Tag Archives: parenting

Kindergarten’s first hard lesson: It’s a morning people’s world

I’m waiting for the Kindergarten grind to catch up to my son.

His preschool was only three hours in the afternoon. Kindergarten runs all day. Like his old man, he’s more inclined toward being a night owl than a morning person. We’ll see where that gets him after a few months of having to get up early every day.

We worked on adjusting his sleep schedule in the buildup to school, but there’s nothing like the real thing to make it hit home. So far, after a week of school, he still must be forced to go to bed at a reasonable hour. He gets up in the morning without too much fuss, though it’s clear he’s not happy about it. Welcome to my world, kid.

There have been no reports of him nodding off in school, which makes him a better man than I was at that age. When I was in Kindergarten, I came home at noon. That, and the modern curriculum, makes his current situation more comparable to my first grade experience.

In first grade, my day went like this: get up at 4 a.m. for a quick bowl of Cream of Wheat before going to milk cows; get to school 15-30 minutes late, smelling as little like the barn as possible; chocolate milk and a cookie at 10; fit some learning in before noon; peanut butter sandwich and random Hostess product for lunch; sleep at desk until awakened for bus ride home.

Sleeping school

Where was this school when I needed it? I could have been first in my class.

I’m not sure what my class did in the afternoons as I was rarely with them in consciousness. I don’t remember falling behind, so maybe it was just a recap of the morning’s work. For all I know, it was free play all afternoon, or maybe the teacher led them in games of Let’s Shoot Spit Wads at the Sleepy Farm Kid. I was blissfully ignorant of the goings on around me, which makes me pine for the days when I could put my head down and fall asleep at my desk. The work day would go so much smoother if I could still sleep in that position.

Desk sleeping

“Arrgh! How do they expect me to sleep at such an uncomfortable desk?” (Image: Bayard Taylor)

By the second grade, I was staying awake all day. I’m not sure how that happened. It seems impossible that I could go to bed even earlier than I did in first grade. Maybe I matured, or maybe the second grade teacher made a habit of kicking my chair in the afternoons. It could be that the specter of cursive writing made it too hard to relax.

With all the stuff they throw at little kids in school these days, I doubt it’s a good idea to take the afternoons off anymore. If Kindergarten does start to wear my son down, we still have room to adjust his bed time. That should help him get through the day, but I don’t think he’ll like the idea at night. Hopefully, he’ll be too tired to raise a stink.

If you can’t stand the heat, don’t install a molten lava floor in your kitchen

I cook most of the dinners at our house. There is something about the sight of me cooking dinner that makes our one-year-old especially needy. We make faces and giggle and play at all times of the day, but the only hour at which he consistently needs to be held by me is the one in which I am trying to cook dinner.

Given the choice of being held by me or by his mother, it is probably 70/30 in favor of Mommy, except when I am cooking. When I am cooking, he sees no other arms but mine. Only these arms can keep him from a crying fit when there is something sizzling on the stove.

Parents learn to do much with one hand. Our days are a routine of picking things up one at a time, in the order necessary to complete what would be thoughtless tasks to freewheeling, two-handed, childless types. Still, there are some things that are nearly impossible to do with a child in one arm, like hoisting a roast out of the crock pot or forming dough into a pizza shape.

My son doesn’t care what I can’t do one-handed. Cooking is daddy-toddler together time. He lets me know this by wrapping his arms around my legs as I’m trying to walk to get the butter. If I want to move freely between the fridge and the stove, I’d better pick him up.

Butterworth's demise

“Pick me up or Mrs. Butterworth gets it!”

By picking him up I’ve jumped from the frying pan onto the electric coil, because putting him down again is bound to be an ordeal. When a toddler is okay with being put down, he lets his feet down to meet the floor. When I try to put my son down so I can strain the pasta, he lifts up the landing gear like the floor is hot lava.

Touching hot lava dismays children, even when it is cool and made of linoleum. I am reminded of this every time I attempt to set a child down in it. Having to sit in hot lava while a heartless parent cuts up chicken breast is the worst fate imaginable. It makes a child cry. A lot. Much more than necessary. Especially since no crying is necessary. But it might distract Daddy enough to make him cut his finger, and that would teach him some respect for bonding time.

Cooling lava

A panoramic view of our kitchen floor after it has cooled down a bit from dinner time. (Image: Robert Bonine)

It’s not only that holding a child while cooking is inconvenient. There are things involved with cooking that are hotter than metaphorical lava. This means the boy has to be upset with me from across the room as I pull a dish out of the oven. But when safety is not an issue, I have learned to do all sorts of food prep with one hand.

If you wonder what this looks like, just imagine the Heisman trophy statue. Only, imagine a one-year-old tucked under the left arm, instead of a football. Then imagine that the outstretched right arm is holding a whisk.

