Categories
Cub Scouts

Battleship Cove

Our Pack’s overnight was at Battleship Cove. It’s a historical military site where the USS Massachusetts, which is easily the main attraction, resides. There’s also the USS Lionfish, a submarine; the USS Fall River, a cruiser; and the USS Joseph P Kennedy, a destroyer. They’ve also got a PT boat exhibit.

If you’ve never been on a battleship, then I highly recommend doing so. It’s an impressive experience. The scale of the ship alone is enough to make the mind boggle. The tech specs are equally mind boggling: like the 16-inch canons that could hit targets 22-miles away (it’s just a big bullet- not a propelled object). The rounds were packed with 5000 lbs of gun powder and no one was allowed on deck when they were being fired. Yet the ship was designed such that when they were fired, no one felt the recoil on the ship. They also had 5 inch guns capable of shooting up to 5 miles away. The ship itself was the better part of 800 feet long. When in service, the fuel tanks held nearly 2 millions gallons of crude for fuel and the ship could run flat out for 9 days on that supply.

All of the Scouts who came enjoyed the day. The weather was perfect and it was something most of them hadn’t seen before. We had gone once before with our own kids and they’d also been taken there by the Grandparents. So they were veterans of the ships. But sleeping overnight on the battleship was a new experience.

The overnight program was well organized and well run. Once they were closed to day visitors, the overnighters were given some historical orientation about the ship, including a chance to talk to the (I believe) last living crew member of the USS Massachusetts whom is 90 years old. For an old timer, he still had plenty of spunk. More than enough to keep a bunch of grade schoolers in line while he was talking and answering questions.

Speaking of which, we were 25 of about 550 people staying over night. The vast majority of which were Cub Scouts. People were there from all over the Northeast. The ship was built to house like 3500 people, so we had plenty of room.

After the orientation, there was a dinner followed by a few different presentations including a Morse Code class, a knot tying class, a 1940’s cartoon time featuring Disney cartoons as well as a story teller. There were no obligations to attend anything and we were free to wander as much or as little of the ship as we pleased. The boy tried his hand at knot tying, but lost interest when his friends did, so we moved on from their. The military story telling time entertained them though.

Aside from that, the boy and his buddies had a grand time aiming gun turrets and “shooting” cars and signs and whatever else tickled their fancy. They weren’t supposed to run because it’s a battleship. Things were built to handle the rigors of war, so the ravages of a bunch of grade schoolers was, eh, child’s play. I was amused to notice every couple of minutes one kid or another limping or holding a side that slammed into some unforgiving piece of metal. They didn’t do much running after that. Experience really is a good teacher.

As the night wore on, the crew closed more and more of the ship down, limiting where the kids could get to and thus opportunities for problems. Officially, lights out was at 11, but a few of ours were done at 10. There were warning bulge calls at 15, 10 and 5 minutes to lights out. The ones who fell asleep early didn’t budge. The bunks we slept in weren’t luxury accommodations, but they were good enough for tired visitors.

They certainly sufficed for tired kids.

Reveille was a 6:30 this morning. Most of the kids were already waking up by then. From there, we spent a little time on deck before we had to wait in our bunk area for the crew to escort us to breakfast. After that, the exodus began.

The ship served in several campaigns, but never lost any crew members. In fact, the only “major” damage it took was to its hull on the front side. Before we left, the boy wanted to see what the damaged area looked like. After a bit of searching (it’s a big ship) we located the spot. They’d preserved a piece of the plate with the hole from the projectile that penetrated it. Even that was heady stuff to look at, since the hole was big enough for me to stick my head through. Despite that, it never posed any serious danger for the ship itself.

Satisfied with the find, he was then ready to head home. He hadn’t had enough to eat at breakfast, so he was hoping to have a little extra when we arrived at the house.

That was our overnight at Battleship Cove.

Categories
Cub Scouts

Gone Overnightin’

I’m heading out for an overnight slumber party on a retired Naval vessel with a bunch of Cub Scouts. With any luck, the kids will sleep. I seriously doubt any of the adults will. Should be a great time!

Back tomorrow.

