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Family

Difficult Mornings

During the mornings, I must confess to some amount of envy for one-child parents. After all, they don’t have to listen or deal with the following:

  • Multiple pairs of foot-stompers as the kids wake up and come down with bad attitudes because they aren’t ready to be awake. The stomping can be over anything: can’t get clothes on, brother was down before sister, dog looked at them funny. Anything

  • The turf war over couch space- “His foot is on my side of the couch!” and “She’s taking up more space than she needs to!”

  • The struggle for whose preferred morning cartoons are watched.

  • “When can we watch our shows?” spoken in a whiny tone. When one stops, the other picks up where the first left off.

  • “HEY! I was sitting THERE!”

  • “I want to sit next to Mommmmmmmmmmmmmmm!”

  • “He won’t let me use the bathroom!”

  • “She’s hogging the sink!”

  • “He spit toothpaste on me!”

  • “I was going to brush my teeth, but my brother is being DUMB.”

  • “She didn’t really brush her teeth, she just chewed on the toothbrush.”

  • “He put my shoes somewhere!”

  • “She threw my shoes when I went to get them!”

  • “He threw my jacket on the floor!”

  • “She got to the car first and I wasn’t racing!”

I think the dog has the right idea. She typically goes upstairs and disappears until they’ve been delivered to school.

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Family

Braces Update

The boy’s mouth is now fully outfitted with gear. He has wires on the top and bottom and rubber bands for tension to start correcting his cross bite. It only took the orthodontist 10 minutes to get it all done- not knowing what to expect, I was surprised how quick it was.

The boy was OK with it at the office, but the reality of it has been settling in since then. He has to learn how to attach the rubber bands himself because he isn’t supposed to wear them when he eats. One of the implications hit him when we got home- eating lunch at school. For the moment, he doesn’t want to go to school. Although he’s also bemoaning his getting the elastics in the first place.

Growing up I remember the old mantra “It builds character” (Not that it was used on myself a lot, but it’s a pretty familiar parental quip). I’d say the boy is experiencing that sort of thing now.

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Family

Trying to Remember

One thing this past weekend’s experience with the boy has me wondering is when did I learn how to play baseball?

I’m wondering this because it’s clear that the boy has no idea how the game is played. He doesn’t understand being out, or how to play in the field, or how to run the bases. None of it. And the thing of it is I can’t find fault with his ignorance. When I sit and think about it I can’t really think of any reason why he should know any of it. Last year was the first time he’d played any organized baseball, and the version we played was so far from actual baseball rules that it can only be considered a primer in the sense that we got to bat and play in the field.

The thing is, I’ve never played organized baseball either. I didn’t play in Little League or high school or any rec leagues. Never. I played ‘catch’ with the Father (as he is now so dubbed for blog purposes- I briefly considered “the Patriarch” but; however amusing to myself, it didn’t seem like a good fit) a plenty growing up. He also used to pitch to me in our backyard. I even remember having a black, Pete Rose baseball bat that I beat to death. I remember practicing batting by hitting rocks across the road with it. That did a number on the bat.

But I don’t ever remember having baseball explained to me, and yet I also can’t remember ever not knowing how to play baseball. For that matter, I don’t really remember having any games that we played explained to us. I can only assume that I just learned by watching other kids play, or by jumping in and figuring it out on the fly.

So how to relate to the boy? Initially, I’ve been assuming that he’ll figure the game out by participating and observing. The catching, hitting and throwing(the physical aspects of the game), he’s picking up on just fine. But he isn’t picking up on the rules of the game at all. He’s not alone either as a number of his teammates’ fathers have also related similar experiences with their boys. Yet all of them also understand how to play baseball. But this isn’t the case for all the boys- some of them definitely understand how the game is played.

Perhaps it’s a result of him not watching a lot of TV generally, and sports in particular. But I can’t really remember sitting in front of the TV watching sports other than football; though, perhaps my memory is failing me here. By the same token, the couple of times we’ve tried to sit and watch a game, he hasn’t really shown much interest in watching. Not that I can blame him- regular season baseball is tough to watch. Plus, most times the games are on at bad times- like after his bed time, or during the afternoon on a beautiful day.

Given his game schedule (two games a week), I’m confident that the situation will be largely rectified by the end of the season. But I can’t help but feel like I failed him in some small way here. Sure, baseball is hardly the most crucial part of growing up. But at the same time, it was clearly a part of my growing up and understanding it is crucial to being able to appreciate why football is a vastly superior sport.

