Beats

So about two weeks ago Lucas started making rhythmic sounds with his mouth.

I asked him what he was doing and he looked up at me, and said, with a great deal of incredulity "Daddy, those are my beats. I have lots of new beats."

He's not going to be giving Biz Markie a run for his money any time soon, but it's fun none the less.

Back from TO

But first, at breakfast today Lucas asks "Mama, what's the French word for snotz?".. sadly I was laughing to hard to hear the answer.

Lucas and Technology

So we're getting some baby stuff ready to send to my sister in England (0 to 6 month clothing mostly) and we were talking about how to best send it and how much it would cost.

Lucas listened to the whole conversation and then asked "why don't you just throw it into the computer and send it to her like that?"

The Dentist!

So today was Lucas' first trip to the Dentist. We'd gotten him ready for the whole thing by telling him about it.

Christine told him that the Dentist would tickle his teeth.

I told him that there would be a big camera to take pictures of his teeth.

That was kind of it.

We left out some steps.

Like the whole "don't chew on the films for the XRAY" thing or the "stay still means really still" thing... or the tipping chair or...

It went really well... but we both have to work on our task analysis skills.

Most importantly he had no cavities and the tooth that got bashed in when he went face first into the coffee table is perfectly fine.

Of Shortbread and Nostalgia

I never knew my maternal grandmother, she died way before I was born. She was a Scottish immigrant to Canada and brought with her many traditions from the old country.

One of them was shortbread at Christmas. Not the fancy English shortbread cookies, or fancy things that were jammed out of a cookie gun or some crap like that. No. Shortbread, thick slabs baked in a baking pan. The average piece being about an inch or so squared. It's shortbread that you have a few pieces of with over tea or whiskey or Eggnog. It's muscular shortbread.

My grandmother taught my mother to make the shortbread and my sister and I were taught by Bev. The only instructions were hand written by my grandmother on a index card that was nearly translucent with years of handling by buttery hands. The temperature was listed as "Moderate oven". After years of experiments we've hit on 300 degrees. At some point Bev rewrote the recipe on another index card. It to is now nearly translucent.

Now that Bev is dead as well, the shortbread is now one of the connections that's left between she and I.

Today I was making two more batches for gifts and Lucas wanted to help. So the circle remains unbroken because I started to show him how to make it. He's still too little to knead the dough (taking it from crumbly to nearly like playdoh is tough sledding, even when you cheat like I do and soften the butter in the microwave) but he helped measure.

It will be years before the recipe is like a muscle memory, but it's a start.

Happy Father's Day

When Lucas was about a year and a half he and I went for a walk... we went along Pine and to St. Laurent... near the corner there is a bank and a biggish tree. That's where some of the local squeegee punk homeless kids gather. They pan handle, they wash car windows, that summer they slept there as well.

Normally my interaction with them is limited to giving them some food/changes or a polite no or smile (I'm not some great humanitarian, I just try and remember that they are someone's kid and a human).

Anyway on this walk one of the guys looked at Lucas and I and said "cute kid" and I replied with some sort of joking flip comment (as is my want) like "we like him" or "we love him" or "yes he is". He looked me in the eye and said "Do you love him?" I said "yes I do".

What he said next is what will stay with me forever. He said "You love him forever, and tell him, no matter what, or he'll wind up fucked up like me."

I was taken aback and, frankly, speechless (those of you who know me know what a rare deal this is) so I nodded and said yes.

What I later realized I should have said, what has become my private little mantra (well not so much anymore), is this "I'll love him as long as I draw breath."

What Father's Day is really about isn't the tools, isn't the Bar BQ, or the breakfast (though the French toast was fucking awesome), it isn't really about having a kid (ny moron can make someone pregnant). It's about the relationship, it's about being a Father, about being there, about caring and teaching and hugging and doing all that stuff that's hard but right.

WOOOT!

(non-parents are excused from the following post)

LUCAS JUST HAD HIS FIRST REAL POOP IN THE TOILET!

Crap in water never looked so good.

Bad Karma is going around breaking bikes

So I taught Lucas this:


and now he thinks there's some big guy named Bad Karma running around stealing and breaking people's bikes.

Trying to explain the concept of karma to a 3 year old is some seriously tough sledding.

Projects

So we're up to a bunch of things around here lately.