Categories
Football

Another Look At Soft Shell Helmets

A while back, I wrote a quick item wondering about the possibility of soft shelled helmets replacing hard shelled helmets. Mainly, I was just wondering aloud about it and also the possibility of a combined shoulder-pad helmet design. The ideas being either:

  1. A better dampening effect on the energy transmission to the head via the soft shelled helmet, or

  2. A means of transferring the energy to the body so the head doesn’t take all of the energy from the blow via the combined helmet-shoulder pad design.

After all this time, I got a comment to that post which was basically a form of spamming; however, it was actually on topic to the post so I allowed the comment to remain. I’ll even to the commenter a favor by posting the website he provided right here: Game Breaker Helmets.

One of the arguments often heard about reining in head injuries is to remove the helmets from the game altogether. It’s a nice counter argument, but there have been studies done comparing incidents of head injuries between rugby players and football players and the results are a head-shot (yes, bad pun) to the counter argument: rugby players have a higher rate of concussion incidents than football players. So no helmets is not the answer.

So for hee-hee-ha-ha’s , I did a little research about the transition from leather helmets to hard shell helmets. In a, uh, nutshell, it was basically arbitrary. A guy by the name of John Riddell started making them in the 40’s because the leather helmets got soaked and brittle and generally not liked much. The hard-shell design allowed for team advertising with logo’s to boot. Football has been using the same basic design ever since.

I have no doubt that directly comparing soft shell helmets to hard shell helmets in controlled lab experiments would leave soft shell helmets wanting. But, I think actual use could achieve an important side-effect: modifying the way the game is played. Players would not be able to lead with the head as they do now, thereby reducing head and neck injuries in the long run. Plus, according to the link site I linked above, the helmets can be screened with team logos, so we don’t have to lose our fancy helmet artwork.

What would be nice is to see some kind of research about these soft shell helmets so that a more compelling case can be made for them. (Perhaps our commenter from above has something like that?) Of course, it might cut against them as well, but if the decision to use hard shell helmets way back when was arbitrary, then it can’t hurt to give the alternative a look and have the discussion now.

Categories
Family

What the Kids are Watching

I have to say that the Netflix streaming service has been great for the kids. There’s seemingly no end to the cartoon entertainment available. Which is good, because they haven’t tended to go back to a cartoon franchise once they’ve completed it. The only one they sometimes go back to is Avatar: The Last Airbender.

For now, they’ve been watching episodes of Woody Woodpecker. These aren’t the original cartoons, though. Rather, it’s a re-boot of the original. The only characters I recall from the first go around are Woody himself and Buzz Buzzard. They’ve introduced nephews for Woody as well as Winnie, a sometimes girlfriend, Wally Walrus and Miss Meanie. In all, the only one who’s consistently amusing is Wally and that’s almost entirely to do with his think Svedish accent. I mean Swedish accent. It’s quite catchy. In all, I’d rate it as OK on the entertainment scale and certainly inferior to the original. But the kids enjoy it. Fortunately, the smarty-pants routines are seeping into the kids personalities.

The other one we found is the old chestnut Inspector Gadget whom the kids have just started watching recently. Gadget gets old since every episode is rehash of the same story line with Penny and Brain saving the world while Gadget bumbles through the episode. I don’t know how long they’ll watch this series, but there’s nothing objectionable to it.

Last night, I discovered Transformers Prime. Now this is a good cartoon. It’s one of the computer animated variety, and certainly the subject matter is well suited to the medium. The kids are old enough to watch it, but I wouldn’t let younger kids watch it since the material is definitely on the darker side of the spectrum. But Optimus Prime and his sense of honor and duty dominate the story and that’s something worth having them watch. In my opinion, it’s a better story line than any of the 3 movies that preceded it. And lets face it, big robots that turn into cars and planes is awesome entertainment. Right now, there is only season 1, but season 2 will become available later this year.

This week being a vacation week, the burn rate on the cartoons has been increased a bit. Even so, with these 3 to rotate through, they should be entertained for a while yet.

