Tag Archives: parenting

Sit at this desk and look busy so Daddy can retire

Occasionally, I take my boys to work with me for an hour or two. I work at a relatively family-friendly environment where I don’t often get the stink eye for trailing two little ducklings behind me now and then.

This doesn’t mean it’s always a comfortable experience, keeping the lids on two unpredictable tornado sirens in a professional manner.

If I could take them individually, it wouldn’t be so stressful. Lacking toddler interference, I could teach the big boy to do my job. Of course, he is too young and uneducated to do it all, but I could start him on the basics. Then, after he has completed his kindergarten degree and is fully qualified for my work, he’d hit the ground running when he takes over for me in earnest. This, by the way, is my retirement plan. Some family member needs to be sitting at that desk and bringing home a paycheck until the day I die. It might as well be him.

Junior paper shuffler

Sometimes I make him shuffle papers at home just to hone the most important skill he’ll need to assume my job duties.

Buster wouldn’t be bad on his own either. There’s a 30% chance he’d fall asleep. Otherwise, he’d be content to pound away on my keyboard and write my reports in that monkey language he types. This is a different, but equally readable, monkey language than the one my typing produces, so the reports would be similarly useful to my superiors. He is second in line for my throne in our succession plan.

Together, they create a more difficult visit to pull off inconspicuously. Childhood is a competition to push buttons. We have lots of buttons at work. Be it the elevator, automatic doors, or the water cooler, we have lots of buttons to race toward – screaming. These buttons also leave ample opportunities for the second-place finisher to whine and cry, which puts me in an awkward place because that’s usually my role at work.

Even when we are packed within the half-walls of my office, there are too many buttons. I have an adding machine on my desk. Every time the boys visit, they change the settings so that my decimal places are off for weeks. I can usually get it fixed by the day before their next visit. The Accounting Department still gets the general gist of what I mean.

the final edit

We might write nonsense, but it is very carefully edited nonsense.

Keys fascinate children also. There are filing cabinets outside my office. In them I keep reams of paperwork that no one could find useful or interesting. I keep this ocean of paper locked up tight because that allows me to act like a guy who’s authorized to access company secrets. Co-workers know better, but the boys are impressed. They want to know secrets too; after their last visit, I’m not sure where the keys are. Now I have to keep up a false front about being privy to whatever the hell those papers say.

Maybe I should spare my co-workers all the whining and crying by asking to work from home. But I’m unsure if they’d still let me send the kids in.

Stop acting like a child, kid!

I’ve got five-year-olds figured out. When they hit us with whining, histrionics, and petty stubbornness, it’s all a bluff to lower our expectations of their sophistication. Secretly, those little sponges of knowledge are picking up every tiny bit of data and storing it away to use to their advantage.

Sometimes, though, they get too full of information to keep the secret. Then, they have to let out some of what they know. The more these moments amaze us, the better the whining ploy has worked.

In the space of 24 hours, my son did great damage to his carefully-built façade.

We were in the car, listening to some of my old people music (not my super old people big bands; my moderately old people 1970s) when The Hustle came on. Hearing “Do the Hustle,” the boy wanted to know what that was.

“It’s a dance where everybody gets in a row and all do the same things, like spin around and clap their hands,” I told him.

“Oh! Is it like a conga line?”

Huh? What kind of birthday parties are these kids having? At least he hasn’t come home wearing a lamp shade on his head.

Early Hustle

“Do the what now?” (Image: D.A. Sigerist)

***

The next day, as he was puttering around the house, I heard him humming Pomp and Circumstance.

“Where did you learn that song?” I asked.

“At preschool graduation.”

Preschool graduation was 10 months ago. And it’s not like we’ve been watching the video of it all that time – or ever, since the day after graduation. Also, Pomp and Circumstance is not one of Daddy’s old people songs.

we do love to march

Mommy’s explanation: “Well, you Germans do love your marching.” (Image: Underwood & Underwood)

Recalling how he figured out the basic melody of Carol of the Bells on the keyboard, I told him, “You’re pretty good at music. Would you like to learn an instrument?”

“I don’t know.”

“What instrument would you play? Trumpet?”

“No.”

“Saxophone?”

“No. I hate woodwinds.”

Right. I didn’t know what a woodwind was until I was in ninth grade, and had already spent two years in the school band.

“What’s a woodwind?” I asked.

“An instrument that has a wood piece where you blow.”

“What’s the wood part called?

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll give you a hint. It sounds like the same word as what you do when you open a book.”

“It sounds like look at the pictures?”

***

Later, he asked, “Daddy, can we make a German flag that looks like the American flag?”

“That wouldn’t be much of a German flag.”

“Okay then, can we make the flag of Greece?”

“I’m busy right now, but you can make it.”

He got a blue crayon and made a paper flag of Greece. “Daddy, can you find me a stick to put my flag on?” he asked.

“I’ll have to look for one.”

He pointed through the window at the ravages of winter in the back yard. “You can get one from nature if you want.”

This kid just put a big dent in his cover story. He’ll have to demonstrate great petulance to repair it. In this too, he is equal to the task.

Greek flag

Unlike the German flag, the Greek flag requires only one crayon.

