She Did it Again!

Last week I told the story of how my nine-year-old daughter, Maddie, made the most of a difficult situation. If you haven't read Packing Heat yet, you may want to do that before reading this post because she's done it again.

You know that she loves her new pocket knife. She won't go anywhere without it, but those darn dresses and the lack of pockets make it a challenge. This week she kept the knife hidden from me all through church, but she did manage to show Grandma at some point.

After church we went out for pizza with Grandma and Grandpa. An elderly lady, a long time friend,  came with us. As we were wrapping things up, Grandma said to Maddie, "Show Roberta what you got for your birthday." And this is when she again gave me great pause.

Immediately her left hand pulled the collar of her dress out while her right hand plunged deep inside. Now, I've seen women do this move before and they usually pull out a cell phone or roll of cash, or something else that needs very safe keeping, but I know my little girl and I know what's she's not wearing under her dress, so I was momentarily baffled by her storage strategy. Sure enough, seconds later she pulls the little blue Swiss Army knife out and hands it to Roberta. And then I saw how she had done it.

Her particular variety of knife is the keychain version. Maddie had capitalized on this aspect of the design and cut a length of blue yarn to loop through the ring. She then tied the ends together and slipped the yarn around her neck with the knife tucked safely away inside her dress. The best part was that the yarn upon which she attached her knife was light blue, the same color as her dress.

If she grows up to join the FBI, I'm sure she will be the first to create a line of girly shoulder holsters that can be mixed and matched to properly accessorize any outfit.

Reckless Abandon

Pop culture is full of passing fads. When I was a kid back in the early 90s all the cool kids had their pants tightly rolled up at the ankle. I was convinced that this was not a passing fad and that I would likely get married in red Reebok high tops with my tuxedo pants pegged as my suspenders hung uselessly by my legs. A few years later, those same kids were buying pants that were five sizes too big and were wide enough at the bottom to fit a few friends inside. Looking back now, it was all stupid, but it seemed so important back then. Except for the Reeboks. Those would still be cool. 

As a homeschool family, my kids are somewhat sheltered from the whims of cultural change. Social opportunities abound, but peer pressure is at a minimum. My kids aren't dorky, but they don't know what the cool brands are, nor do they care. On the upside, they will never look back at old photos of themselves and wonder why they ever had that mullet and Z. Cavaricci pants. They don't crave the latest style fads and they don't idolize teenage pop stars who glamorize lives of narcissistic stupidity. 

The latest fad to hit the elementary school where I work captures the culture of today's youth perfectly. We all know the YMCA and the Chicken Dance. Most of us are familiar with the Macarena. This most recent craze is known as the Harlem Shake. On the surface, it appears harmless enough. Boys and girls aren't even dancing face-to-face and the kids are having a good time. Some are more animated than others, but none have rhythm. Others stand innocently on the sidelines watching the action, thankful that the bystanders will never have to deal with a future love interest finding them on YouTube. 

What bothers me about this particular dance is the loss of control that it symbolizes. In order to perform the Harlem Shake, the dancer throws his shoulders back and lets his arms go completely limp. He then begins to shake his shoulders back and forth as his arms flop about like a fish dying on the deck of a boat. Again, this sounds innocent enough, but, at the risk of sounding like a prude, I'm going to examine it further. 

In the name of fun, kids are being taught to let go of their inhibitions as they let their arms just go where they may. While engaged in the Harlem Shake, kids aren't responsible for their actions. They don't know exactly what their arms will do, and it's socially acceptable at that moment. In fifth grade it's a simple dance, but how far is that from drinking alcohol to knock out inhibitions? Or taking drugs? 

I know it's a stretch, and this isn't meant to be a condemnation of a dance. Rather, this is a commentary on culture. One dance isn't going to turn kids into drug-fueled alcoholics.  Nor is it likely to significantly alter the course of anyone's life. What the Harlem Shake is, however, is a picture of all the messages kids are receiving from peers, the media, their music, and all that the world has to offer. "Just do what feels good. Let your inhibitions go. You're not responsible for your actions." These are the messages that bombard our kids everyday. 

Our duty as parents is to shield our kids from such messages when possible, and to guide them through a logical and godly analysis of them when it's not. I’m not a perfect parent and my kids aren’t perfect kids, but I can hold my head up high and say that I am proud of what I have taught them and what they, in turn, have taught me.  Maybe it's time we all take a closer look at what the rest of the world is teaching our kids. 

Packing Heat

Switzerland is not presently known for its military dominance, but their army has given the world a gadget that has infiltrated many a pocket. Since its inception in 1891, the Swiss Army knife has become about as ubiquitous a tool as the hammer or screwdriver.

