Tag: parenting

The Hot Wheels Industrial Complex

~ sanebishop ~ 4 Comments

Many people these days are raising the alarm about Artificial Intelligence, but they are too late, as evidenced by the fact that Hot Wheels are now self-replicating. Everywhere I step is a new Hot Wheel that seems intent on my downfall. I can’t even get up in the middle of the night without fear that a Hot Wheel will ambush me en route to pee. As a fringe benefit, my employer offers an Accident Plan, a type of insurance that compensates you for fractures, dislocations, concussions, and lacerations. I used to wonder who would feel the need to purchase such a plan, on top of their regular health insurance, and then Thomas turned three and smuggled a Hot Wheel home from daycare. Ever since, Hot Wheels have been multiplying exponentially in our house, and I signed up for the High Option for the Accident Plan. 

For a three-year-old boy, Hot Wheels is a way of life. Thomas wakes up on Saturday mornings at 6:30, climbs into our bed, and pummels us back into wakefullness. “Can I watch Hot Wheels City?” he asks every Saturday. By this point in his short life, Thomas has probably seen Draven, the evil genius in Hot Wheels City, thwarted a thousand times by Chase and Elliot, the two claymation heroes who drive Hot Wheels to save the day, all while engaging in witty banter.

As a parent, I place blame squarely on the grandparents–as much as I try to prevent more contraband from entering the house, I think my mom sneaks in Hot Wheels inside her scratch-made five layer chocolate cake. It’s too good to resist, even if it does contain a metallic layer. These days, good ole-fashioned Hot Wheels are now a gateway to more expensive Hot Wheels Monster Trucks. It’s as if the whole Hot Wheels Industrial Complex is merely meant to dislocate grandparents from their money and parents from their shoulders. One of Thomas’s favorite Hot Wheels Monster Trucks is named Bone Shaker, an apt name if you happen to step on it in the middle of the night.

Thomas and his Monster Trucks

The Winter of My Discarded Stomach Contents

~ sanebishop ~ 11 Comments

Just in case any of you might have been wondering if I finally attempted a farming feat so stupid that it ended in my untimely demise, I’m happy to report I’m still alive; I just haven’t had the chance to write much lately since my intestines have unionized and gone on strike, bringing to a retching halt the normal function of my digestive system. 

First, it was Flu B, then it was a pre-Christmas stomach bug, followed by a repeat stomach bug last week. I have upchucked more in three months than I have in thirty years. I blame my son for all this projectile vomiting: we shower him with big Tonka trucks, and all he gives us are microscopic germs. He seems mostly impervious to the weekly germs de vogue that circulate at daycare, barely slowing down from hyperactive to active for a tummy ache, meanwhile his mom and dad are taking turns jettisoning the contents of their stomachs for days on end. 

I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. I thought adults were supposed to have more fortifications against microscopic invaders than children, but alas my white blood cells have apparently fallen asleep on duty; meanwhile, I can’t sleep at all because I’m too busy guarding a porcelain throne. 

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good holiday season and here is hoping for a good 2023–full of new farming feats, fewer daycare germs, and a return to normality, at least for my digestive system. 

Raising a Man of Taste

~ sanebishop ~ 9 Comments

Thomas is not a picky eater–he will eat chicken feed, goat feed, cow feed, and cat feed indiscriminately without pretense or shame. I guess it serves me right: I was secretly hoping Thomas would enjoy helping me do farm chores, but instead of helping me feed the farm animals, he mostly just helps himself to the farm animal’s feed. In the process of trying to deter my son from binging on calf starter pellets, I’ve learned that explaining to a toddler why he shouldn’t eat feed meant for other species is a task that should only be undertaken by someone with a Ph.D in logic. Toddler logic is the hardest logic to defeat.

ME: No, no, we don’t eat goat feed.

THOMAS: eat! eat!

ME: “No, it’s the goats time to eat, we just ate. Thomas, stop!”

THOMAS: [grinning with a goat pellet hanging from his lip] time to eat!

ME: “No, goat feed is yucky!”

THOMAS: “No yucky–yummy!”

In the barn, we have three big plastic  trash cans that serve as feed bins to contain the livestock’s vittles. They also serve as Thomas’ buffet line. Of course, the easiest way to keep marauding pests out of feed bins is to shoot them, but you can’t really do that with toddlers (at least you can’t in the South–gun culture is so strong here, the toddlers would likely shoot back). 

And honestly, I’m not sure if I really want to deter Thomas’s adventures with taste. It’s not like he’s only eating highly processed animal feed, he is also developing quite a fondness for farm fresh salads, in particular a fresh orchardgrass/fescue mix which he shoves into his mouth while toddling through the pasture. Anyway, my theory is that if he eats grass as a toddler, he’ll eat broccoli as a teenager. I’ll report back in 11 years.

Thomas caught with hand in cookie jar.

