Yotos and Tonies. All day every day. Seriously great screen-free stories, learning, and music for the 5 year old, and something to hold and play with for the 18 month old. Great holiday gifts too for the parents/kids in your life.
Card games. The 5 year old has gotten big into Uno and enjoyed learning others like Old Maid and Slapjack. It’s been fun to watch his strategy evolve to the point where I don’t even have to consider letting him win since he wins plenty on his own.
Board games. While at the library a while back with the 5 year old, on a lark we sat down at their public chess board and I started teaching him the basics. He was hooked, so we got our own teaching set for home. Strategic thinking for chess has taken longer to develop but he’ll get there.
Books. The 18 month old’s current favorites: The Shape of Me and Other Stuff by Dr. Seuss, Find the Duck by Stephen Cartwright, Moimoi—Look At Me! by Jun Ichihara, and more. The 5 year old’s current favorites: the InvestiGators comics series, Pokémon character books, and a variety of library picture books.
The Wild Kratts theme song. Obviously we still watch the show itself often, since it’s usually the 5 year old’s pick for his limited screentime. But for some reason the 18 month old really loves the theme song, so when he gets upset while in the car (which is often), we’ll play a YouTube video that plays the song over and over again. Shoutout to whomever made that video!
Our 5 year old likes to say that a lot when he gets on a roll telling us about something he’s excited about. It could be science facts or recounting a fun outing or his latest playground escapades. He’ll sprinkle it in throughout the story, which shows he’s both excited to share and keen on building some suspense into the telling.
My wife sent me something about the opposition of Saturn last Saturday night, which meant it’d be more visible than usual. While at the library that day I saw they had a monocular telescope for checkout to use with smartphones, so I decided to check it out in case I had the opportunity to try for a shot.
And we did. Before bedtime for our five year old, we managed to catch a glimpse of it between some trees outside our back door. Behold my hasty, heavily magnified iPhone astrophotography:
I kept jumping between regular and night mode and playing with the focus for the best possible shot, and that’s what I managed to get. I told him how special it was that we were able to see it, both due to the astronomical factors and just being alive during a time when Saturn still has its rings (it’ll have to say goodbye in about 100 million years).
I recently went on a bike ride to the library with my 5 year old. It was the first time he was on his own (training-wheeled) bike instead of riding along in the trailer and it was really fun. He was so jazzed up about it, which caused him to start monologuing his thoughts throughout the entire ride.
Some of those thoughts morphed into what he considers the Rules for Biking, which are as follows:
1. “Always look forward, except when there’s wildlife or really beautiful parks, and you can just look for a second.”
2. “If you get a scrape on your leg, it looks cool. Not too much cool, just still a little bit of cool.”
3. “Everyone who loves biking should stick together.”
Bonus quote: “Ahhhh, don’t you just love having the wind in your face?”
Today I was in the backyard playing tag with our freshly minted 5 year old. He likes when I zig-zag around while he tries to catch me, something he indicated he couldn’t do himself thusly:
“I can only do the zig, not the zag.”
It’s a great line, but it also make me think of another similar iconic quote:
The 4 year old and I were drawing shapes on our whiteboard, and he told me to draw a beehive. I guess it wasn’t up to his standards because he said “this is not art” and drew a red circle and slash over it:
Raffi. His greatest hits have been on heavy rotation as it seems to be the only music that calms down our 8 month old when he’s upset, which is often.
Hamster maze videos on YouTube. The 4 year old is delighted by these. Random but could be a lot worse.
Who Smarted? A fun and educational podcast for kids about all kinds of topics.
Toniebox. As audio players for kids go, we’ve hitherto been a hardcore Yoto family. But several characters the 4 year old loves are only available as Tonies (Wild Kratts among them), so he got several for Christmas. It’s nice to have more variety for listening, even if the overall experience is less ideal than Yoto.