Several months ago, my son completed the requirements to carry a pocket knife as part of the Cub Scouts.  Though he was only ten years old, we felt that he was responsible enough to be trusted with one and, as a homeschooler, we wouldn't have to worry about him making national headlines for bringing a knife to school.  When Christmas rolled around, Zach was presented with his very own Swiss Army knife. As we expected, he has used it carefully and has never had a problem with it.

As is true in many families, the eldest often serves as the trailblazer. Once the knife trail had been blazed, followers were needed. My oldest daughter, Maddie, quickly stepped up to the plate. "Daddy," she began, "I want a pocket knife for my birthday."

"I responded the way any normal father would. "Mom and I will discuss it," I said. So we did and in the end, our sweet little nine-year-old girl got her very own Swiss Army knife.  A pocket knife is easy for a boy since jeans have pockets. Girls, on the other hand, have some difficulty as their dresses and skirts aren't always equipped with the prerequisite pocket that is necessary for a pocket knife to fulfill its function. Not to worry, my artistic daughter quickly fashioned a wrist purse out of scraps of fabric and ribbon that was just big enough for one knife. 

Today at church I noticed that she was wearing a new birthday dress, but didn't have her handy purse on her wrist. "Oh, well," I assumed. "She must have left her knife at home today." How wrong I was.  It all became clear partway through the sermon, when I noticed that she had repurposed her bulletin and made it into a flute. The flute, however, wouldn't be complete until it had holes in the top of it. Being the resourceful girl she is, she hiked up the left side of her new dress, ran her hand all the way up her thigh and pulled out a shiny Swiss Army knife. 

I've seen that move in spy movies before when the leading lady pulls out a hidden weapon during the party at a foreign embassy, but this was my daughter! My mind immediately started thinking about thigh holsters and hidden scabbards.  What other surprises did my little girl have hidden? She knits. Did she have knitting needles taped to her leg? She likes to bake. Could there be a rolling pin somewhere? "Where did you have that?" I whispered, maybe a little too loudly. 

"In my pocket," she said innocently as she revealed the shorts she had put on underneath her dress. 

"Don't do that during church," I said turning my attention back to the twenty-third Psalm. "And if you have any other gadgets in there, leave them alone."

By the time we got home, the knife was tucked safely back in its pocket, hidden from view by the dress and the flute was complete with all the necessary holes. I know Maddie wants nothing more than to grow up to be a mommy, but for a brief moment today, I feared she might pursue a career in covert affairs. Perhaps this is God's way of telling us it's time to add to the family again, just to ensure that her maternal instincts don't grow stagnant 

Homeschool Sales Pitch

There are times in the life of every parent when it becomes clear that we have done something right. We may not see those glimpses everyday, but they do happen and, when they do, we gloat. Today is a day of gloating, which is a difficult thing to do while maintaining humility. To make it that task easier, I’m going to give my wife all the credit since she deserves it anyway. 

For the past several years my wife has been loosely following the Thomas Jefferson model of education. In recent months she has really come to fully embrace it and has enjoyed watching our kids develop a true love of learning. As a homeschooling family we have the flexibility to step outside of the confines of a traditional classroom, so giving the kids opportunities to learn in new ways is par for the course. 

My kids have always been naturally gifted learners (again, this comes from my wife). As I stood in front of a hot barbecue this evening with pork chops soaking up a healthy dose of smokey flavor, my (almost) nine-year-old daughter, Maddie, came outside with a piece of paper and a hula hoop. As she started wagging her hips with the hoop obediently following her cues, she said, “Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, Mad,” I replied as I always do.

“Do you want to hear my speech?”

“Sure, Maddie,” I said. “Let’s hear it.” She then proceeded to give me a complete summary and analysis of the biography of Sojourner Truth that she had just finished reading. As I listened to her flawless performance with the hoop spinning seamlessly around her hips, it struck me that what this home-schooled third grader had written was as good or better than any fifth grader had ever written for the fifth grade class I teach at the local public school. 

“Who told you to write that?” I asked when she was done. 

“No one, I just wanted to write a speech.” 

Later, I was talking to my wife about her speech. “She did all that during her free time today. She wasn’t even supposed to be doing school work at that time,” she told me. 

