Like chess, only different

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During quiet time yesterday Primo came up with a game. He lined up various small pieces in two lines across from each other with a canon and gold chest in the middle. After playing a few rounds himself he came out of his room and asked if I wanted to play his new game. It’s like chess he said, but not really like chess at all. I asked how you play the game and he said its easier to just get started. So we lined up our pieces with no real rhyme or reason for who went where. He told me I was team two and he was team one and team one went first, naturally.

“The guys can move forward or ‘dee-oganally’ like this” he told me as he moved the Flash figure in front of my Mater. I moved The Penguin forward and he told me that was a great move. “How do you win?” I asked, and he told me that “you have to capture the canon and the gold and who ever has both of them wins. If you get one and someone else gets the other then no one wins and no one ties and no one is good” This sounds like tough game but I push forward. Hawkman captures The Penguin on his next move so I counter with Mater taking out Flash. He tells me we have a really good game going and I am proud of myself for some reason. He is clearly making this up as we go but it feels good to be doing well in his imagination.

After a few more piece swaps he uses Professor Z to knock the canon over and declares that he has now captured the canon. I use Superman to knock over the gold and he tells me that no one wins and no one ties and no one is good. Where I felt pride before I now had a troubling feeling. “No one is good?” I asked. “That just means we play again.” So we set the pieces up again and I got to go first. I tried using Superman to block him from the canon and I had once again made a great move. He even had Beautiful come in the room to see what I just did. She had questions about the game that had no answers so she was quickly sent away again. He captured the canon with a ‘dee-oganal’ move and when I used Superman to capture one of his pieces he let out a loud AHA! and captured the gold too. The bad news is I had lost the game, but the good news was that everyone was good.

I still don’t understand the game but I love playing with the little man. He even told me that it would be hard for me to win since he can change the rules when ever he wants because it was his game. I’m fine with never winning this game, as long as I get to see his eyes light up when I make a great move, or hear him explain how to move ‘dee-oganally’

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Vocation and a stay at home dad

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It's a metaphor (photo by http://www.indieimagephoto.com)

This past week I started a new job working part-time from home. I still have the boys to look after, the classroom duties, and the various jobs I have volunteered for in each of their schools. It has been a busy week navigating this new job and the focus that it takes, while trying not to lose focus on the responsibilities that I already had. There is no balance to be found yet but I think that time and intention will help bring these different roles in line. Mostly I have been thinking about what it is I do. When people ask me what I do I have said I am a stay at home dad, I look after the kids and the day-to-day dealings of our family. Now that I have another job on top of that I have been thinking about how I answer that question and what that means about the way I view myself. There is always a concern for stay at home parents that their identity is some how lost in the role of care provider. Not being in the market place means not having clear metrics to measure your value against others. I enjoy being a stay at home dad and feel valuable and valued by my family and most the people I come into contact with. While I’m really excited for this new job and challenge and extra income that it brings I still answer the ‘what do you do’ question the same. I am a stay at home dad and that is the role I identify the most with, and the one I am most proud of. I’m good at this job and I am thankful for the opportunity to have a vocation I enjoy. As for the part-time work I think I will be pretty good at that too, once I figure out how to balance the two.

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Valentine projects paying off

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This year I was on the ball and got started on Valentine’s Day cards for Primo’s class early on. I sent him to school with three kids names each day for him to find out what they love so we could incorporate into unique cards. Mostly I wanted him to engage kids in his class that he doesn’t normally interact with so that he could see them in a new light. I’m not sure how successful that was but he came back with some funny insights into the girls in the class. I picked up supplies at Office Depot and was ready for Valentine’s Day. Since we have a bag full of broken crayons we took a heart-shaped muffin tin and made colorful heart-shaped crayons out of the pieces. Then we cut up some construction paper and for the cards and Primo wrote each kids name in a card and then drew a picture of something each kid liked. For some of the girls in the class the picture was of them with a conflict resolution paper be handed out. He told me that so and so loves handing out conflict papers to the boys in the class and I couldn’t help but giggle. He seems to have girls all figured out at such a young age.

We brought the cards into Primo’s class this morning and he handed them out to each kid explaining what the picture was. He was so excited to find a kid and then explain the crayon he made and what the picture inside meant. Segundo and I needed to head to his pre-school so we tried to move Primo along but there was no rushing him. I handed him the last cards for the kids that weren’t there yet and told him to put each card in their box. He said he would just hold on to them so he could pass them out when they got there.

