Tag Archives: children

I can tell you are a Superstar from your healthy snacks

This is a big week in our son’s life. He is Superstar of the Week at his preschool. This is a major honor that can only be achieved through hard work, diligence, and having your name drawn out of a hat. All of the children have a turn, but this does not diminish the honor. When it’s your week, you are the only one who is Superstar of the Week.

The boy’s parents are not Superstars when it comes to thoroughly reading the information sheets he brings home from school. Instead, we rely upon him to keep us informed. This is ironic, as he seems to believe that his parents do more than skim the paperwork for the gist of it. He doesn’t like to waste our time supplying redundant details.

This resulted in a Sunday night trip to the store for materials, when we finally figured out that Superstars usually make a poster of family pictures to display during their week. The evening was a frantic blur of scissors and glue. Daddy ran security to keep the baby away from the project, on the construction of which, he so badly wanted to help.

I was the at-home parent on Monday of Superstar Week. When my son got up in the morning he asked if he needed a bath. Since his mother hadn’t left orders to give him a bath, I told him he didn’t need to take one.

“Yes, I do,”  he replied. I froze in place. Before I could demand of this alien imposter what he had done with my real son, he explained. “I can’t be dirty if I’m gonna be the Superstar.” So, Superstars take baths voluntarily? This is the most important thing to know about the Superstar of the Week. I went back and checked; it wasn’t mentioned in the handout.

The Superstar is privileged to bring to school a healthy snack to share on Friday. We will have to ask for some advice on this matter. When I was a kid, healthy and snack never appeared in the same sentence. If anybody had ever dreamt of such a combination, it would only have been to remind the provider to steer clear of the lead chips this time.

During my childhood, we ate wholesome snacks. These were foods that gave us the energy and the blood pressure to stand up for the American Way. Ho-Hos and whole milk defeated communism. Could carrot strips and V-8 juice have accomplished that?

Sugar and salt, the cornerstones of my youthful nutrition pyramid, seem to be out of favor today. Maybe my wife knows of a magical food item that fits into that narrow intersection of healthy and delicious to preschool children. If not, we’ll do what we usually do: bring it up in casual conversation with some up-to-date preschool parents and steal their ideas without letting them know how clueless we are.

Being Superstar of the Week brings glory, but also grave responsibility. You have to be clean, and you have to nudge your parents into the modern age. It’s not all fun and games, you know.

walking to school

Heading off to the first day of school in the fall. Who would have guessed that the experience would turn him into a Superstar?

 

 

Can a baby get some credit?

Every time the baby goes to the doctor, they ask about milestones. These are things he should be doing at certain ages. It went from making eye contact to sitting up to rolling over to crawling. Recently, we have met and passed the pulling himself up to stand milestone.

Tracking these standard milestones is fine, but it’s disappointing that the doctor doesn’t seem to care about the entertaining stuff our baby is doing. Our baby has passed a lot of other milestones too.

The High five milestone

Our baby is quite advanced in his high five skills. Maybe a lot of 10-month-olds can give a high five when prompted, but our child initiates the high five. He holds up an open hand and gives you that look that says, “Daddy Dog, can a baby get some skin?”

He is satisfied with all the high fives he gets in response. But if you make a “chit” noise with your mouth, to exaggerate the sound of two palms striking each other, he will reward you with a lovely smile and probably make you one of his regular high five buddies.

For a while, he even experimented with the fist bump, to which the proper sound effect was a tongue click. In the end, he found this activity overly pretentious and less sincere than the high five.

The Don’t go to any trouble; I can serve myself milestone

This is a milestone that all breastfed babies probably achieve. It’s odd that the doctor never asks about it because it is a good measure of ingenuity and coordination. Our baby met this milestone some time ago, but it seems like he keeps getting more nimble and insistent.

Babies learn to know where their bread is buttered. Though they may be eating other foods, there is still nothing like a fresh brewed pot of milk. Our baby has perfected the art of grabbing hold of one of nature’s milk jugs with both hands, while turning himself sideways across his mother and diving directly at the spigot. The turning maneuver he can accomplish without using his arms. This lets him keep his eyes, and his hands, on the prize.

The I understand that something nasty just went down inside my diaper milestone

This is another universal milestone that doctors should ask about, but don’t. It shows the development of awareness and an appreciation for social awkwardness. Younger babies can do all sorts of mischief inside their diapers without batting an eye. That bubbling cauldron of goo is no concern of theirs.

You know your baby is developing some self-awareness when a bottom-side blowout makes him freeze in place and stare at you with wide eyes, even before his big brother yells out, “Daddy, the baby just ripped a hole in his diaper!” The baby knows he’s absolutely tearing it up. What he doesn’t yet know is whether he should be proud or ashamed of it. Hence, the wide, questioning eyes.

Don’t worry, baby. In a year or two, your brother will have taught you that the sound your butt just made is the most hilarious noise in the world. There is nothing to do but laugh, and try to blame it on him.

wide eyed baby

“Oh my! Did somebody order a diaper shredder?”

