Author Archives: snoozing on the sofa

Big Brother and [TOP SECRECT – Name Redacted] up in a tree, K. I. S. S. I. N. G.

Young love is fickle. So is the willingness to discuss it with parents.

Our six-year-old has swapped out the girl he liked for a new love interest regularly since the dawn of kindergarten. He’s a young man on the move, and a girl has to stay on her toes to keep his interest for long. Also, she has to not make it obvious that she likes a bunch of other boys better.  That’s a deal breaker. He’s very particular about having a “girlfriend” that likes him back. He has to be, at the very least, the boy she likes second best.

Way back in those callow days of kindergarten, the boy was shy about naming the girl he liked. He must have thought he had one of those mean dads who would tease him about liking girls and warn him that school was a place for learning, not for smooching. Of course, I’m not like that. I would never do that for very long. It stops being fun after a while.

Smooching

This is exactly the type of behavior I’m talking about –  I mean, it would be, if I were one of those dads who teased about smooching.

After some time, he shook off his shyness with talking about girls he liked. Once he discovered that he had a nice dad who wouldn’t tease him very much, it got kind of cool to have somebody with whom to talk about girls – somebody who’s already married and out of elementary school and everything.

Now, the pendulum seems to have swung back the other way again. But now his reticence is not rooted in embarrassment; it’s about his right, as a mature young man, to withhold information from his parents.

It’s been a while since he’s talked about liking any particular girl, but the other day the topic of girls came up in conversation. My wife and I quizzed him about all the girls he used to like. None of them were on top of the list anymore.

Was there a particular girl that he liked now?

“I’m not gonna tell you,” was his reply.

“Why not?” asked his mother.

“Because that’s my Policy Privacy.”

“Do you mean Privacy Policy?” I asked.

“Nope. It’s my Policy Privacy.”

“What’s that mean?” my wife asked him.

“That means I don’t have to talk about it.”

Fair enough. You have the right to clam up about it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t throw girls’ names at you until one of them makes you grin. We have our methods. And you may have Policy Privacy, but you sure as hell don’t have a poker face.

Heaven is boring

On Friday morning, I got to get up and go to work. Doesn’t sound like much of a treat, does it?

It was a delight.

It wasn’t so pleasant because of what it was; it was pleasant for what it wasn’t.

It’s wasn’t getting three kids ready for school. Only Big Brother actually goes to school, but since society might frown on my leaving Buster and New Baby home alone, they all have to get ready to roll.

This is how my morning went, Monday through Thursday:

  • Drag Big Brother out of bed by his ankles while he complains about being too tired.
  • Two fresh diapers and one “Put on some pants or you’re going to school in your underwear.”
  • Distinguish big baby clothes from small toddler clothes.
  • Find pairs of nearly matching socks for three boys of different sizes from our box of random floating socks.
  • Make the boys breakfast while New Baby attempts to climb up my leg.
  • Yell, “Leave him alone and eat your breakfast!”
  • Yell, “Leave him alone and eat your breakfast!” another dozen times.
  • Be caught off guard because it’s Bring [Specific Object] to School Day and we don’t have [Specific Object].
  • Find as many hats and winter coats as children, or as close to it as possible.
winter socks

“I can’t find my boots.”

  • “Put your shoes on.”
  • “Well, where are they?”
  • “Then go get them and put them on!”
  • Back the car out of the garage so door will open wide enough for New Baby’s carrier.
  • Come back inside for New Baby. Leave muddy tracks in kitchen. Look at clock. Shrug. Make mental note to prepare for after-work slovenliness scolding.
Put the shoe on the other foot

Getting ready, one wrong foot at a time.

  • Field ridiculously detailed questions about German army helmets on drive to school. “I don’t know,” is not an acceptable answer.
  • Carry Big Brother’s school bag into school for him because his hands are cold.
  • Ask him where his gloves are.
  • Be informed that his gloves are at the bottom of the bag you are carrying for him.
  • Take three children into school; leave one there; take two back to car.
  • Drive to Mommy’s work. Drop children off. Debate confessing about muddy kitchen floor. Decide silence is golden.
  • Drive to work. Find last parking spot on roof of structure or move on to more distant ramp with long, cold walk.
  • Rush to catch up on work.
  • Stay late to compensate for late arrival.

On Friday, my morning went like this:

  • Wake up, get dressed, go to work.
  • Park in usual, convenient spot. Have a hot bowl of oatmeal at desk and ease into workload.

A little slice of Heaven, Friday morning.

It makes me appreciate my boring routine. I think I like boring.

It makes me appreciate my wife. This week was an aberration. She dances this Morning Tango with the boys most days. She does it better, and she doesn’t get the floor dirty. I might not notice if she did, but I know she doesn’t. It’s not her style. It’s gold to me that she takes such tumult in stride, so her husband can stay happily boring.

"Dont play ball in the house!"

It we’re not running too late, we like to fit in a “Don’t play ball in the house!” before school.

 

So you want to build a Mega Bloks helicopter with your kids: FAQ

Q. What are Mega Bloks Call of Duty sets?

A. Mega Bloks, if you are not steeped in the world of expensive plastic squares, are a competitor to LEGO. Call of Duty is the paramilitary wing of Mega Bloks.

