Entries Tagged 'Family' ↓

On Monday I was watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I'd stayed home to help Kerry with the kids, all of whom have the stomach bug. There is a scene in Harry Potter where Voldemort's wand becomes locked with Harry's, and the ghosts of everyone Voldemort has ever killed start issuing out of it – backward in the order from most recently killed.

This is the scene that came to mind late Tuesday evening when I came home from work and Brendan decided that he was not done with his stomach bug yet. Apparently he'd had formula most recently, and before that something green, and before that something orange….

(Yes, I know it's a disgusting story, but you didn't have to clean it up.)

Taking the cue from Hugh Macleod at gapingvoid, Rebel Dad is calling for 500-word manifestos on "any parenting/balance topic you can think of."

Here's mine:

Over the weekend Elizabeth dug up an old cheapy toy that came as part of some bag of party favors. It's two pieces of plastic attached to a central piece by elastics. The idea is that you swing it back and forth and it makes a clapping noise. Surely you've seen such a thing.

Anyway, after some vigorous playing with it Sunday morning, one of the hands comes off. No worries for a Sunday morning, as it still makes the clappy noise.

Fast forward a few hours and the other piece also comes loose. "Uh oh Daddy," says Katherine, "We have to throw it out now, both pieces came off."

"What are you, crazy?" I say, "Now it's the sound of one hand clapping. Very Zen."

"What's Zen?"

"Never mind."

So this morning Elizabeth is hanging out sitting with Kerry while we get ready.  Suddenly she (Elizabeth) says to me, "Bear's in the cage!" 

Now, anybody who communicates with toddlers knows how this game is played.  You start wracking your brain trying to figure out what she's talking about, while still trying to interact with her in the hopes of getting more information.  You start by repeating what she said.  "The bear's in the cage?" I ask, looking at the television to see if there's such a commercial.  Nothing.

"Bear's in the cage!" she says, and is very excited about this.

She's not been to the zoo lately.  She doesn't really have any toys that "bear in the cage" would seem to cover.  So I start trying to get more words out of her.  "The bear?"

"The bear!"

"What bear?"

"In the cage!"

"Oh.  Where is he?"

"In the cage!"

This isn't going anywhere.  I'm starting to make jokes about her being a Russian spy trying to deliver a message.  The purple pigeon flies upside down at midnight, and all that.  "Is the bear in your room?" I ask.

"No."

"Is it in Katherine's room?"

"No."

"Where's the bear in the cage?"

"Right here.  Mommy and Daddy's room."  At this point she is pointing.

I turn around and I see her Lego table, where she has constructed what appears to be two towers.  I suppose it could be a cage.  "Oh!" I say, realization dawning.  "Is this the cage?"

"That's the cage!  Bear's in the cage!"  It's like playing a game of "getting colder getting warmer".

I look in the cage, expecting to see one of her Little People animals or something.  "I don't see the bear," I say.

"It's invisible."

D'oh!  Faked out by a 2yr old.  Needless to say, Kerry greatly enjoyed that.

When Jingle and Jangle get to visit the Mayor, he makes them a deal. If they can make it snow in Southtown, then he will take that as proof that Santa exists. They will then celebrate by…giving Santa the day off. Huh? They're down there in the first place to prove that he exists so that he won't take the day off, but then they're going to give him a holiday anyway. Now I'm just totally lost. How was that supposed to work when they got back to the North Pole? "Santa! Santa! People really do believe in you, you can go to work this Christmas! Only don't, because the kids don't want you to come!"

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Katherine, telling me about her day at school.

"Daddy, I painted under a table at school today."

?? "You mean you painted on a table?"

"Yah, I painted under the table."

"Are you saying under or on? You mean on a table?"

"No, under."

"Well that's silly, how do you paint under a table?"

"You take your paper and your paints, and you put them on the floor and you lay down on your stomach so that your feet stick out the end, and then you paint Chinese."

Well, that sentence took an interesting turn right there are at the end. "You painted Chinese?"

"Yes I did."

"Chinese letters? Which characters did you paint?"

"No, silly, not letters. I just painted a chinese building."

"What's a chinese building look like?" She begins flailing her painting hand around in space, as if I can imagine what she's trying to visualize for me. "How do you know what Chinese buildings look like?"

"I learned it from watching tv."

"What show taught you that?" Then it hit me. "Ohh! Sagwa, the Siamese Cat, right? You saw Chinese buildings on that show?"

"Yeah, Sagwa showed me."