Three solid hours of non-refundable simulated deafness

We were ready to watch our first Monster Trucks show. My son and his friend had their Monster Truck flags, which indicates that they had not succeeded in poking out any eyes with the flag sticks during the pit party. They had their industrial-grade earmuffs, and my wife and I had our ear plugs ready.

On the arena floor were two rows of junk cars just waiting to be crushed to bits. The Monster Trucks were scattered around the outside of the floor area. We anticipated a fun-packed circus of mechanization and noise.

kids looking at monster truck

This truck can totally crush a whole row of cars. It can do it all . . . night . . . long.

The announcer introduced the drivers. The names floated past us into oblivion. The drivers put on their helmets and got into the their trucks, assuming their true identities (e.g. the guy driving the black truck).

The boys put their ear protection into place, which instantly turned them talkative. You’ve never heard a more confused conversation than one between two preschoolers wearing earmuffs:

FRIEND: “The red truck is starting up.”

SON: “Huh?”

FRIEND: “The red truck is starting.”

SON: “Huh? Oh look, the red truck is going.”

FRIEND: “Huh?”

Seeing me put in my ear plugs inspired my son to attempt a conversation with me, an activity fraught with miscommunication under ideal acoustic conditions. Realizing that I couldn’t hear him, he helpfully lifted a muff from one of his ears every time he spoke.

I tried to preserve my son’s hearing by discouraging him from talking. I turned my attention to the spectacle below. This was when I realized that I’m not really a Monster Truck kind of guy. Yes, it was cool, the first time the trucks ran over the cars, but they just kept running over them again and again. I believe this is where the phrase beating a dead horse originated, back during the old Monster Stage Coach exhibitions.

two moster trucks crushing cars

Looks pretty cool, right? It was pretty cool, until about the 20th time over the cars. I didn’t take a picture of the 20th time, or any of the times thereafter.

Finally, after the cars were crushed flat, the announcer declared, “Well, the time has come . . .” I reached for my coat. “. . . for intermission.” Intermission? You mean we’ve got to wait half an hour until they decide to start driving over a road of flattened metal again? “That’s right, it’s intermission time!” the announcer replied to my thoughts.

The second half of the show was amazing, for those who can’t get enough repetitive truck driving. The boys were fidgety. They were losing interest, but they didn’t want to go, because at that age it’s easy to get trapped in that gray area between boredom and not wanting to miss anything. One of the trucks shot sparks, leaving the boys hoping for a full-blown fireball. It seems almost cruel that none of the trucks exploded.

The show finally ended when the grand champion’s truck started leaking some crucial fluid. It wasn’t exactly a heart-stopping finale, but all the smoke rising from the engine made it almost like the fire the boys had been awaiting.

My wife had the boys’ coats on, earmuffs put away, and was leading them out of the arena in about 15 seconds. Apparently, she’s not a Monster Truck kind of gal.

Monster Trucks: Every bit as good as a sharp stick in the eye

We took our four-year-old and his friend to see a Monster Trucks show at the local sports arena. I had never been to such an event and did not know what to expect. All I could reasonably be sure of was that the boys would enjoy themselves at a show featuring big trucks with big tires crushing stuff.

Before the show there was a pit party. Everyone got to get a close-up look at the trucks and meet the drivers. The first thing the boys noticed when we got there was that some other children had Monster Truck flags for the drivers to autograph. Well, if people we’d never heard of before, and would never see again, were signing other kids’ flags, then we needed flags for signing too.

boys visit big chicken

I’m not sure what a giant chicken is doing at a Monster Trucks show, but those huge eyes of his must present a tempting target for a couple of kids with sticks.

The flags hadn’t looked like such a liability for other parents, but as soon we handed over the money for them, we realized what a bad idea they were. Give a kid a flag at the end of a stick and he is overcome by the need to wave it recklessly. Correction: Give a kid anything at the end of a stick and he is overcome by the need to wave it recklessly. Correction: Give a kid a stick and he is overcome by the need to wave it recklessly.

It was a crowded arena, and many times I had to deflect one of our jubilant flag sticks from the vulnerable parts of strangers. But the kids needed the flags to collect autographs and that is exactly what they did, until they had each collected one autograph. You had to wait in line to get an autograph, and waiting in line is not nearly as fun as running off and waving your flags in each other’s faces.

waving flag into camera

It’s always fun until some camera loses a lens.

For the one autograph they did get, my wife held our places in line while I refereed their flag fight. I’d hoped this might get it out of their systems, but they were still in a waving frenzy as we rejoined the line. We needed to have a man to man to man talk about flag safety before somebody got hurt, and somebody got sued.

I knelt down and made them pay attention. “Listen, if you put out somebody’s eye, I don’t know you,” I told them. “When they ask you who brought you here, you go point out somebody at the other end of the arena so I have time to get back to the car. Got it?”

A minute later, they got their first and only autograph from a very nice man whom I could not now pick out of a police lineup to save my life. He has a very snazzy signature though. It looks great on the flag, but it’s illegible, so we are unlikely to ever know who he was. He’ll always just be that guy who drove the red truck, or was it orange? Oh well, the important thing is that nobody lost an eye needed an attorney.

writing on monster truck

Taking a break from flags and chickens to visit a Monster Truck. Writing our names on Chalkboard Chuck.