Principal's Office Visit

I went to pick up the boys yesterday from daycare and found my lively three year old in the principal's office.  Now I've done my share of time in the principal's office mostly in my early elementary years.  (By the time I made it to high school I learned to fly right around that gray area where the punishment didn't quite justify a visit to the big man's office).  So I felt like this was an interesting moment being the parent of a boy doing the same thing or at least winding up in the same spot.  I think you're just embarrassed as a parent because you assume, rightly or not, that these people probably think you're an awful parent.  Little do they know you've been awarded parent of the year.  See blogging, year 1.  Well, holy cow! my parents are saying as they read this.  Finally, after 30 some odd years our boy gets it! 

Quinny got in a fight on the playground - at 3.  Hmm.  He pummeled this kid, got on top of him and was making him eat wood chips.  Deep down in those places of the brain no one talks about pom-poms and fireworks are going off because after all he's a boy, he's my boy and he clearly smoked this kid.  The boy can hold his own!  As a conscious parent you're appalled that a three year old could pummel anyone.  We were horrified, specifically about the forced eating of wood chips, although I'm laughing aloud as writing this trying to picture the playground fracas.  So we talked to him about it and took away some privileges and think we parented it out.

Today, upon dropping him off his teacher says, "Are you proud of him?"  Umm, excuse me?  Is this daycare for the UFC?  There was obvious confusion.  Apparently, the kid he whipped had been bullying him; punching him, biting him, pushing him, etc.  Finally, yesterday afternoon Q hit his limit and unleashed the inner beast throwing a much needed beat down to this bully brat.  The teacher felt the loser got what he deserved and Q stood up for himself, which she felt was good and necessary.  Well, now I feel like a louse because we disciplined him for his actions and like the nether regions of my melon I should've been taking him out for ice cream, fireworks and high fives.  Tonight we'll toast the victory with his first beer!  Okay, I'm just joking.  I am bummed that I gave him the talk and all that nonsense when I definitely want him to stand up for himself.  I don't want him getting bullied and now I have no idea what he thinks or what message I've sent him.  Oh, man this parenting thing is getting deep!

At any rate maybe we have a boy that knows when enough is enough and apparently just takes people's garbage because he's a well adjusted human but not because he has to.  It looks like he's going to be a great young man.

Traveling



Drinking & Driving

I flew to Wisco for the weekend to give Carrie some much needed alone time with the boys. She just doesn't get enough of that single parenting so every once in a while I try to take a trip so she can use up any excess patience.  You don't want to store too much patience. 

I was only gone for the weekend so I didn't pack much, just brought a backpack.  I travel a lot so I have a few "pre-packed" bags and then I take whichever one fits the occasion. The backpack I took is a travel bag so it has a built-in laptop section that is TSA approved so you don't have to take your laptop out. You just slide the bag through.  I have pens, ethernet cords, all kinds of charging cords, matches, pills for various problems, tip money, some change, etc. I'm sure you get the picture. It's not easy to remember to pack all this stuff so I just keep my bags loaded and then just take clothes or whatever I need.

I had no problems leaving Tampa. While leaving Milwaukee I had some issues. I get stopped by security and I never get stopped. I mean never. I know what clothes I own that will set off security from what watches, shoes, belts to knowing that too much spare change will get you stopped. I know. Who knew?  I have this down so I was surprised I was stopped. There was a problem with my bag and several TSA agents are looking at the monitor pointing, discussing, pointing some more. I'm watching thinking there's nothing in there. Sometimes you get to certain airports (like Cedar Rapids, IA!) where the TSA agents are extremely aggressive. I know that Iowa is a hotbed for al-Qaeda focusing on spreading Jihadism but clearly I'm not interested in blowing up the 7 people on the plane to make a political statement over a cornfield across from exactly nowhere. 

So they grab my bag, take me to the search area and ask all these questions. Do you have two keys of cocaine in there?  No. Do you have weapons of mass destruction. Um, no.  No, I don't. Do you have weapons of any kind in there?  Nope. And of course while this guy is politely interrogating me, I'm trying to think when the last time I used that bag was and what the hell is in there. All I really want to say is, "You know I haven't used that bag in a while and frankly don't know what's in it." But, that's exactly what you don't want to say to security. You're basically raising your hand to have them call the FBI.  So, I'm actually a little nervous. He searches the bag. There are a lot of pockets. I have that thing packed like an Eagle Scout.  He pulls out a Sharpie, 3 ball point pens (you know certain pens will leak due to the changes in air pressure so, and this sounds beyond nerdy, but I actually carry specific brands of pens that I know won't leak), so there are like 7 different kinds of pens in there. He pulls some matches out - you never know when you might want a cigar and any cigar smoker knows a Bic lighter is not what you use to light a cigar. He pulls out some Zantac and then I thought, that was it. The little foil packets will set off the alarm if they are in your pocket so I thought it would show up funny on the x-ray. He bought that. He takes all this stuff out and puts it in a tub to run it through and he also reruns the bag.

It's another conference with 4 TSA agents this time and I can just tell by the way they are pointing whatever they see, it's still in the bag. Now, I'm actually pretty nervous and starting to wonder if I did something stupid. I'm totally innocent but I'm sure that's what every terrorist says upon questioning.  Back to pulling more stuff out. He pulls out money, change, power cords, more pills, clothes, toiletries. The bag is nearly empty. He sends it through again. It's still in there. Ahhhh! It's been about 25 minutes at this point. The guy is being cool and I'm keeping my cool. That's a lesson I learned. Don't be a moron at the airport. If there was ever a place to keep your cool about delays, travel hassles or security it's the airport my friends. I saw a guy take his whole shirt off (bare chested people) because he was peeved they asked him to take off a bulky sweatshirt.  He didn't want to waste anymore time so he just stripped down right there in the massive security line.  That didn't go over too well. It was extremely entertaining, however, for the rest of us.

