Let the record show that on this day, the 26th of December in the year 2013 of our Lord, the lass finished her first chapter book. It was a kid’s version of Frozen, the current Disney movie out in theatres and was about 125 pages long.
After her victory, she did not declare that she’d be going to Disneyworld. She did ask when she could see the movie though.
The boy’s favorite Christmas present is his laptop. It’s not a toy laptop loaded with educational games. It’s the real deal laptop, with a 64-bit Intel processor and 150GB of disk space. Size wise, it’s a netbook so it’s just right for him to set on his lap and peck away at. Best of all, it has Ubuntu installed on it.
The only thing I don’t like about it is the Unity UI. Bleck. But then, I’m not a big fan of UI’s like that. Extended Linux exposure will do that to a user.
The reason he got that kind of rig is because of his desire to learn to program. It’s hard to justify anything else for a kid other than a Linux box since tools, debuggers, editors, IDE’s and any language the prospective programmer could possibly want to work worth are readily available at no charge. If this machine had not been available I’d have converted some other machine, probably a chromebook, as I saw fit.
So he’s enthusiastically resumed his programming activities. In addition to the laptop, he received a “programming for kids” book on python. I was somewhat amused to see that the book’s approach was similar to my own. Namely, introduce him to the language and so forth and build up his ability to write programs.
I’ve come to realize this is a completely inappropriate way to teach a kid like the boy. He needs to see a program actually do something. He doesn’t care about variables and tuples and functions or object-oriented and classes and constructors or closures. He wants to see a ball bounce on a screen.
The book has a couple of simple games it helps the prospective programmer write. It takes the approach of building up the knowledge bit-by-bit until there’s a functionally complete program. Naturally, the boy skipped all that and went right to the part where the whole program is laid out. It’s a “bounce” program, a simple version of the game “Pong.”
I’ll admit to not initially being thrilled with his approach. But, there are plenty of programmers out there that have cut there teeth by reading code and learning how it worked that way. There’s no reason the boy can’t be one of those if he chooses. Most importantly, he was willing to work through it. He did try to see if I’d be willing copy it for him, since I “could do it faster.” I scoffed at the notion though, “I can’t learn how to program for you.”
I did have an “I told you so.” After he’d started writing the code, I told him he would have to debug the program. First, there were bound to be typos in his code and those would cause syntax errors he’d have to work through. Then, there would likely be some lines he missed, or mistyped so the program would fail at strange points. Thankfully, there was only 80 lines of code or so, so debugging it wouldn’t be to difficult a task.
Forty-five minutes later, he’d finished typing it and tried to run it. It puked.
So I helped him fix that mistake. “Do you think it will run this time?” he asked hopefully.
“No.”
And it didn’t. It didn’t run on the third try either. Or the fourth. Or the fifth.
To his credit, the boy maintained his patience. It was obvious he was in that excited state a programmer attains when their program is about to ready to take flight. It maintained his focus.
After we fixed the syntax errors, we finally got a screen to pop up. But it still wasn’t running. Once more, we slowly brought his little program to life. First a paddle appeared on the bottom of the screen. Then a ball appeared above it. Shortly after that, the ball started bouncing around and the game was working.
Through all of it, I tried to explain what was wrong so he’d learn something for the next time. For many of the errors, he’d have needed a better understanding of programming to solve. Regardless of whatever I tried to offer him though, his main motivation was to see it run.
When finally it worked, the boy was beside himself with joy. Literally, a smile from ear to ear. Here was a game that he had “created” and written on his computer that he could actually sit and play.
Since then, he’s gone back and started trying to do other things. Last I saw, he was trying to draw circles on the screen. Hopefully this little success breeds more. Perhaps the thing to look for is a book with various programs for him to copy and play with.
The main thing is he’s off an running.
The boy was working on a last minute gift for the Wife. He’d already picked out a couple of presents, but he wanted to make her something as well. So, he set to work on one of those rubber band bracelets that seems to have taken the world by storm. Perhaps its just our world, but for all intents and purposes, it’s the world.