It may not qualify as a cherished childhood memory

My wife is diligent about giving our boys different experiences to fill their childhood.  She is especially skilled at sniffing out free events. Unfortunately, we are often a step behind on the details when we set about our adventures. We might arrive at the wrong time or pull up to an abandoned building with an address almost like the one where all the wonderful childhood memories are being handed out.

Our eldest son likes the old Batman TV show and our younger boy enjoys singing the theme song. When we learned that Adam West was due to make two appearances at our university, we immediately marked the date on our calendar.

We explained to our four-year-old that this was the actor who played Batman; he wouldn’t be in costume and he would be older than he looked on TV. Even so, the boy was excited to see him. The little boy didn’t care who it was. He’d sing his song for Burt Ward if he had to.

I had to work, but my wife got the boys to the student union in time for the afternoon autograph session. This great success was marred only by the fact that the event was happening elsewhere. When this troubling detail was discovered, it was too late to make it in time. We’d have to try for the later event.

We made sure that the evening appearance was indeed located at the student union before setting out. The big boy brought his Batman mask and cape from two Halloweens ago. In the car, the little boy spontaneously burst into his rendition of the Batman theme song.

We imagined the great photo we would get of our young Batman with the original Caped Crusader. We thought about how tickled Mr. West would be to hear a song so near and dear to him from the mouth of a babe. He might even tell the story in future interviews. Maybe he would recount it in a memoir.

At the union, there were rows of chairs set out before a stage. It looked like Mr. West wanted to give a talk before signing autographs. We found seats and immediately swung into keep the toddler contented mode.

From what I heard, before the toddler bolted from the room, Adam West sounds like a funny, humble man. I spent the last half playing out in the hall. At last, people started streaming out. It was odd that they didn’t stay for autographs.

We went back into the room to find my wife and the big boy among the few people left. Not among them was Adam West. Apparently, the earlier event had been the only autograph session. Details!

It wasn’t a total loss though. The little boy had a great time playing in the hall; my wife learned several fun facts about the career of Adam West; and the big boy got an awesome photograph of himself with a poster of the senior citizen who once was Batman. Not too shabby.

Pitcuter with a picture

He’ll always remember the day he posed for a picture with a lady holding a poster of a guy in prop sweater.

 

 

Make a wish and blow out the candles on your bacon

My four-year-old son is not big on breakfast. We’ve struggled to find a food that inspires him to eat in the morning.

During the week, I’m gone before he gets up, but I was able to persuade him to eat a pancake some weekend mornings. When we could find bacon on sale, we might add that to the pancake breakfast. He developed quite a taste for the bacon.

Eventually, his palate tired of the pancakes, but he sensed that they were necessary baggage to his enjoyment of bacon. Unfortunately for him, we are most often without bacon. Sure, it tastes wonderful, but it’s pretty expensive for a food whose main purpose is to clog your heart with goo. Lacking bacon, our morning conversations go like this:

ME: “Would you like me to make you a pancake for breakfast?”

BOY: “If there’s bacon, I’ll have a pancake and bacon. Otherwise, I don’t want a pancake.”

ME: “How about a pancake and bacon, with no bacon?”

BOY: “No. I’ll just have a pancake with bacon.”

It’s rare that I can sell a pancake without bacon anymore.

The last time we had bacon, we were all sitting around the breakfast table, discussing his upcoming birthday.  “I think I want bacon for my birthday,” the boy declared. “I want bacon instead of cake.” His mother and I like bacon too; if he wants us to spend the cake money on bacon, that’s fine with us. We shrugged and said it was okay.

That must have seemed too easy, so he made sure we understood. “The bacon is instead of cake. It’s not my present.” Bacon is delicious, but it’s still only food. Food is not an appropriate birthday present for a boy who has seen the wonders housed within the magical walls of Toys R Us.

birthday bacon

I suggest that he wish for a significant price drop in the pork belly futures market.

Later, as we drove to get groceries, the boy piped up from the back seat with another bolt from the blue:

BOY: “Daddy, I think I’ll need a bow tie, if I’m gonna go anywhere fancy.”

ME: “Oh?”

BOY: “Yeah. Not one that you have to tie. Just one that you snap on.”

ME: “Where are you going that’s fancy?”

BOY: “I don’t know, but just in case I do.”

I hope he wasn’t envisioning his birthday party as a black tie affair, because bacon and ice cream don’t really wear well on a tux. Besides, if he wants to look like a junior Orville Redenbacher, he’s going to have to finance that fashion statement on his own.

At the end of our shopping trip, we passed through the bakery section of the store. The boy stopped and gazed through the glass at all the sweet treats. “Well, I think I do really want a cake instead of bacon for my birthday,” he said.

“How about a cake shaped like bacon?” his mother asked.

“No. I want it to look like an army vehicle.”

Oh well. Bacon was starting to sound good, but I like cake too.