 

Buster’s birthday bash

It was right around April Fool’s Day when Buster walked into the room with one hand hiked up into his shirt sleeve. Holding out that arm, he practiced his most scared face and yelled in mock terror as he stared at the empty space at the end of his sleeve. He couldn’t stop giggles from filling the places between his terrified screams, because he was convinced the whole prank was hilarious.

It was hilarious, and a huge parent-fail that I didn’t get it on video.

It was his first joke as a two-year-old.

I bet Buster learned this joke at his birthday party. It was pirate-themed, and one of the props was a plastic hook that covered up the wearer’s hand. Likely, an older kid pretended to lose a hand in one of their many sword fights. Hooks may be comical, but empty space is funnier. That’s what Buster took away from it.

below the cupcakes

Checking the perimeter for cupcake-stealing pirates.

Buster always throws a good birthday bash – both times. I think this is because toddlers don’t have lots of expectations to get in the way of having fun with whatever direction the party takes. They don’t care who shows up as long as there are a few kids ready to play. They don’t stress over the menu, and they aren’t expecting presents, so anything they get is gravy. They don’t even care if somebody else blows out the candle on their cupcake, just as long as they get to eat the frosting and leave the cake part for Daddy.

All Buster really cared about at his party was having a house full of kids that he could chase around with a foam pirate sword. They didn’t have to be his own age either. The bigger the kids, the bigger the targets.

fighting pirates

A mighty sword – brought to you by the pitter-patter of little feet.

Buster likes playing with older kids. You don’t have to be careful with them. You can hit them as hard as you want. If they start crying because they got beat up by a two-year-old – well, let’s just say they should learn to not do that. It doesn’t paint them in the best light. And nobody’s going to yell at you for making a big kid cry. They might pretend to scold you, but they’re only doing it to mollify a big baby, or modern society, or somebody else not to be taken seriously. They don’t mean it.

But if a big kid hits you too hard, just turn on the water works and that kid’s done for the day. They should know better, but after you whacked them good a few times, they must have forgot. Big kids are funny that way.

pure gravy

After cupcakes and sword fights, opening presents is pure gravy.

When he slept two hours late the next morning, we knew Buster had a good time at his party. He must have had one-too-many Kool-Aids.

Three days later, the pizza and cupcakes were gone, the decorations put away, everything back to usual. Except that Buster was still making pirate-themed jokes. Now that was one heck of a party.

Mice Capades: Part 2

Killer mice

Vicious beasts like this should not be frightening the cat and disrupting our family life. They should be outside fighting bears or something. (Image: USFWS)

As everyone sooner or later learns, the key to removing a mouse from your house is having enough kitchenware on hand. What we needed was a lip-less cookie sheet and a pitcher with a snug lid.

Having assembled the proper tools, it was time for man and wife to argue about how to proceed while children threatened the success of every step with meddling curiosity.

I slid the cover enclosing the mouse onto the cookie sheet. Now the rodent dungeon was mobile. My wife was in favor of just throwing the prisoner outside and being done with it, but I was not taking such chances with a trespasser who already knew his way in. We were going to put some distance between him and us.

Since nobody volunteered to ride in the car with Mad Mouse Beyond Thunderdome on their lap, I had to make the prisoner more secure. I made my wife come outside with me to transact the transfer.

If you and your spouse ever need to partner in moving a mouse from under a dish cover on a cookie sheet into a juice pitcher, be prepared for the ultimate test of your marriage. It should be one of the challenges on The Amazing Race, because it’s that full of drama.

A trapped mouse is a ferocious animal who will use any available part of your body to facilitate his escape, sending you into paroxysms of terror. Should this psychologically scarring event come to pass, it will be your spouse’s fault. This is a given. Your relationship may never be the same.

Mouse Thunderdome

Welcome to Thunderdome: One mouse enters; two humans bicker.*

My wife chose to be the slider, leaving me the catching duties. She was skeptical of the plan from the first, predicting that the mouse would avoid the pitcher as the cover slid clear of the cookie sheet.

“If you do it quickly, he’ll have no place else to go,” I reassured her.

She was not reassured. “He’ll climb around the edge,” she insisted as she began her methodical sliding of the cover.

“Not if you do it quickly,” I repeated, attempting to prod her to swifter movement.

She shot back something about losing track of the mouse if she went too fast.

She was giving him too much time to think. “If you do it quickly!” I demanded.

A spouse who doubts your plan is unlikely to execute it quickly. She continued sliding the cover at her deliberate pace – to better identify the exact moment of failure.

“If you do it quickly!” No doubt, the vein was bulging in my neck. Dangerous animals have that effect upon me.

She gave me the famous “Say that one more time!” look.

The mouse, disoriented by my frantic bellowing, allowed himself to drop into the pitcher. I covered it with a sigh of relief.

My wife was back inside the house, having closed the door on both pests left outside.

I drove the mouse to a spot that looked ripe for colonization and set him free.

Then I went home to tell the cat he could come out of hiding and practice talking nice to my wife.

 

*My wife insists I mention that these items have been thoroughly cleaned. Just in case you happen to stop by for some rodent-free baked goods.