What Every Kid Knows - but will never tell

Every mother faces that day - the first day of kindergarten when they leave their child to the unknown world of school. I remember when it was The Boy's first day.

Timid and shy, he stood with his back against the brick wall of the school, only watching as the other children ran about to greet schoolmates they had left behind when classes ended in June. On his first day of school, The Boy stood as close as he could get to me, with all the clingy need of a kindergartener , eliciting promises from me to stay with him. I was calm, reassuring and comforting. I told him all about his day and how much fun he would have. He looked up with the eyes of a dog that had been beaten as if to say "How could you do this to me"?

But that was the first day of school. By the third morning, when his older sister was not going to be able to watch over him, and I was torn between staying or being on time for work, I was told in a confident voice "Just go ahead, Mom, I can handle this myself".

A strange thing happens to your beautiful, loving and needy children when they start school. They become kids. They speak the language of kids, their ideas and opinions come from other kids and the only people who are acknowledged to know anything are other kids. I remember all too well the innocent five year old girl with the silken curls, the frilly pink dream of every mother that I took for her first day of kindergarten 9 years ago. That little angel went into the school that day, but she never returned. Instead, they sent home a kid. I still have not recovered from the first time those soft, cherry lips uttered her first kid phrase: "Duh, Mom, I already know that".

I assume that whatever strange and mysterious things go on at school, they are too secretive to share with parents for it seems the children are debriefed at the end of the day with strict instructions to never admit to knowing anything or remembering anything that occurred during school hours. The Boy has only been in school for two weeks before he knew the routine well. I could see his resolve in our conversation while driving home one day that first year.

"What did you have for lunch at school today?" I already knew the items on the menu, I was just being interested in his choices. I thought mothers do that, so I was trying it.

"Nothing."

"Nothing? I gave you lunch money, didn't you order lunch?"

"I don't know."

"You gave them your lunch money, what did you order?"

"I don't know."

This line of questioning obviously wasn't going to work so I took another tack.

"When your teacher takes you and your class to the cafeteria, what do you do there?"

"I don't know."

"Do you get a tray with food on it? Do you sit with your class and eat?"

"I don't know."

"Okay, let me get this straight. When you went into the cafeteria you blacked out and entered some kind of vortex and when you emerged you had no memory of it?"

"I ordered a hamburger and they gave me pizza."

Finally a confession, apparently brought about only because they had made a mistake. His loyalty to the secret school society was weakened when they disappointed him.

"And white milk."

That must have been the last straw, he spat the words "white milk" as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. Even I would not have been so foolish as to forget the chocolate milk and I am only a mother.

But that was the last revelation. I tried to find out what they learned, what games they played or how he liked his teacher. But he had recognized his slip and all I got was: "I don't know".

When I went for my first parent/teacher conference, I heard what a polite child he was, how friendly and outgoing with other children. The teacher explained what letters they were practicing and how they had learned to count by tens. She showed me his artwork and praised his efforts.

But for all I know, it could all be a lie. It may be that they do none of these things. All I have to go by is this stranger's word and a few scraps of paper with some scribbles on them. I have no way of knowing what really goes on in the secret school society.

The Boy knows, but he's not talkin'.

Those Lazy Summer Days

Every summer, school vacation presents problems for parents: how to keep the kids busy and entertained for two months. When I was a kid, this was never a problem. As soon as we woke up in the morning, we were outside, knocking on the doors of friends' houses, running under summer skies throughout the days. I can't remember anyone planning a single activity for us, our imaginations filled the days that seem to last forever and yet were so brief.

Bur for kids today, it's very different. Summers must be planned, activities found, rides sorted out and of course, money plunked down to pay for it all. Being able to stay home and experience summer freedom isn't what it used to be. Since most kids aren't home in the summer, there's little to do in an empty neighborhood.

