Tag Archives: Sons

The world according to Buster

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “I’m a lover not a fighter.” If our one-year-old could speak English, he would never say such a thing. He would proudly proclaim that he is a lover and a fighter.

He’s a little scrapper, that one. He loves to roughhouse and he’s not above bopping a family member on the nose when push comes to shove, or at any time before or after. He’s not very big for his age, but he makes up for his lack of volume with full doses of piss and vinegar.

Buster Brown

With a haircut like this, you’d have to be a fighter. (Image: Richard F. Outcalt)

My wife suggested that we change his name to Buster, or maybe Brutus. Brutus was the big meanie who picked fights with Popeye. This was either directly before, or directly after, his name was Bluto. I can’t remember the chronology; it’s so hard to keep up with Popeye now that he’s not appropriate for children anymore.

Buster and Brutus are tough guy names. But our little rough and tumble kid has a sweet side too. He’s a really good hugger who is never shy about passing out kisses to his family. If you rescue him from his crib when it has become a prison to him, he’s apt to take your face in his hands, turn it toward him, and plant a big wet one on your lips. (And you can pretty much count on baby kisses to be wet, even out of runny nose season.)

Pick him up from day care and he will smother you with hugs and kisses. He’s never loved anybody so much as he loves the particular parent who brings him home from that peculiar form of exile.

When you have a toddler who is both so rough and so tender, you have to be careful about how you teach him to employ the opposing sides of his personality. We’ve learned it is dangerous to lead such a child to the belief that a kiss is the equivalent of an apology.

Brutus . . . er . . . Bluto?

“See, it says right here. My name was Bluto until 1956, and again after 1958.” (Image: Fleischer Studios)

Sure, it seems like a sweet kiss would be a nice way to say I’m sorry, when the culprit is too young to say I’m sorry with actual words. But no.

Whenever the little boy plowed an unprovoked fist into this brother’s ear or pinched his arm, we asked him to make up by giving his brother a kiss. He had no problem doing this. After all, the punch was meant in good fun. Since no one hits him, he doesn’t know how much it can hurt.

Kisses seemed like a fine substitute until Buster could express his remorse in actual words.

Then, one day Mommy picked up her little boy and asked him for a kiss. He knitted his brow. He wanted to give her a kiss, but could not recall having anything to apologize for. So he punched her in the ear.

And then, in accordance with his training, he gave her a sweet kiss dripping with love (i.e. baby spit).

Be careful what you inadvertently teach your Buster.

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like a house with the right kind of bed in it

On the days I pick my son up from kindergarten, we come home through the neighborhood. There are a lot of very nice, roomy houses on the school side of our neighborhood. The homes get smaller and plainer as we get closer to ours. When there is nothing left to envy about the houses we pass, we know we are home.

dream home

What our house surely looks like from the other end of the neighborhood. (Image: Marion Post Wolcott/US Farm Security Administration)

There have been three or four houses for sale along our path since we began taking it. They are all near the school, over on the swanky side of town. We couldn’t afford to upgrade to any of them, but with the addition coming to our family, it is tempting to fantasize about living in a bigger house.

My son always points out each house with a for sale sign in the front yard. We make a game of picking out which property each of us thinks is the nicest. It’s kind of a stupid game, since they are all nicer than people of our ilk can afford. But it passes the time.

One day, on our trip home, I asked the boy, “Would you like to move to a new house?”

“No.”

“Not even a nice, big, fancy one like these?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because the new house might have a girl’s bed in it.”

“A girl’s bed? What does that mean?”

“It might come with a girl’s bed in my bedroom instead of a boy’s bed.”

I’d never thought of that. Who would want to take such a chance? “When you move to a new house, you take your own bed with you,” I explained.

“Oh. That’s a good idea. I should keep my same bed.”

Yesterday was my morning to take him to school. All of his favorite pants and shirts were in the hamper, so we had to make do with whatever was clean. He balked at the two pairs of pants I could find that fit him. Then, when I finally got him to understand that there were no other choices, he complained that the shirt I found went with a different pair of pants. The situation escalated. I yelled at him to just put something on before we were late. He whined and got all pouty about having to wear such unappealing clothes.

fresh laundry

All his other clothes were dirty. (Image: Dorthea Lange/US Farm Security Administration)

And there I was arguing fashion with my five-year-old son. I’d never imagined a scenario that would lead me to this result.

It’s a good thing I don’t have any money to buy a new house. There was an hour yesterday morning when I might have shopped for one that came with a girl’s bed.

That knee-jerk reaction faded fast. It soon occurred to me that he was arguing about his loss of control more than about fashion. Even so, he can be into fashion or whatever else he wants. He’ll always be my boy and he’ll always be able to bring his own bed wherever we might go.

A child of the world

About a year ago, I wrote about taking the family to an international festival. This was the event where I won happiness by transferring M&Ms between dishes with chop sticks.

