The Magnificent Seven! - A Daddy Blog

First Hike on the AT

Year six has been a lot of fun!  It is crazy to think that at this time last year he was getting ready for Kindergarten, and we were so worried how he would ever get out of the car by himself and walk to his class. Yeah, that took about two days of adjustment and he was running inside the school. So here are some other highlights from the past year:

1)  Swimming! -We have been doing swim lessons all summer and watching it "click" has been like watching him take his first steps. Just this past week he has been able to jump into the deep end and swim the whole width of the pool. It's like a super proud moment that is also kind of terrifying.

2)  Sports for him and coaching for me! - Over the past year he has played baseball and soccer. Coaching soccer last fall was a very new experience for me. I had my first whistle! I had a binder with plays and formations drawn out. I had these checklists and schedules to run our practices by. Maybe I took it a little too serious, but my team was really good! Coach pitch baseball this summer was a more laid back affair. I did pitch several games and was pretty proud of myself. I never hit more than three kids with the ball (per game) and none of them cried.

And not one of my pitches hit a kid in the face

3) Video Games - Back in the fall I did something really ridiculous, standing in line outside a Toys R Us, in the rain, to get one of the 11 SNES classics they had in stock.  So we have been partying like it is 1992 since.

Only took 52 lives to beat Ganon in Legend of Zelda - Link to the Past

4) Reading! - He loves to read. About halfway through Kindergarten, he just pretty much started to take over reading before bedtime. I can pretty much just turn the pages and help with words now and then. Over the past few months, he will occasionally read the campaign signs that are all over the place. Have you ever tried to explain elections and democracy to a little kid? When he asked if he gets to vote, I started to explain how it was just for adults because they are supposed to know best...ummm....let's just talk about Sponge Bob.

5) Learning kid culture and loving it!  When your kid is really little, yes the cartoons get to be super annoying. Disney Junior runs the same five episodes of each of their shows pretty much every day. But now we are finally getting into the cool stuff. I have had to do some research on the super heroes, but all in all, a lot of it is just a reboot of the same things I watched/played in the 80's and 90's.  Even the video game stuff is pretty much the same, with Mario and Zelda.  The water guns are still Super Soakers. The TV and movies include Transformers, Ninja Turtles, Sponge Bob, and even a remake of Inspector Gadget. It actually makes me have some sympathy for my parents because all of that stuff was foreign and new to them.  Right now, one of his "favorite movies", is the 1990 Ninja Turtles movie. I like to tell him that his Granddaddy took me to see it at the theater was I was nine. And there is some new stuff, Like Captain Underpants, which I think is hilarious. I am probably a bigger Captain Underpants fan than he is.

So we are looking forward to another year of great adventures. Somebody has got to help Captain Underpants foil the evil plots of Professor Poopypants.....remember kids, "The emphasis is on the Poop!"

Tra - La - La!!!!!

I Got Your Six! - A Daddy Blog

Birthday time once again!  The Big Six. I will have to admit, year Five was a pretty exciting time with some pretty exciting stuff.

1) Hiking!  I am not talking about just little walks in the woods, but full on, carry lots of water and spend half the day in the woods adventures.  After one particular fall trip to Pinson Mounds, he kept telling people how we "fought a snake and he fell down a hill and I saved his life".  It wasn't quite that dramatic but it was a lot of fun.

2) Camping!  Yeah, it is backyard stuff right now, but he is incredibly tough.  The night we went in the fall it got down in the 30's.  He slept in a $10 kids mummy bag from Academy Sports (I did add a fleece liner) and on an old Therma-rest pad.  I had a 30 degree Mountain Hardware bag and a super thick sleeping pad.  I woke up every hour.  He slept through the night.  I had to wake him up to make him go inside for breakfast.  

3) Video games!  He has always like to watch me play, but this spring and summer he has really gotten into playing Mario.  The first time he really played original Super Mario, I recorded his first true video game kill!

 

4) Movies! He went to his first movie and loved everything about it, especially the gigantic portions of popcorn.

5) Him still a genius!  There is this puzzle game he plays on his Leap Pad called Scaredy Cat in the Spooky Woods.  He can beat all 30 levels.  I can get past about 10.

And there are a lot of big days coming!  Oh yeah, the big K is coming and I ain't talking 'bout no blue light special!  Kindergarten starts next week.  And in two weeks soccer is going to start, and I am going to help coach.  It will be Brody's first time playing soccer and my first time coaching anything.  Possible disaster? Sure.  Possible great experience to treasure for life?  Sure.  With parenting, that is what makes it fun. 

I Got Fives On It! - A Daddy Blog

Wow, the big FIVE.  I have always thought of five as a big milestone, but being on the parent side of stuff has really given me some good insight into what makes this age range such a fun time.  Here is my short list:

1) The kid forks and plates are used less and less.

Actually, we really don't need to use them at all, but we still do really mainly to keep up the supply of clean adult plates (as conversely I have been known to eat with the Mickey Mouse fork when it was the only clean fork in drawer).  He does completely fine with the salad forks and small spoons as well as normal plates.  Although, he isn't totally eating off the fine china yet, we are still die hard Take N Toss cup users.  There are probably four under the seats of my car right now.

2) You have to turn sideways through doorways.

He got big.  As I am writing this he is laying on the couch beside me and kicking me because he is now longer than half the couch.  It wasn't too long ago when I used to sit with him on the couch and he wasn't as long as the couch cushion was wide.  Now when I scoop him up and take him to bed, I have to turn at doorways to get his head or feet to clear.

3) He isn't fooled by ridiculously healthy food.

Pretty much since he started eating solid food, pancakes and waffles have always been our reliable breakfast go-to.  And partly because it isn't healthy and partly because it results in sticky hands, we purposefully did not introduce syrup.  He didn't complain for years.  But at some point recently he discovered it (I might be to blame).  And once you have gone syrup, there is no going back.

4) The stroller is really gone.

I know there isn't some magic age where riding in a stroller is against the law or something, but when the legs start dragging the ground, it is time to take it in consideration.  We got a lot of good miles out of the old umbrella stroller, but its time is done.  He can walk a long way now and doesn't complain.  When we go out to the Union trails, he can actually trail run with me for a ridiculous long time. He still gets plenty of rides in grocery carts though!

5) The camera is rolling.

This is probably the most exciting and unnerving thing about this age.  This is where your real memory starts.  We have some memories from when we are younger, but they are typically more feelings and images.  From five on, the camera is rolling.  Repressed memories make good Oprah shows, but rarely happen in real life.  Sure there might be a few nights in young adulthood with some alcohol induced amnesia, but for the most part, everything you see and hear past five years old will stay with you for the rest of your life.  So all the fun and good times will stick with him, but we have to be extra careful as well.  Which might mean only watching the TV version of Friday for a while (even though it really isn't funny at all when it is clean).