Is that why you yelled $#(%!!!

A few weeks ago my 8 year-old son forgot a book at school he needed to study for a test. He was getting very upset. That same night I misplaced something and was yelling at myself about it.

I went over to him and said, "See there is no reason to get mad at yourself, everyone looses things even daddy, I just lost something too."

"Oh, is that why you just yelled 'shit'?"

"Uhm, yeah it is. You are not in trouble, but you are not allowed to say that word okay, I am sorry that you heard me say it."

Hold On To This ...

My wife brought my youngest son into bed with me this morning before she went to work. It is the first day that both of my boys have off for summer vacation, so I do not have to get up as early as I have been. So I hug my son but then he realizes that his mother is leaving and he fully wakes up and starts to go after her. I let out a little grumbly moan of disappointment, and he turns back and says, "Hold on to this," and gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and then proceeds downstairs after his mother. A few minutes later he asked, "Are you still holding on to it?"

Stream of Constant-ness / Pictures of You Two

Today, well, Monday, was the first day home on Summer vacation for my 5 year-old.
The last two months he has been asking when will school be over and talking about how he is ready for school to be over.
And now that it is over, he spent the whole day talking about his friends, asking me to call his friends' parents to set up playdates.
I had forgotten that he constantly talks, non-stop, continuously, really, on and on ... I was checking emails and told him I needed to concentrate so I could finish more quickly so we could hang out, but being five he did not understand that what I said meant that he should stop talking.
So I had to ask him to stop talking for a few minutes, I did not blow up at him about it, though I know I have been short with him on this subject in the past, however I can remember how it stung being a child and my mother asking me to stop talking so she could finish paying some bills. I have never been an extremely talkative person, so she did not have to shut me up very often, but I can tell that the lack of rarity, or familiarity with being asked to "Just please stop talking for a minute," has not made it a more comfortable situation for my recent pre-school graduate.
This situation is some what of a trade off for not constantly having the TV on to distract him. I do not plan on the TV being his summer long companion so I just have to remember to be sensitive to his feeling and needs while he is not mature enough to be in tune with or situationally infer my feelings and needs.
At one point he said, "I just want to do anything with you." So I integrated him into my chores, unloading the dishwasher, sorting and putting away laundry, sorting change into piggy banks, etc. and he was into it, though not as much as being into playing of course, he did like the idea that he was earning "points" towards getting his allowance by helping me out around the house.

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For some reason on Sunday on the ride home after seeing Toy Story 3 my kids were talking about my wife and I being dead. It may have had to do with us not getting them any candy from the concessions stand, or it may have had to do with the Andy character growing up, toys being thrown away, etc. As my 8 yr-old was talking about something with us being old or dead and the Toy Story plot, my 5 yr-old said, "When you guys are gone I'm just going to look at pictures of you two all the time."
I had a hard time not crying after hearing that.

I really wish my kids did not have a rather full understanding of death at such an early age. Although it may help them to deal with the issue better through out their lives.

Waitlist 2010 / Accepted 2011

Oh yeah, I got wait listed for 2010 for the MSW program I applied to, and accepted if I choose to go in 2011, which is what I choose, I do not deal well with major life situations being up in the air, so I would rather know when I am starting rather than wait around for things to shake out.

Night and Day / Fear of a Wood Floored Planet

I have been trying to get more sleep to enable me to be more productive during the day when my boys are at school.

Yesterday my pre-schooler said he stepped on a staple when he was at school and it went into his foot. He said they were had to take off their shoes and just wear their socks when they were practicing their dance routine for graduation.

He did not seem hurt, and his teachers are really good at informing us when the students get hurt, and I figured that he would be in huge amount of pain if he had a staple in his foot so I basically did not believe him, and made him continue jogging his laps around the house.
Twice a week I have he and his brother jog around our house for exercise.

At first he seemed in pain, but very quickly was back to normal so I thought he was trying to get out of doing laps.

Fast forward four hours and we are getting ready for the boys to shower and he complains about his foot and when we look he has a centimeter long dark wood splinter buried in his foot. I asked him if the teachers helped him and he said they did not. I asked if he told them and said he did not, "They would not help or do anything about it." I explained to him that he was totally wrong that they would help him, which they would.

FUCK I was so wrong in my assessment, I really should have looked at his foot straight away, which I normally would have done, being a bit of a worrier when it comes to their health, but we were outside and my gut was feeding me bad information.

It took us at least 30 minutes to get it out because my son operates on a dramatic level that is usually only seen in operas or from the mouths of young broken hearted teenage girls, he was wailing the whole time, often when we were not even touching his foot. He got himself so worked up that he was pouring sweat and shaking and screaming at the top of his strong little lungs.
And when I say we got it out, I mean most of it, the hole looks dark, so their may be another thinner sliver of wood in his foot or their is just dirty wood residue in the wound.