He came home one day a couple months ago and was weaving these these rubber bands together with his fingers. He said a friend had shown him how to do it at school. Soon after that, the Wife had purchased a supply of rubber bands for making the bracelets and he and the lass would sit and string them together. Shortly after that, he got a “loom” for making even fancier patterns. Then we were seeing all the kids making the dang things. Since then, both kids have mastered several patterns and designs and will sit and work on them when the mood strikes them.
So the boy had worked out a hybrid design involving a “hex-a-fish” and a “star-burst” design together and was working on joining the two halves together. That’s when “disaster” struck. Remember, when you’re a kid, everything that doesn’t go exactly, perfectly, as expected is a disaster.
The boy, naturally, responded appropriately.
He grabbed the bracelet he’d been working on and threw it across the room. Then yelled about how the world isn’t fair and everything always goes wrong right at the end when everything is almost done.
The Wife and I both tried to calm him a bit, but it was little use. He was cranked up and needed to be distracted from it. He stomped upstairs to go beat up his bed, or something.
I then had an idea.
I went up after him and asked him to join me for a moment. We walked over to a book shelf I’d made for the Wife and I pointed to some inlay work I’d done on it. It was a straight line of alternating darker wood set into a piece of maple. The accent gave the book shelf a little bit of character that it otherwise would have lacked.
It also never would have been there if I hadn’t messed up while building the bookshelf. I’d cut a groove on the wrong side of that piece of wood. I was upset when I’d done it, but rather than hurl the piece across the yard and destroy the garage to vent my rage, I walked away from it. I showed it to the Wife a bit later and she came up with the idea for the inlay.
So I explained all this to the boy. I set it up by asking him if what he thought of that little bit of inlay and then went on to explain how it ended up there. I even concluded the entire thing with a nice pithy “And the only reason it’s there is because of a mistake,” which, given the circumstances, I thought was a nice way to try and give him a different perspective on his own situation.
I was feeling pretty good about myself at that point. It was just like the movies where the young child is imparted with some useful life wisdom by his parent and everyone walks away happy and better. Roll credits.
Yeah, right.
The boy, seeing I was done, got up and walked back to his room to continue doing whatever it was he’d been doing. I sat there for a moment, admittedly disappointed. I already knew life kids don’t accept these sorts of lessons quite so neatly and cleanly as we parents would like. But I’d hoped this would at least get some kind of reaction. Alas, it was not meant to be.
Painting has never been my strong suit. Actually, this sort of art in general has never been my strong suit. Mom and the Sister both had that talent in spades, not myself. My talents lie elsewhere.
As for the Wife, the lass and the boy I submit these to make your own assessment. The Wife signed them up for an art class at a local gallery. The class focused on teaching the mechanics of painting the penguin. I imagine if enough of these classes were taken, a given person could become fairly proficient at creating these paintings.
Perhaps even me.
The boy and the lass built this fella yesterday afternoon when they got home from school. It originally stood as tall as the boy, now it is about 6 inches shorter. He looked a lot happier yesterday as well. After today and tomorrow though, there may not be much of him left.
The lass named him Olaf. I think that is from the story Frozen which the lass is reading before she can see.
The boy was disappointed that Olaf had melted so much. Guess he was hoping it would last so Santa could see him. As if Santa doesn’t see enough snow stuff as it is.
Meet knucklehead1 and knucklehead2. In case it isn’t obvious, the one on the right is knucklehead1.
Raise your hand if you thought I might be referring to the kids…
Lying at knucklehead1’s feet, errr- paws, is the reason they are posing so nicely. I’m holding a second snowball in my off hand while taking their picture with the other. They are patiently waiting for me to toss them somewhere.
Part of my at-home duties is entertaining these two knuckleheads. Possibly their favorite activity ever-in-the-entire-world is this one: chasing snowballs. I’m quite sure they would do this until they collapsed from exhaustion. Even then, they’d probably find a way to chase after another one.
Although it might seem a simple thing, throwing snowballs for them is not quite so straight forward as one might assume. I have to make the snowballs two at a time, throw one in one direction and the other in the complete opposite direction.