Categories
Football

Good for Minnesota

I don’t have a link at the moment, but it looks like the Minnesota Vikings ownership is not getting a lot of love from Minnesota politicians at the moment. Public funding for a new stadium was shot down within the past couple of days.

I recall one of the lines I read was from a city council member who asked the Vikings representatives something to the effect “In these tough economic times, why should we be asking the taxpayers to give money to a billionaire?” I think that hits the nail dead in the head.

Now, when I read stuff like this, frankly it pisses me off a bit. Mainly for the fact that it’s so blind to the realities of the situation. See the above paragraph.

If owners are willing to exploit football fans to this degree, then the only thing that will set them back in line is for fans to tell them to go bilk some other city. Because the owners have made it clear that they’re more than happy to stay in town while everyone ponies up big bucks for their seat, when it comes time to give a little back they find out it’s a one-way street.

I enjoy football as much as anyone, but I’ve never liked the idea of taxpayer funded stadiums and facilities. NFL owners are billionaires. They can afford to spend some of it to make their own facilities.

Categories
Family

10th Birthday Idea

I’m on board with this. In fact, I think it would make for a great 10th birthday theme. Stick a bow on a bottle of Tide, some Clorox and some Bounce, throw in a few new clothes and underwear and it’ll be a 10th birthday neither would forget.

Categories
Family

Parental Follies

After dinner tonight, the kids wanted to ride their bikes a bit. We don’t have a very good setup for bike riding at our home, though. Our driveway is fairly narrow and all gravel. I suppose the gravel part is OK once you’ve learned to ride, but training wheels and gravel don’t work. Also, there’s the small matter of about 4 chords of waiting-to-be-chopped firewood sitting in the middle of our driveway at the moment, which makes for even less room for riding.

Our lawn isn’t exactly great for riding either. Fairly narrow with the logical turn around spots on hills. Plus, it’s kind of bumpy. Of course, if the lawn was really nice, we probably wouldn’t want them riding on it.

But they tried to make the most of it. The boy, particularly, is good enough to be able to tool around a bit back there. The lass is still learning how to ride. I told her to just keep her feet out to the side and try to balance on the bike as it went down the hill. So she practiced at that for a bit.

At one point, they asked if I could ride their bikes. Not in the “Will you do it?” sense, but in the “is it possible?” sense. When I told them I could ride either of their bikes, I offered to demonstrate by riding the lass’ bike down the little hill.

They thought that would be grand.

So I got myself setup on the lass’ bike (standing on the petals) and started down the hill. Just after I hit the bottom, I must have hit a bump. That and the fact that I exceed the reasonable weight limits of the bike resulted in the handle bars tilting way forward on me. I tried to correct the situation, but must have pulled on the hand brake on her bike. With all of my weight already forward as a result of the handle bars, I went flying head first off the bike.

While the landing wasn’t particularly pretty, it also wasn’t particularly harmful. Due to the size of the bike, I was only a couple of feet off the ground at most to start with. I did more damage to the few tufts of grass we’ve got in the yard than anything else. Naturally, I got up and dusted myself off and acted like the professional idiot that I am.

The kids were quiet for a moment, then the boy asked “Is that why we wear helmets, Dad?”

“Yes, that’s why you wear helmets,” I answered.

Categories
Admin

Server Updates

I’ve been informed by my host provider that the server the site runs on will be undergoing upgrades sometime during the wee-hours of the morning. The site will be down for a couple of hours as a result. Hopefully, that will be all the disruption incurred.

I’ll be backing up the site just in case…

Categories
Family

Kids and Clickers

Some of you reading this may remember a time before cable. Back then, channel choices were limited to UHF and VHF. Most of the networks channels were on VHF and those typically came in the clearest. But it was rare that the antenna could remain in one position and maximize reception for all the stations. If you remember those times, perhaps you also remember to whom the job fell to tune the antenna. Us (at the time) kids. If we were particularly unlucky, the mere act of touching the antenna would result in better reception. At which point it was time to settle in and get comfortable.

