Category Archives: Random Toy Box

Posts on the general topic of family.

A smile for yesterday

Every night, I read the big boy a bedtime story. This tradition dates back to the time even before there was a little brother, an era that seems ancient. It’s not so much the story that matters as it is Daddy sitting on his bed reading aloud to him.

Back in the day, he liked a particular Thomas the Tank Engine book called, Thomas and Percy and the Dragon. It’s a Beginning Readers book of about 20 pages that is not flattering to Percy’s reputation, but then Percy does have his issues.

I read this book nearly every night, to the point where I had the dozen words on every page memorized. In a misguided effort to illustrate that we were perhaps overusing this book, I began reciting the story to the boy while looking at everything in his bedroom except the book.

nighttime reading

Daddy is so well read – he can quote the classics from memory.

I turned the pages on cue and recited the appropriate text while staring into the boy’s face. This effort to prod him toward fresh literature completely backfired. Thomas & Friends were doing comedy now, and he loved it. “Look at the page!” he would demand. I would sneak a peek at the book and quickly turn my gaze back at him, eliciting a stream of giggles.

One day, someone gave us a big, hardcover book about animals. I started reading this at bedtime. There was lots of information to digest, so we fell to the rate of one page per night. Sometime between the hyenas and the sharks, his little brother was born.

When we finally finished with the animals, someone gave us a big book of facts. Some of the concepts were over his head, and I’m sure he never wondered why Secretariat was such a fast horse (he had a freakishly oversized heart), but it was our thing.

I hesitated to continue some nights. I wasn’t sure he needed to know about Shakespeare yet. I hadn’t learned to run screaming from that name until ninth grade. Probably he was too young to foresee the terrible psychological scars The Bard will inflict upon his teenage years, so he didn’t flinch.

Eventually, his little brother joined our story time. The little boy doesn’t care about racehorses or playwrights. He wants only to grab the book or wrestle somebody. He’s a distraction from our routine, but he’s also part of our world moving forward, as it should and must.

It took nearly two years to read through those two books full of amazing and soon-forgotten facts. Two nights ago, we closed the back cover.

Last night, at bedtime, the little boy was too busy arguing with his mother to join us. The big boy was waiting on his bed. Sitting beside him was that old, flimsy paperback, Thomas and Percy and the Dragon. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

I sat down and opened the book to the first page. I turned my face to the boy and began reciting.

He grinned as big as yesterday.

Some like it hot

My family is trying to kill me. For sure, the woman and the big boy are. The jury is still out on the little boy; he may not be part of their conspiracy. He might have his own game plan, in which I end up only bruised. I haven’t uncovered the full web of alliances yet.

We didn’t have a blazing hot summer, which may be the only reason I’m still alive. Otherwise, their plan to boil me in my own northern blood might have succeeded.

My wife and my eldest son get cold very easily. Mention November and they start shivering. They dress for a sleigh ride when we go to the grocery store. If I need a break from domestic life, I stand in the frozen foods aisle. Nobody can touch me there. It’s just me and the fish sticks in quiet contemplation.

I’m not a hot weather person. My sun screen bottle says SPF 5×1014. At 78˚F, I sweat from the head like Frosty the Snowman when he got locked in the greenhouse by that magician dude. The Washington Redskins could completely diffuse their whole name controversy if they would only replace their logo with one of me sitting by the pool.

Everyone loves a snowman

Granddad had a way with women. Maybe it was the uniform.

I suspect that my younger son is more like me, but he is still too young and inarticulate to help me. I always get outnumbered, two to one, with the little boy holding his own counsel or voting in a foreign language.

My death by spontaneous combustion/melting will occur in one of two places. In the car, my wife is always surreptitiously turning off the A/C. She thinks I won’t notice the cabin temperature spike to 110. Rather than fight over the controls, I usually roll down my window. This will not necessarily make me comfortable, but it may keep me alive for up to three minutes. Three minutes is as long as the boy in the back can be expected to refrain from kicking a wounded man with “Daddy, can you roll up your window? I’m cold.”

weapon number 1

The moment I look away, this dial will be turned all the way into the red.

Every return from a car trip is a victory, but then I’ve still got to make it through the night. One Christmas, I bought my wife a heated mattress cover. I thought it would ease her January chills. I never imagined she’d use it in July. She only turns on her half of the bed, but my side is still connected. I should be happy. It’s rare that someone shows that much appreciation for a gift. I’m sure she’ll mention in the eulogy that I was always a thoughtful gift-giver.

High!

On the mattress pad controller, H stands for “He’s about to melt in his own bed.”

My only potential ally in this war of temperatures is the little boy. I think he finds it in his interests to save me. He likes to throw stuff. His velocity is good but his accuracy is suspect. To help his confidence, he needs a big target. Without me, he’d frustrate himself aiming for one of the smaller people moving around the house.

Kindergarten’s first hard lesson: It’s a morning people’s world

I’m waiting for the Kindergarten grind to catch up to my son.

