Barely saved by daylight (a Daylight Saving Time tale)

Morning in the
neighborhood (yeah,
there are palm trees
but this in not our view,
just so it's clear)

Come with me, gentle reader, back a few weeks ago, for a tale of a conspiracy of circumstances almost causing chronological catastrophe (eh, kind of). However, before we start that, we need to set the scene with a bit of background on our morning routine.

On school days we have an alarm set to sound to get us up so we over an hour before needing to leave the house. Getting our son up on school mornings can be particularly challenging, so we factor in time to: 

• actually get him out of bed (which sometimes literally involves dragging him off)
• prepare him a warm breakfast (or at least something that can be warmed in the toaster over) and putting together his lunch
• give him adequate time to eat (which often involves at least ten minutes of him just sitting at the dining room table, zoned out while presumably still waking up, allowing whatever we made to get cold) 
• get himself ready (brush his teeth, wash his face, etc., while factoring in he'll goof around in the bathroom until we step in to get him back on track) 
• get himself dressed (which he drags out to the last minute because he hates his school uniform)

As my wife and I both work from home that routine is all geared around getting him to school on time. Even on good days we're often just getting out the door on time.

The vast majority of those days I'm already awake when the alarm sounds. My body is simply accustomed to waking up then (and even on the weekends generally I cannot sleep in); the alarm is more the indication of needing to actually get up than something to rouse me.

Morning at the bedroom window
(not as attractive as the palm
trees so that's why I didn't
put it up top but included here,
as it's the actual view)

Being awake at that time of the morning allows me to somewhat track when the first light of sunrise starts showing on the east-facing windows of our bedroom, which had been getting a little earlier each day since December. In the week before changing the clocks for Daylight Saving Time the sky outside was starting to turn orange right around the time of the alarm.

AND that brings us to... the Friday before we "spring forward". Our son didn't have school for an administrative day, so we'd disabled the alarm on that day, as we didn't need to go through any of that normal routine and could let my wife and him sleep in a bit. (I'd be up anyway.) A little bonus sleep before the fall!

On that Sunday of course the clocks "sprang forward" to Daylight Saving Time, and everything seemed a bit off as it always does that day. Sunrise was now around the time we'd need to leave on a school day rather than around getting up time. But hey, the sunset was later so we had more daylight at the end of the day. That's the whole point, right?

On the Monday after "springing forward" I remember waking up and laying in bed for a couple minutes. The alarm had not sounded, and the house was a bit cold still with the unusually cool March we had, so I figured I had a few minutes before I needed to get out from under the warmth of the covers.

Then it occurred to me: It's starting to get light out. With the time change it should still be dark.

I grabbed my phone from my nightstand. (I don't have a clock there anymore.) It was about ten minutes until we should be leaving the house. We'd overslept!

We'd forgotten to re-enable the alarm after Friday's break. And my typically reliable body clock was still back on Standard Time.

I muttered an obscenity and quickly woke up my wife, then got our son out of bed. I apologized as I dragged him to the bathroom and got him ready myself, while my wife threw together his lunch (with extra snacks). She grabbed a banana and granola bar for him to eat in the car ride, and put a little milk in a thermos bottle. I got our son dressed fast while my wife quickly got herself ready to drive him to school. They got in the car and were on their way about fifteen minutes after my realization, so only about five minutes behind schedule.

When my wife got home from dropping him off I asked if they made it on time. As it turned out, traffic was lighter than usual and they were actually slightly early, presumably because most other people were running even later than we were.

Now with a few weeks to adapt, my body is waking up before the alarm again. Nonetheless, we now make a habit of making sure the alarm is set the night before. Parenting is always challenging, and often is barely pulling it all together in time, but schools really should not be making it even more difficult by disrupting that routine just before the time change. Clearly we can be ready in much less than an hour if we must, but that's no way to live.

(Changing the clocks twice a year is in its way absurd but that at least serves some purpose that can be beneficial. At least I assume so, having lived with it my entire life, but as I wrote last year it might be a harder sell if we didn't already do it.)

When your child shows you a tiny bug on the table...

Yesterday our son made a very small boat-like envelope out of paper after breakfast. He wanted me to tape the edges together, but as we needed to get ready for school I told him that would have to wait. 

After he was dressed he then pointed to a tiny insect on the dining table which initially I didn't even see (it was maybe 1/16"). Then I squished it with my finger, because we had to get going. 

He then started crying because it turned out that little envelope was meant to be a house for the bug I'd just killed. He had not mentioned that part yet.

I apologized profusely and suppressed explaining how unlikely it would be that we could have gotten the bug into its "house" and how it would have been a poor pet even if so. 