Mystery solved. Thought I would like to see what her Chinese building looks like.

The girls are now playing that game where they get to "be" everyone. You know, when watching the Macy's Parade and seeing a dance number and they take turns saying, "I'm the purple one!" or "I'm the pink one!"

So last night we're reading a Beauty and the Beast princess story, starring Belle. "I'm Belle," says Elizabeth (who is 2, for those that don't usually follow along).

"Daddy," whispers Katherine (4), "I'll be Belle too. But don't tell Elizabeth, she doesn't think that both of us can be Belle."

"You not Belle!" shouts Elizabeth, who obviously heard.

"Who can Katherine be?" I ask, trying to be peacemaker not simply because I'm physically in the middle of them.

"I Belle!" says Elizabeth. "Katherine, you can be the Beast!"

Ah, love. Elizabeth finds this hysterical, Katherine not so much.

Over the weekend, Katherine is trying to use logic to determine what television show Brendan (6months) might like to watch. Since, after all, he is a boy and he might not like the same shows that girls like. Katherine decides that he might like "Manny", or "Bob the Builder." This is because, to quote Katherine, "Because Daddy, Brendan is so small, I don't know what he wants to be when he grows up. He could be a hunter, or maybe a hair dresser…."

"Hopefully not a hair dresser," said Daddy.

"Why not a hair dresser?"

"Oh, just one of Daddy's jokes that you're not supposed to get, sweetheart."

Got a message on the company email yesterday that there's going to be a movie filming on our street and in the building next store, so be prepared for the traffic and detours and so on.  Turns out that this movie is The Game Plan, starring The Rock.  How cool is that?  I wandered downstairs today for lunch (nice that it is 60+ degrees outside) and yeah, they're shooting a movie all right.  Just like you see…well, in the movies. Lots of big spotlights, and people carrying around what look like posterboards with tinfoil on them.  We can't get anywhere near the action, of course, but the crowds are positioned so that you can get a glimpse.  I didn't get to see him (yet), but apparently others have, as I heard some conversation like "Can you see him?  He's sitting in the front seat of the car.  There, he just got out, that's him…"

What reaallllllly annoys me is that according to the trivia for the movie, just last week they were filming in my own hometown!  Argh. The Rock was wandering around my home town and I missed it.  That's annoying.  Surely that would have merited a sick day from work.  After all you can hardly expect North Andover to draw the same sort of crowd that downtown Boston does.

Didn't he just make a football movie?

Update: It's funny how different audiences see things. I'm in a meeting, there's a pause while we wait for some people, and I toss out, "So, did anybody go downstairs to see The Rock? He's shooting a movie."

Lady across the table looks interested, but kind of shrugs off the reference with, "I don't know who that is. Who else is in it?"

"Kyra Sedgewick," I say.

"Oh my god I love her!" she says, and begins chatting excitedly with the woman next to her about this woman's movies.

All I know about Kyra Sedgewick is that she's Kevin Bacon's wife, and I sat across the row from her on a plane once. One of those moments to kick yourself, because the entire flight I kept wondering, "Is that Kyra Sedgewick?" but not having the guts to ask. She was with two kids. Getting off the plane she even had trouble with her luggage and I should have been a gentleman and offered to help lug it, but I didn't. I think I assumed that when she walked off the plane there'd be people waiting for her or something. Instead I went home, went online and looked her up, and sure enough that was her – the description of the two kids matched perfectly. So now I tell people that my Kevin Bacon number is 2. 🙂

Sometimes we all have our days. Just got back from the worst vacation I've ever had, which culminated in packing the 5 members of my family into a single hotel room for the evening. Nothing quite like going to bed for the night at 6:30pm, afraid to even turn on the television for fear of waking one of them up and setting off a chain reaction.

During the weekend, Katherine got a "princess puppet" from Grammie and Papa. During the confusion of changing hotels, it was misplaced. She kept trying to dig through the bags looking for it, and I kept telling her to leave the bags alone, there was enough chaos as it was, and that we would be sure to find the puppet in the morning.

This morning she came up to me and said, "Daddy, later are we gonna find that puppet?"

And I said, and I am so proud of myself in this moment :-/, "Katherine, if you mention that puppet one more time I am going to throw it out the window. You've already asked me about the puppet, and I already told you that I promised that we would find the puppet. Now don't say puppet anymore."

To which Katherine responded, ever so calmly and patiently, "Ok. But Daddy? I didn't say puppet. I said later are gonna see Grammie and Papa?"

Oh. I feel big. :-/