Turtles all the way down

Last night I was discussing school and learning with my seven year old. He indicated that he didn’t like learning things, which seemed to be contradiction of his general curiosity and enjoyment of school. I told him that learning things in school was important, but learning was an activity that occurs everywhere. You learn when you play a game, you learn when you read, you learn when you take a trip and you learn when you fix something that is broken.

I finished my little lecture saying, “What you learn inside of school important as what you learn outside is what really counts.”

His response: “You mean at recess?”

My five year old invented a variation of chess last night wherein both sides have black pieces (starting on the black squares) and white pieces (starting on the white squares). Each piece also gets three lives and there are fire moves and zap moves.

It is far more difficult than traditional chess. Mainly, because you lose track of which pieces are yours and how many lives each piece has.

And if it sounds at all like a Nintendo game, that’s no coincidence.

School starts up tomorrow. I expected to spend my last weekend of freedom relaxing, playing with the kids as much as I can, and ramping up for the semester.

Instead, early Saturday morning, the kids’ computer came down with a virus. I ran the virus scanner to fix it, but it took almost all morning for the check to run. I also ran it scans on all of the other computers in the house, just in case.

Then, I bit the bullet and decided to move one of my websites to a new hosting provider. Had it up and running in a couple of hours, modulo a sticky issue with a configuration file that got munged in the transition between Linux and Windows. I cut traffic over to the new server soon after. So far I’m thrilled with the performance at the new hosting provider, and I’m giving a tentative thumbs-up to Lunar Pages.

We took our younger son’s broken dresser across town to be fixed, stopping for lunch at a crowded Subway. We were in back for a little bit of quiet time, during which my wife took a trip to the grocery store and I fiddled with the settings on my newly-transitioned web site.

Around 4pm, I headed out to play in a neighborhood softball game. Our hero went 3-for-4 with two runs scored. Of course, out of my 4 at bats, the kids only watched the one in which I struck out. Now how will I get them to listen to me when I teach them how to hit?

That evening we took in some of the soon-to-be-over Olympics and after the kids were in bed, my wife and I watched Eastern Promises, a halfway decent thriller. Mildly recommended.

At 6am the whole family was wakened by one of our smoke alarms chirping. Not going off - chirping. Although all of our smoke alarms are wired into house power, they need 9 volt backup batteries. And if one of those batteries is about to die, the alarm will chirp. Loudly. Did I mention it was at 6am? As an aside, this happens every year or so and it always seems to occur early in the morning.

Awake, I fiddled some more with the web site, fixing a feature that was broken, then after breakfast had a couple of quick games of Yahtzee with my older son, then we headed out to pick up the now-fixed dresser.

I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon working researching my law review article, then we all headed to the gym. The boys were looking forward to climbing the rock wall, but the gym had mysteriously changed its the rock wall’s hours, so we arrived right after it closed. Instead we let them play racketball, after which my wife and I hit the weights. I was still sore from softball but managed a decent workout regardless.

Once home again, we cooked steaks and had a family game night. The boys played chess, then we all came together for Carcassone (a very cool game - highly recommended) in which I got trounced.

At this point it was just about bedtime, so the boys went down to read to each other while I read a couple of law review articels for my paper research. It has begun…

Me: “How was your first day of Kindergarten???”

Him: “Didn’t learn anything.”

As I was cutting my older son’s fingernails last night, I told him that when his nails got to a certain length that he should tell Mom or Dad so that we could cut them. In order to further motivate the point (and perhaps because I was frustrated that I had not previously noticed how long his nails were) I told him that if he didn’t, his nails could break or split and that could be very painful.

His response: “How come girls’ nails don’t break or split?”

I didn’t have a good answer. I mumbled something about how girls put polish on their nails to make them stronger. That was sufficient for him, but not for me.

I want to avoid the silly stereotypes, but apparently, in the spectrum of sexual correctness I draw the line at a certain point. It’s not exactly where other people draw the line but it is still a line.

Should boys grow long fingernails? No.

Should girls be able to dress in traditional “boy” attire (e.g., pants)? Sure.

Should boys be able to grow their hair long? Of course.

Should boys wear dresses? No.

Should girls be able to boy sports? Yes, as long as they understand (as boys need to understand as well) that they could get hurt.

Should girls play with “boy” toys? Yes.

Should boys play with “girl” toys. I’m not so hot with this idea.

While I have resisted certain archaic social norms, I’m not willing to act as if there is no difference between the sexes. Thus, apparently I’m compelled by prevalent social norms to raise my boys in a certain way.

Perhaps this isn’t such a big deal. I believe the most important aspect of all this that the kids need to understand is that EVERYONE should be treated fairly and with respect.

“The opening ceremonies are on? I want to watch! I want to watch!…when are they going to play games? There’s no games in the opening ceremonies?!?!”

“BOOOOOOOOOORIIIING!!!!!!!!”

My almost-five-year-old is learning to read, and like everything else he gets into, he’s taking it to the next level.

Getting my older son to read was like pulling teeth at times. Today, at seven and a half, he’ll sit and read a book for an hour or more at a time. But in Kindergarten he wanted to be read to. He resisted reading on his own. Our reading sessions were forced and not fun for either of us. Somewhere along the way, around the beginning of first grade, something clicked and he began reading. He’s still not an aggressive reader but he’s doing fine and reading above his grade level.

