Dear Nathan,

This week you turn five. I won’t lie to you and tell you that its gone by in a blink of an eye because of course, there have been 1,825 days since you were placed in my arms, and some of those days were longer than others if you know what I mean and I think you do. But if I take a step back and look at the big picture, its amazing how fast you went from newborn to Kindergartner. What’s really hard for me to grasp is that once this same amount of time passes again, you’ll be 10.

One of the great things about having a child that is past all the newborn and toddler stages is that you can see their personality for everything it is. All those little quirks and nuances, the expressions, sounds,  and looks that we noticed along the way- a lot of them have persisted, stuck with you, good, bad or otherwise, and make you exactly who you are today. Those little things that I can now look back and say, “he’s done that since he was a baby.”

2.5 yrs old

Your first love, [one of] your first words, and your heart’s passion is still airplanes. I still distinctly remember one evening when we lived in Virginia- you couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 months old- we were out walking, letting Sandy run in the field at the elementary school, and you looked up and stared at an airplane high in the sky. It was the only thing in a clear blue sky and your eyes tracked it as it moved out of sight. Maybe thats where it started. This is the kind of thing that if you grow up and become a pilot, people that have been around you from the early days like Jeff and Stephanie or Andy and Janelle will say, “yeah- we totally saw that coming.” You are a boy who loves planes. Admittedly your knowledge is no where near what it used to be. At the age of 2 you could name pretty much every military aircraft from WW2 to current day. No exaggeration.  We should have gotten you on Leno. You could recognize the tail flashes (is that what they’re called?) for dozens of commercial airliners. You have baskets upon baskets of airplanes, most of them all chipped up, little [Im assuming] lead paint chips scattering everywhere. I know we won’t save all of them, but Im certainly going to save some of them; the ones that looked like they were loved the very most.

You love transformers and you reside in the decepticon camp. Why? Because many of them are aircraft of some type. Your very favorite, the one I paid $40 on ebay to acquire- the vintage colored F-15 Starscream. You also spend a lot of time playing playmobil, but again, this is because you have the airport and the commuter jet and you don’t know it yet but you’re getting the cargo set for your birthday. Your friend Ethan used to refer to you as “Airplane Nathan.” The name still sticks.

You have excelled in school and Im impressed with all you’ve learned. And because I don’t want to sound like one of those moms who brags about how! smart! her kid is, the reality of the situation is that the montessori school you went to pushed you kids hard. Based on what I’ve heard about what you will “learn” in kindergarden, school this coming year is going to be a bore for you. You read and you read well. Even if I quickly spell things out to communicate with your dad , you quickly figure it out and say the word out loud. This has resorted in us using the phonetic alphabet (” do you want to stop for Igloo Charlie Eskimo – Charlie Rico Elephant Alpha Mixer  (hey– I never said it was the MILITARY phonetic alphabet)- thankfully you haven’t caught on. As we drive down the road you’ll ask “why does that sign say “end school zone?” or “why does that say: construction vehicles only?” Its amazing to me how well you read and the words you are able to sound out. I guess my $450 a month really did go to good use. You can do addition and I’ve heard you count by 5’s and 10’s and that sort of FLOORS me because really? I don’t know when I learned what but I know I didn’t count by fives at five.

I’ve written at least a few blog posts about your computer searches. I’ve come downstairs on more than one occasion to find Safari opened and “trnsfrmrs on amuzon” is typed in the Google bar. “Toy arplanes,” “modl arplanes”,  ”delicut (delicate) modl arplanes”,  ”trnsfrmr starscrm”–I’ve seen ‘em all.

