Archive for the ‘Kids’ Category

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The $43 Cheesecake

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

So, yesterday was officially both Papa’s (My father-in-law) and Grandpa’s (my dad) birthdays. More on this later, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

We spent the day strolling around NYC yesterday. Running around the city is tough work with three kids. Even with help. Katie and Mike, (our friends from Hawaii), have always made having kids easier. They are a great aunt/uncle (they’re brother and sister) set to have around. When we lived in Hawaii, they were our babysitters. They were great to have around, and frequently crashed at our place. Having them over yesterday and today was like reliving old times a little, and that counts for a lot.

I’m a big fan of using the Subway when in NYC as a way of covering ground, especially with kids. It’s a bitch getting selves, kids, stroller, etc. to the platform, but once there, it’s a straight shot onto the train. The bus, on the other hand, would be sitting there while your slow-moving-herd boarded, while other passengers watched with frothing mouths.

Kevyn, it turns out, likes the subway too.

George and Kevyn on the subway

George and Kevyn on the subway

He kept asking me to let him slide down the pole. So being a dad, I obliged, his laughter being contagious and infecting other passengers.

Lara also introduced him to the rushing wind preceeding an oncoming train.

Lara and Kevyn, as the train approaches

Lara and Kevyn, as the train approaches

Central park has some nice little playgrounds, where the kids can have adventures, meet new friends and explore the properties of matter, As Caelyn was wont to do. She also likes putting sand at the bottom of the slide. Just because.

Caelyn playing with sand

Caelyn playing with sand

Mike and Katie spent some time with their non-blood nieces and nephew as well. Honestly, you should have seen the looks on their faces when Mike and Katie walked into the apartment yesterday morning. It was priceless!

Katie watching over Caelyn

Katie watching over Caelyn

Mike and Quinlyn

Mike and Quinlyn

The end of the evening involved dinner and tomfoolery at Dave and Busters, where the kids made a killing in tickets on some roulette type of game. Quinlyn played air hockey for the first time. And Me, Mike, Quinlyn, and Kevyn took turns blowing up aliens/monsters on various gun games.

The cap to the evening was something Papa had said earlier. Lara had called him to wish him a happy birthday, and he said something to the effect of “have a piece of cheesecake for me.” Well, this became our driving force. Find a whole cheesecake in NYC at 9:30PM. Problem being that we were tired, and it was getting late: most normal bakeries were closed by then. Everywhere else sold them by the slice, and we weren’t having any of that. So after searching Times Square for a deli or bakery with a whole cheesecake we settled on a slightly-used-but-mostly-whole cheesecake, that cost $43 after tax. Some decisions just can’t be explained.

A slightly used cheesecake

A slightly used cheesecake

Posted in Family, Friends, Games, Kids, New York, Pictures | 1 Comment »

Of Deserts and Space Stations

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
Kevyn Channeling Yoda

Kevyn Channeling Yoda

We have a Millenium Falcon right now.

It serves our needs, keeps us safe and dry, has access to the information we need, and when required, can take us to galaxies far, far away.

Oh, I’m talking about our apartment, if you didn’t know.

What we lack is a desert, or a space station, or a city-sized open space where me and the three Padawans can break out the lightsabers and have a battle of epic proportions. We had a space like this back in Hawaii, but not here. We don’t have a yard, front or back. We have a parking lot, but who wants their fantasy play to be interrupted by something as mundane as a car?

I mean, we have my dad’s house, which has a HUGE backyard. And he loves when the kids come over. But that’s an hour and a half away: far to much for driving every day, or even every weekend. I wanna be able to take the kids out back ANY time.

It’s not that I don’t love our apartment, or it’s next-door proximity to Polish nom noms from Piast, but we need a bigger place. Unfortunately, it’ll be years before we can do that, between paying down debt and saving for a down payment. But we’ll get there.

There are many reasons to want to own your own home. I like to keep it simple.

I want to have lightsaber battles with my kids.

Posted in Family, Just Sayin, Kids, Life, Star Wars, Traffic | 1 Comment »

Split Decisions

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

I have a theory:

As a parent, your available attention span is inversely proportional to the number of children you have.

This applies whether your children are presently accompanying you or not.

