What Country Do You Live In? Berkeley!

We've been trying to teach Elliot some rudimentary geography. That includes the name of our street, our town, our state and our country.

I guess it's a lot to absorb for a 3-year-old because sometimes when I ask what country he lives in, he'll say, "Berkeley."

At first I would correct him, but now I wonder if he's just absorbing the local sentiment.

"Socialist Democratic Republic of Berkeley" — sign on truck selling rustic birdhouses.

Most people in Berkeley do live in their own country.

Another Cautionary Tale About Child Labor

I've written before about the pitfalls of relying on child labor.

Well, this weekend Elliot had to make almost 20 valentines — enough for everyone in his preschool class.

He lost interest after a few of them and began squeezing glue into the crayon box.

So I had to make most of the valentines myself.

Fortunately, I have the arts-and-crafts skills of a 3-year-old, so no one will notice the difference.

The Living Water Tower

One thing you realize when you have kids: Role reversals can take place very quickly.

When we first moved to Berkeley, I enjoyed pointing out the water tower to Elliot. My reasoning was, water towers are fairly unusual in modern-day society, and the fact that we have a prominent one in southwest Berkeley is exciting.

The thing is, when you're 2 or 3 years old, EVERYTHING is unusual. And so, young kids have very different ideas about what's exciting.

As it turned out, Elliot got it in his head that his dad was very interested in water towers. After that, whenever he saw one he would say, "We should show that to Daddy. He likes those."

Then suddenly I had to pretend like *I* was the one excited about water towers.

That said, I am very excited about this "living" water tower in Minneapolis.

It uses a projector to make it seem like it's alive. Pretty cool.

If we're ever driving though Minneapolis, I will point this out to anyone who will listen.

How Old Is a Grown-Up?

"I'm almost a grown-up, Daddy."

"Oh, really? How old is a grown-up?"

"Ten."

"Ten? What kind of things can you do when you're ten?"

"Drive a car."

"Is that right?"

"Yes, I'm going to be a really big racetrack driver."

Terrifying Hexbug Colony

I thought we had a lot of Hexbugs in our house, but one of Elliot's friends has a much more impressive collection.

I can only imagine what these things will do when Skynet gets switched on.

Ceiling Solar System Contains No Pluto

I wonder if makers of glow-in-the-dark planets jumped at the chance to stop including Pluto — if only as a cost-saving measure.

For whatever reason, Elliot's solar-system set contains no Pluto, which was downgraded to a minor planet in 2006.

Actually, at the moment his solar system contains no Jupiter, Saturn or Neptune either. They fell to the floor a few days after we put them up there.

I tell Elliot, "Don't worry, Uranus is still stuck to the ceiling," and then giggle for a long time. Fortunately, he has no idea what I'm talking about.

Man Freestyle Raps in Delivery Room

Given this blog's interest in babies and hip-hop, I'd be remiss not to post this video of a dad freestyle rapping to the beat of a fetal heart monitor.



When Kelly was pregnant with Elliot, I burned six CDs' worth of mixes for the delivery room. (In fact, we left late for the hospital so I could finish them. Priorities, people!)

Maybe I should have just improvised.

'You Don't See Anything Funny About That Lightbulb?'

I was reading Elliot one of his library books (an Elephant & Piggie story), when I came across this picture.

I chuckled at Piggie getting an idea with a compact-fluorescent bulb. Then I realized there wasn't anything funny about it. That's what lightbulbs look like.

In fact, I'm not sure Elliot has ever seen an incandescent bulb in real life.  When I asked him if the bulb in the story looked funny, he studied it for a while and said no.

"Happy New Year!"...at 7:47 p.m.

It will be a sad day when the kids can figure out it's not really midnight.

How Do You Stage Santa's B&E?

This was the first year that we pushed the Santa mythology on Elliot (he was barely 2 at Christmastime last year, so everything went over his head).

He seemed to accept that a portly elf would be coming down the chimney and filling our stockings with gifts (hello, terrifying). But then Elliot asked why we hadn't left open the fireplace grate. So we did that.

After Elliot went to bed, we tried to arrange the scene to make it seem convincing that Santa had been there. We left a note, a half-eaten cookie and an empty glass with milk residue.

Was that enough? Should I overturn some furniture to make it seem like a real breaking-and-entering? Maybe leave ash and sooty fingerprints everywhere?

In the end, Elliot seemed to buy it without too much embellishing.

When someone's giving you presents, you don't ask too many questions.

Santa Claus Negotiating 101: What Not to Do

There was a man dressed as Santa Claus at Christmas Tree Lane, which gave Elliot his first real-life encounter with St. Nick.

We plopped him down on Santa's knee, but clearly Elliot didn't understand the protocol. He spent the whole time telling Santa about toys he already had ("I have a panda"). Maybe he just wanted an opportunity to flaunt his stuffed-animal wealth in front of others, but it was very sweet.