Now that your dad and I have upgraded our phones you now go around referring to the old phones as ‘yours’. “Let me just grab my phone,” you’ll tell me as we’re leaving the house. First of all, its no longer a phone, there is no ‘ET phone home option’ on those. Second, they do have some value, the games keep you entertained and we have several educational apps on there as well. However, we’ve tried to make it abundantly clear to you that just because we have new ones, the old one is not yours. We do this because we love you, because even at 5 we see the “cycle of want” rear its ugly head more often than we’d like. If there is one thing we know, and its partially learned by experience, its that stuff will never make you happy. You are always on the prowl for a new app for the iphone or a new transformer or a new anything– its such and ugly vicious cycle and Im worried what its going to be like when we move back to the United States where consumerism and want reign supreme.

I often wonder how much living in Japan, for basically your entire life, has and will shape the person you are. On more than one occasion you have asked me if you can get the “set meal.” You don’t ask me for a happy meal or a value meal or a combo meal…..you want the set meal. And that is just so very Japanese. I recently bought you a Lightening McQueen umbrella for 50 cents at the thrift store. Perfect timing as its rained every day this week. You have played with that umbrella, inside and out for hours every day. These are the simple pleasures I want you to find in life- fun with a 50 cent umbrella. You have even started carrying it with you when we go out in the sunshine- telling me it keeps the sun off your face. Yes- just like the Japanese do.

We’re working on making you a cultured individual. You ask me why there are so many Chinese people here and I have to quietly (as though the Japanese have any idea what you’ve just said) tell you that, “you’ve lived your entire life in Japan and these people are JAPANESE people. You’ve never even been to China. WHY would you call them that?” When we talk about going out to dinner you’re happy to throw out “how about Indian food…..curry would be good.” I had never had Indian food until I met your dad. And yet at 5- you eat curry almost every week. You keep asking me during my meal planning/grocery writing hour if we could just “go to the noodle shack one night, PUH-LEZ.” And don’t get me wrong, I love the noodle shack- I can confidently say its the best ramen on the island, but dude- they don’t open until 7pm and your sister would be a hot mess by 7pm without any dinner.

And speaking of your sister. Sweet little Mackenzie. You guys can be so right and so wrong for each other. Looking at old videos of you two from when she was born, I think man, you were such a little guy when she was born. Do you even remember life before her? Most of the time you are the loving, caring brother you should be. You help her put on her shoes, you open the pantry for her so she can raccoon a snack out of there, you pull out a box of toys and dump them on the floor for her. You’ll get her crayons and paper. You will tell me that, “she is the best sister I’ve ever had.” Yep, the only one too. You’ve recently started getting her out of her booster seat or out of a chair on your own. The first time I saw this it involved you basically bear hugging her around the neck and lifting her down. Thankfully her head didn’t snap off and you now know to lift her under the arms.

The two of you like to think you are part of some sort of comedy show during meals. You stoop to her 2 year old antics and sometimes all your dad and I can do is sit back and laugh. Tonight as we were sitting painting sticks for your party we were talking about the wedding and how we expect you to use your best manners. I asked you what you should do and you kept replying,”use good manners.” Finally your dad said, “give us an example- like an example of what is good manners and one example of what bad manners.” Your response? “Well good manners would be NOT licking the table. Bad manners would be licking the table.” Like I said, we’re working on it.

When we aren’t trying to teach manners we have been spending our days either at the beach, at the pool or in the party in our backyard. Your sister loves the “poo-yaya” and for the most part the two of you get along nicely in the 5-foot-wide pool. You love swimming and keep telling me how much you want to do swimming lessons. Yeah….I so need to get on that. We’re going to sign you up for an off base swim-team of sorts. After soccer camp last week I told you I would sign you up for fall soccer and you told me, “no, I’d rather focus on swimming.” Ok then. We’ll focus on swimming.

Oh my sweet little Nathan, I know sometimes I can be hard on you and sometimes I expect more out of you than I should. When Mackenzie has me frazzled I know I bark orders at you to “turn on Einstein”, or “get your sister a snack Im trying to make dinner,” but I think you’ve been around me long enough, 5 years to be exact, that you know thats just me, I get easily frustrated but it blows over quick and it doesn’t usually last long. You are patient with me when you shouldn’t be, then again you can be a pain in the arss when you don’t need to be either. Thats how family is.

