Parenting 101: Only the facts...

Jonah is very smart. I try to fool him every now and then with something silly and funny. Most of the time he sees right through me and calls me out on it. If Holly hears me trying to mess with him, much like Calvin's Mom, she puts a quick end to it.

Now I don't do it to be mean or try to make the kid less intelligent, because I know he's very smart. I like to try to pull one over on him every now and then. That is one of the joys of being a parent. You can mess with your kids every now and then. Hey, they do their best to mess with us so sometimes a little payback is in order.

Brielle is still too young to pull little pranks on, but rest assured she will be messing with us in no time. She already has me wrapped around her little finger. Much like Jonah has his mom is wrapped around his entire hand...

Of course I say all this in jest. The kids are fun to play with, and we always try to give the most accurate answers to all of their questions. Jonah's are much more complex than Brielle's questions. He's pretty deep. Trying to word the answers in such a way that a 1st grader can understand it is a bit challenging of course.

As always, enjoy a cup of Calvin & Hobbes with some coffee...

Parenting 101: Driving

As the weather is getting nicer and nicer, so we are traveling a little more on our Island.

Actually, we have been car shopping and are trapped in the tiny Avalon where the kids are in their stage of being buddies one minute, teaming up to try to annoy the parents as much as possible, to being enemies the next fighting over every possible thing you can imagine.

At the end of June the family will be growing a little larger with a new baby boy joining us. With this comes the need for something that can hold a few more bodies. My 2-door Blazer is on it's last legs and is not easy to get kids in and out of.

So we are looking at either the Toyota Highlander, or the Honda Pilot.

They are comparable vehicles and are about the same price. We are currently in the price factor phase. Whoever can give us the better deal will be the victor and win us as customers. The vehicles are a bit more spacious so we should be able to separate the kids a little better and have a little more peace of mind while we make our travels. Hopefully this will allow us the opportunity to make a trip back to Michigan in the future.

As for Traveling, enjoy some classic Calvin and Hobbes... Couldn't be more true... Except generally Holly is driving...

Parenting 101: Labor Pains

This weekend was a wet one... It drizzled on and off all day Saturday and poured pretty much all day on Sunday.

Of course the kids could not go out, so staying in was the only option. This is a recipe for disaster. Constant running through the house, screaming at the top of their lungs and smashing into things. The yell for us to tell them to stop throwing/kicking balls around the house and things getting knocked down after repeatedly saying stop throwing/kicking the balls!!!

This Calvin and Hobbes seemed to fit the mood pretty well.

Hope your weekend was much drier than ours...

Parenting 101: Television

At one time, the kitchen was THE room in the house that the family would congregate in. Since the introduction of the television, the shift has been made to the living/family room. Or wherever you happen to have a television plugged in.

I love television. Since marriage has decreed that the remote ownership shifts to the wife, I get to watch what I'm told that I like. I think it's in the vows somehwere between honor and sickness and in health... This is of little consequence since I generally enjoy whatever I watch with my lovely wife.

As for kids, television is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, as a parent, it's easy to fall into the trap of letting the television be the babysitter. If it's an occassional thing and under the right circumstances this is fine, but in large quantities is not so good. They need the interactive experience of playing with others. So this is the challenge to interact more with the kids instead of letting the television show them their role models.

Within these social interactions lies in the "Play-date". I'm not really sure where this term came from. I can discern from the words what it means, but we never called it a "Play-date". My phrasing was, "I'm going out to play with Scott and Johnny!" or, "Tomorrow, Scott and John are coming over to build a fort!"

The phrase play-date never left my lips. Now I have nothing against the phrasing although it still feels aquard to say. As I have come to thinking about this subject I have to analyze what is different now compared to when I was a kid.

I suppose it all comes from our new enviroment on the East Coast, although I think the term is widely used everywhere now...

As for integration of television into the family unit... Well Calvin usually has something that fits. Jonah seems to be doing this a lot lately as well... For a long time, Jonah has been reciting back funny parts of his cartoons. Sometimes they make sense, most of the time I think you really had to see it to get the humor. But we laugh just the same... Lately he's been adding background theme music to his activities. It's quite funny. Although I have to wonder if we should be concerned about it or not...

Enjoy some Calvin with your day...

Landscaping: Raised Flowerbed

This weekend we decided it was time to take care of the flowerbed that has been in much need of care.