This year I discovered what seemed to be a perfect solution - the Parks Program. All of the town's parks are staffed with counselors who will guide your young ones through a summer of fun and activities and it's all free. This sounded ideal as the neighborhood park is a mere two or three streets away and the ages served are 6-14, a range inclusive of both the children. Moreover, the elder can keep an eye on the younger.

During their April vacation I was persuaded to allow The Girl and her friend take the The Boy to the park. They had a raucous good time - playing, swinging, sunning and buying junk food from the ice cream truck. They went every day and vowed to spend all Saturdays in this manner. Although they never actually went to the park again, I still thought itsounded like the perfect plan.

As with any perfect plan, it went wrong before it began. The elder, being a 14 year old girl, had no interest whatsoever in going to the park, let alone watching a younger brother. She was bribed into participation with promises of payment, but soon even the prospect of spending money was not enough to rouse her from her bed to walk the three blocks.

Soon, the younger realized that the counselors don't insist on participation in games and that they have an "open door" policy, which meant he could leave at any time. The first time he decided to exercise this right was a day when clouds lowered heavily and there was an imminent threat of rain and thunder. Having kept a close eye on the weather, I set out to pick him up only to find him already making his way home, having left upon feeling the first tiny droplet of rain.

Soon his reasons to leave were such things as boredom, he forgot his favorite Pokemon card, he hit his thumb on a tree, etc. He began to find reasons not to go before he even got there and turned back halfway.

But never fear, The Boy has found the perfect activity to keep him busy all summer. At the top of the street (the hill, as he calls it), he has found a depression in the ground under a tree. He likes to sit in "the hole" and... well, I don't know what else he does. But when I call to him and ask what he's doing, he simply yells back "I am up the hill". Further inquiry reveals that he is "sitting in the hole".

Sure he will spend time riding his scooter, catching bugs, and just running for the sake of running, but it's nice to know that he will spend some time as I remember spending time on those long summer days. Sitting in quiet contemplation from a shady spot, perfectly situated to observe the world and its wonders - a walking stick on the tree bark, a dragon in the clouds flying through the sky - the wonders that we once saw on a summer afternoon. They are still there, though we no longer see them through the busy-ness of life. But sometimes, through the eyes of a child, we experience them once again.

A Fishy Story

Today may be the day I finally put the aquarium to rest, although I will miss it as a fixture in my livingroom. I rather like the soothing babbling noises of the filter and watching the air bubbles rise. I like the colorful gravel and the large rock formation that rises from it. It's a focal point for guests who stare at it in rapt amazement until they finally ask "where are the fish"?

It's another fish tale, the ones that didn't get away so much as simply expired. I expect goldfish to die with some regularity, but some were the victims of exceptional circumstances.

I believe it began when The Boy's teacher decided to put a little goldfish bowl in the center of every group of desks (nowadays, second graders are allowed to look at each other during school - the desks are pushed together in groups of four). The fish were a grand biology experiment for the children. They would learn how to be responsible for living things that they fed and cared for. Needless to say, all the fish died.

I saw one of the early corpses firsthand. When I arrived to pick my son up at his afterschool program, a counselor took me aside and handed me a plastic baggie with a small, mushy, somewhat shiny, indistinguishable mound of something that looked like it might have been a sardine that had slid out of a sandwich to the floor and had been stepped upon. I didn't make him a sardine sandwich that day.

The counselor explained that The Boy had shown up there with a fish in his pants pocket, a very dead fish. No autopsy had been performed, but a type of dissection by erosion had taken place while the body was transported inside the pocket of a small boy's jeans. The question then became, did the fish die before or after he reached the pocket?

The Boy upon questioning admitted to removing the fish from the trash after its natural demise. So when the children requested a couple of goldfish as pets, I didn't think it would be a problem.

The first fish that got sick received prompt attention from The Boy who decided to pick him up and comfort him, hastening his passing. Later fish died on their own as they will do, but also due to overfeeding, underfeeding, general attention and general neglect.

The most abused fish were the deceased ones. Although I firmly advised a flush funeral, The Girl insisted on burial. The Boy would then insist on exhuming the carcass for further examination. When the last fish finally went to Davy Jone's locker, I said "enough".

