Do the Puppet Master

When it comes to rating myself as a dad, I’m a hard grader. For yesterday, though, I’d give myself an A.

Exhibit A: Homemade puppets, our post-nap art activity. I let Aki choose what type we’d make, and his “one track mind,” if you’ll pardon the pun, won out: everything these days is trains, trains, trains!

The materials: All reused or recycled. Gift and bagel bags; parts of empty tissue boxes; wooden coffee stirrers; coffee filters; nutella and honey lids; crayons and markers.

We also made the Little Red Caboose’s wreath (which, you may know, was its reward for saving the train from sliding down the hill) out of ribbon, glitter, and a hole-punched sticker. And our conductor (female! breaking stereotypes!) is a sticker from the drive-thru at In N Out.


Little Red Caboose Puppet

Before my bragging sends you packing to a less self-congratulating Daddy blog, though, let me explain some of my recent shortcomings, and why I allowed myself a pat on the back. You see, Aki got into his Terrible Twos about half a year early; accordingly, he seems to have entered into his Threes (whatever those should be called: Threatening? Thrilling?), ahead of schedule. And Daddy has been letting his temper get the better of him.

Aki’s always been a sassy, strong-willed little man, which I think is great in a lot of ways; after all, someone once told us, would we want our child to be weak-willed? But now that he’s speaking in increasingly complex and grammatical sentences, he’s gotten verbally sassy.

And that little temper of his? Well, he gets it from me. That and his stubbornness, although Yuri and I joke that he gets the temper from me and the stubbornness from her, or vice versa. Either way, when it's time for a tantrum or meltdown, he and I are like the Irresistible Force meeting the Immovable Object.



Aki and Daddy at Make Music Pasadena

In the past few weeks, as we’ve worked to transition him to sharing toys (and the limelight with his adorable cousin Keagan), sleeping on his own, and going potty on the toilet (still a work-in-progress), we’ve clashed, and I’ve often found myself with that sickening feeling you get after you raise your voice or even holler at your kid until they melt down.

I also admit to relying too much on Netflix to keep him entertained while I cook, tidy up, or sag into a chair, sapped of parental energy. (Although I'd have to say that this might be the Golden Age of Children's TV, with clever and instructional Nick Jr. shows like Wonder Pets and Yo Gabba Gabba, on which a painfully hipster-ish Elijah Wood recently taught Aki how to do "the Puppet Master" dance.)

Worse yet, I’ve found myself--due to poor planning, or changing things up on the fly to hang out with other family members/parents--relying too often on prepackaged, processed snacks, like the little sugary fruit snack packets from Target; a chocolate milk from the coffee shop (when I get myself a shot of Joe to get through the day); or those salty little Goldfish that kids crave like Crack.


Sugar Rush!

I would be the last person, in other words, to call myself the perfect Dad.

Yesterday, though, I decided to work a little harder. We took a nice long walk up to Gymboree (where I bought him several new outfits for less than $25: thanks, sale prices!). We got a day's worth of exercise before the day got too hot, and stopped on the way to snack on a peach, mostly avoiding artificial sweet, although we still made time for one bite-sized treat (a mini-carrot cake from Henri Charpentier, thanks to Yuri’s cousins in Japan).

We practiced introducing ourselves to a little boy playing on the “blue bench” (“It’s nice to meet you. My name is Aki. What’s your name?”) then stopped off at Fresh & Easy to get some broccoli, butter, and other things we’d need to make our fresh lunch.


Favorite Hang Out: The "Blue Bench"

I made him his favorite Choo-Choo Pasta--a recipe out of The Baby & Toddler Cookbook--wagon wheel pasta with a white cream sauce and steamed broccoli, which he wolfed down heartily. Then we re-read one of his favorite books (The Little Engine That Could) before I helped him fall asleep in his own room, no-fuss, no problem; he was tuckered out.

He slept a satisfying two-and-a-half hours while Daddy revised some poems and sent out freelance work-related emails. After his nap, we set about making our train puppets, washed rice and shucked corn for dinner, then draped the dinner table with blankets and “camped out” in our own private little world until Mommy came home.

I always feel better about myself as a Dad when I make our food myself, when we avoid burning fossil fuel with the car, and when I can remain steady and insistent in asking him to do something without seeing myself go into the red or triggering any tears on his part.


Mommy and Aki at Milk

Not every day will be like yesterday; and I know that it’s not unnatural or even the worst thing in the world to occasionally blow one’s top, even when talking to a two-and-a-half year old.

But I always want to be a better Dad, maybe since now that I’m in the thick of child-rearing, I look back with wonder at what a first-rate job my own parents did.

Before I started graduate work at USC, my old prof Stuart Friebert wrote me a letter of congratulations, asking me to send him a picture of me with my son. “It’s your most important assignment,” he wrote, and I took it to heart, since Stuart is a fine poet, educator, editor and father himself.

Each day Aki infers something new, asks a new question, remembers something I never would’ve thought he could possibly remember, recites lyrics to a song I haven’t been able to pick out myself.

He’s working as hard as he can (without even realizing it) to understand and master this world, the way we break it into discrete parts and name these parts, all the countless nuances of how and when and why we say things a certain way. The least I can do is try as hard as he tries, and give him as much support and stimulus as I can—-love, sensory-rich experiences, understanding, ethical and behavioral modeling, creative and even wonderfully nonsensical activities like making paper puppets that look like a train and a caboose.


The Butterfly Trail at the Audubon Center