Puppet show!

A couple of weeks ago I took Zoe to see a fun little puppet show called “The Flying Tortoise” at a local library.

Initially I had reservations since she’s still young and wasn’t going to go. Eventually I agreed with Cheryl and said why the heck not. Besides, any excuse to go to the library is a good one.

I was surprised that Zoe enjoyed the show. The puppeteers were all dressed in blue, including blue hoods. These matched a blue background that they could blend into, so you could focus more on the puppets. I was surprised mostly because she wasn’t scared of this setup, which is like nothing she had ever seen before (and very little that I have.)

I won’t go into too much detail about the story, except that it was an African folk tale that explained why the tortoise’s shell looks like it does (with a few morals tossed in on the way.) There was some audience participation also: the audience was encouraged to make some bird noises whenever the puppeteers made a certain sound (this was what scared Zoe the most.)

My biggest criticism with the play was the volume of the speakers, which I thought was way too loud for a children’s show. You see this a lot at family events and I wish it was something that the people in charge paid more attention to.

At any rate, it just goes to show that you should always take advantage of opportunities to take your kid out to see new things whenever you can. Especially when they’re free!

More on animated stuffed toys.

The previous blog reminded me of a recent video I’ve seen of the upcoming more-realistic-than-ever Tickle Me Elmo XXLIV. [Correction: more-terrifying-than-ever]

It all started with that darn “Teddy Ruxpin” doll.

It just seems to me that the more animated these things are, the less a child needs to use their imagination.  I think I’d much rather see my kids playing with stuffed toys having a tea party than some little robot instructing them to not think for themselves.

I love you, you’re scared of me.

 

A while ago when Zoe was still an infant, we got a gift in the mail: An stuffed interactive electric Barney. That’s right: none other than that wonderful purple and green dinosaur, equally loved and hated by parents and children everywhere (perhaps a little more hated. A simple YouTube search should verify this.)

[A bit of foreshadowing: The toy was manufactured by Microsoft. Cue foreboding, dark music.]

While my wife and I aren’t exactly members of the Barney Fan Club, we’re also not ones to look the proverbial gift dino in the mouth, either. We’re still open minded… why not give it a try… we’re new at this… what do we know? Besides, when we fired it up, Zoe seemed mildly amused enough by its robotic twitching, silly games, and even sillier songs (recently at a library play group, the teacher sung Barney’s “I love you” song, which admittedly made me cringe a little bit. Okay, a lot.)

Eventually, the toy seemed to freak Zoe out a little more than we liked. We put it back in the box and buried the dinosaur behind the futon to be excavated at a later date. She was well below the recommended age for the toy anyway.

Recently, feeling rather adventurous, we dug up the doll and reintroduced it. This time, though, Zoe’s reaction was not so lukewarm. She was frightened by it… terrified.

She’s done well with most things, showing no fear of the dark, the drain or Daddy’s singing. She does exhibit quite a bit of stranger anxiety, but that’s more understandable – most people scare the hell out of me. But this was the first time she’d been really afraid of something besides people, and I admittedly had no idea how to handle the situation besides shoving the little purple abomination back into his box and behind the futon.

After a couple of weeks, Zoe decided to pull the box out to get to another toy that was behind it. I surmised that since she’d done this, she must have gotten over her fear. I asked her, “Zoe, do you want to play with Barney?” Her reaction: bottom lip out, insta-tears, and immediate distress. Yikes.

My next mistake (hey, I’m still a rookie parent): ignoring common sense and research (and more common sense) and taking it upon myself to set up a play date with Zoe and Barney. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” right? After all, she hadn’t seen him out of the box in a while.

Once she saw how harmless and stuffed he was, her fear would immediately be replaced by love for her prehistoric purple pal. I’d be on eBay the next day bidding up Barney DVD collections and posters for her room with positive catchphrases like “School is cool” and “I love you, you love peas.” We’d be singing boisterous songs about friends or birds or whatever the heck it is that Barney sings about. Fluffy, happy things.

What transpired next was 14 minutes that seemed like a 3 hours. We don’t need to go over all the gory details. There were tears. A lot of hugging. There were cryboogers… loads of cryboogers. [This is where the aforementioned dark, foreboding music could be heard intensely along with Bill Gates’ maniacal laughter.] In the end, Barney was back in the box, and the opposite of progress had been achieved.

After discussing the situation with my wife and doing the research I should’ve done in the first place, Barney has been buried much deeper and even farther away. He may not even be recovered this time for another 4 million years by a more advanced race who will either see him as a primitive tool, or charge him up and get the crap scared out of them.

I’m betting on the latter. In the meantime, in this house at least, Barney will now be referred to as “That Purple Thing That Shall Not Be Named.” Until we try again (in 4 million years.)

Children’s Book Review: Punk Farm & Punk Farm On Tour

Our family loves rock n’ roll. Actually that would be Loves. Capital “L.”

Before our first child was born, we saw “Punk Farm” by Jarrett J. Krososczka on the shelf of the bookstore and knew it would be a hit in our family. Obviously, then, we were most excited to find out there was a second book in the series, “Punk Farm On Tour.”