One of them has been this:



It's a Kraft Peanut Butter jar that we're filling with sand. From Lucas' shoes. He collects it at the daycare and every night we dump a bit more in. We're trying to fill it by the end of the summer. This is about three weeks into the project.

The other thing we're doing is this:



This is our fence, with the first coat of stain on it. We need to put another coat, finish some of the trellis and that will be that. Then on to landscaping. Where the Barbecue is right now will be some variation on the river rock/small stone theme. The other half of the yard will be grass for small boys to play on. Though I guess that he'll wind up where he can hurt himself more effectively.

Prepare for the torrent

I've got like 5 posts in my head, some of them just house updates/a way to spam photos and some are political and some are Lucas related. All are good.

Arts and Crafts

Lucas is very very imaginative. And, like all 3 year olds, random.

So periodically he'll see something on TV or in a video or on the street and then a few weeks later he'll ask about it. A couple of weeks ago he saw a Magic School Bus episode where they visited a recycling plant. So he asked Christine to make him one to go with his recycling truck he got for Christmas.

Then today he asked for a Museum. Once again she threw down.

I helped a bit with the signage for the Museum and with the table hockey game that goes inside (not pictured). He's as happy as a pig in poop, and the Playmobile™ people have been exposed to some culture.

Here's the results

But first! An update.

Since all of the injury business happened, we've been back to Ste-Justine and had Lucas' wounds looked at by a plastic surgeon. She was very happy with how they are healing and wants to see us again in a year just to keep track of it.

Of course, a few days later we went out the front door, he saw a street cleaner and managed to go ass over tea kettle, even though he was holding my hand. So he now has a nice scuff on his upper lip.

Brown Sugar

This morning when Chris went out the front walk was really slippery so, being the proactive manly man I am, I went and got the only salt that I thought was remotely usable. Some lovely fine grain kosher sea salt. So I chucked some on the front walk.

Lucas thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen in his whole life. He laughed and laughed. He also asked what other foods we could throw on the ice. I asked him what he thought would work, and he suggested brown sugar.

So once we were ready to go, I went and got a teaspoon or so of brown sugar and he chucked it on the ice. I thought he was going to break something he was laughing so hard.

On the way to the daycare he informed me that tomorrow we're going to be throwing Tomato Sauce on the path.

Boom.

So we're at home. Lucas is tired, but in a great mood (we'd just bought him some new shoes) and he was celebrating by running with them.

He tripped.

And smashed his face off the coffee table.

There was blood everywhere. His shirt. His face. The floor. His pants. My pants. His hands. My hands. Chris' hands.

We got the bleeding stopped and called InfoSante. While we talked to them I got online and read askdrsears.com about wounds etc. My Dad was called and he came by, so we jumped into his car and drove to the CLSC. In about 10 minutes he was examined by a nurse who made some quick calls to see if there was another CLSC that still had a Doc on duty who could do stitches. There wasn't.

So we got back in the car and went to Hopital Ste-Justine. We got registered etc in about 10 minutes. We got called for Triage about 30 - 45 minutes later. He got examined and the damage (most of which we already knew about) was two huge cuts to his lips (on on each side. A really deep on one side and a smaller one that was at the corner of his lips on the other. Additionally he'd jammed one of his baby teeth up into his gums.

We waited about another hour to see a Doc, who examined him and then sent us off to a small OR. She met us there and there was only room for one of us. Chris stayed (which was awful for her) and I went out in the hall with my Dad (a different kind of awful, but awful none the less).

He screamed. He cried. I paced. Chris told him stories about Thomas. And after what seemed like a week or so, but was probably about 45 minutes, he was done.

So a couple of stitches and a bunch of the adhesive strips on one side and some more stitches on the other.

We got home around midnight and he fell asleep after about 10 minutes.

Oh and it would have been Mom's birthday.

And it's Dad's today. We meant to distract him from thinking too much about Mom, but next year I think we'll stick with, I dunno, requiring a trip to IKEA or making him come by the house to help build something.

The very definition of a First World Problem

The other day I was doing something around the house. And things weren't working out the way I wanted them to. I was getting frustrated and grumpy and snippy.

And then I started to laugh at myself.

Because what I was so pissed about was that running the power supply for my 3.5 year old son's computer was not working out the way I wanted it to.



NB: It's an old B and W G3 with a piddling amount of RAM, but come on.. it's a computer for a 3 year old.

