Egghead

My son has started lying.

Experts, however, claim you shouldn't punish a preschool for fibbing, it's all a natural part of development.

I'm punishing him anyway.

Not for lying, necessarily, but for thinking I'm dumber than a hard-boiled egg.

I was watching the Canucks clinch their division the other day when I realized it had been at least two minutes since I heard any sound from Alex.

I immediately jumped to my feet and raced into the kitchen, where I caught him standing on a chair in front of the sink with blue food colouring completely covering his mouth and hands.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Nothing"

"Where did you get all that blue stuff?" I asked again.

"Nowhere."

"Alex, your hands are all blue. How did they get that way?" I demanded.

"The cat."

I smiled, but bit my tongue and continued.

"Alex, were you playing with an Easter Egg? " I asked.

"Maybe."

"Well, remember mommy and daddy saying that we don't put unpeeled eggs in our mouth. You could choke on the shells," I warned.

"But daddy, I didn't put any egg in my mouth," he said through his blue-stained teeth.

"Alex, go to your room. And on the way past the bathroom, look in the mirror."

Has Been and The Gonna Be

I consider myself a cyclist.
Back in the day I used to be a pretty good racer.
I was a USCF certified fitting specialist and worked 50-hour weeks in a bike shop, racing on weekends and training before the shop opened in the morning.
I moved back to Canada, hurt my back and found out carbohydrates make you fat unless you ride 10,000 kilometres a year.
Still, I own a ton of gear, two bikes and fix my neighbour's bikes in exchange for beer or babysitting.
But truth be told, Alex is the real biker in the family.
He rides every day; I ride three times a week.
He has the newest bike in the family; my Bianchi is three years old.
I own a set of the coolest free-riding pads in the universe, but Alex, who wears my forearm pads as leg armour, is the one whose crashes have scratched them beyond recognition.
I have two bike-related scars--one on my cheek and one on my elbow; Alex has scars on both knees, both elbows, his chin, his butt and a bruise on his tummy from landing on the handlebars.
But the real kicker is recognition.
When we went into West Point Grey Cycles yesterday, the shop dude called: "Hey Buddy, how's the riding?"
He was talking to Alex.

Right on the money

It’s been a weird week.
One of the nicest people I’ve ever met has turned out to be a left-wing radical, my son is now riding his bike to school and the Canucks have made the playoffs.
Strange how dissimilar things can all be tied together.
My friend Elecia, bless her tree-hugging heart, passed on a recipe for removing the toxic black mold problem in my apartment. As you know, black mold can be lethal, but my tie-dyed friend said a mixture of lemon juice and baking soda would clean the mold right up. She swore this is what she uses to get bong-resin stains out of her shag carpet in her VW van, so I tried it.
Of course, it didn’t work, and I wasted $5 worth of lemons, but no real harm done.
Alex started riding without training wheels on Friday and by Saturday we bought him a new bike, mountain bike gloves and a neat little Orca bike horn. By Saturday the whole package had been devalued by about 50 per cent. He crashed so many times, the bike’s paint is scratched through to the frame, the gloves have a hole in them and the whale is now a two-piece unit.
About the only positive thing to come out of my week was the Canucks. The $100 I put on them with Bodog at the beginning of the season to win the Cup is now looking like a pretty shrewd bet. 100 to 1 (now down to 10 to 1) would pay out $10,000 US, enough to get Alex some new gloves and pads and pay a professional to come in and wipe out the mold problem.

Observations

As a journalist, I try to pay attention to my surroundings.Traveling to a foreign country has given me extra incentive to hone those skills. In no particular order, here's a few things I saw in Mexico over reading break.

Americans and Canadians are the fattest people on the beach. Europeans are fairly far behind and native Mexicans the skinniest.

Women have to realize that wearing a thong is a right, not a privilege. The same goes for men and Speedos.

Only people under 25 take advantage of all-you-can-drink bars, but everyone takes advantage of all-you-can-eat self-serve ice cream.

Just because you (OK, me) can eat 50 Global Thermo-Nuclear Hot Wings at Hooters does not mean you, er I can handle the mildest homemade salsa.

If global warming kicks in and Vancouver's rainfall stays the same, the Lower Mainland is going to look exactly like the Yucatán.

Minimum wage in Quintana Roo is $4 US per day. A $2 tip to the busboy, maid and waiter puts a smile on their face. But to really become friends you have to wear a soccer jersey. Club America is OK, the Pumas are not and Cruz Azul and Chivas rule.

If you've ever had sushi in Japan, you know most Canadian-made Japanese food is not up to par. No surprise, but the Mexican version is no better.

Paying bus drivers a percentage of their fares leads to them racing each other from bus stop to bus stop. This tends to scare Canadians who aren't use to doing 80 km/h though a school zone neck and neck with another bus full of terrified passengers.