If I make and toss them one at a time, knucklehead2 will stand there yapping at me but will not give chase because he defers to knucklehead1. If I throw them in the same direction, again knucklehead2 will not chase because of knucklehead1. Thus, throwing snowballs becomes a carefully orchestrated event.
It is because of things like this that I refer to them as knuckleheads.
The Wife had a holiday night out with friends tonight. That left me with the kids. Fortunately, that’s a position I’m comfortable with by this point.
Tonight, they were split up for awhile. The lass had dance lessons again, now that her leg is fully healed. The boy had to take a karate class tonight to make sure he got his two nights per week in. I needed to get some paperwork for Scouts signed somewhere in the middle of all that.
As luck would have it, I ran into the fellow I needed to sign my paperwork at the karate school. Turns out, he handles the custom shirts for the school and we just happened to cross paths tonight. Fortunately, I had the papers with me so that took care of one burden.
The boy finished up his lesson and was hungry. He asked me if I knew what I wanted to do for dinner. In truth, I didn’t. It was going to be 6:30 by the time we got home, not leaving much time to throw anything together. I was strongly leaning towards dinner out.
I suspect the boy can sense these things, because he cheerily offered a local restaurant that we hadn’t been to in awhile. A little Mexican food place that he and the lass both liked. At that point, I didn’t need much convincing. We left to get the lass at her dance school. She was pleased at the news we’d be eating out tonight.
This place is a bit different when ordering food. It’s like a mix of takeout and sit down. We order the food at the register, then go and seat ourselves and wait for them to bring it out. The lass wasn’t sure what she wanted, so I ordered for her. The boy and I both ordered our usual meals- he gets a steak burrito and I get a taco salad with chipotle Ranch dressing. They both got bottled water to drink.
We hadn’t been sitting more than 30 seconds when the boy started wondering when they were going to bring the food out. “What’s taking them so long?” he complained. It’s one of those things I remember doing and am now ashamed of. I can only hope he’ll look back on his moments like these with a critical eye as well. He opened his bottle of water by breaking the plastic cap seal and took a drink. I’m not sure if the lass is more patient than her brother, or is just content to let him speak for the both of them. Whatever she might have been thinking, she remained quiet.
I had been zoning, looking out the window when I noticed the boy busying himself with something. I started to observe him and he was whapping a piece of the plastic cap around our table with another piece of the plastic cap. He’d push the piece in one direction, then double it back and bring it back in the other direction.
Then I realized, he was “playing” hockey.
I continued watching him. The lass wasn’t interested at this point. After a bit, I said “How’s the hockey game?”
He smiled a bit and said it was going fine. Then he put his off arm on the table and cupped his hand and started “shooting” the puck at his hand with the other piece.
When the lass heard mention of hockey, she turned and saw what her brother was doing. She was instantly ready to participate and formed her own hands into a goal. She implored her brother several times to start shooting the puck at her goal, but the boy ignored her. As she continued to watch him, she lamented “I want to play hockey…”
She then glanced at her bottle. The plastic piece that had come off of it wasn’t on the table. She looked on the floor, and there, lying next to her, was the little piece of blue plastic. She bent down to pick it up and I could see her beginning to ponder how she’d turn this into an object of entertainment.
Alas, it was not meant to be. Right then, the food arrived and all the hockey games ended in favor of eating dinner.
Growing up, we didn’t have any of these silly days that the kids now have at school. There are silly hat days and twin days and comfy-cozy days and other days that I’ve forgotten. Today was pajama day at the school.
The lass came downstairs and remained in her pajamas all morning, just like her brother did. By “all morning” I’m merely referring to the time period from when they got up to when it was time to go to school. If she’d managed the real “all morning” then I wouldn’t be sitting here typing this post.
The kids were basically all ready for school and I told them it was time to go. That was when the lass got a serious case of cold feet.
She started complaining that her teacher wouldn’t know that today was pajama day and she would get in trouble for wearing pajamas. Suffice it to say, this reasoning made no sense. The boy knew what day it was, there was no conceivable way that a teacher wouldn’t as well.
