TV is not the problem.  TV can even help to solidify words and concepts in a child’s brain as long as the parents are spending adequate time teaching the child!  TV, when used properly, can help to expand vocabulary as long as it is not the sole tool of learning.  True, today’s shows, like Dora, encourage interaction, but that interaction is for older children, not for younger children.  Younger kids need one on one learning with parents every night for television to have any value.

Anyway, that wasn’t what I meant this post to be about, but I figured I would lead into this with that.

With a new child here and the demolition of my home office to make my son’s new room, we got a laptop for the dining room table.  Now, whenever my son is bored and he sees me on the computer, he will come over to me and start saying “numbers”.  he wants to sit o  my lap and play on the keyboard.  Stupid me, I though I would make it work.  You know, open up Microsoft Word and set a very large font, type some numbers and letters and let him identify them, and then ask him to find some numbers and letters.  yeah, great idea.  In  theory.  Worked for about a minute, until he got bored and just wanted to pound away on the keyboard with his ham fists.  And then he ran his stained fingers over the screen.  Complete disaster.  Now I don’t let him on my lap and he cries.

So I went out and bought this V-tech keyboard/computer for $20.  It has thirty or so little programs on it, but he is only old enough to really do 2 or 3 (It is made for 3 years and up).  But there is a program for identifying numbers, and one for identifying letters, and one that asks him to identify the largest of three objects.  So it will be more useful as he gets older, but it gives him a keyboard he can bang away on without destroying a $700 dollar piece of computer equipment.  He absolutely loves it!

Of course, he saw me putting in the batteries, and after playing with it for 30 minutes, he flipped it over and demanded that I open the battery compartment for him.  I didn’t, and he cried for a bit.  Hopefully he will forget it is there.

Though made for older children, if you have reached a point with a younger child who is bored with pointing out numbers and letters in a book, this is a great durable and relatively cheap toy to make learning more interactive.  And since it looks somewhat like a laptop, your kid will think he is a big boy, too.

Peace out.

And remember, TV isn’t a substitute for time spent with your child, but it can be a great tool when used to enhance what he or she already knows

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Technorati Tags: 2 yera olds, Children, computers, development, Dora, learning, TV, V-tech

Months ago, he would spy my toothbrush sitting next to the sink while he bathed and demand it.  And if I didn’t give it to him, he would throw a fit in the bath.  So I would give it to him.  I quickly learned that I needed to keep my brush safely tucked awayinn the medicine cabinet where he couldn’t see it.  It worked for a while; out of sight out of mind.  But one day, while in the bath, he looked up at the cabinet and pointed a finger and said, “Want toothbrush”.  And I promptly told him i didn’t have any.  He obviously didn’t believe me because he continue to point his finger and ay, “In there.”  So, admitting defeat at the hands of a two year old, I opened up the cabinet and revealed my new green toothbrush.  he took it with glee.  “Daddy’s toothbrush,” he screamed, and proceeded to violently brush his teeth.

I am always careful to keep my toothbrushes out of sight.  While he know they are there, he is less likely to ask for it if he can’t see it.

He’s taken about twenty toothbrushes from me in the past several months, and he carries them around the house like toothbrushes, proudly proclaiming, “Daddy’s toothbrushes”, every couple of hours or so.  He’ll brush with all of them in a five minute time span, lining them up on the floor and using each one in order until he gets to the last one, his own small orange toothbrush.

He doesn’t hate his own toothbrush.  I guess he just likes daddy’s toothbrushes.  Thankfully, we order them in bulk at the office, and I always have a handful in reserve at home so when he steals mine, I won’t be left empty handed.

Once I tried to retrieve a stolen toothbrush, but Nathan had managed to destroy it in less than three hours.  I’ve had toothbrushes for a full six months which displayed less bristle wear and bend than what my son is capable of inflicting in less than a day.

Eventually, when a brush becomes too disgusting, I’ll throw it away.  But Nathan always knows, and those are the times he inevitably points at the medicine cabinet and asks for Daddy’s toothbrush.

