Month: August 2007

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Dad Blogs Fatherhood Marriage

Childhood Innocence

Thanks to the heat, we here in the South have been forced indoors in the afternoons. It’s too hot to ride bikes; it’s too hot to play ball; heck, it’s even too hot to go swimming in the pool! What’s a family of four to do?

Luckily, there are still some games around geared towards the young-ones. Interestingly, they are the same games we adults loved as a child–Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Hi-Ho! Cherry-O. All classics and all pretty much the only games on the market for the “under 5” crowd.

Obviously, we don’t still have our childhood board games lying around so we went off to our friendly neighborhood Target and purchased a few games to while away those long hot summer afternoon. As it turns out, Candyland has become my three-year-olds’s favorite game; so much so in fact that while the board itself is still in fine shape, the flimsy cards have become so over-handled that I can’t even put a proper poker shuffle on them anymore.

The funny thing about this game though, is how it’s evolved over the years. Take note:

Notice how in the old version of Candyland, the two kids are whitebread, blond crackers, and in the new, politically correct version, we have a cross-sample representation of ethnicities and genders.

Why am I not surprised? But anyway, my son loves this game, but more importantly, he loves to WIN! We’ve been very careful to explain to him that the game is random and anyone can win at any time, to which he responds, “But you can’t win every day.”

The truth is however, that by hook or by crook, he seems to win more than anyone, but it’s never enough. Should you get up from the game to go stir the pot of soup, or to put the fallen baby back up in a sitting position, he will sneakily look through the stack of cards for either the “lollipop” or “ice cream” cards, which move one near the end of the game and close to winning.

Another of his tactics is to skip a color. So, if he pulls a card with one red square, he’ll move two; if the card says two red squares, he’ll move three. He’s very sneaky. We’ve tried to explain to him that this is cheating and I’m particularly careful to ensure that he follows the rules, but I will admit to “fixing” it on the rare occasion where we adults have consistently won a game or two just so he gets the satisfaction of winning. And of course, he loves it.

But he’s coming around to losing with grace. Generally, it involves him saying, “Ok, let’s play again and I guess I’m gonna win.”Now if we can only teach him how to be a graceful winner, rather than cackling like a crow who just found a new shiny object, we’ll be in business.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

It’s like a HEAT WAVE…oh yeah!

Have I mentioned lately that I’m ready for autumn weather? Well I am. Here’s why:

It’s the middle of August, which according to “averages” should be a wee-bit cooler than July here in Atlanta. Not so though! We are well above average AND in the middle of a drought. I enjoy summer, that is, until it turns perpetually 90 degrees-plus for weeks on end and then I’m just over it and ready to move on. But I love early summer when the plants I planted the year before burst out of the ground and we finally get some color. I love the first few trips to the pool or the first (and usually only) trip to the beach. All very well and good, but also very temporary.

About halfway through summer my mood always turns pessimistic. It’s not like I’m not getting enough Vitamin E, because I certainly am. So I started thinking about this mid-summer crisis and I came up with a few possible reasons for why I feel like I do:

  • It’s too hot to get out and DO anything. This means that I’m inevitably stuck inside the house, or other similarly A/C’d place and I can’t work off my energy.
  • Same for the kids. Even though they are at daycare all day, if they don’t get outside and exercise, they are little hurricanes when they come home at night. And this only leads to more “No, stop that!” and “Would you please stop talking for 5 minutes?” Generally, things that make you feel like a bad parent later when you stop and think about it.
  • Summer makes you do things you wouldn’t normally have to do, which takes time away from things you want to do. For instance, watering outdoor plants. When I have to do it, it takes me almost an hour and a half to do it. An hour and a half when you have children, is like an eternity of free time just down the tubes. And sure, watering is easy and it’s quiet, but you still sweat just standing there, so it’s not fun.
  • I also enjoy a nice walk after dinner to work off my compulsive eating disorder (it’s all in my head) and you can’t do that when it’s so hot.
  • It’s too hot to play golf or even hit balls…my one hobby
  • I’m tired of my summer wardrobe

And I think the weather people around here are co-conspirators in that they keep tweaking the long-range forecast. See, they start off by showing that it’s gonna be really hot for three days, then they show a cooling trend. But then if you look at it the next day, it shows the same thing, just advanced one day. And the same happens the next day and the next day. It’s like they know that people are looking to their long-range forecast for just a little ray of hope–something to look forward to–and they don’t want to ruin it by bald-faced admitting, “Yeah it’s gonna be 98 degrees for the foreseeable future. Sorry.”

Anyway, I’m taking off this Friday despite it still being 94 degrees, but that just forces me to stay home and start pulling off that wallpaper rather than going and playing golf 😦 But you watch, one of the children will probably end up getting sick and instead of having a productive day off, it’ll be Daddy Daycare with yours truly as the teacher, teacher’s assistant, cleaning crew and chef.

Really…I don’t ask for much…just some cool nights outside on my back porch listening to Audio Visions with a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon in my hand. Is that too much to ask? Is that so wrong?

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

The Harsh Realities of Life – Preparing Kids Early (Maybe Too Early)

Sometimes when you’re watching TV or a Disney movie, and there’s a really touching scene involving children and their parents—usually a culmination scene where a problem between the two parties is worked out—there is often a moment when the parent looks at the child (usually the father) and says, “Have I ever lied to you?” The child usually doesn’t respond because kids are smarter than we give them credit for and they have already rationalized, “I don’t know…have you?” but they know better than to say that out loud, so instead they externalize, “No daddy, you haven’t. I love you!” Then the music cues up, the credits roll and everyone lives happily ever after.

What a crock! Or, at least I hope so because if I’m being honest, I will never be able to utter that line to my oldest son. Does that make me a bad parent?

