The Suburban Dad

Just a normal Saturday, trip to the emergency room

It's been awhile.  Thank you for your patience.

The last month has been filled with Olympic mania here in Vancouver.  Things are starting to settle down.

It's been a challenging couple weeks.  Our son got bronchiolitis.  He's been coughing and congested for the last two weeks.  Never heard of bronchiolitis before so we can cross this one off our list of infections our child can possibly get.

His wheezing got better midweek last week but got worse again on the weekend. So on Saturday, we took him to the doctor for another checkup and gave him another nebulizer treatment. His breathing didn't improve and we got sent to the emergency room at our local hospital.   So we survived our first trip to the emergency room and our son's first chest x-ray.  The doctor and nurses at the pediatric ward of the emergency room were all fantastic.  Chest x-rays for little people looks painful.  They strapped my little boy into this shell that can be classified as a torture device if used maliciously.  Our son was a good patient though. 

We kept him home again today since he didn't sleep well last night. Hopefully this bug will soon go away.

My Future Olympian!

Unplanned, spontaneous family moments are the best!  As Vancouver is being engulfed by anything Olympic, the torch relay passed by our neighborhood last night.  Unfortunately, we didn't have a camera with us and this is the closest thing we have to capturing the moment.

Thanks to a major Olympic sponsor, celebratory flags were being given out and we grabbed a couple.  While waiting for the motorcade for the torch bearer, we taught our son to wave the flag and say "Go CANADA".

Once he got the hang of it, he can't stop waving the souvenir flag.  He also muttered "Go, Can-DA".  Close enough.

Maybe he'll be our future Olympian.  

Photo of the Day: I'm ready to host the Tonight Show!

Terrible Twos starting already?!

I'm not sure what's going on. But the crying fits are becoming more and more frequent with our son.  When he doesn't get what he wants is usually what triggers the crying fits.  I know he doesn't quite understand everything that's going on.  It's certainly not his fault that he doesn't.  But it sure is challenging to deal with these crying fits at times.

How do you balance saying yes to a little toddler's requests and drawing the boundaries?  Obviously, as the parent, you have to be the one to stay in control. Losing it certainly doesn't help.  For me, staying calm and collected in stressful situation is probably the hardest thing for me to do.

Our morning routine usually consists of me bringing our son down for breakfast.  Today, he didn't want to come with me.  He wanted to stay with him mom.  I brought him down anyways and as soon as we got downstairs, he started a crying fit.  God bless him, if he wants something, he knows how to get it.  So he climbed up the stairs and ran towards our bedroom.  At this point, all I can do is surrender as I needed to get breakfast ready.  My wife managed to calm him down.  In the end, he wanted her to go down with him and he wanted his milk. He usually knows how to sign please when he wants something.  In the last week or so, the pleases have turned into a pointing motion to whatever is he wants with a 'there, there' (in a toddler voice). 

I found an article that finds the bright side with toddler behaviour from Today's Parent Magazine.  But in the end they concede, that toddlers can be a handful.  Luckily for us parents, their charm and enthusiasm redeems all those temper tantrums.

Bedtime Stories - toddler bed and bedtime woes

Last week our son learned how to climb out of his crib.  As a knee jerk reaction, we opted to convert his crib into a toddler bed by taking out one of the sidewalls.  We were concerned he would try to climb out of his crib in the middle of the night and hurt himself.

Luckily, it was a blessing in disguise.  He is thoroughly enjoying his little bed and even preferred to be read his bedtime story in it on the first night. 

***

Our son is really sociable.  He loves being around people especially when we have family and friends over.  Last night, we had a small gathering of friends and he obviously wanted to be part of the action.  It was already past 9 p.m. (he's usually asleep by 8:30), I thought it would be appropriate to cut his party time short and start putting him to bed. 

I asked him, "Ethan - bedtime?"

He confidently replied, "No, no no" with his little toddler voice.

Trying to be the responsible parent, I decided to not heed to his request and bring him upstairs.  Realizing that he was being taken away from the party, he voiced is displeasure and went on a crying fit.  My wife managed to get him into his pyjamas but he was still insisting to go downstairs.

After 30-40 minutes of trying to appease him, I gave up the fight and just brought him downstairs.  I just asked him to sign 'please' if he wants to go downstairs, and he promptly calmed down and stopped crying.  Everyone left around at 1030 and he politely said goodbye to all our guests.

We all went upstairs and lied down on our bed and he fell asleep within 5 minutes.  So what to do next time?  Let him just enjoy the party or force him to go to bed?

Pandemonium at Chuck-e-Cheese!

Our son will be 18 months old tomorrow.  Everyday, he's becoming more and more a little boy instead of a baby.  I still get a glimpse of him as a baby when he's only wearing a diaper. 