His preschool was only three hours in the afternoon. Kindergarten runs all day. Like his old man, he’s more inclined toward being a night owl than a morning person. We’ll see where that gets him after a few months of having to get up early every day.

We worked on adjusting his sleep schedule in the buildup to school, but there’s nothing like the real thing to make it hit home. So far, after a week of school, he still must be forced to go to bed at a reasonable hour. He gets up in the morning without too much fuss, though it’s clear he’s not happy about it. Welcome to my world, kid.

There have been no reports of him nodding off in school, which makes him a better man than I was at that age. When I was in Kindergarten, I came home at noon. That, and the modern curriculum, makes his current situation more comparable to my first grade experience.

In first grade, my day went like this: get up at 4 a.m. for a quick bowl of Cream of Wheat before going to milk cows; get to school 15-30 minutes late, smelling as little like the barn as possible; chocolate milk and a cookie at 10; fit some learning in before noon; peanut butter sandwich and random Hostess product for lunch; sleep at desk until awakened for bus ride home.

Sleeping school

Where was this school when I needed it? I could have been first in my class.

I’m not sure what my class did in the afternoons as I was rarely with them in consciousness. I don’t remember falling behind, so maybe it was just a recap of the morning’s work. For all I know, it was free play all afternoon, or maybe the teacher led them in games of Let’s Shoot Spit Wads at the Sleepy Farm Kid. I was blissfully ignorant of the goings on around me, which makes me pine for the days when I could put my head down and fall asleep at my desk. The work day would go so much smoother if I could still sleep in that position.

Desk sleeping

“Arrgh! How do they expect me to sleep at such an uncomfortable desk?” (Image: Bayard Taylor)

By the second grade, I was staying awake all day. I’m not sure how that happened. It seems impossible that I could go to bed even earlier than I did in first grade. Maybe I matured, or maybe the second grade teacher made a habit of kicking my chair in the afternoons. It could be that the specter of cursive writing made it too hard to relax.

With all the stuff they throw at little kids in school these days, I doubt it’s a good idea to take the afternoons off anymore. If Kindergarten does start to wear my son down, we still have room to adjust his bed time. That should help him get through the day, but I don’t think he’ll like the idea at night. Hopefully, he’ll be too tired to raise a stink.

Top academic priority: study the playground

My son’s new school is about a mile away from our house. His new school is the one in which he will attend Kindergarten. He calls it his new school to differentiate it from his preschool, which was his old school.

He likes to visit his new school. There is a big playground alongside and I guess he wants to familiarize himself with all the equipment, to give himself a jump on his classmates in September. It’s important to know which is the best slide in those pivotal moments when the other children are making a confused rush toward the playground. Otherwise, you could have to wait your turn or something.

Climbing the ladder

A school is only as good as its playground.

Yesterday, I was home with the boys. As a special treat, I loaded them both into their wagon and started pulling them over the long trail toward the new school. It wasn’t very hot outside, if you weren’t pulling two kids in a wagon. The unencumbered pedestrians we saw looked rather comfortable. But comfortable is a relative term for a beast of burden.

Halfway there, I realized that I hadn’t brought the little guy’s diaper bag. We had already climbed one of the two big hills along the way and I was damned if I were going to backtrack for a diaper. Diapers are subject to arcane rules of chance, mandating that if you go out of your way to have one with you, you will certainly not need it.

I discussed it with Toddler Boy and we agreed to roll the dice and keep going. Mr. Kindergartener concurred, though his vote was merely ceremonial.

At the school playground, the boys exited the wagon. I had earned a moment of relaxation, but what a parent earns and what he collects are different quantities. A four-year-old can run surprisingly fast when aimed at a slide-sprouting sculpture of yellow metal.

Where's the best slide?

Practicing racing the other children to the best slide.

A one-year-old can be stopped in his tracks by an interesting array of wood chips, a used straw, an unfortunate bug, or really any number of common things seen under the new light of the playground.

Examining mulch

A piece of mulch unlike any other.

It is no time for relaxing when one must herd the cheetah and the sloth into the same swath of savannah.

Our play time was limited. Building clouds made a storm appear imminent, and a toddler always makes a storm imminent when he lacks fresh diapers.

As I built up a nice froth pulling the boys home, my son said, “Daddy, I’m not sure I want to go to Kindergarten.”

This was unusual. He’s been excited about it so far. “Why not?” I asked.

“I don’t know if I want to follow all their rules.”

This is a boy after my own heart. Many times I have contemplated calling my supervisor: “I won’t be in today because I don’t think I want to follow your rules. You’ll see me when I’ve developed a better attitude.”

I couldn’t argue against his point, so we went home.

Elementary school

The dismal house of rules just beyond the playground.

My wife got home soon after. “Guess what we did?” my son asked her. “We walked to my new school.”

We did?

I let it go. Mom was home now, so I could grab a few minutes to myself to relax. I did what I normally do with these precious moments. I went outside and mowed the lawn.