The tank is very clean now. If you glance at it quickly, the play of light and shadow makes you think you can see fish swimming about. Watching fish swim in an aquarium is rated highly as a relaxation technique. But watching an empty tank only gives one a desire to fill it and I have already seen where that leads.

So to avoid the many hours of relaxation followed by even more hours of high frustration, I think I will empty the fish tank today.

I Am Not a Supermom

Have you ever woken up one day and wondered what your kids ever did to deserve you? Or rather, do they deserve better?

Recently I have had the experience of meeting "accomplished" mothers. These are the mothers who have such a list of credits to their names, it's nearly impossible to imagine how they managed to squeeze in time for pregnancy and birth. I do know one thing, they were probably multi-tasking during labor.

These mothers have immaculate houses. They make elaborate meals out of vegetables and grains they have grown themselves - organically. They sew, they churn butter, they knit the kids new bicycles out of steel wool.

I start to feel inadequate. I begin to pity my kids. I start to wonder why I had them, why did I want to bring children into the world when I wasn't prepared to make cookies for the bake sale, volunteer to sew costumes for the school play, head up the local fund-raising efforts and do spot welding on fighter jets in my spare time?

Then reality hits me. My mother never did any of those things either, and I don't remember ever resenting it. In fact as I face homework sent with my child that requires that I participate and then sign that I have participated, I can only imagine my mother's reaction should any of my teachers ever tried to send her homework.

I don't want to be without influence in my children's lives but I am not sure that constant accomplishment equals influence. I want them to know what I believe, know what I think is important, understand how to have compassion and how to forgive failings and foibles.

I don't live up to the perfect suburban mom standard. I am disorganized and scatterbrained and rushed and forgetful. Some days I get tired and order pizza. I let them eat it on the fly instead of forcing the family to sit down and talk about our days. But if they have something to tell me, I can listen instead of needing to wash the dishes, finish my needlepoint or paint a mural on the side of the garage.

Motherhood is hard enough without having to try to live up to impossible standards. I believe more mothers are like me and my mother than are like the supermoms. At least I hope so. And my children are lucky I am not a supermom, because truthfully, they're not perfect either. For now, we will each just have to make do with what we got.

The Great Deconstruction

With a week home from school, children find new ways to be bored or new ways to make you think they are languishing in a bored state when really they are doing something dastardly. Such a one is The Boy.

The Boy has shown a great interest in tools. In order to foster his interest in a safe and constructive way, I have bought him numerous kits from the crafts store. The thing is that he hardly ever shows a great interest in putting these thing together, not even the toolbox. He's very happy once it has been constructed and he loves the smaller-sized but real wrenches and screwdrivers that come with the kits. In fact, he prizes them above all and will immediately set about using them to do what he does best - deconstruction.

The Boy's great interest in life is not in putting things together, but in taking them apart. He has disassembled a robot, an artist's easel and a gumball machine - all Christmas presents. Disassembly yields even greater prizes, for he then has a pocket full of screws and nuts and bolts that jingle-jangle and he proudly makes his deconstructed music everywhere he goes.

I suppose you could say he has a curious mind - takes things apart because he wants to know how they work. That would be very comforting, but I am afraid he takes things apart just to get the parts. Perhaps he is planning some large and secret construction of his own. That is an unsettling and yet amusing thought.

I wonder what he will make with a robot head, some wing nuts, a plastic bubble and a dry-erase board?

The Tween Christmas

It was a rough Christmas for The Girl. She is 13, the age where no one quite knows what to buy for you. At 13, you are too old for dolls, although some part of you may still yearn for them. At 13, you love new and fashionable clothes, but still feel cheated if that is all you get. It's the equivalent of an "underwear Christmas". But there are no "toys" for 13-year-olds. Basically, there are electronics and video games, the occasional board game that disappoints because you can never get anyone to sit and play it with you and there are clothes.

Don't get me wrong, she loved her presents, even the clothes and the "girly" items. But some part of her deep down inside is not quite ready to give up her child's Christmas. I understand because I was thirteen once. Thirteen is a bridge between the child you were and the woman you will be. The woman who is struggling to become tries to shake off the child that still desperately clings and it's both exhilirating and heartbreaking.

I remember when I was nearly that age, maybe 11 or 12. I had my eye on a doll that rode her own little bike and it was just the sort of doll I had always wanted but never had found under the Christmas tree. Due to one of my tomboyish escapades, I had broken a tooth some years earlier and now I was at the age where the dentist wanted to do a more permanent repair; my dental age being sufficiently matured, something other than the bonding was required. Because this was to be a long and painful procedure, my mother wanted to reward me with something that would make up for the long hours in the dentist chair and lift my spirits. I asked for that doll.

It wasn't until I actually had the doll in hand that I realized what a mistake it was to have asked for it. I wanted to play with her and feel the joy and wonder that I would have felt if I had been a few years younger, but I didn't. No, I wasn't trying to recapture my youth. I realize now, it was the child in me trying to create the experience she had always wanted and never had. A last desperate act of the child in me trying to resolve final issues and tie up loose ends as the woman slowly assumed control.

I wish I weren't aware of my tween's struggle, or why she seemed so disappointed. It would be easier to tell her to grow up and act her age, to explain that she is too old for toys and that she needed the clothes and the boots and the bath accessories. But instead, I want to go out and buy her a toy, a doll, or a stuffed animal, anything that would say, it's okay to be an in-between. As a mother, I mourn the loss of the girl-child as much as I take pride in the emergence of the young woman.

Perhaps I should tell her about my doll.

The Elegant Rug

When I was young and proving useless and aimless (well, perhaps disinterested is a better word) I had a guidance counselor at school who felt that finding me a good way to expand my horizons might rev up my interest level in life and school and maybe even homework. So, off I went for piano lessons.

Although I was a poor student in that I rarely practiced, I enjoyed taking piano lessons and playing music. But I enjoyed going to my music teacher's home more than the lessons or the music.

She had a wonderful array of books and lamps and vases and items that evoked the style and attitudes of an earlier period. The house had atmosphere. There may have been rock n' roll and dayglo and tie-dye outside, but in her world there was Bach, Beethoven and a sumptuous Victorian elegance.

What I admired most were her gorgeous rugs, of which she had two. They were Perisan carpets of different color schemes, one mostly red and the other a delicate blue. This firmly set Persian rugs in my mind as the ultimate in home decoration.

This rug is nearly exactly like the blue rug in my teacher's front room. In my child's mind, it has become the symbol of what I want when I finally achieve my goals and have the home I want. I will build my decor around it, in fact, there will be a room dedicated to it. A bright, open room with shiny, hardwood floors and a shiny, black baby grand piano to perfectly accent my rug.

There are other criteria for this dream house such as that it must be by a lake or the ocean and I have this idea about a deck but all of that is very complicated so I am going to concentrate on starting with the rug. I will work up from there.

The Joy of Christmas Trees

When I moved away from home and began my new life as an apartment-dweller, I switched from having real Christmas trees to artificial ones. By this time, the miniature lights had become the popular fashion and so the larger, hotter and more dangerous 7 watt bulbs were out. Made of spage-age polymers first developed for use in space by NASA, the tree is more likely to melt into a great, green puddle than to go up in flames. That, together with the cooler lights, seemed to make the whole business slightly less worthy of emergency fire department visits when the tree stayed up too long following the big day. In fact, if I leave the tree up until March, what's the harm?

The delicate nature of a real tree demands that you do not purchase and set it up too many days before Christmas, or you risk a brown tree with razor-sharp needles that might poke Santa (express ticket to the naughty list) or give you a nasty tree-rash when you take it down. An artificial tree can be put up at anytime, but traditonally (my tradition) I think the weekend following Thanksgiving is soon enough. It seems appropriate as the day after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday, is the start of the holiday shopping season and also when Santa arrives in town at then end of our little holiday parade.

But this year, The Boy wanted the tree up even earlier. Judging his sense of restlessness and how unlikely it was that I would get any peace until it was up, I agreed to allow them to put up the tree on the weekend before Thanksgiving. This is the third year in a row that I have had little or nothing to do with putting up the tree. The Boy and The Girl do it all themselves. As The Boy gets older, it goes more smoothly. This year he didn't have to ask at all about the letters on the branches or which order they go in. He's even tall enough to help The Girl put up the lights. I am not even needed for my height anymore.

Of course, the tree doesn't have that elegant, coordinated, Tiffany look. There are no less than three different colors of tinsel garland and they are wrapped around the tree at various levels, so that it is red at the top third, then white, then gold, like a striped tree. They also insisted on having as many strings of lights flashing as they could find flasher bulbs for. My tree should come with a seizure warning, like the ones they put on video games. The ornaments are placed haphazardly and those favored by The Girl usually have a photo of her on them and are grouped at eye level on the front of the tree for maximum exposure.

But you know what? It's beautiful.

It's beautiful because they are so proud of it. It's beautiful because it has special meaning to them. It's beautiful because it's a product of their own creativity. It's beautiful because it represents sibling cooperation.

But mostly, it's beautiful because I didn't have to do it myself. It will become a lot less beautiful after Christmas. It's much harder to find good help to take it all down again.

The Girl Who Cried Wolf

The Girl is home from school today. I had to say yes, because she is complaining of all the same symptoms I have been experiencing. If I am going to give myself the pampering I think I deserve when I am sick, then I can't deny her illness.

Although occasionally it is hard to know if The Girl is really sick, she has a flair for the dramatic. She may limp about for days after stubbing a toe - unless you catch her in an unguarded moment. As emergency medical attention is not always offered when she bumps an elbow, she will rig up a sling made out of a winter scarf or a long stocking. The effect of a pink sling with snowflakes and Santa on it may not be as devastating as she would like to believe.

I watched in amazement when, at 18 months of age, she alternately practiced laughing, smiling, looking surprised and looking sad in her crib mirror. I shook my head in disbelief when at 4 she told the pediatrician that her legs sometimes went into spasms and she couldn't walk. As the doctor and I both stared, wide-eyed, at her demonstration of a girl using those "sticks that help you walk", her objective suddenly became clear to me. "She's trying to score a pair of crutches", I explained to the baffled physician.

I have told her the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf many times but it hasn't made an impression. What good are stories with a moral if they aren't going to scare children? I think Hansel and Gretel would be a better choice. She might think twice about eating all the school snacks in one afternoon - after all, she might need them one day to find her way out of the woods.

How To Be a Slacker Prepared

The countdown to school begins. We now have less than 48 hours to the first day of school and preparations are proceeding at a fevered pitch.

The Girl has started out well. She is organizing all her notebooks and folders well ahead of time, even preparing labels for each section of her mega-binder so that all homework and class worksheets can be placed in their rightful category. To watch her, one can't help but be impressed with her organizational skills and her responsible approach to schoolwork.

However, school often starts this way. It doesn't take long to degenerate into a mad search in the evening for the math worksheet and hastily placed phone calls to classmates wondering if they know which words she is supposed to study for the vocabulary quiz. I have had teachers tell me of homework that arrives crumpled with chocolate fingerprints and other,less easily identified stains. Other work may still be damp from having been placed under her wet bathing suit in her backpack. Books needed at school are left at home, books needed for homework are left at school. Miscellaneous items are scattered throughout the cars and homes of relatives and friends. The urgent plea to buy her an item needed for a project due on Friday is usually made on Thursday night.

Yes, The Girl is organizationally challenged, suffering from impaired preparatory skills, lacking sufficient organization motivation. In other words, she's a little lazy.