The older you get the more your dad and I can see how all that DNA was shaken up and rolled out like a turn of Yatzee. I still think you look just like your mama. You have big brown eyes and dark brown hair. You have your mom’s ‘I-get-easily-discouraged’ attitude which, yeah, is not great, but it keeps you from barking up the wrong tree and investing too much time in something thats not worthwhile. You like to snuggle, you always are roping us into your activities. You love to bake with me and am proud to say you know a lot about nutrition and health. You love to watch hospital/emergency/bloody shows with me and know more than you should about spinal cord injuries and intestines.

You have your dad’s stubbornness and hard headedness. You share his techy propensity and you have your dad’s linear thinking. This was made abundantly clear to me tonight when we were painting sticks for your party in blue, purple and red. I just started jamming painted sticks wherever into a piece of styrofoam. I even jumped between colors, a red, a blue, a purple, a blue, a blue etc. You looked at me and asked me why I wasn’t making a row for each color? Like, sticking them into the foam in a straight line? Organized by color? That thought would never occur to me. Like I just don’t think of things that way. At all. And you are totally the opposite.

Your transformer themed party is just a few days away. And despite the fact that I told myself since we are having it at the beach that I was going to “keep it simple” your dad and I are up at 11:51pm cutting out tags and printing decepticon symbols because we love you and more than anything just want to make it special for you. Despite the fact that I don’t like character parties.

If I’m counting by fives, it seems impossible that 10, 15 and 20 years will come next. I’d rather count each day and hope that the next 1,825 days don’t go by too quick.

I love you always,
Mom

Filed under: Nate the Great

The other day in the car we were driving to get the mail and I told Nathan to look out at the ocean. The post office is perched at the top of a hill and on a clear day its really a sight to behold- bright blue, aqua and crystal waters lined with all the washed out looking buildings of Okinawa.

“Are all those buildings out in town?” He asks me.

“Yes.”

“So, are we going to go shopping out in town?”

“No, we’re going home after this.”

“Mom…..whats out in town mean?”

The 5 year old brain never fails to entertain me. Always trying to use words and phrases but still not entirely sure what they mean.

———

I had asked Nathan to get the TV remote for me earlier and he was happy to oblige. I told him (and I find myself doing this more and more– like Im some 80 year old grandma) “You know, when I was your age we didn’t have a remote. We actually had to get up and push the buttons on the TV.” We’ve had this conversation about tv remotes and cell phones and computers and Im sure my child thinks I must have grown up in the dark ages. Like how could life have ever existed without remote controls?

Filed under: yes he said that- and no I didn't teach him

PC told me yesterday that in order to get ready for Nathan’s party he’d do whatever I asked him to if I could provide him a commanders intent and a mission and a…..I don’t know, a bunch of other things. I just stared at him and told him, “uh….lets pick out what color napkins to get. That other stuff sounds complicated.”

So, this week will be busy figuring out all the last minute stuff for Nathan’s party and figuring out how Im going to create the cake he wants (Nathan: a transformer cake of all my transformers having a fight on an aircraft carrier. Me: how about some cupcakes with blue frosting?) I enjoy making/decorating cakes, I wouldn’t say its one of my greatest strengths but Im not overly enthused about making a fancy, 3 foot long aircraft carrier cake and having to figure out how to a) transport it and b) have the frosting not immediately melt once its out in the Okinawan heat.  I think I’ve almost got Nathan convinced that a Starscream cake that can fit in a box and be stored in a fridge at Torii would be acceptable. We’ll see.

In other news I’ve signed myself up for cookie Fridays for the Marines. And by signed up I mean I came up with it. I know I’ll never be able to bake enough cookies for all 800 of PC’s Marines, but I figure it’ll something to look forward to on a Friday afternoon. Plus, it lets me try out all kinds of new recipes without the calories being directly deposited on my hips.

