Tag Archives: parenting

Halloween off the record

Halloween is a reminder of the futility of capturing precious moments. The best of them come in the chaos, and it’s difficult to hold onto a camera and chaos at the same time.

What I recorded:

Our festivities began at Big Brother’s school parade. Hundreds of other parents, just like me, sat with their cameras ready to get those great shots of their kids passing by. I think we all got the same blur as the kids raced toward their classroom parties with little regard for posterity. I tried to get photos of some friends’ children, and never have I collected so many pictures of the backs of heads.

I think I did better than most, since my wife had no qualms about stepping into the parade route to make a human speed bump as Big Brother approached.

Next it was on to Buster’s preschool, for the recital portion of his Halloween party. It turns out, Buster is not an enthusiastic public singer or dancer. This, despite how readily he will do both at home, right in front of the TV, on fourth and goal.

I recorded several minutes of video in which Buster half-heartedly dances, and more in which his lips are sealed as his classmates sing. His little classmates were a joy to watch. Maybe that’s what he was busy doing instead of singing. I’ve got lots of video of him watching his classmates sing.

What I missed recording:

We began our Trick or Treating with a group of a dozen kids, also known as the kind of chaos where I lose track of my camera. That’s when I have to start relying purely on memory, which is a shame because I feel like my storage is reaching its limit.

Our group of children and assorted parents kept together pretty well right up to the first house. After that, the group quickly pulled away from Buster, Big Man, and me. We continued on our own, free of the stress of keeping up with the big kids.

One quick shot before the chaos.

One quick shot before the chaos.

Together, we three shared Halloween moments I wish I could have recorded:

  • My two-year-old Ninja Turtle fully immersed in the spirit of the night, running from house to house.
  • My four-year-old Spider Man, once again marching to his own drummer, making his little brother wait as he walked backward or hopped to avoid cracks in the sidewalk.
  • Big Man pointing to a darkened house and asking, “That guy heeping [sleeping]?” then pointing to the festive house next door and declaring, “That guy not heeping!”
  • Two little superheroes forgetting about candy for five whole minutes to examine all the cool lawn decorations at one house.
  • Buster offering an unsolicited explanation of our night to the owner of the last house: “This took a long time, but we’re going home now.”

I’m happy I got what pictures and video I did. It’s all entertaining stuff. But those little moments that will stick with me I can’t replay for anyone else. All I can do is put them into words, and that doesn’t seem quite the same.

 

Sibling rivalry: Talking Dogs versus The Loop of Agony

The cooler, wetter weather has caused us to move much of our sibling rivalry fighting indoors. There are plenty of indoor toys, let alone game screens, to argue over, but our latest, loudest feuding has been over Netflix.

Buster likes Star Wars shows, especially those that combine the franchise with LEGOs. What could go wrong when the two most awesome things in his world are combined? These programs may not be very entertaining for adults, but at least they are not fingernails-on-chalkboard painful like his second favorite: Power Rangers. There are many different incarnations of Power Rangers, and some stab at my brainstem less brutally than others. The most plentiful episodes, though, seem to have been produced by a Junior High A/V class under a substitute teacher.

Even Big Brother’s eight-year-old sense of production values is offended by this Public Access Channel version of Power Rangers.

Buster’s greatest Netflix adversary is Big Man, with his weakness for talking dogs.

Big Man loves puppies, a group that includes all dogs, regardless of age. He likes the baby puppies best, but even the old puppies are good. There are lots of tolerable dogs in cartoons, but Big Man doesn’t care for cartoons. He likes live-action movies. While it seems quite natural for Scooby-Doo to talk, I get a little freaked out when I hear Don Knotts’ voice come out of a real dog. Don Knotts’ voice was unsettling enough when it came out of Don Knotts.

Will the real Deputy Fife please stand up?

There are more movies featuring talking puppies than you probably imagine. As a parent who has now watched a good many of them, this makes me sad. The only thing that makes me sadder is that somehow there aren’t enough movies featuring talking puppies.

I’ve learned not to lament the discovery of another talking dog movie. Finding another talking dog movie is a minor miracle. A new talking dog movie gives us a 90 minute reprieve from having to watch the old talking dog movie one more time. That’s something to be thankful for.

Buster might not mind the dog movies if they didn’t take away from his Star Wars/Power Rangers time. As soon as he sees the first hint of closing credits, he’s on the remote. Big Man’s movie is over and it’s his turn to choose. It’s only fair, except that when a Power Rangers episode ends, the next episode starts automatically. This may be the single greatest cruelty anyone has ever done to me. I call it the loop of agony.

power-rangers

Go! Go! Power Rangers! Go! Go! Unplug the TV before the next episode starts!

You might think this would be the perfect time for me to go out into the peaceful, cold rain and read a book. I would be content with that, but the kid who’s not watching his choice isn’t about to let me go where there be mud puddles without sloshing along beside me. Besides, everyone else in my family is counting on me to convince Buster that Power Rangers is really over before the next episode auto-starts.

