zen.org Communal Weblog

The road I live on leads to a cul-de-sac, so we don’t get much through-traffic. However, enough homes are on the road that strangers who don’t live here often visit those who do. No problem. We have family and friends do just that. But there’s a behavior problem involved.

The “Children Playing” sign at the entry to the road needs to be twice its current size, and have lasers attached which will blow out the tires of the fuckers who go tearing up and down the road so maybe their car would flip and crush their useless skulls in a mesh of metal and glass.

Ahem.

There are more than six children on the road under the age of 10. They love to play together, and go running up and down the sidewalks or ride on their scooters or even their bikes. All of the parents are trying to get them into the habit of looking before the go running into the road, but reality being as it is, sometimes they don’t follow our instructions.

A couple of days ago a lady was coming down the road from the cul-de-sac at an incredible speed. I’d just walked my son down to play with his friends, and wasn’t in a glowing mood, so I stood in the middle of the road waving my arms. When they slowed down, I saw a woman with at least four children (not a seatbelt fastened around one of them) looking at me curious as to why I’d signaled her. I yelled (I won’t be silly and try to suggest I was speaking calmly), “SLOW DOWN, there are CHILDREN on this road!” I was looking at her own kids more than her while I said it. She looked sheepish and drove away…a little more slowly.

Just now, I was walking home with my son’s broken scooter as he went running with his friends up the sidewalk in some game I wasn’t privy to. Down comes a red Volkswagen burning enough fuel to reach its 0-60mph rating pretty quickly. I repeated my Hit me, you fucker pose, and when he slowed to pass me I saw the 20 year-old (at best) looking at me like I was nuts when I yelled basically the same sentence again, word-for-word. To help him deal with the repercussions of his actions, he went tearing out around the corner—again, not losing control of his car, much to my dismay.

I don’t want speed bumps on our road, but at the same time I want something better than the sign no one looks at. I know kids are going to come running out from behind parked cars, and I’ve yet to see more than a few people honor the 10mph rule for this sort of road.

Given that, I also don’t want some useless sack of shit given the power to take away my son’s life.

Jesus, time for some wine.

Eoin, age five months, decided to start fidgeting at 4:30am and was awake for real at 5:15am. He and I went downstairs so Elana could get some sleep.

In the kitchen, we put the kettle on for some tea (as you do), and Eoin and I started brainstorming. Well, first the sopping wet diaper and damp sleepy suit—certainly the culprits that woke him up—had to be changed. Eoin’s expression as he looked up at me, his gorgeous blue eyes sparkling with innocence, was nonetheless consise and to the point: What should we do? (I channel my thoughts through his random facial expressions.)

His brother Patrick, age five years, was to attend a birthday party that afternoon and we still needed to make the cake. Patrick’s food allergies make it difficult to go to that sort of event because he’s usually unable to eat any of the food. To smooth the process a bit we make our own double-layer chocolate cake with cholocate icing and contribute it to the festivities. Luckily it’s pretty tasty and devoured at most parties. In addition to the cake, lots of parents are incredibly accommodating and put a lot of effort into asking us what sort of things are safe for him to eat, and adjust their plans to use them instead. Absolutely amazing.

I parked Eoin in his exersaucer and started getting the ingredients together. Oven now heating up, I made it past the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt when he started to fuss a bit. I moved the exersaucer to give him a change of view and got the water, vegetable oil, white vinegar, and vanilla together. As I started mixing, he started to complain that this just wasn’t interesting enough. What to do?

Our kitchen is an open plan style with a room next to it lined with lots of shelves like a big pantry, an Ikea cabinet as our folding table, and a washer and dryer stacked up on each other. The washer sat with a finished load of laundry started before we went to bed last night.

Hmmmm.

A few minutes later I finished prepping the cake tins, the batter ready to be poured. Eoin was a couple of feet away from me, staring with fascination at the washing machine in front of him as it did a new rinse cycle. It began to spin faster and faster, and he giggled with delight.

It was six in the morning, another beautiful Irish day beginning outside. The cake went into the oven, the kitchen got cleaned up, and sanity reigned—for a moment. From one spin cycle to the next.

Sometimes they both sleep through the night, and then the smaller follows it with long naps during the day. And blink they’re bigger.

Patrick would walk around carrying his brother forever if he was given the chance.

We’re up early, just the guys. A squirmy four month-old Eoin is in my arms, protesting the fact that his dad’s just not made to breast feed him. Since his mom will be up shortly, I won’t grab any from the freezer. On the TV I’m watching Jon Stewart.

Patrick, age five, comes downstairs in his new Spiderman robe and plants himself down on the couch. “Can I watch something?”

“This is almost done.” I hear a sigh of resignation, the muttering of this is so boring hidden by closed lips. After Jon’s Moment of Zen, I make the MythTV box go to the set of children’s shows it’s been recording.

Seeing the first appearing on the list, I ask, “How about Bob the Builder?”

His answer surprises me: “I don’t like Bob any more.”