A final interesting thought- will he find himself in a similar situation some day? For that matter, perhaps I don’t remember my own childhood correctly and the Father was wondering similar things while I was growing up. If that’s the case, then it isn’t a kid thing. It’s a parent thing.

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Family

There IS Crying in Baseball

We survived opening day. I could snarkily claim that it’s taken me until now to recover; but, that wouldn’t be accurate. I’ve been trying to reestablish our grass. Which is threatening to become a yearly chore.

But I digress. Opening day is a somewhat drawn out affair. There are 6 levels of play: T-ball, coach pitch baseball, coach pitch softball, the minors for baseball, minors for softball, and finally majors for baseball. There aren’t enough girls to field a majors team for softball. At least not this year.

For T-ball and coach pitch there are 3 teams a-piece, something less than that for the majors and the minors. On Opening Day, all of the players on all the teams get introduced and run out onto the field. Where they have to stand around and wait for the league organizers to thank all the sponsors, helpers, volunteers, politicians and who ever else might have tangentially contributed to something related to the Little League. Don’t get me started on the guy who decided to “sing” the National Anthem. Really- don’t get me started.

Wanna guess how well the younger kids are able to wait through all of that?

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Family

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Ahhh, Opening Day for Little League. Both the lass and the boy will likely have double-headers today. They don’t play against other towns so there are not a lot of teams in their respective leagues. That just means lots of reps I suppose. I’m not sure what to expect for the boy’s coach pitch games- we’ll be pushing the envelope there. But I’ve having done T-ball already, we know what to expect for the lass’s games.

Looks to be a long day.

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Family

Tavern Puzzles

We visited a science center recently and one of the interactive exhibits had one of the old tavern puzzles. The Old Shackles variety to be specific. Both of the kids were instantly smitten with them and that’s when the Wife informed them that we had a whole bunch of them at home.

I’d totally forgotten about them until she had mentioned it. We not only had the same one as at the science center, but a number of others. I recall first coming across them in high school. They were fun to work out even if they were all twists on the same basic principles. The lone exception was the Patience Puzzle– a very appropriately named challenge. It literally took years of on and off work on it before I finally solved it.

Anyway, I pulled all of them out for the kids and they had a blast with them for about 5 minutes. When they realized that they couldn’t figure them out, the puzzles lost their luster. The boy, particularly, got very frustrated with my old version of Old Shackles. He had been able to solve the one at the science center, but couldn’t solve mine. Naturally, something had to be wrong with mine.

It’s a familiar pattern with him now. Any kind of new challenge turns into a tremendous exercise in frustration. He thinks he should be a master of whatever he chooses to do and when reality bites, well, he doesn’t like it.

As for me, I’ve managed to solve them all again, including the Patience Puzzle. If that means that I’ve learned patience, then there’s still hope for the boy.

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Family

Adopted Behavior

When the lass heard the magic word yesterday, she started to get choked up and wanted to know if the cat would be alright. She was close to tears and we told her that the cat would be fine because he was already inside. This revelation settled her down some, but concern was still visible on her little face. She gets that way nowadays when thunderstorms are in the air.

The boy, for his part, claims to not be afraid of thunderstorms. I’ll believe it when I see it. He claimed the same thing last year, but still came downstairs at night if he awoke because of a thunderstorm.

What makes the situation interesting is that it wasn’t always this way. The boy has always been afraid of thunderstorms. Not so the lass, whom started manifesting the phenomena a couple of years ago. I find it interesting because I think the lass has actually made herself afraid of thunderstorms.

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Family

The Boy and His Friend

This is how the day ended yesterday:

The boy and his friend taped this up to the boy’s bedroom door. I’m have to confess, I’m confused as to what should concern me more, the level of spelling or that I’m apparently viewed as a girl. Sigh. At least I get some kind of exemptions status, for whatever that’s worth.

The lass isn’t one to take such matters lying down. After this sign was crafted, she came down the stairs and asked my how to spell “No boys allowed. Only Dads.” At least I was a boy again- and still retained my exemption status.

These amusing hijinks followed pretty much an entire day of the three of them getting along. They started the day off with the Wii. But I limited their time on it and they came to regret starting the day off on the Wii because I didn’t allow them to play it anymore after they were done. It wasn’t a great day, weather-wise, but it wasn’t raining and there was no reason they couldn’t go outside.

By the end of the day they’d played a couple of games of checkers, hide-and-seek, tag, a brief round of trying to get behind me so they could slap my rear (they didn’t- even when they tried the obvious head fake that the game was “over” while quickly walking around me for another shot), played in the sandbox and some kind of game where the object was to get the kid on the floor to roll over onto their bellies from their back. So it ended up being a pretty full day for them. Along the way the lass helped me prepare some dinner. That gave the boys a chance to hang together without the “third wheel.”