I think the experience speaks to Elliot's complete lack of expectations. Even after all the holiday buildup (including the Advent calendar), Elliot probably wouldn't notice if we decided not to hold Christmas at all. There certainly isn't a specific gift that he's requested. I thought this might be the case for all 3-year-olds, but Elliot's friends aren't like that.

On the way home, Elliot remembered more stuff that Santa didn't need to get him. (He regretted not telling him that he already has an antelope.)

Elliot also asked if we could bring our copy of "The Night Before Christmas" to Santa because he'd probably like to read it. "I think he's heard that one," I said.

If this is a phase, I hope it lasts forever.

A Trip to Alameda's Christmas Tree Lane

If you're an East Bay resident with kids, it's pretty hard to avoid going to Alameda's Christmas Tree Lane at some point or another. It's like trying to avoid seeing "Avatar" or that video where the cat puts the baby to sleep.

We went for the first time this week, and the kids loved it. (Well, Elliot loved it. Alice just sat in her stroller and gurgled contentedly.)

Christmas Tree Lane is a block of Thompson Avenue where every house is decorated — many to an insane degree. I've heard it's part of their neighborhood association that you have to go bananas at Christmastime. (I assume they let people do Hanukkah decorations too, though I didn't see much evidence of that.)

A lot of the displays involved animatronics, and one even had lights that were synchronized with the soundtrack to "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

One of Elliot's favorites was a Santa that would hide inside a tree and then pop out to ambush onlookers. I called him Viet Cong Santa.

I preferred the Tintin display. It's still hard to believe we've reached a point where Tintin is this mainstream in America.

The Grinch, Peanuts characters and the Muppets also were featured prominently. Elliot didn't recognize any of them.

However, he was thrilled when he saw this one. "APPLE!"

It's amazing that a company logo can elicit so much excitement from a 3-year-old.

What I'd Forgotten About 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'

Elliot's old enough now to start watching some of the classic Christmas specials, providing me with the opportunity to revisit them. The other night we saw "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," the stop-motion-animation special that first aired in 1964. During my youth, it was required viewing every Christmas.

Elliot loved it. But the kid also will watch a locomotive decoupling for 15 minutes, so that's not saying much.

I was surprised by how much I'd forgotten about the special, which I hadn't seen in at least 20 years. And it was interesting to watch it in near-perfect definition. Despite the fact that we were viewing a free clip on YouTube, the video quality was vastly better than anything I'd experienced in the 1970s or '80s — when we were hampered by static, ghosting and a dim CRT picture.



Here's what most surprised me in viewing it again:

1. Rudolph is born and learns to talk the same day. I realize reindeer have fast maturation periods, but this seems unlikely.

2. Santa is a complete dick. When he initially discovers Rudolph's condition, he reacts with open disgust. Then Santa tells Rudolph he won't have a chance to make the reindeer team if the problem doesn't clear up. Later, when the elves try desperately to please the old man with a song ("We Are Santa Elves"), Santa tells them it needs work and marches out, slamming the door. I'm surprised he didn't throttle the imperial elf commander with a telekinesis chokehold.

3. What's with the odd subplot where Santa is skinny and then Mrs. Claus has to fatten him up every year so he can satisfy the children's expectations? (Maybe this is why he's so pissed.) Who is he, Bobby De Niro? This can't be healthy.

4. Hermey the elf opens a dental practice with no medical training whatsoever.

5. They remove the Abominable Snow Monster's teeth to avoid being eaten. Then they give him a job at the North Pole putting ornaments on trees. Great, but what about the years of agony as he subsides on a liquid diet?

6. The dialogue on the Island of Misfit Toys is pretty bleak. Doll for Sue: "I haven't got any dreams left to dream. We'll never get off this island. Never." I'm pretty sure that line was lifted directly from Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

7. Doll for Sue's dim outlook was perhaps warranted. At the end of the story, Santa doesn't deliver the misfit toys himself; he just gives them umbrellas and drops them out of the sleigh from a high altitude. Again, this Santa could give a shit.

A Disturbing Scene

I walked into Elliot's room yesterday to find this arrangement of toys.

I'm not sure what happened here, but I feel like Blue Dog knows more than he's letting on.

Christmas Tree Shopping: Then and Now

What's it like to go Christmas tree shopping in 2011? For us, it started by piling the family into the car and then realizing we didn't know where the nearest tree lot was. So Kelly summoned Siri on her new iPhone to find out.

Unfortunately, Siri didn't understand the question — even after Kelly repeated it several times.

After we sat in the car for several minutes, one of our neighbors came over to help. She's lived in Berkeley longer than us and recommended several Christmas tree lots. Then she said, "Look at you, getting Christmas tree advice from a Jew." This made me wonder what religion Siri is.

We ended up at a tree lot in Emeryville that had a bouncy slide...

...a petting zoo...

...and, yes, a few Christmas trees (though not so many to warrant the excessive sideshow, I'd say).

When I was young child, we lived in rural New England. My family and I would trudge out into the snow with a saw and cut down the tree ourselves. As our mittens thawed by a wood-burning stove, we celebrated with a cup of hot chocolate.

I'm not sure anyone took photographs, so this lithograph will have to do.

