Leggo of my Lego

“I want to take apart my legos,” M-ito said.

Mom-ita and I just stared at him. “What?” I asked.

“M-ito says he wants to take apart all his legos.”

“All of them?” I asked, with my mouth dropping open.

M-ito nodded with a big smile. “And it’ll be easy to take ‘em apart. I’ll just smash ‘em up.”

“No,” Mom-ita said. “You’ll take them apart. Now why do you want to take them apart?”

“All of them?” I asked again, still uncomprehending. You see, M-ito has been building legos models for a couple of years now. We have the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Underwater Adventures (my personal favorite), Mars, Castle, Power Miners, and a few others I can’t remember. They line two book cases in his room. He keeps them out of the way so that no one can touch them and break them. Little kids… look out. He built them. He plays with them. He collects them. I just didn’t understand.

“We’ll get a bin for them and you can put all the pieces in that.”

“That’s right. That’s what I thought,” M-ito said, still smiling.

“But Dad-dito will take pictures of them first so we can remember them. And you don’t have to break up all of them. You should save some.” Mom-ita had it down.

“You want to break them up?” I said again. I was having trouble with attachment, trying to hold on to the legos. M-ito was ready to let them go and I wasn’t.

I took pictures of him giving me the thumbs up next to his shelves. I asked him if he wanted to save the underwater adventure models – for that’s what I think of them as, models – models without glue. I spent a lot of evenings sitting on the floor with him searching for and finding pieces for him while he snapped them together.

“No,” M-ito said. “I’ll need the pieces for building other things – you know, like Austino does with them.” Austino and his friend have a bin they build all kinds of structures, spaceships and weapons of destruction from. If Austino does it, M-ito will do it too. Austino is a year older and is M-ito’s hero.

I nodded, then shrugged. “I’ll go clean out a bin.” So I did. It’s still sitting empty beneath the play table. But the Deathstar is half disassembled.  My heart aches a little. But if it means there’s more space in his room…

Games a 7-Year Old Plays

Here was M-ito’s list for Santa (who he still believes may or may be real and I’m so glad he’s still on the fence about the big round guy).

1. The Nintendo DS (see Dumb and Stupid (DS) previous entry)
2. Rock’em Sock’em Robots (Just like my brother and I played when we were kids. Santa Aunt got it for him. We’ve played about ten minutes with it so far and its’ still the same game. Even Mom-ita played a few rounds. You get tired of it before you break it. We’ll see how long it lasts in active service. But as a retro gift I’m glad his aunt got it for him.)
3. Sorry Sliders (The TV commercial totally got him. We played our own version of the game with disks we have and that was almost as much fun as the real game. Cousins got this for him and we’ve played it three times. I can’t tell it it’s a keeper of not. It’s basically like a four person small shuffleboard game.)
4. Battleship (Friends got this for him – the electronic version and he got the small travel version. As Mom-ita says, “Now we don’t even have to talk to each other when we play” – the computer does it all. He loves this game even though it goes slow after a while.)
5. The Force Unleashed Wii (It’s too violent but he played it at a friends house and Mom-ita said it was “OK” so we have it along with the light sabers that go with it.)
6. Spy Gear Eavesdropper Remote Control Vehicle (Santa Aunt got him the infrared goggles instead. Spy gear was heavily pedaled on TV commercials and the stuff is neat looking but… M-ito hasn’t opened the box yet.)

Here’s what Santa added in the bag to combat EGS:

1. The next three Hiccup the Viking Books by Cressida Cowel (M-ito loves these).
2. The next four Droon books by Tony Abbot
3. Carcassonne (an award wining tile game about building a city in medieval times by Rio Grande Games for 8+ and for 2-5 players)
4. The Settlers of Catan (another award-winning game for 10+ and 2-5 players)
5. Gamewright Games: Going Nuts, Say Cheese, and Constellation Connect (still one of my favorite game companies for kids – card games and dice games like you’ve never seen before)

What Do 2nd and 3rd Grade Boys Talk About?

