Tag Archives: children

Ginger and his brother, Mary Ann: a nicknaming debacle

Sometimes I wonder why people go to the trouble of naming babies. After all those hours of pouring over the baby names books, after all those alarmed faces you had to make, listening to the ridiculous names your spouse suggested, after all those recollections of the goofy children of your youth who put otherwise respectable names off-limits with their oafish behavior, you finally settle on a name that everybody can live with. And then you call the baby something else anyway.

Children should not be formally named until they are two or three, when they have outgrown all the infant, pet names their parents have invented for them. If all little boys were named at age two, none of them would have names that mean peace is some distant language. There would be a lot more truth in advertising.

Before the new baby was born, our son wanted to name him Brother or Doritos, depending upon whether he was more in the mood for a sibling or a snack. Both of these names made sense in their own way, and I was happy that he chose them instead of names like Parasite or Usurper. At the very least, I knew Doritos were something he liked.

Meanwhile, my wife and I spent countless hours negotiating. None of our top picks could win the support of the other parent. Finally, hours after the baby was born, we found a compromise.

Now, weeks later, I have observed that my wife refers to the baby most often as Tiny Tim. His name is not Tim, nor is it Tiny. Sometimes she calls him Peanut. This is also not his name.

“You can call me Tiny, or you can call me Tim, or you can call me Peanut . . . it really doesn’t matter; I only respond to spitting noises anyway.”

His big brother still tries to tell people that the baby’s name is Brother, but when he is addressing the baby directly, he usually calls him Mr. Baby. While I appreciate that this is a very respectful form of address, that name is also nowhere to be found in the baby’s official paperwork.

I too have fallen into the habit of addressing the infant as Mr. Baby. It makes him sound like a young gentleman of substantial accomplishment. Other times, I simply call him Junior. This worked fine until his big brother adopted it as well. Big Brother’s three-year-old pronunciation of Junior comes out Junjor. To my wife, it sounds like Ginger, which she has already jokingly repeated several times in reference to the baby.

These things have a tendency to take on a life of their own, and I don’t think I want Ginger attached to my son as his nickname. The way we free-associate in my house, we’d soon be calling his brother Mary Ann. Even with all the “A Boy Named Sue” toughening qualities that these names stand to gain the children, I would still disapprove of this development.

My boys could hardly have a couple of prettier namesakes. (Image: United Artists/CBS Productions)

I am simply going to have to pull the entire family back from the Junior word-association thread. I must find a name with a more suitable web of mispronunciations attached to it. If I get desperate enough, I may even have to use the one printed on the baby’s birth certificate.

I have a limited attention span, partially developed motor skills, and little perception of what you hope to accomplish; you need my help

My son is three, which means he has a biological need to help with all of the fun projects that Daddy does around the house. Little boys need to prove how indispensable they are to the proper functioning of the household.

This is a slow process. It will take him until he is about 12 to convince me that I am utterly dependent upon him. When he is 12, we will enjoy just about 3 months of the perfect father-son, symbiotic relationship. Then, nature will endow him with the blessings of teenager-hood, and it will take a girl to get him to do anything.

Since his little girlfriends aren’t likely to beguile him into mowing my lawn, I should get all the work I can out of him before they show up. Unfortunately, a three-year-old’s zeal is hardly ever matched by his handy-man skills. Still, you can’t help but admire the level of enthusiasm.

If I want my boy to instantly appear, all I need do is get out my toolbox. Screwdrivers are his favorite. He will carry a screwdriver around with him for hours, tightening everything in his path, including screws and anything else that needs to be stabbed and turned.

He likes hammers too. Hammers fit in well with his natural love of hitting. He has an uncommon zest for fixing things by pounding them until they are right. Whatever you’ve got that needs adjustment, a wall, a window, a kneecap, he’ll take care of it with his hammer. And he’ll do it all for the intangible reward of being helpful.

“Here’s an empty spot where we can put some snow.”

A boy who loves screwing things in could hardly avoid falling in love with changing light bulbs. You know the new bulbs? The ones that are all twisty-shaped, save energy by keeping your rooms dim, and are jammed full of poisonous mercury? He really enjoys handling those, because if you want to keep kids from being drawn to something toxic, by all means make it look like a soft-serve ice cream cone. I don’t let him help me so much with these, which really saddens him because he is sure in his heart that he could show me how to install them more efficiently with his hammer.

“We’ve got a lot of lawn to shovel off. Good thing we’ve got a clear space in the driveway where we can pile up the snow.”

In the winter, my son helps me shovel snow.  He follows behind me, shoveling snow from the piles I’ve created and dumping it over his shoulder, down his back, and onto the freshly-cleared sidewalk. Between the two of us, we have cut the job down so that we do only three times the shoveling I did when I had to do it all by myself.

