Last night, Kelly and I went out for dinner to celebrate her birthday. We dumped left Ian with his grandparents.
When we returned, Ian was taking a bath. Apart from Grandpa, baths at Grammie and Grandpa’s have one attraction for Ian which really sets them apart from the tepid, utilitarian baths he has at home: the Titanic. Grandpa has a toy model of the Titanic that—wait for it—really sinks.
You flip a switch, a section of the bow caves in, and the ship sinks, nose-first. As the bow slips under water, the ship breaks in half, and the stern comes tumbling after.
It is morbid. Yet disturbingly fun.
Grandpa also has a submarine with a light that works underwater. Sure, fathers are known for playing pirates or naval battle in the bathtub. But how many have ever played ’salvage operation’?
Parentography is a new online community for parents to share reviews and experiences of family-friendly experiences in their home-town, and in their travels.
Places and activities are divided into several categories, such as Major Attractions and Parks & Playgrounds. They’re also organized by age-appropriate…ness and time of year.
Along with reviews (and pictures), parents can also submit Excursions, which…I admit, I don’t quite understand:
‘Excursions are suggestions and ideas from Parentographers about ways to spend time with your children. They range from short activities near home to multi-day adventure-fests. Some excursions involve specific places. Others focus on activities that you can do anywhere!’
The goal, it seems, being to share more about your favorite places than just where, when, and how must it costs.
Parentography is new, and in beta, so the content is slim and site a little buggy. But it certainly looks promising!
(Thanks, Lifehacker!)
Fishing in Winter
By Ralph Burns
A man staring at a small lake sees
His father cast light line out over
The willows. He’s forgotten his
Father has been dead for two years
And the lake is where a blue fog
Rolls, and the sky could be, if it
Were black or blue or white,
The backdrop of all attention.
He wades out to join the father,
Following where the good strikes
Seem to lead. It’s cold. The shape
Breath takes on a cold day is like
Anything else—a rise on a small lake,
The Oklahoma hills, blue scrub—
A shape already inside a shape,
Two songs, two breaths on the water.
We really have no audio recordings of Ian. We don’t own a tape recorder, and there’s no way I’m trailing a three-year-old with a laptop and microphone; I don’t care how user-friendly Audacity is.
Fortunately, Ian’s grandpa works at a radio station, and Ian loves to talk. This was recorded last month, with grandpa laughing in the background all the while. A few notes:
- Do not feel obligated to listen to the entire recording. It’s unedited, for the sake of long-distance grandparents living vicariously through the internet.
- No, I have no idea what he’s saying.
- My kid’s cuter than yours.
Click to play.
I’m always surprised by people who swear conversationally. I’m sympathetic to a broken dish or hammer to the thumb, but I’m of the opinion that you shouldn’t swear unless you’re on BBC. Or Mel Brooks.
I’m even more surprised when people swear in print. Not that we don’t all have our moments of weakness, but I’ve never sworn online. Swearing lives in the moment, and I’ve never reached a point in writing where I couldn’t think of a better noun or adjective. Where only a four-letter word could best capture the experience.
Plus, my grandma reads this stuff!
A lot of bloggers swear. And often. It’s not that I’m a prude, not that I can’t handle or get over it; it’s just that, given the choice, I’d rather avoid the more colorful side of language. I don’t need that language in my mind, or in my heart. I’d rather my son avoid it, too. Which is something of a moot point given that he’s three. But still.
We have spam filters for offensive e-mails, and firewalls for offensive everything else, but what about text?
Enter the Profanity Filter, for Firefox! Using a pre-configured list, Profanity Filter replaces foul language with asterisks, keeping your eyeballs minty-fresh. And because language is alive and ever-changing, you can update the list with the latest and creative ways to cause women of high-society to drop their monocles in shock.
Profanity Filter requires the Greasemonkey Firefox extension. Add-on. Whatever.
(Thanks, Lifehacker!)
I’m getting dressed for work, and Ian is lying on our bed and talking. And talking. And talking. I start singing; an attempt to short-circuit his feedback loop.
‘Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah…’
Ian sits up. ‘No,’ he shakes his head, ‘we’re not singing.’
‘Please? I really like singing.’
He frowns, and holds up an admonishing finger. ‘Okay, I’ll sing a little bit. But that’s all.’ I sing again, and this time Ian plays his part: ‘Praise, ye, the Lord!’
We finish the song, and Ian holds up his hand, index finger folded down. ‘That was Praise, Ye, the Lord! Next up is Twinkle Little Star! We have four more songs!’
There’s a cliche which applies very strongly to parenting. Something about wishes, and caution.
I’ve read and heard horror stories from other parents, about children stealing under the covers in the dead of night, or sons and daughters being unable to sleep in their own rooms. Ian’s never really had a problem sleeping. Waking was another thing.
He’d shout. ‘Daaaaaady!’ Every morning, apparently unable to move, Ian yelled for our attention. ‘I’m ready to get up!’
Rolling my eyes, I’d also yell. ‘So get up!’
‘I need you!’
So one of us would shuffle to his room, and lift him from the bed. Spell broken, feet free, he’d run off. ‘You know, you can get out of bed yourself.’
And last month, he finally learned. In the mornings, we hear a thud and padding of feet. The rattle of a doorknob. The rattle of a doorknob. The rattle of a doorknob. The click of an opened door and the padding of feet.
Ah, sweet success.
Except, now that Ian knows he’s able—and allowed—to leave his room by himself, he knows that he’s able—and allowed—to leave his room by himself.
Last week, Kelly and I had just gone to bed—Ian an hour earlier—and were talking, when we heard a rattle. Our door opened. ‘I need to go tinkle.’
He didn’t, but he tried. As I led him back to his room, I explained that he should always knock on Mommy and Daddy’s door.
The next night, and the next, and the next, and the last, about fifteen or twenty minutes after we close Ian’s door, we hear thudding and shuffling from the floor above. Clicking and stomping and opening and closing.
He has five minutes before I move from the couch. Then, at the bottom of the stairs, I say, menacingly, ‘Ian.’ The other night, as the echo of my voice faded, his head poked from behind a wall. ‘I had to tinkle.’
Parents
By William Meredith
What it must be like to be an angel
or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.
The last time we go to bed good,
they are there, lying about darkness.
They dandle us once too often,
these friends who become our enemies.
Suddenly one day, their juniors
are as old as we yearn to be.
They get wrinkles where it is better
smooth, odd coughs, and smells.
It is grotesque how they go on
loving us, we go on loving them
The effrontery, barely imaginable,
of having caused us. And of how.
Their lives: surely
we can do better than that.
This goes on for a long time. Everything
they do is wrong, and the worst thing,
they all do it, is to die,
taking with them the last explanation,
how we came out of the wet sea
or wherever they got us from,
taking the last link
of that chain with them.
Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,
to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.
The bad elephant spilled the volcano and then a huge snack came. He did two lavas. The beast spilled the lava because no animals were there. The volcano spilled and the animals died.
By Ian, Age 3
A Little Tooth
By Thomas Lux
Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It’s all
over: she’ll learn some words, she’ll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,
your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It’s dusk. Your daughter’s tall.
