I like to play music while I drive, and I’ve been using family travel time to introduce my boys to my old 70s and 80s tunes. So now, every time we load up in my car to go somewhere, the boys tell me what songs to play and in what order.
Stuff they like and request first every time we get in the car:
Heart - Magic Man
Heart - Barracuda
AC/DC - Back in Black
Duran Duran - Hungry Like the Wolf
Suprising, to me, they don’t care for Wild Boys by Duran Duran.
“Dad, play Magic Man, Hungry Like a Wolf [sic], and then your song,” they tell me. “Dad’s song” is Love’s Theme by Barry White. I’m not sure exactly how that song became known as particularly my song — all the songs are from my CD collection.
I couldn’t get either of them interested in any Waylon Jennings music. They haven’t taken to Rick Springfield, either. Calfgrit9 likes She Blinded Me with Science by Thomas Dolby a little, but Calfgrit5 isn’t taken by it at all, so it doesn’t get played unless I call for it, myself.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what attracts them to certain songs. They do seem to like rock and roll, and not country or bubblegum pop. Although, Calfgrit9 used to like, (he said it was his favorite), A Horse With No Name by America, when I played in through my cell phone. But I don’t have that song on CD in my car, so we haven’t played it in a long while. And even though they really like two Heart songs, they’re not interested in others — like Crazy on You and Straight On.
I’m thinking that getting them interested in particular music is more a matter of attaching the song to a particular activity the first time than a matter of the qualities of the song itself. Then every time we do the activity, (like just riding in the car), they want the designated music to go with it.
This concept has some serious implications for psychological manipulation. I’m not sure if this potential power, in my hands, as their father, is a good thing or a bad thing. I’m not sinister, but I do have a sense of humor.
The past two weeks have been hot as hell. Several days had temps in the low 90s. What is August going to be like when late May and early June are in the 90s already?
I bought a new bathing suit this past Friday. Not only did I need a new size, but my old two pairs are 5 and 10 years old. Something that has annoyed me for several years about men’s bathing suits is why is the style so damn long? I mean, we have disgusting bikini bottoms, or we have freakin’ knee-length pants. Why are women’s swim suits getting smaller and smaller, (no complaint from me about that), and men’s suits are getting longer and longer.
Anyway, I got new trunks. Also, we just joined the local YMCA. We’ve talked about it for years, and the place is really fantastic, huge. When they ran a good deal recently, we decided to go ahead and join in, at last.
The YMCA pool is pretty damn nice. For one thing, it has three pools — a main pool for everyone, a wading pool for young children, (and parents who want to just sit in the water), and a lap pool for the athletes and exercisers. Plus there’s a fountain area with water spraying and geysering up from a couple dozen pipes under the ground. And plus plus, there’s a great water slide — something like an amusement park would have. I’m really impressed with this YMCA.
I took the boys to the Y pool on Saturday. I lathered them up with 50 SPF sunscreen, (30 SPF for myself — I want some sun to get through), and we loaded towels and snacks and water bottles into the car.
We were at the Y for about 3.5 hours, and the boys played in the big pool and in the fountain area. I went down the water slide twice, and then lounged under an umbrella. (Yeah, I know I can’t get a suntan while under an umbrella.)
At the table next to ours was a family of a mom, dad, and little girl. I noticed the dad had on the exact same bathing suit as I did. I mentioned to him, “Hey, cool bathing suit.”
They laughed, and the mom said, “Yeah, we can tell you shop at Target, too.”
During our day at the Y pool, I noticed two other guys (a teenager and another dad) wearing my suit, but in a light blue color rather than my dark blue. I guess I have an eye for what’s the popular style.
The boys kept asking me to get in the water with them, and I did a couple times. But on that hot and crowded day, “playing with Dad” meant “climb and hang all over Dad.” I love my boys, but damn I don’t want to just be a jungle gym in the water the whole time. Either one was wrapped around my chest and the other was wrapped around my back, or they were wrapped around my right and left sides. I couldn’t really swim or play in any way.