After all of this I still had to give them showers and shower myself, so being worked up from the situation I did not get to bed any earlier than normal.

Then this morning my wife wakes me up at 5:15 and says, "Our 2nd grader wet the bed and I am going to workout at bootcamp, so you have to get up and help him."
Great, my sleep was encroached upon at both ends.

My pre-schooler is now afraid of wood floors, which we have a lot of in our house. I spoke with the teachers at his school and they said that they will not make the kids take off their shoes anymore, and that they wish he had told them because one of them is an EMT and would have had no problem cutting out the splinter seeing how she has performed emergency surgery in the past.

So the morals to this story are when it comes to health issues always believe your kids, they may not communicate exactly what happened to them, but if they are bringing up an issue there is a very good chance that something is going on, and regularly remind your children to tell their teachers, baby sitters, basically what ever grown up is responsible for them at that time, when something bad happens, be it bullies, boo-boos or uncomfortable interactions with weirdos and to tell them right away.

Really, you are going to wear that?

It has been hot and humid as all balls lately, and yes a world completely made up of testicles would be disgustingly clammy and uncomfortable, why did I leave the moderate and foggy shores of San Francisco?

My house is disaster post my preschooler picking up lice from his school, a situation like many that is so traumatic that even though there are tons of interesting and even funny stories generated from it, I just don't bother blogging about it in detail because living through it once was enough.

So my laundry in garbage bags in various places in the house and it is super humid so I am not phased by my only available shirt being a sleeveless Adidas t-shirt. It is not a tank top, I will not be exposing my hairy Neapolitan descended shoulders, it is just a t-shirt with no sleeves.

My five year old sees me after putting on the shirt and says:
Dad are you really going to wear that to my school?
Me: Yes I was planning to
Him: laughing, Into the school?
Me: thought bubble, "great I need to hit the weights more or maybe get my shoulder and arms waxed, or both."

Monday D-Day or G-Day

I called the admissions department for the MSW program I applied to and they said they will start completing their review of the applications this coming monday.

Hits From the Palm: 2 year old notes about dying

this passage has been sitting around in my palm pilot since at least 2008:

Before I had kids the idea of dying was palatable to me, you get old, you ware down, you kind of get tired of things in general, and then you're ready to go.

Now I find the idea that death is an inseparable part of life horrific, I guess I didn't love myself, or life in general nearly as much as l love my kids and wife because the idea of my children having to sit through my funeral is the most inconceivable heartbreaking things i can think of until i think about the fact that my boys will one day die as well.

I have come to understand the profoundly deep love that parents can have for their children, and there was no way to understand prior to having children, which isn't a put down to people without children, or a condemnation of their ability to love, somethings have to be experienced to be understood. It's like when you see a Hollywood rendition of an alternative lifestyle that you are familiar with; punk, stoner, club kid, whatever, and you realize that the writer has no first hand knowledge of their subject matter, "No self respecting punk would dress like that," or "Nobody acts like that when they are high."

Having a second child really taught me how one's capacity to love can grow exponentially.
I have always intellectually thought that one can have almost infinite love to give, but pre parenthood it was mostly tied to some sort of poly-amorous concept.

So basically I don't want to die, ground breaking I know.

Sadly now I know why all children in 3rd world orphanages have shaved heads and the literal meaning of nitpicking, hasn't been a fun last 27 hours.

If they could always stay little

The end of the school year is fast approaching and with it my pre-schooler's graduation. I am experiencing very different emotions with his graduation than I did for his older brother's. The first time around I was excited for my little guy to be growing up and heading off the primary school, now I am afraid that I will be balling at the graduation. It reason must be that this is my youngest and we do not plan on having anymore children, so will always be our baby, and if he is growing up then I surely must be growing old.
Also he is so damn cute and one day he will not be, in the same way at least. Public grammar school also means a less supportive environment for him, homework, dealing with bad kids, over worked teachers, and having to actually make it to school on time!

Excuses

We've had a few deaths in the extended family, bad allergies and illnesses being passed around, I have mostly successfully patched the thin spots in my front yard and have had the backyard sodded, my 2nd grader was "recruited" for the local travel soccer team's U8 development academy, so with the rec league team I coach it's soccer four days a week including twice on Saturday!

I should be hearing about my graduate school application soon.

So things have been busy I will hopefully be able to get back to posting on a more regular basis.

