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Category Archives for 'Fatherhood'
Electricity is Screwing Up My Kid
Okay… I admit. I’m really the one screwing up my kid with electricity, but it’s fun and he’s cute.
Magic!
Arthur C. Clarke is attributed with stating that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But when you’re a toddler everything falls into the category of magic.
Like good parents we put up a Christmas tree for our 15 month old son and decked it out with ornaments and lights. Because I’m a pretty lazy guy when it comes to Christmas trees, I decided to put the lights onto a Clapper
The Clapper works just like it’s supposed to do: Clap a few times and the tree lights go on. Clap a few more times and they go off. My toddler son has watched us doing this for the past couple weeks and has quickly surmised that clapping turns on lights. He now runs around in public clapping madly in front of Christmas trees, regular trees and even the bushes that line the sidewalk. When nothing happens after a few moments he frowns and points and then moves on.
And while most people have just attributed this to him being a typical toddler, a few family members have pointedly asked why our son is running around applauding at house plants. “Oh, he just wants to turn them on,” we say.
The ceiling fan thing is a little more difficult to explain.
One night my son was pointing at the ceiling fan. I told him it was stuck, but if he blew on it like his pinwheel then it might work. He surprised the heck out of me by actually blowing upwards. As any good father would, I obliged my son by flicking on the electric switch on the wall and made the fan whirl for a moment. I thought we were just playing a game, but I was creating a monster.
Each morning we now have a ritual where we both run around the house and he blows at all the ceiling fans, making sure they are all turning. If I’m not near the switch at the moment he blows he frowns, shrugs and says, “Stuck.”
At least, I think that’s what he’s saying.
Is all this toddler behavior cute? You bet it is. Will it permanently scar him psychologically? Almost definitely.
I can’t wait for the day when I can be in the Oval Office as he strides across the presidential blue carpet, steps behind the most powerful desk in the world, sits in that big leather chair and starts clapping for the lights to turn on.
Wiitarded Again
I am the reason reason your child will be crying this Christmas day.
Your child. My fault.
I’ve had a Wii of my own for about a year, but I’m just as desperate for a Wii as all of you bad parents out there who haven’t been able to fulfill your child’s every fantasy and given the gift of a Nintendo Wii. And I don’t want just one more Nintendo Wii, I want a dozen more (as long as its before December 23rd or so).
Why would a 35 year old nerd with a toddler son who hasn’t even seen TV, much less video games want more than one video game? I could say I want to get one for my 12 year old niece, but the truth of the matter is that I’m just greedy and I want to sell it to desperate people for a huge profit.
Nintendo has basically created an entirely new underground market, never before seen in video game history. Despite Microsoft and Sony’s best efforts at fighting the Wii, they have yet to create the frenzy that Nintendo has. For a solid year Nintendo Wii’s have been selling for retail price and higher on the black market known as eBay, and when the Christmas season rolls around all logic and sanity fly out the window when it comes to satisfying the wishes of your offspring.
But you won’t see me camping out on the sidewalk in front of Best Buy for three days and you won’t see me scouting out Target’s parking lot on weeknights to see if delivery trucks are bringing in any surprise shipments. That’s all for losers. And, besides, I did that for most of December last year.
Nope, this year I’m using every online tool available to me. As I write this I have a website up that is constantly checking for Wii availability, I have my cell phone ready for instant text messages, I have Outlook open and checking for any email updates and I have at least three other desktop PC items that will blink or flash or bing the moment a Wii is for sale for retail price anywhere on the internet. When a Wii does become available I’ll either immediately be able to buy one or I’ll be startled to death and die of a heart attack.
I’ve considered selling my used Wii on eBay this year and just taking the profit, knowing that I’ll eventually be able to buy a Wii again for the retail price come March. I might even lick my Wii and THEN sell it on eBay, just to make myself feel even more powerful.
I am proud of my ability to capture a Wii for my family last year when so many went hungry. I often hold it up as a trophy and sometimes parade around the neighborhood with my Wii in my hand, showing the world what kind of man I really am.
My name is Tom Coffee. I am hunting Wii.
Or is the Wii hunting me?
My Ghetto Toy Lovin’ Toddler
My Son’s Birthday Loot: Approximate Value $147.00.
