Entries Tagged 'Family' ↓

In the weeks leading up to Easter, the 3yr old is telling everybody who will listen, "Easter Bunny going to bring me a pink unicorn." Well I have it on good authority that the Easter Bunny looked high and low for a pink unicorn, and the best that he could find was a regular white unicorn who came in a pink carrying bag.

Easter morning, 3yr old: "My unicorn! I got a unicorn! Easter Bunny bring me a unicorn!"

5yr old: "Daddy? She said she wanted the Easter Bunny to bring her a *pink* unicorn. That unicorn is white."

We don't get to church often with all three kids, but for Easter we had to make the effort (typical Christmas&Easter catholics, I know). My 3yr old's take on the holiday made it entertaining, though. Here's what I learned:

"God's not here today. He's at Disney World." Apparently his favorite character is Daisy Duck.

"Jesus is not born yet. Christmas is his birthday."

Whenever the priest mentioned Jesus, my daughter would recognize the word and shout out "Jesus!" much to the amusement (I think) of the people around us. Felt a little evangelical to me. I suppose it didn't help that whenever she did that I'd say "Testify!" and throw my hands up in the air.

Albeit an imaginary one. Elizabeth (not yet 3) has a new thing where she comes into my bathroom in the morning before I take a shower and says, "I wear your watch, Daddy." So I strap my watch onto her arm.

"In five minutes Katherine wake up," she says. "I all done." Then she takes the watch off and walks away.

Done it every day this week, the exact same.

Everytime I go get my haircut, I make the same joke. "The older I get," I tell whoever has just done the $14.95 job on me, "The less time I seem to spend in this chair."

Today, for the first time, the girl responded with, "Of course. Now you've got more important things to do."

I like it. Good point. Actually made me feel like "Why yes, yes I do."

I've become somewhat obsessed with teaching Katherine math.  At almost 5 years old, I don't believe that multiplication and division are concepts too difficult to understand.  I've blogged in the past about the "postfix trick", where you put the times at the end to make it more understandable — "How much do you have if you do 3 2 times?"  The mental switch there is easier to grasp and you can see "3 and 3".  But this trick gets unmanageable quickly since it's hard for little brains to grasp numbers much larger (especially if you run out of fingers).

Lately we've started working with some flashcards that Nanta and Grampy got us.  At first we were going to set aside the multiplication cards as too hard, but after going through the various shape/color/letter cards Katherine said, "I want to do those."  She seems to have quickly grasped the tricks for 0 ("if you have 0 of anything, you've got 0") and 1 ("If you only have one of something, then that's what you have, so if you have one 7, then the answer is 7.")  And I tried the postfix trick for various combinations of multiplying by 2 or 3.  Part of the problem is that you quickly run out of fingers, you see.  There's not much that you can multiply by anything greater than 4×2 or 5×2 and still get the answer on both hands.

Here's a game I plan on trying when I get a moment.  I thought of it last night right at bed time so we didn't have a chance to play it, and I'm bored on the train so I'm writing it up.  You'll need:

• 10 little plastic Dixie cups, like the sort you hang by the bathroom sink to rinse when you brush your teeth
• at least 20 coins, beans, or other small countable items
• two big bowls (optional)
• marker.  Number the cups 1-10.

I chose 20 countable items because I think that children my daughter's age can reasonably work with numbers in that range.  The game could easily be expanded up to 100 by simply providing more countable things.  So you have to be careful to only choose combinations that result in an answer less than 20

Put all of your countable things into one of the big  bowls.  You could get by with just piles on the table or floor if you want, I figured the bowl just keeps it a little neater.  My 3yr old has a tendency to walk through the middle of such games and mess up the piles.

Pick a flashcard, or just make one up.  Say your flashcard is "5 x 3".  The child counts out 5 cups (using the numbers to help, if necessary), and then proceeds to take the items from the big bowl and distribute them, putting 3  in each cup.  Naturally it's important at this stage that the child can count to these numbers, but I'm assuming that she can, otherwise teaching her multiplication is a bit overkill.

Once that's done, dump all the cups into the other big bowl. Now count what's in that bowl.  There's your answer!

Sure it's a lot of steps, but the name of the game is for the child to eventually memorize the answers are predict the outcome, and then see if she's right.  You can take turns and let your toddler fill up the cups with beans, and then the adult has to guess at the answer.  Then you can figure out together whether you were right by dumping everything out and counting them up.

