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:
The above is a screenshot from a video on my phone that’s come to be known in my family as “Ball Under Table.”
Recorded shortly before the first COVID lockdown, the video documents a little game our (at the time) freshly minted one-year-old created. He would roll the little squishy soccer ball under our table, wait for me to get down and reach to get it, then waddle off into another room.
It was his way of trying to sneak off, which, having just learned to walk at that point, he was doing a lot. The video ends with me having “caught” him in the living room and asked, “Are you sneaky?” After a pause, he smiles mischievously and sets off again.
Run it back
Now three years old, he loves to watch this video over and over again, along with the many other videos of him from birth to present. It has become so indelible that he’ll recreate it in the exact same spot. (Though his wobbly toddling has turned into straight-up sprinting.) And if his mother or I dare to veer from an exact reenactment of the video, he’s none too happy about it.
It’s interesting how this moment has morphed over time. When it happened, he was too young for it to make a long-term impression. But once he was old enough to watch and rewatch the recording, that’s what became his default understanding and memory of that moment.
Which is a phenomenon I understand well, having watched and rewatched a lot of my own home videos from when I was a kid. How many of those moments would I actually remember if they’d never been recorded? Not a lot, given my woefully weak capacity for long-term memories that aren’t useless bits of trivia.
He’ll have just as much (if not more) footage of his childhood as I did, thanks to our smartphones and camcorder. And he’ll have to deal with far more screens and reality-distorting technology in general. How will that affect his mind and those of his generation?
That was a question from my 3 year old during a recent walk as he was looking at the sky. We’d recently introduced him to the concept of seeing recognizable shapes in clouds, so I’m guessing that’s what he was getting at. But this phrasing was so much more deep, man.
Bluey. A not-small number of times after watching an episode I’ve thought, “Was that one of the greatest episodes of TV ever?” Hot take: the only TV shows a kid needs, really, are this and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood—the yin and yang of instructive, high-quality children’s entertainment.
Picture books aplenty. A few he and I have enjoyed in equal measure lately: Creepy Carrots and Creepy Pair of Underwear by Aaron Reynolds, Jazz for Lunch by Jarrett Dapier, and Up the Mountain Path by Marianne Dubuc.
Our Planet. Gave this Planet Earth spinoff on Netflix a whirl with him and he was mesmerized. Nature is so metal.
YouTube. An amazing learning tool. He learns about volcanoes in a book; check out this compilation of eruptions. He starts t-ball class but has never played baseball before; let’s pull up some highlights of a random game.
The playground at the park near my parents’ house is getting renovated, which means the place as I knew it from ages 11-18 will be no more.
I’m glad for the memories I have from there, many of which are shared with my childhood best friend, Tim, who also lived a block away from the park. We logged countless hours at the basketball court and amidst the playground, making up spy games and other shenanigans.
The shenanigans have continued into the next generation, with my son and his cousin having romped around the same structures I did. Here they are last summer on the very old and rusty slide:
They took many, many turns on the slide, engaged in a constant loop of climbing up, sliding down, and running around. The next time we visit that slide will be gone, replaced with another slide for adventures anew.
3 year old was “helping” me clean out the car on a warmer day by “fixing” a headrest with a wrench, but all you can really see is the reflection of the sun and clouds in the rear window:
Among the pines:
Stumbled upon this view (while walking on a bike path under a bridge), in which the sunlight hitting the dirty creek water formed an X-ceptional angle:
More shapely, shadowy scenes on aforementioned walk:
We celebrated Little Man’s third birthday this week (well, fourth if you count his actual day of birth). While looking through my photos of him I noticed a motif of capturing him from behind as he ventures forth at varying speeds.
I like this vantage point for a few reasons. Since we don’t post his name or face on the internet it’s a convenient angle for sharing. But it’s also an accurate representation of me watching him discover his world over and over again.