We had fun making the cards and the crayons and the practice writing his friends names on each card was a great learning opportunity but by far the best part was seeing the pride on his face as he handed out the cards. He thought of each kid when picking out the  heart crayon on the front of the card and the picture inside and he told the kids “I made this for you.”

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Horse Racing for Amateurs

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The rain came back today after a week of sunny but windy and cold weather. We wanted to get out of the house but the wind and the rain made the playground unbearable so we headed to Portland Meadows Race track to watch the ponies. I had never been to Portland Meadows but had wanted to check it out for some time. Parking and admission were free so why not get out of the cold rain and take advantage of some great people and animal watching.

The race track looks like it was built-in the seventies and the only change in thirty years were the touch screen wager stations. First we headed to the paddock and watched the horses get saddled up for the sixth race of the day. The boys loved watching all the action in the paddock and were full of questions. I answered what I could, the security guard helped with others, and one of the jockeys even chimed in when Primo asked how someone so short got on such a big horse: “Watch this!” Everyone we encountered seem to feed off the excitement of the boys and they were more than happy to answer all their questions.

We went from the paddock to the seats upstairs and watched the horses head out to the gate where they would start the race. There was a small TV on our table that we turned on to get a closer look at the action across the track. Primo noticed the eight horse not wanting to get into the gate and told me he didn’t think he was going to win. He picked the one horse, Segundo the four horse, and I went with seven. Once the race started the boys didn’t know where to look and bounced between the close up on the TV, or the view through the huge glass windows, or the frenzy around them as the people around them came to life yelling for their horses. Huge smiles spread across their faces as the race ended and people cursed in one corner and celebrated in another. We grabbed some snacks before the next race and went through the steps all over again.

After watching our third race we headed downstairs to the paddock and then outside to watch the race from the track. One of the riders that would be escorting a race horse to the gate came over to the fence and asked if the boys wanted to pet her horse. The climbed up on the fence and stroked the nose of the horse with a mixture of excitement and fear. When the race horses came out the boys waved to the jockeys before finding some dirt to play in before the last race started. When all was said and done Primo had picked one winner and three second place finishes in the four races we watched. I was out of the money with every pick and Segundo’s strategy of always picking the four horse because he had just turned four was as successful as mine. Next time we will put some money on the races, with Primo picking of course. The races are Mondays and Wednesdays in February so we will be back soon.

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The Kindergarten Economy

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Everyday I pack a snack for Primo in his green metal lunch box. He goes to half day Kindergarten so the snack is just something to get the kids through the morning and keep them alert. Early in the year I put two things in his lunch because there were a couple of kids that didn’t have anything and he liked to share with them. Once all the families got the snack memo I didn’t need to send two things in his box but I liked to give him the choice and he usually had something left over to share with his brother on the ride home. Lately I’ve started to notice that the snack he has left over is not the snack I sent him with in the morning. Take yesterday for example when I sent him with a cheese stick and an orange. When I picked him up he had a cheese stick but it was a different brand than I gave him, and in place of the orange was a grilled cheese sandwich. I asked Primo where this new snack came from and he told me how he shared his orange with one kid and gave his cheese stick to another in exchange for the sandwich. Then he got another cheese stick from a different kid because he shared his cashews with her last week. There seemed to be this whole snack time market place that Primo maneuvered like a wall street trader. He turned fruit snacks into cookies and orange slices into gluten-free grilled cheese. I was never good at trading food in the lunch room economy but it looks like Primo is making good use out of his negotiating skills. These are the real life skills that will serve him well once he finishes school.

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Clearing the low bar of fatherhood

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Today while dropping Primo off at Kindergarten I watched a dad fix his daughter’s hair with clips and a smoothing hand. They were running late so he saved the polishing touches for last and he did a great job. I watched thinking that he was a great dad because he could fix his daughter’s hair with such a smooth hand. The truth is I have no idea if he is a good dad or not, I only know that he knows his way around a hair clip, and if I saw a mom doing the same thing I wouldn’t assume she was a great mom for such a simple daily action. We dads have a low bar when it comes to public opinion of our fatherhood skills. Michael Chabon, in his book Manhood for Amateurs , recounts a scene at a grocery store where he is shopping for food and holding his baby. A woman comments on what a great dad he is and it makes him mad. She thinks he’s a good dad just because he has a baby with him in public when there are at least three other moms there with babies that get no kind smile and public recognition. Chabon goes on to write that he thinks he is a good dad but not because of some low bar of multitasking. Louis CK hits on the same sentiment in an episode of his show Louis when a mom at the playground tells him he’s a great dad. He says “Why am I a great dad, because I’m in the same room as my kids?” She responds that yes that is why and don’t blame her that the bar is so low, blame other dads. Both of these situations illustrate an interesting dichotomy of fatherhood where the men are seen as great fathers for such simple reasons that would never apply to a woman, and fathers are still seen as buffoons that can’t even clear that bar. I don’t know how this view of dads changes but I think it starts with us holding fathers to the higher standard we have for mothers expecting them to meet them. Some day the sight of a dad fixing his daughter’s hair before school might be so common we won’t notice it but I doubt it. There is something that is just so cute watching that scene unfold.

