Kirk blAug

Jupiter has been wanting to make music lately. When he shows an interest in something, I typically look for ways to foster it. In this case Chris and I found a music class aimed at three and four year olds. It is called Music by Leaps and Bounds and is a once a week 45 minute session. It includes singing, dancing, playing simple instruments, learning about different variations in notes, and more. Jupiter's first day was yesterday. He was a little bit apprehensive at first but by the end of the session he seemed to be enjoying himself. I was supposed to leave for the first 30 minutes of the class and come back for the last 15, but since I had never left Jupiter alone in this sort of environment before, he asked that I stay this time. After class I asked if it would be okay if I leave next time and he said it would. He has so far learned about making long sounds with the triangle and short sounds by hitting two wooden sticks together and it seems that they add new instruments and dy

Boys playing with dolls is supposedly taboo in American culture, but in reality the toy industry caters to it. What I mean when I say that the toy industry caters to the idea of boys playing with dolls is a product cleverly (or perhaps not so cleverly) disguised under the product category of "action figures." What I imagine is really looked down on in boys who play with "girls" dolls. When I was a young boy I had a few different sets of these action figures. I had a Batman , which I recently passed down to Jupiter, who was also a dress up doll as he is able to switch out from his costume to Bruce Wayne. I had a Pee-Wee Herman action figure complete with his pal Chairy from the Pee-Wee's Playhouse series. I also had all four Ghostbusters action figures and some ghosts for them to trap complete with the Ghostbuster's House (dollhouse) and a Ghostbusters car. These are only some of the various action figures I spent my childhood playing with. I was not alon

I have been wanting to see this film since I first heard about it. I grew up listening to a lot of punk rock, so I was very interested to see what the artists interviewed and followed in The Other F Word had to say about parenting. The documentary finds several veteran punk rockers and asks them questions about the hardships of touring with their quasi-famous punk bands while trying to raise kids at the same time. At first the film is pretty depressing. It depicts the punkers as absent fathers who are out doing shows which they do not really have very much passion for anymore. One of them admits that they might as well be blowing up balloon animals, implying that they are nothing more than cheap entertainment bought and sold by the same types of corporations that some of them set out to rebel against. In one part of the movie, Lars Frederiksen of Rancid, takes his kid to the playground and clears the whole place out. He jokes on screen about how all you need to do to get the park to y

Parents, watch out! Your kids might not appreciate the sounds you make with your significant other at night. The girl, 15, told an officer that she wanted to go to a local shelter “because she heard her mother having sex” and “felt disrespected” by her 35-year-old parent’s actions. The teen acknowledged that “there was no form of abuse or neglect in the house.” Seems a little over the top to me. After some sense was talked into her, the 15 year old decided that she still wants to live at home. If your kid is trying to regulate your sex life, maybe you should have a look at your relationship with them.

I am constantly amazed with how much the way we get information has changed in so little time. Not too long ago, most of our news came on the doorstep or television. If we wanted to find out what was going on with family or friends we would have to make a phone call, leave the house, or invite them over. Meeting new people meant leaving the house as well. Now, increasingly, the best place to find all these things and more is a cyber connection from your internet service provider. The newspapers, magazines, seven o'clock news, telephones, bingo nights, singles bars, etc. all still have a place in the lives of many people today. Those mediums are, however, getting trafficked less and less. Now for many people a lot of this comes in a stream on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. You can find out which celebrity died, whose nephew had a new baby, and a philosophical discussion with friends of friends whom you have never met; and all in one page load, thanks to the advent of social networki

Some of the best toys cannot be bought in the toy section of the store. Regular household items that can be repurposed as toys can inspire great imagination. Jupiter and I had just used up a roll of wrapping paper after we wrapped his cousin's birthday present. I told him he could play with the cardboard tube that was left over. I remember my mother giving them to me to play with when I was a boy and I figured he might like to as well. He immediately found several uses for it. First he made his voice sound tunneled by speaking through it. We have all done that. Next he used it to hit the dogs. I was not to crazy about that and advised him against it. Then he started using it as a tunnel for his Hot Wheels cars to drive through. I am sure he will find many more things he can do with it too. What are some other good household items that can be repurposed as toys?

I have seen a bit of controversy stirring up in the stay at-home dad world lately. First I saw one of my dad friends post this video about "Little Boy Larry" by Mark Driscoll a few days ago. In it, Driscoll describes at-home dads as less than manly lazy asses who live off their wives and what they really want in a wife is a mom because they are deep down mamas boys. I am not that familiar with Driscoll. I may have heard the name a few times, but this is the first time that his name has really caught my attention. Wikipedia has him as a Christian pastor from Seattle, so the sense of patriarchy does not surprise me. There is a lot of patriarchy justified in the Bible, but I will get to that in a minute. I have have to wonder if, since he calls relationships where the man stays home with the kids while the wife works a mother/son relationship, he then considers a more traditional relationship where the wife stays home with the kids and the husband brings in the income a father

We recently moved Jupiter's bookshelf out of his room and into the play area so that he might have more encouragement to read. He likes to look at and read books a lot and I thought that he might benefit from it being in the area that he spends more awake time. He had been spending time reading during nap or bedtime and not getting enough sleep. One day I asked him if the books were distracting to him and preventing his sleep. Later that day he told me he wanted the bookshelf out in the living room. I think this arrangement has turned out for the better. I also thought that as Tsunami gets older they will probably like to share their books with each other so that they can both read all the books. Right now we pick out the books which we read to Tsunami and sometimes Jupiter picks them out for him too, but soon he will have his own book interests that he can share with Jupiter. Any suggestions to add to the shelf?