It starts as soon as we get in the car. I’ve only driven the boys (M-ito and his friend Austino) to school (or picked them up from school) a handful of times but it happens each time. They get in the car and start talking about poop, pee, and destruction. Here’s an example.

“Poop, poop, poop, poop,” Austino says as soon as they close the car door and buckle themselves in.

“Poop and pee, poop and pee, poop and pee,” M-ito adds in. They are both hysterical with laughter. I smile back at them through the rear view mirror.

“All right you two,” I say, “that’s enough with the poop and pee.” I know once they are in school none of this will be allowed. I figure it’s better to get it all out now so when they don’t stop right away I let it go on for  a few minutes before I veer them towards another subject.

On Friday they both were singing the Barney song but it went a little like this: “I hate you, you hate me, we’re an unhappy family, I’m gonna take a saw and cut off your head, then Barney will soon be dead.” Writing it down it doesn’t sound too good. I know, I know. But in the car, riding home after a full day of school, being good, following the rules, not using any toilet language, being gentlemen, a little letting loose can’t be bad. Can it? Variations of Barney being taken out went on for a good ten minutes with the two boys laughing and giggling at each other’s humor. Eventually I told them that enough was enough and asked them to change the subject – but they only sang louder. I should have figured that wouldn’t stop them but I’m slow at these things. Regardless, I liked to hear them laugh and didn’t want to crush their creative work directly, just channel it somewhere else. So I started word games with them. How many words can you name that rhyme with red? Then I spy with my little eye. It worked for a while, but poor Barney the purple dinosaur eventually got knocked off a few more times before we got home.

This trend towards violence and not understanding what it means disturbs me. It’s not real to the kids. But, do I want it to be real for them? Do I want them to have seen people get killed for real? Dead bodies, for real?  I’ve seen enough violence and the results of violence in my life and I’d rather not have them see any of it even when they’re older. On the other hand, they don’t take it seriously. It’s like a movie or a video game to them. And so it’s funny.

I remember a number of my friends in High School used to enjoy seeing the George Romero films like Dawn of the Dead. They laughed at the gore and violence because it was so over-the-top to them. I couldn’t watch the films. They terrified me and it all looked way too real. I couldn’t laugh at the horror of what I saw on the screen. I was not made to see horror films.

My son does not see violent films – he barely gets to see PG rated animated films and we hand-pick his films very carefully. He still hasn’t watched the third Star Wars film Revenge of the Sith because I think it’s just too violent. M-ito couldn’t sit through Beverly Hills Chihuahua last year because it was “too scary.” He get’s scared easily and we don’t want him to have nightmares. Yet when he plays Wi Lego Star Wars what is the purpose of most of the action? Well… it’s to kill all the other characters. You get points for taking their hearts. “Take out your light saber and kill them,” is commonly heard during play. It makes me cringe. What do parents do about this desensitization?

M-ito told me a story on Friday about his school. Three 8th graders had to do some public speaking at assembly last week – it’s an assignment each of them has to complete during the school year – and one of them tried to be funny in his speech. M-ito explained it to me like this.

“One boy told us he was describing his trip to Japan and said, ‘I was looking out the window of the airplane and saw three torpedoes fly out at a building and blow it up. Then I saw people jumping off the building, wait, no I was only kidding!’ That’s what he said, ‘I was only kidding!” M-ito laughed – I sensed feeling sophisticated because he got the humor. He thought it was funny – as funny as talking about poop, farts, or pee.

The first time I heard him tell this story, we were in the car on the way home from school and Austino was in the car too. They both thought it funny. I smiled but felt a little sick to my stomach – a little disturbed. I was on the 16th floor of Tower II the day the Trade Center’s came down and the story just rang differently for me. I didn’t say anything to him about it. I smiled and listened to them laugh. The second time he told the story it was to Mom-ita a few days later and I was listening while sitting next to him at dinner. I looked at Mom-ita after he’d finished and neither one of us talked for a moment. M-ito was giggling again.