Not only did we tune the antenna, we also were the remote controls for our parents. And, I suppose, why not? Since we were already up there futzing with the antenna. Might as well kill two birds with one stone. We’d patiently stand up there flicking the dials on the TV (or pushing the buttons for the stations on the more modern versions) waiting for some kind of “OK” to signal that a station had been selected and we could return to our seat. Assuming we weren’t making reception possible, that is.

I mention this because I think there’s something useful there from a parenting perspective. Namely, the act of a parent having a child do something trivial. While I remember being none to thrilled with the job at the time, as a parent I actually think that things like this have a place in helping parents raise their kids.

Mainly, it’s an assertion of dominance. Not the kind of dominance where a parent is actually forcing a child, mentally or physically, to do things a certain way. Rather, it’s the kind of dominance where the notion is enforced that the family has a pecking order and the parents are at the top of that order, while the kids reside somewhere lower in that order.

I’ve never bought into the “parents as friends” line of thinking. Kids don’t know enough about the world in order to make good decisions. As a case in point, we had a Roadside Cleanup with the Cub Scouts this past weekend. In my group of boys, one of them decided that a good diversion was to pretend a bear had emerged from the woods and was chasing him. So he ran off screaming right down the middle of the road. (I did take him aside immediately to deal with the behavior and he didn’t do it anymore). Like I said, not the best at decision making. We parents have to teach them that sort of thing, be it through example or by talking them through the decision making or by scolding them when they get something demonstrably wrong or by letting them suffer the consequences of their own decisions.

Now, can a parent teach that sort of thing (or anything, for that matter) if the child doesn’t respect the parent as the leader? Not likely, in my book. Does anyone listen to someone they don’t respect?

But how to establish that pecking order? How to establish that status as the leader above the kids? That’s were kids-as-clickers comes into play.

Using the kids as a clicker reinforces the pecking order of the family because the kids are the one doing the work for their parents. It works because it happens every day and it’s a trivial exercise for the kids to perform. After a short period of time, it’s simply understood that this is one of their jobs as a kid, so they do it with minimal fuss. This makes it a win because for a couple of reasons. One, it’s a low-overhead request; meaning parents won’t have to expend a lot of emotional energy (aka- screaming) to get the kids to follow through. Second, it helps to lay the ground work for future moments where you’ll need their help or you’ll want to explain something important to them (like how pretending a bear is chasing you as a pretext for running, screaming down the middle of the road is a bad idea).

Nowadays, we have actual real remote controls so kids don’t have to be our remotes. But there’s still no shortage of simple tasks that they can do: retrieving food from the pantry or freezer, getting the mail, letting the pets in and out, feeding the pets, bringing clothes for laundry. Frankly, whatever they can be convinced to help out with works towards the ends of reinforcing the notion that the parents are the boss. The key is that it has to be fairly trivial to perform (thereby minimizing the opportunity for foot dragging), and it has to be something that needs to be done (now they’ve done something useful rather than just some random request because Mom or Dad is on a power trip)

All that said, kids-as-clickers is not a cure all. Just because they do these things doesn’t mean they’ll become perfect little angels. At least, not if my 2 are any indicator. They’ll still carp about certain tasks, and claim it’s the other ones turn; but, I do think they are more likely to listen in general as well as primed for larger requests of their time and effort as a result of having established the pattern of parents-ask-and-children-do.

Categories
Family

Vacation Awaits

Well, vacation for the kids anyway. Spring vacation has arrived and, judging be the weather forecast, Spring itself as well. There won’t be any swimming just yet, but it can’t be far away at this point.

The Wife and kids spent most of today out in the yard starting the cleanup. The kids were actually useful this year for a change. They helped carry all the the Wife pulled out of the gardens and carried it down to the compost. The boy even emptied the wheelbarrow of a load of firewood, stack the wood by himself, so they could use the wheelbarrow for carting the crap instead of a bucket.

They were paid with ice cream from one of the local dairies later on. It’s never too early for dairy made ice cream. Especially maple walnut. Yum.

Categories
Family

Useless Tattletaling- An Example

The lass comes downstairs this morning after waking up to find the Wife preparing her morning cup o’ Joe. She proceeds to inform on the boy:

“Mom, my brother didn’t wake up this morning until he farted and scared the cat off the bed.”