“What?! Why?”

“Bob’s stupid. He’s only for babies.”

“Why do you say that?” I ask with genuine curiosity. I already know the answer, but still, you have to ask.

“My friend at school says it too.”

No surprise. A short list of names quickly takes form in my head. “Which friend?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well I still like Bob,” I inform him, and press the button on the remote to make it start to play. I’m sitting in the chair still trying to hold on to fuss-monster Eoin. A few minutes pass, and out of the corner of my eye I can see Patrick watching the TV with me.

As the show continues, Eoin adds his own baby-speak commentary to the current episode of Bob. “Eoin, please, I’m trying to watch Bob the Builder.” By admonishing his little brother I seem to have given Patrick some sort of signal to share his opinion.

“Actually, I do like Bob,” he admits suddenly. Then he carefully qualifies that statement when I look over at him, a look of surprise appearing on my face. “But only a little bit.”

Small victories like this are all I can hope to get. We’re entering a new phase in our parenting: we now have to roll with the punches as these darling classmates attempt to change Patrick’s own mind.

Sure, he’ll be unconsciously fighting this sort of thing for the rest of his life. How to help strengthen his inner confidence when he likes certain music, believes something is wrong, or disagrees with what someone said? I don’t want him to care what people think of his clothes. I want him to try lots of books, music, sports, activities, food, everything. Then he can decide what’s good from his own experience, not what everyone else is telling him.

Accomplishing this is so incredibly difficult that most of us only succeed in small steps. It’s always going to be hard to keep your own thoughts, even as you’re still finding them and developing them. The reality that he’d be going through this so soon is the single biggest shock to me. He’ll grow from these experiences, of course, and I know he’s strong in his heart and will—and mind. All we can do is show him disagreement with others is okay.

The boy watching Bob the Builder across from me has smiles playing on the corners of his mouth. He is back to himself again, if only for a moment. And he knows I agree with him.

It’s apparently still safe to like Bob the Builder—a little bit.

Psalm 4:17 And the lord our God said, “Nay, thy sleep shall in the second hour of the first nap reach a full and happy end. Thus with great joy thee shall fill thy good diaper, and we shall all rejoice.”

Patrick did a couple of amazing examples of what makes him a pretty amazing big brother to two-month old Eoin.

We were getting ourselves together for a journey up to Blackrock to go shopping at the supermarket (SuperQuinn, better in so many ways than the Tesco alternative in Dun Laoghaire). I was adjusting Eoin’s car seat with its owner sitting in the pram doing a bit of fuss. Without saying a word, Patrick went over to him and started pushing the pram in circles helping calm down Eoin while I was finishing. I came out of the car and Patrick pushed the pram over to me, delivering the focus of his care.

Later, while driving home, Eoin started doing a good old cry. Patrick announced, “Tears!” Elana and I started offering reassuring comments to try to calm Eoin down a bit, and Patrick reassured us, “Don’t worry about him.  Don’t worry about him—when we get home I’ll wipe his cheeks.”

Oh my GOD, how can I put words to how much I adore him in moments like these.

Early spring this year. Thanks Phil!

Elana was going out for a while. I was in the kitchen and told her I’d be getting Patrick’s breakfast together and then feed Eoin with the recently-expressed bottle that was in the fridge. Patrick overheard the conversation from the livingroom.

“Dad, how can you feed him? We don’t have (some garbled words).”

“We don’t have what?” I asked, almost knowing the answer—almost.

“But we don’t have any lungs, so we can’t feed him; only moms can! They have lungs.”

“Lungs?”

He responded with his very declarative, “Yes!”

Ok, today we’re explaining breasts. What’s next?

P had a classmate over for the afternoon to play. During a bit of lunch, they had wide and varied conversation topics. At one point, the focus turned to an interesting debate.

“There was a spider in our bathroom, but now it’s gone,” P informed his friend.

“I don’t like spiders,” the friend responded.

“But your mom likes to eat spiders!” Patrick declared.

“No, I think it was your mom,” his friend replied.

“I’m serious. Your mom ate them, you told me.”

“Oh yeah,” his friend admitted. For only a moment. “No, actually, I think it was yours. But watch what this spoon can do!”

And they composed music with their bowls of chicken salad.

About a year ago we got a copy of Ten Little Dinosaurs by Pattie Schnetzler (and cool illustrations by Jim Harris). It flows really well, and gives some fun words to pronounce:

Ten little dinosaurs bouncing on the bed,
Pachycephalosaurus fell off and broke his head.
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,
“No more boneheads bouncing on the bed.”

It’s been used as a bed-time story (or any-other-time story) quite a few times since we got it.

This morning as a way to pass time before leaving for school, he opened up a coloring book and his case of crayons, pencils, and markers. Looking for a page not yet completed, he stopped on one page and asked me, “Dad, why does the pterodactyl have tiny feet?”
Wow, he remembered it! I wonder if he’ll get his PhD and live in New York City with other 20–30 year-olds?