Little Treasures

Last night, when getting ready for bed, my daughter took a paperclip out of her pocket.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked her. “From school,” she replied. I asked her if the teacher said it was okay, and she said she just took it.

Every few days, she comes home with what must be Little Treasures to her. Sometimes, it makes sense; a penny one day, a colorful bead another. Sometimes, it is a stick, or a piece of paper someone else wrote on. Or a paperclip.

We have a lot of paperclips in our house.

Little Treasure or not, I don’t want her to get into the habit of taking stuff from her class. “You really shouldn’t just take things from school, sweetie,” I tell her.

Her response?

“I only do it on days I have pockets…”

Buffalo

It is still weird for me, having lived my first 25 years in the Buffalo (NY) area, to think of my kids as not being Buffalonians or even New Yorkers. Every once in a while, something reminds me. The other night, it was my daughter saying something about a “Tag Sale.”

Another reason I think about this is that she is almost 5 1/2, and she doesn’t know how to skate. Part of that is my fault, but part is that we don’t have as many days where the ponds are frozen here in CT as we did back in Buffalo.

Well, all that changed recently when we finally got my daughter out on the ice at open skating.

I haven’t skated in, easily, 10+ years. I had no doubt I could still do it – I just knew I was in for some pain. My feet always hurt if I went too long without skating. But, out there on the ice, holding my daughter’s hands as she learned to skate (actually, just getting comfortable being on the ice), I didn’t anticipate my back and arms hurting so much.

I probably didn’t think I’d be that sore, because I thought my daughter wouldn’t like the lack of balance and the fact that learning to really skate takes a while. But she loved it. We were there almost an hour and a half. And she did really well for a first timer. She liked it so much, she still wanted to do lessons.

So now that we’ve got her signed up for lessons, it is time to get a hockey stick in her hands.

Speaking of hockey, she’s taken a bit of an interest in watching hockey with me. She mostly just likes when the Sabres score. The other night, they were playing the team we love to hate – the Maple Leafs, whom we seem to own lately. I went up to say goodnight to her and told her the Sabres were beating the Leafs, 1-0. Her response? “Oh, they’re so easy to beat!”

I guess she knows more about hockey than I thought!

Conversations With…: The Recession’s Tough on Everyone

I guess everyone has suffered a bit in this last recession…

Me: Do all birds hibernate (sic)? Or do some stick around in the winter?
Daughter: The snow owl does!
Me: Really? We’ll have to keep an eye out for one…
Daughter: They live in Antarctica!
Me: Really?
Daughter: Yeah! The have camouflage… to protect them from creditors.
Me: Preditors?
Daughter: No, creditors!
Me: Creditors?
Daughter: Creditors.

At least they didn’t get a loan from Big Tony…

Conversations With…: Holiday Spirit

Driving in the car last night, out of the blue…

Daughter: Hanukkah isn’t fair…

(I could see what was coming)

Me: How so?
Daughter: They get presents for 8 days and 8 nights!
Me: Well, you’ve already missed 4 days of Hanukkah.. you should wait until next year to convert.

Happy Holidays, all…

First Snow Day

I woke up this morning, and noticed a strange kind of light coming through the window shades in the bedroom. I recognized that light. Having grown up in Buffalo, I knew this was “snow light”. Sure enough, peeking through the window, there was snow on the ground.

When my daughter woke up, I had her look out the window. “Snow! Oh my gosh!” she said, “I guess I can’t go to school!”

“It’s only an inch. They aren’t going to cancel school for that!” I told her. Then I remembered that, although I grew up in Buffalo, we were now in Connecticut. So we checked the local news on TV. Sure enough, her school was closed that day. Her first snow day ever.

It reminded me, once again, how strange it is that my kids were born and will be raised in a city and state other than the one I grew up in.

I just hope they learn to drive in snow more like Buffalo drivers, and not like Connecticut drivers!

Santa Train

Our town’s annual holiday festival/tree lighting/Santa arrival was this past weekend. It is guaranteed to be the coldest day of the year. This year, three days before the festival, it was 61. I thought we’d break the trend this year, but, sure enough, the temperature dropped about 25 degrees in 3 days, and we froze our behinds off.

The highlight, for the boy (2 years old now), though, was the arrival of Santa. You see, Santa, in our town, arrives via fire truck. The boy (a firetruck lover), had a front row seat and was thrilled to death. Now he gets excited whenever he sees a picture of Santa. Like, really excited.

Of course, I don’t think he gets excited at Santa, The Toy Bringer, but rather Santa, The Train Dude.