Now, as dental professional, I can not endorse any child walking around with a toothbrush in his mouth.  It is a very dangerous practice.  So don’t let your children do it.  As the old proverb says: Do as I say, not as I allow my child to do.

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Technorati Tags: Children, Dentist, toothbrushes

Nathan is just 2 years old, and my wife has decided to start potty training him.  She must have taught him the word penis, because I sure as heck didn’t.

My wife told me to show him how to pee while sitting down.  I prefer not to.  I think he’s smart enough to watch me pee standing up.  Anyway, before bath time, he’ll sit on his potty and watch me pee.  And laugh at me.  And I’ll tell him to watch daddy pee, and that he should pee, but he hasn’t, not yet.  But he laughs.

Anyway, several weeks ago, Nathan is playing in the bath, and I have to pee.  So I stand up and starting peeing in the toilet.  And I turn to Nathan to Nathan and say “Daddy goes pee pee int he toilet.”

And Nathan proceed to stand.  he looks at me and smiles and says: “Ney Ney (how he says Nathan) go pee pee in bathtub.”  And then he proceeds to pee in the tub.  So I can’t figure out why he won’t pee in his potty considering he has some control.

As for the second story, and back to the fact that my wife must have taught him what his penis was… one of Nathan’s favorite game is to ask me a question that he wants me to ask him, so he can answer it.  Such as, what color is the car or what shape is a block or how many cups there are.  What can I say.  He likes showing off.

Anyway, last week he’s sitting on the potty, and all of a sudden he looks down at his penis and asks “What color is penis?”  So I ask him what color his penis is, and he smiles and yells “Pink!”  Later that night, after I put his diaper on, he points to his diaper and asks “What color is penis in here?”  And I ask, and once again, he yells “Pink!”

Sometimes it’s pink, sometimes its purple, and yes, soemtimes,a ccording to him, it is green

Hilarious, I tell you.

More to come as the potty training continues.  I hope he gets it soon.  With another baby here, I would like to only have to pay for diapers for 1.

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Technorati Tags: 2 years old, Children, potty training

Have you ever seen Wonderpets, the adventures of a baby duck, turtle and hamster?  Its horrible.  It;s so sugary sweet with the lessons that it  rots the brain.  My wife loves it, thinks the lisp the duck has (his name is Ming-Ming) is adorable.  It drives me nuts.

And then there is Ni Hao, Kai-lan, a cartoon featuring Chinese characters.  The backgrounds are beautiful, but the stories are horrid and they are trying to get my kid to start speaking Chinese!  I think China is trying to use this cartoon to start the take over of America.  Characters have names like Ho-ho and Yea-Yea.  It truly is an atrocious show.

But neither of these are as bad as my son’s newest favorite: Max and Ruby.  Max is a toddler rabbit, I guess, and Ruby is his sister.  Max basically spends every episode trying to annoy Ruby and getting into minor trouble.  Ruby scolds him at the end of every episode, but I don;t think he ever learns a thing.  I don’t think there is a single redeeming quality about this show

Thank god he doesn’t like Yo Gaba Gabab- at least not yet.  I’ve watched bits and pieces of that show, and it is bad enough to melt even my 2 year old’s brain.  And what’s up with that big red guy?  You know who am I talking about, the tall one that looks like male genitalia with genital warts.  Totally inappropriate.

So I have learned to appreciate Dora and Diego because they are truly the lesser of two evils.  Decent stories, only minimally annoying characters (though I do want to shoot Boots), and at least they are teaching Spanish, a language they may actually have use for in the future.

Whatever happened to quality children’s programming.  Anyone out there like me, in their early thirties, remember Pinwheel on Nick?  Now that was awesome.

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What does he want?  Yummy beets, the onions that are stewing in the beet juice, and plain avocado chunks in lemon sauce.  It’s just so bizarre. 