Today, many websites are going black in protest of the Protect IP bill now going through congress designed to ruin the way the internet works. Watch the video and follow the link below to let Congress know that you like the internet the way it is. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/31100268 w=490&h=276] Fight for the Future

I think divorce gets a bad rap in our society. It gets painted as a problem when most often it is a solution to a problem marriage. Sometimes, for example when people marry their high school sweetheart, people have made an error in thinking that they have found someone who matches what they want for the rest of their lives. In this case, a divorce is the solution. Successful marriages have been studied to be associated with higher education and age. This makes sense. The more you know, the more you know what you are looking for in a partner. Many people are foregoing the whole idea of marriage altogether. Many people realize that as people grow, interests change and that you cannot definitely say that two people will remain interested in the same things for the rest of their lives. I am married to my wife, but I can see that point of view. Marriage in The US is also convenient for legal reasons. Taxes are higher on single people, and while the state using taxes to encourage marriage

Today Chris, the boys, and I went to The Loop on Delmar Boulevard to check out the Ice Carnival that was going on. When we got there it looked like the 5k and 10k which started at 10 AM was just ending and the stores were starting to setup some carnival games in front of their shops. Many of the shops had ice sculptures in front of them of something themed based on that shop. For example, Moonrise Hotel had a moon ice sculpture and a tattoo shop nearby had an eagle that was reminiscent of one someone might get tattooed on their body. Here are a few more of them we saw: Eventually we got hungry and ate at the Eclipse restaurant which resides in the lobby of the Moonrise. Following our meal, we made our way to the roof where a skate party was going on. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c5Zvz0GIZQ&w=490&h=279] Jupiter played a few of the carnival games on the sidewalk as we walked along too. He won a few stuffed animals. There was much more to do there, but the boys were

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion , or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. First Amendment of the United States Constitution Despite knowing full well what the US Constitution says about government sponsored respect for specific establishments of religion, many public schools in this country try to get around it by either hoping for the ignorance of its students and their parents, or finding loopholes in this system. Case precedent has, of course, found that any school sponsored prayer is unconstitutional. Recently in history, students or their parents have started bringing this violation up with those usually rural schools more often who have been violating the First Amendment for years and sometimes decades. When the school attempts to ignore these students and parents, the typical cours

Sometimes Jupiter likes to read the classic Golden Book tale, The Poky Little Puppy before bed or nap time. This is another of many children's stories where the intended moral of the story seems to have been surpassed by a message that, I think, conveys the nearly the opposite message. The Poky Little Puppy is a story about five little puppies who dig a hole under the fence to go out for a walk in the wide, wide world. The fifth, poky, puppy is always behind the others. Eventually the poky little puppy smells the dessert that is prepared for the puppies each night. The four other puppies smell it too and hurry home while the poky puppy takes his time. The four puppies then eat their dinner and are scolded by their mother for digging a hole under the fence with the punishment being that they do not get dessert. Then along comes the poky puppy after everyone is asleep. He is met with no dinner but left over dessert, since the four puppies were not able to eat it. This scenario takes

One thing that I think I need to work on with Jupiter is being less of a helicopter sometimes. A helicopter parent is a term for one who hovers over their children like a helicopter to the extent that they do not let them learn from their own experiences. It is a form of over-parenting. I do not think that I am as bad about it as some parents I see, but I do think that I could work on it a bit and so I have been. Mostly I have trouble letting him make a mess because it causes more work for me, but I just need to get over it and clean up the mess and be thankful that he had the chance at a new learning experience. The other day we were at the Magic House and all but one small section of the museum was closed until noon. Jupiter was playing in a water area that has a stream of water on several levels with boats and dams and watering cans, as well as a little fountain area, an enclosed water gun case, and a couple other things to help teach young children about how we can interact with w

Today Jupiter, Tsunami, and I went to the Missouri Botanical Garden with the membership that we received from Antijen and Uncle Tom for the holiday. I asked Jupiter to choose between going back for another round at the Sculpture Park or the garden. When he choose the garden, I was skeptical that we would have any fun and tried to convince him to go to Sculpture Park again since it is January and I suspected nothing much would be in bloom, but I think he actually had the right idea. The Missouri Botanical Garden was actually much bigger than I had thought from looking at it from the outside. I had been there before to go in the Climatron, but there was still much to see outside even though flowers are not in bloom. Lots of interesting trees and other plants, plenty of peaceful walking paths, and flowing creeks were all over the place. Jupiter had to make sure to try out a bunch of rocks that were just off the path to see which ones were good for sitting and which ones were not. Tsunam

As CTO of the family, I vetoed the idea of getting cable television when we moved since we never used it in Lincoln. We received our television over the internet through a platform called Boxee . We had Boxee installed on a Mac Mini that sat under the television for the past two to three years or so, and it gave us all the television we needed. Recently, the powers that be at Boxee decided to release its final version of software that is installable on the PC/Mac/Linux. With this software release, the most notable change, for us, was that they dropped support for Netflix. We use Netflix with Boxee quite a bit, so we had to find a new solution. What I needed was support for Netflix, but also support for access to various media types over the local area network because we have many of our shows and movies available in that form ever since our physical media minimization . Boxee was based on XBMC , so I played with that first. There was a sort of Netflix app, but it was not very intuiti

We went to the Laumeier Sculpture Park a few days ago. It was pretty neat. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but it was pretty interesting and a lot of fun. We only got about a third of the way through before the kids started getting tired. There is Jupiter and Chris getting looked at by Eye by Tony Tasset. That is me and Tsunami hanging out on Pool Complex: Orchard Valley by Mary Miss which was built made on an abandoned pool site in the park. This is Chris and Jupiter wandering under The Way by Alexander Liberman. There is a lot of hiking paths and cool sculptures in the park. I cannot wait to go back.