My Son’s Current Favorite Toys: Approximate Value $.04.
My son celebrated his first birthday recently and like most children his age he was totally fascinated with the wrapping paper, any ribbon he could shove into his mouth and all the balloons we had at the party but showed just about zero interest in the new toys he had opened, any of the people who attended the party or even the cake we presented for him to eat with his fingers.
As a fat person, I was the most offended by his refusal to even try the cake at first. I quickly surmised that the child wasn’t mine and started berating my wife for sleeping with someone else, until my son’s icing-covered hands accidentally slammed into his mouth. From that point forward my son began licking his fingers and rubbing the icing all over his face and hair, which seems much more like something I would do at lunch if, you know, I didn’t have any meetings in the afternoon.
Back to the toys. Most of his new toys were hermetically sealed in bubble wrap or boxes which were then reinforced with enough packing tape, wire twist ties and cardboard glue to keep a grenade in one piece after pulling the pin. If any of you parents out there have opened a single new toy in the last ten years, you know exactly the kind of packaging I’m talking about. After unpacking most of his new toys my son did show some interest in them and did play with them for a little while, but I noticed he kept going back to play with things that are not really toys.
This has continued up to the present and my wife and I are now seriously wondering if our child has some sort of psychic link to some starving Third World kid whose only source of entertainment is a stone and a pile of dirt. Our son received all sorts of music toys, puzzle toys, colorful toys and some downright cool toys to play with for his birthday, but none of those hold his interest very long. My wife, in a fit of political incorrectness that will bar her from ever serving on the Supreme Court, has started calling his favorite toys his “Ghetto Toys.” At the moment his top five favorite ghetto toys are:
1. Four empty Pedialite bottles and a plastic holder left over from a trip to the Emergency Room: Ahh, good times. Our son caught a stomach virus and lost his lunch… and breakfast… dinner from the night before… in my car. We rushed him to the hospital after he couldn’t keep down some water and we spent the next 24 hours letting his tummy rest and getting him back into the groove of things with Pedialite, the baby’s version of Gatorade. These containers can snap out of their holder and their lids come off. They’re basically the ghetto version of Megablocks, and my son loves them for some reason. I like to think he’s training to be an architect, but the way he throws those bottles around I have to wonder if someone let him watch the Tom Cruise masterpiece Cocktail.
2. An empty plastic box that used to hold moistened baby wipes: There is something irresistible about this empty box. He’ll play with this for hours, carrying it around and moving things in and out of it. We’ve started putting snacks in the box at night, which surely encourages the notion of the box being magical. Years from now my son will probably fail some sort of college entrance exam because he still believes deep down in his heart that Cheerios regularly materialize from thin air and appear in mysterious places.
3. A Newcastle Brown Ale Refrigerator Magnet: We bought my son several packages of magnetic letters and numbers for the refrigerator which he mostly ignores, but he’s completely fascinated with this giant refrigerator magnet which resemble a beer bottle cap. I think I got it years ago in exchange for trying a Newcastle Brown Ale at my local Mexican food joint. I don’t remember much of the evening, but I do remember the next morning when I realized that Newcastle Brown Ale and Mexican food should never, ever mix.
4. A paper plate left over from his first birthday party: Our son loves to walk around with this and simply place put it down, toddle around for a while, and then come back and move it again. I like to think he’s training to be a famous Food TV chef, but he’s more likely preparing to be out of work actor who needs to make ends meet by waiting tables.
5. A red plastic Dixie cup: He loves running around the room with this red plastic cup like a college frat boy running from apartment to apartment on campus. The refrigerator magnet, the plastic bottles and the plastic cup pretty much cinch it. I can deny it all I want, but I think it’s pretty clear that my son is going to be a raging alcoholic.
I’m going to simply let him keep playing with these ghetto-fabulous toys for the moment and hope he eventually migrates over to the toys that our friends and family actually spent money on. He’s a happy kid and these toys are mostly harmless, so I see no reason to take them away. As parents we’re simply trying to encourage him to explore his world and learn and play as much as he can.
In the meantime I’ve got my eye on a nice empty two liter plastic soda bottle and my wife wants to get him his very own Amazon.com cardboard box he can carry around. I can’t wait for Christmas!