Filed under: Cookie Friday, Nate the Great

I should really create an ‘about’ page so that every time I want to talk about Colorado I don’t have to explain our history there. Colorado is home. Its home according to my drivers license, its our home according to the Marine Corps and its home in my heart.

Occassionally, when I have nothing better to do (and really, that just means Im too lazy to be folding the laundry I should be folding, instead putting it off until just before PC gets home) I will look at property there. And I think it serves two and only two purposes 1) too see just how unaffordable everything is and 2) to upset me, make my heart sink and make me question the path we’ve chosen.

I love my life, I do. I think I find happiness and fulfillment and joy and grace and humility and gratitude in just about every day. But sometimes I wonder- if we moved back there- would I find even more of that? I was talking to my sister-in-law about this and her take is that ‘you can never go home again.’ That the things we loved would just be different now- we’re in a different stage of life (kids) and things would just be different. But maybe thats the point. After all, we’re different. We’re not the same people that left in 2004. We’re better people. We’re more humbled, generous, simple. We’re more experienced? traveled? Im not sure what the right word is there, but I sometimes wonder if we had to go to the far reaches of the Earth just to find out that we are supposed to end up exactly where we started from.

I had emailed one of my close friends about my property searching telling her that it was totally irrational, what I was doing, “isn’t it, iSN’T IT?” That I just need to keep reminding myself to stay the course. Just fourteen more years and we’ll have the freedom to do whatever we want. We’ll be 45 years old and won’t have to work anymore….we’ll have health insurance and a paycheck for life. Its a deal you can’t beat. My friend told me there is nothing “JUST” about 14 more years. And she’s right. This chapter of our lives (kids, family) will be closing. Nathan will be 19 and Mackenzie 16- we’ll almost be empty nesters. And really- who knows what life may throw at us before we reach that day 14 years from now. Its sort of do-or-die in that regard. There aren’t any second chances. There are no do-overs. I think that is the thing I wrestle with the most- you only get one chance to live this day. I love what we’re doing at the moment. I love where PC is at at the moment and  I love having my own parking spot (I don’t think I mentioned that on the blog did I? Well, I do. I may not have an ice maker in my freezer but I do have my own parking spot at PC’s office.)  I love the places we’ve gotten to go and all the things we’ve been able to see. Life is great (and to be clear- I have no regrets, and I think joining the Marine Corps was the best decision we’ve ever made) but I do wonder; maybe we’re missing something and don’t even know it? I guess that’s the  great quandary of life isn’t it?

Im sure a lot of this is stemming from the fact that its just time to get off this rock. We’ve been here for an awfully long time and right now, any place that isn’t sandy and tropical seems far more like ‘home’ than here….

This will always be home....

...no matter how far away we are.

Filed under: Colorado and Mountains Make Me Happy, Grace in Small Things, Military Life, This Is My Life

This past Friday was PC’s change of command ceremony. He’s now head honcho for the 3rd largest company in the Marine Corps. For you non-military folks, I’ll humbly tell you this is kind of a big deal.  Im really proud of him and all his hard work. Two of the units that fall under him now are the brig as well as PMO (military police)….Im confident he’s going to come home with the best stories.

Filed under: Military Life, The Captain

While I was back in the States, Ashley and I journeyed down the street from Scott’s apartment to a little coffee shop/bookstore/cheese shop/florist  (yes, it was all in one shop) to use their internet. And yes it was a ‘journey’ because you haven’t seen the neighborhood my brother lives in (while there I went to the convenience store just a block away and in that one 15 minute trip I: got hit on by the Indian dude while buying a Red Bull, was hit up for a dollar by a woman with no shoes at the bus stop and discussed cheese with a guy named Cyrus for about 10 minutes, but, I digress). My computer was taking a big “cannot connect to the internet” dump on me so instead I decided to peruse the magazines.

