Fallon Park
We’ve never completed the Fourth-of-July Challenge at our house, but we do try to make it into June. So far this year, we’ve only been tempted to turn on the A/C a couple of times. Here’s how McLain has been coping with May heat.
Yeah, I like this new auto-gif feature.
We didn’t miss the bus.
JaM in Fallon Park
Happy Springtime from Fort Bubbles
Shouts to Jackie Jones, William Wegman, and the “dog eating with human hands at the table” genre that never gets old to me.
There was a fall at the end of the video, but no children or dogs were hurt. Maybe Robah will get a seat next time.
My man McLain can flat-out get loose. I introduced him to Gorillaz a few weeks ago, and I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner. Albarn’s virtual band seems to be the best answer to this question:
What act from the recent past made fun, innovative music that everyone can like, and is also appealing to kids?
So lately, he’s been trying to rap with Del or begging to watch the 19-2000 video. The kid loves his jams…so much so, that I made a trailer for McLain’s new feature film — the movie is a “self-actualization through dance” story (think “Fame” or “Footloose”). Look for it in indie/arthouse theatres around Thanksgiving.
I also dug up the following clip of a 2-year-old McLain (video credit to Alison Saville), and you can see a different style of summertime expression in his technique.
I still don’t have good footage of his biggest contribution to modern dance: corny slow-motion. We’ll work on correcting that.
A couple days after your baby is born, you have to leave the hospital. I was certainly ready to get out of there. But, with your first child, going home with a screaming, mysterious pink infant is a bit of a scary notion. The shock of the hospital experience is overtaken by the anticipation of the future first-day-home experience.
I think I remember packing up our stuff in the hospital room, three days after Jackie was born. Everything was in order, or at least I thought it was. I had tightened the 5-point harness car seat, and was confident that we could drive the 4 miles from Rex Hospital to White Oak Road without endangering mother or child.
Katie was wheelchair-bound, holding a tiny (yet 10-plus pounds) Jacqueline Burns Jones, and I was pushing. I remember the general smell of the courtesy take-home lasagna (thanks, Rex) in the elevator, going down.
I’d noticed the car seat inspector before as I’d entered and exited the hospital. He’d always seemed unusually busy, hovering around the perimeter of whichever minivan or station wagon was parked near the automatic doors. On the second day of our 3-day stint with Jackie, I stood out by the fountain and watched him “work” for about 10 minutes. Was this guy really collecting a paycheck for this? How hard could it be to pull on a car seat and proclaim either “tight enough” or “a little tighter”?
Now, after fetching our Honda, I saw him again. This time, however, he had an unmistakable air of authority. I suddenly realized my true place in the situation — with eyes blurry from fatigue and head pounding, I was presuming to take an exhausted woman and a wriggling, screaming baby out of the hospital and drive them four long miles through curvy roads to a house across town.
The Chief Car Seat Inspector approached the Honda, and asked if he could take a look. “Of course”, I replied, in the most respectful tone I could utter.
He wiggled the car seat, and it gave. It moved about a centimeter from side to side, and I knew I had failed my first test. “Here’s how you get it really tight,” he said to me nicely as I prepared to make mental note.
Now I know the importance his job, and how he often deals with men and women who enter the hospital confident, but leave it humbled and frazzled.
We made it home safely on December 26, 2008. I bet Bax and Beebs are still wondering what hit them.
Here’s Jackie coming home in 2008:
What the…
If you’ll allow liberties so I can make a parallel, there’s a new gatekeeper in our world these days. Melissa drives the J. Y. Joyner Elementary School blue bus, which turns left from Oxford Road and stops at the corner of Alexander and White Oak at approximately 8:53 a.m. every weekday during the school year.
Every morning, Jackie, McLain, and I walk down to meet the bus. They and the other kids play tag or Mother May I (Mrs. Williams is the MC) until the bus makes its turn onto White Oak Road. The first one to spot it (usually a parent) yells, “BUS!”, and the kids are off.
Some days, Jackie rides it home as well.
Here’s Jackie coming home in 2014:
Getting off the blue bus after the first day
Katie and I, and Jackie too (mostly), have wonderful things to say about JYJ Elementary.
Hallowed kindergarten hall at J.Y. Joyner
Orientation in Mr. Del’s class
Jackie and McLain and I spend 30-45 minutes reading good books every night. Why did I italicize good? Because this nightly reading time doesn’t just belong to my children. It’s my time, too. I love it, as long as we read the more interesting, fresher books in our home library. And, considering that I’m the only one (until recently) who knew how to read, I had all the power.
It used to be easy. I’d ask Jackie and McLain to each pick 3 books for reading time. When McLain returned with Duck Soup (which we’d just read the previous two nights), or when Jackie brought me any book with flaps or any other types of moving parts other than the actual pages, I’d send them back to the shelves to try again. My wonderful wife was complicit, comfortable with her authority over most other aspects of our home life.
If a selection didn’t have a plot, I’d reject it. Jackie and McLain, accustomed to making multiple book submissions for approval on any given night, would go back to the drawing board and find something their father would accept (like some of the favorites below).
Some of “our” favorites
Lately, reading time is changing around here, though. I’m losing control. The dictatorship is being democratized. My daughter is empowered, and it’s partially my doing.
Last April, Jackie and I started lesson one in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which is an adaptation of the DISTAR method. She wasn’t quite four and a half years old, but she had been ready to learn to read since she was three. At a rate of about three lessons a week, Jackie was reading at an end-of-kindergarten level by lesson number 75 sometime in September. We stopped following the lessons after she had mastered all of the 40-odd phonemes in the English alphabet.
Now, she’s reading at about a first-grade level. I secretly recorded her with the Berenstain Bears, a book that she was reading for the first time:
Those 80 or so lessons taught me as much about parenting as they taught her about reading. About a one-third of the time, the lessons made one or both of us angry, or at least very frustrated. It’s never easy to correct someone, no matter how old she is or the relationship you share with her; it’s never fun to be corrected, no matter how you slice it. For a child who is extremely bright, it’s important to understand that hard work and dedication trump raw intelligence.
I think Katie and I are realistic about our children’s strengths and weaknesses, just as we acknowledge the good and could-be-better in ourselves. Jackie is a verbal whiz kid. She’s making her own books now, and is quick to remind me that she’s the author and illustrator of these original works. I suppose McLain is next to learn lesson-by-lesson how to take control of storytime (although mini-Charlie Chaplin might be a little more gifted in comedic dramatic arts).
JaM
I think I spent the dog food money 