Watching My Kids Take On the World, One Mini-Marathon at a Time

This week the kids at the local grammar school were out once again running their annual mini-marathon. And once again, watching my daughter struggling to keep up – an enormous and ultimately impossible task – my heart was both bursting with pride at her spirit and aching with the knowledge that her struggles will never completely end.

A week or so ago, arriving to pick her up at the after-school center she sometimes goes to, I heard her talking to another girl. From their conversation it was apparent they were in the process of deciding to go outside and play together. It also seemed that they did not know each other too well, because as I stood off to the side trying not to be noticed I heard my daughter tell the other girl very matter-of-factly that she looked kind of funny when she ran – and then asked the girl not to laugh.

A Short Post About Short Kids

and snacks on a pile of ancient dirt.

We could have just sat at the kitchen table and had cocoa. But the crisp blue sky was too much to ignore. So I bundled up the kids and tossed them in the car for the quick ride to Kobo-yama.

It's usually just a few minutes' walk from the creek where we park and through the tree-covered slopes up to the top of this oversized hill. On this day it took a bit longer with all the snow that still prevails on the northern side but for the kids, who already have little sense of time, how long it takes is irrelevant. Only the fun factor matters. At least until the frostbite sets in.

We'd been here before, in the spring, when the west-facing half of the hill becomes a pink and white blanket of cherry blossoms. Then too I'd tried to impress my kids with the fact that the top of this big hill is actually a burial mound dating back to the 3rd Century. They didn't care then, and they didn't care now - particularly my daughter, who thinks anything that happened anytime in her four years of existence was 'yesterday'. That none of us will be here in another century is equally unimpressive.

And that's cool.

I'm just happy they like it out here enough to forget all about the kitchen table.

How to Survive Your Kid's Summertime Birthday Party (as seen on Yahoo!)

The following is an intro to my debut as a contributing writer on Yahoo! With this I join the exclusive ranks of those who have been selected to have their literary genius brought to the masses. I think I'm number 608,773. Someone please pass the SEO.

8 Ways to Survive (one involving assaulting a watermelon)

If you are as poor a planner as I am, perhaps you have a child who was born in the dog days of summer. If you are as ambitious a parent as I pretend to be, maybe you're determined to weather the heat and humidity and have your kid's birthday party out in the yard. If so, I'd like to extend a few pointers I've picked up along my way that might help you too avoid a big day meltdown...

I don't expect to change the world. But if I can save the sanity of just one parent it will all be worth it. Though I'd rather get a few million hits.

'Twas the Night Before Mother's Day

Today was a full day and the kids were pretty wiped out. For me that’s exciting because it means maybe they’ll all crash pretty quickly, and it’s only after everyone else is asleep that I get to enjoy My Time. Yes, that’s with a capital MT. Sadly, it’s Saturday, and My Time tonight, like every other night since became a father, consists of a date with Microsoft Word. And that’s if I’m lucky. Because while going out for a beer is eternally preferable to sitting at home pecking away on the laptop, a quiet evening with a few pages in Times New Roman is infinitely better than dealing with kids who won’t sleep, and since tomorrow is Mother’s Day I’ll feel more obligated than usual to take the little girl off Mom’s hands until eleven or twelve or sometime around dawn.

My three-year-old boy won’t go to sleep by himself. I have to lay there with him until he’s unconscious. This is the by-product of my wife’s insistence that babies should not sleep alone, it’s too scary for them and they need the psychological comfort of knowing Mommy is always there. Well, now my son is extremely psychologically uncomfortable if I am not there to help him fall asleep. If he’s anything like his big brother I’ve got another two years of this crap. Then it’s the girl’s turn to be scared just like she’s been taught.

But like I said, after today they were totaled and I was able to slip away from my kid at 8:30 – a relatively early start to My Time.