Now, what exactly are we supposed to do with that information? Personally, I laughed.

Categories
Family

Making the Impossible Possible

The sound was a very familiar one to me. I’ve heard it many a time over the past few years. Borrowing from Dr. Seuss, it could appropriately be described by It started in low. Then it started to grow…

Only this sound wasn’t merry. In fact it was very un-merry.

It was the beginning of sobbing from the boy.

What could possibly have reduced him to such a state? If you’re suspecting me, well, that would be a fair guess I suppose, but in this case I can’t claim credit. It was his homework that had done him in.

That and having low blood-sugar levels.

His homework involved using his spelling words for the week. He’s been very good all year with spelling, even knowing all of the bonus words the teacher has tossed out. The exercise that did him in was the final one on the worksheet, which wanted him to write a paragraph describing how to do some gardening using 5 of the spelling words.

The problem he had was it wasn’t obvious how to use any of the words to describe ow to garden. The phrase he kept using was “It’s IMPOSSIBLE!” Hmm, actually it was more like “It’s IMPOSSIBLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!”

At this point in my parenting career, I don’t have much patience for crying. Especially because something is hard- cry me a river. It’s just a phrase but the boy was taking it literally. So I sat silently, waiting for him to stop. I didn’t even bother with the usual “Does crying solve anything?” type of attack. It’s not worth it as it only would have given voice to my frustration.

Since he wasn’t in a hurry to calm down, I took his worksheet to see what all the fuss was about. As it turns out, not only was his assignment possible- there existed a shining example of it in the previous problem. It was a paragraph about gardening using all of the spelling words, only some of them were misspelled. For that one, he was supposed to identify the misspelled words. He managed that just fine.

Back to the problem at hand, I informed him about the example on the worksheet. But this only agitated him further because he couldn’t use it. Oddly, I felt a little better after his statement since he’d voluntarily rejected plagiarism as a solution.

Since he still wasn’t calming down, I decided that the best course was to make him eat something. He continued to whimper all the way through his meal. To the point that I decided to eat somewhere else. Finally, after he’d finished his meal he calmed down. I’m guessing those two things are not unrelated.

Then wouldn’t you know, he went and wrote a paragraph about gardening using his spelling words. I even checked it over, correcting his spelling mistakes and helping him with his writing in general. He was a habit of creating runon sentences and using the same phrases over and over and over again without breaking things up into different sentences so that he has a whole bunch of words that are tied together and by the time you are done reading his sentence you are out of breath because you weren’t sure it would ever end and did I mention about the runons?

So it turned out to not be so impossible.

Categories
Cub Scouts

The Bike Rodeo

I’m not sure where the term “bike rodeo” came from, but that’s exactly what we did last night for our Pack meeting. Basically, a bike rodeo is a chance for kids to get their bikes checked out for safety, get helmets fitted, and ride their bikes around.

We had a local bike dealer come out and setup to checkout the bikes and make sure that helmets were properly fitted to heads, while another Dad brought along a compressor to take care of bike tires. This was our “gathering” activity, basically the pre-meeting stuff. It took about 20 minutes for everything to get completed.

I wanted to keep the meeting part of the evening a short as possible. We had about 20 kids whom had arrived expecting to ride, not be talked to all night and I didn’t want to disappoint. So after our opening flag ceremony, I went through a short list of announcements about upcoming events and then formally introduced the bike shop owner who came out to help. I also mentioned that they were all going to earn their Bicycling Belt Loops.

It turned out to be good practice for him since he’s been approached by 4 or 5 other Packs for the exact same thing. He spoke for about 5 minutes about safety: what side of the rode to ride on, what to do at intersections, how to properly wear a helmet. His only mistake was to ask if there were any questions because he started getting stories about different things that happened to the kids when they rode their bikes here or there. Fortunately, he figured it out quickly and got them heading for the doors.

Our riding time was in the bus loading area for the school. This turned out to be perfect because rather than a large parking area, it was a circular roadway with a center line through it so the kids had a natural path to follow. We simulated an intersection and made sure the kids stopped and waited. We even had a couple of live drills when some late workers at the school got in their cars to leave.

