Easy Indoor Activities: Fun with Boxes

With Christmas not too far back in the rear-view mirror, we still have a lot of boxes that we haven't gotten around to letting go of yet. With that in mind, I decided to pull out some of those boxes to figure out what kind of fun things we could do with them.

"But Dad, playing with boxes is totally square"

after the jump: what we did with them

Things My 5 Year Old Will Put in Her Mouth vs. Things My 5 Year Old Will Not Put in Her Mouth

Things My 5 Year Old Will Put in Her Mouth: 

Yum.

The glass, not the food. The
moment I look the other way, bam. Tongue. Glass.

See also: our sliding-glass door.

more failure to understand my daughter after the jump

Boys' Day In

This morning, Ellie had a play date with some of the other little girls her age. That left me at home with just the boys. Whenever the opportunity arises, I like to do total guy stuff. If they were older, I'm sure we would have rented all of the super hero movies that we've missed out on over the last year or two. Really, anything with explosions would have been great. The Mrs. isn't always as excited to watch those movies as I am, so I've got a lot of catching up to do. But alas, the boys are still just 1 and 2 1/2, so all of that would be too intense. So no superhero movies for Dad.

So what did we end up doing, you ask?

The Greatest Thing: 'Jams

It gets cold in the NorthWest. Not nearly as cold as some other places, mind you, but cold nonetheless. This, in and of itself, isn't too big of a problem.

We have wood floors. Wooden floors get cold. Also not a huge problem.

My kids refuse to wear any nice, foot-warming articles of clothing that we put them in for longer than a few minutes at a time. The kiddos are also not good about staying under their covers when they sleep. These issues, when combined with the aforementioned temperature and flooring situation, start to create something of a problem for us.

The solution?

Pajamas.

More particularly, the good pajamas. Fuzzy Footy Zippy Jammies, as I like to call them. 

Not accurately represented in picture: Snuggliness.

Easy Activities: Fun With Lap Trays

So yesterday, I introduced the concept of F2E (fun to effort ratio), and I realized a few things:

1. I didn't really explain what constitutes effort in my post.
2. You all probably understood it anyway, so I don't even really have a good reason to explain it further. Regardless, I feel strangely compelled to, and I know that it will just stay on my mind until I do. I think that's how crazy works, so I understand that I am treading on dangerous ground here.
3. After making such a big deal out of F2E, I might have sounded somewhat lazy.
4. In order to properly explain this, I am going to sound somewhat more lazy. And then I won't. This will all make sense in a moment...

Alright -- for me, effort is a matter of how much preparation, physical exertion, mental acuity, and clean up, is required to do the activity. Of these things, physical exertion and clean up are my major concerns. And there it is. I just said, more or less, that I didn't want to move around from the couch very much and I don't want to have to clean. That doesn't paint me in a very good light.

saving face and finally getting to the point after the jump

Easy Activities: Paper Airplanes

This morning, I was dragging pretty hard. I just couldn't muster the energy to be particularly fun or creative. I needed to find something that we I could do that would give us a high Fun-To-Effort ratio score (referred to hereafter as the F2E Score, or just F2E).

Then it hit me: Paper Airplanes! I gave the kiddos some paper and crayons and told them to go hog-wild. When they were finished coloring, I turned their plain old stationary (haha) artwork into aviationary artwork (that's totally a real word, as far as I'm concerned). Not too time or labor intensive, but fun. F2E ftw.

Mine had one of those old warplane style mouths on it. I am more excited about that than I should be.

Videographic evidence after the jump

S.O.S. (Secret of Survival) - Sing

One day, someone is going to ask one of my children what their dad was like when they were kids, and I'm pretty sure that I know what their answer will be. "I remember he used to sing a lot," they'll say, "like, really a lot. And loud... Like he was trying to practice or something." 

Yeller was a good growler, but his clean vocals were a little ruff...

The kids are used to it since it's all they've ever really known, so they don't get nearly as weirded out as they probably should when I suddenly start singing at full volume for no apparent reason. Yup, I love to sing... 'Cuz I'm crazy like that, yo... Don't judge me... Yeah, so I suppose that the kids are just enabling me. Here's hoping that it lasts for a few more years...

Hitting People is Lame: The Song

Just to be sure that the lesson from the last post stuck, I pulled out the guitar and made up a song on the spot about how hitting people is lame. I call it "Hitting People is Lame." Yup. As you can see, I have a knack for catchy titles.

Watch the video after the jump

Experiments in Dadification

Just because you can make brown Jello doesn't mean that you should.

Be yourself. Or myself. Depends on who we are talking about, really. Which right now, is me. So... myself it is. 


You get the idea.

I realized recently how much I feel like a tool every time I try to lecture the kids. I switch into lecture mode, and all of a sudden, it's as if I've stepped back, switched into autopilot, and now I am just watching the whole thing unfold in front of me from the 3rd person. 

I don't sound like myself at all, and they don't seem to get the message, or even to really listen.

My experiment of the day: acting like myself when reprimanding the kids. 

Hello/So Here's the Rub:

I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had friends who had their whole futures mapped out, which always made me feel inadequate, because all I ever knew was that I wanted to be a father. I was going to have a family, and that was all that really mattered. 


I was pretty sure that I would be good at it too -- the whole being a dad thing. I had every reason to believe that I would be a pretty kickass dad: