Summer vacation part II : Playground

How can you be a parent and not like going to parks?  We have wonderful parks with playgrounds here where I live, right near my house. I walk with the kids there. I don't have a car.  The playground just down the street is very good.  But it is vacation, so we had to travel 15 hours on planes to go "home" to visit my Mom and be with Grandma for several weeks in the summer.  And what do we do there?  Well, we go to playgrounds of course.  What else?  In fact several of them.

The first one was not so great but we were able to spend at least close to an hour there.  That's OK, they were more a tennis court park, the kids section was an afterthought.    It was out in the woods. They did have a baseball diamond and a soccer field, but those are out of my kids boundaries yet.  Can`t imagine a two year old hitting a home run.  No, not yet anyway.  But they should have put a bit more effort into the toddlers section.

splash park Kingsley, Michigan, hot July day

But three big cheers to the splash park in Kingsley, Michigan.  Folks, Kingsley, Michigan has a population of 1,514 (according to 2012 numbers) and here is a nice big playground with a very decent splash park.  Nearby in Traverse City, Michigan they have tried to set up a splash park, but they keep on having troubles with it.  While over here in little ol Kingsley the splash park is going nicely, well to the best of my knowledge.  I was just a bit worried that the big bucket which fills with water from above and then sploshes down like a, a big bucket which dumps water on you, would hurt my little two year old.  And that water was cold.  But she outran it.  When we get dry after splashing for half an hour, we go over to the climbing gym equipment to climb.  Luckily there is no merry go round at this park.  My how I have changed since childhood.  I'm nauseous for the rest of the day if I have to be on the merry go round.  Don't call me names please.

But Traverse City, Michigan DID get the Kids Cove playground right.   And that was made through donations by a private group, a group which is interested in kids health and promoting kids exercise and activity.   Carter`s kids group will also begin update to the park and improvements, so it is said, September 2014.  We have gone there several times and if it is not too hot out, it can be a two hour stay at the playground or more.  By my rule, an hour at the playground is the least amount of time.  If they get bored after 45 minutes, its not very good.  This time, we had a three hour stay and Grandma was starting to get nervous that she was missing her afternoon nap.

I pushed my littlest girl on a swing for fifteen minutes.  During that time another father came over and pushed his girl for at least ten minutes on an interesting swing set.  I suddenly felt competitive.  After all he was half my age, shirtless with tattoos and could have outlasted me on the playground by an hour.  I felt I had to prove my salt and gave my girl stronger pushes on the swing.

My other girl had become enamored by some five year old Don Giovanni and was playing hide and seek.  A bus pulled up and out came a little group of specially abled adults.  I was taking a break with my tiniest girl after the swing session (the other father had eventually packed it up.  Ha, I showed him al`right) and eating some crackers with her.  One of the adults came in with some crutches and set them down and proceeded to do the whole playground set including crawling through the wooden tube.  He was ecstatic after he had doggy crawled through that tube.  Another lady who I thought was a director of the group at first because she was wearing some plastic identity tags around her neck started talking to me.   We discussed the swing content in the park and I said the best one is that big tire over there.  She said she had never been on that one and walked over there and started swinging on this big inner tube tire connected by three chain links.  "Whoa ho, this one is great.  Whoo hoo.  Whoa, nearly fell off there"   I watched her swinging.  Everyone should have so much fun during the summer weeks.    

 More people should get to the parks in the summer, especially if you have kids.  Hats off to people doing something productive by creating and building playgrounds and parks.  They are a positive energy for little people and big people of many different needs.  Myself included.               

Summer vacation part I : Teeth brush

I cant be so humorous in this post.  It hurts for me to even recall. 

I was the sole parent for my two girls for the last three weeks, though my Mother did partake a bit too.   We had a very wonderful vacation and in my opinion we all bonded even more.  I am not saying the whole time was easy.  Watching over two very young girls and having to divide your attention among them is not a simple task.  Then again, I want to get the message across in all my posts that Fathering IS a job.  But a wonderful job.  However,  just like any job you don't always love it.  The vacation with both my girls was a good experience and I love them even greater.  Yet I wonder now, how single Mothers do it.  Why do single Mothers do it?  Single Fathers too for that matter.