I love food magazines with their perfectly photographed meals on the covers. I ended up getting a Bon Appetit, a Summer Grilling magazine and a 30 Minute Suppers from America’s Test Kitchen. Bon Appetit, while definitely enjoyable to look at has a little more fluff than I’d like (Cool Copenhagen: Hot Restaurants….is not really applicable to what I make for dinner tonight). But the 30 Minute Suppers? Best $7.95 I’ve spent in awhile. Everything I have made out of there has been either ‘very good’ or downright ‘keeper’ material. And when they say 30 minutes? They mean 30 minutes. As you know Im not one for using prepackaged ingredients and all these meals are from scratch- unless you count the rotisserie chicken as ‘prepackaged’.

I usually turn to epicurious.com or foodnetwork.com or recipezaar.com when Im doing my meal planning. I think americastestkitchen.com is going to be my new go-to. Go pick up a copy for yourself– you wont be disappointed. And if you’d like to get me a subscription, that’d be fine too.

Filed under: Because I'm NICE like that, Things I like

Dear Kiki,

Time to squeeze in a quick update for you before your brother’s big milestone steals the show. You turned 21 months old this week which means its just THREE short months until you turn two, and THREE short months until Scott and Ashley’s wedding. Its going to go fast, and while Im very anxious and excited for the wedding, I’d like these baby days to linger. Something about hitting 2 makes you so much less of a baby, but as much as I want you to still be my baaaaaybee, you are a thriving, happy, fiesty little toddler.

Our summer days are filled with everything and nothing. Hands down my favorite word of yours is swimsuit: “swsw” (it makes kind of a whistling sound when you say it). If you see it come out of the wash or hanging on your door you get excited and exclaim “SWSW.” If anyone even suggests swimming you run to your dresser and frantically try and figure out which drawer it might possibly be in, “swsw”-ing the entire time. You like to go around the house asking about going “dide” (outside) and “poo-yaya” (pool water). You love the water. I think you even love the water more than Nathan if that is possible. At just 21 months you already love being on your belly doggy paddling with the least amount of assistance your parents will allow. You are fearless about falling over, getting a mouthful of saltwater, or being sloshed by a wave. You have little interest in playing in the sand. The water is where its at. If we are driving down the road and pass the beach you make sure to let everyone know that the “YAYA” is within spitting distance. When we go to the beach and you see the water the expression on your face is the purest form of toddler joy.

little miss determined

When you aren’t seeking out water you can be found carrying around your basket of barrettes (a girl has to accessorize) and trying on your shoes. Now that you are a sturdy walker you even will tromp around in my heels in addition to all your jillions of pairs of shoes. You have a baby stroller (“doe-woe”) you like to push around, two actually. You will attempt to push them both, like a frazzled little mommy who really just needs a double stroller for those two dolls: Becky (“ba”) and Stella (“Tah”). You like to play in your kitchen and Im impressed how, for quite some time, you’ve gotten the idea of pretend…..drinking from empty plastic cups, serving up bowls of empty, shoveling spoonfuls of delicious nothing into your mouth. Its so cliche, yet true, how girls just gravitate to girl stuff. You love my makeup brushes and in the mornings you are always wandering around upstairs with some little bottle or tube or jar of something. Usually something you’ve raccooned from my nightstand or a drawer in the bathroom. You love chapstick or anything resembling chapstick and smearing it all over your face. On more than one occassion you’ve found a stamp that had a similar tube-like shape and smeared it all over your lips and then some. Green. Its a good color for you.

You love music and you love dancing. Your favorite song is Sugar by Flo Rida. As soon as we get in the car you ask for music. As soon as a good song comes on your little fist starts pumping- you’d fit right in with those crazy kids on Jersey Shore with your pump. You call yourself “dee dee” (Kenzie) and I suppose we should be thankful you call yourself something close to your actual name, considering we still have dozens of names for you, the most popular still being Kiki and Kunu and Little Macky.

