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In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday, I am posting a Not Mine Monday.

• It was not my children who stuck their drinking straws into a bowl of sprinkles (that were supposed to go on their ice cream) and were trying to drink as many sprinkles as they could. Nope, my children know that straws are for their drinks only, and they know not to play with or make games of their food.
• Our son did not let out one of the longest, loudest yawns he could, just after the last hymn, while the pastor was getting ready to say something but hadn’t quite started so it was very quiet in the church. But if he had done that, the whole congregation, including the pastor, would have laughed.

And to make things official, here’s a Not Me entry:

• I did not give the kids straws so they could drink the sugar water light syrup out of the fruit cup containers before they ate the fruit. Nope, I know that they don’t need the sugar and I always drain the fruit cup first. And rinse the fruit. Yeah, that’s it.

Currently, my kids come to me about everything. Okay, maybe it just seems like everything. I’m sure my wife hears more of their needs than do I. One of my jobs as a parent is to get them to be able to resolve conflicts peacefully on their own.

They were not getting along well the other day. They went back and forth throughout much of the day, and it got rather comical after a while.

Beta : “Daddy, Alpha is using his whiny voice!”

Alpha : “Daddy, Beta put his toe in my eye!”

I suppose I see their problems as rather trivial and wonder why they need to call me over to settle who gets what Lego or who read which book first last night, but to a small child those are the important things.

I am just glad that the conflicts are that trivial – who gets the red plate and who gets the blue plate – and they (and I) don’t have bigger worries.

Finally, just before bedtime when the kids were getting their books for me to read to them, I heard this:
“Daddy, Beta is not letting me get through!”
“Well, did you ask him to move?”
“No…”

(slight pause)

“Beta, please move so I can get through.”
“Okay”
“Daddy, I asked nicely for him to move, and he moved!”

Funny how that works… This situation definitely needed some encouragement thrown in, so they would remember how well things work when you are nice.

“Good job to both of you.”

I took Beta to a hockey game – just him, no other kids. I had given him a choice of games – football (would have been a college game) or hockey (was a minor league (OHL) game). He chose hockey, so hockey we saw.

We were right on the glass, near the corner where the players make their grand entrance and where the crew (cleanup, ice maintenance, car to be given away, etc.) enter and exit. The first thing we noticed, after we sat down, was that the mascot was standing in the entryway to the ice and was a mere several feet from us.

For most kids that might not be a problem, but Beta is intensely distrustful of mascots, clowns, Santa Clauses, Halloween costumes, etc. So I was very impressed when Beta actually waved to the mascot. I think it helped that there was a significant barrier protecting us from the mascot.

Partway through the first period, a deflected pass went up into the nets that surround the ends of the rink. Since our seats were on the corner and were also the first row, we were under the netting somewhat. The netting was attached to the back of the glass so that if a puck hit the net and rolled down, it would end up in the first row of seats.

And that’s exactly what happened. The guy sitting next to us caught the puck. He was there with his family, so they enjoyed that. Then, a period later, the same thing happened again. The man was so very nice and gracious and offered that puck to Beta, who quickly accepted it. So he got an official game puck and made sure he knew where it was at all times (answer: in my pocket so we wouldn’t lose it).

When we walked into the rink, we had to go past all the vendors. I pointed them out to Beta – “here’s ice cream, do you want any?“, “there’s the food“, “here are roasted almonds, or you can have chocolate-covered pretzels“. Each time, I would ask him if he wanted anything. And each time, he would decline.

After the first period, I asked him again if he wanted anything. And again, he declined. I asked why he didn’t want anything, any dessert here at the game. He said he wanted to wait until we got home so he could have a Tootsie Roll. So I bought myself some roasted almonds. He wouldn’t even try one.

I thought seats on the glass would be fun, and they were. At least for me they were. Beta did not like the checking into the glass. I don’t know if he didn’t trust the Plexiglas-brand acrylic glass or if the noise was too loud, but each time something happened against the boards in front of us, Beta would lean as far back as he could.

Eventually, at his insistence, we moved back a row. That was for the third period. That, coupled with the fact the I couldn’t see much of anything that happened at the other end of the ice, means that when I go back, I want seats at least halfway up. Beta quite enjoyed the game. He said he wants to come back with Alpha next time, but not with Momma.

One last thing to note about the game: they were not just power plays, they were Air Force power plays. Apparently you can sponsor the power plays. At least the face-offs were anonymous.

All in all, it was a good game. It had just about everything one could want in a hockey game – checking, 5-on-4 power plays, a couple of 5-on-3 power plays, a hat trick, a throw-off-the-gloves fight (they both got penalties – 5 for fighting), and Canadians.