At this festival, two Indonesian ladies showed us a traditional marble game called Congkak. They skillfully moved the marbles between wells cut into a wooden tray as I futilely attempted to follow the strategy. It seemed like a fine game, but it involved more thinking than I like to do at my age. My wife was rather taken with it. She continued to watch the women play as I wandered off to enjoy my first taste of Gangnam Style on a large screen Samsung at the South Korean exhibit.

Later in the day, we noticed people at the Malaysian exhibit playing their own version of the game. This redoubled my wife’s interest. I had to agree that if the populations of two countries so culturally distant, and separated by so many thousands of miles, as Indonesia and Malaysia both enjoyed this game, it must be an exceptional entertainment. Having contributed my requisite wise crack on the subject, I forget all about Congkak in the accompanying flash of euphoric smugness.

Congkak board

A traditional Congkak board – not available at Target. (Image: Tropenmuseum)

My wife did not. A year later, she found something that looked like it at Target. It has a different name, so we can’t tell if it is indeed the same game, but the picture on the box shows marbles on a wooden tray, and that’s good enough. She put the game into the cart, declaring that one of the boys would give it to her for her upcoming birthday.

Can't go wrong with wood and marbles

A game that is available at Target, which we bought on the strength of its wood and marbles.

That night, our son found the game on the kitchen counter, where all things we buy that don’t have a preordained spot in the fridge or the pantry sit until we figure out what to do with them. The marbles in the picture must have reminded him of Chinese Checkers. “Is this a Chinese game?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “I think it’s Indonesian or Malaysian.”

“Can I play it?”

“It belongs to Mommy. You’ll have to ask her. But I think it’s for her birthday, so she probably won’t open it until then.”

He thought for a minute, then put together a statement constituting a powerful argument for letting him play. “Well, I’m Indolaysian.”

“You are? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. Just a little bit. But it’s mixed in with the German and Polish and American and all the other stuff, so it’s hard to see.”

“Oh. Well, even so, you’d better go ask Mommy.”

He let it drop. If his lineage bombshell didn’t move me, it sure wasn’t going to do anything for Mommy.

Now, whenever I take a good look at my boy, I try to pick out the Indolaysian traits. He’s right though. The Indolaysian is mixed in seamlessly with the German and Polish and American, and especially all that other stuff. I can hardly pick it out at all.

How to drive a toddler over the edge

This truth is self-evident. One-year-olds are patriots in their zealous devotion to the pursuit of happiness. They want happiness, and they want it now. They’ll let you know, quickly and unambiguously, when the path they are on deviates from that ultimate goal.

The path deviates regularly, because the things that make a one-year-old happy are often disruptive, destructive, dangerous, or all of the above. Further frustrating the pursuit of happiness is their reluctance to abandon the notion that parents can make all their wishes come true, regardless of the laws of physics or better judgment.

Our one-year-old’s happiness is hindered by baby gates. He isn’t bothered that they prevent him from going down the stairs; someone will carry him down, if he asks. Baby gates frustrate him because they have a mechanism that he cannot operate. He doesn’t need freedom to pass the gate; he wants the knowledge to open it, to liberate himself from ignorance.

gateway to hell

This gate has a long history of vexing one toddler and numerous adults. It has been pulled out of the wall twice – probably not by the toddler.

Once, when he was especially frustrated by the gate atop the basement stairs, I tried to explain the purpose of baby gates to him. I told him that baby gates wouldn’t be useful if all manner of little people could operate them. I was careful in my explanation, but he acted like he didn’t even understand most of the words.

I asked him if he would like me to take him to the basement. The look he shot me said, “Mommy, my juice, and the gate I was working on before you butted in are all up here. What the hell would I want with the basement?”

Toy trains are another frustration to the boy. He loves playing with his big brother’s trains. Big Brother, in adherence to rule number one of The Boys’ Guide to Optimal Utilization of Toy Trains and Real Dads, owns several incompatible sets. The cars of one set won’t hook to the cars of another. This drives the one-year-old into a toddler-sized fit of apoplexy.

His dream is to make a single chain of all the diverse engines and cars in the house. He gets annoyed when he can’t get two cars to hook together. Then, he taps me with his hand and points to the troublesome connection. Since I can’t make incompatible trains fit together, I’m left trying to explain.

the problem with trains

All the connectors are the same color, but somehow that’s not enough. Were the baby Vanderbilts saddled with such trials?

Incidentally, if you want to know what frustrates a man in his 40s, it’s trying to explain compatibility to a toddler.

I finally got him to understand the color coding – blue hook doesn’t fit into white hole. Then he brought me two engines with only white holes as connectors, tapping me on the shoulder and pointing to the work he needed done. You should have seen his face when I tried to teach him that the two whites couldn’t connect without any hook pieces. Knowing what I know of his toddler language, I’m pretty sure he called me a lying sack of something or other before he flung the engines across the room.

How could any child build a viable transportation system with parents like this?