Simple Spanish for Students

About the only trouble with vacationing in Mexico is the language barrier.
Sure, most Canadians know the basics (Uno cerveza por favor), but if you want to get out of the hotel bar and access the culture, it’s important to know a few sentences.
Like everyone else, I had a phrasebook, but unless you’re looking for a museum (Me gustaria ver el museo) it’s pretty useless.
So, without further ado, I present the UBC Grad Student Guide to Essential Spanish.
When you meet a member of the opposite sex
Soy Soltero. (I’m single.)
¿Cuál es se número de teléfono? (What’s your phone number?)
When asked why a 40-year-old is going to school
Soy alérgico trajabo. (I am allergic to work.)
At the beach
¿Cuántos años tienetu hermana? (How old is your sister?)
Enjoying the local culture with your new friend
Me gusta ir de bar en bar. (I like pub crawls.)
In the bar
Le invito a una copa. (I’ll buy you a drink.)
¡Salud! (Cheers!)
Otra de lo mismo. (Same again, please.)
After the bar
Estoy enfermo. (I’m sick.)
He estado vomitando. (I’ve been vomiting.)
Trying to e-mail someone back home for sympathy
¿Dónde hay un cibercafé cercano? (Where is the local internet café?)
Discovering it’s running Windows Vista
Se ha quedado colgado. (It’s crashed.)
Trying to get through customs to board your plane
Tengo receta para esta droga. (I have a prescription for this drug.)

I love you. Good night.

Last week my son and I flew to his grandparents in Kelowna.

Alex is four and loves flying almost as much as he loves Grandma and Grandpa.

The whole deal took a couple of hours and, thank to UBC Okanagan's deal with North South Travel, less than a couple hundred dollars.

I got home, did some homework and went to a three hour Investigative Journalism class.

I couldn't wait for my wife to get home.

When she did, we decided to enjoy our new-found freedom with a spontaneous decision--a nice dinner out.

Two hours and five courses later, we were back home to an empty house.

Don't get me wrong, I love my son, but the lack of responsibility and complete sense of freedom brought back memories of those heady days as DINKs.

It was 9 p.m.

My wife and I looked at each other.

She spoke first: "Remember what we used to do before we had Alex?" she asked with a gleam in her eyes.

We raced to the bedroom as fast as we could and dove into bed.

She was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow and I followed suit a few minutes later.

My son, the biker

I took the training wheels of Alex's bike today.

Seven minutes later he was crying.
It's not like he's a crier and it's not as though I didn't read everything Bicycling magazine wrote about training wheel removal.

Still, he tried, he crashed, he crashed again, and again and three more times and then went storming into
house sobbing that he'll "never be able to ride like Liam."
(Liam is his best friend and has been riding without training wheels for at least a week.)

It started well.

I followed the advice of Bicycling magazine, removed his training wheels, took him to the top of a small
grass-covered hill and let him coast down.

He did perfectly, but when he stopped, he kept his feet on the pedals and fell over.

The second time down the hill, he did the same thing. Even fell over on the same side.

I consulted Bicycling, put a hockey stick between his bike's seat stay arch and the bottom bracket and tried to keep his bike upright by using the stick as a lever.

It worked, until Alex noticed and started complaining that Liam didn't use a
stick.

I took it off and Alex promptly fell over, getting all tangled around the frame in the process.

Bicycling magazine called it a "flesh pretzel."

His last crash was the worst.

We went back to the top of the hill. I made sure the hockey stick was removed, told him to keep his feet off the pedals and tightened his helmet.

I gave him a push and he did awesome. He coasted down the hill, across the sidewalk and right into the neighbour's wooden fence.

I consulted Bicycling but there was nothing about removing splinters from a crying preschooler.

Move Over Art Linkletter

Art Linkletter made a career from quoting kids on his show Kids Say the Darndest Things.
I figure I'll test the waters and see how easy it is. Feedback encouraged.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Alex, go to the bathroom."
"I did."
"Did you pee?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"There was no pee, just a fart."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Daddy, can I have a peanut butter sandwich, but without peanuts?"
To some people this makes no sense, but we have two types of peanut butter in our house--crunchy and extra creamy.
Guess which kind he prefers?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Grandpa, what's that?"
"That's a rooster."
"No, on his neck."
"That's a wattle. All roosters have one."
"Oh. Why does Grandma Pam have one?"
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The very first time Alex asked me where he came from, I told him that mommy and I picked up the parts from a store and assembled him at home.
One day when he was three, he had a nosebleed.
When it finally stopped, he said: "We have to go back to the store and get a nose that doesn't leak."

That sounds disgusting

When my wife became a nurse practitioner, she went out and bought the most obnoxious sounding alarm clock she could find.

She needed a high-decibel clock to wake her for those 7 a.m. consults, but she still managed to sleep through it a few times.