“I’ll get rid of this big, ugly weed for you, Daddy.”

In summer, he helps me weed the flowerbeds. He picks those especially troublesome weeds with all the orange, yellow, and red soft parts at the top. These weeds attract bees, and bees can sting people. I know  he wonders how someone who has been gardening as long as I have could miss the most obvious weeds in the whole garden. Silly Daddy wastes his time on the little green sprouts in between when it is the big, colorful weeds that are using up all the space on top.

It requires extra time to be helped by a three-year-old, but it’s time well spent. I cherish his desire to help, because one day he’ll be 12, and that is practically the cusp of 13. I won’t be as cool then as I am now. Some little girl will come along and steal his attention. What kind of selfish girl would take away the helper of an old man with battered kneecaps?

To Mom, from your boys

This blog is normally written from the father’s point of view, but today it’s all about mothers. Specifically, it is about a mother who has to manage three boys, aged 6 weeks, 3 years, and 40-something, on a daily basis.

In retrospect, we try to make all of our sins seem comical, but they are not always comedy to the one who has to endure them day after day. We don’t mean to kick all of your rugs out of place with our scuffling feet. We don’t mean to roughhouse so disruptively when you’re trying to relax for a minute. We don’t mean any of the hardships we put you through. It’s just that we’re boys; we are doomed to suffer spells of inconsideration and ingratitude. We are not the most emotionally focused breed.

We try to make it up to you in little ways. We try to give you the things you need to be happy (though we sometimes miss noticing what some of those things are). Since you are a girl, we don’t always understand everything you need, but we try to meet the needs we understand.

Our ways are boy ways, so they may not always make sense to you. Still, we try hard, in our own special way, to let you know how we feel about you. And anyone versed in boy ways will hear us very clearly when we do the little things we do to quietly tell the world how much we love and need you.

Happy Mother’s Day. We love you dearly.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers of the world. And to every mother who lives in a house full of boys, a special wish: May God have mercy on you.

Houston, we have splashdown

I had my first extended stint as Mr. Mom since the new baby came, and it didn’t start out so well. The baby didn’t want to sleep all day, which isn’t really a crisis, and is understandable, considering that I had nothing more soothing than a bottle to put into his mouth. But it would have been nice if he could have taken a short nap just to let me get organized before setting upon me with his verbal assault.

A crying toddler, on the other hand, is always a crisis – to the toddler anyway. And it does distract from Daddy’s ability to soothe a crying baby, which he’s not really very good at in the first place.

The three-year-old announced that he had to go potty. No problem. He’s adept at climbing onto the toilet and getting the party started all by himself. He wouldn’t need any help for a few minutes. Meanwhile, Daddy could keep arguing with the baby.

After a little while, I went into the bathroom to check on the boy. His pants were down, but he wasn’t sitting on the potty. He was standing with his shirt hiked up behind him, using two hands to buff his lower back with a hand towel. It looked like he had a bad itch.

“What’s going on?” I asked, not even in that accusing tone I most often use.

He burst into tears. Now, toddlers are pretty clever folks, but two things they have never effectively learned to do at the same time are cry and answer a lot of pointless questions. The boy made no attempt at words. He focused all his attention upon his wailing. The baby heard his song and picked up the harmony.

“I can’t have two crying kids,” I told him, a little in that annoyed father tone I most often use. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

For a second, he tried to say something, but the crying would not relent.

“Stop crying and tell me what’s wrong,” I insisted, comfortingly, instead of in the impatient tone I most often use.

“My shirt’s wet,” he choked out between sobs.

“How’d your shirt get wet?” I asked. You can probably imagine all the tonal cues from here.

“I don’t know.”

When my son says, “I don’t know,” it means one of the following, in order of frequency:

a.) “I think the truth might get me into trouble, so I’m pleading the fifth.”

b.) “I’m really embarrassed and I’d rather not talk about it.”

c.) “I don’t know.” This last example is a rare usage, usually reserved for questions of an academic nature (e.g. “What number comes after 19?”).

I may not be the world’s most perceptive parent, but I know there are only two sources of water in our downstairs bathroom, and I didn’t hear the sink running. Further investigation revealed that his toddler potty seat was over in the corner, where it could do nothing toward keeping him high and dry.

“Did you fall in?” I asked.

Footstool, toddler seat, books to read – of all the amenities, only the toddler seat is indispensable. Alas . . .

“Maybe.”

“Okay. Take off your shirt. I’ll get you a new one.”

I got him cleaned up and settled back into the world. We spoke no more of the incident. I didn’t even laugh, and I want credit for that. Somebody falls into the toilet and a guy with four brothers doesn’t even laugh. That’s love, pure and simple.

I think the baby might have laughed though. He stopped crying for minute, which is as good as a laugh to me. But I guess he has to laugh at this kind of stuff. It’s his brother.