She stuck to her guns and slowly worked herself into tearful frenzy over the issue. Seeing that things were hitting “ridiculous”, I quietly went outside to the car to start warming it up and left it up to her if she wanted to change. The only thing was, she had to choose quickly because we couldn’t wait forever or they would be late for school.
While the boy and I sat out in the car while it warmed up, the Wife stuck her head out the door and gave us some kind of signal. I figured the lass was changing clothes and she just needed another minute or two. Sure enough, the lass emerged from the door a short time later wearing black clothing- something the Wife had chosen for her.
The boy wanted to make a big deal, but I told him to knock it off and reminded him that it was fine if she didn’t want to wear her pajamas to school. There is no requirement to participate in this stuff.
As to what was really going on in the lass’ head, only she knows that. She’s stuck to her guns regarding her irrationality. In the end, it turned out she was the only one in her class that didn’t wear pajamas, but that didn’t seem to bother her much. I guess she gets credit for that, anyway.
Some days it seems just about anything is enough to make the boy mad. It could be a project that he’d been quietly working on. He’ll come to a point where something will go wrong and he can’t solve it. His frustration quickly boils over to anger and it’s all he can do not to completely destroy the project.
It can be his homework. Lo be the problem that he doesn’t quite get and causes him to begin erupting in fits of furious erasing and a willingness to throw his homework into the fire.
It can be a request to help. If he feels like it’s unfair (usually because he thinks he’s being asked more than his sister, or some variation thereof) he quickly turns into an angry little hornet. The request could even be something that is regularly asked of him, but for some reason he’s deemed it an unsuitable moment to be asked this particular time.
His temper is one of the white-hot varieties. He makes no bones about the fact that he’s mad. It’s not uncommon for him to be willing to destroy something that he’ll likely regret doing so. Sometimes his anger is directed at himself and he becomes his own worst critic, thinking he should have dealt with something better or solved something quicker.
More and more, I try to respond to his anger with rationale and logic, or just a calmness to offset his own boiling emotions. That balance can be tricky though, since he’s not the only one in the house with a temper. I’ve, regretfully, let it slip on a number of occasions where we’ve ended up going head-to-head. I say regretfully because I don’t think it’s a good example to set for him and, unfortunately, I think those are the moments that leave a bigger footprint.
I suspect this is one of those traits he’ll have to spend time working on to curb as he gets older. For now though, he doesn’t have the resources to reign himself in and the Wife and I have to figure out ways to defuse him. Time will tell how big a problem it becomes for him.
For those of us out there that love the movie A Christmas Story, there are several, if not iconic, then certainly famous scenes. The flat tire scene would be one of those. So too the scene where Ralphie finally uncorks on the school bully.
Another one that may be the most recognizable is the one where Flick sticks his tongue to the flag pole after being triple dog dared. The moments immediately afterwards are great stuff, and I can easily conjure him yelling “Stuuck! STUUCKK!” in my mind over and over again, followed by pleading to Ralphie for help. Ralphie, of course, bails on his friend because the bell rang, signaling the end of recess.
Today, the kids decided to put it to the test. This circumstance also reminds me of the time when my sister tested the theory by touching her tongue to the inside of our refrigerator freezer. Several cups of hot water later, she was convinced to the “myth’s” authenticity.
As for the boy and lass, we never would have been the wiser had the lass not started complaining during dinner that her tongue was hurting. The Wife took a look at it and noticed that the tip of it was bleeding a bit. She’d stuck her tongue to one of the wind chimes on our deck and it had frozen fast to it in the 15 degree weather. If only we’d been able to wrap it in a bandaid a la the movie.
It was later revealed the boy had also performed the experiment, but he did something different. He used a little extra spit to protect his tongue from getting frozen fast to the chime. How he know to do that, I can’t say. But when he revealed it, the lass was immediately upset with him for letting her get her tongue stuck without letting her in on the “trick.”
At this point, if we get a flat while going somewhere, I’ll be sure to leave the boy in the car.
The boy got very good marks today on his report card. Really, he couldn’t have done much better. The teacher had lots of good things to say about him as well.
