Change is good
I'm sure you've seen them by now. This is the square(ish) fuel saving milk carton. And I applaud them. Nice job. It is great to point out how little changes can make such a big difference, etc. However, it seems that this carton was designed with another more diabolical, more sinister, purpose in mind: to put milk on my shoe. I hate milk on my shoe.
I saw a little action figures of Mario and Luigi of Super Mario Brothers fame and, without thinking, bought them.
Well, my five-year-old saw them and loved them. A lot, in fact. With there only being and inch and a half tall or so, they were easily lost in the bed at night, so I bought a container for them at Ikea, a giant plush frog with a big mouth/pocket that zippers closed for just such emergencies. Perfect.
Since then, things have happened. His fascination with Mario and Luigi's back-story has led him to the discovery of many more characters, and because he was really engaging in imaginative play with these characters and because they weren't very expensive, I ordered Bowser, Toadstool, Princess Peach, and one of those little bomb things. At this moment in time, these little figures and his wooden blocks are the best things in the world.
So he carries this frog, King Frog, nearly everywhere he goes in the house, which is pretty cute because so many of the things we get for our kids seem to go unappreciated. Actually it is more than cute. It fills my heart to see it, I don't know why.
Anyway. I also noticed that if he could take them with him somewhere, for instance at bath or dinner time, he'd put them in this odd place in the foyer. He's meticulous child so I didn't think too much of it. But one day I watched him go a significant distance to put them there for what was only to be a few minutes.
So I asked. "Why do you put King Frog with the shoes all the time?"
"In case there's a fire or gas leak and we have to get out fast I can grab them on the way out."
Okay.
I have to say that I believe Sellwood to be the best neighborhood in Portland. Of course I haven't lived anywhere else since moving to Portland 5 years ago, but I cannot imagine living anywhere else.
And it really is great for families. Heck, there's going to be 100 kindergartners at Llewelyn this year. (It's best not to think about the student-to-teacher ratios).
Anyway, as a big Sellwood fan I am glad to see the new neighborhood branding. Looks sharp.
Check some of it out here: www.sellwoodwestmoreland.com
Well my oldest son heads off to kindergarten in just under a month and I am finding it increasingly difficult to accept this fact. Seriously, it seems like he was just born. As most of my friends work they just don't seem to get how hard this is.
Of course, he has been going to preschool several days a week for years and he loves it. He is excited to go to school, and I'm sure Llewelyn is as fantastic as they all say, but he'll be away from me on so many levels and I'll never get to do this—these last 5 years—over again.
So, in order to deal with this, and I'm clearly not, I am obsessing about schools. Should we have looked more at private schools? Charter schools? Cooperative educational endeavors? What about the French School? But I know I'm not fooling anyone, I'm just not ready.
But he is.
There's another Llewelyn kindergarten play date in a couple of weeks. I know that these are as much to ease the parents into this new role as to aid the kids, and I appreciate it.
Are you getting ready to send your child to school or do you have an interesting story? Let's hear it.
I've been a father for more than 5 years now. That is, in the same moment, no time at all and an eternity. So every day I am confronted with the awkward juxtaposition of feeling completely disappointed in my performance at this job I have had for so long and the feeling that I have learned so much so quickly.
I mean, yes, the job is different everyday. But it is also the same and, on paper, pretty easy: keep them fed, safe and engaged (or some abstraction of the lot).
Anyway, we went to our neighborhood toy store yesterday, Spielwerk, and my oldest son really made me angry. And this is where I have to be careful, because I know how he did it, I'm just not so sure that it is fair of me to expect anything different.
We just stopped in to get a set of small Bilibos for him and his little brother, but it is also a great store to just look around. And we usually have fun doing just that. But yesterday he wanted everything, which was frustrating because I sensed that he wasn't having fun because he was only concerned about whether or not he would get these items. Now he has never done that before.
I told him to enjoy the store and to show me all the things that he fancied at the end. But he couldn't. Because, alas, he had stumbled upon a wand with a star atop it. And it was beautiful.
And this is one of the things that I just love about my son, he loves the beautiful. He has a real feeling for it, and this wand really engaged that.
"That really is lovely," I said, "but that isn't what we are here for today. You can play with it while we're here though."
Well that brought a meltdown, which meant we left the store without anything. But as this was his first meltdown over a "thing" I was aghast.
I really don't like to be the bad guy. I like to talk with him and explain my position and let him offer his own, etc. Principally, there are two such wands at home -- they are a little different, I'll grant that -- that I honestly cannot remember when he played with them last. Certainly not this year. But the connection was emotional, so my role was that of the bad guy.
Yet the bargaining went on. And this is where it got weird for me because it seems like that he began to see the wand as this thing that he wasn't allowed to want, while being a thing that he truly wanted.
So he had taken my "you shouldn't expect to get something immediately just because you want it," okay, there may have also been talk of recession, etc., but he had taken that to mean something tantamount to "you should not want that" and trying to reconcile himself with the fact that he did.
So then I find myself saying something like, "I love that you want it. It is one of the things that I love about you, but I just want you to be okay with not having it." What the hell does that sound like to a 5-year-old?
Heck, maybe I should stick to what my folks did:
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I said so."
We went to the Dairy Queen last night so that London could use the free ice-cream coupon he got from talking to a park ranger at Seattle’s Ballard Locks.
London had ridden his bike there so I stayed outside with the bike as Sarah and he went in to get the prize.
The line was long. The day was hot.
I watched him as he held so tightly and so proudly to that little ticket. There was something about that scene that just filled my heart.
You cannot say that you weren't having fun, it was written in your eyes, in your red cheeks and runny nose.
They say this and that about so many things.
Maybe this place is haunted but the ghosts look just like us.
I don't think that I would have noticed had I not of met
myself (starred into the eyes of me as I would have been
at age 10 or 11). The encounter was long in its shortness --
an eternity in an instant. And then he went off to ride the
trails and I to contemplate lost time.
I found this in my journal. How time flies.
>>>>
Every day is so precious; it makes me sad when they end.
Today, after I got home from work, London and I went to the market and got some milk. We talked along the way about all the things we saw.
He points to the chestnuts on the ground and says, “wetsnuts.”
He points to the flowers and says flower. I put him so that he can smell them and he says, “nice.”
He likes to point put airplanes, ants, and bicycles and when you talk about the wind he leans in close to your face and blows – like the wind.
He also enjoys flirting with all of the girls at the market. He is quite a regular now and certainly has his favorites.
At the market London wanted a plum (num).
We had a good day. Today Sarah put up a video of London doing the Hokey Pokey on the web site. It was a huge hit at the office.
After dinner, I gave London a bath. That is always fun – or, at least, has always been fun so far. Then we brushed teeth and went out to look for the moon. It wasn’t up yet,
It was a good day. It was a very good day.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
London has a cold today. He woke up fussy, but we still had a great day. We played outside some when it wasn’t raining and smelled some flowers. We walked down to the house that has the chickens and looked at them for a while.
Yesterday London and I got to spend a lot of time together while Sarah was doing a clinic in Woodburn. We did some shopping at the outlet stores, made some friends, and then went over to a field that had some cows and horses in it.
London likes to call out what he sees: “Cow!” “Chicken!” “Horse!” and he likes to keep calling it. It is wonderful how sweet his little voice is and how fast he is learning things. He has a little book about a tiger. He has only has this book for a few days but he can already call out every animal that appears in the book. Tiger, snake, monkey, elephant, bird.