And when he’s done gorging himself on this delightful meal, we ask him if he wants anything for dessert.  there are cookies and cakes and other things he loves.  But he’s done.

I know every kid has his/her own eating style, but I still can’t get over how eclectic his tastes are.  I hear from so many friends that their kids only want junk food and won’t touch anything healthy, and here my kid is eating nothing BUT vegetables.  Given the choice between ice cream (granted, its soy ice cream b/c of allergy) and cake and cookies, or watermelon and cantaloupe, he will choose the healthy alternative 95% of the time. 

Come one kid, eat a freakin cookie once in a while.  Eat something fattening.  Eat something bad for you.  Cause all of this healthy eating is not putting any meat on your bones.  And it’s really disgusting watching you slurp down onions like they were worms

Thank you for listening to my rant on my child’s eating habits

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Technorati Tags: Children, eating, Fatherhood, food

That’s how long I’ve been sleeping on my couch.  Not that I’m complaining.

Why am I sleeping on the couch, you may ask?  Well, if you have been reading my blog, you know that I have a newborn daughter,  That is not the problem.  The problem is, I have a dog.  And now just any dog, but a livable Daschund, who drives me crazy.

Anyway, people have this misconception that wiener dogs are sweet dogs.  They are not.  They are borderline psychotic.  Not mean.  Just a little crazy.  They (I do not know who they are, mind you) that Daschunds are responsible for the most dog bites every year.  This isn’t common knowledge because no one goes to the hospital for a weiner dog bite, so the actual count is not very high.  But they bite.  A lot.  Because they are crazy, temperamental little beasts with inferiority complexes.

How does this relate to me sleeping on the couch?  With my wife nursing, we don’t feel cofmortbale with the dog on the bed.  I don’t think the dog would maul the baby.  Or hurt the baby.  Not intentionally, anyway.   But every so often you read a story about a Daschund chewing off a baby’s toes, or soemthign else horrible like that.  So better safe than sorry. 

So for now, it’s me and the dog on the couch

He keeps me warm so I can’t really complain.

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Anyway, as you all know, its a scary world out there.  And as parents, all you can do is… well, the best you can do.  And at some point, you have to accept that what your children do is out of your hands.

I spent some time with my brother tonight.  He’s 19 years old, just finished his Freshman year at Pitt.  And the stories I hear… the drinking, the drug use, the promiscuity… he doesn’t do much because he was never into that stuff, but that’s besides the point.  I went to college in New Orleans and did a lot of stuff, but I never over did it.  I was never one of those kids who got drunk until I puked every weekend.  But I had my moments.  And quite honestly, I never considered my actions from my parent’s point of view, how my actions would make them feel as parents.  Part oft that was because I never overdid it.  Hell, in high  school a geek- yeah, a geek.  I played Dungeons and Dragons and went to a nursing home with a group from school every Friday.  I never drank, never smoked, never did drugs in high school.  And even when I went to school, I think my parents knew me well enough that I would never get myself in trouble.

But every changes when you have children.  And I know that those days are a long way off.  More than a decade for my son, longer for my daughter.  But I look at Nathan and wonder what he will be like when he is older.  I wonder if my feelings and lessons will be more important to him than the peer pressure from his friends.  Will he have enough self-respect and self-control to keep him on the straight and narrow during those formative and possibly dangerous college years.  Will he be one of those kids who supposedly was raised by loving, giving parents but still ended up a bad apple.

Will he, god forbid, turn into a thief or rapist or murderer?

Will he disappoint me?

it’s a heavy burden to lay on a two year old, and heavy thoughts, but with the world the way it is these days, with high school kids and college kids seemingly devoid of any morals or inhibitions, it is a scary time to be a parent.

Its tougher with my daughter.  Yes, she’s not even three weeks old yet.  And when she looks at me, she doesn’t even smile.  She isn’t a person yet, not in the way my son is.  But the worry sets in immediately these days.  I was watching a show about women who went through an entire pregnancy but didn’t know it.  And the last story was about a nineteen year old freshman girl who freely admitted she got trashed on a regular basis, and oftentimes didn’t use protection while having sex.  She claims to have had a steady boyfriend at the very beginning, but he was neither mentioned, nor shown, over the course of the episode.  So who knows,s he may have been a tramp who slept around.  And she may not even know (or remember) who the father is.