Mr. Men and Little Miss. The 4 year old has been on a kick with this book series. We own an old copy of Little Miss Scatterbrain but we got more of them from the library and he just loves them. He especially loves looking at the grid of characters on the back covers and asking us what each of their names are.
Sometimes when we’re driving, our 4 year old will provide turn-by-turn directions in a robotic voice as they do in Bluey as the “sat nav” (i.e. GPS). Which is always funny because he doesn’t understand directions. But it was especially funny the last time he did it because his directions were not only wrong but hilariously indifferent.
Go in a straight line, he droned, then go whichever way you want. It’s up to you, whatever makes sense.
It went on like this for a bit. My wife and I were trying not to laugh, but it felt like an SNL skit waiting to happen.
Here’s an exchange I had with my 4 year old while on a recent walk around the pond:
“Papa, guess what: penguins cannot fly.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know, I need to learn.”
We were walking past some ducks when he said this so that must have triggered the fact about penguins, which I’m guessing he learned from one of his Yoto cards.
I love that part—that urge to share what he knows. But I also love his response to my follow-up question: when confronted with something he didn’t know, he both admitted ignorance and expressed the desire to investigate further.
Both of those impulses come naturally at his age, so I’m not saying he’s special in that way. I just really respect and enjoy the preschooler’s tendency to declare what they know (or think they know) and remain insatiably curious about what they don’t.
Recently my aunt got my 4 year old a “something special for the new big brother” gift: a popup butterfly garden with a cup of live caterpillars. The cup came in the mail prefilled with caterpillar food, which they ate over the course of a week as they grew and eventually retreated into their own chrysalides.
Then soon enough, they wriggled out one by one and emerged as painted lady butterflies:
We fed them some fruit and “nectar” (sugar water) and after a few days set them free into the wild. As they were flying away, the 4 year old said: “Goodbye butterflies, I’ll never forget you. I think the butterflies will always remember me.”
It was a fun little project for all of us, and a cool thing for the 4 year old to witness and directly facilitate.
Recently my father-in-law unearthed my wife’s old Nintendo 64 console, which was accompanied by the Super Mario cartridge. I was skeptical it would still work after all these years, but we plugged it in and it fired up like a charm.
I didn’t have video game consoles at home growing up, so my exposure to them mostly happened at friends’ houses. For Super Mario it happened once a year around middle school age, when we traveled to central Wisconsin for my sister’s figure skating competition and stayed with some family friends. They had an N64 and Super Mario, which I played seemingly endlessly.
Diving back into it now, over 20 years later, was a bit surreal, especially now that I’m introducing our 4 year old to it. He’s slowly picking up basic movement and actions, though mostly just wants to watch me play. Luckily he doesn’t know or care that I don’t really know what I’m doing—I just try the different doors and magical worlds and see if I can stumble upon any Power Stars before I inevitably die through clumsy play.
We’re not planning on having other video games in the house, so he and his newborn brother will just have to get by with Mario & Crew for a while. Which, of course, will make them the coolest kids on the block.
Photo: Mario stuck in a tree with not much life left, so you can tell how good we are at Super Mario.
There’s a quote I discovered floating around Instagram Reels that people use as narration for clips of their little kids:
You have little kids for four years. And if you miss it, it’s done. That’s it. So, you gotta know that. Lots of things in life you don’t get to do more than once. That period between 0 and 4, 0 and 5, there’s something about it that’s like a peak experience in life. It isn’t much of your life. Four years goes by so fast, you can’t believe it. And if you miss it, it’s gone. So you miss it at your peril, and you don’t get it back.
(I was surprised to learn the speaker is Jordan Peterson, whom I’ve never read or even heard speak before. Not interested in litigating Peterson as a whole, just taking this quote for what it’s worth.)
I was talking with an older coworker about kids and how mine recently turned 4. His are all grown now, he said, but he would do anything to have just one day when they were 4 again, to do bathtime and all the other kid things that fill your life so intensely for a few years before the kids grow into other phases.
