Tag Archives: humor

A four-year-old does what a four-year-old has to do

There’s a law somewhere that states that if you hold an event for families, you have to do some sort of arts and crafts activity for children. We attend lots of family events, so my preschool son has created quite a lot of crafts.

The thing to know about crafts is that they don’t make good toys. No matter how fun they were to make, they will soon be forgotten. Consequently, most of the crafts my son creates don’t even make it from the car to the house when we get home.

Last night, after a long day of preschool and play, my son discovered a craft he’d made months ago. The back seat, like a receding glacier, coughed up an ancient paper mask from its store of long-lost artifacts. I remembered helping the boy glue plastic baubles to the paper mask. I’d imagined, as I’m sure the boy did, that this creation had been destroyed ages ago by the natural attrition that eats paper crafts.

boy wearing paper mask

The mask when it was fresh and new. Who would have guessed it would reappear months later to cause such anguish?

The child immediately began re-examining the already beat-up mask in the rough, destructive way of four-year-old boys. Soon, both eyeholes were torn to the edges of the mask. “I’m gonna throw this away,” he told me, his tone indicating that he expected me to protest.

“If you’re done with it, go ahead and throw it away,” I replied.

The boy was instantly offended, as if I’d demanded that he destroy a precious relic. “I don’t want to throw it out!”

“Okay. Keep it.”

“Daddy, I didn’t want it to be ripped.” This was said in a whiny voice. He was very tired. “I really don’t want to throw it away.”

“You don’t have to, but you really should have been more careful if you didn’t want it to get ripped.”

I had to turn away to tend to the baby. When I turned back to the four-year-old, the mask was gone. I asked him where it was.

“I threw it in the garbage,” he said in the resigned voice of a boy who, in his own mind, has taken a long step toward manhood by doing an unpleasant thing because he knew it had to be done.

“Okay,” I said.

Then he turned on the water works, leaving me wondering how this long-unwanted paper craft had suddenly been transformed into Old Yeller. He cried inconsolably, as if he had just returned from putting down his lifelong companion. Several unsuccessful attempts to calm him told me that he was beyond the point of reason. The only solution was bedtime.

old yeller movie poster

This doesn’t turn out well either, but at least the crying makes sense. (Walt Disney Studios)

Today, there has been no mention of the mask. The boy shows no sign that he is haunted by his decision to put it out of its misery. I suspect the mask has slipped into the same memory hole that has vacuumed away all of his other over-tired histrionics. I am the only one scarred by the memory of the night when a boy grit his teeth and did what man has to do.

Name that tune – the home edition

One of the toys that has been passed down from the first son to the second is a baby activity exersaucer. You lower the baby down into the cockpit in the middle of this toy. He can then turn himself around and play with any of the myriad interesting toys on the circular, outer ledge.

baby playing in exersaucer

Multitasking: picking out some music to enjoy with Mr. Sunshine.

I like this toy. It can buy a busy parent up to 15 minutes of baby-free, two-handed productivity. In 15 minutes, the baby will realize that the outer ring of toys is not really that interesting after all. The baby will begin to wail his head off for someone to come extract him from a device he now considers little more than a psychological prison.

But that 15 minutes is golden.

baby biting Mr. Sunshine

Lunging to give Mr. Sunshine a kiss – or bite him. With that new tooth running the show, you never know what that little mouth is going to do.

One of the toys on the outer ring of our saucer is a group of large buttons with an image of an animal on each. Every time one of these buttons is pushed, the device says a word, or makes a noise, associated with the pictured animal. If the baby is successful in pushing one of the buttons four times in succession, he is rewarded with a snippet of classical music. The one exception to this is the cow button, which plays Old MacDonald, as if the designers could not find a fifth piece of classical music in the public domain.

baby wailing on music

That blur in the middle is the baby’s arm beating on the music player in a fit of classical music dance fever.

The baby, like is brother before him, really enjoys hearing the music. He smiles and swings his arms. The selections are quite lively and melodic, excepting, of course, the insipid Old MacDonald. In fact, the whole family enjoys these bits of music, especially Big Brother, to whom, it seems, they bring back the pleasant memories of his own distant youth.

One day, the baby was pounding away on the cat button when we were all rewarded with the inspired notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Big Brother’s eyes lit up. “I know that music!” he shouted with glee.

It warmed a father’s heart to know that this timeless melody had stayed with him through the years. Maybe he would develop an aptitude for music. Maybe he would become a great musician himself – our own little prodigy.

“That’s the Judge Judy song!” he declared.

And so it is.

This little piggy led a jailbreak, and this little piggie’s on the lam

I’ve never met a baby who wanted to wear a sock. And yet, we make them all wear two.

