Daylight Savings Strikes Back

I can't quite exactly pin when it first started to occur.

There's vague memories of P-Finn sneaking into our bed to fall back asleep in the grayness between late, late night and early, early morning. Of course, I managed to sleep through most of the disruption, only to wake with him situated sideways with his heel lodged into my rib cage.

Those visitations were few enough. It once seemed like an anomaly when Patrick would actually wake... moments before I was ready to leave for work while everyone else continued to sleep.

Turn on the TV, and flip to either Disney or Nickelodeon. Grab him a teacup full of dry cereal. A glass of ice tea. Toss a blanket atop (while carefully tucking in the sides to cocoon him under a quilted mass). I could actually manage to sneak out the door before the next commercial break.

We had unknowingly established a new morning routine.

This waking before work became a bit of a habit. Somewhere between rotation, revolution, and the tilt of the earth-- my son started to wake up a little earlier every morning as the darkness of winter gave way to longer hours of spring daylight.

The sunlight would creep, curling his luminous fingers around tightly drawn shades, prying my son's eyes open to the breaking dawn."Dad. The sun is out!" he'd exclaim as he'd burst out of the bedroom. Standing on his tippy toes, Patrick would stretch and bellow an exaggerated yawn, interjecting, "Dad. I do like you!" before resuming a mock up of my morning stretches.

The man appeared to enjoy the additional father/son time (free of Mom & Maura). So did I... at first. A few seconds compounds over time. One week I am enjoying cereal and cartoons on the couch for a few minutes.

The next week I'd find him patiently sprawled out on the cold, tile floor waiting for me to step out of the shower. I'd struggle to keep him entertained as I readied myself for work and maintain my own morning schedule.

Waking earlier provided P-Finn with the opportunity to him to flex his opinion. Morning juice? Ice tea. No... orange juice. No... apple juice. Green cup? No... Blue cup. Sorry bub, that one is in the washer. Can you believe this kid actually asked for popcorn instead of cereal? Pop corn: no good. Corn puffs: well, they are OK.

Then there was the selection of television station. We had to compare Nick against Disney to see which offered the better program. He'd ask for programs that weren't airing, and we'd have to settle on what was currently being televised.

My morning had become mired down in meeting the picky demands of a 3-year-old. It was only a matter of time before I found myself serving up a breakfast platter, satisfying his request to watch particular cartoon episodes on either Netflix or On Demand.

It wasn't as if I didn't value the added father/son time. His waking had an inverse relationship with my leaving for work on time: the earlier he rose, the later (and later) managed to sneak out the door. Handling a toddler strictly by myself, while under a tight schedule, was a bit tough.

I started to question it all: how did it come to this? Where did I go awry as a parent? I needed a fast-acting solution short of waking Mom & Maura to divert Patricks's attention in the morning.

I looked forward to the prospect of resetting the clocks to Spring Ahead. An adjustment in one hour would allow me to slip out of the household under the cover of darkness. Sure, I'd loose an hour of sleep over the weekend, but it would pale in comparison to what I'd regain with my solitary morning routine.

In reality: daylight savings is a sick experiment on the sleep time routine of little children.

Yeah, so P-Finn wakes to the rising sun a clock hour later; his nighttime routine is offset by an equal amount. It's a difficult concept for a toddler to understand that exact clock hours do not necessarily correlate with sunrise and set; our biological needs are attuned to the rhythm of day and season.

This change in clock time and extra sunlight translates into a later bedtime hours for several more days until we can veer Patrick onto a new evening routine. At least he should start sleeping through my pre-work routine. Though, to be honest, I'll miss out on that small window of father son time.

#Instagram Reflection of the Week

The iPhone 4s is so intuitive, even a 3-year-old can easily navigate its features. And apparently, he manages Netflix well enough to queue up and watch episodes of Sonic Underground. Don't ask. His choice-- not mine. It's just a matter of time before he figures out how to request FaceTime with my parents. 

Toddler Christmas Toy Train 2011

Last Christmas my parents gifted P-Finn with a train set. Now, this wasn't any ordinary train set, oh no! This Disney-themed steam locomotive was modeled after the engine that picks up guests as they enter the park on Main Street. Finn would sit right in the middle of the oval-shaped tracks and watch the train circulate round and round, mesmerized for hours on end.

Poor child nearly had a meltdown when we had to box the train away with all of our other Christmas decorations. Right away he started to frequently ask, "When is Christmas," and "When can we get the Mickey Mouse train down?" And that started right away in January and persisted throughout much of the spring and summer.

In fact, my parents purchased their own Disney train this past fall, and gladly setup the tracks anytime P-Finn visited. Considering Walmart started to air Christmas commercials well before Halloween, my son was conned into believing the winter holidays were imminent. In response to these circumstances, my son stepped up his requests to take the train down from the attic. We politely declined until the time was appropriate.

Finn exploded with excitement when my wife finally started to remove Christmas decoration from the attic, including his Disney train. Nearly every day he falls into a meditative trance as the locomotive circles around and around. Being in the Season Spirit, I made this quick 30-second film for my son to commemorate the Christmas train (and tide him over those upcoming summer months).