My children will not experience that. But they did get to zoom down an inflatable slide beneath palm trees while enjoying the California sunshine. This has to be some form of progress.

We debated what tree to get for a while, but at least no one was carrying a saw (that would usually escalate the arguments during my youth).

After sealing the deal, we took the tree home and decorated it.

I'd say it looks just as good as the ones from the old days.

And on the plus side: No one threatened to hack up another family member.

Could Roomba Develop a Pacifier, Please?

Elliot never got into pacifiers, but Alice loves them. It's part of what makes our two children complete opposites (the only thing they seem to share is they both think Elliot is awesome).

When you have a pacifier-loving baby, you realize there's a frequent ritual. She'll misplace it in the middle of the night and start crying. That forces the parent to get up and feel around the crib to try and find it.

Trust me: If it's dark and I don't have my glasses on, there's little chance I'm going to find anything. They sell clips that at least keep the pacifier near the baby's head, but that doesn't quite do the trick.

There has to be a better way. Can we please have a Roomba pacifier — something that can automatically return itself to baby's mouth? I'm thinking of something like the spiders in "Minority Report"...but maybe less terrifying.

Can we make this happen?

UPDATE: It's not really related, but it's impossible to discuss robots without mentioning DJ Roomba.

'Mighty Machines': Canadian Mind Control Continues

I've spoken before about the outsized influence that Canadian TV programs have on young children. Well, as far as Elliot in concerned, this show may be the mother of them all: "Mighty Machines."

"Mighty Machines" is a half-hour program showing how different vehicles and construction equipment works. For instance, an episode will be dedicated to a train yard or street sweepers.

The production values are fairly low. It's just video of machines at work — plus hokey voiceover where people pretend to be the vehicles: "Look at me delivering box cars!"

We're watching episodes on Netflix that were produced in the mid-1990s, which means they look like they're from the 1980s (I'm using the Robin Scherbatsky conversion standard here: "The '80s didn't come to Canada 'til like '93").

Anyway, Elliot ADORES it.

Amid criticism about "SpongeBob SquarePants" and concerns that kids' shows are too frenetic, it's worth noting that "Mighty Machines" is the polar opposite.

The camera lingers on the lumbering work of each vehicle (there was an episode on race cars, but that's as fast-paced as it gets). It makes "Masterpiece Theater" look like it was directed by Michael Bay.



The appeal mainly speaks to the allure of machines on kids. (The show has been described as "porn for little boys.")

I guess you don't need to dress that up.

'Daddy, Is It Tomorrow?'

When we were kids, my brothers and I would go nuts over our Advent calendar. I remember how exciting it was to open the tiny window each day, knowing we were 24 hours closer to Christmas.

Behind each window was a picture — something related to the story of Jesus.

A picture...that's all. And yet this was somehow thrilling. (Making it more absurd: We'd recycle the same calendar more than one year, so I'd seen the pictures before.)

Well, nowadays kids have more options. Many Advent calendars have chocolates inside, and there's even one with Legos. (A co-worker got this for his children.)

Why is the cop about to arrest a Christmas tree?

For Elliot, we bought the Trader Joe's Advent calendar, which somehow is only 99 cents (is this a loss leader?). Elliot loves it.

But he's also at an age when he's very easy to satisfy (or maybe this is his personality?) and makes no assumptions about anything.

Every day, we'll take out the calendar and get ready to open one of the windows.

"I wonder what it's going to be," Elliot says.

After it's revealed to be chocolate (spoiler alert: they're all chocolate), he'll say, "Mmm...chocolate!"

Then we'll tell him he has to wait until tomorrow to open another one.

That leads to him frequently asking if it's tomorrow yet. Kelly tried to explain that it will never be tomorrow; it's always today. But that didn't seem to clear things up. (In fact, I started to get confused myself.)

Anyway, Elliot seems most excited about the ritual and doing an activity with his parents.

I'm pretty sure he'd be perfectly thrilled to open the window and just stare at a picture.

'Three-Year-Olds Are Terrible at Hide-and-Seek'

In this video, Elliot and cousin Margot have a blast playing hide-and-seek — despite having no understanding of how to hide or seek.



Once again, enthusiasm trumps competence.

Does 'Three Little Pigs' Send a Dangerous Message?

"Three Little Pigs" is one of Elliot's favorite stories, but I wonder if it's giving him the wrong message about unreinforced brick masonry.

Here in California, using bricks as a building material is generally a bad idea. And there's no evidence that the third little pig braces his walls with a steel frame. (He doesn't even bolt his house to the foundation for chrissake.)

From the Earthquake Country Alliance:

Houses built of unreinforced masonry — bricks, hollow clay tiles, stone, concrete blocks, or adobe — are very likely to be damaged during earthquakes. The mortar holding the masonry together is generally not strong enough to resist earthquake forces. Anchorage of walls to the floor and the roof is critical. These houses are weak (brittle) and can break apart. Walls may fall away or buckle, resulting in damage.

How can we call ourselves responsible parents if we teach our kids that using brick is OK?