Names No comments yet

names have power: to
control, contain, render safe.
in his fear, my son

names me ‘monster’, and
takes my hand. ‘hi! you wanna
play?’ i am disarmed.

Cutie McSmilemuch No comments yet

Look, my son’s cute. This is not my opinion, it’s simply a fact. He’s adorable, and everyone knows it. Including himself. He smiles at everyone, says ‘hi’ to most, and will do his best to be his cutest when he’s misbehaved.

Ian stands in stark contrast to his father. I was born with a cleft lip, and have had several surgeries to correct said deformity. While I’ve come to accept that I’m not classically handsome, I was more than self-concious about my appearance throughout childhood, and as a young adult. I still hate to have my picture taken.

As such, you can imagine how confident I was at approaching members of the opposite sex…or anyone else, for that matter. It took being married to an uber-extrovert and drama teacher for me to shove my anti-social tendencies aside.

My son has no such inhibition. Ever since he could lift his head, Ian has had a way with the ladies. He’s far from shy, and was flirting before he was crawling. Eyes wide, head tilted, corners of his mouth lifted slightly…women fall at his Keds. Last night, Ian got a taste of his own medicine.

Our waitress was cute, with blonde hair in a ponytail, [color] eyes – I’m a guy, what do I know from details? – and a soft, lisping voice. At first, Ian didn’t seem to notice anything unusual. He smiled, as always, said please and thank-you, as always, and quickly had Susie wrapped around his finger.

Ian seemed to watch her more closely as she took our order. By the time she reached Ian, he wasn’t saying anything. She asked him what he wanted – no response. Kelly gave him a little nudge, ‘Do you want the Funny Face?’ It was as if Mommy hadn’t spoken. Susie reached across the table to point at Ian’s menu. ‘That? Do you want that?’ Ian gave himself a slight shake and softly mumbled, ‘Yeah.’

A few minutes later, Susie returned to clean the table behind our booth. Ian’s eyes locked onto her the instant she was in his range of vision, and followed her as she crossed the room. Suddenly he sat straighter, frowned slightly, and took a deep breath. ‘You’re pretty!’ Susie collapsed into a heap under the table, her heart having been cleft in twain by my little Cupid. What she didn’t know, however, was that Ian had never said this to anyone. Ever.

Some might surmise that Ian had been simply trying a new weapon from his arsenal of manipulative cuteness. He did, after all, receive the biggest chocolate-chip pancake I’ve ever seen. But I know my son, and this exclamation was none of his doing. He had been captivated by Susie, and his compliment was no less than a revelation – a realization that could not be until it had been put into words. My son had experienced his first crush.

As Susie walked, beaming, back to the kitchen, Ian’s head followed as if it were tethered to her apron. ‘I see her! Mommy, I see her!’

Steady on, son. Steady on.

Wherein I Join a Commune 2 comments

Last month, I joined a collaborative blog (a clog?) called DadBloggers, which is (suprisingly) simply a collection of dads writing about their children and fatherhood. We’re certainly not the first, but I like this group of dads because we’re kid-centered and family-friendly.

The site currently has sixteen contributing dads, and our editor hopes to have one for each day of the month. My pieces are published on the fourth of each month, and won’t be included on this site.

Please remember to check out DadBloggers, but also make sure to visit the sites of the other contributing dads – these are some great writers! If you’d like to join our little community, feel free to contact Doug, our founder and editor.

Hindsight, Now in 3-D! 1 comment

In retrospect, an IMAX 3-D presentation of a South African safari wasn’t, perhaps, the best choice for Ian’s first movie-going experience.

We’d been flirting with the idea of taking Ian to a movie for over a year, but could never quite bring ourselves to do it. Ian doesn’t have much of an attention span when it comes to most movies, and most movies are expensive. Plus, I rarely get to visit the theater, and I, selfishly, didn’t want to have to walk out in the middle of a film.

We thought that The Goblet of Fire might be a good introduction. However, I knew that if the film looked anything like Prisoner of Azkaban, Ian would, at the very least, sleep with his eyes open for the rest of his life. Not to mention the therapy. Which is also expensive.

Enter New Year’s weekend, 2005, and an impromptu jaunt to Kansas City.

On Sunday afternoon, we visited Union Station and this year’s Holiday Village, a 2,400-square-foot G-Scale model train display. Ian loves trains, and Thomas the Tank Engine – this display had both. He knelt on the floor, face wedged between the slats of the picket-fence, and waited anxiously for Thomas to appear from the tunnel. Ian shouted, ‘Hi, Thomas!’, and raced the engine to the opposite side before it disappeared into another tunnel. He ran back to the first tunnel, and started the whole cycle again. And again. And again. Woe to any adult who forgot to look down.

Eventually, we made our way to the lower levels of Union Station for Wild Safari 3D. Lions, elephants, leopards, and, as we were to find out, deadly, deadly buffalo leaping from the screen. I don’t know what we were thinking.

Ian loved the 3-D glasses. He liked the screen, too; a massive, five-storey-high blank canvas, just waiting to be painted. The crowd was buzzing, everyone wearing Elton-John-esque glasses on their heads, Mommy striking movie-poster poses for ‘Amazing!’ and ‘A Must-See!’…how exciting! And then the lights dimmed.

You have to understand that IMAX films, by the very nature of their medium, are designed to be overwhelming coma-inducing. They are not subtle. You don’t see many IMAX presentations of Bob Ross, for example. Audiences want, and expect, to be possessed by a film, regardless of almost certain and significant mental, visual, and auditory damage. Now multiply that by three dimensions.

I don’t know what we were thinking.

Ian likes maps and globes. He simply thinks that five-storey versions of the Earth, flying toward one’s face, are a bit much. Ian caught one glimpse of Asia at mach-six, ripped the 3-D glasses from his face, and, screaming, climbed onto Grammy’s head.

I quickly whispered to my mother-in-law that I’d take him out of the theater- part of me wanted to reduce any further risk of dementia, the other, larger part just wanted to hold my son. Ian wasn’t going anywhere. So we sat, whispering to Ian about the animals. ‘Aw, see the baby elephant?’ ‘Look, there’s a leopard, in that tree! She’s sleeping.’ ‘Oooh, a giraffe!’

And so forth.

Despite his primal fear and the discomfort of watching a five-storey 3-D film without 3-D glasses, Ian actually started to enjoy himself. By the time our safari reached the lions, he was smiling and giggling, and had shirked all attempts at physical comfort from Grammy.

Near the end, as the female lions sauntered into the fading sunset (to engorge themselves on a half-eaten carcass), Ian sat up straight. ‘Hi, lion! What’s your name?’