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Hank, Frank, Henry, and Hife

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Today is Segundo’s birthday, and the birthday of his growing list of personalities. I thought that since most of them are new they would have different birthdays but he has informed me I’m wrong. They are all celebrating being four and being one younger than their big brother for the next couple of months.

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Solidifying Our Friendship With Trees

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This weekend we became Friends of Trees. I think we were already pretty close with trees and loved meeting them at the park to play, or nodding hello as we passed on the street but today we solidified the friendship. We aren’t just Facebook friends that quietly stalk each other online and occasionally LIKE a funny status update Trees  makes about birds and the frustration of getting poop stains off birch bark. This weekend we became such good friends of trees that we helped nine of them move to new homes around North East Portland. Everyone knows that’s a true friend right there: one that helps you move.

Beautiful, the boys, and I rallied with a couple hundred other friends to get instructions and break into groups. We were group X, which pleased the boys to no end as they referred to themselves as X-men the rest of the day. What a couple of dorks. We drove to the first house and learned how to plant a tree from our team leader. While others stood by to observe the process the boys got in and got their hands dirty exposing the roots and scarring the hole for maximum success. Sure they were in the way at times but mostly they were the ones leading the charge to get the tree planted. It was great using Walmart gardening tools to plant the trees as a community.

After planting seven trees and having another group plant our other two trees, we met back up at the rally point and shared a meal with all our new friends. Not the trees of course, they had to stay and unpack at the their new homes and enjoyed some cold water while we ate our warm soups. It was a great community building event and we felt so “Portland” for taking part. I was proud of the boys and the way they dug right in and worked hard while others seemed to be there to bring some karmic balance for past sins against nature. I would recommend getting out and volunteering together as a family adventure, we had a great time on ours and felt like we did some good as well.

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Songs for Children of All Ages

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A couple of weeks ago I was followed on Twitter by Lori Henriques and since her bio said she made music I headed over to her website and listened to that music. It was a rough day here in daddy land and the boys were being “powerful” to borrow a term from our previous exchange student. I brought up the music page on the site and started getting lunch ready to the soothing piano and I realized the boys had calmed down and were playing with each other without fighting. I’m not sure if Lori’s music is akin to snake charming for kids but it had a profound effect on all three of us that afternoon. I tweeted about our experience and Lori Henriques responded by sending not just her new album Outside My Door, but also a collection of lullabies called Lullaby Piano. Now we have the CD’s in the car and all of us have been enjoying her music. Primo loves the song “It’s Hard to Wait For Your Birthday” while Segundo is partial to “Enough Is Enough” I think because it has the lyric about goat turds being awkward. I highly recommend Lori’s music even though I can’t guarantee that it will have the same soothing effect on you or your kids as it did to mine.

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PCPO Conference: Building Lifelong Learners

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Tower built with kids on my helper day at pre-school

I am on the board of Segundo’s Co-Op Preschool and one of my jobs is being the schools representative to the PCPO ( Parent Child Preschool of Oregon). The PCPO is a non-profit umbrella organization for more than 65 Co-operative Preschools in the North West and every year they have a conference for parents and teachers with workshops like Early Math Concepts, Positive discipline, and Enhance you Marriage, Improve you Parenting. You can see a full list of the workshops available this year by checking out the Conference Brochure.

This years conference is Saturday March 3, 2012 at Athey Creek Middle School in West Linn, OR. The day is broken down into three workshops, two in the morning and then one after lunch. For each of the workshop times there are a number of options to choose from and something there for everyone. The goal is to build lifelong learners with us as parents and with our kids. The Co-op model works on the principle that we learn as much as the kids do by participating in the class room and taking that out into our days.

If you are a parent or teacher with preschool to first grade age kids in the Portland area then I highly recommend this conference. The price of $50 if registered by February 24, or $60 at the door is an incredible deal for the wealth of knowledge in each of the workshops. Modeling lifelong learning starts with us as parents, and the opportunity to tap into all of these great sessions will keep us on that journey.

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