My first daughter, in retrospect was wonderful. She used to sit in her high chair for lunch and EAT lunch. She would stay in her high chair even after she was done because I thought she should relax after lunch, take it easy while she digested. She did. I read her books. She was under two. I remember those days happily.
Until she was nearly two she had allowed a wide array of foods to pass into her gullet. She was eating vegetables in those days, I remember zucchini and even yellow squash. Imagine.
That all changed when she hit two, though not so drastically. When she did move out of the high chair into the regular chair after her second birthday, suddenly her tastes in food, well narrowed and dried up, so to speak. But she was still OK. That is when the creativity in feeding had to be used. I am grateful she laughs at my jokes to this day (my cousin with teenagers says, flatly, that will change). I had no trouble sending the helicopter with spaghetti or mashed chicken and vegetables into the landing pad in her mouth. She loved my scenarios and the food made it down her throat, that was the important part. Although, definitely, as I said, the numbered palatable interests narrowed. No more vegetables, at least food that was visibly vegetable. Fruits even were tough.
This proceeded to last for at least two years, and may still be taking place. Listen, when we were on vacation for a couple weeks before her fourth birthday, at her Grandmothers, my Mother, the situation became comically desperate. I still can list the foods she ate: omelette's, chicken, breakfast cereal, milk, juice (well we have to count them), her morning and evening porridge, spaghetti without meatballs or cheese just sauce, some soups, spaghettios but only the ones with spaghetti. I served her spaghettios one day. Out of desperation I served her spaghettios with meatballs the next day. She cried when I presented them to her and said "Daddy I dont want this". I said, "What what? You ate it yesterday. Whats the problem?" I couldnt understand through her crying, but eventually it came out that this helping had some big brown lumps in them and they did not please her at all. All explanations of the deliciosity and juiciness of meatballs in spaghetti were not worth the breath I breathed. I tried to push the meatballs to one side. More crying. I ended up picking out every meatball from the bowl and still she was suspicious.
See, this is where the women's patience kicks in but the males impatience goes crazy. I absolutely think it has something to do with the evolutionary "fight or flight" survival technique. I dont think fight or flight is an issue or exists for women. Does it? They would just pick up their kids, hold them tight to themselves and get out of the situation. Men, the blood starts boiling up, or literally you start to feel this "kicking in", which I will put forth is the adrenaline picking up and everything readying yourself for a battle. It has to be discharged. It doesnt dissipate. At best it is released by a good yelling at the child. (You better eat those meatballs, they are good for you.) Not very helpful, but not the worst. I dont want to talk about the worst, it makes me sad, but it has happened, not with me of course. But in fact the battle that men have to overcome and fight is in fact the very idea that they think there is a battle. The adrenaline has to be battled. The urge to fight has to be discharged peacefully. That is the real battle and issue for men. Or used to comic effect, this is when Homer Simpson puts his hands around his sons neck and says, "Bart, why you, Im going to..."
I left out one food item she also ate. Ketchup. She takes after me.... um to a degree. We served her an omelet or sunny side up in the morning... with ketchup. That's OK. The chicken meal in the evening was not so outrageous with a dousing of ketchup on the meat. I had to carefully pour the ketchup over the chicken pieces in an exact pattern of some sort. "Like this?" "Yes" "Here?" "Yes". "On this one?" "No, Daddy daddy, no not that one". The Europeans put ketchup on pizza and spaghetti, so that was acceptable too. Ketchup in the soups, wellllll, OK, mix it in. "Spaghettios already have ketchup my child, you really dont need to pour ketchup into the spaghettios. Oh, OK, a little will be OK. Go ahead."
One morning she demanded that I pour ketchup on her 100 per cent four grains breakfast cereal. That's where the buck stopped and my patience ran out. "Sweetie, we just dont put ketchup on breakfast cereal, it, well, its just not done. I m not really sure why not, but, NO, i wont do it"
"Daddy, I want ketchup on it, I want ketchup on it". "This is just too crazy. I ll get kicked out of society or something. If people find out about this, no, I really cant do this. Dont ask me to do this. I cant do this. I just cant. Please please please, pulease, DONT demand that I put ketchup on your breakfast cereal"
For some reason, I felt that feeling. The adrenaline picked up. I was getting extremely angry and I was donning my military gear for all out "me vs you" battle. That feeling is just so, so, its like a negative orgasm, if I can be a little crude. Its not going out with a sigh of relief, its staying in and corrupting your whole system and to repeat myself a little and coining a new word, "negatizing" you. Whats the opposite of dopamine and "feel good" natural chemicals in your body? That's what IT is. That is the impatience. "YOU DONT PUT KETCHUP ON YOUR BREAKFAST CEREAL, little girl"
What would you have done? Mrs Mother?
