cedar ball snacks

The other day my five year-old saw a cedar ball and asked my wife what it was and what does it do? She told him that bugs do not like cedar so people use it to keep them away from clothes.
The next day at snack time my son complained about a bug flying around in the kitchen, I told him with the weather getting warmer that the bugs are starting to come out. I looked at his snack bowl and there was some brown chocolate looking ball in it that I had not put there. At closer inspection it was of course a cedar ball, when I asked why the heck did you put that in your food he said, "To keep the bugs out."

Bear on a Leash

My oldest son is terrified of bears ever since he learned that they are one of the few animals that eat humans and that there are some in the northern part of our state. Recently we were in a town square and he started freaking out saying, "Daddy is that a bear?" I assured him there were no bears around and then saw this huge fucking brown bear devouring some toddler's entrails ... well not really, I saw some one walking this huge assed dog that was devouring the dismembered leg of an elderly gentleman ... okay it was just a huge black dog* that looked like a cross between Cujo, the shaggy D.A., and an Afghan, but it had to be close to 175 - 200 hundred pounds. So I then told him that bears usually are not walked on leashes and he had nothing to worry about.

* I just read something about pounds being full of big black dogs because they scare people, they said some crap about people not being able to read their facial expressions because they are so dark, man racism even extends to people's views on dogs.

Savoir-Faire Update

http://stayathomedadbdc.blogspot.com/2007/09/savoir-faire.html
In an older posting (link above) I mentioned my son trying to communicate with what he thought was a french girl in his class who did not speak English very well. I told him some french phrases to say to her, he said he tried but she would just stare at him weirdly when he tried to use the phrases I taught him.

It turns out he later learned the girl is Chinese and not French.

I've got to start taping this show ...

Urination Regression / Protecting Mine

I've been jotting down blog ideas in my pda rather than online lately, I'll be posting them on the next few weeks.
2/27/08
My kindergartner has wet the bed with semi-regularity, like once every week for about a month now and there was one episode where I had to take him home early from school because he did not make it to the bathroom in time, we must be doing something wrong, with us being really busy, there has been more TV, more yelling, more timeouts, less mommy time and more pee problems.

update 3/27/08
Still really busy trying to get the house ready for sale, but I've cut out the before bed beverages, made sure that he's gone the bathroom right before going to bed, and my wife hasn't had many late nights at work lately, not sure if it is a coincidence or not but he has not wet the bed lately, I think only once in the last month, which is better than the one to two times a week it was happening in February.
I hope I haven't jinxed myself, he and his brother are asleep in my bed right now with my wife and I have to move them to their own bed, not in the mood for changing my sheets and waking him up to give him a quick midnight bath.
The problem at school surprised me, I was told that all of the Kindergartner class rooms had bathrooms in the class, but my son's class does not. Apparently they send the kids to the bathroom in pairs, one kid is like a look out I guess, anyway a couple of weeks ago two boys in my son's class were harassed by a pair of fourth graders in the bathroom.
I've got no problem with beating the living shit out of a fourth grader if the fuck with my son, be on notice fourth graders of America, be on notice.

My three year old is now taking soccer with his older brother, probably the only time they will be involved in organized sports together, unless the little guy is super kick ass at some sport when he's a freshman in high school and gets to play with his brother while he is a senior.
Anyway, he's the youngest kid in the class and some bigger kid took the ball from him, which wasn't a big deal but then he realized it was easy to take the ball from him and kept doing it, then pulled the ball from underneath him as he was sitting on it, which made me jump up as if I was going to do something about it. I then proceeded to stare the kid down, which he did not seem to understand.
My kindergartner was completely oblivious to this, and therefore was negligent in performing his god given duty of protecting his little brother. I called over and told him to protect his baby brother, to tell that kid to stay away from him. My big guy ran straight over to the bad kid and wrestled his soccer ball away from him and kicked it away, and continued to do so through out the session. My little guy thought this was some kind of game and then began to interact more with the "bad" kid.
After class it dawned on me that my older son may not have verbally communicated our family message to this kid, so I asked him and he said, "No I didn't tell him anything, I just kept trying to take his ball."
That night I contemplated teaching the preschooler about how there are no fair fights, and the "You fight one of us, you fight all of us" family credo, but decided he is probably too young for that information at this time.

The Kaboom!

Caillou is for "reals"

For parents of newborns or people thinking about having kids, the most accurate depiction of children in the toddler / preschool age range that I have encountered is the cartoon Caillou.

Besides being educational for children, the parents serve as a positive example of calm, though not permissive, parenting.
As parents we may expect our children, particularly our firstborns, to understand more than they actually do, and Caillou does a good job of showing how the world and it's workings are really still new and mysterious to young children, even if they seem like little teenagers when compared to their young siblings still in diapers.