The first book covers a day in the life of several “ordinary” farm animals that become rock band “Punk Farm” when Farmer Joe goes to bed. Through clever writing and most excellent artwork (air guitar, please) Krososczka writes a cool, original and fun story.

When we quickly get to the concert, the band plays a killer version of “Old MacDonald Had A Farm.” Every band member has a verse: Cow the drummer goes boom, crash; chicken’s keyboards go wild; pig’s guitar screeches a solo. Each page is not only fun to read, but fun to improvise, and in a way that can be tailor-read to suit your own child’s enjoyment.

“Punk Farm On Tour” is kind of like when a rock band produces a second album that’s way better than their debut (Nirvana, Nevermind; Wilco, Being There; Led Zeppelin, II; etc.)

This one follows the adventures of Punk Farm as they tour the U.S. The song this time is a raucous version of “The Wheels On The Bus.” The bus is replaced with their tour van and its rockin’ sound effects. It also develops the characters a little further, increasing its improvisational value: goat as quasi-hippie, pig as rock-egomaniac and so on.

One more cool addition to the books is the accompanying website, complete with actual versions of the songs.

These books are great because of their repeat readability and the rare ability of the author to hit his target audience perfectly in tune (with lots of feedback, of course.)

Book Review: The Best 2,000 Games and Activities

Sometimes, despite knowing there are plenty of activities you can do with your kid, you still sometimes find yourself sitting across the room from them, wondering “what the heck do we do next?”

My wife brought home this book a while ago, and it’s served as a handy answer to that question ever since:

“The 2000 Best Games & Activities” by Susan Kettman (Sourcebooks Inc., 2005) not only has lots of age-specific ideas, but the activities are also written with a budget in mind.

Wow! You mean you don’t have to spend your kid’s entire college fund on “Baby Einstein” DVDs and two hundred dollar musical instruments for them to learn and have fun at the same time? We already have too many toys to count – but it’s still nice to find activities that require little more than imagination.

The book has activities that range from baby through age 8. The age groups it is divided into are baby, toddler, preschool (ages three and four), and kindergarten through grade three. So far (with a 17-month old) we’ve done lots of the baby and some of the toddler activities.

Overall, the book is divided into seven different skill sections. These include: communication, concentration, curiosity, decision making, kindness, physical ability and playfulness. Besides age and skill, there is no particular order in which to read the book. You simply open up to a skill section you wish to work on, find the appropriate age, check to see if you have the materials for a particular activity, read a paragraph or so, and then play.

Activities that my child liked the instant we did them were spreading pillows on the floor and jumping on them, using paper towel tubes as megaphones, and being pulled around by a towel on the floor. These are some of the more simple examples from the book, but fun, easy-to-find, and neatly compiled in one place.

Like I said, the book was written with a budget in mind, and there are very few activities that will need materials that the average household doesn’t have on hand. One might require some straws, pen and paper, a shoebox, or masking tape, for example.

Some parents might be able to come up with lots of activities on their own, and we still play lots of fun games. I was happy with the book the first time I saw it, though, simply because of the amount of activities that it contains. Also, while flipping through and figuring out what to do, it also can encourage new ideas for games by the parents themselves. I’ve done a few activities that have reminded me of things I did when I was a kid, and those are some of the activities we are most eager to share with ours.

Where on Earth do you start?

Well, I’ve only been doing the whole parenting thing for 1 year and 5 months as of yesterday, and I have no idea where to start. A story from today would be as good as any place, I suppose.

The story starts yesterday, when my wife and I were at the dinner table with our daughter Zoe. [If you're sharp, or a parent, or both, I'm sure you would have guessed that she's 17 months old now.] We were trying to get her to wink, which turned into a fun time because she would try and end up closing both of her eyes, except with a huge smile. So naturally, we kept trying until her attention was drawn somewhere else.

Fast forward to today’s dinner: same idea, same attempts, same results.

Later on as bedtime approaches, we’re all in our usual routine of reading miscellaneous books, listening to the same songs for the fourteenth time today, dancing, and so on. As a song ends, Zoe and Cheryl start to play chase & catch with one another. [Cheryl is the wife & Mommy; if you guessed correctly give yourself five points.] Zoe runs, Mommy chases, Zoe Chases, Mommy runs…

All of the sudden, in a picture perfect moment, Zoe turns around, looks through the side of one of our bookshelves and locks eyes with Mommy who is only about 12 inches away. Both smiling. And in this picture perfect moment, I find myself without the means to take a picture, and I have to decide: lunge twelve feet away for the camera and hope to catch this great shot, or just let the brain soak in another great memory. I decide to go with the latter. I’ve gone for the camera too many times and gotten back when it was too late. This was too good.

Then, the parenting payoff: To our complete surprise, Zoe beams at Mommy, opens her mouth a little, closes her right eye and winks the biggest, most perfect wink I’ve ever seen.

I suppose that sums up the point I want to get across in this first post in an offhand way. All the cameras, CDs, toys, diapers, etc. (the lists goes on forever) that you buy and all of the choices you make as parents… well, when moments like that occur (and there are lots of them) you just know you’re doing something right.

This blog will be more about some of those things you have to choose as parents, and my opinions about some of the things we’ve tried and haven’t tried, that have worked and haven’t worked.

Does that all sound rather complicated?

; )