Category: lil’ chino

the coming spawn

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just us part ii

Sharaun’s mom was in town for a long Easter weekend.  I took Monday off so I could spend an additional day with her in town.

We decided to head downtown and bum around the little historic district.  I don’t “get” most of the shops in these places.  Full to the point of clutter with stuff that looks like junk yet is priced like finery.  Because the stores are packed tight with towering hoard and I was pushing Cohen around in the stroller I often couldn’t navigate the pathways and was forced to find something else to do while the ladies, Sharaun, Keaton, and Ami (what Keaton calls Sharaun’s mom), browsed.  This meant that he and I spent the better part of an hour wandering the shopfronts.

It’s nice to have that time where it’s just you and your kid.  With Cohen most of our father-son time has been at home; we haven’t gone much anywhere just he and I.  While I was pushing him around listening to him chatter, I remembered one of the first times I had the same kind of solo outing with Keaton.  In fact it was in the same place, when I took her down to a chili cookoff on a nice Summer Saturday.  I wrote about it here, actually.  And, like that time before, I enjoyed every smile directed into the stroller and every, “He looks like his dad” themed comment.  It was a nice little break from work where things are run-away worthy right now.  I need to do my absolute best to focus, working double-time between now and when we leave in four short weeks.

But that time, that time where it’s just you and your kid(s)… that’s the stuff right there.  The mother lode.

Goodnight.

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call in the cavalry

For Christmas Keaton got a new big-girl bike.

When I purchased it online it didn’t have an option to ship with training wheels.  Though I knew she’d likely still need them (she’s only ever ridden with them), I suppose I was hopeful that maybe we could rush right to the dad-runs-alongside kind of learning to ride and perhaps forgo them.  A few weeks back, when the government gave me sunlight after work and the weather warmed enough, we tried this.  Results were as expected: she’s just not ready to try without training wheels yet, especially on a bigger, more daunting, bike.  So I took a “to-do” item on my phone to purchase, or borrow, a set of training wheels for her new ride.

That was three sets of unusable training wheels ago.  The first set, hand-me-downs from her good friend Jake, wouldn’t fit on her bike – a theme which would come to repeat itself.  See, the frame where it rests on the rear wheel axle is all thick stylized tubing… and most training wheel attachment and stabilization hardware assumes some standard frame construction.  That being the case, the borrowed wheels wouldn’t work.  I purchased two more sets from the local big-box joint, and the hardware for both of those was also a bust.  No way to get them attached to her crazy new-fangled frame.  Worse, in the process of trying set after set I managed to strip the axle nut so badly I almost couldn’t remove it.

Last night, however, we happened to be at the Wal Mart and I noticed they carried a type of training wheel I’d not yet tried.  Now familiar with the specifics of my daughter’s bike which caused the incompatibility, I quickly inspected them for feasibility.  Hooray!  My visual inspection said they were at least plausible, but I’d have to buy them to be sure.  So we did, paid something like $13.  Tonight I attempted to put them on the bike, and, what do you know – it actually looked like they’d work.  At least that was the hope until I managed to crossthread the axle nut onto the bolt – permanently ruining and hope of reattaching the wheel again.  With the first 1/8th inch of thread simple sheared flat, I’m out of luck.

Soundly and thouroughly defeated, I removed the entire back tire and will be taking it into the local bike shop tomorrow to see about either getting a new axle bolt, re-threading the current axle bolt, or getting an entirely new replacement tire if neither of those options is (are? – man I always mess this up) possible.  Keaton made sure I wasn’t given a pass on this – in fact she told Sharaun immediately that I “broke her bike again” (the first “break” being the stripped nut).  Oh yeah Keaton?  Well… dad can… pay to have someone else fix his mistakes.  How about that, huh?  How about that.  Hopefully the bike store dudes won’t laugh me out as I walk in with an 18″ pink and purple bike tire…

Goodnight.