We both finally looked at him and said, “You know it could be that people will think about the World Trade Center when someone tells that kind of story. They might not think it funny. People really got killed there – a lot of people.” But M-ito was working on only 8 hours of sleep and as soon as I got serious he tuned me out. Of course I said two or three sentences more and had to have Mom-ita tell me to stop, “He’s not listening to you anymore,” before I finally did find silence.

I liked it when M-ito thought Oswald was the best TV show. There was no violence. There was Big Banana day. There was a picnic in the park. There was lunch at the local diner meeting friends. Now my son is growing up and the volume is being turned up too.

When it comes down to it, if I have a choice between laughing at violence or poop and pee, I’ll take the poop and pee any day.

Favorite TV Shows at 7 and 1/4

July’s Favorite TV Shows:

• Phineas and Ferb (Aglet song and the one hit wonder Gitchie Gitchie Goo song are constantly in his head, and mine at this point – by the way I love this show too. It makes me laugh out loud many times. Perhaps it is my sense of humor or perhaps the show is really just funny. The kids are nice to each other and even the older sister Candice – whom M-ito has to look away from every time her and Jeremy are getting all lovey-dovey, has some really warm and beautiful moments.)
• Star Wars the Clone Wars (the first four episodes just came out on DVD and we’ve already watched them two times this week – I also enjoy this show. The animation is very good and original and the stories exciting and well written – though some are way too old for my son and require explaining. More a 10 and up show than a 7 and up. Don’t let the cartoon imagery fool you – it is violent.)
• Chowder (this show is new and I’m not sure what it is as I haven’t seen it yet. M-ito described it to me as a story about a short fat kid who wears purple all the time – and said, quote – it’s really cool)
• Pokemon (we both love to watch this also – M-ito because he knows all the Pokemon and wishes he could have one in this world so he could train it and it could be his best friend – and me because it’s interesting, contains strategy tactical development skills – yes I rerally wrote that – perhaps it’s better to jsut say it promotes game playing skills and neat problem solving skills – and pretty good values shown about friendship and teamwork. I have found the card game to be great – really works M-ito’s math skills and the imagery is terrific. The animation is standard on the show and stylized – reminding me of Speed Racer days, but I think the story lines are good considering every show is about a fight between Pokemon. It’s amazing what the writer’s have done with that.)

Rush Hour

It came in like a spring wind. A small black playing board with plastic cars, trucks and busses on it – and an ice cream truck – for whom the whole purpose of the game was to get it unstuck from a traffic jam. The game was called Rush Hour and it had been months since M-ito brought it out of his room to play. What I liked about the game – a traffic jam puzzle - was that it was portable (ie: fit in my bag of tricks backpack), that I could play too (the expert level games where indeed challenging), and that, well, the game looked cool. For one week last year it was all M-ito played, everywhere we went. Then he’d had enough and moved on to another game. Rush Hour became obsolete. 

Yesterday I pulled it out, because M-ito had mentioned it while talking about iphone games and he reminded us how much he liked the Rush Hour game. Excited, I brought it to coffee this morning, on the last day of school, and two of M-ito’s friends enjoyed playing it while they waited with the adults for their party to start. I started giving them hints and then had to stop myself because they were enjoying themselves without me. After the festivities were over and we were again home, I asked M-ito if he wanted to play. 

“No,” was all he said.

“But,” I began.

“No, Dad-dito, I don’t like that game anymore.”

My mouth hung open and I caught some flies for a few moments. 

But I’m not done with the game yet, I said to myself. I still want to play.

The problem is I like games, a great quality for a Dad-dito to have. It means when Candyland comes out, I play. The same goes for Star Wars Monopoly, Operation, Zooreka, and Zooloretto. And I like all kinds of games, including card games and board games. I don’t mind losing to M-ito most of the time (I have to win every once in a while just to keep him honest), reading the instructions to new games, explaining the rules to him, and looking for new games he might (and I might) like. And M-ito likes games too – he loves them, but he usually loves a game for anywhere from one day to a few months. Then the love affair is over. And I’m left with a hankering to play a game without a partner. 

