Category Archives: Outings and (Mis)Adventures

Where thumbs go to die

Every first Saturday of the month, we pack up our complimentary, kiddie aprons and head off to the Home Depot kids’ workshop to build something.

This event provides a great opportunity for kids to learn how to use tools and for parents to go insane.

Okay, that’s hyperbole. Many parents at the workshop don’t go insane. Mostly, it’s only me. And even I’m okay, if we can bring as many parents as kids.

The problem arises when my wife can’t go, and I’m in charge of two little master builders with hammers. The projects always require hammers.

My boys are aged five and one. Five-year-olds are awkward with hammers. One-year-olds feel right at home with hammers, which is the more terrifying relationship.

hammer time

Let’s hammer some decals onto this airplane!

The projects are easy, and I can manage going back and forth between the boys. Right up until the kits require me to use one of those quarter-inch (6mm) wire nails. It’s hard to start such a nail, on account of it not reaching up past my fingers as I hold it in place. Also, I have to look around the corners of my seeing-things-far-away glasses to spy this little, close-up item hidden somewhere between my thumb and index finger.

This is when things, except my blood pressure, slow down. I’m helping the big boy pound a nail, using only my sense of touch, while the little boy builds his list of other things that can be hit with a hammer. Since my eyes are useless to the project at the moment, they are reassigned to standing guard over my kneecaps.

I’ve finally got my nail in the right spot with my thumb positioned to absorb no more than 60% of the tap, when: BANG!, the little boy brings down his hammer with both arms onto the plywood bench we’re hunched over. The piece I’m working on jumps, and it’s back to square one.

I eventually get the big boy’s nails started for him. He’s pounding away on them, and anything else within a six-inch radius. Time to help the little boy with his nails, which I have to hammer while walking, because his hammer was the only thing keeping him interested. Now that I have it, he’s going shopping, and I’m chasing him down – with a hammer in my hand. Nothing to see here.

Somehow, we get both boys’ projects assembled. That means it’s time to double down on adventure with . . . PAINT! I wear a Home Depot kiddie apron with my name on it, just like the boys. The lady in charge laughs at me every time I squeeze the neck strap over my head, but I’ve learned my lesson.

Paint!

Who wants to get painted first?

We get our money’s worth out of that paint. We paint clothes, the workbench, nearby portions of Home Depot, and sometimes we even get a little color splashed onto our projects. The latter is always a bonus, because then we can take wet paint with us in the car.

When we’re done, the boys get pins for their aprons to signify completion of the project. I don’t get a pin, but each time I walk out of there with two thumbs, I’m happy.

trojan horse

Stickers instead of paint? This could be a major breakthrough in stain prevention.

You can compete for a gold medal as soon as family time is over

I made some predictions in a recent post. Prediction #1: My son and I would attempt to catch some Olympic cross-country skiing on TV. Prediction #2: Those races might inspire us to hit the trails together. Prediction #3: This would cause me to transfer the burden of my unfulfilled dreams of Olympic glory onto his shoulders, in an attempt to live vicariously through him, as fathers of my ilk are wont to do.

Skiing with Calvin

And after he won his gold medals, he’d be invited to the white house to meet the President and First Lady.

Skipping primetime coverage of the elegant and glamorous sports, we were able to catch some fleeting moments of our favorite gritty, ugly sports during the afternoon, better-than-dead-air, filler broadcasts. We enjoyed truncated depictions of random cross-country races. We even caught a biathlon event. We may have been the only two Americans who enjoyed it. I understand; biathlon is too slow for this country. Had it been developed here, it would be done on downhill skis, and with a machine gun. And I’d kind of like to watch that too (but not in person).

My prediction #1: CORRECT

Having ferreted out our favorite Olympic sports and taken inspiration from them, we went to the park to emulate the Olympians. We didn’t attempt biathlon practice, not because it wouldn’t have been fun for us and exciting for the other park patrons; rather, neither of us wanted to go chasing after the Nerf bullets.

My prediction #2: CORRECT

Boys playing in the park

Nothing livens up a Saturday afternoon in the park like seeing the boys at their biathlon practice. (Image: Bain News Service)

Though my son seems to like skiing, it takes more practice, and can become more frustrating than sports like, oh, say, sledding. Knowing this, I chose a park with a sledding hill and snuck a plastic sled into the trunk, just in case.

For a five-year-old, skiing means concentration, hard work, and falling down, especially when your dad needs to replace the short skis and poles you got when you were three. For a dad, skiing with a five-year-old means a lot of standing around, issuing encouragement, and getting cold. Together, we got through those frustrations.

Then, the great moment happened. The boy found his groove. It takes him time to get going because we don’t practice enough. But when he gets going, he has fun, and I get excited for him.

“You’re going so fast!” I told him. “I wish Mommy were here to see this!”

“Me too,” he replied. “It’s too bad she won’t go outside in winter.”

Too bad indeed, she doesn’t know what she’s missing.

At that point, things went off plan. I was supposed to envision him skiing across the finish line in the 2030 Olympics. I didn’t. Instead, I had visions of him skiing with me as an eight-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 16-year old, getting bigger and stronger, making me struggle to keep up. Along the way, his little brother joined us, then his other, soon-to-be little brother.

Mommy wouldn’t come out of the house. Even dreams have limits.

We went all the way around a big loop, the four of us, growing up the whole way. My old Olympic dream faded, replaced by a better one.