The moment was only saved when he pointed out a different tiny insect (looked like a fruit fly) that was also on the table. The "house" could be its home instead. He wanted me to get some fabric to make a bed for it. I told him he could do that after school and to put on his shoes.

This is parenting an empathetic child. 

Also a reminder to find out the plan before acting.

(Really, we do clean the house.)

Iron Man

Like most sentient beings our 8-year-old is well acquainted with the theme to the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon. I think he may have seen some clips on YouTube but mostly it's from me putting it on a playlist we played in the car many times. (The playlist also included the Ramones excellent cover.)

Last week I mentioned there was a song called "Iron Man" and he was interested, figuring it must be about the other Marvel superhero. I pulled up the Black Sabbath track on my phone and played it for him, and... he lost interest partway through and had me stop when it became clear it was not about that subject.

Fair enough.

Then yesterday he was humming the riff to "Iron Man" quietly to himself, despite it not having come up in the interim. So apparently that had made some impression on him. 

And last night before bedtime he started singing this:

"Iron Man
Iron Man
Does whatever an iron can"

Then he chuckled softly, amused at himself.

Kids make you proud in the most unexpected ways sometimes.

Kids ask the most probing things: The dangers of nature shows

Tonight, as a family we were watching an episode of Crocodile Hunter (yes, from the '90s) where Steve and Terri were on a beach where green turtles were mating in the shallow waters. The hosts talked about how during the hours-long mating the females are responsible for bringing both turtles to the surface to breathe because the males are too focused on what they're doing.

Without missing a beat, our son asked (with complete sincerity) "Is that what Daddy was like after you guys got married?"

After several minutes of uncontrollable laughter, we could only say: "Not exactly." 

The simple joys of being a middle-aged dad: Flash Gordon theme edition

Somewhere in my past the chorus to the theme (by Queen) from the 1980 Flash Gordon movie got quasi-embedded in my brain--particularly that couplet: 

Flash! A-ah!  

Savior of the universe! 

 

Over time my brain changed the second line to "Defender of the universe" (which I think works better in the meter, but that's another topic) but the melody remained, and the key (of course) was the "A-ah!" vocalization after the hero's name. It's not as though I was a huge fan of the movie (I was not) nor a huge fan of the song (it's fine); but that part was just an earworm that was in me permanently.

For no good reason other than my own amusement, occasionally I'd adapt it and substitute another single-syllable word where the "Flash!" was, to elevate the term in a ridiculous way; e.g., "Cheese! A-ah! Defender of the universe!"--although I have no recollection of using that one in particular. It's always spontaneous, tossed out in the moment when an appropriate word comes up in our conversations, as a jocular interjection, so they never stick with me.

Taking your medicine

A single moment can change your day, and it doesn’t even need to be that big a moment.

Take yesterday morning.  It was the first time that our kindergartner could wear something other than his school uniform or his PE clothes, and unlike most mornings he eagerly got dressed. The theme was dots (or circles) and he had his red Flash shirt (with the lightning bolt through a circle, but in the design the circle diffused into dots).  He even picked out shorts and socks that had some such pattern.  He was really into it.

As we were wrapping things up before it was time to leave, Mommy asked if he’d had some medicine and he had not; this week he had been coughing some with occasionally runny nose. As she finished getting ready in the living room, I went and poured some into the little cup. She sent him over to the kitchen where I was, and he looked at the cup and said, “That’s more than zero.” I didn’t think much about that and simply replied, “Yes, now here.” As we were running short on time and he was hesitating, I put the cups to his lips and tilted it so the medicine would run down into his mouth.

He then closed his mouth and it spilt down on his shirt and shorts in large globs that did not look like dots.

Play it LOUD, Daddy

Last night on the drive home our preschooler had a full-on crying fit... because I wouldn't play "Here and Now" by Letters To Cleo at full volume in the car.

"I like it super loud" was his argument for why I should increase the volume. Which I countered with, "No"--but while still playing it louder than I would listen to, say, NPR.

Then for tonight's drive the iPod played a mix of songs that I kept at a very modest volume... until he decided he wanted Grant Lee Buffalo's "Truly, Truly" turned up--not that he'd ever heard that before; it may simply have been what came on at the moment he wanted the music louder in general. And the volume stayed up for... the Carpenters' version of "Reason To Believe". When he wanted "super loud" I said, "How about semi-super loud?" That distracted him as he then had to ask what that meant.

Then to close our commute he requested that we listen to the Bauhaus cover of "Ziggy Stardust" twice in a row. That he accepted at just normal volume--which, again, was louder than I'd do for NPR. Because Ziggy played.. gui-tar.

Knock knock

Actual knock-knock joke our preschooler told at dinner a couple weeks ago (with our responses):

Knock-knock
(Who's there?)

Banana
(Banana who?)

Knock-knock
(Who's there?)

Banana
(Banana who?)

Knock-knock
(Who's there?)

Pickle
(Pickle who?)

Pickle you glad I didn't say "Banana"! [Cackles with laughter]

~

Happy National Pickle Day.

A couple moments with my son

Tonight after I put our son in bed and turned out the light he said, "Let's talk about our day, Daddy." And so I asked him about school, and he answered. Then he said (for the first time ever), "How was your day?" And I told him it was fine, which is as much as he needed to know about what it's like to be a grown-up, despite how mature he sounded when asking.

~

Earlier in the evening, without establishing any context, he had talked about how "my friends say 'poo' which has an 'o' on the end, but 'poop' has a 'p' on the end" and he was quite certain he was right and they were saying it wrong, and his pedantry was too cute for me to mention either variant is acceptable. Nor did I elaborate on how either is just what grown-ups say around young children to avoid saying words they don't want to have to explain to the teachers.

But whatever elicited his remark it surely revolved around how either "poo" or "poop" is something that is hilarious in preschool. And I'm glad he's not growing up too fast to stop enjoying that.

Dino jingle

While reading a book about dinosaurs to our preschooler last night we came upon Ceratosaurus, and he said, "It sounds like 'Cerritos'." And I agreed that it did somewhat resemble the name of that Southern California town.

Then he sang the "Yes... Cerritos Auto Square--dot com!" jingle from the commercial for the car dealers, which presumably he'd heard on the radio while riding with Mommy.

This is why I only listen to the iPod or NPR when I'm driving in the car with him. Kids are sponges.

When you don't get your sleeping child an In-N-Out milkshake

Last weekend while running errands our preschooler (unsurprisingly) fell asleep in his car seat. He'd eaten many snacks beforehand so when my wife and I were hungry we went through the In-N-Out drive-thru (to allow him to keep sleeping while we ate in the car) without worrying about getting him something.

Then over an hour after we left there (and had gone to two other destinations, where I stayed in the parked car with him while my wife ran into the stores) he awoke in the back seat... and noticed the empty milkshake cup in the cupholder with the chocolate and vanilla residue showing through the lid.

He then started saying he wanted a milkshake, over and over. And I kept explaining we were no longer near where they made the milkshakes. And he kept saying he wanted one. And I kept explaining. And he kept saying he wanted one.

Finally, with his lip pouting so far out one could rest objects on it, he muttered, "Worst day ever. I don't get a milkshake."

We are really bad parents. We should have disposed of the evidence before he woke up.

~

Epilogue: I gave him a little ice cream bar from the freezer when we got home and then things were fine.

Raising a Dodger fan

The other morning our son changed out of the shirt I'd picked out (and dressed him in), taking it off and choosing instead a Dodgers shirt instead.

I asked him if he remembered the last time he wore it, and he replied "When we went to the Dodger game." (We took him to his first professional baseball game back on Father's Day.)

I asked him if he remembered who won. He said, "The Dodgers?" (It is unsurprising that he didn't recall the outcome, given it was more about all the stuff he got to eat and chanting "Let's go, Dodgers!" But being only a preschooler the fact he made it through the entire game was remarkable.)

I had to say, "No, it was the Giants." He furrowed his face and said, "I only want the Dodgers to win."

Then Wednesday night when we got home another Dodger game against the Giants was about to start on TV. When he saw the shots of the players on both teams he asked who was the "grey team" (going on the color of the road uniforms). I answered it was the Giants, reminding him it was the team the Dodgers played when we went to the game.

Unprompted, he said, "The Giants are a sack of poop. I want them to lose all the time."

As a parent, I know in general I should dissuade that sort of "sack of poop" sentiment, but in this case I allowed it.

~

It's also worth noting the Dodgers won that Wednesday game over the Giants in extra innings.

Squishy

Our three-year-old son has taken to occasionally wanting to hold my arm for a few seconds as a soothing gesture when I put him to bed. And it's not my wrist he seeks but my bicep; he has even gone so far as to ask me to roll up my sleeves to grant him better access to that part of the upper arm.

As a parent of a pre-schooler, I am generally tired and will appease him because it means he will go to sleep faster.

At first I thought he found it comforting to touch the muscle, as though it made him feel safe to be near his strong Daddy. Then he started squeezing my bicep and gleefully saying it was "squishy."

Here's the thing: I am absolutely certain in his mind that is a colossal compliment. That his father has a part of the arm which he can squeeze is apparently what makes him feel better in those moments after I've turned off the light in his room.

It is that oblivion that makes it somewhat endearing, and allows me to put aside societal conditioning about musculature when he specifically asks for "the squishy part" (as has become his preferred phrasing).