The kids had a great time with it and for the final few minutes we gave them some free ride time where they could just tool around as they liked through the parking lot. Frankly, the night couldn’t have gone much better. For anyone thinking about organizing this sort of event for their own Pack, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a slam-dunk for a great night for the kids.

Categories
Misc

161

I promise not to make a habit of this, but the odds-beating involved were enough that I had to jot it down for posterity’s sake. This is my “great Words with Friends Comeback” story.

I’m playing my father and it’s a tight game for the most part. He started hitting a few well placed words and he opened a 50 or so point lead on me. That’s not a worrisome lead because the scoring in WwF is pretty friendly. But we had a very tight board, lots of stacked words and the like, so the opportunity for good word play was rapidly diminishing if we didn’t have the right letters in our rack. That’s what started happening to me, until I ended up with ‘QUIZ’ in my rack.

I could have played it right then, but I realized that the perfect place to play it was to hit the TW and TL squares on the outer boundary. That way, a 10 point letter landed on a TL square, and then with the TW I was looking at a minimum of 120 points. Bye-bye lead. So I gambled and started biding my time. Playing as many of the other 3 letters in my rack as I could.

The decision was met with great peril. Dad slowly began increasing his lead. 75 points. Then 100 points. The effect only served to reinforce my determination because it was rapidly becoming my only option. Letters were running out and I still hadn’t found a way to play QUIZ like I wanted. Getting desperate, I started swapping tiles.

I finally caught my break with 8 letters left in the game. After a swap, I pulled a D and a blank tile. Surveying the board, there was a word ending in Y 1 square over and 2 squares up from the leftmost TL square on the bottom. I needed a 2 letter word that I could add a Z to so I could play QUIZ like I wanted. I made the blank an A and played AD next to the Y and spelled down. So the D hovered precariously over the TL.

The next part was the worst- waiting for Dad to make his move. He’s pretty good with gobbling up freebies like a D in the clear over a TL. My only hope was that it was late enough in the game and that he didn’t have an S or something to spoil my plans. Luckily, that’s how it played out.

At this point in the game, his lead had swelled to about 150 points. As I said, there were only 8 or so letters left in the game, so this was my only shot. When I placed it down, I did a quick guesstimate and figured it would either tie me up or leave me just shy. Either way, I knew it would be a BIG swing.

It was bigger than I expected. QUIZ by itself was worth 129. But I also had ADZ as well, which was another 32 (the A was no points since it was a blank). Giving me a total of 161 points for 4 letters played. I went from down 150 to up by 10. There were no other big point letters left to play, and it was solely a matter of who could empty their rack most effectively at that point.

I hung on and finished the comeback, adding about 20 more points to my total to hold Dad off. Final score, 353-349.

Nothing beats a comeback.

Categories
Family

Bad Pasta

What kind of parenting blog would be complete without a little puke?

Got home from the boy’s MA class tonight, and he went right to the couch with a stressed kind of breathing. Next thing I know, I get those 6 words every parent loves to hear: “I think I’m going to THROWUP!”

He made a bee-line for the bathroom, and pretty much just made it. Several minutes later, it was all over. I checked him and he didn’t have fever or anything, so I had him take a shower and, since it was close to bed time, basically just herded him to bed.

I made pasta with meatballs for dinner tonight. So far, the lass and I are fine. Of course, the lass loves pasta so much her body may be overriding the stomachs desire to evacuate. Here’s to hoping. As for the boy, I was thinking perhaps I hadn’t served him dinner far enough in advance of his MA class, so he’d gotten an upset stomach as a result of that.

Anyway, I’d just finished the greatest comeback in my history with WwF, when I heard the distinct coughing sounds of a child retching. When I made it upstairs, I discovered the boy hanging off the side of his bed, hovering over a puddle of noodles. Apparently, the puking process interferes with other neural pathways, because the boy continued to hover there, spitting onto the floor. When I asked him if he still had more, he grunted at me in reply. So I went over to him and got him moving towards the bathroom in case there was an encore.