Today I had (as I always do) some time to kill at Penn Station before my train started to board. So instead of idling in the NJ Transit waiting area looking at gir…people, I decided to stop by Penn Books to get something to read. I went in there looking for the “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”, as I had the words “don’t panic” stuck in my head (there’s a story as to why, but it’s not as funny as I’d like it to be)..

They didn’t have it.

And then I was lost. I spent the next twenty minutes looking at book after book, hoping something would catch my eye. But I couldn’t look at more than a few books before my attention would drift back home to my kids.

I used to be able to walk into a bookstore and, if I so desired, pick a book before I’d taken ten steps. I’ve never been disappointed by one of my picks.

Now I can’t pick one at all.

Another, sadder example. In my life, I’ve found about ten four-leaf clovers.. Most of them I got because I’d be walking past a patch of clovers in the grass, and spot. One out of the corner of my eye. It just came naturally.

Now, I lack the attention span to look at a clover patch, consciously, for more than a few seconds. And forget about using that passive awareness. That’s shot.

So, is my attention divided along the same lines as my heart? Or am I just getting old(er)?

And yes, I still believe in leprachauns.

P.S. I just noticed the guy next to me has an Amazon Kindle. Second one I’ve seen in the wild. Maybe I should get one…

Posted in Family, Just Sayin, Kids, Life | No Comments »

Potty Mouth

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

So the other day, Kevyn showed me just how much I need to watch my language.

I’m a big fan of music. Been playing it (or dreaming of the days when I did) pretty much all my life. I play my music loud. I’m kind of an audiophile. I might not be using the highest bit rate for the music, but at least the highs lows and mids are all adjusted to appropriate and proportional levels.

Others just like to have the bass cranked up all the way.

Now, I might be old fashioned, or maybe just picky, but the only time I ever want that much bass is when worlds are exploding in movies.

We love our apartment, but it’s lacking in the way of air conditioning. So until we can get a window unit or two, we have to leave the windows open to keep cool. The unfortunate part about that is that two of the living room windows and our bedroom window face a rather busy street just before an intersection.

When these bass-cranking fucktards get stuck at that red light, communication in my apartment comes to a halt and we hold on for dear life as the space is filled with the *THUD BOOM THUMP* sounds of J-fuck’s newest hit single entitled “My fans are tools and morons.”

Occasionally, when my listening ability is nullified is such a manner, I lose my temper a tad and yell things out the window at people that I know can’t hear me.

My choice of words the other day was “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Now, I know I have a profanity problem. Ten years in the navy plus being a New Yorker plus working an a power plant as a technician desensitizes
you to profanity, as you learn just how versitile words like “fuck” can be.

Kevyn apparently has the same distain for the interruption of our environment and/or the slaughter of music. Either that, or he just thought it looked like fun when I did it. Because the next time that happened, he walked up to the window and yelled “You fucking kidding me?”

I’m now trying to limit my expressions of disbelief to a very emphatic “Really?”

Posted in Kids, Life, Social Norms | 2 Comments »

Neccessary Roughness

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

These thoughts prompted by the Dadcentric blog article Bully, by Jason, which can be found http://www.dadcentric.com/2009/07/bully.html.

I’m in a fairly constant state of flux when it comes to teaching my kids how to stand up for themselves. On one hand, our ever-increasingly wussified society tells me that all violence is wrong, and kids should be taught so (or we’ll snitch to CPS on you and have your kids taken away). On the other hand, personally, my school fighting stopped when I finally fought back and knocked a kid out. On a national level, we celebrated our independence recently because over 200 years ago a bunch of parents, farmers, bankers, and other normal folk decided enough was enough and stood up for their rights.

History is littered with stories of violence solving problems. Of course, it was wielded as a tool to be used towards an end and locked away until needed.

Until one fateful day in seventh grade, I didn’t fight back. I got my ass handed to me fairly frequently. The odd thing, though, was that I still got in trouble for it. I didn’t seek it out, I didn’t start it, but I still got in trouble. The day I ended it, I got in trouble for that too, but it never happened again.

I hope my kids never have to deal with that kind of choice, but the odds of that are painfully slim. I can only hope that I’ve taught them well enough to make the right call when the time comes.

Posted in Kids, Social Norms | 1 Comment »

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