Category: Lydia

Father’s Day 2009

As usual, I’m missing my father, glad to be Lydia’s father, and wishing that my father and my daughter had met.

I’ve been musing about this for a while: do guys say, “I love being a dad” the way some women say, “I love being a mom”? I mean I love being LYDIA’S dad, but it’s not the same thing.

You know what cereal commercial I hated? The one for Kix that went: “Kids like Kix for what Kix has got. Moms like Kix for what Kix has not.” It seemed to suggest that dads didn’t care what was in their children’s breakfast food. Not true, and the implication made me a bit peevish.

I really liked traveling with Lydia, just the two of us. Save for a couple 1.5-hour bus trips from Albany to Oneonta and back, we don’t travel alone together beyond the routes of the CDTA regional bus system. She traveled well. She was momentarily peeved when I had to put her tray table in its upright and locked position until she realized that EVERYBODY had to do that.

Lydia made me a drawing for Father’s Day. Drawing seems to be the gift for every occasion of late: birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries.

From AwesomeStories:

In 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd was listening to a Mother’s Day sermon when she wondered why people didn’t celebrate Father’s Day. After her mom’s death, Sonora’s dad – William Jackson Smart, a Civil-War veteran – had raised all of his children alone.

To show her gratitude, Sonora worked to have Father’s Day celebrated during June – the month of William’s birth. She was successful, and the event took place on the 19th of June, 1910. Fourteen years later, Father’s Day had become so important in America that President Coolidge recommended it should be a national holiday.

It was President Lyndon Johnson, though, who designated the date as the third Sunday of June and President Nixon who formally instituted Father’s Day as a time of national observance.

And … in case you didn’t know … the rose is the official Father’s Day flower. Red is for fathers who are living; white is for fathers who have died.

ROG

ROG

The Lydster, Part 62: Humor

Anyone who’s been around a five-year-old – anyone who remembers BEING a five-year-old, knows that humor at that age has…a different level of sophistication than one develops later. Certainly Lydia has some of that. She also, however, does things that generally makes me smile.

Her primary M.O. is to mislead about what she’s doing. She can’t find clothes to wear, but then voila, she’s dressed in her clothes for the day. Or she’s too tired to put on her pajamas. Then presto, she’s in them.

However, she’s also found slightly more sophisticated variation. We were watching “Go, Diego, GO!” (Why me, why?) At the end of each of the animal rescuer’s adventure, he and his sister Alicia ask four review questions that are really rather obvious, even if you hadn’t watched the show. One example was does a certain dinosaur eat leaves or bologna sandwiches. (Hint: nowhere in the show were sandwiches of any kind.)

In the beginning Lydia would get them right. But now, she’s figured out that these questions are so inane that she deliberately gets them wrong, and follows it by “Oh, man!” and the appropriate arm gesture. She has a sly twinkle in her eye that shows that she’s pulling my leg, and I find it genuinely funny.

“Oh, man!”, BTW, for those of you lucky enough not to have seen it, is the response Diego’s cousin’s Dora’s nemesis Swiper says when she stops Swiper from stealing something. She, her friend Boots and YOU get to say, thrice, “Swiper, no swiping”, and the fox, if he’s caught, will reply with “Oh, MAN!” Oh, bother.

ROG

ROG

Siblings

Reading Arthur’s post about his sister’s memory reminds me yet again of an incontrovertible fact: in the main, the sibling is the longest relationship one will have. Longer than parent/child or spouses. Probably longer than most friendships.

Here’s a picture of the Green children of 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY, which my sister Marcia came across and sent to me in the last month. I recall that it was taken when I was 10, Leslie was 9 and Marcia was 5. But some notation on the back of the picture suggests that it was shot earlier. Frankly, I can’t believe that Marcia could have been 3 when this photo was taken. This was considered the “good” picture, compared the “ugly glasses” photo taken three (or five) years later.

I was talking to Marcia a month or two ago about a trip Lydia and I will be taking to visit her, our mother and Marcia’s daughter Alexandria in North Carolina. As I’ve noted, Lydia is afraid of dogs. In this conversation, my sister notes that they had to put their dog down. Now, previously, I might have offered some sentiment of condolence. But I was so focused on how this would affect my daughter, I felt – this is not admirable, but it is true – a sense of “Well, THAT issue is resolved.”

Of course, Marcia calls me on this, but she used this ancient example to make the point. She recalls that when I was about 12, each of us got a kitten. Mine was Tiger, Leslie had Taffy and Marcia had Tony. Somehow, Tiger got out and was run over by a car and killed. I was devastated and even more so because my sisters had taken some glee in this; children can be so cruel.

So in 2009, Marcia says, “Don’t you remember how badly you felt when you lost a pet?” and she’s correct, of course, but pulling out that 40+-year old example is something a sibling is most likely to have brought up.

I find it interesting that each of us has only one child.

Indeed, because she was the youngest, Marcia tends to remember almost everything. She can start a sentence, “Do remember when…”; many’s the time Leslie and I will say no, but the essence of the story and the details are so vivid that we accede to her recollection.

The sisters used to drive each other crazy, with me as the involuntary referee, but they’ve become closer over dealing with my mom. Whatever that childhood noise once was, we have more important things to do.
Marcia is the best at sending presents and cards for all occasions, something I’m lousy at and Leslie’s not much better. That is her arm holding a dress that she ultimately sent to Lydia for her last birthday, which Lydia likes to wear. (Cell phone picture taken by Alexandria.) She’s the one who sent the anniversary card to Carol and me.