Playing Little Big Planet with my Toddler as Father / Son Time

Developmental milestones never cease to amaze me. Like the time P-Finn first managed to toddle up the staircase… and into the library to grab a CD out of it's jewel case, toddle back down the steps, and successfully insert it into the DVD player. And just under two years of age. Your either born with that technology intuition or not, and my son seemed to have it.

Just saying'.

So it came as no surprise when P-Finn asked me to have the second game controller having observed me play video games. Not wanting to ruin my current high score, I handed him a dummy controller and attempted to con him into believing that he could manipulate the main character. P-Finn didn't fall for it one bit.

In what ever three-word sentence he could string together , this child firmly requested a live joystick (or else he would commandeer mine). Seeing no other possible course of action, I plugged the little guy in. Left. Right. And use the "X" button to jump. Very straight forward. And wouldn't you know, my little kid had it figured out in only a matter of seconds.

Again, just sayin'.

P-Finn and I quickly and deeply fell in love with the cooperative style of Playstation 3's "Little Big Planet." The game is a physics-based platformer set in a world of imaginative creation. Entire levels are pieced together using various swaths of cloth, cardboard, stickers, and puppets. It's all the fun of arts and crafts... packed into a video game.

The DIY theme carries straight through into the level creation toolkit. Not only did Patrick and I attempt to build our own railroad-themed levels, but we tapped into the wealth of community created levels... well over five million of them! We spend most of our time in Little Big Planet playing through the various community created, railroad levels (especially the ones created by JubJub67 and TSFRJ).

It's one thing to watch trains in movies or television, but it's something else to get behind a freight engine and virtually pull a load of box cars. There is nothing better to a train-enthused, three-year-old. And it's become one of many father / son activities we've come to enjoy together as of late.

My Toddler is the *rain Man

Earlier this summer the family took a day trip to the Jersey shore. Having spent a major portion of that day in the sun and sand, we readied to head back home. My three-year-old son refused to put on his sandals, even after taking a few sizzling steps onto the sun-soaked blacktop.

"What are you, a BEACH BUM," I cracked, mildly amused that he would rather endure the treacheries of walking barefoot.

"No dad, you a beach bum!" he asserted.

We exchanged words a few times, and then I allowed him to get the final word. Needless to say, my son walked barefoot all the way back to the car.


A few weeks later, the family took a camping trip up to Vermont. Having parked the car, my son kicked off his sandals and proceeded to run about the campsite barefoot. Yes. Sixty degrees, raining, with that brisk New England late summer chill. And there he was, digging his toes into a carpet of pine needles.

"What are you, a MOUNTAIN MAN," I cracked. This time I new the rules of the game meant he now had to volley back a remark.

"No dad, you a mountain man."

"No, you're the mountain man!" I shot back, attempting to best this toddler.


This time, he looked at me in earnest and replied, "No dad, I'm a *rain man."

I blinked. A rain man? My wife and I exchanged looks of befuddlement. What did my son know about autism and Dustin Hoffman? Yeah, my son's a keen observer, but this definitely didn't make sense.

"A rain man?" I asked.

"Yes dad, a *rainmain. Choo choo."

Oh yes, of course. A TRAIN man. Of the Thomas the Tank Engine variety of train man at that. "Why yes, you are a train man, aren't you." And to that, he nodded in agreement.

Toddler is a language of all it's own; apparently I am not all that fluent.

The Boy's Badge of Summer

My son lacks the finesse of eye-foot coordination (it must come from his mother's side of the family). Anything faster than a trot, and my son is nearly guaranteed to stumble and fall flat on his face. Prepping him with the parental warning of "no running" has little effect, and apparently pain has no memory... Otherwise P-Finn would have learned his lesson many times over.

I'm somewhat at odds here. On one hand, the kid clearly needs to burn off pre-nap energy, not to mention the whole bit about learning to run for enjoyment. Sure, give him a rolling park. Grass stains have a fairly quick recovery time. But oh, just a little bit of concrete is enough to grate away layers of skin and scabs. Damn, that sucker would bleed bright, bright red. Just enough to garner the attention of any onlookers.

The kid knows how to play sympathy's fiddle. "Daddy, I have a boo boo. It's bleeding. Pick me up." He would just stand there, paralyzed, one hand lifting his pant leg, giving the trickle of blood an unobstructed path towards his ankles. Depending on his audience, he might either give the sobbing performance of a lifetime, or laugh it off and jump right back into playing. You never quite know, though trust me: the remedy is not the answer he was looking for.

I did had some minor success in daddy triage utilizing a rolled paper towel to bandage the knee. This approach exaggerated the painful appearance of his injury. "I don't wand a band aid," he would pine on with a grimace that would suggest the cure more painful than the injury.

So... I quickly changed my approach and called it a "boo boo badge." It sounded somewhat tougher to me. Yeah, that didn't work either. It all came down to a moment's distraction while I slapped that band aid on his knee. Let me tell you, peeling away a half-way removed band aid was cause for an even bigger production!


The mosquito bites. The unexplained bruises. A blotch of what might be poison ivy. Splinters. Bee stings. And the skinned knees. These are the perpetual marks of a boy's badge of summer.