But I’m not done yet.

So it goes.

Wii Wars

Mom-ita plays a mean Wii. M-ito plays a mean Wii. I can hear them battling through five levels of animated storm troopers, alien cantinas and pod-racers. This is what it sounds like.

“Go over here, Mom-ita – follow me.”

“You have to wait for me.”

“Follow me, Mom-ita, I know what to do here.”

“M-ito, you have to wait for me.”

“Follow me.”

Or…

“Mom-ita, you have to wait for me.”

“I know what to do here so you follow me.”

“Mom-ita!”

“M-ito, sometimes you have to follow. That’s what playing together is all about.”

I step over to see them from the kitchen. I’ve just about finished the dishes. They are both sitting there, nonchucks in one hand and control wand in the other. Their eyes are glued to the TV screen which is filled with flying projectiles, coins and red hearts.

“Get the heart! Get the heart!” M-ito says.

“I’m trying to but you keep moving away from it and I can’t get to it.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got it.”

I play sometimes with M-ito but I’m not a big fan of electronic games. I was when I was a kid and adolescent. I spent a lot of quarters on Pong and Space Invaders, Galaga, Asteroids, and Defender. But I also got lost in them and disappeared while I played for hours on end. I get worried my son will do the same. He has had a different life than me so he doesn’t have the same need to disappear that I had at that age, but I get worried never-the-less.

Back on Tatooine, Mom-ita has put her controls down and has crossed her arms, sitting back on the couch, chin tucked, brow furrowed.

“Mom-ita, what are you doing?” M-ito says as he continues to blast away at furniture and creatures, gaining coins and hearts and points.

“No,” Mom-ita says.

“I’m sorry,” says M-ito. “I said I’m sorry.”

Mom-ita picks up the controls and leans forward.

“I can do this part,” she says and M-ito nods, his mouth hanging a little open.

I return to the dishes, shaking my head. Mom-ita says she wants to practice with me at night after M-ito is asleep. She says this in front of M-ito as a joke, but also to let him know how good he is. But… I don’t think she’s kidding.

Youtube Trouble – Parental Controls to the Rescue

It’s time for me to put parental controls on the computer. M-ito has figured out how to use Google.

Yesterday he called me over to see something he’d found on the computer. It was a Star Wars Lego video on Youtube. I watched two of them before I shook myself and realized my son had found Youtube. How did he find Youtube?

“How’d you find Youtube?” I asked, speaking almost as quickly as I thought.

“Right here,” he said and showed me how he’d typed in Legos and gotten a list of sites, including Youtube videos of legos Star Wars characters in stop-motion battle with each other. It was just dawning on me what this meant – what my son had found and what he could now be exposed to when he showed me another video.

“Look at this one, Dad-dito!” he said, pointing to the screen.

I saw what looked like a scene from episode 1 on the planet Naboo – marshy with fog and a gungan riding a walking two-legged creature. I looked up at the title of the film – Star Wars Spoof Battle with Benny Hill. “Whow,” I said, taking the mouse, ” time to switch channels.”

“Why?” M-ito asked.

“This one’s adult content – you know – not for kids.”

M-ito just looked at me.

“From now on you have to have Mom-ita or me nearby when you go searching on Google or watching Youtube. Got it?”

He nodded.

Later I watched the film, of course, because I’m an adult and I’m curious. It was the battle scene from the movie sped up to manic speed while the famous Benny Hill Show music played in the background. I smiled through to the end.

Good Morning Good Morning

Mom-ita is working four days this week. As any good Dad-dito would do, I’m doing double duty, getting M-ito off to school in the morning and leaving early from work to pick him up when school/afterschool is over. I’m pretty tired.

