Mr. Rogers

     Ryland has somehow stumbled across Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and it is now his favorite show. This is amazing, seeing that there is no advertising for the show, it has no toys associated with it, and it has been off the air for almost twenty years. We first started watching Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood a couple of years ago when he was really little and I decided to let him watch Mr. Rogers and we didn't even get through the first five minutes before he said he didn't like it. Now, all three kids are come running to the TV when they hear the opening bars of "Won't You Be My Neighbor" on the piano. They sit and stare at the TV while Mr. Rogers and his fellow neighbors slowly meander through whatever activity it is that they are doing in that episode.

    I often watch Mr. Rogers with the kids when I put it on because I like the show as well. It's hard not to notice how slow the action (or lack thereof) the show goes though. Shows like Thomas the Tank Engine and other preschool shows have to speed up their pace and make it more action packed and colorful in order to keep kids' attention, but good ol' Mr. Rogers seems to keep my kids in a trance one slow quiet moment by one slow quiet moment. Watching him feed the fish or pour and then drink a glass a milk is as riveting as any new adventure they can throw at you on the Disney Channel.

     Another thing that you will notice is that most of the main characters are old. It's as if my kids are watching a play put on in a retirement community. Most everyone has gray hair, which is in stark contrast to the kids that are running around screaming on Nickelodeon in full force sensory overload. I find it refreshing that in an age where youth is supreme, Mr. Rogers and his gang of aging neighbors set an example of manners and respect that you won't see in many other shows. If you were to come to a TV executive and prepose a show where everyone is over the age of 50 and there will be light jazz music with singing and half of the show will have old ugly puppets the show would never get off the ground floor.

     We like to tell people that our kids, especially Ryland, love Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and they will just look at us like our kids are strange. Ryland has learned several of the songs and will sing them around the house, even changing his shoes and zipping up his jacket while singing like Mr. Rogers does. As a party trick, we will ask Ryland to sing a few songs and he will then sing to all of our friends and family that he would like them to be his neighbor.

     It's endearing to hear him sing the songs because, though it is not the norm for today's fast paced culture, we can remember a simpler time in our lives where we too sat and watched Mr. Rogers and sang some of the songs and believed that all adults were loving, caring, and respectful. I definitely remember Mr. Rogers feeding the fish and putting food in his 1950's refrigerator and all of that brings back fond memories of when I didn't have a care in the world and that the world around me was filled with people who only wanted to either help me or show me the cool things that they do for a living. It's a shame that real life is not like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and we have to deal with evil people, vile politics, and a fast paced non-forgiving world. I strive to keep the innocence and the sense of wonder alive in my kids as long as possible and I'm glad that even more than ten years after his death, Mr. Rogers can still give that to our kids.

    Side note, Ryland says that when he gets to Heaven he will sing "Won't You Be Your Neighbor" to Mr. Rogers. That will be fun to see.
 

   

Judas

     When I read the story of Jesus at the last supper, I wonder what was going through the disciples' minds when they asked who would betray Jesus. In the Gospel of John 13:24-27 Peter asks Jesus who will betray Him and it seems pretty obvious when Jesus hands Judas the bread dipped in the bowl, but then it says in verse 28-29 "But no one at the table knew for what reason He said this to him. For some thought, because Judas had the money box, that Jesus had said to him, 'Buy those things we need for the feast,' or that he should give something to the poor." NKJV. In Matthew 26:25 it reads, "Then Judas, who was betraying Him, answered and said, 'Rabbi, is it I?' He said to him, 'You have said it.'" NKJV. Judas acts dumb the whole time, even while being blatantly accused in front of all of his friends and Jesus who knows all.

    Sometimes we also deny that we know what stupid thing that we are doing. Ryland has gotten into the habit of doing something wrong, and then denying it even though we were all watching him when he did it. I told him that I know when he is lying, and for the most part I can tell. As children and as Children of God, we think that we can get away with our sins, pretend that they did not happen, and then deny deny deny, as if God does not know all. This is the new challenge for us as parents as we have to discipline Ryland as he denies vehemently the very thing that he is getting in trouble for, furthering his punishment when what he did in the first place was probably not all that bad. 