Beta fell asleep on the way home, holding his free coloring book and the puck. I think we’re off to a good start. Other children may fall asleep holding their blanket or stuffed animal – mine has his hockey puck.

In cooperation with LaanyKidsMom, here is my entry for this week.

Where did I find joy this week?
At home, with my oldest child

Alpha enjoys reading, laughing at, and then telling jokes. After flipping through a few books at the bookstore, I realized that the joke books he likes right now are the “Silly Riddle” type of books. The other joke books aimed at young children were fine, but he appreciates the word play of the riddles.

Here are a few of our favorite riddles:

Q: How do you put a sliced pizza back together?
A: With tomato paste!

Q: What’s a pig’s favorite sport?
A: Pig-pong!

It’s so fun listening to him tell those jokes because he wants to make sure that you get the joke.

Q: If chickens wake up when the rooster crows, when do ducks wake up?
A: At the quack of dawn.
Then he will emphasize it for you: “Quack of dawn.”

Q: Who steals the soap from the bathtub?
A: The robber ducky.
“Robber, instead of rubber.”

Q: What drink has a cold?
A: Coffee. Cough-ee.
And then he coughs and says “ee“, just so you are sure that “cough” replaces “coff”

In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday, I am posting a Not Mine Monday. This week is a mix of Not Mines and Not Mes

• My child did not stand up straight at attention with his chin up and say “Yes sir!” to my wife when she was sternly lecturing him about his misbehavior. And then he did not march out of the room when she was done.
• And if he had done that, I would not have hidden behind the sheet of paper I was reading in order for him not to see me as I was stifling my laughter.
• I did not notice that both drinking fountains had the same supply line and therefore the height of water in one fountain varied based on the other water fountain. And I did not use that knowledge to cause my oldest to have water sprayed in his nose by letting go of my drinking fountain’s button as he was leaning to take a drink from his fountain. That would have been immature and would have given him some bad ideas. But if that had happened, he would have thought it was funny too.
• I did not pack part of my lunch in a Bob the Builder bowl and take that to work.

We got our kids new toothbrushes a few weeks ago. It turns out that one of the toothbrushes has a new feature – a suction cup built into the end.

I thought it might have some practical use, but once a 5-year-old discovers what it can do,

your house

will never

be the same.

As you may have noticed, I changed the background picture of SBS again. Back to the fall shot of leaves in the yard.

Football has resumed, and has brought with it a thousand pleasant memories of the start of school. I will again be updating the Football Happiness Calculator, so check your mood on Mondays throughout the fall and early winter. Or don’t. I’m not keeping track.

But in the interest of summarizing my summer (would that be summerizing?), I give you these pictures.

First up, a day at the beach.

We had a week at one beach and another week (in a different month) at another beach. My kids had swimming lessons at the beginning of summer, and showed remarkable improvement from before the lessons to after. You can tell it was remarkable improvement because I just made a remark about it. So now my kids wander into the water without life jackets sometimes. They spent most of their time in the sand, building moats, castles, and other formations that were easily destroyed by wind, water, or mischievous cousins.

Next, a parade.

Regular readers of this site will note my displeasure of sirens in parades, and what better picture to show that than this? This picture was taken about a month and a half after I wrote about toning down the sirens. And I didn’t tell my kids to do that. They just instinctively know that loud sirens are bad for them. Just like any adult should also know. Or maybe my kids learned it from watching me.

Finally, the quintessential summer day. I’ll have to look up the etymology of quintessential. Mainly, what does “most representative” have to do with necessary fives?

Anyway, I like this picture because it shows what a good summer day should have. Swimsuits, a sprinkler, and freezy pops. This was one of the hottest days of the year and we, just like a million other people, thought we should go to the local water park. Since the water park was filled to capacity and had a waiting list (i.e. line down the sidewalk of people standing around and praying for people inside the water park to leave), we just went to the back yard and let the kids play while we did a lot of nothing. My nothing involved a nap on a hammock.

Okay, I looked up quintessential. And I got nothing. But it did point me to quintessence, which had a lot. It does mean “fifth element”, and is not related to the 1997 Bruce Willis movie (as someone at work once told me, “I’ll save you some time. Don’t go see the movie – the fifth element is love.”). But according to ancient philosophies, the fifth element is not love, it is ether (or aether or æther but no one really uses the æ thing anymore, much less knows how to pronounce it).

The first four classical elements are earth, water, air, and fire – all natural items seen on our planet. Ether was for the rest of the universe. I haven’t figured out how Earth, Wind, and Fire fits in here and why they shun water.