After two hours, I reapplied sunscreen to the boys and myself. Unfortunately, we discovered that night that both were mildly sunburned on their shoulders and back. Fortunately, ibuprofen and a slathering of medicated lotion seemed to keep them comfortable. Calfgrit5 says his skin doesn’t hurt. Calfgrit9 says it stings a little, when the meds have worn off.
So, I’m a good dad for taking my kids to the swimming pool for half a day. But I’m a bad dad for letting them get too much sun. I’m a good dad for getting in the water and playing with them for twenty minutes at a time. But I’m a bad dad for getting out of the water after only twenty minutes at a time. I would say +2 and -2 balances out to neutral, but I think the sunburn lingering for day or two pushes the equation over into the bad dad.
I’ve learned my lesson: no matter what advice you’re given about what and when to apply sunscreen to kids, do more and do it more often.
Just a few weeks after getting his new bicycle, Calfgrit5 told me he was ready to take off the training wheels. When I came home from work, it was the first thing he said to me: “Dad, I want to try riding my bike on just two wheels.” I got my tools and took off the training wheels.
I held his bike for him so he could mount up, and then I held onto the back of his seat to help him balance as he started pedaling. I held on for just a few seconds as he rolled into the cul de sac, and then I let go of him. I continued to jog along beside him in case he lost his balance, but he kept going just fine.
I had to explain how to land on one foot after braking, but after a couple more runs beside him, for only a few seconds each time, he was totally able to handle the bike all by himself. Within five minutes, he was riding around the cul de sac, and in and out of the driveway completely on his own. He looked like he had been riding without training wheels for years.
A week later, he rides across grassy fields, he drops down off of curbs, and he races me and Calfgrit9 through the school’s empty parking lot. He’s awesome to behold. I think his practice riding on his scooter built up his balance over the past several months.
With Calfgrit9, when he was 6 years old, it took a lot of convincing, and weeks of repeated practice to get him riding comfortably on his own. But then, he didn’t have the scooter experience beforehand, and he didn’t have a big brother to keep up with.
There’s a kid that lives down the street from us — he’s 6 or 7 years old — who still has training wheels on his bike. He loves to come play with the Calfgrits, and he comes rushing over whenever he sees them outside. He has outgrown his bike by at least a year, and one of the training wheels is bent up in a totally useless position.
The little boy has to ride leaning to one side, with the good training wheel, so he doesn’t fall over. This is rather sad. He comes pedaling up the street to ride around the cul de sac with my boys, and I just want to stop him and fix his training wheels.
I’ve never seen his parents watching, even from their yard down the street, when he’s out riding around. I don’t know if they even know where he is when he comes over to our yard. And what’s wrong with the dad (or mom) that they either haven’t noticed the problem with his bike, or they haven’t bothered fixing it?
I mean, I can understand if someone can’t buy a new bike of the correct size (even though they could get a used bike for cheap), but at least fix his training wheels. If you aren’t going to help him learn to ride without them, don’t leave him struggling with a broken and useless wheel on one side.
We got a new bicycle for Calfgrit5; he’d outgrown his first bike. I was putting the bike together, with CG5’s “help,” when he started spinning one of the wheels. As the wheel spun, he started to put his finger into the spokes.
“No,” I said, “don’t do that.”
He stopped. But then a few seconds later, he started to do it again.
“No!” I said. “You could really hurt your finger.”
“How?” he asked.
“Your finger,” I explained, “will get caught in the spokes, and broken.”
I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t really getting the concept. His mother broke her toe a while back, and from his point of view, it was nothing really bad.
I said, “Go out into the yard and find a stick to bring to me.”
He ran out into the yard, and after a minute, came back with a long, thin stick.
“Watch what happens,” I said.
I spun the wheel real fast, then slowly lowered the stick down into the spokes near the fork. Crunch! The stick snapped. A piece went flying off, and another piece dangled from the main length.
“See?” I said.
His face scrunched up in horror, and he burst out in tears. He bawled.
“What’s wrong?” I asked with concern.
He cried out, “Now I’m going to have a nightmare.”
His mother came into the garage and noticed her baby crying. When she asked what happened, CG5 said, “Daddy told me I’m going to break my finger. And he showed me with the stick. Now I’m going to have a nightmare.”