Why babies hate socks is unclear. They seem to be able to come to terms with wearing diapers, shirts, pants, and even some regrettable onesies that they will, no doubt, one day recall as fashion mistakes. It’s almost as if babies know that their toes will never again be so cute as they are during these first months. This is the time to show off those little piggies. Let them go gleefully to market and have their roast beef while they are still pink and round.

Whatever the reason, babies like staying in socks like Houdini liked staying in straitjackets. Turn your back for three seconds and the baby will have one sock off and the other hanging by a big toe. This phenomenon is the one, and only, viable rationale for baby shoes. Babies need shoes for no other reason than to shackle their socks to their feet.

Baby with one sock

The liberated toes work to free their imprisoned comrades. It’s amazing how many socks a single baby can shed without ever using his hands.

When they grow older, kids seem to like socks a lot more. My preschooler would wear the same pair of socks for days, including to bed, if I let him. I’ve warned him that mushrooms would start to grow between his toes if he didn’t change his socks. Somehow, he thought I’d said marshmallows, which only encouraged him. What better way to enjoy sugary snacks without parental interference than by growing them between your toes?

Our baby went the whole summer without anybody bothering him about socks. Now that the weather is turning cool, the battle begins in earnest. I’m glad to see that his sock-escaping skills have not diminished with lack of practice. Every time I turn around, I’m looking for a missing sock. In stores, I have to mentally mark our route so I know all the places to search. I will not admit defeat by buying shoes for somebody who is so far above doing any of his own walking.

Baby socks are cheap and easy to replace, but I find myself becoming sentimental about whichever sock our baby has cast to the winds. I don’t want a new sock; I want that sock. If he could lose both socks at the same time, I might be okay with buying a new pair of socks, but I’m not springing for two socks when I only need one. I’ll find that sock, even if I have to search the basket of every shopping cart to do it.

I’ll find it, and I’ll put it right back onto that child’s foot. I’ll show that little baby; he can’t break my will to keep his toes warm and dry. I will sock every naked foot I find, until every toe has succumbed to the necessity of being clothed. I will do it just as soon as I get up from my hands and knees and finish searching under the racks in the bakery department.

Baby toes

If my little piggies were this handsome, I guess I’d want to show them off to the world at every opportunity too. The comparison almost makes me want to wear two layers of socks.

When Virgos attack

My poor wife! She’s married to a Virgo and her first-born son is a Virgo. Talk about rotten luck! Well, actually, only the son is dumb luck. It was her own (questionable) choice to marry a Virgo. Some lessons you just learn too late.

Virgos are very particular people. We like things to be a certain way, and we will swear to God that there is a good reason behind our preferences. We can’t always explain the reason, but you should just trust us, because all of our exacting arrangements have worked out perfectly in the past, even if you don’t realize it yet. In spite of how much more efficient we have made your life with our helpfully rigid routines, you might still claim that we are not the easiest people with whom to share a living space. Go figure.

The boy Virgo has worn pull-ups to bed since he was two. He no longer needs them, being conscientious about getting to the bathroom if he has to potty at night. I know this because he gets me up too. My job is to guard the bathroom door in case any intruders have broken into the house for the sole reason of invading his bathroom privacy at 3 a.m.

blanket fringe out of place

Knowing there is one fringe bent back, he will not be able to sleep at all. This makes perfect sense, as it is nearly impossible to sleep and complain about trifles at the same time.

He baulks at the idea of wearing regular underwear to bed. You’d think he might be proud of this milestone, but he will not accept the honor. Regular underwear are daytime underwear; he wears nighttime underwear to bed. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s the way it should remain. It has nothing to do with pee; it’s the system – tried and true.

Every night, after I tuck in Virgo Junior, he wants Mommy to give him and hug and kiss, and more importantly, fix his blankets. There is nothing wrong with his blankets, unless you count, as he does, the one spot where a single fringe is folded backward. Don’t worry that all the blankets will be twisted into knots after five minutes of his sleep-thrashing, just make it right so he can overcome this obsession for one more night.

Arrangement of toys

He has not used the Mickey Mouse airplane in over two years, yet it must remain parked between the Little Tikes emergency vehicle and the also obsolete rocking horse. It’s the law.

We have a playroom in the basement. While Virgo Child is certainly no neat-freak about his toys, many of the larger items have exact spots where they are to be parked. Yesterday, my wife cleaned out many of the toys that my son has outgrown, moving them to a different part of the basement.

Later, he and I went downstairs to play. He spent 15 minutes locating all of the old toys and replacing them into their assigned locations. He pushed all of the newer toys my wife had put in their places into a big, messy pile on an unclaimed parcel of floor. When Mommy sees the results, I hope she understands her mistake.

It’s not easy being a Virgo. People should trust our methods by now, but for some strange reason, they don’t. It can be very frustrating. Mommy doesn’t know what it’s like to be a Virgo, and one day this may cause her to explode. We can’t help it that she’s one of those high-strung signs.