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dad’s superman veneer

Shhh!  Don’t tell anyone, but I made a conscious effort to dial-down my work investment this week.  I really did.  I was sort of sick a couple days so that forced slowdown helped, but I also tried to do less.  You can see, from the writing, that it worked.  I feel better (not bad at all) about it.  Let’s go.

I don’t know if it’s the lovely Spring weather or what, but lately Keaton’s had a renewed interest in riding her bike.  I talk more about the whole training wheels saga later; right now we’ve just been getting out of doors almost nightly and riding small suburban circuits.  While we ride together, I can help but to do a bit of dad showing-off… dredging up muscle memories made in my youth and popping and riding wheelies (on my mountain bike, no less), riding with no hands, “fishtailing,” “endo’ing,” and bunny hopping.  (I think) she finds it all terribly impressive, and a dad’s gotta keep up his Superman veneer, you see.

Monday evening Sharaun was at the gym and Keaton, Cohen, and I had all gone on a long walk around the neighborhood.  Keaton chose to ride her bike and after we got back home she joined up with a group of neighbor girls who were also out riding bikes in the cul-de-sac across from our house.  For a while, while the sun was still well enough above the horizon, I stretched out on the grass in the front yard and played with Cohen there while she rode.  Then, as dusk came and the sun was no longer there to warm us, Cohen and I took our leave of the lawn and headed inside.  I hollered at Keaton that she could stay out and ride with the girls.  She stayed out there and cycled around in circles until after the streetlights came on and all her friends had to go home too.  It was after eight o’clock before I stepped outside to call her back.

Later, I learned that she was absolutely thrilled to be given this tiny freedom.  I considered it quickly at the time, only just briefly, for it really isn’t a situation she often finds herself in.  She’s only just five, and the times where she’s “alone” are usually playdates with friends or in childcare at the gym or church.  She hasn’t really yet experienced the empowering rush that I can remember as a kid when you felt that the world (as big as it was to you at the time in your radius of four of five suburban blocks) was yours to explore and discover.  But for Keaton that night she was out hanging with the big girls.  Riding bikes with no parents, laughing and playing and having a grand old five year old time.  Nevermind that I could hear her the whole time through the front screen door, or that I could see her by craning my neck from my seat on the couch – to her she was unchaperoned.

As she was coming in she said to me, “You can do that again Dad; let me ride by myself.  I wasn’t scared or sad at all; it was fun.”  It’s fascinating to try and plumb the psychological implications of what your kids say and do.  Maybe this little self-affirming comment was her way of admitting that, in fact, she may have been a little scared or sad to begin with – but that those notions soon passed and she was thrilled to realize that there is a world off the apron strings.  I figure one thing I can do is try and give her an idea of just how big and wonderful that world is, maybe grow in her some passion to explore it and test it.  Then again, I have no idea what I’m doing here.

OK, the other thing I wanted to capture about that evening bike ride.  I mentioned I could hear the girls in the circle through the front door, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to stand there and eavesdrop a bit.  I’m glad I did, because I got to overhear my daughter bragging to her friends.  “Hey do you guys know that my dad can lift the whole front wheel of his bike and ride around?  He can also ride with no hands and jump his whole bike off the ground!”  Hearing this made my heart swell, I tell you.  Of course the other girls were quick to represent their dads in response, I heard lots of “My dad does X,” and “Yeah and mine can do Y!”  If you’re not a dad of a little girl, I don’t think you can even approximate what emotions this evokes in a man.  It’s primal, tickling something in us which dates back to primitive times; and it is so satisfying it’s hard to describe.  (Pat just wait.)

Just wait until she’s fourteen or fifteen and reality comes crashing in as she realizes I’m not but a human after all, and a flawed one like the rest of us at that.  Owell, until then I’ll enjoy the view from this pedestal.

Goodnight.

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carseats in RVs (or, death-baiting)

As I’ve mentioned many times here on sounds familiar, our family is going on massive, cross-country RV odyssey this summer.

