Tag: Adam

How often does your child say something that takes a while interpret? How often is your first guess wrong, or your second?

This evening we were lounging in the family room, basking in our relative freedom from responsibility (Cheryl and Beth were out on errands), and out of nowhere Adam says, “I’ve got the blues dad.”

My first thought was, “Are they playing B.B. King at daycare?”

“Either that,” I figured, “or he’s a little depressed and his grasp of language rivals mine… and he’s only three.”

A few minutes later he asked, “Can I have another blue one dad?” For some strange reason he likes the fat-free yogurt better than the low-fat, and they come in a blue container.

Beth has been hounding me for a new movie for months. Me and Adam sat in front of the iMac for a while the other day and pieced this one together real quick. I’m hesitant to post it, seeing as how I come across as a complete fool (which is my nature), but so far it’s a hit at our house with the kids, and looking like a fool has never stopped me from posting my every thought here before.

Oh well, despite my better judgement… here it is.

You think peer pressure was tough has a child, kid pressure is much, much worse.

As always, there’s more on the movie tab.

Have you ever had a toilet seat break under you? I don’t mean a broken hinge or a couple screws coming loose, I mean the thick part of the seat cracking through – making two pieces where once there was one. It never happened to me before either… until this week. (Assuming of course, it hasn’t happened to you.)

It led to Cheryl’s briefing on Wednesday morning…
“John, your mission today – wether you accept it or not – is to pick up a new toilet seat for the kid’s bathroom.” I gave her my trademark mock-scowl before I wrote myself a note on my Palm (else I would have surely forgotten).

All of this has very little to do with what I really wanted to tell you this evening… I just thought the post could use a little more flavor.

Anyhoo, there’s a little hardware store just on the other side of our neighborhood, so I figured I’d just pop in on my way home after picking up Adam. I love giving my kids a sense of empowerment, so I told Adam he could pick out the seat we’d get. I didn’t even see the blue acrylic (almost transparent) seat with an ocean theme until he hauled it off the shelf and declared, “this one daddy!”

I can’t say I would have picked it out on my own, but it’s growing on me. Best of all, Adam is extremely proud of his selection. It’s one more thing in the house that dad did with the kids, something that truly makes it OUR home. Well, that’s my hope anyway.

The only appliance I have a worse relationship with than the clothes washer is the clothes dryer. Boy I wish I’d paid closer attention when my daughter told me, “Adam has a pocket full of marbles.”

Finding a dozen marbles in a load of laundry can be surprisingly time consuming. It’s almost as surprising as the noise generated by a dozen marbles in a loaded dryer.

… punched themselves in the face trying to remove a sock? It ranks right up there with hand v. ceiling fan, accidental dye jobs (the clothes formerly known as ‘whites’), bike v. parked car, unfortunate shirt/pants pairings, toe v. bed frame, and all the other things in life we learn the hard way.

Poor Adam. If he’s anything like his father, this evening’s pain/humiliation is only the beginning.

Poor Adam stepped on another last week. Cheryl picked him up from school and took him to the doctor because he’d been coughing a lot. The doctor gave a listen to his lungs and gave a look of surprise. “Wow,” she said, “you’d never guess just looking at him that he’s wheezing.”

As the doctor said these words he was doing his impression of a perpetual motion machine, with a big grin on his face that was reduced to a blur – unless your eyes could anticipate his next move. I can already tell he’s going to be much tougher than his dad when he grows up.

He got another nebulizer treatment, an updated prescription for albuterol, and a larger mask (for giving the albuterol to small children who aren’t quite ready to huff on a regular inhaler). Before they left the doctor told Cheryl to try and keep him calm that night… you know, to keep him from running around.

Hah! We might as well tell him to stop breathing (all right, not funny). It didn’t turn out too bad though. We sat down together (the boy and his goof of a dad) and read a couple books. Afterwards we moved on to the computer, and pictures I took that weekend. Even with a boat load of stimulants coursing through his veins, he was still content to sit back and relax with dad for a while.

When parents of older children speak wistfully of their kids’ younger years, I suspect they’re talking about these moments (rather than the preparation it gives you for a second career in the wonderful world of hazardous materials).

We’ve lived in our house for almost ten years. For all that time we’ve had locks on the drawers in our kitchen, socket covers on our electrical outlets, and cabinet locks on our… well… cabinets.

Why so long? We moved into our house when Beth was one. When Beth got to an age when they could come off we decided to have another child, so we left them on thinking we’d just have to put them back on again (soon). Then the miscarriages came, and I think we might have left them on because taking them off would’ve meant we’d lost hope.

Then Adam finally came along. For the last year or so, Adam has been taking the cabinet locks off to play with the pots and pans… and putting the lock back on when he’s done. (Does anyone else have a lot of ceramic tile in their house? Does anyone else have permanent tinnitus from the sound of stainless steel pots banging on their ceramic tile?)

Maybe it’s time to finally take off the locks. We’d hate to inconvenience the little guy.