Q. What’s the difference between Mega Bloks and LEGOs?

A. Mega Bloks are cheaper than LEGOs in proportion to how much harder their instructions are to follow.

Q. Is there anything else people should know about Mega Bloks?

A. Yes. Although the pieces are segregated into about a dozen different plastic bags, in order to complete Step 1 of construction, you will need exactly one piece from each of the dozen bags, necessitating that you dump all 324,943 pieces out into one omnibus pile.

Q. What is the best time to build a Mega Bloks Call of Duty helicopter?

A. When Daddy is home alone with a six-year-old, a two-year-old, and an eight-month old. Preferably late afternoon of a frigid day when you have been cooped up in the house for hours together already.

Q. Where is the best place to build your set?

A. The dining room table. No other surface will hold the 324,943 pieces.

Q. Isn’t it too close to dinner to spread that all out over the dining room table?

A. Work fast or eat on the floor.

chopper from hell

As with all of our greatest family accomplishments, this one was built on the placemat of US Presidents.

Q. Why can’t Big Brother (6) build this set by himself?

A. He could have, if Daddy had been smart enough to shell out the extra cash for LEGOs, with their at least partially-discernable instructions.

Q. What did Big Brother do to help?

A. Big Brother snapped together pieces at random so that whenever Daddy looked for a specific piece it was sure to be cleverly disguised within some abstract sculpture.

Q. What did Buster (2) do to help?

A. Buster loaded some crucial pieces into the back of his toy truck and quietly drove them to a different room.

Q. What did New Baby (<1) do to help?

A. New Baby crawled around the perimeter of the table, patrolling for any fallen pieces that might look good to eat. He also sneaked away at one point to the kitchen where he pulled a used bag of microwave popcorn from the garbage, spilling unpopped kernels all over the floor. These also looked good to eat, which provided Daddy with a nice break from his work as he sprinted from the dining room to the kitchen. You shouldn’t sit in one place for too long.

Q. Did the children do anything else helpful?

A. Lots. Big Brother and Buster got into a fight every 10 minutes over the helicopter pilots and their tiny guns and equipment so that Daddy could have something to break up the monotony of searching for missing pieces.

Q. Is Daddy supposed to yell so much when playing with the kids?

A. Everyone has a different method of family fun.

Q. Will this become a regular activity?

A. Only after Daddy has died and gone to Hell.

Einstein didn’t have to poop on the potty!

Buster is adept at many skills for a two-year-old. He holds a pencil like a pro and draws abstract art as if preparing for his gallery opening. He makes up his own songs to serenade his Mommy at bedtime. He knows his way around an iPad better than I do and makes that little guy leap over the stampeding bulls in his favorite game with dexterity to make my head spin.

Helping with the baby

Teaching Daddy how to manage those tricky snaps on the baby’s Onesie.

Yet there are some toddler skills that Buster is not ahead of the curve on. It would be one thing if he didn’t have the capacity to do certain things, but he does. It’s more of a defiance issue, although even that doesn’t truly capture the spirit of it. It’s defiance mixed with indifference.

Buster thinks he’s pretty smart. I don’t know if he styles himself a genius, but his affinity for playing jokes can only lead to the conclusion that he believes he’s pretty clever. And a clever boy shouldn’t be asked to learn things he sees little use for in the rest of his life.

Just as an older child might ask about the long-term utility of Algebra, I hear, in Buster’s spirited remonstrations, the philosophical query: “When will I ever use big boy underpants in real life?” Such garments hold no candle to the convenience of the diaper.

“Einstein didn’t have to poop on the potty!” He doesn’t know anything about Einstein, and he doesn’t say this literally, but I can see in his eyes the formation of an idealized, toddler image of genius. His aggravated eyes tell me that the child genius would never waste his time on something so trivial.

Theory of potty relativity

“Everything is relative, my dear. Poop wherever you like!”

“Galileo didn’t pronounce K, F, or S sounds!” I bet he did, though this is not really about Galileo. It’s about a toddler whose opinion of his own world view dismisses the need to do inconvenient things.

Pope Urban's bad boy

Galileo Galilei: also too clever for his own good. The inquisition was not amused by his jokes.

It’s easy to replace the unnecessary consonants in words with the ever useful D and T. Mommy and Daddy understand the words formed by these substitutions, and since they are the only people he will ever need ask for a bowl of Lipton Noodle Doup, there’s no point in wasting effort on the unnecessary.

Buster can make the S sound. I know, because I’ve hounded him into doing it. He just doesn’t see the need. It is, after all, marginally more difficult for his tongue than making the D sound, so why bother?

Because Daddy is a trouble maker. One day, daddy wouldn’t make him any doup until he made the S sound.

“If you want soup, say ssssssss,” Daddy demanded.

Buster held out as long as he could, but he really wanted that soup.

Finally, he relented. “Sssssss,” he said.

“Now, say sssssoup,” the heartless Daddy persisted.

Buster sighed. “Ssssss . . . doup.”

That was close enough. Buster got his soup. And the last laugh.

Clever boy.