As for my daughter, she wants, and I quote, “Just two things [hold up two fingers here] for Christmas.” This of course is good and bad. Good, in that she isn’t getting greedy – she wants just two things for this to be the greatest Christmas ever! Bad, in that one of the things (Barbie Three Musketeers Castle) costs about $135, and she isn’t getting it. This, or course, translates not to Not Getting One of Her Gifts, but rather Not Getting 50% of Her Gifts!

Should be a fun Christmas morning…

Conversations With…: At least she didn’t say “pooch”

My daughter’s thing is cats. The boy’s thing is trucks, trains and firetrucks. Which would explain why the toy workbench he got for his birthday only gets occasionally touched.

Today, my daughter decided to actually combine her love of cats with the workbench and decided to play a game where she is a cat, and I am a construction worker. She asked me to name the cat, so I went with a construction theme, and chose the name Rivets, which I thought was a cute cat name.

She had no idea what a rivet was, and even after I explained how it was relevant, she insisted I name cat after a tool. She picked up the toy wrench and said, name the cat after this. “Wrench?” I asked. “Yeah, wrench,” she replied.

After a few minutes of playing, I went into the kitchen to talk to Ms. Kaz. My daughter came in and started talking some more about the game, and I told her to slow down and tell me again…

Daughter: .. so Wrench the cat, and Screw the dog were going…
Me: uh, huh.. wait, what? Wrench the cat and who..?
Daughter: Screw the dog.
Me: …
Daughter: …
Me: That’s a great name for the dog. Tell mommy!

I am looking forward to many more games of Wrench the cat and Screw the dog. I just hope she doesn’t try playing this game at school!

Buy This!

Reading Greg @ Daddy Types’ recent experience with TV commercials here, I was reminded of my own daughter’s thoughts on commercials…

Usually, we hear, “Daddy, can you skip the commercials?” — which works great on the DVR. When we tell her we can’t because it is “live TV”, I think she gets confused. One day, she’ll tell her grandkids about how she occasionally had to sit through the commercials.

On the occasion where she is forced to watch commercials (either because of “live TV”, or us just not bothering to fast-forward through), she would occasionally tell us that a commercial was “important”. Eventually, I discovered this meant “non-toy” or “boring”.

Either that, or Oxy Clean really is that important…

Halloween

So, the rain kind of held off, and the kids went out trick-or-treating.

My daughter was a Barbie-Thumbelina-Fairy-Princess thing or something. The boy was a fireman.

The boy loved it. I am not sure he really understood he was getting candy (not at the time – he figured it out later), but he just seemed to love the idea of going up to people’s houses, getting something out of a bowl, putting it in this strange pumpkin container thing is parents gave him, and carrying it to the next house.

The girl, surprisingly, did not go too crazy… a couple of blocks and she was done. Or just ready to get to the eating part, I’m not sure.

At the end of the night, they picked their 15 pieces of candy and left the rest out for the Candy Fairy to come and trade for a gift.

I am not sure what the Candy Fairy does with all that candy, but if I find it, I’ll let you know. Eventually.

Conversations With…: The New Threats

Daughter: If you don’t let me, I’m gonna call a woodpecker!
Kaz: …
Ms. Kaz: …
Daughter: …
Ms. Kaz: And what will the woodpecker do?
Daughter: He’ll PECK the house!

Should I Worry?

Last night, getting ready for bed, my daughter told me, “Whenever I go into the bathroom, I am attracted to the potty.”

And the boy, almost 2, still isn’t big on the talking thing. He can do animal sounds (cat, dog, cow, duck, monkey) and go “uh-oh!” whenever he spots a crumb on the floor. The kid’s a crumbophobe. He won’t sit in his highchair or on the couch if there is even the tiniest crumb on there.

The boy better learn to talk. The girl isn’t churning out enough quotes for the blog.

We all live in a Pokemon world..

My daughter is no longer into princesses. Our princess movies sit unwatched. Her princess costumes are collecting dust. When asked about Disney World, she says, “Are there Pokemon there? No? Naahhh, I don’t want to go there.”

In fact, all she ever talks about is going to Japan to go to the Pokemon Center Store. I have to say that a trip to Japan sounds intriguing to Ms. Kaz and me. But I could just see us going there, visiting the Pokemon Center Store and then spending the rest of the week dealing with, “I don’t want to go there! That sounds booooring!”

Even the boy now recognizes, and gets excited about Pikachu. He likes to squeeze his first together and grimace and shake his head in faux effort in order to get us to go, “GEODUUUUDE!!”

Anyhow, on a recent trip back from Rochester, my daughter was talking about something, and I told her, “Sweetie, I have no idea what you are talking about.” A few seconds of thought, and she responded, “If you don’t know what I am talking about, it is probably Pokemon.”

Indeed.