I could be more physically fit (of course), but rather than this inspiring me to hit the gym I am merely pleased he hasn't figured out a way to try to grab my stomach. Which I'm sure will only be a matter of time until he does.

And I'm sure I'll learn to live with that, because while I may only be doing so-so when it comes to being "in shape" I can roll with such things by being in reasonably decent parenting condition. Or, again, too tired to object.

Splitting the alphabet

Looking at TV for young children where they list the alphabet I've noticed they struggle with how to split up the lines of letters when there isn't room all on one or two. Given that 26 is not divisible by three or four or any whole number until one gets to 13 the lines end up unbalanced.

But it occurred to me that five lines would be closer to equal (with one leftover) than other possible splits. Then I had the thought that the five vowels could make for another way of separating the lines, putting each vowel at the start of one of the five lines; those letters hold a distinction so having the notice from being at the front of the lines made a certain sense.

And while working out each remaining line (with the set of consonants after each vowel) I realized that gave an unexpected sort of quasi-symmetry:

ABCD

EFGH

IJKLMN

OPQRST

UVWXYZ

More outdated children's shows observations: Daniel Tiger wears no pants!

On Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood the eponymous lead character is an anthropomorphic tiger living in a Mr. Rogers-inspired town with other anthropomorphic animals—Katarina Kittycat, O the Owl—and with human characters. The stories give lessons with little songs about topics like compromise and dealing with frustration. As previously noted, Our son finds it enjoyable.

One of Daniel's friends is Miss Elena, who it's shown has mixed race parents. So the show seems progressive in ways like that.

However, there is something that I notice that seems less congruous with that sort of theme. Now, I concede analysis of a show with such a clear distance from verisimilitude is utterly futile, but if nothing else we live in the era of utterly futile analysis so here goes:

Music soothes the fussy toddler (thanks, Doc McStuffins)

We don't let our son watch a lot of TV (to appease the Parenting-Industrial Complex I must note that) but we have put on some shows for short periods when we need to keep him occupied (like when we're getting ready to go to work in the morning). We have recorded some episodes of Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Doc McStuffins to be able to play when necessary.

What he particularly likes are the songs. Sure, all kids like music but he really responds to it. He started dancing almost as soon as he could stand up. At daycare when they have the "music man" come in on Fridays he's always the most excited of all the children.

Poop

Parenting reality:

On more than one occasion I've changed our son's diaper, only to have him poop in that fresh diaper only a few minutes later, necessitating another (stinkier) diaper change.

The initial reaction used to be: Well, what I just did five minutes ago was kind of a waste.

The reaction now is: Hey, at least he didn't poop on me in the middle of me changing him.

Changing two diapers where nothing is actively being expelled from your child is always far easier than cleaning up what gets expelled in that window after the dirty diaper is removed and before the clean diaper is applied.

Nothing done is a waste of effort if the outcome could have been much worse, especially when it comes to baby poop.

Woof, woof

A few months ago, as my mother-in-law was watching our toddler son (while he was home from daycare due to a fever), she taught him the sound dogs make. Presumably this was from a book we have that also has buttons corresponding to animal sounds, where the dog sound is one of them.

Now when he sees a dog on TV he (at least some of the time) says "woof, woof" (or more accurately, "wuhf, wuhf"). Given that we don't have any pets it was particularly interesting he could identify them and remember that.

Attention shoppers: It's the Ramones

I understand that everything three decades old or older is considered pretty anodyne from a cultural standpoint, regardless of how controversial it may have seemed in its heyday.

Still, to hear (as I did on a recent evening) the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" playing in a Vons grocery store seems like something that should hold at least a tinge of being a tiny bit taboo.


There are other Ramones' songs where the lyrics are such that your grandmother wouldn't balk while shopping ("I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend"—another of their "I Wanna…" tracks), but "Sedated" is not sedate enough to be acceptable for all contexts.

I'm not suggesting that most people are actually paying any sort of attention to the music playing over the public address while shopping; it's merely filling in the background sound so it isn't eerily quiet. I get that. I'm among the tiny minority who notices such things at all. I know.

Saying goodbye to Jon Stewart (so we both can spend more time with our kids)

It was announced yesterday that Jon Stewart will not be staying on with The Daily Show after this year. Having seen every episode except one of the sixteen years of his tenure and an avowed fan (I've mentioned it in posts more than a few times) I will miss him, but I understand the desire to move on.

But I'm not as sad as I would be were I not a parent.

As it stands, since our son came along, I have found myself often recording a week's worth of episodes and having to squeeze them in on the weekend. When Stephen Colbert stepped away from "the Report" last year I was sad, but that was time I would need to devote to other pursuits.