You’re a great eater and an even better scavenger. We call you our little raccoon. Im confident you’d survive in the Serengeti because you always know how to find food. If I ever forget to shut the pantry completely I know it because I can her some riffling around in the kitchen and then you emerge with a box of croutons. Or an entire bag of rice crackers. Or a box of granola bars, bringing it to me asking for “naaah, naaah” (snack). You sit like a big girl at the dinner table- [long] gone are the days of using your tray on your booster. You eat off a plate with a fork like you are some kind of little lady. And then remind us that you aren’t because you insist on putting your feet on the table. I would have chosen to ignore this stunt- not because I, in any way, find it ok, but your dad has chosen the opposite reaction and now you look straight at him, sneak a foot up and onto the table and grin waiting for a reaction. Its a game. And we play it more now than we ever did before.

You and Nathan love playing with each other. Its been nice that the older you get the more you can play together. You guys like having a ‘two bath’ as Nathan calls it and the more water that is splashed and consumed (oh yuck) the better the bath. You like to copy each other, and sadly its more 5-yr-old-copy-the-20-month-old than the other way around- this has been especially [un]pleasant when we go out to dinner and everyone around us must wonder if we’re raising chimps or children. You love to play in his room and bounce on his bed. You play with the most mundane things (a patch from his old flight suit, a medicine syringe etc) and I wonder if this is just you or if its some kind of second-child-never-got-anything-to-play-with type thing?

While I was gone you fully discovered the toddler crack that is Baby Einstein (I must document that you call Lions “why-we’s” -love. it.) Your dad took that a step further and had set up his little Acer laptop at the kids table in the family room. You thought you were some kind of high roller over there with a laptop at your disposal. I insisted that be put away before we created a Mac Monster and now you settle for picking up the remote and demanding ‘die die’ (einstein). As soon as those bright colored animal puppets make their appearance you go nutty. DIEEEEE DIEEEEEE/laugh/giggle/squeal/bounce/flail arms around. You love yourself some Einstein and for a little bit each day Im happy to oblige.

I’ve never been one of those mom’s who…..oh….how do you say??? cares? too much about all the stuff some parents get so wound up about. TV? Sure, but not too much. Ruining your appetite with Cheetoes while we’re hanging out outside on a beautiful day, in the pool, with friends? I insist. Your brother using the top of the slide as a launching pad while standing on the swing as I write this– looks like schools-out-summer-fun to me. Being more carefree and not worrying so much is a lesson Im still trying to learn, I get frustrated easily and discouraged and worry too much about things that, in the big scheme of things, really aren’t that important. When you grow up and look back, I want you to remember more of the days that we played in the pool and ate Cheetoes for dinner and less of the ones where Im freaking out about the house being messy and laundry being folded (which is so FUTILE because its never totally picked up and there is always one. more. load. of laundry to fold.)

The closer we get to two the more frequent and more trying your tantrums are. You are so much feistier than your brother. I thought girls we’re supposed to be easy the first 10 years and difficult the second 10? If this is easy Im not sure Im going to survive the teenage years. Your moods just defy all logic. You tell us you want something, we go to get it or open it or turn it on or whatever it is that needs to be done but half the time it ends in an utter, total, meltdown. Something clearly doesn’t go according to plan in your mind and your attitude then is “Screw this. This is not how I wanted it. I wanted it my way on my terms on my time and you can just FORGET IT NOW.” Oh these difficult days of toddlerhood, they are so trying, aren’t they?

those eyes....

The problem is, when you aren’t melting down on the kitchen floor, mopping it with your butt as you shove yourself around in fury, you are such an adorable, lovable, charming little girl. You love attention and will do anything for a laugh or a smile or a high five or sometimes even negative attention is ok. As long as the spotlight is on you. You will still make ’sweet eyes’ for us and come running into our arms- screaming and smiling, for either mama or dadEE. I hope you will always be that happy to see us, that happy to have us around. Promise me you will and I’ll let you have cheetoes for dinner.

love always,
mama

Filed under: McSassy, Uncategorized

Our holiday involved brunching with friends- consuming crepes filled with red, white, and blue. Taking a whole slew of baked goods to some of the single Marines, playing outside in the pool, water balloons, a stroll along the seawall and fireworks with the same friends. We kinda like them. And I finally got to use the new picnic blanket I made. So, all in all, a pretty good day.