Division can be taught this way as well, but it's substantially harder because of fractions.  With the help of an adult you can count out a large number of coins, then pick a number of cups that you know divides that number evenly (for instance, pick 12 beans and 4 cups).  Then the child can distribute one coin each into the cups until they're all gone, and look at how many are in each cup.  If there aren't the same number in every cup, that means that the numbers don't divide.

Like I said, haven't tried it yet, but I hope to try it soon.  I'll post the results.

Kerry and I managed to disappear for a night up to a B&B in Maine this weekend. Back in November I'd promised to take her away for her birthday and made the arrangements, but it wasn't until now that we could find the time to make it happen. The fun thing about going to a bed and breakfast is that each one is unique, right down to your choice of rooms. Do you want the suite, or the one with a television? Queen or king bed? Jacuzzi tub, or fireplace? Finding the right combination is tricky, especially once you factor in your own budget and time considerations.

We found a nice place that had two large rooms to choose from that met my requirements – both had a king bed, and both had a fireplace. Interestingly, neither had a television. The other rooms that had televisions all had queen beds. One room had a "soaking tub" separate from the two-headed shower and, this was the final tipping point, a "pass through fireplace" that could be seen both from the bed / sitting area as well as from the bathroom. In other words you could relax in the tub and enjoy the fire. That sounded perfect.

It's interesting how you picture something in your head, isn't it? We got there, and it really is quite a nice place. Our room was indeed the best one they had. And oh look, there's the fireplace, a gas-insert type of thing built right into the wall so it can be seen from both sides. I've seen similar things in hotel lobbies. Cool. Then I notice that while yes, you can see the fireplace from the bathtub (if the door is closed), the tub is facing the wrong way. You can't actually lay down in the tub and still see it. Interesting how that detail slipped by. Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure that it was phrased as "you can see the fireplace from the tub", not necessarily that you could enjoy both at the same time. Sneaky.

And then came the second realization. A pass through fireplace, you see, is really another way of saying "A little window into the bathroom." Sure enough if you're out in the main room in just the right spot, you've got a straight through line of sight to the other person doing their business. I'm not really sure that's the sort of thing that you should mention on the marketing brochure, though. Never know what sort of clientèle that will attract.

The next morning at breakfast we met a couple who said they'd stayed in our room the night before, but moved to a different room. I wondered why, silently – something wrong with ours that they weren't telling us? Later I looked at the descriptions of the other rooms and realized that they'd switched to one with a jacuzzi tub. And a queen bed. To each their own, I guess.

Have I mentioned lately that my wife likes things grilled? She's all about the year round grilling. Which is fine by me, really, when weather permits. So when she said that we were grilling for dinner tonight it didn't dawn on me until too late that over the last week we've gotten a good foot of snow. I call her on the phone to tell her this while I'm driving home, and she goes over to the porch to survey the situation. "Looks fine," she says.

Looks fine, I come to learn, means that the grill is surrounded by a foot-high snowdrift on all sides. The side facing the house, where I would normally stand, is completely ice due to the gutter dripping down on it. This is going to be fun.

This is a precarious spot. I am standing on an icy hill, sloping down toward an open flame that will soon heat in excess of 500 degrees. This is not terribly smart. So I have perched myself with one foot braced back against the house, and one foot planted up against a wheel of the grill to avoid this happening. It is not a comfortable position, and certainly not the sort of summertime "hang out on the porch with a beer until the chicken's done" kind of time. I carefully step out, position myself so I don't do a faceplant into the flames, check the chicken, and then retrace my steps backwards to the house.

Elizabeth, my 2yr old, has locked me out of the house.

It's a sliding door, you see, which I have closed completely so that the kids who like to stand in the door and watch Daddy will not freeze. It does not take Elizabeth long to experiment with the little foot switch she sees Daddy step on, which locks the door. And, of course, she's incapable of pressing the unlock mechanism. Meanwhile Kerry is upstairs with the baby, I've got a plate in one hand covered in raw chicken bits and another hand with my grill tongs. I try to explain to Katherine, my 4 year old, how to unlock the door but she's not good in tense situations. Finally she just goes to get Kerry, who thankfully does not choose this opportunity to be funny, and lets me back in the house. 🙂

Over the last week or so we got a chance to visit with two different sets of recently married friends. One just had a baby, and one just found out they're expecting a baby. In both conversations the following idea came up, so I thought I'd blog about it. That idea is this:

For every baby story someone tells you, you are going to learn that you'll experience that exact story, and yet it will be completely unique to you.

