my dilemma

When Aaron turned two, we decided it was time to try to start playing some games together as a family.  We gave the children Hungry Hungry Hippos for Christmas, and promptly set the game up.  We carefully showed Aaron and Maddie what you’re supposed to do, and why.  (Whack at your hippo’s lever, and make him gobble as many marbles as possible.)  We play the chaotic version of the game where all the marbles are released at once, and everybody whacks away furiously.

Maddie got the concept right way.  She’s a master player.  Aaron, on the other hand, apparently took the goal a little too much to heart.  He would notice that some hippos wouldn’t get as many marbles as the others, and he would reach into the playing field, grab a marble, and pinch the starving hippo’s cheeks, raising its jaw, and gently force feed him the marble.  (The way one might administer a pill to a sick cat.)  He didn’t have the heart to see the marble distribution go unevenly.

But lest you think he’s a little saint, he’s got another side, too.  That’s the topic of the next entry.

Last Sunday, I was pretty frazzled.  Maddie was crowding me as I was cutting a coupon from a box of cereal bars.  She didn’t know why I was fiddling with what looked like a box of candy.  I asked her to back off, “Give me some peace, please.”

She got pretty happy when she heard that.  “I want a piece, too!” 

“No, honey, not a piece.  I want some peace of mind.”

“Piece of mind?  I don’t know what that is.  I want to try some.”

Now, Maddie knows that she doesn’t get treats unless she’s willing to share them with her brother.  So she backed a couple of feet away, and called as loudly as she could, “Aaron!  Want some piece?  Come get some piece of mind!  Come Aaron!“

The yelling did nothing for my state of mind.  But I saw the humor in it.  When you’ve got kids, you have to see the humor in it.

Maddie and I play this game where one of us thinks of an animal, and then answers questions or gives clues until the other guesses what it is.  Usually, the game only lasts for two or three guesses because we give pretty easy clues.

It was Maddie’s turn to guess.  She asked if it had a long neck, and then guessed if it was a duck.  Nope, it wasn’t a duck.  I gave her a clue:

“It’s smaller than a duck.”

“Is it a horse?”

“Nope, a horse isn’t smaller than a duck.  Pick an animal smaller than a duck.”

“A hippo?  A cow!?  A pig?”

“No, no, no!  C’mon Maddie.  Think of an animal smaller than a duck.”

She scrunched her face for a second, then guessed, “A small elephant?”

A few days ago Maddie showed me what her mom had just taught her:  That you can combine the play-doh of different colors, mash well, and make new colors.  She had made a little purple ball from red and blue, a little green ball from blue and yellow, and so on.  It was very exciting, and we were all very proud.

It was the first time anyone here had permanently mashed dough of different colors together.

I had always taught them to carefully layer dough of different colors together, if you had to.  And when you were done, to separate the colors again, and put them back in their mono-color containers.

Today, both kids got busy mashing dough together to make new colors.  If you’re a type A personality, it’s really hard to watch your children mix all their play-doh colors together.  Before they finished mixing the last of their pure unmixed colors together, I explained, “If you mix all that’s left, you won’t have any of the original colors anymore.  All that you’ll have left will be new colors…”

Of course when I said it, I realized, “…but maybe you’ll like that.”

Without skipping a beat, and with a big smile, Maddie replied, “I like that.”  And she mashed away.

One of my pet peeves from my childhood was being woken up too abruptly, and then being told (a little too happily) to “Wake up, Sleepyhead.”  I can’t tell you how much that irked me.  And I would stay irked for hours.

So now, as a parent, I strive to wake my children up on the right side of the bed.  I’ll tiptoe into my daughter’s room, and slowly and quietly draw the shades open to let more natural light enter the room.  Then I’d sit on her bed, gently caress her and ease her into the morning by whispering “Good morning.”  When she comes to, Maddie seems ready to take on the day, and she usually asks me what the plan is.  (Is there school?  Are there swimming or soccer lessons?  What’s after that?)

My wife wakes the two-year-old boy up while I’m waking Maddie up.  She uses a similar gentle technique, but he responds differently.  None of this “‘Morning” or “Mommy!” or other sweet-nothing out of him.  He’s all business.  Here are the first five words Lillian hears:

Nai-nai.  Cereal.  TV.  Kangaroo.  Video.

That’s a laundry list of his morning demands:  He wants his milk and cereal, and he wants to watch TV.  On TV, he wants to watch the DVD with the Kangaroo on it.  Different mornings, different videos, but you get the idea.

This is a boy who knows what he wants, and there’s no time to waste.  Time stops for no baby.  He’s the kind of kid who just can’t let the morning go to waste lying in bed.  The kind of kid who’ll grow into a father who’ll watch his kids sleep in a little too late, shake them and say, “Wake up, Sleepyhead.”

Maddie knows her letters and numbers pretty well.  She further understands that when I read bedtime stories to her, I’m reading the words from the page.  (Except when I’m faking it, when there are too many words.)  And she can even read a few three-letter words herself, like cat and hat.

Maddie’s favorite letters are the ones that are the initials of the names of her family and friends.  So when she practices writing letters, she usually starts with those.  Lately, she’s been writing her favorite letters in word-like groups like so:

MADL ELADM ELD4 MALDITO

and asking me what she wrote.  I’d read off each letter, but she’d stop me, and ask me what words she wrote.  She’d apparently hoped that she magically put letters together that form a coherent thought, like “The beautiful princess had a wonderful birthday party.”

(I particularly loved her construction, maldito, until I discovered it was Spanish for “cursed.”)

One of the great delights in having a new baby is that they’re fascinated by you, and they love it when you sing to them.  They don’t care if you’re off-key, or if you don’t know the words to the tune.  There’s nothing like having a baby to make you break out your inner Pavarotti.  Or Bono.  Hey, whatever — they love it, it’s all good.

Until they turn one.

For both my children, that seems to be the magic number when my cantorious voice turned into a shrill, grating train wreck.  Kids seem to love certain CDs, and that generally means listening to a lot of Wiggles.  And after listening to “Old Man Emu” for the millionth time, it’s harder to keep quiet than it is to belt it out along with Greg.  As soon as I begin to sing along, both kids in unison shout, “Stop!”  And if I don’t stop right away, they actually begin to cry.

That’s right.  I’ve made my children cry by singing along to the Wiggles.  No joke.

Here’s the part that only other parents can understand:  And somehow, it’s still fun.  Even if now it’s only to torture my lovely little cherubs.  A few days ago, Lillian and I both started singing a song together only to have both children command us to stop.  And we did stop, for the interlude, and we started back again with the chorus, not missing a beat, bolder and louder than before.