hand, will be attending all of her hockey.

Of everyone, the storm hit the Wife the hardest. She was on a business trip and was supposed to return yesterday. The storm blew that out of the water and after jumping through hoops to rearrange things, she was supposed to be home earlier this evening. That too got blown out of the water because another storm delayed her flight from taking off and she missed her connector. She’s now waiting for her flight to take off in another hour or so and she’ll be home some time after midnight. But, she’ll be home and that’s the main thing.

As for my my opening question for this post, the reason the lass sleeps on top of her covers is that way she doesn’t have to make her bed in the morning. She stopped sleeping under the covers the after we cleaned her sheets and she’d remade her bed. She hates it that much.

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Family

Snow Day

Its winter in New England and that means “snow days.”

We’ve had a bunch of them already this Winter.  The first one was a big time “oops,” as the predicted snowfall amounts never materialized.  We weren’t jackpot winners for accumulation today either, but we got about 8″ which is easily enough for the school to justify the closing for the day.

For me, it was a day of chores.  Laundry, dishes, vacuuming, meals all had to be dealt with.  The big one, of course, was plowing the driveway, which took me a couple hours.  It didn’t help that the plow broke down half-way through.  The idler pulley for the auger jumped its pulley, so I had to break it open to take care of that.  Thankfully, it was a one time event.  Turns out that being handy is a good quality in an SAHD.

As for the kids, the hardest part of their day was the hour or so I had them practice math and do some reading.  The boy, particularly, was annoyed because I had him practice multi-digit multiplication and long division.  He hasn’t quite mastered the algorithms for solving those problems, so he brings the drama until I help him remember how to do them. The lass groused about her math practice, but ultimately relented.

Aside from that, there was outside in the snow, board games, wrestling and DS time.  Along the way they had a bit to eat and they might have even done a chore or two.  Their day ended with some Olympic action, watching womens sledding.  I mean skeleton.

Right now, it’s raining out.  It’s supposed to change back to snow a bit later.  Whether that means tomorrow will be another snow day remains to be seen.

Categories
Family

When Life is Like “Star Wars”

The boy came downstairs wanting me to fix the lass’ marionette. It’s a simple little thing with a 4 strings attaching a ‘t’ to a puppet’s head, body and 2 legs. There was a twist or something in a couple of the strings and neither of the kids wanted to deal with it.

So naturally, in their minds, I was supposed to fix it.

And I said “No.”

The boy sat and worked at it for several minutes while I sat and read. I purposely avoided watching him because it makes him self conscious. I could tell it wasn’t going well based on all the noises emanating from his general direction. When I finally, did glance up at him, there were tears of frustration building. Finally, we flung it down on the ground, giving up.

I was a little disappointed with the antics, so I told him that wasn’t his toy to do that with. When he grumpily, and rudely, asked me “WHAT!!? I didn’t do anything,” I told him it was time for bed. Further protestations from him led to a brief reprimand for his attitude and making sure he understood “what” he’d done.

After he went upstairs to get ready for bed, I took the marionette and spent a couple minutes untangling the strings. I then headed upstairs and handed it back to the lass, whom thanked me for fixing it.

The boy was in bed by then but was unaware that I’d fixed the puppet. He called to his sister that it was hopelessly broken beyond fixing. The lass then informed him that Dad had fixed it. At the same time, knowing he wouldn’t believe her, I picked it up and brought it over to his room for him to witness that it had been fixed.

He was in a state of disbelief.

I didn’t bother saying anything because there was nothing I could say.

Situations like this actually crop up pretty frequently now. Some problem crops up which the kids try half-heartedly to fix and then it falls to me to fix it. I do so and then they are amazed and want to know how I did it. When I tell them I worked the problem, tried things, observed what happened, tried more things, they claim that’s what they did but it didn’t work.

It calls to mind the memorable scene from The Empire Strikes Back on Dagobah where Luke’s x-wing has sunk into a bog. Yoda tells him he can use the force to get it out, Luke tries a bit and fails. Yoda then does it for him.

Too bad I don’t get the lightsaber though.

Categories
Family

Learning Something New

“Dad, what does ‘U’, ‘R’, ‘A’ spell?” the lass asked me.

She was staring at a piece of candy. One of those soft sugar kinds that melts in the mouth. These also have little notes written on them.

“Does it have any other words on it?” I asked.

“Yeah, it has ‘STAR’ on it. But what does ‘U’, ‘R’, ‘A’ spell? I don’t get that..” she trailed off.

How best to get her to see the light?

“Read it again,” I told her.

“Letter ‘U’, letter ‘R’, letter ‘A’, STAR,” she said.

Facepalm

Should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. But perhaps with just a little more coaxing…

“Read it again without saying ‘letter’ before each letter,” I said.

“‘U’ ‘R’ ‘A’ STAR,” she read.

She then stared at the candy for a moment and said “Oh.”

Or perhaps it was ‘O”.

Categories
Family

Something Amiss

While the boy was getting ready for school this morning, he happened to glance at the thermometer and saw that the outdoor temperature was 3 degrees. His reaction?

“YES! No outside recess today!”

My reaction, “Huh?” I was only halfway through my first cup of coffee, so I wasn’t sure what I was hearing.

“If the temperature is less than 20 degrees, we don’t have outside recess,” he explained.

So, I’d heard right. The boy didn’t want to have recess. That seemed, completely wrong.

He went on to explain that the 4th grade boys had gotten in trouble because of the actions of a few. Apparently, “the few” were throwing snowballs. Not at anyone, mind you (and the boy says he wasn’t involved), just throwing them out into a field. The teachers then yelled at the boys, rounded up everyone (including some 3rd graders whom the teachers told “Blame the 4th graders, it’s their fault”) and cut the recess period short.

This isn’t the first time the boys in his grade have been singled out for this kind of treatment under seemingly flimsy or even dubious circumstances. There have been other lunch related incidents where, in the Wife’s and my judgment, it was merely the action of 4th-grade boys being 4th-grade boys.

That’s not to say that 4th-grade boys are cherubs or entirely without fault. I’m well aware that I’m getting 1 side of the equation here.

Recess was, quite possibly, my favorite thing about elementary school. That was the one chance during the day to run around and be basically free of the classroom until I got home. I can’t imagine it not being a favored time for any 4th grade boy. And yet, here’s the boy saying just that. For the moment, he’s more worried about getting in trouble at recess than having fun.

I’ve read often about this notion of “a war one boys” but I’ve often dismissed as a result of oversensitive political types trying to whip-up partisan frenzy. But some of the things the boy has had to deal with this year in how teachers and his school have dealt with disciplinary items bring the notion a lot closer to home. The simple fact is, I’m starting to not trust the school’s judgment where these things are concerned.

And that’s a problem. How it gets resolved remains to be seen.