As our Sunday family outing, we thought it would be a great idea to take him to Chuck-e-Cheese's.  I haven't been inside a Chuck-e-Cheese since 1992 and haven't thoroughly enjoyed being inside not since I was six years old. 

As soon as we got inside, it was pandemonium.  There were three birthday parties and the volume in the place seemed like you were in a rock-concert.  Our poor son didn't know what to make of the noise, the lights, the games, the rides and the hundred or so children alongside him.  Our fond memories of Chuck-e-Cheese seemed like a lie as chaos seemed to ensue on this visit.

First step, get some tokens!  I had just taken out a $20 bill at the bank next door. I proceeded to tell my wife ok, here's the $20 - just change it all to tokens.  I was anticipating that he would want to go on those kiddie rides over and over again.  During the Christmas holidays, we easily spent $4 on 20 minutes in a kiddie car ride at the mall.  

In the first 5 minutes, we realized we had bought too many tokens.  Every kiddie ride scared him.  The only thing he found appealing was a telephone booth game.  We tried to play skee ball with him but he quickly lost interest with his ill-fated attempts to throw the ball down the lane.   Now stuck with $18 worth of tokens, my wife and I tried our hands on some skee ball and some of the games.

The confusing part is, he would grab my hand and drag me around the whole floor to look around.  He just didn't want to try or go on anything.  Even the playground and slide in the toddler area seemed overwhelming for him.  After an hour and a half, we decided to call it quits but our son didn't want to leave.  Probably didn't help that he never got his full nap that day either.

So now, left with a bunch of tokens, we will try again in six months to see if Chuck-e-Cheese is off the Sunday family outing list completely.

Update

The only thing that made him happy at Chuck-e-Cheese:

 

How young is too young to watch stage version of Lion King?

When my brothers and I were kids, I remember us all going to concerts and to the annual shows of the circus and IceCapades. My earliest memory was probably around 4 years old attending a concert.  My mom swears she took us to shows as young as 2.

Lion King, the stage version, is coming to Vancouver in March.  My wife wants to watch it.  The show played an extended engagement in Toronto and she never watched it.  She also didn't watch Phantom of the Opera or Miss Saigon during their respective multi-year engagements in Toronto.  But I digress.

Our son will be close to two years old when the Lion King plays here in Vancouver.    Is that too young to take him? 

I've seen the show and it's filled will amazing sets and puppetry.  Of course, there is the amazing music and songs.  My son loves music and dancing.  I think it can hold his attention (this is me wishful thinking a little bit)

Bu I'm sure most people will say he's too young.  Children his age have very short attention spans.  And besides, Scar might just scare him.  

Has anyone taken their little toddler to a show like Lion King?

My son's 'first' Christmas...

Last Christmas, my son was a log.  This year, he's big enough to understand he gets presents for Christmas.  It really is his first genuine Christmas experience.  At first he didn't know what was going on when big wrapped boxes were being placed in front of him.  When we showed him to rip the wrapper apart, he saw what was inside.  This picture just captured his 'eureka' moment! 

His first table and chair set

We noticed that our son likes to sit at the kiddie table at his daycare.  After much deliberation, my wife and I thought it would be good for him to have his own table and chair set at home. The As-Is section at Ikea is very good to us.  We spotted the two little chairs for $10 each (which is normally $19.99 each). 

 

Family Pictures - Don't get 'Sears-d'!

There's been a lot of talk around our parent circles about family portraits.  We have a couple of friends who have fallen 'victim' to the Sears Portrait Studio.  Yes, a lot of families do get their portraits done there and are quite happy about it.  But are the 'Sears Portraits' really good compared to what you'll get from a real professional photographer? (I do apologize to the Sears photographers who are working hard to put food on the table).

I admit that professional photographers are expensive.  I don't even want to tell you how much we spent on our family portraits when our son was 6 months old.  It's not the actual sitting fee that's expensive but the product that you get from them.  Some of them will not give you digital files while others will.  This will save you a lot of money if you could just do your own printing at your own pace.

If you have a friend/relative who is into photography and owns an SLR camera, ask them to take your pictures in exchange for experience and maybe some baked goodies.  My brother's taken some pretty nice pictures of our son with his SLR camera.  The one thing to remember though - you mostly pay for the eye of the photographer.  Not everyone is gifted with the 'eye' and the personality to bring out the best in you in a photograph.

Here's a recent family photo taken by Sharon Barnes.  She is friend of a friend of ours.  Sharon's been taking family portraits for our friend's kids for the last few years and she's done some amazing work.

A picture does say a thousand words.  Capturing that moment in time for your kids is priceless (or hopefully won't cost a fortune!).