KJToo

Though I do not consider myself a collector of PEZ dispensers, I do have an assortment of the candy-disgorging hinged heads and I keep most of them on a shelf above the television in the living room. Every once in a while, I fill Batman or Spider-Man or Darth Vader with candy and give the dispenser to Kyle, who proceeds to eat every piece in a matter of about ten minutes.

Some time ago, my niece—who is, as one might expect a young girl to be, a fan of the Disney princesses—gave me a Belle1 PEZ dispenser. Disney princesses aren’t really my thing,2 but it was a gift and I like PEZ dispensers so I gave Belle a place on the shelf next to Spider-Man and Chewbacca and the Unnamed Snowman.

Kyle and I have been enjoying LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga on the Xbox 360, so lately the Darth Vader3 PEZ dispenser has been in heavy rotation, but something absolutely magical happened last weekend: after R2-D2 and C-3PO4 escaped from the besieged blockade runner, Tantive IV, Kyle wanted some PEZ.

“Daddy,” he said. “I want some candy. I want yellow Princess Leia.”

I’ll admit that it took me awhile to parse his words, but when I finally figured out what my young apprentice wanted, my heart was filled with joy. My son looked at Belle and saw Princess Leia dressed in yellow.

That’s my boy.

1. The “Beauty” in Beauty and the Beast. [back]
2. Exception to the rule: Jasmine is hot. [back]
3. “Darf Vay-to!” says Kyle. [back]
4. “Artie-pee-oh!” says Kyle. [back]

Posted February 5, 2009 Comments(6)

Somewhere just before the two-year mark, parents typically stop reporting their child’s age in months. I had planned to report my young apprentice’s age in weeks until he legally became an adult, but that plan dropped by the wayside when I forgot to actually keep track of how many weeks old he is. I could have easily written a widget to manage that little bit of data for me, but it’s a little late in the game to go back to tracking the weeks; the last thing I want to be is gimmicky.

Kyle will not technically be thirty months old until the thirteenth of July but I suspect that, developmentally, not a whole lot will change in the next six days. On the other hand, he picks things up very quickly these days, so I suppose it’s possible that he might potty-train, count to twelve, learn to read and develop a cheap, clean and completely renewable energy source by next week. That’s just how far the Pendulum of Parental Expectations™ swings these days.

Yesterday, as I sat on the couch with a box of tissues trying to cope with an allergy attack, Kyle climbed on to my lap, looked up my nose and declared, “You got a boogie, Daddy.” He then climbed off my lap and headed for the stairs. “I get it!” he exclaimed as he ascended. He disappeared into the master bedroom and emerged a moment later, descending the stairs with a cotton swab clutched in his hand.

Laura and I occasionally use cotton swabs to clean Kyle’s nose when he has a particularly crusty cold, but those swabs are in a small box, tucked away in his room where he (ostensibly) can’t get at them. However, after watching daddy’s post-shower rituals on occasion, Kyle knows that there are cotton swabs in a jar we keep on a shelf over the toilet in the master bathroom; a toilet that he sometimes climbs when he wants to wash his hands with daddy.

So, Kyle descended with the cotton swab he got out of our bathroom1 and climbed back onto my lap. “Oh,” I said, reaching for the swab, “thank you!”

“I get it!” he repeated, and before I could stop him he jammed the tip of the cotton swab up my left nostril.

I don’t know if he got the boogie, but I managed to stop him short of drawing blood. Not, however, short of causing a firestorm of agony in my nose.

A very helpful and considerate firestorm of agony. And that made it worth the pain.

1. Time, I think, to move the cotton swabs. [back]

Posted July 7, 2008 Comments(12)

Laura, Kyle and I spent the last two weeks of December in Michigan’s beautiful (and snowy) Upper Peninsula and, apart from several family members coming down with some sort of gastro-intestinal plague, we had what I will call a grand old time. Here’s just a sampling of the fun:

• On the 19th of December, Brenda, the older of my sisters (Kyle calls her “Benta, Benta, Benta!”) had her tonsils and adenoids removed and her uvula reduced. This isn’t a big deal when you’re six years old, but is a significantly bigger deal when you’re approaching thirty. She’s recovering nicely, but spent several days with a very raspy voice eating only orange sherbet.
• Carolers, honest-to-baby-Jesus carolers, came to my parents’ house. In all of my thirty-four years of yuletide celebration, never have I been caroled to in such a manner. My heart grew three sizes that day.
• There were eighteen people living in my parents’ house over the course of the holidays, including my parents, their six children (plus three significant others) and seven grandchildren.
• On Christmas day, the number of people in the house doubled.
• My younger brother bought an eight-foot-tall inflatable Spongebob Squarepants, which he set up inside the house on Christmas morning.
• Kyle made two snow angels (with my help), fell face-first into six inches of snow (all by his lonesome) and greatly enjoyed being pulled around the driveway in his new sled.
• On the 26th, my brothers and I (along with the younger of my sisters’ significant other) went to see Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. It was a funny, ridiculously violent movie and I’m pretty sure we all enjoyed the hell out of it. Get to the chopper!
• My parents now have DSL and a wifi router. On the 27th of December, there were eight devices (seven of them wireless, including an iPhone) with outstanding DHCP leases on the router. My mind was boggled.
• My mother had a laptop for one day, after which it was returned to OfficeMax. The GPU was bad, causing blue screens of death before I even had a chance the screw up the laptop on my own terms.

There are photos, but I’ve not gotten around to retrieving them from the camera yet. Speaking of photos and cameras, Laura and I had a serious case of camera envy while we were in the U.P. There were a half-dozen digital cameras in the house, most of which were smaller than ours, all of which were faster than ours. I fully believe we’d take more photos if our tired old HP PhotoSmart was more compact and didn’t take 30 seconds to write each photo to the CompactFlash card.

Posted January 7, 2008 Comments(9)

Today’s HoNoToGroABeMo photo is a little late. I usually try to take the picture between about 5 and 7 o’clock so it still kinda-sorta fits with Evo Terra’s “5 o’clock shadow” meme. However, Laura and I were at a party this evening and I took precisely zero photos while I was there.

This shot was taken by the light of the end table lamp at about 11:15pm, shortly after we retrieved Kyle from Laura’s mother’s house. Kyle was originally supposed to stay at grandma’s tonight, but we stopped there on the way home to check on him; he was sleeping, but apparently heard me because he woke up just as we were leaving and we had to go back and get him. He’s sleeping upstairs, Laura’s watching CSI and I’m fulfilling my blogging/beard growing responsibilities for the day.

The party? Yeah, we had a good time. There was pie.

Posted November 17, 2007 Comments(0)

One of my many responsibilities as a parent is ensuring that the television programs my young apprentice watches are educational, wholesome, enriching and appropriate for his age (currently 20 months). As a public service, I present the first in a series of informative reviews of television programs geared toward preschoolers.

The Wonder Pets is one of Kyle’s favorite programs, and it’s not hard to see why: there’s plenty of music, oodles of cute animals and more music. Parents (and corporate managers) will undoubtedly appreciate the core message the show consistently delivers: that cooperation and teamwork are essential in any problem-solving effort. On the surface, it seems like the perfect show for young children. A closer examination, however, reveals that The Wonder Pets is one unfortunate example after another of parental negligence.

Each episode begins with Linny (a guinea pig), Tuck (a turtle) and Ming-Ming (a duckling) relaxing in their schoolhouse home after all the children have left for the day. Their leisure time is interrupted by the phone (“the phone is ringing!”), a can-and-string contraption that alerts the trio to a baby animal in peril. Donning capes and hats and assembling the flyboat (a vehicle constructed from a Frisbee, some markers and various other bits), The Wonder Pets race to rescue the youngling from some horrible situation using (“what’s gonna work?”) teamwork and music.

Once the chick, kit, fawn, foal, cub, joey or calf has been rescued, the irresponsible parents arrive on the scene, probably returning from the local watering hole, brothel or cock-fighting ring. Oh, sure, there’s the requisite gushing over how brave and amazing The Wonder Pets are, but rarely is there an explanation from the reprehenible parents as to why the children were left unattended in the first place. The best thing Linny, Tuck and Ming-Ming (too) could do to help the baby animals in trouble is contact the local Department of Children’s Services.

Coming soon: an intrepid explorer, a singing moose and a whiny turtle.

Posted September 29, 2007 Comments(6)