(I think women are gifted with the ability to turn their hearing off, a skill that allows them to stay married to husbands who, allegedly, "snore like a congested heifer.")

Anyhoo, after much research, I have found the perfect sound for the world's most effective alarm clock sound and I'm willing to share it with anyone who wants to use it.

I guarantee it will wake the sleepiest person and have then out of bed and running in less than a second.

The sound, of course, is that of a child barfing his brains out.

All over his bed.

After having two helpings of peas, carrots and chicken (which, it seems, he needs to chew more).

If this posting does not make much sense, I apologize--I'm sleep deprived.

It seems, that after a 3 a.m. wake-up call from the barf alarm, I didn't get any more sleep and spent the next three hours doing laundry, rubbing a little person's back and telling him "no, I'm not mad at all that Junior also threw up on mommy and daddy's bed."

And I made sure Lisa didn't sleep though her alarm.

Mexican sun vs. Canadian son

Is it wrong to leave my son in Canada while I head to the Mexican Riviera for "research"?

It was easy to convince Alex that Canada was the better option for him, but I'm having trouble convincing myself.

If my son stays in the Great White North he'll spend a week with his grandparents (whom he seldom sees) in the Kootenays (lots of snow, which he loves) playing with other kids his age (tons of fun).

Conversely, I tell myself, that wandering around a bunch of Mayan ruins in the scorching heat while mommy tries to explain the difference between Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacán would be boring to a four-year-old (or, to be honest, a 40-year-old).

The grandparents hometown has deer, a wave pool, enough toys to start a Toys R Us and a grandma who can make 349 different types of cookies.

Mexico has spiders and snakes, a semi-polluted Gulf of Mexico, toys that meet no known safety standards and 349 different types of hot sauce.

It seems straightforward enough, yet I was still wracked with guilt.

Like most men, I didn't want to discuss something as sensitive as childrearing with my wife.

Instead I asked the guys during the Super Bowl.

Sure enough my guilt was assuaged.

"Dude," said Alan. "Didn't Foreign Affairs issue a travel advisory for Mexico. You sure don’t want to bring in a kid to that."

"Yeah," said Bosko. "And diarrhea kills more people every year than AIDS and cancer combined. And everyone knows Mexico is famous for Montezuma's Revenge."

"True," added Jay. "And do you really want to spend $1,200 so you can spend six hours on a plane with a four-year-old?"

Thanks guys, I'm now guilt free.

Paranoid

Are you paranoid if they are really out to get you?


Alex is only four, but last week I was pretty sure the age of innocence was over.

My sweet bright-eyed son had been called to the principal’s office.

Well, actually, not the principal's office, as Pooh's Corner Daycare doesn't have a principal.

But they do have a trio of BCDCS Level II Early Childhood Cognitive Development Co-ordinators (or something like that), which sounds even scarier.

So anyway, when I went to pick up my rosy-cheeked son the other day, I was told to be at the school the following Thursday "to discuss Alex."

It was as though my family doctor just told me to come in as soon as possible to discuss my prostate--even best case scenario, you know it's going to be awkward and uncomfortable and might even hurt.

When I arrived at the Pooh's Corner I was greeted by a woman I had never met before who was armed with a huge stack of papers.

Alex's three BCDCS II ECCDC's (from here on they will be called babysitters) were seated behind.

"So, what's up?" I asked, with the same apprehension I use when I talk to cops who have just pulled me over for speeding.

"Nothing," said the briefcase lady who, it turns out, was just a really nice public health nurse.

"We just like to touch bases with parents once a year to see if they have any questions or
concerns about their child or the program."

And that was it--no panic, not trouble, just a regular old meeting.

It turns out Alex is completely normal and actually well behaved.

Talking "The Talk"

I was waiting until my son was 10, maybe 12, before having "The Talk."

My wife and I had even talked about having "The Talk," (a talk-Talk as it were.)

Anyway, we figured, when the time came to explain the birds and bees, we'd spare no expense.

Lisa was, after all, a former labour and delivery nurse who had access to a huge supply of fake ovaries, uteruses, vaginas and fetuses.

So, when Alex came up to Lisa and me the other day and asked about babies, we were floored.

Although Lisa and I had talked about how we'd handle the situation, we never actually discussed what we would tell him.

I guess we always figured there'd be time enough to discuss it in the future.

But nope, here we were, sitting at the dinner table, drinking coffee and reading the paper, when Alex came running in and asked: "Where do babies come from?"

Lisa looked at me and mouthed “Go ahead.”

I started: “Well, uh, there's. . . .there’s this special place inside mommy. . . .

"That’s what I told them,” he interrupted and ran back outside to his friends.

I looked at Lisa.

“Well that was easy,” she said and turned back to The Province.