It’s a sentiment I’ve heard often, usually in the form of parenting clichés like “The days are long but the years are short” and “They’re only young once.” The annoying thing about clichés is that they’re usually both trite and true, and I’m grateful for when they tap me on the shoulder at just the right time.
A recent example: I was sitting with my 4 year old playing with his Carry Around Robot Town as (who else?) The Okee Dokee Brothers were on in the background—this time their 2018 album Winterland. He was immersed enough in the game that he actually let the album play through instead of wanting to jump to his favorite tracks, and that allowed me to enjoy some of their quieter, more reflective songs he’s usually not interested in.
We got near the end when on came “New Year,” a beautiful tune in the form of notes back and forth between two friends inquiring about their lives and children.
Here’s the lyrical exchange:
Hey say, Happy New Year Have you had much snow And how’s that new baby boy of yours, Joe
Happy New Year to you The snow’s still deep And he’s our little roly-poly I sing him to sleep
Say how’s the weather Have you had much rain And can that new baby sing your refrain
The weather’s changing It feels like spring And as he falls asleep We can hear him sing
Have the leaves changed Where does the time go And now how old is that son of yours, Joe
Leaves blow away Time goes on He’s all grown up now, singing this song
Perhaps you can now see why the combination of this song and the moment—cozied up next to that son of mine while he cutely played—made me tear up: I envisioned the time that has already passed in my life with him and how in a snap more time will pass and he’ll be all grown up and singing his own songs, only I won’t be cozied up next to him.
It was a moment of mono no aware, a Japanese phrase I love that indicates “the awareness of impermanence or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.”
That concept cuts both ways. Everything in this stage—and in life—is impermanent: the good moments, the hard times, the drudgery, the occasional euphoria. “Nothing gold can stay,” wrote Robert Frost. And that’s why it’s so important to love them at the age they are and every year they grow, because they’ll never be that age again.
There is one workaround for this: have another child. Our second is due in late May, so I’ll get another chance to start at zero and bask in this unique time once again. And you better believe I’ll be working extra hard to enjoy bathtimes while they last.
(Not visible: the buffalo plaid pocket square accompanying the bowtie.)
The biggest thing that happened to my family this year was trying to have a second child. It was a long and demoralizing journey that ultimately ended successfully (due in late May), but it’ll take more than a bullet point to say why.
Beyond that, we just kept on livin’. Here’s what that looked like this year:
Got to see our cute, curious, cuddly, (sometimes) cantankerous 3 year old:
get familiar with the neighborhood birds, including hawks, cardinals, herons, woodpeckers, and blackbirds
get his second-ever haircut
get COVID (was basically fatigued for a day then back to his usual self)
take classes for t-ball, gymnastics, tap/ballet, and various other sports
giddily explore a few different children’s museums
Saw these movies in the theater: Barbarian, Nope, The Fabelmans, The Banshees of Inisherin, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Babylon
Added these cheap used DVDs/Blu-rays to my collection: The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Apartment, Arrival, Brick, Brooklyn, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cast Away, Casino Royale, Do the Right Thing, Hell or High Water, High Noon, In the Heights, The Irishman, Looper, The Matrix, Ocean’s Twelve & Thirteen, Out of the Past, Paris Texas, Red River, Remember the Titans, Roma, Titanic, and The Usual Suspects
Added these (not cheap Christmas gifts) Criterion Blu-rays: 12 Angry Men, The Night of the Hunter, The Lady Eve, and WALL·E
A sunbeamed leaf as seen through our car windshield:
The yin and yang of a backyard bonfire remnant:
At work in his corner office:
Cloudy with a chance of a refill:
The bubbles are back, and they’re multiplying:
Mr. 3 Year Old is eager to shovel at the slightest dusting so we’re out there even while it’s still snowing. This results in what I call snombré (snow + ombré), where the freshly shoveled blends smoothly into the re-covered areas:
