Hey, have you seen our little sister?
My youngest daughter doesn’t do mornings. She wakes up last of her two siblings and groggily wanders into the kitchen for breakfast with no more to say than, “I want breakfast.”
I then ask the four-year-old what she wants and she shakes her head no until we get to what she wants to eat. Then she stares out the window or lies her head on the table until breakfast is served, silent as can be.
Then the other day she came into the kitchen and knew exactly what she wanted: to sit in the booster chair that somehow had made it back to the kitchen table after a year or more of disuse.
The problem? Her seven-year-old brother was sitting in it and he wasn’t about to budge. Not even as she voiced her demands, or as she fidgeted or stared at him with darts in her eyes. Not even as she barked out, “I want to sit in the baby chair NOW!” [continue reading…]
Well, if not a monster truck, what about a tank?
I sometimes think that my kids will share my views and tastes, that they will grow up to be bronzed, laid-back surfers like their father. Well, not quite. I am as pale as can be and prone to stress attacks.
But you get the idea.
The realization that this may not happen with my three young children came with their tastes in cars, at least my son’s.
I’d love a Volkswagen Van or even a Vanagon to drive on long cross-country trips to hunt out good waves and head into the deepest forests and high into the mountains of the Argentine Patagonia. We could sleep in the pop-up top on cold nights. And put on some Neil Young, Janice Joplin and Bob Marley as we cruise the open highways and drive north in the search of waves in Chile, Peru and then Ecuador. [continue reading…]
Yeah, Dad. I know. The great outdoors! But it would also make a great screen saver.
My seven-year-old son was getting on my nerves.
He came to me for what seemed the 100th time and said he was bored and there was nothing to do.
I said, “Go out and play.”
He said, “Boring.”
Of course, he didn’t mean it was boring to play outside, especially not in our house on the coast of Argentina, where a garden-cum-forest beckons. There are trees to climb, bikes to ride and a sandy lane out front where the neighborhood kids get together for games of soccer or just to shoot the breeze. That’s how I spent my youth in Los Angeles, albeit with a lot of cement and cars. But we didn’t give a hoot. It was what we knew. So we raced our bikes, played football and snuck into neighbor’s pools for a dip. Or we’d walk up to the shops to mill around. Or further afield to the fast pace of Westwood Village, a trip that required (for us, at least) a frightful dash across a graveyard after riling each other with tales of ghouls and ghosts and vampires.
But then there were times when we were just too beat for any adventuring, and all we wanted to do was plop down and vegetate in front of the TV watching “Gilligan’s Island” reruns. Or anything, for that matter.
I knew that this was what my son was angling for. [continue reading…]