At any rate, the very bad stick out sore spot of  the day was bedtime,  specifically brushing teeth time.  By the second week, my littlest girl was saying her teeth hurt on the left side and she didn't want to brush there.  I looked and saw the gum was nearly above the tooth.  Yes, experienced mothers will now say, "you imbecile, it was her tooth coming in, you don't deserve to be a father" and ashamedly, that may be true, but I wasn't sure at first and was worried it was some gum disease, periodontitis, or gingivitis already.   Except that periodontitis cuts the gum away from the tooth and exposes the tooth as in these pictures here.  I thought I should brush the tooth more to get the gum down.  My friend visited me and assured me it was the tooth coming in and not gum disease.

In the meantime my daughter didn't want to have anything to do with brushing her teeth in the night time and this quite irked me.  You have to brush your teeth.  You cant go to bed without brushing your teeth.  What kind of a parent would I be if I let her get away to bed without her teeth getting brushed?  She was screaming "It will hurt, it will hurt".  I said I would just do the tops, but through the struggle I just did the whole set because I would get angry and want to do the whole thing.  It was a struggle and... it did hurt her.  At the end she would escape to a corner  refusing water to rinse and still crying.  But... it had to be done.  And I did do it.  Could I have done it better?

This will go down on my permanent record. This will be stored in both my daughter`s and my memory.  I will stand before God on judgement day and have to answer why I had to brush my two year old`s teeth?  What was the point?  My Mother in law didn't start brushing her teeth till she was 8.  Why is it that suddenly in the last couple days I have heard of people referring to something that happened when they were four or five and they remember it to this day when they are fifty?  The famous comedian, Michael Kaplan, spoke of the first encounter he had with a Hostess snow ball four (sixth story down on the collection).  "It was a game changer".  Maybe I should have given my daughter a Hostess cupcake or Twinkies (naw, not a Twinkie, I wouldn't want to give my daughter a phallic symbol, better the cupcake) at the end of brushing her teeth?  Then she would have mixed feelings about getting her teeth brushed.  "I remember when I was two and my father brushed my teeth.  Then he would give me a Hostess cupcake".  And I could answer God on my judgement day, "yes, but I gave her a Hostess cupcake at the end".  All would be forgiven as she would remember the pain of brushing her teeth followed by the rich, downy, chocolaty heaven of the Hostess cupcake.  Hell and Heaven.  There would be no childhood scars.

Every adult problem stems from Childhood.

Well...  As it stands now, she may have scars.  Maybe she will stop brushing her teeth when she becomes an adult.  In defiance of my crinkled, angry brow and my, "we have to brush your teeth (rrrrrrhh)" she won`t.  Then SHE WILL get gingivitis, a pariah on her friends because her breath smells bad from two meters away.  Gum disease and halitosis at the age of twenty two.  Loss of friends, loss of job, depression, therapy.  All traced back to the painful, mouth brushing sessions when she was two years old. Does anyone remember Mel Brooks movie "High Anxiety"?  It does happen.  She will come to me one night after her therapy.  Me, not seventy years old yet, and plenty more life to live, supposedly, will be waiting for someone to take care of me.  Waiting as she pulls out...
"You know why I must do this Dad?"
"Yes.  We all must get our teeth brushed before bed. My stocks are in order for the day and I`m ready for sleep.  But, it hurts (I finish with a whine)."
A huge electric toothbrush with bristles as sharp as a machete.   Proceeds to brush my teeth.

Should I have given her the Hostess cupcake at the end of brushing?  That would have been impossible, everyone knows you can`t eat after you have brushed your teeth in the night time.  I just have to resign myself to my destiny.  When it comes.... I hope I am ready.  

When vacation was finished and we were back home earlier this week.  I told my wife, "I will not be brushing her teeth again.  You do it".