Next morning: "Sweetie do you want ketchup on your breakfast cereal again today?" "No, it wasnt so good yesterday with the ketchup. I want a egg. With ketchup"
An End note. On the flight back home from that vacation, of course the plane got diverted and we had to spend a day in JFK (that is another story, whoa Nelly) We got food coupons, but I was at a loss of what to get my daughter for lunch. Well, lets go with the breaded chicken with baked potatoes. OK. Fine. "Daddy, put on the ketchup". I shook it, it was a big plastic bottle with a squirt cap opening. The ketchup went SPURT, not in a nice design on the chicken but in a big heap on one side of the chicken. I was laughing my head off, it had just been a big, funny "SPURT". She was crying very loudly, it had scared her and it was a bad design on the chicken. She wouldnt eat the chicken, she only ate the baked potatoes. I was laughing, she was crying through the whole meal. The other patrons came over and pinned me with the "worst Father of the year" award.
Yep. Well.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Friday, January 3, 2014
Intermission: Dinosaurs 1
This is not a movie review. You can go see what you like. Take your kids to what you think is best or what they want. I have few qualms about it. However, I will say that for anyone, any age, the more the movie turns you on and inspires you the better it is. Isnt that so?
I brought my older girl to see the movie Walking with Dinosaurs the other day from this writing. I thought it would be an animated documentary about dinosaurs. Or at least a half documentary with some sort of story to go with the documentary. Not so.
It wasnt a documentary at all. As a result, me personally, I was sorely disappointed and gave my wife the "eh eh, OK, but not really" hand signal when she asked how the movie was. Such a cornball story. A dinosaur love story. Phhhh, yeah, insert sarcastic remarks of any sort here. Why do all the animations have to have some "right dude" "dude, go for it, that's the ticket, dude" type of voice in their movies, for the main part or supporting actors now? What audience are they shooting for? I dont think under ten girls OR boys really get the "dude" hipster act. What happened to using Woody Allen s voice as the hero? Brilliant. Why didnt more animation movies use that scenario? After all, I think Woody Allen's voice is closer in tone and timbre to little kids voices. Or they can get a handle on it much more than a deep voice or a "dude" voice for that matter.
OK, enough dudes. So you get it, I didnt care for it. And I do love animation movies and kids movies too. Come to think of it, are there any animated documentaries? Now that would be a great category, a new direction to go forward in.
I couldnt gauge my daughters approval or lack therof on the way home. "Daddy buy me a potato chips"... didnt convey to me thumbs up or thumbs down. If there was some hidden message in those words, I failed to catch it.
However, that evening she started crying before bed because she wanted to pet the dinosaur with a hole in its head (the hero dinosaur loses a chunk of his head plate, triceratops, when he is a toddler dino). OK, she was a bit tired and you know what happens when kids are tired before bed, but this comment baffled me. It didnt help to explain that it was a movie character and she couldnt pet that dinosaur. I think she knew that and it was just the tiredness talking, but still, she wouldnt stop crying about it.
And then the next day she demanded we read her new dinosaur book. She got a number of books for Christmas and one was a second hand old book with great pictures of dinosaurs. In fact way back in time it was quite a best seller because of the pictures. Unfortunately this wasnt a translated book and the captions were in Finnish which is not a language I can decipher well.
Since then we have gone through that book three times and my Finnish is progressing and weve both learned quite a bit and my wife got another book on dinosaurs. This time the book is in her language and pop up. And there doesnt seem to be an end in sight in the interest in dinosaurs.
So get this, some of the things we have touched upon reading the two dino books: The dinosaurs were around approx from 235 to 65 million years ago, which brings in the concept of the age of the earth, that the dinosaurs lived during the time when all land was together till the continents slowly drifted apart, plate tectonics, and when the dinosaurs died out, either due to cooling temperatures or a huge asteroid hitting the earth with the subsequent rise of mammals, the concepts of global climate and evolution. Incredible. And for a five year old. She got inspired. I got inspired. I am quite happy with the results.