Here's the problem. Once you either get pregnant or have a baby, people are going to come out of the woodwork to tell you what to expect. Most people are not courteous enough to properly tell "here's what happened to us" stories, they will tell you "here's what's going to happen to you" stories. These stories are well intentioned. They want to bond with you over the shared experience you're about to have. They want to help by imparting their wisdom based on their own experience.

However, it's logical for you to get defensive over it, because for someone to tell you what you're going to experience (as well as how you're going to feel and react) before it ever happens, well, that makes it seem like they're taking the experience away from you. It lessens the anticipation. Your natural instinct is to say "Not me!" and then, even if it does play out exactly as the person told you it would, your subconscious can't even see it because darnit you want the experience to be yours, not this other person's. The problem with this is that you're isolating yourself from what should be a great support community. You just had a baby, for pete's sake, and you want to distance yourself from other people with babies? Not a good idea. You should want to bring them closer so that when you need to say Help! they're there for you.

Hence the paradox. Much like light exists as both wave and particle (physics, see?), baby stories exist in both past and future. They happened, past tense, to me. They will happen, future tense, to you. The great thing is that they will still be similar enough that you should feel fine saying, "Yup, that happened to me too!" while at the same time being able to tell the story as if it was yours to begin with. They're handed down from parent to parent. But I'm not handing down "The story of when Elizabeth threw up three times at 4am", I'm handing down the story of "My kid threw up in the middle of the night." It was handed down to me. You'll hand it down to somebody else.

Nobody has claim to baby stories. Telling you one does not lessen your own ability to tell it for your own situation. Each version of the story is as valuable as the next one. When you tell them, tell them with that in mind. And when you're being forced to listen to them, keep that in mind as well. The storyteller simply wants to have some common ground to share with you. You don't have to push the person away for that. You'll probably find yourself in the role of storyteller soon enough.

Any fan of classic literature has got to be frustrated by the Disney-fication of eventually all children's classics. When we decorated Katherine's nursery we told people that the theme was "classic Pooh" rather than "Disney Pooh". If you didn't realize that, you do not. All of them – not just Cinderella and Snow White, but Sleeping Beauty and Little Mermaid too, all are old public domain stories that Disney has sanitized and merchandised. Some of them are actually better in the original, if you ask me. Read the original Sleeping Beauty some time and then see how dumbed down the Disney version is.

Anyway, this post is not about princesses, it's about the sordid history of Winnie the Pooh and Disney's recent loss in that war. You see, the rights to Pooh are technically owned by the Slesinger family, who purchased them from A.A. Milne back in 1930. In 1961 the family signed a deal with Disney to market Pooh, and receive royalties. However around 1991 it appears that the deal went south, and Disney just stopped making the royalty payments. It's worth noting that Pooh around this time surpassed Mickey Mouse as Disney's biggest money maker. But, hey, they're Disney, they're above the law, right?
Like Scientology or Microsoft they can just throw paperwork and lawyers at the problem until the other party just goes away.

In 2002 some granddaughters of Milne and Shepard appeared out of nowhere and tried to file a copyright claim to the characters which would essentially have erased Slesinger's complaint against Disney (since they would never have had the right to license Pooh in the first place). Disney was not technically a part of that lawsuit, but basically they funded the whole thing. They said that they would pay the granddaughters' costs, as long as, if they won, the granddaughters also signed their rights over to Disney. That's practically Asimov's grandfather paradox, if you think about it. How evil do they have to be to even think of sometihng like that? We can't think of a reason why we shouldn't have to pay this deal we signed…I know! We'll go back in time and fix it so that they never had the rights to do the deal in the first place! Mwahahahah!

Only problem is, as of Thursday, it didn't work. The judge threw it out. Apparently in 1983 one of the surviving Milne's did indeed know about and approve of, on paper, the Slesinger deal. So she couldn't then swoop in and say "No deal."

Want an idea of just how big the Disney marketing juggernaut is? Apparently the Slesinger's are owed somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion dollars in royalties. Billion. Have a nice day.

BoingBoing has this story about unboundedly long songs. Not infinite, since you can stop whenever you want, but songs that have no specific end. For instance, X Bottles of Beer on the Wall. You can pick whatever X you want.

I'm surprised that "Old MacDonald Had A Farm" isn't on there. Katherine the other day asked me when that song ends, and I told her it ends when you stop singing. Am I missing something? Does that song have an end that I don't know about?