I can understand this, as I was the child who did homework in front of the TV and wrote five page reports the day before they were due. The difference is, that I got away with it. If you are going to be lazy and unorganized, it's imperative that you turn in what appears to be a well thought out paper, a report full of references or at the very least, pass the pop quiz. These are the real skills that she is lacking. It's hard work to be prepared, but if you are going to be a slacker, then you need to learn how to deliver the goods under pressure and at the last minute.

I think a lot of this is dependent on maturity. This is the child that didn't like first grade because they didn't play as many games as in kindergarten. If you find first grade to be grueling, then middle school is bound to be like being taken from a warm, comfortable bed and dunked into a tub of ice water. But as she grew to accept that first grade was about learning and not about socializing and fun, so she will accept that middle school is about responsibility and preparing for the future. It just might take some time.

At least that's going to be my line when I get to the first parent/teacher conference. I hope they buy it.

Ben Franklin Never Had a Mom

The sun is shining brightly outside my window, so brightly in fact, that it's hard to see the computer monitor. Whoever would have thought that I would come to prefer dim rooms with little light for the sake of reading words from a little screen?

Despite the bright sunshine the weather forecast promises thunderstorms. Now thunderstorms are the bane of the computer addict - close and severe storms mean powering down to protect your machine. Separation anxiety can overcome you within minutes.

But thunderstorms are greeted in my house with as little fanfare as possible. I don't want to have the children overly-anxious about lightning as I was when I was a child. A healthy respect for its power and the dangers it possesses is fine, but my mother knew how to instill deep and lasting fear.

Most people know how to avoid the most obvious dangers during a thunderstorm - turn off the computer, maybe turn off the TV, don't talk on the cordless phone, don't take a bath. Don't try to emulate Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod experiments. But my mother had much more detailed rules.

Windows all had to be closed. No one was allowed near windows or doors. We weren't allowed to tread upon the carpet as it might contain wool fibers, and she was convinced that wool was a great conductor of electricity. For similar reasons, we weren't allowed to pet the dog, not even if she was dry. She felt that dog hair was probably as good a conductor of electricity as the carpet. So we were a family of 5 sitting on the couch with our legs crossed under us, yelling furiously at the dog to go out to the kitchen until such time as the storm had passed.

They say the odds of getting struck by lightning are about one in nine million. Strangely, although I don't know nearly nine million people, I personally know three who have been struck by lightning. None of them were walking on the carpet or petting the dog.

My rules for thunderstorms are a little more lax than my mother's. No playing outside in the rain when there's lightning, no holding steel rods out the windows. You can watch TV if you sit on a chair a good distance from it until the power cuts out. If there is more than one crack of lightning in a row that sounds like it just blew up your garage, it's probably best not to sit too close to an open window. If the power goes out, only the mother can light the candles and no, you can't take one to bed with you.

The truth of the matter is, if you don't do anything really stupid, the chances of being struck by lightning are one in nine million. Let's face it, if it's gonna get you, it's gonna get you. Might as well watch the end of American Idol.

There Goes the Bride - Again

The Boy was 6 when he walked into the kitchen one day and said to me "Mom, I like girls". It was very matter-of-fact. I nodded, a little short on words since I didn't know if this was just a declaration or the beginning of one of "those" chats. I simply said "That's good, glad to hear it".

Now there's no doubt he's a handsome little thing with a shock of dark blonde hair that glistens with natural streaks of gold, big blue eyes and a winning smile. But The Boy is only 7 and he's been engaged twice and married once.

Oh yeah, he got married. His first fiancé, who is 8 years old, moved to another town and he was quite distressed at first. But it didn't take him long to replace her with a new neighbor who is also 8. The kid's got a thing for older women.

The wedding was sprung on me without advance warning. The Girl got busy making cupcakes for the occasion, filled the house with stuffed animal guests and they all got dressed up. The Boy wore a shirt and tie - he knows how to impress a lady. I was commissioned to play the wedding march on the keyboard and they marched through the house to a lovely outdoor ceremony after which they were taken away in a red wagon. It was a lovely wedding.