Clearly I need to get some perspective.

Hip Hop Harry Must Die or Why must the bad kids shows be so very very very bad?

After 3.5 years as a Dad I've worked out some things:

1. Diapers are honestly no big deal. There will be some you'll talk about years from now, but they are nothing.
2. Parenting is hard work.
3. Your love for your kid knows pretty much no bounds
4. A wide variety of children's shows would qualify as the worst possible crap on TV.

Let's look at #4 shall we?

I've worked out a rule of threes for this. Basically there are three broad categories of kids shows (I'm into lists today):

1. Ones that have something for everyone, the kids, the parents, random visiting friends.
2. Ones that are still good, but are aimed exclusively at the kids.
3. Ones that fucking well suck.

So, category #1 includes things like Peep and the Big Wide World (Joan Cusak as the narrator, Taj Mahal theme song!), Charlie and Lola (cool art, English accents, all round coolness) Magic School Bus (LILLY TOMLIN! - honestly that's all I have), George Shrinks (the art! OMFG THE ART! Plus the Dad's instruments), Koala Brothers (It's just so damn nice and cute) and This is Daniel Cook (best. job. ever. And he's like 8... bastard!). We catch ourselves watching these shows when Lucas is in bed.

Category #2 includes shows like Hi-5 (they sing, they dance, THEY NEVER SHUT UP, but it appeals to Lucas), Teletubbies (I don't get it, you don't get it, but your 3 year old does, move on, nothing to see here) and Wonder Pets (Ok, so I kind of like this one, but only for the theme song - The Phone! The phone is ringing!!!).

Category #3 is, sadly, the category that in my mind dominates the kids show landscape, if not due to sheer tonnage of shit, but because these shows are so loud, so obnoxious, so very very tied to marketing that the just about crush and destroy everything in their path. In this category I'm forced to put Bigfoot (huge ass animated monster trucks. It's loud. It's stupid. It's so fucking obvious as to hurt your face. Note the corporate sponsors on the site.), Todd's World (Imagine you wrote a lesson that you wanted to teach your child on a piece of paper. Imagine you used a lot of colours. Then imagine you wrapped the piece of paper around a sledge hammer and then beat your kid with it. This is Todd's World).

Towering over these examples, over everything else on the air really, is Hip Hop Harry. Before I even mention the show, I'd like you to click that link. Look over at the parents icon on the right. Subtle eh? How the info sequenced for parents is represented by a shopping cart? Sadly things go down hill from here.

Let's leave aside the fairly overt, and yet subtle and muted, cultural appropriation/whitewashing bearwashing, the annoyingly focus grouped children who dance through out the show etc and focus on Harry himself. In the song The New Style, the Beastie Boys rapped that they had "the kind of voices that are in your face". If this is true, then Harry has the kind of voice that rolls up to you, tears your face off, sautés it, eats it, pukes it out, reassembles it, puts it back on and then kicks you in the nuts. Insipid, screeching, inane, monotone... these are but a few of the words that begin to describe it. Add to that what I believe is meant to be a retro 80s look and you have, dare I say it, a heir to the purple dinosaur that haunted 90s era parents worst nightmares.

Lucas can make it through about 10 seconds of Harry before he turns to me and says "Papa, this is garbage, is there something else on?" If there isn't, and at that hour there is only Arthur (a kids show so stupifiyingly boring that Lucas refuses to watch it), he asks that the TV get turned off.

Samples of the wonderment that is Harry can be found in the last minute of each show "You say Good! I say Bye!". Were that I were joking. I could go on and on about this show. But really, haven't I already scarred you enough?

An after thought:
Honestly I go back and forth about where to categorize Go Diego Go and Dora. They are educational without being overly obvious, they aren't hideous to look at, but they are so damn loud that I think they are a 2 verging on a 3.

VICTORY!

At Lucas' last birthday he got a huge ass train set, then at Christmas he got more and more pieces and a bunch more trains. There are many things I am good at in this world, but for some reason building complex things like a railway seems to not be one of them. The goal has always been to use as much rail as possible and to try for a closed loop.

Today this goal was attained. GO CHRISTINE!!

Salade de quoi?!!?

Lucas has a pair of overalls that he hasn't worn for a while, the other day he asked about them.

The proper French word for overalls is "salopette".

So Lucas asks for "salade de pets", which would translate to "fart salad".