But the highlight of the day was definitely the sign. Good to know that the eternal struggle between boyz and girlz will continued to be waged by the next generation.

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Family

Another Genie Out of the Bottle

Went to pick-up the boy from school yesterday. As is the norm for most schools now, I imagine, I had to wait in line while the teachers shuffled the kids to predetermined spots on the sidewalk. You patiently wait in line for the kids in front to load up until it’s your turn. Fun stuff.

The lass was with me and her booster seat is on the passenger’s side. So when it was time for the boy to jump in, he did so through the front-side passenger door. However, where in the past he just kept on going right to his spot in the back, this time he just sat with a smile on his face. He didn’t outright ask, and he didn’t have to because the expression on his face communicated perfectly what he was after.

There is no minimum age limit for riding in the passenger seat here. We’ve double checked it. I’m fairly sure some of the states around us are different. Since I recalled riding shotgun many time I was the boy’s current age, I really couldn’t come up with an objection.

So then we had a mini fiasco as a couple of things hit at once: the lass objecting to her brother sitting up front and we were now holding up the line. The boy still had his backpack on and wasn’t buckled in. I brushed off the lass by telling her she still had to sit in the booster seat because she was too young. But I’m sure she’s counting the days.

So now the question will be when he can ride shotgun. In another year, they’ll be fighting over who sits in the front seat. The race for the car will be vicious I suspect. I’m sure his friends will notice that he’s riding up front and they’ll start pestering their parents.

I imagine I’ll be blackballed by the end of the month at the latest.

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Family

Coach Pitch

The boy had his first baseball practice last night. In the rain no less. And he was all enthusiasm about going. Will wonders never cease?

We went figuring that the practice would be an abbreviated one, but lo-and-behold several other teammates showed up as well in the rain. So what started out as just a couple of kids getting a chance to get a little pitch-and-catch done and go over some of the games’ rules turned into a full practice session with batting and a drill for practicing throwing to first base.

The kids all did well. None of them cared about the rain, cold or wet. Surprising all of us who helped with the coaching. Just when you think you know your kid, they go and do something like that.

The other thing I’ll note is the noticeable level of comfort the parents have with one another and the other kids. A year ago, we all barely knew each other and we were all hesitant to correct someone else’s child when they were slacking off or something. I’ve noticed it in Scouts, and it’s clearly continuing right into baseball, now that we’ve all realized that we’re all basically on the same page regarding behavior, attitudes, courtesy and so forth, it isn’t unusual for any given child to get a quick correction from someone who isn’t their parent. To the kid’s credit, they tent to listen as well. Perhaps getting noticed by a stranger has some kind of “focusing” effect or something. Regardless, it’s nice to have the help.

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Family

Things That Make You Go “Hmmm”

Yesterday, while taking the boy and some of his friends to a birthday party they were talking about the gifts they (AHEM!) had gotten for the birthday boy. I’d never heard of one of the toys before (the name eludes me now) so I asked them what it was. After a couple of brief descriptions from his friends, the boy chimed in:

“I don’t really know what it is, but I think I’ve seen it before.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Today at dinner, the lass abruptly gets up from the table, walks out of the dining room and goes in the opposite direction from the bathroom. We were all a bit startled by the abruptness of her departure, but we made no comments.

As she returned to the dining room, the lass declared:

“You don’t have to tell anybody if you’re just getting up to blow your nose.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

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Family

Braces

The boy is off to get his braces at the moment. He’d been OK with the idea until he mentioned it to some of his friends yesterday at school. Apparently, a bunch of 6-year olds were amazed he was getting braces at such a young age. Or something like that. Anyway, after that encounter he wasn’t so keen on the idea.

But he trooped off this morning without much in the way of complaint. I decided to give him a heads up that his friends may laugh at him when they see him with the braces on the first time. He still doesn’t like being laughed at, so I just wanted to prepare him and reiterate taht the best thing he can do is laugh along with them. I don’t anticipate any problems. Though I’m sure he’ll be a bit depressed about the whole thing.

This’ll be one of those character building experiences, I reckon.

UPDATE:
He’s doing well after the first few hours. The ortho was impressed enough with him that he told the Wife he wished all his child patients managed as he did. So +1 for the boy.

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Family

Signs of Progress

The boy seems to have fully recovered from whatever little bug caught hold of him Monday. He’ll be returning to school today.