The one side closest to the sidewalk has a large planting of Mums that bloom in the fall, which we want to leave as is. They are just starting to pop up now. The rest of the mess is juniper, which has claimed every available space. What a mess... From this picture the juniper looks more like grass, but not as pretty.

Considering Holly is nearing the end of her pregnancy, she is by default the Foreman. Slavedriver would be a better phrasing... Only kidding! She has some excellent ideas of what we can do with this space, so I'm grateful for all the help she gives. She even got me water... Now that's Love!

Ok, enough joking... So I started pulling up the juniper to see where everything was rooted. WOW!!! These things were everywhere! I was able to use a saw to cut everything from the root system, but still have a number of stumps to get out of there. I'll take care of that soon enough.

It took me a couple of hours to completely remove the juniper from the bed. At the end I was tired and swetty and felt like I had just won a battle with a great beast. The corpse of which was now lying piled up in the lower steps leading to the porch.

Dragging the mess across the driveway reminded me of the scene in Independance Day with Will Smith dragging the Alien across the desert, Dreadlocks dragging and everything.
The juniper got a few last scratches in as it found it's final resting place, but it felt good to take care of something myself in the new house.

The next day was Easter. We did all of the fun things you normally do on Easter.

We decided to plant a number of Hyacynth's, Daffodils and Tulips in our newly cleared bed. I had to do a little more removing of stumps and roots to make this happen, but in no time the flowers were planted and smelling as sweet as ever.

Our next step is to replaced the top railroad ties that are damaged. We will then get a weeping cherry tree to place in the center of this bed. A Holly bush will be planted closer to the latice work closest to the house. Of course we will use mulch to make it all look nice again. I'll show all of that after we get it all put together.

There's just something about the smell of Spring flowers that makes things just feel better...

Enjoy the pictures.
(Disclaimer: the juniper mentioned in this post was harmed during this process. This was unavoidable...)

Vistors in the Day: Part 2

On Easter morning, I was speaking with my Mom back in Michigan over the phone. I wandered through the house making sure that the kids were not over-loading on Easter Candy when I found myself standing at our glass storm door looking over the front yard.

It took me a moment to notice that there was a visitor standing on the porch not four feet from me.

Apparently our house has become the free lunch spot for all kinds of travelers. Today it was Rocky. No he's not a flying squirrel, I couldn't think of another name off the top of my head. He's your run-of-the-mill Grey Squirrel.

Apparently he enjoys cat food. I thought Squirrels were more into the corn and peanut kind of cuisine. I suppose in a pinch, cat food will do...

Happy Easter!

The kids had a great time on Easter.

The morning started out with the yearly tradition of finding the easter basket. The Easter Bunny hides Jonah and Brielle's baskets somewhere in the house. It's always fun to watch them run around trying to figure out where the basket has been hidden this year.

Of course what is Easter, Aside from the religous aspects of the Holiday, without an Easter Egg Hunt?

This year it was a little different. The Easter Bunny broke from his norm and woke Holly and I up to let us know he couldn't hide eggs outside because of the "bandits" aka "Visitors in the Night" that were on the loose. We completely understood this situation and agreed to hide the eggs for him later in the morning. In return for this service, he left us a bag of candy for ourselves... Pretty kind of the bunny...

So later in the day... The hunt began.

These pictures pretty much tell it all.

Hope you all had a nice Holiday!!!!

Ladies and Gentleman... Huey Lewis and the NEWS!

My buddy Clifford made this video while in College. He posted it on his blog a while ago, and I thought I'd throw it out here as well for others to enjoy.

Have fun!

Parenting 101: Shaping their minds

As a parent, it is our job to train and teach our children to be responsible caring people. This includes educating them along with the schooling they receive from their teachers.

There are situations where you have to scratch your head and wonder where they come up with some of the questions they ask you. Other times you just want to take a humorous moment and pull a Calvin's Dad on them.

Enjoy this post for the day...

Parenting 101: Testing Boundaries

Why do kids have to test their boundaries?

After a certain age, they just won't take our word on much of anything. Jonah has moved into this phase with full force. Testing every last nerve possible and then some. Since Holly is pregnant, her nerves are at the frazzled level already... So when the testing starts, it is not pretty...

More and more every day, I come to realize what my parents had to go through when I was a child. It's amazing that I'm alive today thinking of some of the things that I did as a kid. I don't know how they made it through any of it either. I've been noticing more and more grey hairs as I look in the mirror. I suppose keeping my hair shorter makes it a little less noticeable.