He was truly upset. I had no idea the demonstration would affect him so. But, after he calmed down, he didn’t try sticking his finger into a spinning wheel again. And that night he apparently didn’t have a nightmare. So maybe it wasn’t a horrible thing to show a child, after all.
Last night, Calfgrit9 wanted some time to play alone in his room. So Calfgrit5 and I played together. We had a lengthy sword fight with our foam swords (bought from the Lego store in Downtown Disney). Then he rode on my back as a knight on his horse. This went on for 30 to 45 minutes until I needed to answer the phone.
While I was on the phone, CG5 went to his room to play with his Legos and Lincoln Logs. After a while, I gave the five-minute warning for bath time. The five minutes passed quickly, and he wasn’t ready to stop playing when I started his bath water.
He got right pissed when I turned on the stern-daddy voice, “It’s time for bath. You’ve had plenty of time to play, and you can play some more after bath if you don’t take too long with this.”
“Baths are stupid,” he said.
“Now, we don’t use that word,” I said.
“I don’t want a bath. I haven’t had time to build anything,” he argued.
“If you don’t come and get in the bath right now,” I warned, “you won’t have time to play after. And if you’re going to be bad, we won’t read a book before bed. You’ll just go straight to bed.”
“Nooooo!” he shouted in agony. (No book before bed is a sad punishment in this house.)
“Come on!” I raised my voice.
He stomped into the bathroom, and started taking off his clothes.
“You’re a bad daddy,” he said. “You’re the worst daddy, ever!”
I got him into the bath tub, and since he refused to wash himself, I had to soap him up and rinse him off, myself. He pouted and whined the whole time. He reiterated and confirmed my bad daddiness. I was “the worst daddy ever in a million years.”
When he was clean, I had to threaten the no book before bed punishment again to get him to get out of the water. As I dried him off, he asked, “Will you build a Lincoln Log house for me?”
“Do bad daddies build Lincoln Log houses?” I asked.
He looked at me with the towel draped over his head, and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Mm hmm,” I grunted. “Can you put on your pajamas without an argument?”
“Sure,” he said. He was suddenly a totally different child.
I built a Lincoln Log house with him before he got in bed. I don’t know if I’m a bad daddy, a good daddy, or just a sucker.
This weekend, while Calfgrit5 was in his room taking his nap after lunch, I went into the office to fiddle around. While there, I saw out the front window, Calfgrit9 was sitting in the grass of the front yard.
His zip-up sweater was off and lying in a pile on the grass next to him, a plastic hoe (that he uses as a sword and a rifle) was in the grass on the other side of him, and he had some small toy in his hand. He was just sitting there, sort of staring off into space. He’d shift or move occasionally, but he seemed deep in thought more than playing with his toy.
I watched him for a minute or two, wondering what he was thinking. I got a little worried; I thought maybe there was something troubling on his mind. So I left the office and went downstairs to put on my shoes to go outside.
I walked up to him, “Hey buddy.”
“Hey Dad.”
I plopped down in the grass in front of him. “Whatcha thinking about?”
He didn’t hesitate, but stated, “About how some animals are pretty smart. They make their own homes, they form groups, they communicate. It’s like they’re as smart as we are.”
“Yeah,” I said. I totally didn’t expect that to be his thoughts. Here I was, worrying that he was bothered by something, and really he was just thinking intelligent concepts.
We chatted about animal reasoning and instincts for a few minutes, and then he wanted to show me an ant mound he had found over in the common area next to our lot. He had experimented with the ants by covering the exit holes with leaves and rocks, to see how they dealt with it, how they’d work around the obstacles.
After showing me his experiment, we walked around to the back yard, and our conversation wandered to what we’d do in the yard when the weather warmed up with spring.
I was relieved that he hadn’t been sitting in the yard fretting about something. I was rather impressed that he could just sit peacefully and think. That’s something I like to do sometimes. It’s something that I really don’t get a chance to do very often, anymore. Maybe next time I won’t disturb him.
At the table next to ours was a family of a mom, dad, and little girl. I noticed the dad had on the exact same bathing suit as I did. I mentioned to him, “Hey, cool bathing suit.”
“No,” I said, “don’t do that.”