The item worth noting in all of this is yesterday, the lass brought home the school work he had missed over the past couple of days. He was feeling better all day yesterday and, unprompted by the Wife or myself, he sat down and worked on his school work.

The relevant background with this is the last time this same situation occurred, the Wife and I had to tag team him and actively work him to do his school work. He complained about it the entire time. He even tried to do it so poorly that the Wife and I would just give up on it, forcing us into the old “It’s not worth it” box.

Not so yesterday. The only questions he asked were for clarification on some of the instructions. His only frustration came when he’d made a mistake on one of his sheets and had some trouble tracking down where it occurred. After he found it, he completed that sheet without further problem.

It’s always nice to know that, occasionally, effort is rewarded.

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Family

The Boy’s Weekend

Here on the blog, I have a tendency to note kid related events that range from humorous to missteps. It’s easy to overlook the fact that a good part of the time, the kids are, actually, pretty well behaved. It’s even easier to overlook the simple task of giving credit where it’s due.

With that in mind, allow me to relate a bit about the boy’s weekend, noteworthy mainly for its lack of noteworthiness. It doesn’t make for the greatest blogging material, per say, but I’d like to give him credit for his good behavior.

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Family

Parent Teacher Conferences

I suppose the title conveys the main point. We meet with the lass’ teacher this afternoon. We actually don’t have a meeting with the boy’s teacher. When we asked for a little consideration regarding scheduling to avoid conflicts with the lass’ teacher, she replied that she was comfortable with where the boy is at and unless we really needed to meet, she didn’t feel it necessary.

Now, my first reaction was, I think, completely predictable. Something along the lines of “Yes! We have the best 1st grader in the history of 1st graders.” But then my mind started turning and questions started bubbling up. Like, what criterion is being used here? Does she mean that he can walk down the hall without tripping and that’s good enough? Does she mean he doesn’t habitually pick his nose and burp and fart in the middle of class? Does she mean he’s ready for algebra? Maybe he can skip 2nd grade! Or does she mean that he doesn’t habitually drool on himself and his classmates? Or maybe he’s going to be writing a novel! Perhaps he’s ready to work at the Hadron Collider!

In the end, we figured if his teacher was “comfortable” with where he was at and didn’t think the meeting was necessary, we’d abide by that judgment. After all, she can probably use the break.

UPDATE: The boy’s teacher caught us after the lass’ conference. The boy is doing fine and apparently “right where he should be.” His “report card” is full of D‘s, D+‘s and W‘s. The D‘s were a little jarring initially, but the report card format is not from our era where we got a letter grade for a subject. These report cards have about 50 categories and they are graded on an “emerging”, “developing”, “well-developed” scale. So his report card shows good progress in everything- particularly math.

I’d still like to know more specifically what “right where he should be” means. My best guess is it’s just a standard response, designed to be unoffensive and keep parents mollified. But based on what can be gleaned from his report card, he is on the right track.

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Family

Tiger Cake

The boy has his Cub Scout Blue and Gold Banquet tonight. For his pack, all of the older Cub Scouts who have earned their Arrow of Light will be getting that award. It’s the highest award a Cub Scout can earn.

As a fund raising activity, the Pack has a Fella’s Cake Bake. The idea is that a father-son, or older male-Scout combination, work together to bake a cake. The rules, in a nutshell, no professionally baked cakes and the Scout and male leader have to make it.

The boy decided he wanted to make a chocolate cake with the Tiger Cub from the Tiger Cub badge on it. Here, presented for your entertainment, is the result of his and my efforts:

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Family

I Don’t Get It

For some reason, the boy doesn’t like to change his underwear. I do not understand this at all.

I mean, I figured he would go on some sort of laundry efficiency kick when he became a teenager; but, I wasn’t necessarily going to have to be aware of it. Contrast that with, seeing as the Wife and I are responsible for the laundry, it’s hard not to notice when there’s 5 days of laundry in the basket, minus the expected quantity of underwear.

Parenting is not for the timid.

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Family

Hockey Tournament

Instead of the usual practice this morning, the hockey league ran a 3-on-3 tournament. We signed the boy up for it as it would be his best chance to play some “real” hockey. If you can call hockey without checking, penalties or goalies real hockey. The nets were tiny little things about 15 inches wide and 8 inches high or so.

The tournament was the first competitive environment in which the boy participated. He’s been in other less formal things like t-ball and the like, but they didn’t keep score during those games. They didn’t want any hurt feelings. But here, there was actually going to be a sanctioned winner. Meaning there would also be a bunch of losers. Welcome to the real world I say.