It Was All Yellow

     There is this song from Coldplay from 2000 that I used to listen to all of the time in college and the words were something about everything being yellow, "It was all yellow," I think were the words. I'm not the best with lyrics so I'm not quite sure what all was yellow in the song, but I do know that with Juliana every color is yellow. When she was first starting to talk, every thing that she saw was yellow. I will show her a blue crayon or a red block and say, "What color is this?" She would then say loud and proud, "Lellow!" By the way, lellow is baby for yellow.

     I'm not sure why "lellow" is the word that my kids like to say so much. Weston used to say it so much that his favorite color is now yellow by default. When every color is yellow and you ask Weston what color cup or plate or crayon he wants he always says yellow so he always gets yellow. He sees yellow all of the time because it's now his default favorite color like most boys' favorite color is blue and most girls' favorite color is pink. It works out fine for things like plates and shirts and crayons, but not as well for lollipops. When I ask all of the kids what flavor lollipop they want, Weston will instinctively say yellow, which is then met with a scrunched up face after taking the first lick of the sour lemon lollipop that I just handed him.

     Juliana has moved past just saying that everything is yellow and is talking, though every color is still yellow. She is not just talking a little though, she is talking a lot. And loud. She is saying full sentences now and she's not even two. When Weston was two, I wasn't sure if he was ever going to really talk at all. Juliana though is turning out to be a real loquacious little girl that has more to say than she even has words to speak. I can only imagine what it will be like years from now. She will have a full novel of a story to tell me when she gets home from school and by bedtime she will still be only half way through the thoughts and feelings of the first few hours of her day.

     Her talkative nature is good for me though, because I am a good listener. That is what I do best. I can sit there and listen and listen and listen. It's good for me because it makes me a very likable person and all I have to do is sit there while whoever I'm listening to spills their heart and soul out all over the place. Right now Juliana's speaking is short. Actually, most of her sentences are run on words so that her sentences are just one really long word instead of several distinctly different words such as, "whereditgo," for "where did it go," and, "imerighthere," for "I'm right here." I'm looking forward to the days ahead when she will be able to tell me all that she is thinking and feeling in distinct words and sentences, but for right now, it's nice that it's all yellow.

Push Them Over

Juliana is just beginning to walk. She started standing from a squat position a week or so ago and will start taking some steps by herself. This is a joyous time when I finally see Juliana begin to be more mobile and independent and start to grow up, a definite upgrade from the drooling, babbling, barfing, pooping blob that constitutes the first few months of her life. This is a time when I am both happy that she is growing up, and filled with dread that she will soon be running all over the house and getting into things faster. This is the point where I should really think long and hard about my immediate future and what a walking child can accomplish. I should take this opportunity and begin to push her down every time she starts to stand up.

     I loved watching Ryland begin to walk, but was filled with trepidation when Weston started walking, especially since he started walking at ten months. It's like that little booger was born to run and get into everything. With Juliana, I'm both happy that she will soon be able to walk, and thus be able to run away from her annoying brothers, and uneasy that she will be following me around the house constantly.

     Growing up is a wonderful and milestones are important for the child, but during the transitions can be terrible for the parent. For example, potty training. Ryland took a long time to potty train. There were times where I felt like I was reading an entire libraryful worth of books while he sat on his little Thomas the Tank Engine potty giggling and listening to stories until something inevitably would come out on its own and then I could shower him in praises. We finally got the bright idea of giving him the phone to play with so that we didn't have to spend all our time in the bathroom, but then he learned that the only way he could watch Youtube was when he was going potty so he spent even more time sitting on the potty.

     I dislike changing diapers and wiping the pasty poo from in between all of their little fat rolls, but accidents where pee gets on the floor and poop falls down the leg of their pants is even worse. There's not much worse than hearing the words, "I had an accident" and then struggling to get his underwear off make sure that the giant ball of poop in the underwear doesn't plop onto the ground and stick like silly putty to the tile floor. It was time like these that I thought that having him in diapers forever wouldn't be so bad.

     Walking is not as messy as potty training, however. It's the joy of seeing Juliana make the steps into toddlerhood and also the dread that with this new mobility she will be running away from me when she needs to get dressed or run out into the parking lot. The ability to walk is an important skill and babies are eager to learn it. Even the youngest of babies will start to move their little feet in a walking motion if you hold them up. It would seem that walking would help me out more, but my kids always seemed to want to walk in the places I didn't want them to walk, like the parking lot, and were physically unable to walk when I had five hundred things in my hands.