Death in the family

My mother just called me to tell me that a cousin of mine just died, she was in her 50's and had all kinds of medical problems, she recently had a leg amputated due to a childhood accident it had given her problems her whole life, she was actually happy to have it removed and was doing well beside her diabetes. It is ironic that she died from a heart infection stemming from a bunch of recent dental work, some medicine she is on was ruining her teeth and she finally got approval from medicare (or whatever med agency was helping her) to get her teeth worked on. So she was going back every week to make up for lost time. She was feeling bad yesterday and died while getting dialysis at 4pm today. My mother called me a half an hour ago, my wife won't be home for another 30 minutes, so I can't really reflect on this in peace cuz I got the kids and have to make dinner.

FUTSAL & SOCCER

My big guy has been on a tear he had 5 goals in his last two futsal games, in one they were down 3 zip, he somehow got kicked in the face on the sideline in the first half, then after sitting out most of the half started the second and took a nasty fall onto the hardwood floor and sat out most of the second half, he pulled himself together and asked to get back in and helped lead a come back to tie game at 5-5 with two late game goals. He ended the season with a hat trick in a blow out season finale.

After opening the outdoor soccer season with a only an assist in a loss, he followed up with hat trick in our second game and two goals in the third game.

Porno comments

I have been getting a number of comments to my postings on this blog in Chinese. I just commented to one of the comments asking that they post an English translation, then I remembered babel fish, in one comment they were talking about my tribe's milk? and here is a translation of another comment:

How does the big milk younger sister paste the chart area 0204 movie watching dew point autodyne immoral woman female student to console oneself the pornographic station adult to laugh at the av violent snares of love to like the video beautiful woman lascivious av adult pornography telephone spicy younger sister video chatting the sexual relationship sentiment color vcd self-consolation chart obscene beautiful adult forum Taiwan pornography forum adult chatroom autodyne bare female to paste chart video adult free a piece of movie Ms. av adult net adult pornography pornography Taiwan spicy younger sister vesicle the pubic hair pornography news bare female autodyne pornography movie a piece of forum sexual affection skillful beautiful woman to escape the bra personality color heaven av portrait pornography video to chat makes love the video adult movie bedroom drama sentiment color to chat the net hot sentiment color Taiwan female superior sexual affection secrets Taiwan av female superior masturbation self-consolation movie

Why would they post porno stuff to my blog, no one is looking at my comments section looking for porn

Budding Evil Genius

My 5 yr-old son has really shown a propensity for manipulating his brother and test his parents' boundaries. The other day as we are leaving to take his older brother to school right before we get to the door he says uh-oh and pulls a lego star wars figure out of his pocket and very visibly puts it on the kitchen counter. His brother was already in the car. About three minutes into the trip he tells me that his brother has a star wars lego figure in the car, knowing that house toys are not allowed in the car with out parental approval.

I get on his brother's case about knowing he is not allowed to bring toys, particularly very small easily breakable ones that they love, in the car or outside of the house, and I point out that his brother remembered to leave the toy he was playing with at home.l

I forgot to have him hand the toy to me, so of course he took it into school anyway, and let some kid look at it at the end of the day and lost some rare character's light saber. After getting his teacher to unlock the classroom and let us look for it, to no avail, I tell him this is why you shouldn't bring collectible toys out of the house, and he says, "I wish I never listened to my brother." I ask why and he says that his brother told him they should sneak the lego figures into the car so they could play with them.

So he told him to bring it in the car, had me watch him not bring his in the car and told on his brother for bringing it in the car, all in a ten minute span. Sounds like a set up, right.

I asked my therapist, who has written a number of books on children, if she thinks it was possible that my 5 yr-old actually planned this out to set up his brother? She said yes particularly if he has done anything like this in the past. They both tell on each other all the time, and he has manipulated his older brother into adding him in a number of sneaky endeavors, the biggest of which usually involve snacks, like discovering a hidden cache of gummy fruits that were destined for birthday party gift bags and getting his brother to open them because at three years old he did not have the strength to do so himself. There was also the time where he showed his brother that they could eat Easter candy without permission if they hide the wrappers, again he needed his brother's help opening the candy.

So yeah, I think my little guy is capable of hatching a plan to get his older brother in trouble. Since then I told my 2nd grader to just tell me if his brother tries to get him involved in any other schemes that he fears will get him in trouble and sure enough almost once a day that little mind is hatching some devious plan to advance his goal of world domination over candy, toys and video games.

A side note to his thinking ahead, this morning he asked me if we were late to pre-school and I said not really and though he usually is pushing to make it on time, he seemed bummed, so I asked him, why did you ask and he said, "I want to be late, if we are late to school that means I don't have to go for as long." I said wow, yes you are technically correct.