His relative inexperience showed. He was hesitant and unsure of where to be at various points, especially when the puck wasn’t in his immediate vicinity. But he wasn’t alone and I and the other parents just encouraged them to skate hard and play hard. After the first couple of games, they were doing just that. He managed to score a couple of goals along the way, making the whole thing a personal success for him. I made sure to point out that the goals were a reward for working hard during the games. No way to know for sure if the “work” aspect registered with him, but we did our best to point it out and reinforce it. When he scored a goal in the final second of his last game, I made sure to point out that it was great that he kept on going right to the end.

Probably the most amusing moment came after his first goal. Since there are no goalies, play essentially continues right after each goal so the scoring team can’t take too long to celebrate or they’ll give up an easy “answer” score. Well, the boy was so excited that he skated the entire length of the ice to tell me that he’d scored his goal. Meanwhile, play was continuing behind him. I had to give him a quick “Attaboy” and then usher him back out to help his shorthanded team. Luckily, no goals against during that sequence. (FWIW- the goal was a nice shot. He was about 10-12 feet away and off to the right of the goal at a tough angle when he shot. He caught the far side of the little net with a satisfying “DONG” when the puck hit the metal frame. A little excitement was justified I’d say.)

When it was all said and done, his team came in second place. A feat that generally seemed to please him. Although he did comment that he wanted to win first place. I’d have been disappointed and surprised if he’d stated otherwise, though I’d never tell him that. We told him to keep working hard and next time he might just come in first. It was good to see that he clearly enjoyed the experience. Considering that he had a 5:30 wakeup call this morning(the first game was at 7), having him in a good mood after it was all said and done was the biggest win of the day.

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Family

The New England Aquarium

That’s where we spent our last day of vacation. It was a surprise for the kids, though they did their level best to get us to spill the beans ahead of time. After realizing the brute force approach wasn’t working (“Where are we going?” Answer: “You’ll see” or “To where we’re going.”) they started using more elaborate strategies. For instance, they’d ask if we were going to place ‘X’ in an attempt to narrow down the field of possibilities. They’d ask what city it was in. Or they’d ask if we’d been “there” before. Regardless of the tactic, we maintained our cone of silence right until our arrival.

The penguins were the big attraction. They were center stage around a massive center-column aquarium with all kinds of fish swimming around, including what looked like a couple of sand sharks. There were also some groupers and a couple of massive sea turtles. I’d say that aquarium was roughly 4 stories tall and about 50-60 feet in diameter. As big as it was, many of the fish in it looked cramped for space- especially the sharks and groupers.

Around the center-aquarium were a variety of smaller aquariums stuffed to the gills (ahem) with fish. A few of the tanks had some good sized fish, but mostly they were of the smaller variety. The high lite was when the kids got to see some Cuttle Fish eat shrimp. Let’s face it, Nature at her rawest is pretty cool in general.

We ended the day watching a 3-D Imax movie about fish of the sea. It was a little disappointing, in truth, because it spent a disproportionate amount of time on just a few types of fish, the Cuttle fish in particular. It was also narrated by Jim Carrey, whom made sure to take the time to lecture us about how evil we all are and how we’re destroying our oceans but “we’re starting to learn we can do things better” blah blah blah. Too bad a shark couldn’t take a bite out of his ass.

The fun thing about the 3-D was the lass, who repeatedly would put her hand out to “pet” or touch the fish. The end featured a section where seals were coming right up to the camera and that was when she was at her most frantic in attempts to pet the seals. It was amusing to watch. When everything was done, I asked her what the seals felt like. She replied “Dad, I couldn’t actually touch them! It was just a movie.”

Well, the 3-D hadn’t fooled me. But she certainly did.

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Family

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Never underestimate the ability of kids to turn something simple into something not so simple. Perhaps it’s a superpower. Parent’s insert themselves into a situation and kids immediately begin deploying their “Obfuscation” ability by making their eyes wide and using the words “But she…” or “But he…”

The boy was supposed to take a shower. But when the Wife made the request to him, he just stood there and stared at her, rooted to the spot. Since the lass also needed a shower, and the boy seemed to be in some kind of temporary state of paralysis, she asked the lass instead to go.

Which was all the boy needed to snap him out of his self-imposed stroke. He took off like a shot to be the “first” in the shower. The lass, not to be outdone, also took off. Unfortunately for her, she is not a physical match to her brother and he beat her there easily. So she now launches into a frustrated, tearful “Heeeee butted in front of meeeee….”