Extra Help

My office is connected to our house.  It has a bathroom in it; that’s the bathroom Isaiah will use when we’re all downstairs together.

From our living room, it’s through the kitchen, turn on the light in the office, walk through the office (away from the house a little), turn on the light in the bathroom, and use the bathroom.  After two steps into we can hear him, but we can’t see him. 

My office bathroom has several posters up of movies and comic book characters, it’s not a man-cave, but it’s as close as I’ve got.  Partly because of the distance from us, and maybe partly because of the many posters in the bathroom, Isaiah developed a fear of going to the bathroom by himself.  While I love being with my son wherever he goes, I wanted to teach him that he was strong enough to go potty by himself.  I wanted to show him that he had nothing to be afraid of in the bathroom.  First, I explained to him that Mama and Papa weren’t that far away while we were in the living room and he was in the bathroom.  We could still hear him even if we couldn’t see him.  Then I told him that the people on the posters were all good guys and they would help him. 

“Look, son, that’s Batman.  He’s a good guy.  He helps people.  And that’s the Great Red Dragon.  He’s in the shadows in that picture, but he’s going to help Fone Bone find his way.  And look over there, those are cowboys, just like Rango.  They help people too.  So they’ll help you.”

After that conversation, Isaiah would go into the bathroom saying, “Papa, Batman and the Dragon will help me, they’re nice!”

And he would come out, after going potty, saying, “Batman and the Dragon helped me!”

…I guess if he already had Batman and the Great Red Dragon, he didn’t need cowboys. 

In what I think is another example of overextension, our son has applied this to several other situations, even when the posters are nowhere near him.

• Going upstairs by himself, “Batman and the Dragon helped me!”
• Heading outside to pick up his toys, “Batman and the Dragon helped me!”
• Jumping in the IWU pool, “Batman and the Dragon helped me!”
• Getting on the bus to preschool, “Batman and the Dragon helped me!”

I love it.

And it seems perfectly logical.

Think about it, if you had Batman and a Dragon on your side, you’d never be afraid either.  

Talk to Me, or not

Sometimes our son is a little bossy.  Now that he's figuring out communication he'll sometimes command me or his mama to talk to him or each other.

Today he started playing a game on the iPad and said, 

"Papa, talk to me while I play iPad"

I said, 

"Ok, son. Are you sure you can pay attention while you're playing your game?"

He assured me that he could so I began to engage him in conversation.  

"So, Isaiah, did you have fun at school today?  Did you learn things? Did you learn any words?"

He paused his game.

Looked up at me.

And said, 

"Papa, talk to mama."

Parenting is Fun 

Indiana

My friend Michael Matti is in Seattle for spring break.  He sent me and some other folks an amazing picture of a waterfall he saw while hiking.

I looked at the picture and loudly lamented,
"ahhhh! I miss the Pacific Northwest, and the Pacific Southwest,
and the Pacific in general. 
...really just the West."

Isaiah looked over at me and said,
"Papa, why are you crying?

I said, 
"You're from Indiana, son.  You wouldn't understand"



Parenting is Fun 

Airport Boy

Candice Begg had told Isaiah we were taking Jeannie Banter to the airport (he loves airplanes). He got really excited and said he wanted to go on the airplane with her. Flabbergasted, Candice repeatedly asked him if he really wanted to "leave mama and papa and go with Jeannie"He was adamant.

Yes, he would leave us for a trip on an airplane.When Candice told him that he couldn't go on a plane without us and we couldn't take a trip because we didn't have money for it, he dutifully went into his room and worked the plug out of his piggy bank.

He came out of his room proudly clutching the "money" to solve the problem:

36 cents

Goodbye To My Home

A break from the series I've been doing, a reflection on my recent move:

I cried when Candice and I moved out of our first home.  We had lived there for over four years and made so many memories there and spent so much time with friends that, though we were moving to an exciting new place, it was hard to leave. 

I start by explaining this because I want to make it clear what leaving Bowman House was like.

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To See The Sky

This post continues my theme of drawing wisdom from Ursula Le Guin’s Orsinian Tales.  You can check out some of my previous posts for a more detailed summary of the book or the Wikipedia page.

The story I have come to as the subject of this posts is one of my favorite in the book.  It is one that I felt bolstered up with joy and exhilaration after reading.  It is one I completely remembered though I first read it a while ago now, and yet I still reread it to write this post.

I wanted to experience it again. 

The story is called An die Muzik, I just want to attempt to summarize it here and perhaps I’ll write another post later in order to dive into the details.

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A Wondrous Critique

This post continues my theme of drawing wisdom from UrsulaLe Guin’s Orsinian Tales.  You can check out some of my previous posts for a more detailed summary of the book or the Wikipedia page.

This post is a little different for me because the subject of the quote I want to expound upon is politics.  I usually don’t pay much attention to politics, much less write about political issues.  Maybe this is more of a social issue.  I suppose when you engage social issues, you’re going to run into politics sooner or later.

This is taken from the story A Week in the Country.  This is something a man’s grandfather says to him.  Remember, the setting is an oppressed [fictional] Eastern European country.

“What would we do with freedom if we had it, Kosta?  What has the West done with it?  Eaten it.  Put it in its belly.  A great wondrous belly, that’s the West.  With a wise head on top of it, a man’s head, with a man’s mind and eyes-but the rest all belly.  He can’t walk any more.  He sits at table eating, eating, thinking up machines to bring him more food, more food.  Throwing food to the black an yellow rats under the table so they won’t gnaw down the walls around him.  There he sits, and here we are, with nothing in our bellies but air, air and cancer, air and rage.  We can still walk.  So we’re yoked.  Yoked to the foreign plow.  When we smell food we bray and kick. –Are we men, though, Kosta? I doubt it.”

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