Usually Mom-ita and I take M-ito to school (drive) together and I walk from his school to the subway. The morning tasks with M-ito are divided up between us – Mom-ita makes our son his lunch (heat the thermos with hot water, heat the hot meal, fill the lunchbox, put it by the front door) while I make our son and myself breakfast (Hot cereal for me and Cornflakes for him – Mom-ita has breakfast later with her friends). She has done both jobs many times by herself when I’m away traveling and is a pro. It is rare I have to do it by myself for more than a day or two in a row so I am an amateur. I’m on day four tomorrow. It makes me grateful for the school lunch (today) and for Mom-ita’s ability to multi-task.

I’m getting better, quicker. But my to do list on Monday was sketchier than my list today. 

• Do yoga practice
• Wake Mom-ita up to get to her work
• Get M-ito up (not an easy task)
• Get his clothes together and put them near him on the bed (in case he gets up)
• Make lunch for M-ito (heat the water for the thermos and put the food in the oven)
• Check on M-ito to see if he’s up yet
• Put M-ito’s food in the thermos and thermos in the lunch box
• Make breakfast for M-ito
• Check on M-ito to see if he’s up yet
• Make my own breakfast
• Check again on M-ito to see if he’s opened his eyes
• Plead with M-ito to wake up
• Bribe M-ito to wake up
• Remind M-ito to pee when he does wake up
• Eat breakfast together
• Attempt conversation
• Listen to Pokemon story
• Take shower while M-ito gets dressed nearby
• Get dressed with M-ito finishing getting dressed nearby
• Make sure lunch box is packed and by the front door
• Make sure backpack is packed and by the front door
• Turn inside out M-ito’s socks (the seams bother him)
• Get M-ito’s sneakers laces loose so he can put on his shoes quickly and easily
• Help M-ito get on his sneakers anyway (hold laces with finger while he ties bunny ears)
• Get on my own shoes and jacket
• Help M-ito get on his sweater and jacket
• Tell M-ito he has to wear a hat (it’s cold out)
• Tell M-ito he has to pick a hat (too many choices)
• Adjust the hat he’s chosen (he chooses my favorite hat which I was going to wear so I have to choose another one for myself)
• Hand him his backpack and then help with the arm through the strap (otherwise I’ll watch him going around and around trying to get his arm through the second strap)
• Watch as M-ito goes back to the table for a Pokemon action figure to bring with him
• Watch as M-ito goes back to the table for a Pokemon card from one of his new decks to bring with him
• Remember wistfully that it used to be a Lego Star Wars figure that he took with him
• Go back to the living room for my keys, my wallet, my money, my watch
• Look each other in the eyes and leave together
• Walk to school, holding hands most of the way

Om Nama Shivaya. I’m going to do it again in the morning.

In case it sounds too idylic, we had a huge fight this morning – day three – because he wouldn’t get up and we were half an hour late for school. My tactic was to let him be late and I simmered. Maybe it was better than blowing up. Mom-ita and I fought a little instead on her way out. I said to her, “let me handle it.” I was probably wrong in my approach. As we were on our way out the door M-ito apologized to me. I told him he had to get up in the morning to get to school. Then I added when he was late, I was late to work. Then I added Mom-ita and I fought because he was late this morning (ie: it was his fault). Guilt is my speciality. Then I called him from work a couple of hours later (a phone that goes right into his classroom) and checked to see if he was all right – feeling very very guilty for guilting him on the way to school with words that will probably scar him for life. He sounded fine on the phone as if it had all passed him by a long time ago. I’m glad he’s resilient.

When I picked him up from afterschool ballet, he sat on my lap on the couch outside the classroom for fifteen minutes. We watched all the other kids (all three of them) leave the class with the teacher. I gave him a big hug and kiss. We talked a little while, then, he looked at me and said, “I’m ready to go.” I helped him get changed. I carried his bag (too heavy – it was) and his extra jacket (too hot outside – and it was) and watched as he ran back and forth playing with two friends that we walked a few blocks home with. 