Anyway, I'm actually wondering if they are going to rip open the bag thinking it's something sewn inside. I'm getting anxious and racking my brain trying to figure out what I have in this stupid bag! Why did I bring this dumb bag??! I have 12 bags!

Finally, he finds it buried deep in one of the 72 pockets. It was an army can opener.  I bought it for tailgating to be able to open the kraut. Any decent tailgate has to have kraut.  Hilarious. And you want to know the really funny part? After all that they gave it back to me. Can you believe that?  30 minutes of their time, my time, a search that would make the founding fathers roll over in their grave and they finally find the offending item, look at it curiously, enjoy my tailgating explanation, have a few laughs with me and then give it back to me.  As this is taking place a guy got stopped for carry on too much cheese. It's wisco and you can't leave without cheese.  They were swabbing his cheese, no joke, to make sure there was no explosive residue on it. The ole' sneaky cheese bomb. You have to be alert for this kind of stuff.   At that point they offered to repack my bag. No thanks. Hilarious. There has to be a funny TSA blog. Maybe I can start one.

P.S.  The boys survived their mother. More to come tomorrow.

We are a Family of Bipeds!

We have evolved. We have decided it's better to walk with two legs than continue this journey on all fours. At exactly 17 months (March 13th) our youngster finally decided that walking was going to be the way to go. Both my parents and Carrie's parents were in the state of Florida and were able to witness the event.  Gavin would like to thank the neanderthals first, for without them this wouldn't be possible. He would further like to thanks his older brother, Quinny, for proving that walking was indeed possible to learn as child. He would like to thank his adorning parents, whom never lost faith in his journey and continually encouraged him to take those first steps. And lastly he would like to thank himself for gaining the courage and taking those first steps for anything is truly possible. Hooray! 

He promptly than took a header at daycare and bloodied his nose pretty good smoking the bookshelf on the way down. We had not yet had an opportunity to provide the necessary physics lesson. I guess some things one has to learn on their own. He still crawls from time to time but we're so happy he's moving in the right direction. What a great time. And you know what walking means? It means it's time for another baby!  We'll see.  I'm still encouraging the wife to have four but it takes two to tango. (Don't take this gibberish as some kind of announcement).  My better half requires me to put these disclaimers in here. 

Forgive my recent absence in blogging. For a while there I was without a computer so I will shoot out several posts over the next week to get caught up on all that's been going on.  It's also been spring break and March is the busiest month for us with visitors. We saw Carrie's grandparents, my parents, Carrie's parents, I snuck in a trip to Louisiana to watch opening NCAA madness with my closest undergrad Badger fans (2 wins!!) and I'm heading to the great Cheese State tomorrow for more madness and fun. It's been a riot and beautiful weather all the way around. We've been to Siesta Key, Medeira Beach, Clearwater Beach and have I named enough beaches yet?!  It's nice to have so many options. Quinny even learned how to "swim!"  It's been a great start to the spring and we're looking forward to more adventures with the kids as we embark on summer.

Here is a link to the skating video from the last post on youtube.

Hockey Tryouts

Quinny was invited to a friend's 5 year old birthday party this weekend at the ice rink with a free skating lesson.  Imagine 12-15 kids ranging in age from 3-6 in ice skates mixed in with the rest of the public skating on a hockey rink.  It was organized chaos.  Quentin didn't know what to think when we got there.  He was excited but totally shut down as soon as we got there.  He wouldn't even put his skates on! I'm not sure what that was about.  I don't know if he was afraid of the skates, the ice or if there was just too much going on but he cried and cried when I tried to lace them up for him.  At that point we took him out to the arena so he could watch the other skaters hoping that would build some confidence.  He liked that but he was still too shy to make the leap to getting out there.  We tried to get him to put his skates on again and realized they were too small so Carrie went back to the counter with Gavin in tow which drew a lot of comments, "Wow! You're getting that kid skating?!"  Um no people he can't even walk.  Upon returning with the right size we finally convinced Q to put them on.  The whole place is decked out in thick rubber flooring so you can walk around in your skates, which helped him out a lot with balance and getting used to wearing them.  At the end of the day him walking around in the skates was the biggest factor to him getting it later.

We finally got him on the ice and the teacher said he had rubber legs so he wouldn't stand up.  She told him if you walked out here you can skate.  He cried.  He sat on the ice, literally freezing his butt off.  He cried some more but than a nine-year old, an older brother of one of the birthday attendees, who doubled as a professional skater, took a liking to the old Q-ster and started helping him out.  He was literally standing behind him holding him up like a fireman's carry under his armpits.  Quinny was not feeling it so he came off the ice but didn't want to take his skates off.  He kept walking around and getting more comfortable in his skates watching from the stands. 

After a while we convinced him to go back out there and give it another shot.  They have these PVC contraptions that basically help you wheel around on the ice.  I can best describe it by saying it's a walker for kids on the ice made out of PVC piping. I tried uploading a truly awesome video of Q doing his Gretzky impression but I can't get this site to accept it. He his hauling around the ice in it after he finally gets it, feels confident and really starts enjoying it.

By the end of the day he was loving skating and had made a ton of progress.  It was really cool for me.  We haven't tried organized sports yet so this was a new moment for me watching him get better.  The amount of progress he made in the couple of hours we were there was so much fun to watch.
 

With the party we got a certificate for a free pass to skate again, which means I'm going to have to go out there and help him balance.  Yikes.  I have hockey skates but I don't think they've come out of the box in roughly 15 years. It should be interesting.