I was curious a bit about the math curriculum, so I asked about that. The goal appears to be to give the kids a “more intuitive feel” for numbers and what they mean and they don’t want to just teach them “procedure.” I find that odd, because to my way of thinking math is procedure. For instance, I’ve been working with the boy on multi-digit multiplication and long-division. To perform those operations, there is a pretty simple procedure to follow to solve those problems. I don’t quite see how there’s a “feel” or “intuition” involved in solving them. If there is such a thing, I think it only comes from the experience of doing a lot of them.
As for the lass, she’s doing just fine. Her reading was the main concern and happily, she’s improved dramatically from where she was. She’s not the bookworm her brother is, but then he’s in 4th grade and she’s in 2nd. The boy’s proclivity for reading did not develop until the 2nd half of his 3rd grade year. Even so, there is no guarantee that she’ll be like her brother in that regard. We’ll keep working with her.
Aside from the reading, the teacher couldn’t sing her praised enough. She’s “a joy” to have in class and “gets along with everyone.” She’s always attentive and he never has to look at her funny or anything. I believe the phrase “model student” came up more than once and at one point the teacher even said that he’d hope that his son’s behaved the same way she does in class.
It was all a bit too much, actually. That much effusive praise is too much in some ways. Besides, I know what she’s like at home. That kid is a lot different from the one her teacher described.
So there will be no coal in their stockings due to poor reports from school.
The kids had a half-day today because of parent-teacher conferences at the school. I took the opportunity to cut cord wood. Let me just say that cutting, splitting and stacking cord wood in 20 degree weather is much harder than doing it in warmer weather. In fact, I’ve concluded I erred pretty badly in waiting for the cooler weather to come before starting in on the cord wood. For one, when fingers get cold, there is no way to warm them up and they just hurt. For two, there is no oxygen in 20 degree air. I was exhausted after an hour of work today. Finally, sweat freezes.
The kids arrived home while I was toiling away. I cam in for a quick break and the boy was holed up on the couch reading, while the lass was working on a paper. I went back out and decided to ask the boy for some help stacking what was left of the wood I’d split. He did so and together we finished up the project.
Shortly after that, we both went inside and the boy resumed his perch on the couch. I went to go shower up and noted that he was staring off into space as I headed upstairs.
When I came back down 15 minutes later, he was fast asleep. In the same position I’d left him in, just his eyes were closed. I can even imagine what he must of thought, “Hmm, eyelids heavy, I’ll just let them …. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ”
And there he remained for about 3 hours. So either he’s a bit sick and fighting something off or he’s going to wake up 4 inches taller tomorrow.
It turned out that today’s hockey tryout was for a new travel team the youth league is trying to put together. That meant it was actually optional for him since making a bigger commitment to hockey isn’t in the cards. We didn’t know that until after it was all said and done. He’s going to be going into a black belt testing cycle after the New Year and that will take a bigger commitment from him at the dojang. There’s only so much of him to go around.
It would be different if hockey was something he loved. On the way over to the practice, he mentioned the travel team and said unequivocally that he didn’t want to play any travel hockey. He also said he wasn’t looking forward to being on the ice for 3 hours. He liked hockey, but not that much. Karate, on the other hand, is a different story.
So he participated in the tryout and I thought I knew what to expect- a kind of half-hearted effort. I’ve watched him enough and seen his effort level when he’s really not into something and his body language makes it pretty obvious he is not focused on the task at hand. It drives me crazy, but I bite my tongue and remind myself he’s young. I once half-assed my way through some sports and eventually came around. I just have to trust he’ll do the same.
That’s what I expected, but what I witnessed was something else entirely. He was focused and alert. His body language screamed effort and paying attention and trying to compete. He performed the skating and puck handling drills as well as I’ve seen him do them. Then they had a scrimmage and I was really impressed. He hung back and played an aggressive defense in front of his goalie, moving towards the puck, keeping it away from the goal. He even pushed a couple of pucks up the ice when he had the opportunity and scored on one of them.
It was really enjoyable to watch. His competitiveness had clearly taken over and it brought out some of his best effort and hockey play.
