be a good father

My son and I have an excellent relationship, and I do not question the fact that I am a good father….It’s been great to look back at all these entries, but ultimately I don’t need to reassure myself about this anymore.

My wife sign us up for SantaSpeaking.com Basically, the way it works is that you fill out a web form to make an appointment for Santa to call your child. You may include details of how naughty/nice your child was this year, what he wants for Christmas, what he’s done this year, etc… Santa uses all of that information to have a meaningful dialog with your child.

So… today was our call, and my son is still beaming over it. They talked for a good 10 minutes (which is a lot for a 5 year old). My son started asking Santa questions on how the reindeer fly, and whether he should get up on Christmas Eve to talk again…hysterical stuff. At one point he sang “Winter Wonderland” to Santa. When Santa asked him what he wants for Christmas…. his reply was…”Well…a remote control helicopter that is easy to fly and can do loopty loop stunts like the blue angels”... Classic. Part of me wanted Santa to say “You’ll poke your eye out, kid…” (to paraphrase “A Christmas Story”).

What’s important is that Santa left a great impression on my son…and that’s all that matters.

My son was the ring barer at my sister’s wedding a few weeks ago. He looked so sophisticated in his tuxedo… like a little James Bond. The wedding was at the St. Louis Science Museum that luckily for him had a ride-able model train inside. He made friends with the engineer and got to ride it more than ten times. He was a good traveler… although he did get car sick a few times. Everywhere he went, he made new friends. He’s fearless in social situations.

At the beginning of the wedding ceremony, when the wedding procession had arrived at the alter….there was a moment of silence…in which he yelled “Welcome to my Aunt Janice’s Wedding everyone!” It made everyone laugh….He was the life of the party.

I’m so proud of the little man he’s become.

My son won the prize for the Best Halloween Costume in Kindergarten! He was beaming the entire day. My wife basically built an airplane out of a medium sized red cardboard box that he wore from the neck down to his waist. She put a spinning propeller on the front of it, put a plastic window in front of his face, a rudder/tail wing in the back and attached cardboard wings to his arms. He also wore “Red Baron” style goggles and a long red scarf.

He looked awesome….and I couldn’t have been prouder. Unfortunately, this weekend I am away for work, but I miss him very much….given that he has become quite the conversationalist lately. I can finally have decent phone talks with him, without him losing interest, so that’s a big improvement.

In just a couple of weeks he’s going to be the ring barer at my sister’s wedding. The past few weeks have been great. He’s in school, learning like a sponge, excelling in everything he does, with his own personal style.

My son has been in kindergarten for 3 weeks now, and is attending a full 7 hours a day. He’s still getting used to being ready for school on schedule, but he has really improved.

He got a 10 out of 10 on his first math test, and is one of the best readers in the class! By the end of the week, he is completely knackered, and goes to sleep fairly early.

I have been away for the entire week at a conference and some training (at Disneyland of all places). Needless to say, I really missed him, and managed to find some Lego electric train tracks and a carriage car to add to his Lego train set. I’m going to surprise him with it today when I get home.

Also, the park behind our house is finally open, and he’s having a blast on the jungle gym! I can’t wait to take him over the next few days. We’re also going across the border to Mexico tomorrow for a bit of a family reunion.

Today is my son’s first day of kindergarten, and I have a meeting with the East Coast first thing in the morning. I’m a little disappointed I will not be able to take him along with my wife, even though I know he’ll be fine.

We had a talk yesterday about how important school is, and how proud I am of him. I told him to listen to his teacher with respect, and to love learning new things.

I am little concerned about his phobia of hand dryers. Lately he’s totally freaked out at new bathrooms that he is uncertain of. If there is a hand dryer, he freaks out and refuses to use the bathroom, (he’ll find a tree!). Once he’s certain that a bathroom has no hand dryers, he calms down, but until then, he is incredibly apprehensive about using the bathroom…to the point of screaming if he is forced to use it. I’m hoping the bathroom has no hand dryer at school OR that he watches other children use it and loses his phoebia all together.

Yesterday was my son’s 5th birthday, and the first one in the new house. The kids had a blast running around the new nearly empty house. The adults watched a slide show of all of his childhood pictures on the new plasma.

We got him this new bike, and threw him a “Cars” themed party. He went to sleep last night totally satisfied! I’m sure with the older athletic boys next door, my son will be riding around the neighborhood in no time.

Today (Fathers Day 2006) we saw “Cars” together as a family. What a terrific movie for both young and old! My son loved it, and we talked about the movie all through lunch. Great morale lesson as well….also an added bonus was not having to explain why some character dies and having my son fixate on death rather than the real message of the movie (like Nemo or the Lion King).

I particularly loved the use of the “Car Talk” guys (from Cambridge, MA! and Nation Public Radio) as the rust repairing sponsors…. I love that radio show….what an appropriate role from them to play.

We’re counting down the days for the move to our new house in Southern California (a little more than a month). My son is a bit apprehensive about leaving Menlo Park given that his friends & day care are here….but I reassure him that we will visit the Bay Area every now and then. It turns out that its the perfect time to move because he’ll start kindergarden in September and get a whole batch of new friends… not to mention that his grandparents will be minutes away.

We’ve been spending a bunch of time together especially in the morning before I take him to day care. I’m amazed at how well he’s sounding out words on signs and in books. He is doing simple maths-addition and subtraction (he’s 4!!!), and he’s also using a bunch of the phrases that mommy & daddy say in context (including the ever popular “I’m so frustrated” & “That’s so cool…” ;).

Lately he’s been really into lining up and toppling dominos. We’ve even setup a few fairly complex multi level designs. Also, spring has finally sprung, and we’ve been making use of the backyard. He’s playing in his sand pit and running around quite a bit.

We’re moving in a couple of months to our new (huge) house, so that will mean a lot of changes for him. He’s really been into “other” modes of transport besides trains lately, including airplanes (which I absolutely love). Last month we flew down to check out our new house. He can now spot 747s, 737s, and Embraer Brazilias….and the Qantas planes with the Kangaroos on them. He says one day we’ll take one of those to visit the land were he was born!

This has been the best time to be a father so far….He’s completely a little learning sponge, and he loves to spend time with me.

My son and I went into San Francisco today and had a blast. We started at the Randall Museum and checked out the Golden Gate Model Railway Club ...then checked out some of the animals in the small zoo. He was very fascinated by bees this time. We went through the whole process of how honey is made.

Then we went down to Jamba Juice , had a smoothie and watched some old time MUNI Street Cars go by on Market Street.

Finally we headed back closer to home to the Guitar Shop were my Line6 floorboard was repaired… There we played different instruments while we waited and he was very fascinated by percussion instruments, particularly the “gong” they had in the drum room. Also of interest to him was the Hello Kitty branded Squire Stratocasters with Hello Kitty as the pick guard and the body painted bright pink…. very girlie. I tried to steer him more in the direction of the more manly Les Paul’s and 335s…to no avail, although he seemed interested in a Sparkly Silver Gretch Hollowbody.

We crashed at home for a few hours, then his friend Thomas came over and they watched the Herbie movie while the adults had grown up time.

Pretty cool day. Tomorrow I might take him to Curious George (music by Jack Johnson!) and run some errands (like supplies from Costco). I’ll be away for a few nights this week, so this is good time in the bank.

He is at such a cool age (4.5)....He asks questions and has complete conversations. He’s outgoing, and always in the mood to have fun.