     In the end, it is probably better that Juliana learns how to walk. It may be more frustrating for the time being, but in a few years if I have to carry her to her first day of preschool and have to explain to her teachers that she can talk and is potty trained, but never learned to walk will be embarrassing on my part. I guess I'll take the constant running into things so that it looks like I beat my child with a wiffle bat and the following me around all of the time over having to continue to carry her everywhere for the rest of her life. On the bright side, at least I'm not teaching her how to drive yet.

Death

  Lately, Ryland has been talking about death. I know that this is a thing that children will often start to talk about when they start to realize that things die and that people will die too. Ryland is not the normal toddler (so every parent says about their child). Ryland is a contemplative little guy that thinks about things and ponders them while twirling his hair. He comes up with some of the strangest questions sometimes that I know he has been mulling over for hours such as, “Did God start out as a baby?” I’m sure that some of our teaching adventures have back-fired into making him contemplate things that he would not have otherwise. Most children would learn a little, think something is neat, and then move on, but not Ryland. He has to analyze it and then pops back with a million questions about it, usually days or weeks later so that it comes unexpectedly.

He has been asking a lot about when certain people will die, like me or his grandparents, or friends or worse, himself. While riding in the car one day he said that when Mom and I die that he was going to get a new mom and dad. That just puts a downer on the mood while singing along with Veggie Tales Silly Songs in the car. Kids seem to have a way to cut right through you in their baseness that is usually unheard of in adult circles. He then backtracked and said that we were not going to die any time soon, so he didn’t need to worry about it. Thanks, now I’m worrying about it.

One particular week he was talking a lot about death. He would be sitting in his car seat twirling his hair staring into space and start to get teary eyed and say that he did not want to die or he would just get out of the bath and start talking about his eminent demise. It’s heartbreaking to think of your four year old dying and that he gets upset knowing and thinking about dying. We were in the grocery store one day and got a coupon for something that was going to go off sale that day and Kara asked me, “is today the last day?” As in, is today the last day of the sale? Ryland responded with, “…to be alive?” This probably means that while we were talking about ice cream and Lucky Charms that were on sale, he was thinking about when his last day on Earth would be. It’s hard enough to divert situations where death really does come up, let alone when we are talking about things that are completely different and he is still thinking about death.

As a parent, when questions come up that seem difficult such as death, answering them honestly is the best thing to do. This is, of course, the exact opposite of what we did when our beta fish died. We got a fish and Ryland named him Charlie, but Charlie did not live as long as we thought he would. We bought him food, but what we thought was regular food turned out to only be fish treats (why would they even make fish treats, it’s not like they do tricks or anything) and so when the package said that you should only feed him two to three times a week, we followed the instructions. So essentially, we starved Charlie to death. We did the responsible thing and replaced Charlie with another male beta fish that looked very similar and called him Charlie and did not tell the kids. We killed Charlie II in the exact opposite manner. We overfed him so that his belly got so big that he just died with a swollen belly. We replaced Charlie II and got a new fish, but Charlie III did not look like Charlie I or II at all. He was smaller and much more blue than the other two Charlies. 

Ryland got up early the morning after we replaced Charlie II with Charlie III and he  noticed that Charlie looked like he was a different color, more blue and solid colored. He said that he liked Charlie’s old color. He then started asking why Charlie also looked a lot smaller than before. Kara and I looked at each other and tacitly decided to break the news to him. We were prepared for the worst outcome of him either crying or him wondering about his own mortality all day. Kara kindly and gently told him what happened to Charlie and that this was a new fish. He just looked at Charlie III, looked at us, then looked back at Charlie III and laughed. I’m not sure if that was a sign of maturity or that he is turning into a psychopath, but I’m glad we did the right thing, and also that he didn’t ask a million unanswerable questions. As for my parent’s dog that recently died however, Ryland thinks that he is currently in an extended stay at the pet hospital.

Poo Finger

Preface: I wrote this after Ryland was born.