As this hopefully amazing trip nears, I’ve been putting the final touches on all manner of planning.  One thing which I wanted to make sure I got right was the question of what we do with little Cohen on the long journey.  He’ll be about eleven months old, and therefore will need to travel in a carseat.  Not knowing where best to install a carseat in an RV, I hit-up Google for some advice.  I was at first a bit dismayed that there didn’t seem to be all that much information out there.

Then I remembered that most sane people wouldn’t choose to drive a baby eight-thousand miles around the USA in an RV and so realized that this lack of information kind of made sense.  I would have to break out my Google kung-fu and find the deep links, search some RV-centric forums, maybe even some carseat-centric ones (yes, there are plenty of both – if it exists, the internet has a forum, or fetish, or both, for it).  After my initial dismay, however, my reaction changed a bit when I actually found some discussion…

Did you know there are carseat nazis?  Well, there are.

Look, before we get started here – I’m not attempting, in any way, to minimize the need for, or obvious safety benefits of, carseats for children and infants.  That would be stupid.  Carseats are great and I’m all for laws compelling their usage.  I am no scofflaw or negligent parent, and neither is my wife – who cut our daughter’s grapes into quarters until she was well past two years old.  I’ll also try to not be too derisive here towards those folks who have made carseat science their religion of choice.

Anyway, there are carseat nazis.

My search above eventually led me to what looked like a series of relevant threads on a carseat forum.  Unfortunately, germane as those threads may be, they were all nearly universally saying there is simply no safe way to transport a baby (or child, by extension) in an RV.  Most of the respondents, in fact, were quite quick to demonize anyone who asked about it or suggested doing so.  Take for example some of the following responses to variations of the question, “What do I do about carseats in RVs?” (all typos left intact, for extra derision):

No way Jose!! That’s asking for a multiple funeral. Car seats cannot be installed on side-facing vehicle seats – RV seats are not crash tested at all.

I would never use the dinette seats. Ever. Safe use requires a chassis-bolted seat belt in a forward-facing seat and most RV seats are only afixed to plywood in the flooring.

There are just so many risks with RVs (top heavy leads to easy roll over, countless projectiles including other passengers, etc.) that my child will never ride in one.  An unrestrained 100lbs person (or someone whose belt is not boldet to the core frame) becomes about 3000lbs of force upon your child in a 30 MPH crash.

RV’s are underpowered and are a nuisciance pest to our highways, due to there slow speeds, difficulty to pass, and lack of driver training required to opperate.

We’d love to RV some day, but we’d never consider putting the kids in a motorized RV – eek, the risks.

Loose or larger items typically transported in RVs during a trip can become deadly projectiles in a crash. For example, during a crash at 30 mph, a case of canned goods or bottled water weighing 20 lbs flying off the counter or out of the kitchenette’s cupboard would be the equivalent of 600 lbs slamming into an RV occupant.  An improperly restrained passenger who weighs 150 lbs would become the equivalent of 4,500 lbs during a crash at 30 mph.

A tow-behind camper and vehicle with which to tow it is the only safe option. That way everyone stay safely restrained, but you still can camp.

The injuries sustained by kids from wearing lap only belts are horrible- lacerations to organs in the lower abdomen, septic shock from torn intestines, lower spinal fractures and worse. So much so that emergency room surgeons have given the symptoms a name, “Seatbelt Syndrome.” If you can find any other option, including a custom tether anchor, your child would be much safer.

I don’t even know where to start (although I am intrigued about being able to become 3,000lbs of “force,” that sounds kind of awesome).  I think it’s fair (and derisive I suppose, sorry again) to say that carseat-heads probably missed the day Newtonian physics was taught in school… or maybe only half-listened.  Their hearts are in the right place, I can say that much.  I can get this kind of attitude, I think.  We all love our kids and would rather they stay alive than cease living – that’s an easy one.  But something about the above smacks me as self-righteous, loving-to-the-point-of-crippling, overbearing and over-protective.