So let me get this straight. My daughter, who already has a deep passion for reading, read a book on her own without a parent or teacher ever telling her she had to read anything. Then she developed a further passion for the main character that was so deep that she felt compelled to write a speech about this person, again without an adult ever intervening. Then she was so excited about what she had accomplished that she wanted to share it with her dad. On top of all that, the speech had a clearly defined topic, main ideas, and supporting details, just like we teach in school, only she didn’t have to sit in a desk and listen to a teacher try to creatively explain how such a report should be written. She simply read a lot of books, applied what she read, and enjoyed it in the process. 

I know that not every family can enjoy the kind of freedom and excellence that homeschooling can bring to a child, but many families are afraid to try it because they feel comfortable with the status quo. If you have ever considered taking the homschool route, do a little bit of research and always remember this one rule; Homeschooling is much more than doing public school at home. It is a series of opportunities to do things differently. Make the most of those opportunities and you will never regret it. 

My Sexy Wife

A lot of guys will throw a quick sentence or two up on Facebook every once in a while and feel as if they have done an adequate job giving their wives some form of public recognition for their success at fulfilling their obligatory wifely duties. After I finish gagging on their pitiful attempts to gain favor with their wives, I usually sit back and ponder how wonderful my own wife is. She’s worth much more than a passing blurb on a social media website that is cluttered with so-called “friends.”  That’s why I prefer to give my wife an entire blog post as opposed to a lowly sentence. 

Sure she’s fun, and cute, and smart, and all those other things, but there are some things that she does that are so far above and beyond the standard wifely expectations that she deserves some recognition. A few weeks ago she did something so thoughtful and caring that it just blew me away. 

It had been drizzling a little outside and things were starting to get wet. It must have been a Thursday because the girls had been at the farm where they spend every Thursday afternoon. Farms, by nature, are not clean places. My wife, knowing that I am not a fan of mud being ground into the floor mats, did something that I would have done. Before stepping into the car with her muddy foot, she turned the floor mat upside down so the rubber side was facing up. That way all the mud would collect on the rubber and not on the carpet. It’s an old trick that I sometimes do, but not one that is in her usual repertoire. The minute I saw that upside-down floor mat, the only thing I could think of was how sexy my wife was. 

It continued raining off and on for the next several weeks and I left the rug in place as a reminder of her incredible sexiness. I washed her car this week and realized that the forecast for the next few weeks was clear, so it was time to flip things back the way they were. That got me thinking. What else has she done that is sexy beyond belief?

One of the first things to cross my mind was the weekend getaway that we took a few years back. As we sat in the hotel contemplating where to go to dinner, she suggested that we go to the restaurant that was full of TVs so we could watch the American League Championship Series as we ate. Come on guys, you have to admit that’s pretty sexy. 

Then there was the time when she was nine months pregnant with our first child. I came home from work to find the lawn mower in the middle of the back lawn. Half of it was mowed, but the mower was hanging out right where she had stopped. So what if she didn’t finish. She knew that I wasn’t going to have time to mow since the baby was coming that night. Again, on the sexy scale, that’s at least a 9.5. 

Of course there is also her latest fad: fires. She has decided the building a fire in the fire place connects her to her country roots. It’s been cold lately, so there has been a fire everyday. As matter of fact, I’m staring at one of her combustable works of art as I type. That’s an easy nine, and possibly even a ten on those really cold nights. 

Now that we have five kids, things aren’t what they used to be. The other day, I asked her what part of her day was the best. You know what she said? Cleaning the bathroom. Why? I asked. Because that was the only part of the day when the kids actually left her alone. A perfect 10. 

All in all, she’s a pretty hot woman. Especially when she lights the fire. Sure we have our arguments whenever she’s wrong, but even her apologies have a sexy flare to them. I guess I’ll keep her around for a few more years. You never know what other sexy surprises she might have in store for me. 

      
Try to fit all that into your daily status update all you Facebook flunkies. 

Kitty Noises

Cats can make a lot of different sounds. Sometimes they meow at the door until someone lets them into the house. Sometimes they curl up on your lap and purr contentedly. Other times they might knock something off a shelf and send it crashing to the floor. And sometimes they let out a sorry sounding cry for help as a wild animal devours their flesh while their owner stands helplessly by. Our cat made one of those noises last night. Can you guess which one? 

The cats meow at the door all the time, so I probably wouldn’t take the time to write about that event and I’m not sappy enough to write about them purring on my lap. If one of them knocked over something valuable I might be willing to write about it, but for the most part, there isn’t anything breakable of much value on any of our shelves. That leaves us with only one remaining option: wild animals. 