Then, we came to the sled hill. It was just me and my five-year-old again. We got our sled and put some icing on that cake.

My prediction #3: WRONG. So wonderfully WRONG.

We don’t need no stinking scarves; we’ve got fun to keep us warm

We’ve had old-school winter weather lately. It’s makes me nostalgic for Seals and Crofts music because it’s just like the ’70s again. Though I don’t hate snow, I don’t have the same high regard for it as I did when I was nine.

My boys love snow; that’s why I can’t dislike it. Shoveling is a pain, especially the re-shoveling after the snow plow has tossed all the street snow into my driveway. But I have two willing helpers, to the extent that they understand the goal of shoveling the driveway, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. There’s plenty else to sneeze at this time of year.

We got more than a foot of snow one day, followed by near-zero daytime temps, which is always a nice cherry on top of your winter woes. I no sooner got out my long underwear than my boys saw their chance to play in the snow. Thus began the ordeal.

The ordeal, if you don’t know the combination of snow and children, is the combination of snow and children. Finding all the pieces of snow attire, collecting them in one place, and getting them around the various edges of a child, is no mean feat. The last part of this circus should be performed with the child sedated, for if the child is conscious, the complaints will be incessant.

In the house, children rightfully complain about being restrained by the overburden of garments and the lack of suitable ingress for oxygen through the holes in their faces. They loathe breathing through scarves and similar impediments:

BOY: “Daddy, I can’t breathe!”

DAD: “You can breathe just fine.”

BOY: “No. I really can’t.”

DAD: “People who can’t breathe are too busy choking to complain.”

BOY: “No they’re not. They always say ‘I can’t breathe!’”

Two-foot drifts waited to be removed from the driveway, but we spent 15 minutes arguing about the habits of highly suffocated people.

His face soon extricated itself from the scarf, at which point he rightfully began to complain about his cold nose. I had no answers for him.

fort building

His nose may be a little cold, but at least he’s breathing again.

By now, Mommy had the little boy bubble wrapped in insulation. He joined us outside and immediately shed his mittens. Three trips back into the house later, he learned that keeping mittens on was prerequisite to staying outside.

Big Brother had given up clearing the concrete and was making a path to his fort beneath the pine tree by moving the excess snow into the driveway. He’d quit complaining; the idea of a fort always warms a kid’s soul.

going to the snow fort

Welcome to my fort. No mittens – no service.

Next, it was time to slide down the snowbanks I’d made with cast-off snow, bringing avalanches flowing back down into the driveway. Then we went back inside to leave a trail of snowy clothes through the house as we boys must do. It helps make it challenging to find all our gear next time, and that’s an integral part of the ordeal.

snowbank slide

There are lots of fun ways to get all this snow back into the driveway.

Later, I snuck out alone to shovel the driveway.

shoveling

Finally made it to the end of the driveway. Now who’s gonna shovel the street?

A child of the world

About a year ago, I wrote about taking the family to an international festival. This was the event where I won happiness by transferring M&Ms between dishes with chop sticks.

At this festival, two Indonesian ladies showed us a traditional marble game called Congkak. They skillfully moved the marbles between wells cut into a wooden tray as I futilely attempted to follow the strategy. It seemed like a fine game, but it involved more thinking than I like to do at my age. My wife was rather taken with it. She continued to watch the women play as I wandered off to enjoy my first taste of Gangnam Style on a large screen Samsung at the South Korean exhibit.

Later in the day, we noticed people at the Malaysian exhibit playing their own version of the game. This redoubled my wife’s interest. I had to agree that if the populations of two countries so culturally distant, and separated by so many thousands of miles, as Indonesia and Malaysia both enjoyed this game, it must be an exceptional entertainment. Having contributed my requisite wise crack on the subject, I forget all about Congkak in the accompanying flash of euphoric smugness.

Congkak board

A traditional Congkak board – not available at Target. (Image: Tropenmuseum)

My wife did not. A year later, she found something that looked like it at Target. It has a different name, so we can’t tell if it is indeed the same game, but the picture on the box shows marbles on a wooden tray, and that’s good enough. She put the game into the cart, declaring that one of the boys would give it to her for her upcoming birthday.

Can't go wrong with wood and marbles

A game that is available at Target, which we bought on the strength of its wood and marbles.

That night, our son found the game on the kitchen counter, where all things we buy that don’t have a preordained spot in the fridge or the pantry sit until we figure out what to do with them. The marbles in the picture must have reminded him of Chinese Checkers. “Is this a Chinese game?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “I think it’s Indonesian or Malaysian.”

“Can I play it?”

“It belongs to Mommy. You’ll have to ask her. But I think it’s for her birthday, so she probably won’t open it until then.”

He thought for a minute, then put together a statement constituting a powerful argument for letting him play. “Well, I’m Indolaysian.”

“You are? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. Just a little bit. But it’s mixed in with the German and Polish and American and all the other stuff, so it’s hard to see.”

“Oh. Well, even so, you’d better go ask Mommy.”

He let it drop. If his lineage bombshell didn’t move me, it sure wasn’t going to do anything for Mommy.

Now, whenever I take a good look at my boy, I try to pick out the Indolaysian traits. He’s right though. The Indolaysian is mixed in seamlessly with the German and Polish and American, and especially all that other stuff. I can hardly pick it out at all.