When it was all done, I told him I thought he’d done really well. I even kidded with him a bit that if he didn’t want to qualify for a team, he shouldn’t have played so well. Naturally, he took it in stride. After 3 hours on the ice, he was tired, cold and hungry. We headed home to take care of all 3 of those.
Today started with an early trip to a Scout camp to pick up popcorn. Aside from the ginger bread house, that was about as exciting as it got.
Not that there wasn’t any tension along the way. The kids were at each other’s throats this morning. Right up until the boy left for a pre-test to enter into the Spring testing cycle for his Junior Black Belt at the dojang. He was gone for the better part of 3 hours for the testing.
During that time, the lass and I sorted all the popcorn and waited for people to come and pick it up. That was my main thing for today and it made it awkward to try and do anything else meaningful, since I’d likely have to stop to take care of pickups. The lass and I had lunch together and we played that “box” game where players take turns drawing lines on a grid with the goal to be the one to form the most boxes. I think the lass was trying to be sneaky, drawing lines a bit lightly when she knew they could cost her. She wasn’t exactly cheating but she was pushing it.
As for the gingerbread house, that’s been a Christmas tradition ever since the kids were old enough to put frosting on candy and stick it to things. The Wife took care of baking the pieces to the house and then she and I assembled the house. Tomorrow, the kids will take care of decorating it and giving the house a yard.
Tomorrow is supposed to be a marathon day of hockey. Not for the lass, since she’s still on the Physically Unable to Play List. The boy has some kind of tryout to participate in, that’s why it’s to be a long session.
Already thinking about tomorrow. Like I said, it was a quiet day.
The Wife returned from her business trip with a crick in her neck. That’s a “crick” like a sore spot in her neck, not like the proper pronunciation of the word for a small stream that’s spelled “c-r-e-e-k.” The crick is a nasty little muscle spasm that I suggested she put some ice on to help start breaking it up.
So the lass retrieved one of the ice packs from the freezer and a dish towel because the ice pack is too cold to put on bare skin. Or, at least the Wife’s bare skin. The thing is that particular ice pack has its own pouch which obviates the need for a dish towel. The lass claimed that she looked for it and could not find it.
So the Wife asked the boy to fetch the ice pack pouch. She even gave him very specific instructions: it’s in the freezer. The little 5 cubic foot freezer that is the bottom third or so of our refrigerator.
Thirty seconds later, the boy was yelling back “It’s not there,” which, in hindsight, was totally predictable. Generally speaking, neither child could find air in a room, let alone a needle in a haystack or, more usefully, a pouch for an ice pack in a freezer. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember. It’s not just for stuff that we want them to find either. They’ll misplace their own things and it almost always falls to the Wife or I to find it- which we invariably do in short order.
Almost 100% of the time, the object turns out to be in a perfectly reasonable and obvious area where they looked but did not see. Once, I found a book of the boys on his book shelf in his room. He was flabbergasted and I recall him asking “What was it doing there?” The mind boggles. This morning, the lass couldn’t find her sneakers. She’d left them on the floor near the Wife’s rocking chair in our family room. The lass “looked” for them by walking back and forth between the foyer and the kitchen, swiveling her head saying “They aren’t anywhere…”
Returning to the missing ice pack pouch in the freezer, the Wife got up to go and look for it. I was busy re-starting the fire. From my spot on the floor, with a lighter in one hand and a starter log in the other (yes, I cheated this time) I called out to both of kids “I guarantee you Mom finds it exactly where we said it was.” The boy said “I looked in the freezer, it isn’t there.”
So, since he looked in there and it wasn’t there when he looked, imagine his surprise when 10 seconds later the Wife said “What was it that Dad said?” She emerged triumphant from the kitchen with the ice pack pouch dangling in her hand.
“How did you find it? I looked in there and it wasn’t there!” the boy cried incredulously. I can’t tell if he’s just really good at feigning it or if he really was incredulous.
“Easy, I actually looked. You didn’t. Sometimes you actually have to move things around to look for something,” the Wife explained.
“Parents have magical powers to find things,” was the boys response. “Something isn’t there and they can just magically make it appear.”