When she lived in Binghamton, little sister’s name was pronounced MAR-sha, but since she moved south, it’s become mar-SEE-ah. Anyway, today’s Marcia’s birthday. Happy birthday, baby sister. Have I sent her a card yet? Er, it’ll be in the mail. Soon. I swear.

ROG

ROG

P is for Photography

And now for something completely indulgent. Hey, it’s a blog; by definition it’s indulgent.

One of my sister sent my five -year-old daughter two one-use cameras, and I had no idea what she was photographing. The only instruction I gave her was to use the flash when she was inside. This is what she came up with, and I didn’t alter them in any way:


These first three items I believe are gifts she received for her birthday.


The ballerina costume – on the floor?


Most of her plushes have very unimaginative names. This is Unoicorn; I blame the TV shows Little Bear and Franklin, where most of the characters have likewise boring nomenclatures.


No Imelda Marcos here.


Not only did she take the picture, she laid out the blanket and arranged the subjects.


Difficult to tell here, but the piece on the right is a piece of her artwork; the item on the left is 1000 years of British monarchies.


Do all only children refer to their stuffed creatures as their sisters?


Chomper


I’m assuming this is the ABC-TV program Dancing with the Stars. I don’t watch it; the child watches it with the wife.


Deerie. (Not to be confused with the late Blossom Dearie.)


There are a whole bunch of self-portraits. Lot of them are just strange mixes of colors. She also took some headless photos of her mother, and one of my back.


I took this one: the photographer.
***
Ringo Starr – Photograph, written by George Harrison and Ringo Starr.



ROG

ROG

The Lydster, Part 61: What She Watches (which means I watch too)

Lydia’s pediatrician has a real antipathy about children watching television or videos. While most guidelines suggest avoiding kids watching TV before the age of two, we waited until she was three.

Most of the first programs were actually videos – programs on something called VHS – which we acquired from my now-18-year-old niece, all circa 1994. Surprisingly, given the fact that Alex was obsessed with him in the day, there was only one Barney video. (I remember specifically being chastised by my parents for NOT buying her a Barney thing in the day; it wasn’t my antipathy for Barney, it was “What do you buy someone who seems to have everything already?” It’d be like buying me Beatles stuff until they put out new product.)

I DO have antipathy for this Barney DVD I got from my in-laws, a “live-action” game show with a studio audience of kids and adults. My wife said that I might applaud if I were in the audience; maybe, but I just don’t want to SEE grown-ups getting all excited about the antics of a purple dinosaur.

Another batch of videos features “the Magic School Bus.” Voiced by Lily Tomlin as The Frizz, and occasionally Malcolm Jamal-Warner in the ending segment, they were so successful with Lydia that she now has over a dozen books and a DVD.

Not much else really stuck, other than Arthur, the aardvark, though she was briefly enamored with this funky 15-minute (in English, followed by the same in Spanish) home safety tape with the catchy tune, “Code Red Rover, grown-up come over.”

Ultimately she found there were shows on TV for her. Her first great love was Little Bear, based on the Maurice Sendak-drawn books from a half-century ago. She was onto Little Bear, and Emily, her doll Lucy, Cat, Duck, Hen, Owl, Mother Bear and Father Bear every day for about eight months until we were seeing the same episodes for the third time. Still we read the books, which are direct sources for some of the episodes.

Lydia’s current favorite TV show is Franklin, which again has but one character with a name other than Bear, Fox, Skunk, Mr. and Mrs. Turtle and so on. She likes calling Franklin Frank; she thinks this is wildly hysterical. The theme song is by Bruce Cockburn of “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” (“some [s.o.b.] would die”) fame.; actually have a half dozen Cockburn LPs.

But she has branched out:
Angelina Ballerina: on once a week, has fueled her need to dance. Not to take lessons, mind you, just to twirl in front of the set.
Ni-Hao, Kai-lan, Blue’s Clues: doesn’t actually watch unless it’s on in real time.
Jack’s Big Music Show: a program I’d almost watch without her.
Dora the Explorer: she watches relatively little of this, but she has Dora pajamas, Dora Band-Aids, several Dora books and she got a Dora DVD for her birthday. Why does she, and her cousin Diego, seem to YELL all the time. “WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE PART OF THE STORY?” And they are so damn earnest, too.

Her upcoming favorite is the Wonder Pets. a hamster, a turtle and duck get in their flyboat and save other animals. There’s always a costume change relevant to the location and some difficulty before they get going that turns out to be useful later on.

It was my wife, though, who noted the operatic stylings of the introductory piece:

Imagine if you can that, instead of Linny, it is a basso profundo singing: “The phone, the phone is ringing.” That octave descent alone would be stunning. Then a tenor, not Tuck, singing the second, a non-lisping contralto, rather than Ming-Ming, on the third. There’s a certain drama in the presentation.

The rest of the music is tied to the situation or the geography. Recently, WP saved the Rat Pack (three rats, one named Blue Eyes), a fiddler crab on the roof and a bluesy Louisiana bullfrog. This is award-winning stuff against stiff competition.

I figure that I’d better record this stuff now before she heads for school, for while I think I’ll “always remember”, chances are that I won’t. ROG

ROG
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