Mom-ita and both joked with M-ito this evening that we would wake him up this morning singing, “Good morning, good morning” from Singing in the Rain. He laughed and laughed. The giggle that launched a thousand ships.

Know Your Pokeman

When Star Wars was in (which it was for the last six months) M-ito knew all of the character’s names, each of the episodes story lines from beginning to end (each that we allowed him to watch) which is what comes from watching them 1 or 2 dozen times each, and had memorized all the key lines for major and minor characters. He also loves Legos and his knowledge of each of the models he built added to his reference base. He carried the Legos characters into school each day so they could play with them together. He had, amongst his peers, a mastery of the subject and so, on the playground during recess, he was in with the boys.

The shift to playing more with boys occurred with the rise of Star Wars when school started back in September. Then about a week or two ago – we’re not sure exactly how long but it’s about that long – a change occurred. Pokeman took over and M-ito’s knowledge base of Pokeman is very very low.

The girls are, “playing games I don’t want to play,” he told us when we asked.

The boys – some of whom have older brothers who were weened on Pokeman – had mastery. They didn’t allow M-ito to play with them. “You don’t know them (the characters) well enough so you can’t play,” they said to him. My son is smart and is a leader in his class. For the first time with this group he found himself outside of the social circle. He’s been playing by himself all week during what used to be his favorite subject – recess. We could tell, he was crushed.

Mom-ita, of course figured this out quickly and came up with a solution. She brought him to ToyRus today and they bought some Pokeman action figures. They came home and M-ito showed me Chatot and Palkia and I could see his face light up. The three of us looked on the internet for Pokeman resources and Mom-ita found a site with descriptions of each of the characters he had bought. In case you didn’t know there is a collectible card game a collectible figure game, and over ten years of gaming history to wade through. It was not easy to find, but Mom-ita persisted.

M-ito now knows each of his character’s type, and special powers, size, weight, and height. Mom-ita also made sure our son bought one character that he knew no other boy had. He will go into school tomorrow with knowledge, and power, and a backpack full of Pokeman action figures. My guess is the water dragon Palkia will be in the mix.  The boys who played with him when they were all into Star Wars must now let him in to the land of Pokeman. The look on my sons face is heartbreaking.

I never would have figured out how to help him. I was stuck unable to see why anyone would not want to play with my son. I just couldn’t get past that. My wife is amazing. To her it’s not rocket science. It’s simply knowing our son.

Toys and Far Flung Adventures – Books to Read to a 6-year Old

M-itos’ three favorite books (these are books I read aloud to him, but he followed along as I read asking “where are you?” every once in a while just to make sure where we were on the page – and they all have lots of wonderful pen and ink illustrations):

Far Flung Adventures: Fergus Crane, by Riddell and Stewart (A wonderfully inventive  book about a boy whose father dissapeared on an adventure a long time ago and whose mother makes pastries at a bakery. It involves all kinds of mechanical inventions, a long lost uncle, three talking penguins named Bill, Finn and Jackson, and the Fatefull Voyage Trading Company. Great read-alone also for the 7-9 age. There are three more books in the series, Corby Flood – we’re reading now and M-ito loves it so far – this one with a girl protagonist! And Hugo Pepper. These authors also wrote a terrific fantasy series called The Edge Chronicles – but that’s really for older kids.)

Toys Go Out, by Emily Jenkins (Another great book about a little girl’s three favorite toys, a stuffed manta ray, a plastic ball, and a stuffed buffalo and their adventures with the girls other toys and household items. It has very funny stories and lovable characters. M-ito actually said this book beat out Star Wars as his favorite story.)

Toy Dance Party, by Emily Jenkins (Part II with a sad and sweet theme of growing up as the girl gets older and, though she still loves her three favorite toys, starts to leave them behind. It may not sound like it but there were laugh-out-loud parts here just as in the first book Toys Go Out. It gave us great things to talk about when were finished.)