Day 17,940

Today I outlived my father.

Before anyone sends condolences, I should clarify. My father died in 1976. Today I am one day older than my father lived to be. I am 17,940 days old, which translates into 49 years, 1 month, and a dozen days.

How do I know this? Microsoft Excel.

Why do I know this? That’s harder to say.

Probably, it is for three reasons: Big Brother, Buster, and Big Man. If not for them, and all they’ve added to my life through fatherhood, I likely would have never thought about this milestone.

The eight years I had with my father boil down to about five years of faded memories. Beyond that, he’s mostly hearsay from others and conjecture on my part.

For most of my life, I recalled my father through the eyes of a child – the last eyes that saw him in real life. My own children have allowed me to relate to him as a father.

Children are remarkable adapters. When my father died, I adapted to the way life must be without him. I lived as children live, thinking about today, leaving yesterday behind. My mother pulled double duty to provide her children good childhoods.

Like lots of kids who lost a parent, I considered my life to be normal. I never felt sorry for myself. That hasn’t changed, but something else has. Once in a while I feel sorry for my father. This empathy is a gift to me from my own children.

As a child, I coped with, and moved past, my own loss, and that was the end of it. I didn’t consider things from a parent’s point of view. I couldn’t conceive of the tragedy of being pulled away forever from a house full of young lives embodying all your hopes and dreams. I didn’t appreciate the sadness in not being there to share the joys and sorrows.

I don’t know what comes after life, or if there is a time or place for a departed soul to feel the sting of this separation, but now I feel it for him. I feel it when I realize how precious my boys’ smiles, and even sometimes their tears, are to me. I feel it when I think about how much they have to learn and how much I need to teach them. I feel it when I realize that most times I am called by name, that name is “Daddy.”

On my father’s 17,939th day, he had eight children, aged 5 to 19. The next day, we all were forced to rebuild our lives without him. Faded, with my memories of him, is the sadness of losing him. More vivid to me now, is a sadness for his losing us.

I visit this sadness now and then. It reminds me to enjoy the great gifts of fatherhood while I can.

I dont want to miss a thing.

I don’t want to miss a thing.

Everywhere I turn, somebody’s growing up

Big Man and I went to the store for groceries. As I lifted him into the toddler seat of the grocery cart, he noticed the advertisement card clipped to the front of the cart. He looked at the bottle on the ad, gave me one of those I’m about to say something hilarious grins, and announced to the world, “We need wine.”

His impressive vocabulary notwithstanding, I drove our cart away from the world in haste. It’s not so bad that a two-year-old can identify wine, and it’s not unusual for children to say they need items they can name in the store. But when those two things come together, it sounds like sketchy parenting.

To add insult to injury, I rarely drink wine, so he must have learned about it from somebody who didn’t have to look like the abusive parent in the store that day. Now, if he’d said, “We need beer,” or “We need a fifth of Tomintoul,” that would have been on me. If he had requested Tomintoul, I would have been more proud than embarrassed, because it would have proved his genius: first in learning a word like Tomintoul, and second in appreciating how low Daddy is on good scotch.

Despite the impression the child gave you, this is not our family car.

Despite the impression the child gave you, this is not our family car. (Image: Carol Highsmith)

I’m glad he can identify a wine bottle. He knows it’s not for him and he won’t confuse it for apple juice. I just wish he wouldn’t talk about it like it’s animal crackers.

Meanwhile, Big Brother’s third grade pictures were taken this week. In the morning, Mommy laid out a handsome sweater vest for him. I went downstairs to make my lunch, wondering if he would balk at wearing a sweater with some wild claim that his friends were wearing football jerseys.

I came back upstairs expecting to hear Mommy ask, “If all your friends jumped off a cliff…?” Today, they’d have to jump without him. He came out of his room shaking his head. “I can never find the right tie!” The clip-on he held in his hand was apparently not the right tie. It was also, apparently, not his only tie. Since when did an eight-year-old need a selection of ties? I wonder how many ties our little Alex P. Keaton has. I may need to borrow one sometime.

Not the right tie.

Not the right tie.

Buster does yoga in preschool. The other night he showed us some yoga positions he’s learned. He demonstrated the Tree and the Airplane. The airplane looked more like a lame duck to me, but my yoga eye isn’t as advanced as his. Maybe I’m taking it all too literally. I have little doubt he’ll be teaching me to see the metaphor and appreciate the symbolism in the form by the spring semester.

This is an airplane for as long as the Master of the Peaceful arts can keep his balance.

This is an airplane for as long as the Master of the Peaceful Arts can keep his balance.

This is the airplane doing a scene from "Sully."

I believe this is the airplane doing a scene from “Sully.”

People always warn us, “They grow up so fast.” As someone who longs to have a conversation, sit down, or merely think my own thoughts for 30 seconds without being interrupted, I’m not worried about them growing up too fast.

Well, most days I’m not.