Tag Archives: toddlers

We don’t need no stinking scarves; we’ve got fun to keep us warm

We’ve had old-school winter weather lately. It’s makes me nostalgic for Seals and Crofts music because it’s just like the ’70s again. Though I don’t hate snow, I don’t have the same high regard for it as I did when I was nine.

My boys love snow; that’s why I can’t dislike it. Shoveling is a pain, especially the re-shoveling after the snow plow has tossed all the street snow into my driveway. But I have two willing helpers, to the extent that they understand the goal of shoveling the driveway, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. There’s plenty else to sneeze at this time of year.

We got more than a foot of snow one day, followed by near-zero daytime temps, which is always a nice cherry on top of your winter woes. I no sooner got out my long underwear than my boys saw their chance to play in the snow. Thus began the ordeal.

The ordeal, if you don’t know the combination of snow and children, is the combination of snow and children. Finding all the pieces of snow attire, collecting them in one place, and getting them around the various edges of a child, is no mean feat. The last part of this circus should be performed with the child sedated, for if the child is conscious, the complaints will be incessant.

In the house, children rightfully complain about being restrained by the overburden of garments and the lack of suitable ingress for oxygen through the holes in their faces. They loathe breathing through scarves and similar impediments:

BOY: “Daddy, I can’t breathe!”

DAD: “You can breathe just fine.”

BOY: “No. I really can’t.”

DAD: “People who can’t breathe are too busy choking to complain.”

BOY: “No they’re not. They always say ‘I can’t breathe!’”

Two-foot drifts waited to be removed from the driveway, but we spent 15 minutes arguing about the habits of highly suffocated people.

His face soon extricated itself from the scarf, at which point he rightfully began to complain about his cold nose. I had no answers for him.

fort building

His nose may be a little cold, but at least he’s breathing again.

By now, Mommy had the little boy bubble wrapped in insulation. He joined us outside and immediately shed his mittens. Three trips back into the house later, he learned that keeping mittens on was prerequisite to staying outside.

Big Brother had given up clearing the concrete and was making a path to his fort beneath the pine tree by moving the excess snow into the driveway. He’d quit complaining; the idea of a fort always warms a kid’s soul.

going to the snow fort

Welcome to my fort. No mittens – no service.

Next, it was time to slide down the snowbanks I’d made with cast-off snow, bringing avalanches flowing back down into the driveway. Then we went back inside to leave a trail of snowy clothes through the house as we boys must do. It helps make it challenging to find all our gear next time, and that’s an integral part of the ordeal.

snowbank slide

There are lots of fun ways to get all this snow back into the driveway.

Later, I snuck out alone to shovel the driveway.

shoveling

Finally made it to the end of the driveway. Now who’s gonna shovel the street?

Life as an interchangeable part

Toddlers have a way with words. Their own way with their own words. They are some of the few people on Earth who say exactly what they mean. Pity we can’t understand any of it.

Our one-year-old has mastered his pronunciation of the words Mama and Dada. This was a happy milestone, until we realized that he was using them interchangeably when addressing his mother and me. I might have been Dada when I left for work in the morning and Mama by the time I got home again. Now, I sometimes forget to bring things home from work, but I’ve never yet left my Dada parts at the office.

Likewise, my wife can go from Mama to Dada without me perceiving a difference in her appearance, and I’m fairly well-informed regarding her anatomy. Buster might bump his knee and cry out for his mother’s loving arms with the plea, “Mama!” After the tears dry, he might tap her on the arm and point out to that very same Dada just exactly where he had hurt his leg.

We recalled Buster’s big brother going through a phase of development where he too threw these terms around without regard to gender, so we bided our time. Still, we took pains to point out which name goes with which parent whenever Buster seemed inclined to listen to our gibberish.

snowball school

Making a snowball with his brother, whose name he always gets right.

This went on until my wife proved again why she is the smart parent. “I don’t think he’s actually referring to us when he says Mama or Dada,” she explained. “I think Mama means help and Dada means look.”

Upon careful reflection, it all fell into place. Whenever he was distraught, he called out “Mama!” When he wanted to point something out, he did so to Dada, regardless of the parent at hand.

It’s nice to imagine that Mama and Dada are baby’s first words, but that doesn’t seem wholly accurate here. He’s been spouting words that don’t mimic adult speech for months, and they all mean something to him. You don’t preach with such fire and brimstone if the words don’t mean anything to you. Are Mama and Dada truly first words because they sound like words we know, even if they don’t mean what we think they should?

When it comes to valid communication, Buster’s first real word is juice. We have it; he wants it. Nothing could be plainer than his demand when he plants himself in front of the fridge and says, “Juice!” He need not be concerned whether it’s Help or Look who’s in the kitchen with him. We both have reached the stage of development where we understand the proper meaning of juice.

Thank God his parents are finally catching on to this language thing. He was beginning to worry about us.

If only we would reach developmental milestones that allowed us to understand more words, he would be much less concerned about our progress as parents.

The gift of an hour

I was in the living room with our one-year-old when the phone rang. I picked it up and heard my wife’s voice on the other end of the line. That’s when it hit to me:

The call was coming from inside the house!

But this is more of a Christmas than Halloween story, so nothing terrifying happened.

“A Disney Christmas Carol is on channel 48,” she said. She was upstairs, getting ready to go to bed early. She didn’t want to yell down the stairs and let Buster know where he could find her. He might decide he’d rather be with her, which would ruin her sleep plans.

I like watching A Christmas Carol. I love reading it. I try to read it every December because I think it is one of the most perfect stories in the English language. No one else in my family is old enough to remember when words were used, instead of CGI, to paint a story. So, with them, I watch it.

Big brother was already in bed, visions of making it to kindergarten on time dancing in his head. It was just Buster, me, and special guest Jim Carrey as Scrooge. We rocked in the recliner. It lacked an hour until Buster’s normal nodding off time. I wondered how long he would watch before he climbed down and looked for a toy or a mother.

Ghost of Christmas Past

Jim Carrey seems most human when he is computer animated. The Ghost of Christmas Past is a delight to little boys. (Image: Disney)

He looked for neither. He watched with me. He didn’t fidget or look around the room or punch me in the ear or anything. He watched, like he was interested. He seemed especially mesmerized by the Ghost of Christmas Past with his flaming head and superluminal flying skills. He made it through an entire hour, until the visit to Scrooge’s nephew’s Christmas party with the Ghost of Christmas Present. Then, he rested his head on my chest and nestled in to sleep.

It wasn’t much, only everything. That one hour was the kind of time a dad cherishes. Sharing something you love with your son, and having him be interested in it, doesn’t happen every day. Yes, he was interested on a completely different level, but still, it was a moment we shared.

Maybe he won’t care for it at all, next year, but that hour gives me hope that he will. It gives me hope that someday, we’ll read the story together. I’m getting ahead of myself here, but maybe someday, he’ll read it with his son. Of course its title will be changed to A Holiday Carol by then, but I expect Dickens will still be dead, and a little rolling over in the grave never killed anyone.

Illustrated Christmas Carol

My illustrated edition: beautiful words and pictures, but no computer animation, so we’ll have to wait and see how well it catches on.

I’m not a very religious person, but I do believe Christmas, taken in the right perspective, can add light to one’s soul. Maybe I’m just a backward traditionalist, but if we don’t give our kids something enduring at times like Christmas, we leave them nothing but toys. And we all know how long toys last.

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.