So, I totally missed the boat on the dinosaur movie. I obviously didnt get it. But she got it, and it was a force of inspiration. To be fair, or rather unfair to the movie, maybe it wasnt the movie but just a natural gravitation by many kids to dinosaurs. What under tenner doesnt or didnt have an interest in dinosaurs? Well my wife didnt but,... mmm, I wont continue. So I guess this dinosaur movie can free the latent love of dinosaurs that every kid has locked inside. That's worth a lot. You can learn a lot reading about the dinosaurs.
Now compare that with the Smurfs II movie my wife brought her to see a couple months before. Well, admittedly my daughter did want to read her book about Paris, the movie takes place in Paris, but it didnt overwhelm her. She knows a bit about Paris now, I think, maybe. Oh and that the Eiffel tow... no, I dont think she remembers that.
So I have to change my opinion about this dinosaur movie and give it a thumbs up, or at least say, it WAS an OK movie DUDE. Luckily my daughter realized that and got psyched. I would have totally missed the educational opportunities from this movie if she hadnt cried to pet the dinosaur with a hole in his head.
End note: Im still in awe of the fact that dinosaurs existed for about 170 million years. We tend to think of them as a loser species because, well they became extinct. But consider that humans have a three million year history since they came down from trees, six million if you want to stretch it to include some sort of ape human transitional period. 6 million.... 170 million, what a piffle species humans are. Not to mention that humans ll be lucky if they last for another 100 years let alone another 164 million.
I brought my older girl to see the movie Walking with Dinosaurs the other day from this writing. I thought it would be an animated documentary about dinosaurs. Or at least a half documentary with some sort of story to go with the documentary. Not so.
It wasnt a documentary at all. As a result, me personally, I was sorely disappointed and gave my wife the "eh eh, OK, but not really" hand signal when she asked how the movie was. Such a cornball story. A dinosaur love story. Phhhh, yeah, insert sarcastic remarks of any sort here. Why do all the animations have to have some "right dude" "dude, go for it, that's the ticket, dude" type of voice in their movies, for the main part or supporting actors now? What audience are they shooting for? I dont think under ten girls OR boys really get the "dude" hipster act. What happened to using Woody Allen s voice as the hero? Brilliant. Why didnt more animation movies use that scenario? After all, I think Woody Allen's voice is closer in tone and timbre to little kids voices. Or they can get a handle on it much more than a deep voice or a "dude" voice for that matter.
OK, enough dudes. So you get it, I didnt care for it. And I do love animation movies and kids movies too. Come to think of it, are there any animated documentaries? Now that would be a great category, a new direction to go forward in.
I couldnt gauge my daughters approval or lack therof on the way home. "Daddy buy me a potato chips"... didnt convey to me thumbs up or thumbs down. If there was some hidden message in those words, I failed to catch it.
However, that evening she started crying before bed because she wanted to pet the dinosaur with a hole in its head (the hero dinosaur loses a chunk of his head plate, triceratops, when he is a toddler dino). OK, she was a bit tired and you know what happens when kids are tired before bed, but this comment baffled me. It didnt help to explain that it was a movie character and she couldnt pet that dinosaur. I think she knew that and it was just the tiredness talking, but still, she wouldnt stop crying about it.
And then the next day she demanded we read her new dinosaur book. She got a number of books for Christmas and one was a second hand old book with great pictures of dinosaurs. In fact way back in time it was quite a best seller because of the pictures. Unfortunately this wasnt a translated book and the captions were in Finnish which is not a language I can decipher well.
Since then we have gone through that book three times and my Finnish is progressing and weve both learned quite a bit and my wife got another book on dinosaurs. This time the book is in her language and pop up. And there doesnt seem to be an end in sight in the interest in dinosaurs.
So get this, some of the things we have touched upon reading the two dino books: The dinosaurs were around approx from 235 to 65 million years ago, which brings in the concept of the age of the earth, that the dinosaurs lived during the time when all land was together till the continents slowly drifted apart, plate tectonics, and when the dinosaurs died out, either due to cooling temperatures or a huge asteroid hitting the earth with the subsequent rise of mammals, the concepts of global climate and evolution. Incredible. And for a five year old. She got inspired. I got inspired. I am quite happy with the results.