I may seem like I am going off on a tangent, but there is a point here.  it’s easier to have a son come home and say he got a girl pregnant than to have a daughter come home and say she ispregnant.  For all we know, the mother of this girl on the show may have been a wonderful mother.  she may have explained the dangers of drinking and unprotected sex.  And the girl may have tossed the lessons out, choosing to do what she wanted how she wanted. 

I look at my daughter and wonder if she will heed my warnings, or if she will take her desire to be her own person too far, as too many kids do these day, both boys and girls.  Disregarding sage advise, living hard and fast without a single thought about the ramifications.

I look at commercials for Girls Gone Wild.  I am aware with the advent of the internet, there is a lot more amateur pornography being created.  And now that I have a daughter, i can;t help but wonder what is going through these girl’s minds.  Whether or not they think about what their actions are doing to their parents.  Whether or not they even care.  Whether or not they will live to regret it when they grow up and try to have a family and real job.

I wonder where these parents went wrong.  Or if they even did go wrong. 

I wonder how much control and influence I actually have at the end of the day over what kind of people my children become.

And I’ll admit, it scares the hell out of me.  Because at some point, children must be allowed to fly the coop and begin making their own decisions, and I don’t know io my words will be as influential as the words of their friends who may have grown up with crappy parents.

In the end, all I can do is do my best.  And enjoy my kids now, because who knows what the future will bring.

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I have to say, the absolute funniest thing about Nathan, my two-year-old son, is his constant narrative.  He reminds me of Peter Griffin from an episode of Family Guy where Peter begins to narrate his life, and gets punched out by his wife.  I guess its the exploration of language that drives them.  At first, when he was one, he would repeat what he saw on his DVD’s, repeat sounds, repeat words, count, read the alphabet, as if he were absorbing the knowledge by rolling everything around on his tongue.

But at two, its no longer about repetition.  Its about expression.  And more than “Nathan wants milk” or “Nathan hungry”.  Its more than needs or wants, its about exploration.  Its about interaction with his environment.  Its about his own actions and his own body.   

What comes about of his mouth is a continual narrative of what he is body and what is happening to him as he gets comfortable with language.  He is very rarely quiet.  When he plays, its “Nathan play with train table” or “Nathan reading book” or “Nathan kick the ball”.  When he’s frustrated and give that little fake cry, he’ll say “Nathan crying”.  When he eats, he tells you what he is eating as well as the color and anything else interesting about it.  When he’s climbing or falling or running or jumping, he lets you know.  Oftentimes many times.

But Nathan’s favorite word right now is “can’t”.  As in “I can’t reach it” or “I can’t find it”.  Only when he says can’t, does he use the word “I” instead of his name.  It’s funny.  It’s not a negative thing, but the opposite.  It’s the realization of limitations and the expression of the need for help from others for non-essential things.  It’s also very funny.

The only downside to all of this is that he is never quiet.  Not anymore.  Its that time, when broken sentences and poor structure slowly evolve into coherent thoughts, when language begins to becomes cemented in that little brain of his. 

Sometimes, when i look at my 3-week old daughter, who does nothing more than cry once in a  while and eat and spit up, I’m reminded of how lovely and relaxing relative silence was.  Not anymore. 

I’m thinking of getting a good pair of earplugs.  or staying away from the house longer.

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Technorati Tags: 2 year old, Children, Family, Fatherhood

My wife gave birth to my second child, a little girl, and life has definitely changed. 

I remember when my son Nathan was born.  My wife and I spent so much time with him as an infant, picked him up just for the sake of picking him up, looking at him just to look at him.  It was a novelty.  Something new and different in our life.