The last of the kids had just been put to bed and my wife and I were buttoning up the house for the night when we heard the sound. It was a pathetic and terrified screeching meow that came from just outside the living room window. “Get out there!” my wife demanded as she froze in her tracks. I ran to the front door only to be reminded that the door knob had broken earlier in the day and there was no way to open it. Plan B was to go out the back and run around the house into the front yard, but the back gate was locked and it would take too long to get the key. The final option was to run to the garage and out into the front yard that way. By the time I figured out the best way to get to the helpless cat, it was too late, she was gone. I searched all the usual places and my son even brought a flashlight out, but, alas, no glow-in-the-dark eyes ever peered back at me. 

A few minutes later, my wife joined us with a bag of kitty treats. She shook the bag a few times and we heard it, a faint meow, kind of like the “I’m at the door, let me in” sort of meow, but quieter. “I think I hear something,” I said. “Shake it again.” So she did and the cat responded again with the same cry. We flashed the lights around the bushes in another vain attempt to find the presumably mangled cat. I mentioned to my wife that when I first came out I had heard some rustling in the bushes so we focused our attention in that area and heard a third cry, this time from above. As we gazed upwards, high above us in a leafless tree sat a shaking cat. 

“Come on kitty,” my wife called out again shaking the bag of treats. The cat tried to find a route down, but apparently in her hasty flight up the tree, she had neglected to map out a path of retreat. “Go get the ladder,” Mommy suggested without really leaving any room for me to decline. A few minutes later, clad in only shorts and a t-shirt on a cold dark night, I found myself climbing a ladder to rescue a cat from a tree. 

By the time I had come down, half the family was waiting for me on the lawn and I was immediately told to put the cat in bed with my oldest daughter who desperately wanted to know that her kitty was okay. Somehow this little cat had escaped the jaws of a violent beast and scurried up a tree to safety seconds before being torn apart and came out of it completely unscathed. 

As I drifted off to sleep later that night, little did I know that the hamster was busy escaping from her cage and slipping out into the darkened house; the house that was guarded by the recently rescued kitty. 

Wrinkled Noses

They say that 90% of communication is non-verbal. Or is it 75%? I’m not a numbers guy so I don’t really care what the exact statistic is and, since you can’t see my face right now, you really don’t know whether I mean that or not. Regardless, no one can argue with the premise that body language plays an important role in communication. 

That's why I don’t like the Facebooking and Twittering world. Short pithy statements without the benefit of facial expressions and body language lead to miscommunication. At least with a blog, I can take a few minutes to support my arguments and emotions rather than just throwing a stupid meaningless statement like “Had a bad day” on Facebook hoping for someone to “like” it so that I can feel like somebody out there in cyberspace likes that fact that I had a bad day thus making me feel loved and cared for.  If you can’t give me body language, then at least have the courage to give me a thought-out explanation rather than making me fish it out of you by asking probing questions in the very public arena of the internet. 

Fortunately, as a parent of young children, kids don’t communicate with us through text messages and annoying social networking posts. I realize that as they age, my innocent children will turn into teenagers and try to drag me into an e-lationship, but for now, I am totally digging the face-to-face old school parenting style. I love watching their faces as they relive the scattered moments of each day. 

My wife and I frequently find ourselves laughing at one of the kids. It’s not just the story he or she is telling, but the facial expressions that go with it. I can’t even begin to capture Justin’s four-year-old face as he asks countless questions that simultaneously crack us up and annoy us to tears. And Cami’s six-year-old inquisitions are accompanied by the most complex assortment of facial cues known to man, but the one that has really been popping up lately is on the face of Maddie. 

At eight years old, Maddie Rae has learned to wrinkle her nose at me. This is among the cuter things a lightly-freckled nose can do and it carries a message that she hasn’t conveyed before. She usually gives me the wrinkle after one of the kids asks an unaswerable question such as, “How many elephants are there in Asia?” When presented with such a question, I do what any good father would do. I lie. “There are 7,031 elephants in Asia,” I would begin. Then I would follow it up with further false facts just to make it plainly obvious to most people that I have no idea what I am talking about. “Until last Saturday when a hunter named Bob illegally poached one for its tusks just after a female elephant in the Vietnamese jungle gave birth to twins. Now there at 7,032.”

The younger kids usually enjoy the story and half believe what I say, but Maddie has taken to giving me the wrinkle. She looks right at me and squinches up her little pug nose and conveys a wordless message: You’re bluffing again, Dad and I totally know it! For some reason I find that look amusing and it makes me want to tell more stories just so I can see it again. 

I suppose that someday when she is a teenager and she gives me the wrinkle right after I tell her that a particular boy is a puny excuse for a real man the conversation will have to turn serious, but for now, its a fun form of silent communication between a dad and his little girl and I intend to enjoy it while I can.