So, I totally missed the boat on the dinosaur movie. I obviously didnt get it. But she got it, and it was a force of inspiration. To be fair, or rather unfair to the movie, maybe it wasnt the movie but just a natural gravitation by many kids to dinosaurs. What under tenner doesnt or didnt have an interest in dinosaurs? Well my wife didnt but,... mmm, I wont continue. So I guess this dinosaur movie can free the latent love of dinosaurs that every kid has locked inside. That's worth a lot. You can learn a lot reading about the dinosaurs.
Now compare that with the Smurfs II movie my wife brought her to see a couple months before. Well, admittedly my daughter did want to read her book about Paris, the movie takes place in Paris, but it didnt overwhelm her. She knows a bit about Paris now, I think, maybe. Oh and that the Eiffel tow... no, I dont think she remembers that.
So I have to change my opinion about this dinosaur movie and give it a thumbs up, or at least say, it WAS an OK movie DUDE. Luckily my daughter realized that and got psyched. I would have totally missed the educational opportunities from this movie if she hadnt cried to pet the dinosaur with a hole in his head.
End note: Im still in awe of the fact that dinosaurs existed for about 170 million years. We tend to think of them as a loser species because, well they became extinct. But consider that humans have a three million year history since they came down from trees, six million if you want to stretch it to include some sort of ape human transitional period. 6 million.... 170 million, what a piffle species humans are. Not to mention that humans ll be lucky if they last for another 100 years let alone another 164 million.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
My son saved my life
Rats, now I can`t find the article. Oh, now I did find it. It`s at the bottom of the page.
I was reading through Daddy articles and I came across a story in the Deseret News from Utah, from May 2013, about a father who wanted to be more of a father than his dad had been. Not that difficult as the man s parents divorced shortly after he was born and he only saw his Dad twice after that. He then started doing drugs as a young teenager and took the path to jail because of it. He spent some years in jail. I forget if he had a kid before he went in or after he got out, but the statement that resonated for me was that now he wanted to be a real father to his young child (who was aged 17 months at time of article) and give him the best shot in life. In fact the father had stopped taking drugs because of his kid. No easy feat if you are on the hard stuff.
Sure, you can say it was kitsch. Quite often I reel off a number of sarcasms in my head if I read a touchy feely article, but I couldn't do that this time. I just knew the man was genuine, the situation was real and it was something to reflect upon, seriously, not as a joke. This child, the man s child had maybe saved his life. So not only did the Father want to spend more time with his son and be a better parent than his Dad, but he had a great reason to be: his child had saved his life. I don`t think he thought about that, it wasn't mentioned in the article, but I think it happened. It reminds me of the line in a NOFX song "Seems like everybodys got/something I have not/ a reason not to die". This father had to repay his son. As ridiculous as that sounds, because being a father isn't payback or you do it because you owe it to someone, in fact, that is exactly how it was. This man owed it to his child. Of course he wanted to be a good father to his son. But if you can say, "my child saved my life, so I owe it to him", you know its a bit of an extra incentive to be a good father.
That was rather a lengthy anecdote to make a point. The point being that Fathers WANT to be better parents. Fathers want to spend more time with their children. I think that men realize more and more that the father is necessary at home. As much as divorce is still high and maybe not declining, the father wants to be there with his children, more than in the past. I think we are evolving.
Lets not blame it on the past though. Since the mid 1800s and sped up by the industrial revolution, the roles of men and women were pushed in certain directions. Men worked, women stayed at home. Besides the 1940s during WW2, this was true all the way through the beginning of the 60s, and even then only 11 per cent of women (in the US) were the sole or higher breadwinner (1960 census).
The baby boomer generation was, at best, a transition time. That is to say, the mentality was changing, but it wasn't being backed up with action. As the saying goes, words without action equals zero. The idea was there, but the fathers were not at home. No action.
Now, according to the Pew Research Center analyzing 2010 census information, the number is 23 per cent. That is, 23 per cent of the women in the US are either the only money maker in the family or the higher money maker in the family. I would like to find out what it is in Europe overall. And as a result more males can and do say, "I want to be more of a father to my children than my dad was". With the economic and cultural shackles removed, men can be emancipated and be at home with their children more.
