Last Day of School!

Today was the last day of the school year, and NorthernDaddy is excited. He feels like an enormous weight has been lifted from his shoulders; like the world is a happy place again.

 

Why?

 

NorthernDaddy doesn't have to make another school lunch for at least two months!

 

Creating school lunches is a complicated task - one that has to be performed every evening of the week. LittleNortherner's school lunches are a delicate balancing act between finding foods that LittleNortherner will eat, don't have to be heated, are "cool" enough for him to eat with his friends at the lunch table, and don't violate any of the school's rules about food allergies. If that isn't enough to deal with, there's also the pressure to make his lunches nutritionally balanced - just so the teachers and staff at the school don't think NorthernMommy and Daddy are the kind of parents that feed their child junk food. It's tough, and NorthernDaddy is glad for the break!

 

Maybe next year, the Spiderman lunch box can be retired!

 

 



Smart Kid

Every once in a while, LittleNortherner gets to use the "big computer" to play games. It's a total cop-out on the part of his parents, but when it comes time to cook dinner or complete an intricate task without being interrupted with a million questions, it's super-easy to switch on the PC, bring up pbskids.org, and get the job done.

 

Little Northerner loves to watch the shows on pbskids, and the games are a special treat to him. He found one the other day that had to do with building circuits to complete machines and then creating the right gizmos in the correct order. There's a screen-shot below, but some of the tasks that LittleNortherner had to do were:

 

-choose the correct machine to build the gizmos that he anticipated his customer would ask for,

 

-draw the lines to connect the entire circuit, from power source to switch to power meter to machine...observing correct polarity, no less!

 

-while operating the machine, he had to correctly choose the product to create in response to his customer's order, keep an eye on the power meter, and swap batteries (by picking the right time between product outputs and then de-energizing the circuit to swap batteries)

 

This looked like an interesting and complicated enough game that NorthernDaddy wanted to try a round, but he was too late. LittleNortherner had set up his game and was ready to go - the only thing he called Daddy out of the kitchen for was to ask what a 'cricket intruptor' was. After NorthernDaddy explained that a "circuit interruptor" was a fancy name for a switch, LittleNortherner was off and running.

 

He's good at this game...

 

NorthernDaddy came out of the kitchen to watch him play for a few minutes, and he was amazed. NorthernDaddy sometimes forgets that Little is six now....he remembers the time that Little was so small and helpless and had a hard time figuring out whether his toes were something to eat or not. Back when Little could be fooled by an adult "hiding" behind their own two hands. Okay, maybe Daddy realizes that LittleNortherner is growing older and getting smarter - the little guy is reading and helping with work around the house, but Daddy is still stopped-in-his-tracks-amazed when he sees Little doing so well at detailed games like this......

 

....Guess that's part of the whole "Grow up fast and move out of my house soon/don't ever get older and independent" conundrum that vexes all parents....



 

Father's Day

LittleNortherner presented NorthernDaddy with a gift for Father's Day. A large poster-sized tribute to his Dad. Crafted with love as a school project (the teacher even laminated it). 

 

NorthernDaddy isn't much for the sappy emotional stuff, and he was side tracked by the horrible spelling that his son possesses, but it was a sweet gesture.

 

After looking at the drawing for a few seconds, and fighting back some tears (sniff, sniff, I'm so touched), NorthernDaddy noticed something............"Hey dude, is that a picture of me? What's with the hair? I don't have that much hair..."

 

His response? "I tried to draw the hair shorter!"

 

 

Love that kid.....

 

 

 

 



Daddy's Office

Above his garage, NorthernDaddy has an office. Certain un-enlightened members of the family call it "The Man Room". NorthernDaddy does not like this designation, there are too many negative connotations that go with it. For instance, there isn't a big-screen TV up there, there's no beer, no billiards table, and no posters of pin up girls. (Those things are what the garage is for...) Nope, that room is 315 square feet of Daddy space - nobody goes there without approval. It's his office, reading space, and retreat from LittleNortherner. It's also half-gym, and since NorthernDaddy has been tracking dirt and leaves in all winter, the place needed a cleaning. NorthernDaddy decided to sweep up all the dirt and dust and dead bugs - but he was in charge of watching LittleNortherner, so the mooch came along.

 

Letting a six-year-old roam freely around a space filled with collectables and keepsakes is a sure recipe for non-stop questions. (It's a pretty good shot at having things broken, too, but LittleNortherner had been sternly ordered not to touch without asking.)

 

LittleNortherner spent a good hour wandering around and asking about things. He thought that the Jeep that Uncle Jeremy made from a Coke can was pretty cool.

Crafted by Uncle Jeremy in 2002 (He was nice enough to sign and date it!)

 

Apparently, NorthernDaddy has been holding out on LittleNortherner: this Lego Jeep was instantly deemed "cool" and LittleNortherner spent a long time playing with it (while chewing Daddy out for not sharing earlier!)



Not really LEGO - more of a knock-off brand.


 

NorthernDaddy didn't let Little see all of the cool stuff - he's not old enough to be pawing through the knife collection - but the little guy was in total awe as he examined the rock collection and played some notes on "a real guitar"(electric bass) and looked through all of the little things decorating the room. He didn't want to leave! NorthernDaddy kept all the toys that LittleNortherner wanted to take down into the house - and he's thinking about adding another lock to the door to keep LittleNortherner out!

 

 

 



Footprints....

NorthernDaddy doesn't really pay too much attention to the cleanliness of the window and door glass at the Northerns' house - there's just so much more to occupy his mind. As long as a person can at least see daylight and fuzzy shapes, who cares if the windows are clean?

 

Despite this attitude about glass, NorthernDaddy couldn't help but stop on the way into the house after evening chores. The sun was streaming in just right to highlight this....

 

 

....a footprint. Closer inspection found it to be a small footprint, on the outside of the door, approximately three feet off the ground. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out just who left that print there, but NorthernDaddy wanted to know why. He couldn't ask the (alleged) perpetrator - that monkey was already in bed...

 

NorthernDaddy had to go in and out of that door several more times that evening, and every time that he saw that footprint, he had to wonder why it was there....

 

NorthernDaddy still hasn't gotten his answer as to why the footprint was there, but he does know this: if a tiny footprint ever shows up in some other unexpected place (like inside the refrigerator, or on a lampshade, or on a ceiling fan blade), he probably won't be all that surprised....it is LittleNortherner, after all.