Now the wife is moving across town, and will be attending a different school. At 7 and 8, I don't think long-distance relationships survive very long. I don't think I will survive if I am called upon to transport him daily to visit her.

On the other hand, I don't think I am ready for yet another engagement or a second marriage. Besides, who will get custody of the wagon?

Boys, Bumps & Bikes

The Boy is growing up. I guess I still think of him as someone who wants Batman pyjamas and Spiderman shaped snacks, but little by little he's eliminating those icons of boyhood with items that are "cool". We were looking together for a skateboard online, and I was quoting him the specs of the ones we could afford. I later overheard him telling a friend, with a sad resignation in his voice, "I have to get the Spongebob one".

A few weeks ago, the kid couldn't even ride a scooter. I have to hand it to him, he practiced for hours in the driveway, a few feet of coasting at a time. He was out there regardless of whether the sun was beating down on his fair face or whether rain was dripping off his hair into his eyes. And - he mastered it.

The next thing was the daily harangue to take the training wheels off his bicycle. I told him it had to wait for a weekend, when I would have time to come out and help him learn to ride it, relating serious stories of the dangers involved - learning to steer, falling down, collisions, injuries, crashing into solid objects. He was unmoved. Alas, he had outgrown his bike and it was in bad shape so taking the training wheels off didn't make a difference, the bike was unrideable. Not one to be easily defeated, he opted to try the girl neighbor's pink bike. The kid rode it easily on the first try, he didn't fall once. I guess all that practice on the scooter had already honed his balance.

Now he has a new bike - larger and more manly in red and black. He is obsessed with riding his bike the way he was obsessed with mastering the scooter. He rides the bike every moment he can, thinking up ways to go faster, looking for objects to run over and plotting tricks and risky maneuvers with which to frighten his mother.

I am nervously biting my nails and biding my time over this one. I know the obsession with the bike will cool and eventually his bike-riding will be just one of many things he likes to do. I know that his skill on the bike will increase and so far, I have managed to keep him from ditching his helmet (although I have my doubts about its future, it has Power Rangers on it).

I wonder if one day The Boy will be grown up enough that I won't worry about his high interest level in dangerous activities.

I doubt it.

I think I'm going to need a lifetime enrollment at the nail salon.

Saved From Television

I don't watch TV anymore. It's a conscious choice now, but it started when my cable bill became too exorbitant to budget about three or four years ago and for the next two years we didn't have television in our house. The reception these days is so weak, an antenna provided nothing more than snow.

After the cable went off, I bought the first of what turned out to be a series of cheap DVD players and invested in movies and children's shows for the kids to watch. A membership in the local video store provided the newer films that we couldn't afford to buy. Besides, once the kids have watched a movie about 25 times or so, they lose interest. Of course, once they have watched it 25 times or so, you have lost brain cells. By the way, you don't get those back.

I noticed how well-behaved and engaged the children were when we visited relatives with cable. They would turn on Disney or Nickolodeon and sit transfixed before the flickering screen. Foolishly, I thought that if I relented and got them real television at home, it would have the same effect. So, in an effort to avail myself of an electronic babysitter, I got satellite TV with not just one Disney channel, but two! East coast and west coast so they could watch everything twice if they wanted to.

I never re-entered the world of television viewing myself. I kept up with all the news I needed on the net and threw myself into blogging - a brave new world. The internet had taken up all the slots in my prime-time.

As I traverse the blogosphere I find I don't actually need a TV to keep up with all the latest shows. There are entire blogs dedicated to sitcoms, reality shows and soap operas (although these are starting to lose popularity).

As for the kids, they tire of television easily now. My grand scheme to pay a monthly fee and secure a few moments of quiet for myself hasn't really panned out. These days, they would much rather play outside, ride scooters, run and scream and get deliciously dirty.

Sometimes, they make me proud.