Maybe, perhaps, someday, he’ll figure it out.
The boy kept referring to the lass using the first-name-middle-name construction. Where I come from, that signals great displeasure with the named individual. Usually, it comes from a parent to a child when the child is caught doing something egregiously wrong. In this case, I think it was more the lass’ general existence that the boy had a problem with.
“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” was her reply.
Naturally, the boy did not oblige his sister.
“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” she said again. This time, she punctuated it by half-heartedly hitting him on the arm.
“Stop hitting me,” the boy changed his tune.
“STOP CALLING ME THAT!” the lass said. Again. It’s hard to describe the tone she uses when she’s riled like that. Every word is spoken harshly and in an angry tone that makes for a very distinctive delivery. The boy is completely nonplussed by it, though.
“Stop hitting me,” the boy repeated.
“STOP CALLING ME THAT!”
“Stop hitting me.”
“STOP CALLING ME THAT!”
With this battle of wits raging on, I glanced at the clock and noted, mercifully, that it was time to go to school. I made the announcement to the kids.
“Dad, my sister is hitting me,” the boy called out as he got up to head for the car.
“No I am not!”
“Yes you are.”
“No I am not!”
“Yes you are.”
“No I am not!”
I had all but tuned them out. By my reckoning, there was no point to getting involved. The only thing I could do was start yelling. Then, each one would justify their behavior based on what the other had done to them. Then, I’d be forced to play judge for who was worse behaved. Then, I’d be “wrong” and would have to listen to why. Then, I’d engage in scorched earth tactics and ban them from ever using their mouths ever again for anything other than eating.
The boy got in one last dig. He was the first to the car, and thus the first to claim shotgun. Most importantly, he was the first in the car. So when his sister arrived and went to open the door, he pressed the LOCK button on the doors, thwarting her attempt to enter just as she pulled on the handle. The timing was so exquisite that I couldn’t help but admire it.
One second later, whatever peace had existed in the neighborhood was shattered by the shriek of the lass. Apparently, she didn’t think much of her brother’s timing. Shaking my head, I pushed the unlock button on the key fob, which thankfully also served as an OFF button for the lass’ screaming. She huffily climbed in, uttering dark mutterings that I couldn’t quite make out. I did not need to- I knew the gist of them.
The ride to school was silent. I’m not sure why. Perhaps they had expended their venom for each other. Perhaps they were going over the day to come- anticipating classes and interactions. Perhaps they were just zoning out for the boring ride in.
Whatever the reason, it was a relief.
So roughly 2 weeks after she got it, the lass had her cast taken off today. In typical lass fashion, she thoroughly enjoyed the process. Mainly because it tickled her foot when the saw was cutting through her cast. She peppered the nurse with all kinds of questions about the saw and the vacuum and what else could the saw cut through and is that the only thing the saw is used for why doesn’t it cut through the soft stuff but it can cut through the hard stuff and yada, yada, yada. The nurse was good natured about the whole thing.
After the cast came off, she still had to use her crutches to go down to get an x-ray taken of her leg. I was kind of curious about what it would look like. Having never seen x-rays of a youngster’s leg, I had no idea I was looking at her growth plate until the doctor came in and set to show us some of the highlights. The break is still partly there, but it’s attached enough so that she can walk around without crutches. I noticed some atrophy in her lower leg, but I’m sure that will recover quickly now that she can use it again.
The doctor left open the possibility of her using a single crutch to help her around. She had her get up and try walking first with no crutches and then with a single crutch on the opposite side from the injured leg. She’d barely taken three steps with the crutch when he declared “No, we don’t want you doing that. No crutches.”
Still no gym or running and dancing for a couple more weeks. The doctors didn’t schedule another visit, so I’m assuming by then she’ll be good to go.
As happy as she is that she’s rid of the cast and her crutches, there is a down side she’ll come to realize. All those chores her brother had been doing for her will now be hers to do once again.
Today’s highlight would have to be the parade in the next town. In my book, that is not necessarily a great highlight, but opinions may vary. Being the Cubmaster for our Cub Scout Pack, I had a front row seat for the parade as I marched in it with the boy. I guess that makes things a bit more interesting.