Materialistic society is 'damaging' children: poll

Commenting on the results of the poll, chief executive of the Childrens Society Bob Reitemeier said: "As adults we have to take responsibility for the current level of marketing to children. To accuse children of being materialistic in such a culture is a cop out. Unless we question our own behaviour as a society we risk creating a generation who are left unfulfilled through chasing unattainable lifestyles." click here for the whole article

My Boys Favorite Things 2007

Sports Teams:
5yr-old
Indianapolis Colts
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
NY Jets
Rutgers University Scarlet Knights - all sports
NJ Devils
2yr-old
NY Jets
Rutgers University Scarlet Knights - all sports

Music:
bands
5yr-old
Arctic Monkeys
Monster Magnet
White Stripes
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
2yr-old
Arctic Monkeys
Led Zeppelin
White Stripes
"Jazz"

Foods:
5yr-old
Mac and Cheese
Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
Cheddar Cheese
2yr-old
Mac and Cheese
Cake
Sliced Strawberry and Cream Cheese Sandwich

Friends:
5yr-old
Taj
Mossimo
Finn
Anil
Michael
Luke
2yr-old
Mikey
Justin

Sports:
5yr-old
football
hockey
basketball
soccer
sword fighting
martial arts
2yr-old
football
soccer
basketball

TV Shows:
5yr-old
SpongeBob SquarePants
Backyardigans
Curious George
Danger Rangers
Zula Patrol
2yr-old
Curious George
SpongeBob SquarePants
Peanuts / Charlie Brown

Superheroes / Villians:
5yr-old
Black Spiderman / Spiderman
Venom
Sandman
New Goblin
Human Torch
2yr-old
Spiderman
Venom
Mary Jane
Green Goblin


Colors:
5yr-old
black
red
blue
brown
2yr-old
Yellow
Green

Drama King

My five year-old is a bit of a drama queen, or king, or more exactly drama prince, anyway one day every situation we found ourselves wound up with him either whining or crying, so at some point I asked him, "How do you turn every thing you do today into a crying fit?" To which he answered red faced and teary-eyed, "Daddy, I'm just like that!"
Well okay then.

Our cat died a few weeks ago, and it was pretty sudden, we had been really busy with family events so unfortunately I wasn't able to fully perceive how far along she was, but she didn't eat well for a week I changed her foods, that worked for another week, then she barely ate for a week, and that was it.
Two years ago she almost passed away but I took her to the vet daily for a week and got her hydrated via an IV, at mid week the vet was like I've never seen a cat with "numbers" as poor as your cat's, maybe it's time to put her down, but my wife was on a business trip and I didn't want my kids to have to deal with their cat dying while their mother was away, so I just kept bringing her back to the vet and she bounced back so I figured it would be the right thing to do to bring her for IV again, since she wasn't eating or drinking water. I was really worried because I could tell she most likely didn't have much longer to live and I would rather she died with her family around her, but if I didn't take her to the vet and she died I would be mad at myself because I didn't try every last thing, particularly when the IV brought her back from death's door last time.
Well I sent her to the vet and she didn't make it back, so I felt pretty crappy that she died without her family because they sent my wife home while they were giving our cat the IV.

My boys really made me proud, my kindergartner was really compassionate to our cat, she was really laboring to breath and he sat by her and sang a really soft song to her which relaxed her to the point where I got nervous because she then was barely breathing and I wasn't sure if she'd be about to muster up the energy to breath more normally again.
Right before my kindergartner and wife took our cat to the vet for the last time (she didn't make it back home) my toddler came rushing over and said, "Wait Daddy I've got it," and pulled out our play doctor's set and tried to treat our cat.
The older boy has a pretty full understanding of what it means to die and so he took it harder, the little guy still asks when is "Whinnie is coming back?" To which I say she's lives with God now, and It's really great there, and try to be convincing as possible.

Toddler tales

Some things my 2 year-old son has said recently that I find amusing:

"Why are you so angry?" Dude you're right I don't know, I totally need to mellow out.

His idea of toilet humor, I was changing his diaper and he was cracking himself up as he said,
"I'm going to draw your penis, and then I'm going to draw my big bruvee's (brother's) penis."
I guess his preschool art class is a little more advanced than I realised when I signed him up for it.

Again changing his diaper and he was upset when I was trying to put his pull-ups on over his privates, "No Dada don't put on diapee, I playing with my penis!"

Washing Kisses

I just kissed my toddler good night and noticed that his cheeks tasted like cake, so I got a wash cloth and wiped his face, which made him upset, which isn't surprising because he always gets upset when you wash his face, but he was saying something different from his normal protests. As I listened more closely I began to decipher something about kisses, and washing, oh he was saying, "You're washing my kisses away," as in I was negating the kisses I just laid on his cheeks by wiping his face.
So I gave him a second round of kisses and all was well.

BARNEY vs. HIP-HOP HARRY

DAF - Die Lüge