Thankfully, there wasn’t. But I still had the mess to clean up. Upon closer inspection, he’d nailed the side of his bed as well. So I did the bed strip-tease and got that laundry going. In the meantime, what can I use to clean puke out of the carpet? Murhpy’s Oil Soap? No. Orange Cleaner? No. Resolve Stain Remover? No. Finally, I found some Woolite which seemed likely to be my best option. By then, I noticed my socks were wet. Which is great, because I’m sure when foot sweat and residual puke get together, it’s good times!

So the boy’s bed has been remade and I’ve spot cleaned the floor. I’ve also left him with a bucket. I thought I was doing pretty well, but then the boy appeared (while I’m on my hands and knees cleaning the carpet) and says “Aren’t you going to put a cold towel on my neck?”

After considering him for a moment, I replied “Do you feel hot? Like you’ve got a fever?”

“No” he said, “but that’s what Mom always does.”

Mom is, unfortunately, away at the moment, so it’s just me. And the pukes. I finally told him “Well, go ahead if that’ll make you feel better.” So he did.

He also wanted to know if he was going to school tomorrow- he’s always thinking ahead. I suppose I should commend him for trying to find a silver lining, but his silver lining will cause me some issues tomorrow. All I could tell him is that first we had to get him through tonight, and we’d see what tomorrow will bring.

At least in this case, I know what I hope it won’t bring.

Categories
Family

Not Ready to Risk Losing

Saturday, the boy competed in his first Martial Arts tournament. It was a school sponsored event, so he was amongst friends out there. Even so, it was telling when it finally dawned on him that he’d have to perform in front of people. All by himself. He’d been asking what would happen at the tournament and I tried to explain what he’d be doing, but I guess he just never made the connection. The deer-in-the-headlights look he had when it finally clicked was pretty good though.

In all, he competed well. He only competed in forms, which are a series of blocks and punches with various footwork thrown in. The form he did he performed well- probably the best I’ve seen him do it. But it wasn’t enough and he didn’t medal.

But here’s the thing- it was really obvious who the older kids were. Based on my off-the-cuff survey, it looks like 9 is the magic age where coordination and muscle control becomes noticeably improved. In fact, all of the kids who earned medals were 3rd graders or higher, regardless of belt level.

The boy was clearly disappointed. It will be interesting to see if he ever wants to compete again. The Wife and I won’t push him to do so. He’s at a point where he wants to win so badly that he’d rather not participate than lose. Which is weird. He’s competing at a much younger age than I ever did, so I don’t have a frame of personal frame of reference. Clearly, the other kids aren’t so concerned with winning and losing like he is. That’s about my only data point and all it means, right now, is that he’s a little different from them.

Nothing wrong with that.

Categories
Family

A Little Graft Never Hurts

Alright, ‘graft’ may be a little strong.

The boy left the Easter Bunny a note:

Thank you for all of the little gifts.

And he signed it from himself. He left it along with a glass of water (the Easter Bunny doesn’t drink milk) and some carrots (which might be left over from Christmas when we had them for the reindeer- hopefully, the Easter Bunny doesn’t know). The assumption that he’ll be getting gifts is almost a bit too much.

I can’t say he behaved particularly poorly today, although there was one period where I blew my stack at both kids, more for affect than anything. The Wife has asked them to put their clothes away. Seems simple enough- not a lot of room to over interpret or misinterpret that request. Well, 40 minutes later of banging around, screaming and slamming doors, their clothes still weren’t put away. The Wife asked them a 2nd time and is was final door slam where I stepped in. I gave them 10 minutes to get the clothes put away and the dinner table set. If they couldn’t get those done, they were both going to bed early. Also, any more door slamming and they went to bed early.

No more door slamming, clothes put away, table set; all with time to spare.

Maybe he was trying to cover his bases.

Categories
Family

The Difference a Generation Makes

I spent the better part of the day splitting firewood. With my elbow surgery, that was a significant project which languished through the Winter months. I tried to work on it at one point, but my arm started getting sore. Thus, I figured best to lay off. With the Winter being so lame, it worked out fine since I didn’t need to worry about dipping into the newly chopped firewood.