Let me explain:

If you have boys, then you know who Thomas the Tank Engine is. If you’re unfamiliar, he’s this lovable little blue train made up in the mind of one Reverand Awdry way back in the day. He made up the Thomas character for his sick son, but some marketing genius over in the U.K. figured out what a cool idea it was and it has now become a worldwide phenomenon. And to be sure, we’ve done our part at enlarging the influence of the franchise by purchasing at least $600 worth of Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise and associated tracks, a table, etc.

Every year, a full-sized Thomas train comes to Chattanooga, TN, about an hour and a half drive from here. The drive isn’t so bad really, it’s the time of year. It always comes in the summer and quite frankly, the last thing I want to do is spend three hours in a car with my kids, only to stand around in lines with five thousand other people to spend 20 whole minutes riding on a train. It just doesn’t hold appeal for me.

Instead, I took my son to a Thomas and Friends play this weekend at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Hall. At $27.50 a ticket, it was no deal, but I figured after skipping out on the real thing, it was worth it. The play was well done and there were three of his favorite trains in near-life size on the stage, so he had a lot of fun.

There was also a miniature train out in the lobby that you had to buy tickets for to ride. When we arrived, the line was too long to ride, so I told him we’d come out during intermission and ride it, only to discover that the owner of the said train didn’t want it to run during intermission. My son was pretty heartbroken; however, let me explain that just the day before, we had gone to Six Flags and he had ridden two trains, so personally, I didn’t see that this was a big deal.

Not one to miss much, my son said, “Well maybe after the show we can come ride it,” to which I simply responded with the non-committal parental catch-all, “Maybe.”

Our seats were situated in the balcony and I knew that by the time the show was over and we could get downstairs, every other like-minded parent would be ahead of us, so when the show was over, I rushed him downstairs before the train started up and said, “Oh look, the train isn’t running” and then I took him home.

That was bad…I know it was, but I didn’t want to stand in line for an hour to ride a train around in a circle no bigger than our living room….and he had just ridden a train the day before.

To his credit, he didn’t pitch a fit or anything. I was shocked and proud of him at the same time, because if there’s one thing I want my children to be prepared for in life…it’s disappointment. That’s kinda sick though isn’t it?

Hey, I never said I was a good parent.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Society

I’ve got an ice cream…and you can’t have one…

From the very same institution (or at least a branch of it) that brought us taxes and war, has come the longer school year. For the kids here in Georgia–and the metro Atlanta area to be more precise–this means that next week marks the beginning of yet another year of substandard education at the hands of underpaid mother-in-laws. It also, unfortunately, means that my commute to work next week may very well signal the end of time–Carmageddon if you will. Because this is when all those teachers, who are use to sleeping late and arising well past the “safe to gas up your car due to smog” time has passed, will once again grab their half-caf-espresso with a twist of lime and head out the door clogging up the already busy lanes.

Which brings me (finally) to today’s conversational topic-school. Georgia has never ranked very high in the national school rankings. In fact, in a recent 2007 ranking of public high schools in Newsweek magazine, good ol’ Georgia only had one entry in the top 300 in the nation. Now some will say “It’s just a southern thang,” but even that’s not accurate. In comparison, our border neighbors stacked up thusly in the top 300:

But statistics notwhithstanding, yuppy-snobs here like to brag about how smart their little whipper-snapper is compared to his or her peers. And it doesn’t just start in middle school or high school when the young Democrat starts taking liberal arts classes either. Nossir it starts much earlier.

Try Daycare! Oh yeah, daycare is all the rage too. Well first, you have to find the proper audience. Utter the sentence “My wife and I both work and we have our children in daycare,” in the wrong setting and at best you’ll get condescending looks, and at worst, people will go “Sixth Sense” (can you believe that movie is 8 years old?) on you and pretend like you don’t exist. But, in the right audience (i.e. dual income families with kids), if you utter the aforementioned death-cry, the ensuing “My daycare is better than your daycare” posturing can reach epic proportions.

And daycare is an interesting concept really, because unlike schools where children from generally one socio-economic area gather together and can revel in their similarities, daycare in a relative 10-square mile radius all cost the same and so the driving factor for what kinds of kids attend there is largely based on how convenient the facility is to one or both of the parent’s offices. So, you can, and often do, get kids of all economic levels, ethnicities, etc.

So it is at my kids’ daycare. My oldest son’s two best friends include a little girl a bit older than he, whose mom recently got divorced and now has to move away for a job she hates. His other best friend is a boy his age whose parents are very similar to us. We knew that he would soon be moving on to the next class in daycare because they’ve moved a bunch of new kids in his class and him and his buds are nearly the oldest ones there now. But what we found out yesterday is that instead of moving him to the next class, they are moving him and his friends to the next-next class. Hippity hoppity ho!

My three year old is already skipping “grades.” Well, not really but that’s how part of me wants to spin it to all my friends. In truth, the reason probably has less to do with intelligence and more to do with economics–the daycare needs to make some room in his current class and in the next class because they moved a bunch of other kids a couple of weeks ago, and since him and his two friends are well potty trained and probably the three best behaved, it makes sense that if you need to move some kids to a different, older class, then moving their little group makes sense.

Don’t get me wrong; my boy is smart, but I don’t think he’s a Mozart or an Einstein. And who wants their kid to be that smart, but socially inept anyway? Certainly not me. So, I’ll go on being proud of him for all the other reasons; he generally listens, he’s potty trained, he has a really gentle spirit, he loves his little brother and because in his eyes, daddy knows how to do just about anything.

Even if they wanted to put him in high school tomorrow and started calling him “Doogie Howser” I wouldn’t be any more proud of him than I already am.