So I tell you what internet.  Here’s what we’re going to do:  We are going to take Cohen (eleven months) and Keaton (five years) on this amazing, once-in-a-lifetime journey.  We’re going to put the carseats in the dinette location with the latch and bank on #1 – not crashing & #2 – being the winning/bigger object if and when we do.  I’m not going to care if the belts are attached to the frame or the wood or whatever.  I’m also not going to even consider the fact that items in an RV during a crash can become “missiles.”  In fact, I contend that this point is beyond ridiculous.  Anything, in any wreck, can become a deadly projectile.  I can also tell you right now I will probably let my five year old do “reasonable” walking around in the living quarters whilst we drive (no scissors allowed).  You know what that means, I am obviously rooting for the worst.

A car crash is bad; a car crash is never good; the most basic idiot knows this.  I hereby proclaim that unless you never, ever take your child in a vehicle at all, ever, period – you are just death-baiting.  You really gonna sit there and gamble with your kid’s life like that?   You monster, you abject beast.  I only drive if we have to go to the emergency room (when my kid’s peanut allergy acts up) and when I do I keep the child in an inflatable bubble and never go faster than 25mph, beat that.

Pish-tosh internet, pish-tosh.

Goodnight.

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cohen’s first word?

Sometimes I think it’s impossible to describe how busy I am.  I often say stupid meaningless chauvinistic things to Sharaun like, “I wish you could be inside my head for a day” to try and convey what sort of rat-race is going on up there.  Yeah sometimes I think this, then other times I think I’m just a wimp.  I think about the rat-race going on in some CEO’s head or a Obama’s head and know that whatever troubles me is paltry in comparison, I walk in the proverbial park alongside that mountain of responsibility.  So, I’ll try not to complain about how very busy I’ve been and how it’s been keeping me from writing.

Instead I’ll write a short bit about Cohen.  For nearly two weeks now I’ve been wondering if Cohen’s been saying his first word.  At first, like we did with Keaton, I dismissed it as phonetically-lucky baby talk.  But more and more he’s able to speak his word on demand, with startling clarity, and, then, in the past few days, without prompting and seemingly in response to a visual connection.  What word is it, you ask?  Well take a gander:

OK it’s short and cuts off, but what do you think internet?  Yeah… eight month old kids don’t really say words, I know.  But I couldn’t be happier.

Goodnight.

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a sound that any kid knows

Tuesday night Keaton had a bad dream.

No, I mean a baaad dream.  The kind you used to have when you were little and you were being chased by skeleton and you were running for your life and you woke up just as he was about to grab you with his bony fingers – only to see him, to really see him, standing there in real life at the foot of your bed.  Of course, he wasn’t really there, you were still dreaming or in some half-dreaming/half-waking state where you haven’t quite shaken off the residuals.  Oh… do you remember the fear?  I do, friends; I do.  One time there were sharks “swimming” around on the ceiling above my bed, like I was looking up at them from somewhere deeper underwater.  I was terrified because I knew I was awake. The dream was over but here were my dreams, crossed over to haunt me in real life.  It’s the fear come alive.

That’s the kind of dream Keaton had, and it really got her twisted.  Bedtimes have a foreboding quality not unlike the bygone “bedtime hell” days of 2009.  She’s genuinely afraid of her room.  See, it was a pretty traumatizing dream: She awoke because she heard a noise, a growl – the growl of a monster, a sound that any kid knows.  Wanting to be brave, she boldly growled right back.  It was then that the monster, according to the story, a story which is consistent and has never varied even in one tiny detail over repeated re-tellings, replied with two short grunt-like noises.  Immediately after, it jumped on her bed and popped up from under the covers.  It looked like the dog-thing Kyle from the movie Despicable Me, I hear.  This is when the screaming started.