Filed under: This Is My Life

Nathan’s surgery went fantastic. He was unbelievably brave and was actually excited, or at least the force driving the train, to get! to! the! hospital! After doing the prep we went back to the operating room area where he was given (oral) medicine to space him out. His got sleepy and his speech was slurred and he had trouble holding his head up so, basically, he had no idea what was going on.

He was wheeled back to the OR and despite the fact that PC wanted to stay with him until he was asleep that was a no-go. It was about 40 minutes start to finish and the surgeon came out and told us he did great and that his adenoid was one of the biggest he’s ever removed. So, Im not sure that I want my kid to get props for having a huge! adenoid! but, it certainly makes me feel better about our decision to have it removed. Hopefully, once he’s all healed up he’ll breathe through his nose and eat with his mouth closed for the first time in his life.

He’s bounced back quick; by the afternoon he jumped off the end of the couch in an effort to show us how recovered he is. He’s certainly taking advantage of the fact that he can have as many milkshakes, popsicles, ice cream sandwiches and juice as he wants. Milking it. Big time. Im ok with that though, Im just thankful he’s ok and well on the road to recovery.

Filed under: Nate the Great

Im married to an individual who is, like, a computer genius. He’s proud to be called computer nerd or enginerd or any other nerdy title thats bestowed upon him. Because of his hobby/vocation/calling we’re a fairly wired household. The phones talk to the computers as do the cameras which talk to the TV computers and to the digital picture frame. The computer in the kitchen is where I keep recipes and when we’re too lazy to watch TV downstairs we watch it on the TV computer upstairs and if we need to look something up there’s an old laptop in the nightstand which we can’t watch movies on because we’ve already exceeded our 5 Mac computers allowed on one account.

It’s not surprising that some of this would rub off on our children. Both kids have figured out (around the age of 18-24 months) how to work the Apple remote for the TV. Nathan loves perusing the iTunes store always searching for the latest app to suit his needs and knows they have to be free for him to get us to approve it. I made the fatal mistake a couple weeks ago of being too lazy to enter our password for iTunes and just spelling it for him to type in. Big Mistake. He knows how to open safari and type things into the Google bar. I can always tell when he’s been on the computer because I’ll find searches such as: “Trsfrmrs amuzon”, or “arplan toys”, or “trsfrmr game.” I also found a word document open last week that said: “nly kids can com to my pardy.” I asked him how he was going to GET to said party and he told me, “you can take me and just drop me off and leave.” Oh sorry, I didn’t realize you were turning FIFTEEN. My mistake. He later amended his word document to read: “nly kids can com to my pardy and my dad.” Wow, I guess Im the odd man out.

The other day, after PC got the new iPhone, Nathan sort of took that to mean that the old one now belonged to him. While we’re ok with him playing with it, we’d prefer our 5 yr old doesn’t think he has “his own” iPhone. While playing with the old one I told him to get ready to leave and he tells me, “let me get my iPhone…now we all have iPhones, right mom?” Wrong. And then there was the day this week where he thought his dad broke his arm playing a game on the iPhone. And then today while chatting I told him, “you know, when I was 5 they didn’t have computers.”

Blank stare: “So……you mean……..you didn’t have one at your house?”

“No, I mean there just weren’t computers at all when I was five. No one had them in their house or at school.”

Completely bewildered, flaberghasted even: “sooo……..what did you do when you were a kid?”