Before I went out, I made sure to inform the kids they would be assisting me. I wasn’t looking for much- mainly, help with loading the chopped wood into the wheelbarrow so it could be taken over to the pile for stacking.

All told, the kids stuck it out for almost 4 hours worth of work. And not the most fun kind of work either. Lugging firewood from one pile to another pretty much exemplifies tedium. At one point, they were making a game of it, trying to move the chopped wood faster than I could create more. They lost steam for the last hour or so, with the lass basically checking out about an hour before I finally stopped.

She was rolling around on the ground, pretending to sneak up on the pile, or something like that. That was a pretty good sign that she’d had it.

The boy stuck it out until the end. I did have to help him with getting the last of the chopped wood stacked, but he didn’t complain or whine the entire time.

Despite the success with getting them to pitch in, the thing that really struck me was how quickly they decided that their work wasn’t for free. Throughout much of the day, they wanted to know how much it was worth. Would they get money for their school’s mini-mall next week? Was it worth extra DS time? Could they play the Wii?

And here it comes… When I was a kid helping out with some type of chore at home, I never expected my parents to reward me for the work. I did it because it was expected of me. The difference between myself and my kids struck me.

I suspect their mild form of extortion is a result of the current trends where kids are rewarded with something when they do something right. Or, at least, not wrong or destructive. Kids are smart enough to extrapolate that meager reward early on to more self serving rewards later.

They’ll have to relearn those habits though, or they’ll end up being disappointed more often than not.

Categories
Family

Center of the Universe

The boy has tests each week for math. Each week, the Wife or I try to work with him so that he’s ready for the tests. Emphasis on try. Now that he has free time, he’s somewhat selfish about it and would rather spend it playing than spend it going over math. Now, it’s not like we’re asking him to spend hours and hours on addition and subtraction. Rather, we’re just trying to help him polish off his skills. Some extra questions here, a few minutes there. That sort of thing.

Well, a couple of nights ago we had him take a practice version of the latest iteration of his math test. It’s a 4 minute test where he’s got a goal of answering 100 problems. The Wife set him up with a practice test and set a timer for him and off he went.

He grumbled and snarled the entire time. He didn’t want to be doing it. It was stupid. On and on and on. Finally, when it was done, he commented “I can’t wait for my sister to be in the 2nd grade so she’ll have to do this.”

Nice sentiment, huh?

Of course, the only problem with his train of thought is that the lass won’t hate it. She’ll love it. When she gets homework now in kindergarten, she comes home, sits down and starts doing it. When the boy made his obnoxious little comment, she turned to the Wife and said “Mom, I like school work.”

The boy continued to insist that things would be different once she was there. I’m pretty sure he’ll be wrong.

That seems to be the mindset of late. Everything is focused through himself. If he doesn’t like something, then no one will. If he thinks it’s stupid, then it obviously is. It’s most prevalent where his sister is concerned, which I expect to some extent.

More than anything, the Wife and I try to ignore his outbursts. Some of his statements are so ridiculous that I, try as I might, cannot hold back the urge to correct him. Even so, he just digs his heels in and plows forward with whatever he was thinking. On occasion, when he takes things too far(a little too belligerent or too smart a mouth- whatever), he ends up in the hotseat with some kind of discipline.

Somewhere along the way, he’ll come to terms with his myopia. Until then, all we can do is wait.

Categories
Family

I’m Not Irish

The Wife has been outfitting me with some new clothing lately. I guess she’s tired of my, uh, well worn wardrobe. She ordered a bunch of shirts for me to try on and they all arrived today. Coincidentally, the lass had arrived home only a little earlier, so she was present to watch me try them on.

One of the shirts is a green color. Upon seeing it, the first thing the lass told me was “Dad, you can’t wear green- your not an Irish person.” The Wife and I started laughing. Her declaration was correct as far as me being Irish, but we didn’t have the faintest clue what that had to do with me wearing green.

She went on to explain that because I didn’t wear green for Leprechaun’s Day, I couldn’t be Irish and therefore can’t wear green.

I suppose that’s reasonable when you’re 6.