Sometimes it will even save their lives.
Yet, what keeps even more dads from taking on more parenting hours? I have to leave that for two more posts I hope to write in the not too distant future. I have the ideas in my head already, but have to read/think a bit more on it. Till that time, considering the date of this post, I hope you didn't or wont make too many New Years resolutions. Statistics show, they'll be out the door and history by March. I made my New Years resolutions this year back in September on the Jewish New Year, for a changer. So far Ive kept two of them. Starting on writing these posts was one of them.
Oh, a last "read the fine print". I'm the sole writer and editor of these posts. All bad grammar is due to my stupidity. I hope mistakes don't detract you from the overall massage. But let me know if so.
Edit, here is the article.
http://www.deseretnews.com/
I was reading through Daddy articles and I came across a story in the Deseret News from Utah, from May 2013, about a father who wanted to be more of a father than his dad had been. Not that difficult as the man s parents divorced shortly after he was born and he only saw his Dad twice after that. He then started doing drugs as a young teenager and took the path to jail because of it. He spent some years in jail. I forget if he had a kid before he went in or after he got out, but the statement that resonated for me was that now he wanted to be a real father to his young child (who was aged 17 months at time of article) and give him the best shot in life. In fact the father had stopped taking drugs because of his kid. No easy feat if you are on the hard stuff.
Sure, you can say it was kitsch. Quite often I reel off a number of sarcasms in my head if I read a touchy feely article, but I couldn't do that this time. I just knew the man was genuine, the situation was real and it was something to reflect upon, seriously, not as a joke. This child, the man s child had maybe saved his life. So not only did the Father want to spend more time with his son and be a better parent than his Dad, but he had a great reason to be: his child had saved his life. I don`t think he thought about that, it wasn't mentioned in the article, but I think it happened. It reminds me of the line in a NOFX song "Seems like everybodys got/something I have not/ a reason not to die". This father had to repay his son. As ridiculous as that sounds, because being a father isn't payback or you do it because you owe it to someone, in fact, that is exactly how it was. This man owed it to his child. Of course he wanted to be a good father to his son. But if you can say, "my child saved my life, so I owe it to him", you know its a bit of an extra incentive to be a good father.
That was rather a lengthy anecdote to make a point. The point being that Fathers WANT to be better parents. Fathers want to spend more time with their children. I think that men realize more and more that the father is necessary at home. As much as divorce is still high and maybe not declining, the father wants to be there with his children, more than in the past. I think we are evolving.
Lets not blame it on the past though. Since the mid 1800s and sped up by the industrial revolution, the roles of men and women were pushed in certain directions. Men worked, women stayed at home. Besides the 1940s during WW2, this was true all the way through the beginning of the 60s, and even then only 11 per cent of women (in the US) were the sole or higher breadwinner (1960 census).
The baby boomer generation was, at best, a transition time. That is to say, the mentality was changing, but it wasn't being backed up with action. As the saying goes, words without action equals zero. The idea was there, but the fathers were not at home. No action.
Now, according to the Pew Research Center analyzing 2010 census information, the number is 23 per cent. That is, 23 per cent of the women in the US are either the only money maker in the family or the higher money maker in the family. I would like to find out what it is in Europe overall. And as a result more males can and do say, "I want to be more of a father to my children than my dad was". With the economic and cultural shackles removed, men can be emancipated and be at home with their children more.
Sometimes it will even save their lives.
Yet, what keeps even more dads from taking on more parenting hours? I have to leave that for two more posts I hope to write in the not too distant future. I have the ideas in my head already, but have to read/think a bit more on it. Till that time, considering the date of this post, I hope you didn't or wont make too many New Years resolutions. Statistics show, they'll be out the door and history by March. I made my New Years resolutions this year back in September on the Jewish New Year, for a changer. So far Ive kept two of them. Starting on writing these posts was one of them.
Oh, a last "read the fine print". I'm the sole writer and editor of these posts. All bad grammar is due to my stupidity. I hope mistakes don't detract you from the overall massage. But let me know if so.
Edit, here is the article.
http://www.deseretnews.com/
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