Little does she know she’s going to be the one giving the rest of “The Talk” the next time he asks.

Emulation is the sincerest form of flattery

A wise man once said "You write like the authors you read." (OK, it wasn't a wise man, it was just a guy who's smarter than me and I think he was just trying to impress a certain female radio personality during a classroom discussion.)

Whatever.

The thing is, he had a point — the last three books I read were all by the same eminent American doctor and I'm starting to see his inspiration in my words.

***************

My name is Ed, sad but true
I have a son, he's from a zoo.

He likes to make my hair go grey.
"Please be calm" at night I pray.

He can't sit still for very long
And once he broke my favourite bong

He likes to bounce on mommy's bed
But then he landed on her head.

He runs and jumps and yells and screams.
Yet when he's good gets ice cream.

Now it's time he went to bed.
But not a tear I shall shed.

When he sleeps he's so darn sweet.
Raising Alex can't be beat.

Snoring vs. bed wetting

Why do female black widow spiders kill their husband's after mating?

To stop the snoring before it starts.

One of the biggest problems with child rearing is having to do it under a constant state of sleep depravation.

That's the very same scenario that first year university students work under, but at least they grow out of it.

Child-initiated sleep depravation only ends when the child leaves home.

It starts when the baby is born.

They want to feed, mom doesn't want to get out of bed every two hours, so mom and baby take over the bed and dad is left clinging to the side with his butt hanging over the edge.

Once the child is weaned, he wants to come into “the big bed” because he's lonely.

No big deal, except little kids can't sleep in one position.

They must move, kick, roll and turn end-for-end at least once every 3 1/2 minutes.

Despite the constant cajoling and threats from mom about being sent back to “the little bed,” this restless sleep continues every night.

Once the child is four, nighttime toilet training starts.

About every third night they wet the bed and want a dry place to sleep (we're at this stage).

That dry placed tends to be mom and dad's big bed.

My lovely bride Lisa thought she had hit on a solution last night.

Instead of Alex coming in and joining us in the big bed, I’d go and join him in his bed (once I put dry sheets on it).

Once I got everything set up, I hopped in bed with Alex.

He looked at me with he same expression mom uses when she tells him he can’t toss and turn in the big bed and said: "You can't snore in this bed. One snore and you have to go to the big bed."

Sigh.

I can’t wait for the I-just-saw-a-scary-movie-and-I-can't-sleep stage.

Sick jokes

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my parents for all the days they stayed home from work and took care of me when I was sick.
I was in that position recently and now I realize how hard it is. Not the sitting around part: Waiting hand and foot on a pre-schooler who demands hot chocolate and endless reruns of Cars.
Nope, the hard part is the moral dilemma between work/school obligations and parenting responsibilities. In the end it took a wife willing to reschedule her morning, me getting permission to cut class and a son who can now quote Lightening McQueen line for line.
The cool thing is I was able to catch up on what's happening in Alex's life.
It seems knock-knock jokes have had as much impact on Barish preschool as the flu has. After about 40 knock-knock jokes, here's the best. Don't like them? Be thankful I didn't publish the other 37.

Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Tank!
Tank who?
You're welcome!

Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Boo.
Boo who?
Don't cry, Santa Claus will come next year!

Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Olive.
Olive who?
Olive you!

Want more? Try knock-knock-joke.com. One hundred pages of jokes, enough to make anyone stop answering the door.

Bonus joke:
Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Who.
Who who?
Is there an owl in here?

Why, daddy? Why?

My son Alex is now four, an age when, according to my dad, I should stop coddling him and start imparting him with the wisdom for a successful life.’
Right.
Like a 39-year-old student with a part-time job has much advice to offer.
Conversely, the only piece of advice I can remember my father giving me (which, judging from my intimate knowledge of the Canadian Young Offenders Act, I ignored) was : "If one of your friends has a really good idea that ends in '. . . and then we run like hell,' it's not such a good idea."
So, just to be on the safe side, I passed on a PG-version of the advice this morning.
Alex: "What does 'run like H-E-Double Hockey Sticks' mean?"
Me: "Run really fast."
Alex: "Why didn't you say 'Run really fast'"
Me: "I guess because I hadn't though it out really well."
Alex: "Why."
Me: "I guess I was preoccupied."
Alex: "Why"
Me: "'Cause I got a lot of things to do"
Alex: "Why"
Me: "'Cause I have to work tomorrow and I got a lot of homework and the kitchen looks like a bomb hit it and someone tried building a castle on an Eggo waffle covered in peanut butter."
Alex: "Why"
Times like these I wish I could run.
Instead I told Alex to go get the waffle and have some breakfast.So. . . in a bid to become a better parent AND get my course work done, I've started following the advice of the DotMoms and their tips on better babies through blogging.
You should too. http://roughdraft.typepad.com/dotmoms/2006/10/better_babies_t.html