The second child is so much different.  She’s more like a guinea pig or some other caged pet.  I look at her once in a  while, pick her up once in a while, but I definitely don;t spend as much time with her as I did with my son.  It’;s not because I love her any less.  And it’s not necessarily because the novelty has worn off.  She is adorable and I do so love to hold her.  

It’s because I now have a two year old to watch as well.  And he is a handful.  As most two year olds are. 

People will say that it’s not the first child whose a life changer, it’s the second.  And they’re right.  Especially at the beginning.  Because at the beginning, all you really do is feed the baby and change the baby, and life isn’t altered all that much except for sleep patterns.  It gets more complicated as that first child gets older, but its never too complicated.  But the second child, the second child transforms life into a a balancing act.

Before my daughter Eliana was born, on days I didn’t have to be up for work until 9:30, I would stay up will 2:30, 3:00.  I am a night person, and can get so much more done at night: laundry, bills, work, writing.  My wife would get up with my son.  But now that there is a second child, I can’t sleep late anymore.  My wife nurses, which wreaks hell with her sleep schedule, so now I get up with my son, and he can wake any time between 7:30 and 8:30.  So no more going to bed late and waking late.  I have to be in bed relatively early every night just in case he wakes at 7:30.  And if he sleeps later… I guess I’ve gotten a little more sleep.

It’s a huge change to adjust to, the second child syndrome.

I’m looking forward to the day the two kids can get out of bed and get breakfast themselves without waking mommy and daddy.  of course, that’s years away, but a man can dream.  I probably won’t get more than 7 hours of sleep again until that happens because I simply can’t get to bed before 1:00.  I just can’t.

The early stages of having family is a weird thing.  A stressful thing, riddled with changes and new responsibilities.  And sometimes I think to myself: I’m way too young to have children.  Of course that’s insane.  I’m 31 years old.  A generation ago, people had families at 25.  You know what it is?  you don’t feel like a grown up until you have children.  Until you have real responsibility.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my family.  It’s just that, the jump from1 kid to 2 is such a major jump, one that requires such a lifestyle change, it can be a shock to the system.

I’ll get through it.  Everyone does.  And I’ll wear my scars proudly.

Oh, and by the wya, I;m goign to go to the vet next week and get neutered.  I. Am. Done.

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Nathan is not two yet, but my wife has decided to start potty training him.  She must have taught him the word penis, because I sure as heck didn’t.

My wife told me to show him how to pee while sitting down.  I prefer not to.  I think he’s smart enough to watch me pee standing up.  Anyway, before bath time, he’ll sit on his potty and watch me pee.  And laugh at me.  And I’ll tell him to watch daddy pee, and that he should pee, but he hasn’t, not yet.  But he laughs.

Anyway, several weeks ago, Nathan is playing in the bath, and I have to pee.  So I stand up and starting peeing in the toilet.  And I turn to Nathan to Nathan and say “Daddy goes pee pee int he toilet.”

And Nathan proceed to stand.  he looks at me and smiles and says: “Ney Ney (how he says Nathan) go pee pee in bathtub.”  And then he proceeds to pee in the tub.  So I can’t figure out why he won’t pee in his potty considering he has some control.

As for the second story, and back to the fact that my wife must have taught him what his penis was… one of Nathan’s favorite game is to ask me a question that he wants me to ask him, so he can answer it.  Such as, what color is the car or what shape is a block or how many cups there are.  What can I say.  He likes showing off.

Anyway, last week he’s sitting on the potty, and all of a sudden he looks down at his penis and asks “What color is penis?”  So I ask him what color his penis is, and he smiles and yells “Pink!”  Later that night, after I put his diaper on, he points to his diaper and asks “What color is penis in here?”  And I ask, and once again, he yells “Pink!”

Hilarious, I tell you.

More to come as the potty training continues.  I hope he gets it soon.  With another baby coming, I would like to only have to pay for diapers for 1,

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Technorati Tags: 2 year old, Fatherhood, Humor, little boys, parenting, potty, training