I don't know how Holly does it. She doesn't have a single grey hair and has all this turmoil going on around her. She's definitely a pillar of strength during these troubling times of parenting. We count ourselves very fortunate that our kids are as good as they are.

We see some of the kids that Jonah goes to school with and how they act and thank God that we don't have to deal with some of those issues. Then watching a show like Nanny 911 or Super Nanny make us count our blessings even more. There are some very testing children out there...

Jonah has tried something similar to this comic in the past... It works as well for him as it does for Calvin...

Have a great weekend!!!

Parenting 101: Where do they get these ideas?

In my opinion, educational television is a great thing. Jonah is starting to get into these from his interest in dinosaurs. He loves the prehistoric creatures. Some of the new programs like Dinosaur Planet have some excellent graphics and make you feel like you are watching a real documentary rather than an animated creation.

Jonah questions a lot of things that he hears on television.... Which is VERY good, because there are some pretty weird shows that he ends up watching that I'm not all that certain we want him to see. Regardless, he asks questions, and we try to answer them to the best of our abilities.

This comic of Calvin goes along with this topic. So far Jones hasn't gone to this extreme in his television believability.... yet.

Parenting 101: Home Improvement

Improving the home is generally a good thing. Trying to repair things yourself can be fun... when things go right.

The recent installation of exterior lights, with the help of Merlin, went very well. On my own I probably would have had more holes than I could deal with. We still have our projects around the house to work on. Thankfully most of it just has to do with painting. Thankfully that's fairly easy. Picking the colors is another story.

My other project is to finish the floors. Actually the floors are done it's the molding along the baseboards that I need to finish. The one room has them installed. I need to fill the nail holes and paint them. The other room I have to do more precise fitting and nailing. I'll be pre-painting these to make the job go a little more smoothly. We'll see how this one turns out.

The kids are generally pretty good while we are trying to improve the house. Keeping the tools out of their reach is a challenge of course. Jonah is very interested in painting, but we are reluctant to hand over a brush anytime soon. Maybe if everything were covered with tarps... including ourselves.

Brielle just wants to be in the middle of it all... She's the uber-helper. Wants to get into it all and help, help, help... Most of the time it's the opposite of help and makes more work for us, but it's awesome that she wants to help none-the-less.

At least the kids aren't too destructive. Messy most of the time, but not destructive... Unlike our little friend Calvin...

Hope you are all enjoying these.

Have a great day!

It's raining here on Long Island today with some mixed snow. BRRRrrrrr.

Landscaping Corner

Now that it is officially Spring, we have started evaluating the current landscaping and trying to figure out what the hell we have out there.

This weekend we trimmed out the dead stuff from last year and found some nice flowers starting to poke through the layer of leaves left from this past fall. We found a group of 5 Hyacinths and several places, in our yard of all placed, where there are Crocuses growing in small groups.

The strangest part of our investigation came from the yard itself. Our grass is a combination of about 30 different kinds of weeds and I think there might be some patches of grass in there somewhere. The odd part is that we have Chives growing all over our front yard. For those of you that cook, you are familiar with the onion flavored herb used in many cooking dished. For those of you who don't... Well... I guess now you do.

We found that Chives in this area are a lot like Dandelions. They have a top that has seeds on them which apparently spread like a weed. I counted over 20 chive plants in our front yard. I guess the lawn mower will take care of them, but I do have a place where I'll be transferring some of them for our herb garden. I do enjoy adding chives to certain recipes.

I'll also pull the crocuses from the yard and place them in flowerbeds. Who am I to complain about free landscaping flowers?

We had Holly's Mom and Merlin out a few weeks ago. Sandy was able to identify this tropical looking plant that we have planted all over in the back yard. They are a Rhododendron plant. They have these huge flower buds on them that I'm anxious to see what they turn out to look like.

There are several bushes that we will be removing and replacing. We also have a Hasta plant in the front that is very large. I found that I can break it into small plants and place them in shady areas of the yard. That is my plan for part of the entrance around the lower level apartment. We'd like to make it look a lot nicer back there for our future renter.

We are in the analysis phase for landscaping now. I'll put more posts out as we make our changes. We'd like to get more flowers integrated into our design.

Let the FUN Begin!!!

Parenting 101: Finance

To give... or not to give an allowance...