“Well, we played kick the can with all the neighborhood kids and rode our bikes and walked to the gas station to buy Jolly Ranchers ( the stick kind of course) and Lemonheads and Alexander the Grapes. We played flashlight tag and caught lightening bugs in peanut butter jars and when catching them wasn’t fun anymore we’d smash them on the pavement to see their glowy innards.”

And its funny, it got me to thinking about how different our/my generation is from my kids vice mine and my parents’. I can’t think of any huge technological advances, as profound as what we have today, that separated our generation from theirs. They all had TV’s, cars, refrigerators, telephones, record players and eventually VCRs and cassette players. Cameras were film in the 50’s just as they were in the 80’s and 90’s and even in 2001 when I got married. Were there changes and improvements? Obviously. But the world our kids is growing up in is just mind bogglingly different.

In elementary school our library we had maybe 10 Apple II computers. We got to use a few times a year and  they didn’t really “do” anything. You could play a game by inserting a 5 1/4 floppy (the real floppy disk). It was barely anything more than a large clunky monitor attached to a large clunky keyboard. In jr. high I had to take typing class in 7th grade. I don’t think at that point anyone even saw it as a necessary ‘life skill’. In typing class we typed on typewriters- this was 1991. There were two computers that we all got to rotate using. Two. In high school there was an actual computer lab and this abstract concept of “the internet” was being thrown around. I was floored when we got an encyclopedia on a CD at home. Up until that point I had to use my parents olive green, musty encyclopedias from the 60’s. Even when I started college the ‘computer lab’ was a bunch of Mac Classics (incidentally, this was the same computer my parents sent me to school with- and if that isn’t sad enough, I was the only person in my hallway that even had a computer). They had just begun doling out email addresses but no one really knew what they were or what to do with them. By the time I graduated classes were offered online, syllabuses could be printed, notes downloaded. I even heard that there were websites where you could, get this, buy papers to turn in as your own. Imagine that.

I often wonder what someone living a few hundred years ago would do if we showed them an iPhone….how could you even describe it? “Its a phone, you talk on it, can call anyone in the world. Or you can text on it. And it takes pictures and takes videos and you can post that to your FB page. If you want to see someone while you talk to them, thats called Facetime. You can play games on it and order pizza. If you’re lost it will give you directions. You can send email. You can send money. You can even send flowers. You can buy things and see things and have question’s answered and anything you could possibly think up? There’s probably an app for that.” Crap, maybe someday there will be an app for world peace. And yet- nothing that I just said is even remotely awing to Nathan. He’ll non-chalantly ask me “who’re ya texting mom?” when he hears the click clack of the keys on the iPhone. He knows how to call PC on my phone. He’ll ask me to look for something on Ebay or to send an email to someone about something. If I’m looking for something at the store that I can’t find, he’ll suggest I just look on the internet for it. He’ll come peer over my shoulder and be all, “oh, you’re doing Facebook?” Today, from the bathroom, he requested I find pictures of adenoid surgery on the internet for him. He’ll never know what an encyclopedia is but surely will use Wikipedia. He’ll never know what a card catalog is or a VCR or what a roll of film looks like.

On the one hand I do wonder- how did we ever live without it, this wonderful internet thing. On the other hand, I wonder if we had it better, growing up without all this ’stuff’? I wonder how the technology my 5 year old has at his fingertips will shape him as a person, for better or for worse? I wonder how much scarier and worrisome the turbulent teen years will be for PC and I than it was for our parents? I mean, what if Mackenzie meets someone online and wants to meet him and marry him? So what if thats how PC and I met, that was the mid-90’s before the internet got all skeevy and creepy and porny and pedophile-ish.

Whats the consensus folks….when will you let your kids have FB accounts? Will you require them to add you as a friend? Will they have their own cell phones? Will you make them do their internetting in plain view? Will you read their email? Or am I the only parent with a five year old that is worried about this already? Today more than ever the world is their oyster and Im not sure if this is a good thing, a bad thing, or probably just a little bit of both.

Filed under: The Whole Wide World, Uncategorized