Mostly about my amusement

Tag: Kids (page 2 of 4)

In between weather

Hot and muggy summer weather does not bother me.  I once dragged Lily through Washington D.C. in 101 degree weather and did not realize she was suffering, I was fine.  Summer in Las Vegas was great with it being over 100 and no humidity.

Autumn is very cool and New York winter never gave me a problem.  I’m not saying Minnesota winter would not wipe me out, but even with cold snaps I can’t get into too much trouble weather wise.  Our winters here are just mild and lately getting milder.

The transitions are a pain.  This is damp but not wet, colder but not cold.  One day it’s summertime and spring like the next. Then back to hot followed by cool evenings.

This weather is “in between” and it always bugs me.  For the next few weeks until fall settles in, I’ll be irritated by Mother Nature’s lack of making a decision. The changes give me headaches and my muscles hurt.  I’ll be more cranky than usual.

Sigh, I’ll have to deal with it by playing with the kids more.  The girl just started kindergarten and claims she is not happy.  She likes the bus ride, that’s very cool.  But she says she does not like the work (it’s her second week).

For 3 years she attended half day pre-k and knew everyone.  There were not many girls in her school and she was treated like a princess.  Once she told me she was going to marry one of the boys in her class. When I asked about another boy, she said she’d marry that one later.

I wonder if we are raising the next Liz Taylor?

At her new school she’s just one of hundreds of kids.  It’s good for her but she needs to adjust. She will learn to make new friends and enjoy being in class. She’ll be cranky and we’ll deal with her maudlin behavior.  For now she’s just in between.

One day limo driver

This morning Lily was going to head to LaGuardia airport and catch a plane to Detroit. I was going to head to the office at my regular time and put in a fully productive day at the office.

The person who was going to pick her up forgot.  I ended up getting dressed in record time and driving her to the airport.  She was running late and had to leave NOW.

She made the flight but it was close.  I headed back home and called my boss to apologize for the last minute change in my schedule.  If I headed to the office I’d have gotten into the city almost 2 hours late and I was not sure if I had any conference calls. I don’t like making changes to my work schedule all off a sudden. Do it too often and it’s abusive.

The day worked out but the high point was my being on a call with my 6 year old son stage whispering “Daddy, can I play with the Nintendo DS?” and me pantomiming the reply of “LEAVE NOW OR FACE THE AWESOME WRATH OF DAD”.  All this while replying to people on the call with “Sure, that change should work. Let’s do it Friday after hours”.

Sign language is a parenting tool.

With Lily not coming back until the evening, I had to bathe both kids.  I need to install a power washer; did you know that little girls need hair conditioner?  Boys are much easier. Ivory soap can double as shampoo and no one ever notices on a boy.

Later on it was her turn to play a game but she kept giving the game to her brother.  She also complained often that he’s not letting her play. This is a life lesson for my son: watch out for girls.  That she just gave him the game did not stop her from trying to get him in trouble.

I’m really glad Lily came back today.

Tomorrow we all go to Disney World

Right before a trip

All packed up and ready to go.  We are all looking forward to this and we’ll be a week in Walt Disney World. The kids have been talking about this for weeks.

We wont be gone that long but two grown ups and two kids means lots of luggage.

I plan to take lots of pictures and post them on Flickr, so I’m going to carry on all the camera equipment.  The kids insist that I bring their cameras as well and if they take any really good shots I’ll post those as well.

Strawberries and downpours

Today the family started with this

DSC_0525

And ended up with this

And the day was going so well

We got to pick strawberries in the morning and in the afternoon we set up a inflatable pool on the patio. It hit 90+ degrees today and we found out that the second floor A/C does not work.  Good thing it rained; it is much cooler now.

Still we all had a great time. Some friends came over for dinner and all the kids got to play.

It was not all cod liver oil today

Now to work on turning

After his homework was completed, the boy finally rode his bike without training wheels.

Sunday his training wheels became bent so we took them off. You can see how it happened here. The culprit apologized but we had wanted to take them off anyway so it worked out.

He practiced for a while Monday but was not able to get going.  Today he and I went out, I ran next to him with my arms at his side and he took off.

He needs to work on his turns, but he is not afraid to fall and that got him going.  Like skating, he enjoys the idea of moving really fast and not getting into trouble.

Oh yeah, and next time he will wear his helmet.

Better than washing his mouth with soap

My son will turn 7 this year and like many first grade kids, he has learned some swear words. He also learned that he is NOT to say those words.

Today I met him when he got of the bus. I began with “We spoke to your teacher today” and he quickly replied “Yes I know. I’m sorry, I said a bad word.”