My older son’s approach to learning reading was top down. He would struggle to sound out a word, and would try to memorize the letter patterns or would guess the word from context or pictures on the page. I would have to keep telling him, “Don’t just guess, look at the letters!”

My younger son’s approach is bottom up. He will focus on the words on of the page and ignore the pictures and context. He aggressively tries to sound out words, often ignoring the context that would make his task easier. I have to remind him, “Look at the page, what is there a picture of?” or, “Think about what makes sense in that sentence.”

The boys are so alike yet so different.

One sick kid, another sick kid, daylight savings time kicks in taking away an hour of sleep, and the appellate brief is due.

Not to mention that my driver’s license expires in a week and I really need to set up a meeting with my accountant.

verse (verb): To contend with other person or computer controlled entity in a video game or similar contest. Typical usage: “I’m going to verse Mario in this minigame.” “I’ll verse you first then I’ll verse Mom.”

Other forms: versed, versing.

Etymology: The Borella household, circa 2004.

This is a post I wrote a little over 18 months ago, before I had the blog. It is a slice-of-life from a neighborhood event. Enjoy.

Yesterday was our annual neighborhood picnic. I found this out about 2 weeks ago though I’m sure that my wife had mentioned it at least once before. Maybe twice. She’s also an organizer for the event. My response to finding out was a shrug. I’m not as into these neighborhood events as I probably should be. Our neighbors are great but our older son’s food allergies make any event combining food and children extra stressful.

A few days before the picnic I find out that I’ve been drafted to watch the kids while my wife sets up, and that I’d be in charge of the kids during the whole event. Great, what little weekend spare time I get has been taken away. Oh well, at least its for what should be a fun event.

I grabbed the kids in the morning and took them to the gym. I had a pretty good workout, running 9 minute miles and working the abs. The boys played both inside and out in the child center since the weather was nice. Afterwards, we stopped by Starbucks for milk and bananas as a treat for the boys who had cleaned the playroom that morning. All was good, even with my younger son in the middle of potty training at the time and having to take him for bathroom breaks every 45 minutes.

In the afternoon, my wife goes out to grab some food and a few other things she needed and takes our younger son. The older one and I play video games. They return and she drops off the little guy, who is sound asleep, and she heads over to set up the picnic. She’s upset about things not going to plan - apparently the guy dropping off the jumper and inflatable slide arrived an hour early.

Around 4pm, she’s back, the situation is under control and our sleeper had just woken up from his nap. We load the kids and the rest of the supplies and drive over to the park, which is about a mile from our house. As one of the first groups there, we start setting up the grill and food tent while the boys play on the jumper and slide. In the past one of us would always watch them nonstop when out in public due to allergies and age. But as we’re with people who are mostly aware of our food allergy situation and used to dealing with small children, we are able to relax a little and just watch them out of the corner of our eyes.

Between 4:30 and 5PM the party gets started with about 20 families showing up. I trade off helping run the event, eating and keeping the kids entertained. My older son and I manage to climb this large rock at the edge of the park, and he doesn’t want to come down when I leave, despite the fact that he can’t get down on his own. The little guy wants to climb up as well but I tell him he has to wait until he’s five.

During our three-year-old’s frequent bathroom breaks, he chatters about jumping on the stepping stones on the walk to the bathroom. Heading back to the park, he talks about them some more. Once we get back, he says, “Daddy, gotta go potty again!” Rolling my eyes, I take him to the bathroom again and once more the stones elicit his attentive chatter. In case you hadn’t noticed, he rarely stops talking when he’s excited about something. On the way back, again lots of discussion of the stones. Finally back at the park he says he has to go AGAIN. But after I ask him if he really just wants to walk on the stones, I find out that that is why he wants to go potty. So I promise him more stone-walking later and bribe him with popcorn to stay. In the mean time, our other boy gets heavily involved in games of cake-walk, water balloon toss, and sack races.

Did I mention how beautiful the weather was? 80 degrees, sunny and no clouds. Not a one. Well maybe just one…a big one. At about the time that we start noticing this dark cloud moving in, we hear thunder. Far off to the west it’s raining, but no one seems to mind. After all, the weather report said that today would be a great day and getting a little wet is not such a big deal right? But then the lightning starts. No rain on us yet, but we decided to pack it in. Our older son is afraid of the lightning and starts whining, which leads to crying. I’m trying to pack up as much stuff as I can as fast as I can while getting the kids to carry something. He sort of gets a grip on himself and we head to the van. I get the boys settled in their seats as it starts to pour. My wife and I go back to get more stuff from the field. We get soaked to the skin while the wind starts blowing and the lightning is striking all around us. Most of our neighbors scatter but a few brave ones stick around to help out. We’re very thankful for them.

Finally, the van is packed with piles of wet junk, we leave our grill and table at a neighbor’s house, and we head home. My wife unloads the car while I marshall the boys inside…to discover that we left the windows open. Slight change of plan…the boys are dirty and muddy from being out in the rain so I instruct them to remain in the kitchen and I run around the house closing windows, wiping sills and drying the floors. Once I get that situation under control, I herd them upstairs for a quick bath as the thunderstorm dies down. My wife goes back to the park to get the rest of the stuff and gets back looking like she had jumped into a swimming pool with her clothes on. But the worst is over. The boys are in their pajamas, the house is relatively clean sans the drenched picnic stuff now sitting in our garage. So we call it a night.

Usually these neighborhood events are fun. But after getting caught in a violent thunderstorm at this one, I can only hope the next event is really boring.