Koi pond: Is it real or Fish TV for kids?

My kids are obsessed with animals. We have three at our house: a cat who thinks he’s a dog, a cat who thinks she’s a god and a rabbit, Capt. Jack Remmington, III, Esq, the world’s only rabbit/pirate/lawyer. That isn’t enough; we have stuffed animals and we watch videos about animals and since they’ve discovered YouTube, we watch animals bloopers until I want to throw up (because it’s the internet and of course I watch it with them. I’ve seen the news and I know internet predators can now reach through the monitor and take your children right off the couch. You can’t fool me). And now they’ve found something even better: our neighbor has Fish TV.

My kids’ other obsession is water. Any water will do: baths, rain, sprinklers and especially ponds and rivers — anything they can fall into and possibly die. And now the kids have discovered our neighbor has his own pond in his backyard, complete with koi fish and almost scarily large goldfish.

We were out playing in our front garden: the wife and roommate were planting, the boys were searching for worms and I was being grunt labor, dragging yard waste to the alley Dumpsters. Our neighbor was also working on his (much nicer) front garden and offered to show off his newly sodded backyard, which looks like the grounds crew at Busch Stadium did it. I went back to take a look and while my neighbor and I discussed sod and sod care, the boys quickly discovered his koi pond, a beautiful little pond surrounded by expertly placed flat, gray stones. The boys were mesmerized quickly as the two dozen or so fish swam around.

I don’t know if my sons knew what to think of this situation. They’d seen ponds, but those were what ducks swam in — everyone knows that — and they’d seen fish in fish tanks but those were up on tables and normally surrounded by crab rangoon and fried rice (we go to a lot of Chinese restaurants). They had seen TVs embedded into the floor at their favorite burger restaurant and I have a feeling this is what they thought they were seeing: an outside TV stuck in the ground that only showed a fish show.

That was until Tiny Bits, our curious 18-month-old, decided the best thing to do to TVs stuck in the ground is to throw a stick at it (this is his go-to move for most things). This fish reacted by swimming up and seeing if they could eat it. This widened all the boys’ eyes; sure, they’ve seen Dora and Elmo talk to them but never has a TV show reacted to what they had done. They quickly figured out this was no TV show but real, live animals right in front of them and what do you to with real, live animals? Pet them!

This was when I discovered the stones surrounding the pond were not all glued down (or grouted or nailed or whatever you do to keep stones from falling into a pond they are surrounding). Tiny Bits decided petting the fish was something he needed to experience RIGHT NOW and nearly threw himself bodily into the depths of the pond but I was able to keep him and the stones safely dry. Then my neighbor, not knowing my children quite as well as I do, showed the boys what happens when you feed the fish. Mainly, they go crazy nuts — the fish and the kids — and the boys immediately wanted to feed them more. I don’t know a lot about fish, but I’ve heard if you feed them too much they die or explode or something so we had to put a stop to our little visit before one of them stole some fish food and decide to feed the fish themselves. Or before they got bored with trying to kill the fish and decided to see what it would take to wipe out the sod.

Originally published on Stltoday.com

Quiet can be a scary thing

Child rearing is filled with numerous moments of abject horror. From the moment when they handed me my first child and I couldn’t stop thinking I was going to drop him to major media reminding me daily that my children are about to be kidnapped by terrorists and made to do Un-American things in foreign lands, every moment is another second where I’m sure I or society at large is going to kill the kids. I’m a nervous wreck. And the kids aren’t helping.

As any stay-at-home parent with more than one child will tell you, a few seconds of peace and quiet is worth its weight in gold. But that same moment of quiet can be terrifying if it takes place when you are out of the room. My older two boys were at school and it was just Tiny Bits, our 18-month-old, and me hanging out. It’s nice to have some one-on-one time with the little guy; time where I can watch him grow, develop and even see his little mind working out how the world works. We had played the morning away, and it was time for a snack. Leaving him on the living room floor playing with his teddy bear, I ran to the kitchen to rustle up some chow.

I wasn’t worried about leaving him alone for a few minutes because he’s going through a “screaming phase,” one of the more “enjoyable” phases of development where children are learning vocal control — and therefore how to scream — quite happily, ALL THE TIME. Luckily this is something they grow out of pretty quickly (or they never do and grow up to be lead singers in heavy metal bands). In other words, I could hear him very well at the other end of our house. And that is why, as I was finishing chopping up his apple, I suddenly froze. I couldn’t hear the baby. The living room was quiet. A little too quiet.

My mind was awash with Wes Craven-fueled images as I ran around the couch to see exactly what he was doing. Had he turned the cat inside out? Had he suddenly figured out how to use the front door and was now out playing in traffic? Had he fallen into an interdimensional gate and now I would have to search the universe for him (that is exactly the kind of thing he would do)? No, he had discovered his toes. He was sitting on the floor, playing with toes. Apparently his toes can hear very well and don’t need to be screamed at. I, on the the other hand, am completely deaf since he looked up at me, saw the bowl of apple slices and happily screamed his head off.

This screaming phase had better stop soon or I’m going to start screaming soon myself.

Originally published on Stltoday.com

Wind experiments and a spray can of cheese, and thus a love of science begins

I’ve always been a scientist at heart. From a very early age I was fascinated with space and biology and just about anything I could get my hands on. Carl Sagan and Nikola Tesla were my Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky. My days were like the TV show “Mythbusters” only with less explosions. And after the last few weeks, I can see my boys are well on their way to follow in my footsteps.

The first time I saw this scientific inclination was just after the recent 40 days and nights of rain. The sun was out, the windows were down and the car filled with cut-grass-scented air. On the highway, wind buffeted us violently, but we were all so happy to see the sun again no one cared. My two oldest boys were in the very back of our station wagon, watching the world speed away from them. The air flowing into the car circulates wildly in the back, and the boys love it: their hair flies this way and that and they giggle as we travel. So much better than the bickering I hear when the windows are up and they’re bored.

An empty shopping bag was in the back of the car with them, and the wind caught it, showing us all exactly how wildly the air was flowing. It whipped around the boys, faster and faster until it wrapped itself around one of their seat belts. This caused them to erupt with laughter, grab the bag and send it flying. Again and again they got the bag into the air until the poor bag finally escaped their torture and jumped into the back seat, hiding down under my chair.

The collective sigh that signaled all the fun in the world was dead echoed through the car until Big Bits, our 6-year-old, grabbed some paper from his backpack and sent it into the air. It flew about too, not quite as crazily as the bag but it was still fun. Someone in Big Bit’s kindergarten class had recently taught him about paper airplanes, which of course he loved (what kid doesn’t?), but he still wasn’t 100 percent sure about how to fold paper into an airplane shape. That didn’t stop him from randomly folding paper and seeing if it flew any better. This met with varying degrees of success. Little Bits, who will enthusiastically tell you he’s 4 if you give him half a second, did his big brother one better and just wadded up the paper into a ball. This didn’t work at all.

But that didn’t stop him in the least. Everything in their reach was tossed into the air, from toy cars to their shoes. Little Bits held his teddy bear up in the air several times, each time dropping it to see if his little friend would fly around the car. I think the little bear’s arms and legs wiggling in the wind gave him hope he might just take flight. I knew the observation stage had ended and they were ready for more advanced tests when they found an empty chip bag, and it flew around nearly as well as the shopping bag. And they started preparing for future funding requests when Big Bits said, “Dad, can we stop for some chips? I’m really hungry.”

This wasn’t the only time their minds have shown signs of scientific curiosity. One day at the store I happened to see a can of spray cheese, that cheese-like “food” substance that comes in a can and is easily spread on crackers. I remembered liking it when I was a kid, so why not spread the joy to the next generation?

I took it home and let each of the kids have some on a cracker. Tiny Bits, our 18-month-old, took the first one and although none actually made it into his mouth, he did have fun with it (took me forever to get it out of his hair). Little Bits took one, barely licked it and politely put it back on the table. I don’t know if he’s the smartest one of us, but he might have the best taste.

To Big Bits, this was a revelation, a whole new world of flavor opened up before him. “I like slimy cheese!” he shouted several times. I had to cut him off before he made himself sick. It was time for bed anyway. As he was brushing his teeth, staring at his reflection in the mirror, he suddenly turned to me.

“Dad, slimy cheese causes freckles.” I stopped getting Tiny Bits dressed and just stared at him.

“What?!” The incredulous “What?!” is said a lot around our house.

“Well, I like slimy cheese and Little Bits doesn’t.”

“Yup,” I agreed.

“And I have freckles and Little Bits doesn’t.” I couldn’t argue with him on this one, at least this close to bed time. I would have liked to sit him down and explain the truth but when our roommate told him she liked slimy cheese too (and, of course, she has freckles as well) that gave him all the proof he needed. Seeing was believing.

I’m going to keep encouraging their apparent love of science and maybe one of them will be the next Einstein or Hawking. Or, if we’re really lucky, the next generation of Mythbusters.

Originally published on Stltoday.com

Boys will fight over anything, even an imaginary ball

You never know when major life events will happen to you. One moment you are trying to wrangle the family into the car for an outing and the next moment you are standing there, dumbfounded, experiencing something you know you will remember forever. Just this weekend I had one of those moments.

It was a beautiful Saturday and after endless weeks of rain we were all champing at the bit to get out of the house. We spent the morning down at the local cafe, eating a hearty breakfast and wasting time with friends. The kids had spent time at the park, running and jumping and expending most of the calories they had eaten at breakfast. This always does one of two things to them: wears them out so all they want to do is lie on the couch and stare at the TV or winds them up to a pitched frenzy whose energy is only equaled by supernovas. There is no rhyme or reason to this, and trying to predict how they will react to “park time” is a fool’s errand. I knew my best bet was to throw them into the car for a quick trip across town. If they’re turning into zombies the car ride will put them to sleep, and if they’re running wild they could run around the mall or a big box store out in the county.

First, though, I’d have to clean out the car. My poor car is a largeish station wagon, but it’s filled with car seats and there isn’t much room in it other than the front passenger seat. It gets filled with diaper bags, jackets, empty chip bags and bottles of soda. This is not a big deal during the week when it’s just me, but my wife has no place to sit and it seems weird to have her follow us in her car when we go on family trips. So as I carried junk into the house, my wife stayed out on the sidewalk to let the kids play in the sun. Tiny Bits, our 18-month-old, found a stick and was going around blessing and/or whacking every plant he could get close to. Maybe he thinks he’s a wizard and the stick is a wand; who knows — he was happy and that’s all that matters. Our other two boys — 6-year-old Big Bits and 4-year-old Little Bits-decided the thousand and one toys we have in the house (and the several in the car) were unnecessary and were playing Invisible Football.

Invisible Football is a simple game: you take an invisible football and “throw” it to your brother, who “catches” it and then begins to run down the sidewalk, avoiding “tacklers” until they come to the “end zone” where they score a touchdown and “spike the ball.” It’s actually fun to watch and appears to be fun to play. Regardless, they were having fun and staying out of my way as I hauled miscellaneous debris into the house.

I was coming out of the front door for the last time when I heard screaming. I could see Little Bits standing a few doors down, crying. Big Bits was throwing a tantrum. Tiny Bits was happily whacking away at a hosta in our front yard. My wife was trying very hard not to laugh at something.

“What happened?” I asked as I came up to them.

“MOMMY IS SO MEAN!” Big Bits told me.

“Big Bits is … hogging the ball,” my wife tried to say through giggles. “I told him he had to share the ball and he threw a fit.”

“It’s not fair!” Big Bits told me. I was confused.

“Can’t they both have a ‘ball’?” I asked. My wife just shrugged.

“I tried and Little Bits said he wanted the one Big Bits has,” she told me. I just shook my head.

“OK, Big Bits, give Little Bits the ball. It’s only fair,” I told him. Big Bits wasn’t happy, but he seemed to see he had been out voted.

Then the most surreal thing I had ever seen took place.

“You aren’t my best friend anymore!” he said as he bent down, “picked” up the “ball” and “threw” it to his brother before stomping off into the car. Little Bits “watched” the “ball” go over his head and turned to run to where it “landed,” “picked” it up and brought it back to us, now happy enough to stop crying. My wife and I got all the kids into the car and stopped before getting in to look at one another.

“Did that just happen?” I asked.

“Yes, our sons just fought over an imaginary football,” she answered before we both broke out in laughter.

At least they have good imaginations. Now, to see if a good imagination helps them in life or just drives me insane.

Originally published on Stltoday.com