Carrot Finger Crunching

And now for a piece of real Daddy Magic: carrot finger crunching, or How to Get Your Kids to Eat More Carrots!

I'm sure I learned this trick when I was seven or eight years old, and on a whim I taught it to my kids tonight at the dinner table. It was an instant hit, and when they started asking for the bag of carrots, I realized that this was a good thing. Enjoy the chaos that is our happy dinner table and see if you can avoid bursting out laughing...

Sweet Music of the Lego Bin.

With my number one child, some days are better than others. Let's just say that today was one of those others, with intense chat sessions on at least five separate occasions and lots of frustrated and bruised feelings all around. It's a cycle that can spiral precipitously downward and is hard to shake out of.

In fact, to shake out of it takes a concerted effort, so when the opportunity arose tonight, I did not pounce at first, but eventually I grabbed it with as much gusto as I could:

I was sitting on the floor next to Caroline to help her get to sleep. Just having a parent in the room can sometimes mean the difference between falling peacefully to sleep in five minutes and requiring repeated trips to the door to put her back in bed and remind her to lie still and quiet. I was getting into my book, when I heard a knock at the door. It was Ian wanting to know if I could help him build a Lego Astros Command Base, and instantly my blood began to rise because I've told him many times not to come in when I'm trying to get Caroline to sleep. (On some occasions this has cost another 30 minutes of settling.) Although no harm was done, I snapped and told him to wait in his room for me. When he, very quietly and tentatively came back in a couple of minutes, I realized that Caroline was long since asleep, and by this time I was just enjoying some quiet time reading my book. My choices were: be right (in my own mind) and put him off longer while reading some more, or get over it and go play Legos.

I don't even know why it's so hard to get down on the floor and play some times, but I know that for Ian, this is his love language, and there's no better way to fill him up than quality time on the floor, speaking his language.

My hesitance was actually a sad commentary on how stodgy I've gotten, because anyone who knew me as a kid knows I was way into Legos. One of the great satisfactions of fatherhood for me was introducing Ian to Legos through my own old sets that had been hiding away at my parents' house for years and years. It didn't take long for the indescribable sound of hands pushing through a drawer full of Lego bricks to brush away years of cobwebs from my youthful spirit. Before long, my inner eight year old was there side by side with my filial eight year old, snapping bricks together, constructing a control tower so that his Mars Mission ships could land safely under heavy Alien attack. Weapon systems galore! Radar towers, swiveling and tilting! Automatic blaster cannons! Incoming missile deactivation shields! I was a little surprised how just the light glinting through certain of the pieces had an emotional memory effect, taking me back to many late night sessions with my old friend Alex Rose... (Any Lego fans out there remember when the clear red pieces started coming out? The red antennas did it for me tonight.)

Anyway, this is not my first time to play with Legos with Ian. But somehow tonight it was special because of the way that he drank it in. As I watched him pace the room, eagerly explaining his pneumatic grenade launcher to me, I felt that he could care less about the conflicts and frustrations of the day because we had our special, secret time together.
So here's to all the dad out there: don't forget to play Legos with your kids! There's still sweet music to hear when you're hunting for the piece you know is there, and your boy's hand is in the bin next to yours.

By the way, I found a collector's site with some old sets I used to have. Click the image to discover the site and enjoy a trip down memory lane. And absolutely visit this site, where some dear soul has scanned copies of the Lego catalogs from 1958 through the present. The space sets from the catalogs of 1981-86 hold a special place in my heart of hearts.

Our Experience of Ike

Like the rest of the country, we have been horrified by the devastation on the Texas coast. And like most Austinites, we have been secretly, guiltily, nursing a grudge against Ike for not giving us any rain. This kind of devastation is pretty mind-blowing, but there is an odd capriciousness to the destruction. In the picture to the right (borrowed from the New York Times), check out the single standing house. How did that happen? Apparently several hundred people weathered the storm on this island, too, and how did that happen? I mean how did they decide to stay and then how did they manage to survive. It's beyond me on a lot of levels.

In any case, Saturday morning, we were watching the news, and they said that the Red Cross was desperate for volunteers to man the shelters. When my dear wife asked whether we should go, a hundred excuses jumped into my mind, but then I realized what an opportunity it was. At my son's suggestion, we donned matching T-shirst and then saddled up onto bikes and trailers and rode over to the volunteer station, which was just under 2 miles away, to see what we could do. We had visions in our heads of working with the kids to stack water bottles or fold blankets. There, instead, we found a long line of people waiting to volunteer: the staff were completely overwhelmed. I sat through about an hour's worth of lines to clear the initial hurdles of registering and submitting to a background check. Then there was another wait for the orientation session and scheduling. Rather than wait two hours for a slot to open up in those, I decided to bike back home with the family and get the kids some shade, water, and lunch, and put Caroline down for a much needed nap. My plan was to go back later and finish the sign-up process after the line had died down a bit.

Well, later, when I biked back over, the line was even longer, and they were giving out tickets for orientation sessions hours later. At that point, sad to say, impatience and the perception that there were way more volunteers than expected trumped my altruistic streak, and I returned home with a vague promise to come back later if I could. It turns out that we ended up going to the library and the grocery store instead.

I don't honestly know whether this was a success or a failure. We did manage to talk to the kids about volunteering, and as far as they're concerned, they pitched in and helped while Daddy went to sign up. I feel pretty good about going as far as I did and having several good conversations with the family about serving others. But the fact is I didn't follow through.

So here's the alternative, and I'm donating right along side you: The Capital Area Food Bank and the Central Texas Red Cross are both desperate for donations now. Click the links with me and pitch in to help some organizations that make a real difference. In the sign up process, I was impressed with a statement posted about part of the Red Cross's mission which is to enable the service of ordinary citizens in helping each other in times of need. That pretty much fits in with our Christian principle of "each one has."

Daddy Fuel

Only the most clueless of my roommates, past or present, have failed to come to the rapid realization that I don't enjoy shopping. For as long as I can remember, that has been the case, and going back as far as high school, people have figured out ways to avoid going with me. It was in 11th grade when my mother began giving me a clothing allowance and telling me to go on my own. Then with my first college roommates, we kept a common refrigerator, and after our second trip to the grocery store together, I was such a pathetic malcontent that they began bribing me to stay home by bringing me lime sherbet (a perennial favorite). My reputation preceded me into my next two living arrangements, where shopping was solitary.

It was not too long after our honeymoon that my wife learned the dark lesson about me and the outlet malls. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I have tested my dear wife's patience to the limit in the last several times that we have had to stop by there. In fact it's gotten almost to the point of no return, and even though I have in the mean time realized that sporting a bad attitude and complaining does not win me any favors and that attempting to show a good face at least lessens the irritation, I can barely breathe without projecting an irritated aura of "how soon can we leave?" Let's just say that my idea of a good time doesn't involve crawling through crowded parking lots dodging shopping carts under a merciless bright hot sun. At least I've learned to suppress the complaining and show a positive attitude for the kids.

All that sets up this afternoon, where after serving with the children at church this morning, we went to lunch with our dear friend Dori, whose pool and dogs were much enjoyed by my children. When Hannah suggested a trip to Ikea afterward, I breathed, I smiled, and I even took some initiative to find out where it was and round up the kids. 'nuff said. It was hot, it was crowded, parking was hard to find, but I stopped; I breathed; I enjoyed watching my youngest play at the wooden train set and following the others on our vary meandering route the display rooms. I think I didn't lose my temper at all, not even a little. When Hannah suggested getting our trip to Costco out of the way, I stopped, I breathed, and I chose to be positive. The parking lot was crowded, the sun was merciless, we dodged shopping carts, but I had a great time pushing my two daughters through the aisles looking for this and that, squeezing the coffee bags so they could smell the fresh roasted beans through the vent hole.

So, on the way home, Hannah and I got our reward. From the back seat, completely unprompted, Eliza says "Hey everyone, three cheers for Mom and Dad for buying us the pink stool. Hip hip, hooray! Hip hip, hooray! Hip hip hooray!" Followed immediately by Ian, "and Mom and Dad, I forgot to say, thanks for making us such a wonderful breakfast this morning!" Makes it all worth it.