Now today we had a scheduled parent teacher meeting.  I had no idea he used a “bad word” and I was going to say that I was impressed with how well he is doing in school.  We started with the usual lecture about swearing and he pretty much gave us the brush off and made it clear it was no big deal.

Uh huh. I immediately drove to Pathmark, went straight to the pharmacist, and asked them for a bottle of cod liver oil.  This got an odd look and when I told them what it was for they said “Healthy and yet tastes awful”.  It’s a great source of vitamin A and D.

When I got home, my son was making it clear that he was not going to have any.  I took out the tablespoon and the teaspoon and explained “If I have to make you drink this, you are getting the big spoon.”

After some hysterics and me making it clear that he is not getting out of this, he took the teaspoon.  He rinsed out his mouth but trust me, he’ll be burping that taste for hours.  I should know, how do you think I came up with this idea?

To Digital SLR or not

I’m not a camera person.  I have a really good memory for events and like to talk to people. I can’t show people what I saw but the telling is very entertaining.

This really means I take lousy pictures, mostly because my hands shake. Using a small camera like our Canon SD400 always get a poor photo.

One of my brothers is a genuine camera enthusiast.  His current camera is a Nikon D80 and he looks longingly at the D300.  If he won the lottery he’d go nuts and get a D3 with a whole compliment of new lens, new flash, tripod, etc.  You can see Stefan’s work at his Flickr page, he really enjoys working with his camera.

Doing his civilian duty to boost the economy, Stefan has been successful at getting co-workers to purchase DSLRs.   One of our co-workers recently got a Nikon D60 and let me play with it.

It’s a remarkably comfortable camera.  The package came with two VR lens and just for goofs, I took some test pictures by zooming the 200mm lens out, standing in my most awkward pose and shot a photo of a sign.

The picture was very stable, no blurriness at all that I could complain about.  Playing with the aperture size, ISO, etc, got me different yet cool results.  I played with the 15-55mm lens as well; the D60 is targeted at people like me who are thinking of getting into semi-serious digital photography.  Since I’m not clever enough to just rest the camera, the VR lens are great.

The owner of the camera had shot over 900 picts in only a couple of days; I could easily see my self tormenting the family taking lots of pictures like that.

I had no idea what I was doing but it was pretty entertaining to me.  So now I am thinking about pricing out that D60 package.  We’re planning a couple of trips with the kids and being able to post decent shots would be a bonus.

A great weekend

I can’t ever forget Mother’s Day since my birthday falls right next to it. Remembering does not sound like much but it’s an accomplishment for me. I have been forgetting one of my best friend’s birthdays for 35 years.

In addition to enjoying my birthday, Lily and I had a great weekend with the kids.

Saturday was the kid’s last ice skating lesson from 11 till 11:30.  We stayed until 3 PM and both kids were exhausted. The girl likes skating, but the boy enjoys it much more.  This is one of the few things where he can go really fast and not get into trouble!

Sunday we took the kids to the Mets game.  To celebrate the holiday they gave Lily and the girl a pink baseball cap.  Naturally the boys had to buy their own and we ended up supporting the economy.

Mets game

Lily took the picture. The kids know how to smile, I don’t know why they made those faces…

Usually Lily and I go to evening games so we always leave right after the 7th inning.  This game started at 1 in the afternoon so we stayed till the end.  The kids had trouble following the action but they sure liked the cheering when the Mets hit two home runs.  The Mets won 8-3 and we headed back to Flushing to pick up the car and go home.

We have to take the kids to more ball games; we all had a great time.

NY Autoshow

Picture of the family in front of the concept Jeep

Monday we took the kids to the NY Autoshow. The kids liked it and they came home exhausted.

It was like they turned Jacob Javits into one huge car dealership. There were very few concept cars. The cars were cool but I could have seen much of the same thing just by visiting the car dealers in my neighborhood.

The photo was from a promotional thing that Jeep was doing. They take your photo, you get it online and get exposed to way too much marketing material. I took pictures too and will probably upload them to Flickr.

The high point of the day was when the kids pulled off the center mirror on a Smart Car they were crawling over. After that I did not let them into the cars anymore.

Health advice from a 6 year old

I caught a bug or stomach virus this week.  This morning when I got up to wake the kids, I got taken over by nausea.  Nice post I know but bear with me for a moment.

My son goes to the bathroom and says

“Daddy, you should throw up.  You’ll feel better if you do.”

Medical advise from a 6 year old. I didn’t hurl but I did call in sick; tummy pains are one thing but 90 minutes to the office could go really bad.