Archive for the ‘hope for the future’ Category

A new hope


2012
02.26

We’re trying to toughen up Dillon a bit.  It occurs to me that perhaps a kid shouldn’t get super-offended and tear up at a professional soccer game because some rabble-rousing fans are holding up signs that says “the Wave sucks.”  (He turned to his grandpa and said, “That is just SO inappropriate!”)

Don’t get me wrong, I love that he is a sweet, sensitive kid.  But he’ll be entering 6th grade (maybe at a new school next year) and probably he should be able to handle unsportsmanlike behavior and just let it roll off, you know?

So what is my strategy for this, you ask?  [Drumroll….]   I am making him watch movies.

We don’t watch a lot of TV as a rule, no screens on school nights pretty much ever, unless you need to type up some homework or something.  And when D does have screen time, he’d rather play a videogame than watch a movie.  But I am forcing the issue a little (in a very nice way), and so we’ve watched Ghostbusters, Goonies, Star Wars: ANH (that’s Episode 4 if you don’t know), and Lord of the Rings: Fellowship and the first disk of Twin Towers (it’s the 3+hour director’s cut, so we had to stop midway through because it just got too late).  Basically, we’re nerding it up by watching all my favorite movies.

I’ll let you know if he learns the important life lessons from Han Solo and Gandalf and Mikey and Egon.  In the meantime, it’s just pretty fun to watch these again with my kid.

4D


2012
01.02

Dillon: Mom, what’s 4-D mean?
Me: Um… Well, you know what two-dimensional and three-dimensional are, right? I don’t think anything is 4-D.
Dillon: No. Mom. The fourth dimension is time.
Me: [mental headdesk] Right. So why did you ask me what something was if you already knew the answer?
Dillon: Well, I saw something at the movie theater and I wanted to know if it was a real thing or just advertisers wanting to charge people more for stuff.
Me: Oh. The second one.

Santa Baby


2011
12.22

Dillon asked me today if I thought Rose still believed in Santa Claus, “Because she’s about that age when you start to hear stuff at school and she’s seen about a million movies and books and stuff where you get clues about it…”

When I responded that I wasn’t sure if she still believed, he said, “I hope she still can.  I don’t want to ask her because I don’t want to ruin it for her.  I am also not going to tell her that we don’t have a chimney and a fireplace and all that.”

He hasn’t believed for a number of years, and really, Charles is anti-Santa and while I want my kids to believe in little magical things, I don’t really try to sell it that hard.  We’ve done our family’s Christmas celebration at home Christmas Eve morning since forever, and Santa has always come a day early to our house anyway, because Christmas Eve we spend with Charles’ family, and Christmas Day we spend with my family.  I don’t think that is what made D realize about Santa though.  As observant as that kid can be about random things, he is really unconcerned with the count down to Christmas and how all the celebrations fit together.

Rose, on the other hand, really wants a printed itinerary in her stocking, because she has been making me go through the plan for weeks.  “Oscar comes what day?  And then Elizabeth and Matte come to town when?  And what night do we sleep over at Grandma’s?”  She is always really interested in how all the plans fit together and what she can look forward to.

In other news, when we were decorating for Christmas last night, she looked at this snow globe and thought it looked like me and her daddy:

polar express snow globe

And just to clarify, that is the little boy and the conductor from the movie The Polar Express.  So we decided it was high time Rose saw that movie, and hopefully she wouldn’t think her parents were represented in a kind of strange snowglobe…  And she loved it, of course, though I think her new favorite Christmas movie is White Christmas.  She’s really into musicals, her favorite movies right now are Annie and Mary Poppins and White Christmas.  Which I am okay with, it is better than watching the Tinkerbell move for the thousandth time.

 

Chess


2011
12.17

So, I knew that when Charles got home from work and walked in the door, this scene was going to make him exceedingly happy…

My parents were over for dinner (Charles wound up having to work very late) and afterwards D asked my dad to play a game with him.  They are playing on the chessboard Charles made with his Grandpa Joe back before D was born.

And sure enough, when Charles walked in the door he got the exact goofy grin on his face that I knew he was going to.  And Dillon and my Dad and Rose wound up playing three more games of chess, with Rose moving into the driver’s seat and getting coached by her Grandpa Tim about how all of the pieces go.

It was pretty awesome all around.