Can you tell I’m not a huge parade enthusiast?
Thankfully, we’ve got members of the Pack who are enthusiastic about parades and they did a nice job of organizing and putting together a float. This year, we had a Pinewood Derby car as the center piece, along with a few thousand lights wrapped around it. It wouldn’t have qualified for race day because of weight, but it made for a nice float.
I arrived with the boy on the early side expecting to have to help with setup. The reality was everything was basically ready to go, except for our Pack flag which I forgot to bring along. A quick ride home and back fixed that. When I returned, a camera crew had shown up offering to let us record a quick spot to promote Scouting. It was one of those moments where leadership had its disadvantages. I made the most of it though.
The Scouts were all antsy by the time the parade started. Quite a few of them had been sitting around for a couple of hours. The nice thing about them being with each other is they all take turns entertaining each other. We have a good crew of kids so they never got too out of control. They were all relieved when the floats in front of us finally started rolling.
The hardest part of the parade is the candy. In past years we’ve had the Scouts hand out the candy. They typically get left far behind and end up running and sprinting to catch up. So this year, we started with the parents handing out candy, of which I was one. I turned to the crowd and saw a group of kids with candy bags, so I headed over and handed out a bunch. When I turned around, our float was gone. Whoever was setting the pace was definitely keeping it on the fast side. I continued to hand out candy as best I could, but I had to skip a lot of people in order to finally catch back up with our float.
By that point, we hit the main drag through town and a bunch of the Scouts wanted to hand out candy. So they hopped off and got to it. While they were doing that, I stopped to say hello to the lass and the Wife, who were both in the crowd. The lass got some candy and a kiss. The Wife just got some candy.
I gave up my candy duties and assumed the role of watchdog, keeping an eye on the Scouts as they walked along the crowd handing out candy. I also played the part of the enforcer. Now that a few Scouts had escaped the confines of the float, others wanted to jump down and walk as well. I put the kibosh on that though, since the 4 or 5 we had walking was enough to keep track of. It’s always a great way to start the Holiday season with “Hey, we lost your kid in the crowd.”
Once all the candy was expended, we started herding the boys back onto the float for the end of the parade and the ride back to our starting point. We continued to wish “Merry Christmas!” to anyone who’d listen as we made our way and the boys sand “Rudolph” a few times. The biggest thrill for the kids was riding on a trailer out in the open, since under normal circumstances they wouldn’t be doing that sort of thing. Fortunately for them, a parade doesn’t qualify as normal circumstances.
When it was all done and said, the boy was cold and tired. We got home an hour or so before bed time and he spent it warming up. When his head finally hit his pillow, he went out quickly and quietly.
Maybe parade’s aren’t so bad after all.
It’s quite possible that tonight is the most excited the kids have been. Tomorrow, they are expecting their shelf elf to appear. There is no doubt in their minds, as evidenced by the gifts they set up for him. The little knit thing on the right is a blanket the boy made for Sparky, while the lass made a pillow and took the time to wrap it up.
The boy wrote a quick letter explaining his gift:
Given the boy’s recent obvious doubt regarding the reality of Santa, I find this to be baffling. If you’re doubting things, you don’t go and make gifts for the thing you’re doubting. Therefore, I conclude that he has no doubts about the reality of Sparky the Shelf Elf. How he can harbor doubts about one while not the other means his logical processing unit is not completely online yet. That or his ability to extrapolate.
Be that as it may, they are ready for the yearly visit. Will he arrive as expected? Or will he delay to cause mischief? Will he like his gifts? Tune in tomorrow to find out!
I posted the boy’s Christmas list a few days ago. Now the lass has finished hers:
Dear Santa,
Can I have please A Heartbreaker Bow, a Giant Stuffed cat that look like our cat D.C., Ipod, clay, potery-weel, Easel with paper, Star Theater in my room, Lite Brix, furby Boom, Pogeo stik, Tranpalyn, Target, Bow and airoes,
She finished it with a little picture of Santa at the bottom.
Oh, and Furby Boom.