o'side daddy raisin' younguns in socal

February 18, 2008

q&a

Filed under: — crowder @ 7:36 pm

The boys went to Disneyland with their mom and their Aunt Nicholle today.  I think it was a challenging day; Ollie is definitely testing his mom and I.  He is very clearly trying to learn the boundaries of our respective houses, and so he pushes to the limit whenever he can, as evidenced by my last couple of posts.

One of the great things about the boys is their fearlessness about asking questions.  Perhaps all kids this age have that same fearlessness.  I hope they don’t lose it — though I wouldn’t mind them learning to save some questions for more appropriate times.  One of their other great assets is the ability to ruminate on a subject over several days.  Maybe that’s more like OCD, and they really just obsess over things.  I think I wrote in a previous post about teaching them (against their mom’s wishes) how to say “I have OCD”.  Anyway, tonight, Reid was asking more about the situation I blogged the other day: how to deal the other kids in his school, when they’re not fun to play with.

Tonight, he decided that some of his friends are “angry … sometimes” and that when they are, he can play with someone else.  Yay!  Hopefully this means he’s feeling a little more empowered to make decisions about this sort of stuff for himself.

February 15, 2008

Mr. Crowder

Filed under: — crowder @ 7:49 pm

For the first time today, I addressed my son as Mr. Crowder.  Ollie, Reid and I were playing “school” today, with Ollie as the teacher.  Ollie taught us about the “kicking the baby into the net” (a nearby soccer-ball became a baby, I have no idea what the net was represented by), the “special star” (an old Christmas-tree topper, Mickey Mouse climbing up to a star) and how it should never be hit because it’s special and brand-new, and about kicking fire-engines into the couch.  Our teacher was Mr. Crowder.

February 13, 2008

activities

Filed under: — crowder @ 7:06 pm

The boys have the following weekly (or more) engagements:

  • Swimming (Monday and Wednesday)
  • School (Tuesday and Thursday)
  • Gymnastics (Friday Morning)
  • Skateboarding (Friday Afternoons)

Today, we added

  • Pee-Wee Golf

They’re busy.  They have more going on in their lives than I do!

Golf was interesting; Reid likes it and is good at it.  As usual, he seems to have a natural instinct for things like how to grip the club and posture.  He also suffers from his usual weakness at anything even vaguely competitive: he hates the idea of not being good at it.  Failing to hit the ball frustrates him.  Being given guidance on improving his grip or his stance or his swing frustrates him.  Being asked to help clean up golf-balls frustrates him.  Not for the reason you may think, though…  he wouldn’t mind the clean-up part.  What makes him collapse to the ground in tears is the idea of having to try to race some other kid to pick up the ball.  He can’t stand that another child might get a ball before him.  If the one ball he’s picked gets picked up by another kid, he freaks.

Ollie on the other hand has a great attitude, but struggles with the mechanics.  I think as much as he loves to build things, he still struggles with his fine-motor skills.  His grip on a golf-club devolves from hot-dogs and buns (the coach’s nickname for a proper grip) to some sort of horrible spaghetti nightmare.  He goes limp when you try to adjust his feet, he bends WAY over trying to mimic the posture of an adult holding a child’s club instead of adjusting for his own height.  Instead of an arcing swing from pizza (an “L”-shaped primary arm in a tall posture, as if carrying a box of pizza one-handed) to bubble-gum (toe pointed, as if displaying the bottom of ones shoe for a bubble-gum check), Ollie hoists his club straight over his head, ready to split wooden logs, or pound his tiny plastic golf-ball into the astro-turf.

They both seemed to have a good time, overall, but a tired post-practice Reid denied finding any enjoyment in golf.  Next week will be interesting.

February 12, 2008

I’m sooooo sorry!

Filed under: — crowder @ 7:57 pm

Ollie apologized to me the other day.  It went like this:  “I’m sooooo sorry my bum is itchy!”

In other news, Reid has always attracted aggressive attention from other little boys; it’s a weird thing.  He’s so ready to laugh, and to be anybody’s friend, I think, that he submits to abuse.  I think he genuinely thinks the other boy is simply trying to play, and that it’s not personal and not intended to be abusive or bullying, and so he allows it.  He’s a tough kid.  He hit his head on a cement bench when he was about one-and-a-half, and was done crying about it within thirty seconds or less.  They’ve both always been tough like that.  In Ollie’s case, it usually leads to utter fearlessness and lack of regard for his own safety.  In Reid’s case it leads to this sort of naive tolerance that leads other kids to pick on him.  He’s so sweet and so generally happy that, as a parent (or maybe as any innocent bystander watching from the sidelines), it breaks your heart.  The other day, he told his mommy that his friends at school like to play a game with him at lunchtime called “kick Reid”.  It came up because he was kicking under the table, and his mom asked him where he learned that.  He explained the game: the name of the game says everything.  Mommy asked him how the game made him feel, and he eventually said it hurt his feelings.  I wonder if it hurt his feelings in the moment or only on reflection (perhaps upon reading his mom’s reaction in her own eyes and expression).  Mommy talked to his teachers about it and there’s been some indication of similar “play” from another boy — perhaps a ringleader of sorts, and they’re keeping an eye on it.  I’m sure that will be that.

It does break my heart, though.  And what should a parent hope for?  That their kid will see the world with more suspicion and mistrust?  I love that Reid laughs when an older boy “plays” with him by throwing a large rubber ball at him as hard as possible — unless the laughter is nervous or fearful…  it doesn’t seem so, but who knows?  (That did happen, once, by the way, maybe a year or so ago.)  You want your son to be strong and tough and self-assertive, but you also want him to be joyful and happy.  How much do you teach them about the world at three?  It will be interesting to see how Reid’s nature develops as he ages, with respect to this sort of tolerance.

February 7, 2008

Filed under: — crowder @ 11:04 pm

Mr Turkey

Mr Turkey,
Mr Turkey,
Run away!
Run away!
Soon you’ll be a mouthful,
Soon you’ll be a mouthful,
Thanksgiving Day!
Thanksgiving Day!

self-maintenance

Filed under: — crowder @ 11:04 pm

There’s a huge difference between “potty-trained” and “self-maintaining.”  Reid, the more fastidious of the two boys provided me an excellent example of this, today, when I was changing his underwear.  I need a book, directed at three-year-olds, with diagrams and explanations of where, what, when, why and how to wipe, because I am not getting through.

I won’t even go into the details of the attrocities Oliver has committed in his adventures on the pot.

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