It was 3am and I was dead asleep.  Keaton’s scream ended that instantly.  It wasn’t a “normal” bad dream scream, it was a horrible pure-fear kind of thing that registered deep in some primal part of my parental response center.  Before I really knew what was going on I’d tossed aside the covers and was running towards her room, calling to her that I was on my way as her screams frayed and tattered with fright.  As I turned the corner into her room I half expected to see a real problem – the terror in her voice was palpable and it got my adrenaline running hot in the seconds between our room and hers.  But it was just her, screaming, legs held in the air so not to touch the bed (from whence, I’d later learn, the monster had sprung).

She slept the rest of the night with us and I thought that’d be it.  Nope.

Sharaun texted me at work the next day, “Tonight is going to be tough; she’s too scared of her room for quiet time.”  I hadn’t even thought of it.  That night was tough.  That was last night.  Tonight was tough.

We tried a lot of things.  “Bravery gummies” for naptime (Sharaun’s idea, think of them like when you used to pretend Smarties actually made you smart).  A “bad dream alarm” plugged in and running (Dad’s idea, an unused ethernet-over-powerline converter with blinking lights that could easily indicate dream-warding).  Prayer.  We gave her a good set of options and tools, I thought.  Nothing really worked.  Tonight, in fact, she just wore herself out.  Under thread of cancelled playdates tomorrow and numerous attempts at cold rationalization (“There is no such thing as monsters, and you know that”), she finally collapsed on her bedroom floor near the door (the monster lives, somehow, in the bed… so it’s the worst possible place to be).

I can remember bad dreams.  Poor thing.  But this cannot stand.

Goodnight.

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a fundamental misalignment of world-view

Once I wrote about eating lunch at a Subway and watching a distracted mother verbally box her child into a sad zombie.

I felt bad for that kid because his mom took away all his options; he was to sit there and be still and be quiet; all being, no doing.  I didn’t think much about the mom, because that day I had time to sit and watch and put my un-distracted un-stressed self in her shoes.  It’s always easier from the outside.  I thought about that mom today, wondered maybe if what she was doing with her phone that day was something important.  Maybe transferring enough money from one account to another, enough to pay rent that month or buy dinner.  Maybe answering an e-mail about a job interview.  Who knows.  Maybe she was under pressure, feeling stressed, not wanting to deprive her son but feeling out of options under the circumstances.  Maybe she’d had a rough morning.  Been dumped; lost a job; had a relative go to meet their Maker.  Who was I anyway?  Some dude eating a sandwich looking down my nose at her “bad parenting.”  Give me a break.

I thought of the entry because, as I sat at the dining room table in a rush to complete an important e-mail (today, for some foolish reason, I thought I could work from home in the afternoon in preparation for tomorrow’s flight; maybe I was thinking I could have a “easy” afternoon… but I was wrong), I was that mom to Keaton.  She was bored, and she was bugging me.  Prancing around my seat, harping into my ear, asking me to play or telling me she was bored or asking if she could do this or do that.  I didn’t want to ignore her, but I just needed five minutes of concentration, just five minutes.  If I got that, I could go right back to being #1 dad.  No doubt about it, just five minutes.  So I did the old parent-stall and hit her with the, “Just a minute, babe,” or “Hang on one second, honey;  Dad has to finish this work,” or even the more sternly delivered, “Keaton; please.”

And I guess that’s gonna be universal.  There are some times when we all just need those five minutes.  Just that and we’ll be back in business; back to parenting and doting and playing dollhouse and reading The Hobbit.  Those five minutes are how it always starts.  And sometimes we do need them.  Need them badly and need them urgently; to do the business of adults.  Kids aren’t interested in understanding this, nor should we expect them to.  To them the world is all dollhouses and doting and fifteen pages of The Hobbit.  They don’t know about your job, your mortgage, your busted taillight or what your boss said at work that got under your collar.  Don’t know and don’t care and shouldn’t either.  It’s a fundamental misalignment of world-view, and it is what it is.  I’m gonna be that mom.  You’re gonna be that mom.

So, mom at Subway last May: I’m sorry for my one-sided presumptuous blog that day.  I hope whatever had you busy passed and you, too, went back to being parent-of-the-year.

I know I did.  Goodnight.