Most of the above shots are from very familiar places: our backyard, our local park, our regular family getaway spot. For me as a jaded adult visiting them can get monotonous, but there’s really no such thing to a toddler. Everything can be new and adventurous no matter how many times he’s encountered it.
That’s why I consider it a privilege to follow him into his great daily unknown. All I can do is hope to continue capturing these views, fleeting as they are.
My wife found a kid-sized easel on post-Christmas super sale that’s whiteboard on one side and chalkboard on the other, and so far it’s been Mr. Almost 3’s go-to activity.
Fortuitously, and perhaps relatedly, his drawing skills have evolved just enough to be able to depict some basic body-like shapes and eyes:
Though they look more like ghosts (or amoebas, or maybe potatoes?) than humans, he’s on the right path and I’m impressed all the same.
It’s been fun drawing alongside him, and trying to keep up. I’ve had to relearn a lesson similar to when he was in his building blocks phase as a baby: no matter how proud I am of what I manage to make, it’ll be gone in a minute or two, tops, because he loves erasing as much as drawing.
With the day off from work, I spent the morning traipsing around our snowy yard with Little Man. He introduced me to his snowman (above), we threw snowballs at trees, and rolled down the small hill in our backyard. Lots more snow is on the way, apparently, so we’ll be out there shoveling again soon to welcome the new year.
I don’t have an overarching thesis of my 2021. In most ways it was just like last year: COVID, living with a rambunctious and hilarious toddler, and doing the little things of living every day. Sometimes that’s all you can and should do: shovel snow when you have to, and roll down a hill when you can.
A few highlights:
Celebrated 15 years of blogging!
Read 31 books and watched 57 movies
Got to see Little Man:
get potty trained
attend a (chaotic, barely structured) park district soccer class for 2-3 year olds
take swimming lessons and learn how to play in the public pool
encounter the fauna of Brookfield Zoo and the flora of the Botanic Garden
share endless hours of ball play in our dining room with the Okee Dokee Brothers in the background
Finally wrote about my undying love for the TV show Boomtown, not once but twice
Watched some good TV: Ted Lasso, Schmigadoon, Bluey, Love on the Spectrum, The Great British Baking Show, The Underground Railroad, The Good Lord Bird, and currently Station Eleven
Added these cheap used DVDs/Blu-rays to my collection: Jaws, WALL-E, The Count of Monte Cristo, Red River, Apollo 13, Columbus, The Death of Stalin, Jurassic Park, Knives Out, Paterson, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse
The following is a short story my almost-3 year old told me while we sat in bed resting between wrestling bouts. I dictated it into my phone as he told it to preserve for posterity:
The gasoline pulled up to the ghost in the starry nighttime sky. The ghost pulled up to a very big bumbly ghost skeleton. The wizard came to the ghost and said something different to the skeleton. It pulled up to a very big nose who said, “hello!” The door pulled up to a very big light and the light said something very funny. The light did a very silly thing with his friend. And all his friends laughed at his silly dance. The window pulled up to a very very very very big book and said something different, said “hello!” The sweatshirt pulled up to a very big shelf, and do you know what the shelf said? It said, “how are you doing today, book?” The papa pillow pulled up to the TV and said, “call head!” By Michael Moore. The end.
A few notes:
For the second half he was basically looking around the room for objects to include, a la Brick in Anchorman
He has never heard of the documentarian Michael Moore, so it’s clearly some other Michael Moore
Clearly things “pulling up to” other things is from a book or show or something he’s seen recently but I don’t know what
After reading the story back to him the next day, he dropped another on me:
The hook came up to the long long snail. It traveled to the great big monster and said “Poo!” The big bumblebee went to the little bumblebee, and you know what it said? “I want some birdseed! I want some birdseed!” The vent traveled to a very big tissue. The cabinet came to the very big clock and said “I wish there was some very big seed for me.” Then the light came to the very big frame and said “I want a sweater to put on!” Wapa wapa and a zaymoo, the end.