The Problem with Toddlers

~ sanebishop ~ 6 Comments

Sometimes, in the midst of rewatching an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine for the fourth time in two weeks, I like to pause and contemplate the great mysteries of life–like, for instance, how sweet sleepy little babies transform into inexhaustible little tyrants, a.k.a toddlers. This contemplative pause is fleeting, however–twelve seconds if we’re being exact, which is the precise time it takes for a new episode of Thomas and Friends to autoload on our TV. 

These days, I do my best thinking in the momentary silence between episodes of whatever my toddler is binge watching. For instance, during the last twelve-second break between episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine, I devised a complete overhaul of our justice system that would reduce crime to all time lows and alleviate overcrowding in prisons. As this blog is not about serious matters, like criminal justice reform, I’ll spare you the details, but here is the gist: it would merely require any violent offender to listen to the Thomas the Tank Engine theme song on repeat, uninterrupted, until they transform into a placid drooling vegetable. And if you think that is cruel and unusual punishment, just remember that’s what toddlers do to their peaceful law-abiding parents all the time–plus, if I really wanted to be cruel, I could have suggested the old theme song for Barney (I love you. You love me…). 

The real problem with toddlers is pretty simple: they don’t toddle. They ramble, run, climb, crawl, roll, wallow, and wail, unless, that is, they’re mesmerized by God’s gift to parents, a talking train from the Isle of Sodor. If you take twelve seconds to think about it, solving the world’s energy crisis ought to be as simple as harnessing the unlimited energy source that powers your average toddler. I mean, when toddlers meltdown, at least they’re not radioactive. And though some diapers come pretty close to toxic waste, a diaper blow out doesn’t have nearly the environmental impact that a blown out coal ash pond would have. 

Anyway, I could go on solving life’s most pressing problems, but my toddler has suddenly tired of Thomas the Tank Engine and was last spotted moving southward bound toward the kitchen. Judging by the clanging sounds emanating from that direction, he is currently spelunking through the kitchen cabinets, and I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be providing parental oversight of his exploration. Wish me luck. 

The Swift Pinch of Justice

~ sanebishop ~ 7 Comments

Sometimes I feel like I’m a member of the last well-mannered generation–that is, the last generation to know swift discipline. No one was swifter than my mom. I can remember when she used to snatch me up in front of the whole congregation for no good reason other than to inspect the shrubbery outside the church. Back then, I always thought it was unfair to have a momma with a green thumb, and by green thumb I mean she could snap a privet switch with a mere pinch. A few pews ahead of me, Johnny could do jumping jacks and taunt me with funny faces and his mom did nothing. However, I could barely contort my face in self defense before I was yanked up and escorted to the hedgerow. 

My mom does not suffer fools. Never has, never will. Maybe this explains my fondness for writing foolishness, as it’s perhaps the one way I can smuggle foolishness past her. She was a high school English teacher, and she always seemed more concerned about the grammatical correctness of my sentences than their content. As long I put my commas and periods in the right place, then the subject of my sentence could slip on the object of the preposition, say a banana peel, and do five flips for all she cared. 

My mom also taught me the grammar of southern living, meaning manners. These rules were so indoctrinated in me that even now I convulse when breaking them. Back then, breaking the Ten Commandments might get you a stern talking to, but breaking the rules of southern etiquette got you a temporary tattoo on the posterior. The rules, as I remember them, were,

  1. You do not brag. Ever. 
  2. You say, “Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, mam. No, mam.” 
  3. You say “Please” and “Thank You.”
  4. You do not talk back to your parents or teachers. This was called sassing–if you got caught doing it, it was more or less the death sentence. 
  5. You never wear a hat at the table.
  6. You sit as still as a statue in church. 

Back then, these were the communal standards for children. Of course, maybe Johnny’s mom didn’t get the memo, but it seemed like most other kids in school had a similar set of dictates set down by adults in their life. And it’s not like I went to some fancy private school. I just went to your typical rural public school with trailers as overflow classrooms and paddles hanging on the wall of the principal’s office. 

By that point, the paddles were mostly a decorative scare tactic, a vestige of a barbaric age when principals were feared and respected. Corporal punishment was well on its way to becoming taboo, at least in schools. In private homes, not so much. Although I felt my mom was stricter than most, she was at least lenient in her preference for switch wielding. My neighbor’s mom used a blunt force wooden spoon, and I knew several kids whose dad’s used a leather belt. 

Eventually, all forms of corporal punishment were lumped together in a catch-all term called spanking. Then spanking was linked to some sort of Freudian sexual repression and shunned by society. However, I just linked it to pain, not a lot, but enough. Enough for me to realize if I didn’t want to get my legs switched, I’d better behave. 

This isn’t to say that we should bring back spanking–I wouldn’t touch that topic with a ten-foot wooden spoon. It’s just to say that Southerners of my parents era may have been sexually repressed, but their children had good manners.