          Changing the diaper on a new baby can be an arduous task that requires both dexterity and swiftness likened that of a pit crew during a NASCAR race. You must have a plan, be able to execute that plan, and do it quickly before being splashed by any numerous fluids that routinely project from the three main orifices of the baby. It also requires the right tools that must be placed near the newborn in order to make the job go by efficiently. If you are successful, then you will transform your screaming, terror of a child, in to the loving bobble-headed baby that you envisioned nine months before it made its entry into the world.


          Every so often, more often than can regularly be counted, my newborn baby will have a dirty diaper. According to the poo chart and the other baby manuals that they give you before you leave the hospital, the newborn should have six to twelve dirty diapers per day. I’m not quite sure which alien baby that they are referring to, but our baby has about fifty to sixty dirty diapers per day, including the clean ones that he poops on while changing a dirty diaper. The problem is not that he poos an exorbitant amount, it is that he cries constantly until he is changed and while he is being changed, and a little after that too. He does not like his diaper to be changed and screams incessantly like a car alarm with his head becoming beet red and the blue vein on his forehead popping out until the process is through.
    
          Now the actual process must be done like a professional. The first time our new baby was changed, it was in the hospital and I let the professional nurses who know what they are doing change the baby while I watched on, terrified for my life. I was able to muster up the courage to help change the next seventy-five or so diapers until he left the hospital, but I wasn’t sure what to do at first. I’m not quite sure he knew what to do either. He made little faces while the blackest tar-like poo I’ve ever seen came squirting out his rear-end like Play-Doh coming out of one of those dough smashers. That kind of poo was not supposed to come until a day or two after birth, but our baby started shooting that black goop out within the first few hours, scaring everyone that peaked inside the diaper.
     
          Now, after one month, things have gotten calmer, but changing the diaper can still be a chore. First off, you have to know what you are getting yourself into before you start to unfasten those Velcro straps. You have to place the new diaper off to the side, open and facing up for quick delivery underneath the buttocks of the previously soiled baby. You also have to have the wet wipes ready for any number of nastiness that may be hidden underneath the playful characters that are printed on the diaper. Also, there is the butt paste. This is my favorite part and the thing that is most important for the overall health of your child, and also how you can get intimately close to the child’s nether region.

          There isn’t much good with having a poo finger, though I have thought of using my new plague of excrement phalanges for evil purposes. For instance, if someone comes over to see the baby that you are not particularly fond of and they do not get the hint to leave, you could threaten to touch them with your poo finger and chase them away. You could also use your poo finger to maliciously get back at someone by sticking your finger in their appetizers. You may even be able to rob someone on the street by using your poo finger as a weapon, but I don’t think you would get as far as to be able to use it to rob a bank or steal a car.

          The real talent comes when you have to open doors, move things around, or attempt to wash your dirty hand while also holding a baby that wiggles more than Jell-O during and earthquake. You don’t have to read the Center of Disease Control website to know that poo has any numerous bacteria present that you don’t want in other areas, such as your eyes or mouth. That is why you should become a professional at cleaning one hand while juggling a baby. This is all part of the special skills that one learns when they have children and one they don’t teach in most parenting books.

          You will need to learn how to do various tasks that you were able to do with two hands with only one hand, or possibly your only your teeth, such as turning on the sink faucet and grabbing the bar soap. You could always place your clean and happy child on a mat on the floor or in some other safe and comfortable place while you clean your poo finger (or if you are unskilled your poo hand/arm), but then you would run into another problem. Once you put your baby on the floor, he will inevitably poop again, but this time worse than before.

          The butt paste is zinc oxide from 5-40% and it protects his butt from the harsh weathers of poo and pee that are constantly flowing from his drainage system and in which he sits in for any number of hours throughout the day. The best way to apply the thick, brown paste is by squeezing a good sized blob on the finger, and then spreading it all over the butt and other areas that are down there to completely protect this most sensitive area and hope that you don’t get surprised by projectile feces when you are especially close to the large colon. The main problem with the butt paste is that after protecting your child from the evils of waste products, you have a finger that is covered in butt paste and possibly feces as well. You now have a poo finger. The real problem, is that you can’t leave the child to go and wash your hands, so you are forced to pick up the baby with a finger that has excrement on it, making sure that the one poo finger does not touch your baby, otherwise terrible bacteria could get on your child and he will grow up to be a mutant like on X-Men, though probably not a cool X-man, but one of the X-Men that the rest don’t want to hang out with.