DJ Electric Daddy

The Finger by GSM World on Flickr The Sprite lets us know what he REALLY thinks about his stewed beans for dinner

Click to Play This Halloween, my wife ElectricMommy found some really cool LED pumpkin lights that change colors as they sit inside the carved out gourde. The Sprite also found these light vessels attractive. In fact while we had the dance music pumping during our marathon pumpkin carving session, he took the lights into the darkened living room and had his own private rave. For a little fella he busted out some big moves.

Click to Play Some left over footage from our trip up to Yosemite this June. Out first time there. Simply amazing and stunning and breathtaking. The vastness and the size of it all. So nice just to roll down the window and listen to the wind...

Click to Play When I have something busy to do on a weekend, I like to keep Gaige well occupied, like France in the 1940's. The best way to do this is to set him up in the driveway with a huge roll of photography backdrop paper and all his paints. On this day, our little Van Gogh was extremely productive, using almost every last drop of paint, glitter glue and utensil he owns. His own body is as much a canvas as the paper.

Click to Play The Sprite is a magnificent chef. He loves to cook all the time. On a Sunday he likes to help me make pancakes for all the family. It makes him so happy he literally breaks out into song and theatrics. And funny faces.

Click to Play This is a clip of The Sprite and his best friend at the Fullerton YMCA Halloween festival from last year. Carefree and full of the energy of youth they frolic to the tune of Abba's Dancing Queen.

I watched a bumble bee die today. Slowly. It must have taken three or four hours. Gaige got his first bee sting whilst playing in the dirt in the back yard. He was playing well by himself while Dani and I were doing yardwork preparing for someone's fifth birthday party next weekend. All of a sudden I hear him SCREAMING at the top of his lungs " I'VE BEEN STUNG, I'VE BEEN STUNG". He comes running to me holding his hand yelling with tears beginning to roll down his cheeks. So we take him to the bathroom, soak his hand in cold water, and give him some Tylenol. This helps and after about ten minutes the poor lad finally settles down, and begins telling us a story about how he got stung two times before, at his old house. Everything has a story with Gaige, and almost invariably involves some anecdotal reference to 'his old house'. I tried to tweezer the stinger out of his swelling hand, clearly visible as a small black hair protruding from the wound, but was ...

The Sprite has reached that 'showoff' stage of his young development. Whenever he wants to attract, impress or get the attention of someone (it could be another child, a visitor to the house or a family member) he will often resort to some outlandish stunt. Usually this involves climbing and ultimately falling to the ground in a glorified flop. "Did you see that?" he'll ask. "Do you want to see this?" he'll inquire before repeating the stunt. Recently we were at Irvine Regional Park for the annual Christmas Train that rides through the park to Santa's Village. Waiting in line for our turn to ride the train, a girl maybe 7 years old took a liking to our Sprite. This attention was met with cold shyness at first, but thanks to the young lady's persistence, was eventually returned with some very silly behavior of the "Do yo want to see this?" variety. Climbing on the railing, falling to the ground, fake-bumping into the wall, all includ...

Here is the family Xmas card we made this year. We had a picture taken at the Christmas Show that took place at the Church where The Sprite goes to pre-school. Trouble was, despite their attempts to dress up the scene with a Christmas tree and poinsettia, the background was so stark and white. This is the before and after of the shot I edited and composited into something a little more attractive. The original shot The final image

So it turns out our child is a rare breed. A specimen of American society found in only 10-15% of children. Much to our chagrin he is not an exceptionally gifted genius. No, our rare breed is 'spirited' as defined in the book "Raising Your Spirited Child" by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. ElectricMommy was doing some research on the internets, trying to find out if The Sprite's bossy, rowdy and explosive behavior was within the realm of normal toddlerdom, and found many a reference to the above mentioned book. It was clear after the first chapter that our little monster is a prototypical Spirited Child, displaying every trait that defines such character. Most of these traits are off the chart to the extreme. So what are these traits that make-up such a child? They are more intense, hyper sensitive and emotional, extremely perceptive, stubbornly persistent, and excruciatingly resistant to change. Noticeably more so than your typical, yet already intense, sensitive, persist...

Yep, you read that right. ElectricMommy and I, with our infinite parenting skills, potty trained our little tinkling-toddler The Sprite in seven easy, effortless days. All those reports we read about three years in and out of diapers, little progress, frustration and failure led us to believe we would have an eleven year old still wearing desperately tight Huggies. But no. That kind of nonsense is obviously for loser parents with no skills. Well that is the story we are selling. That's what we would like to believe, and for you to believe. But truth be told we had very little to do with it. His Spriteness being the single-minded, determined and persistent child he is, got it into his head he wanted to wear underwear and he pretty much potty-trained himself. He was done with diapers, they are for babies, and he would be damned if he was going back to them. It went down something like this: Upon return to the homestead from our Family Jaunt we decided it was time to make a 'conc...

The highlight of our trip to Pacific Grove/Monterey was the day we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium . This is one of the largest research and tourist aquariums in the country, it's centerpiece being a million gallon deep ocean tank. The Sprite had a great time running all over the place looking at sharks and jellies and fish of all sizes and colors. "Oh wow, look at that...." was the quote of the day, and has followed him home as we rediscover sharks and jellies over and over again. The first batch of clips are of The Sprite being himself enjoying all the distractions a huge aquarium has to offer. The entire collection of video clips from our vacation can be found on Blip.tv . Technorati Tags: family , toddler , vacation , aquarium

This section of my video from our trip Monterey Aquarium is all oceanographic in nature. That is it features only the creatures that live INSIDE the glass tanks, and not the ones gawking from the outside. Like the title suggests, this photography is not going to win any awards but the little FLiP video recorder did a pretty nice job of capturing the moment. The Sprite gets a huge kick from looking at these clips and reliving the event, which is the point really. Technorati Tags: family , toddler , vacation

So it's been awfully quiet around these parts lately. And I know what you are all thinking. "Ooooh, so the novelty of writing a weekly blog post has worn off and reruns off Married With Children are more enticing. We get it." But no, I have good reason. On top of the usual responsibilities of a deadline based job, the demands of an increasingly stubborn and bossy toddler, and the constant fix-me-ups necessitated by a fifty-year-old-home, there have been a couple of additional distractions recently. England and we all took a trip up to the Bay Area for a week. I'll write a detailed post about the vacation later, suffice it to say it was a grand time for all. It's been a little while now so I'll need to remember what we did, as family vacations tend to blur into one long feeding binge punctuated by sightseeing. "Did we do the abattoir on Wednesday?" "No, the abattoir was was Thursday. We has the mackerel on Wednesday, so that was after we hit the...

As The Sprite has gotten older and more confident, he has got more independant and stubborn too. But he has also show a great willingness to help. He is so keen to help in fact, it is increasingly difficult to actually get anything done. From flushing the toilet to pulling up ones pants, Young Master G is there to lend a hand. Need to bring the newspaper in from the street, we have a (two-year-old) man on the job. Dishes need putting away, The Sprite is there (under my feet) to assist me. Now don't think I'm ungrateful. I'm actually trying to enjoy every minute of this willingness while it lasts. How long before I am asking, begging, pleading GSM to help take some trash out or tidy his room? How long before eagerness to help is replaced by eagerness to sit-on-his-lazy-arse-watching-Spiderman-cartoons-and the-rest-of-you-can-fuck-right-off. It is with this thought in mind I tolerate tripping over him as I haul 50lb trash barrels out to the kerb, whilst he 'helps' me....

The Sprite and I have a set ritual we follow every evening. We have had this ritual for many months, in fact pretty much since he was born. It has always been my duty to get him ready for bed and put him down to sleep. I always looked at this as my treat, my special time with him, even if it did mean missing more than a fair share of hockey, or episodes of LOST. As The Sprite has gotten older, Les Rituale has gotten more elaborate and takes an increasing amount of time. When he was an infant, a quick scrub of the gums, a change of diaper and short rock in my arms would be all that was necessary to get him down to sleep. There were occasions of course where the rocking in my arms would be lengthy and it may have taken several trips into his bedroom to settle him down. But as we got into teething (and eventually a full set of chompers), and as he started to find his voice, and as he discovered books at bedtime, and realized the delaying properties a book at bedtime possessed, the number ...

Healthcare. Health. Care? Dont get me started. Coming from a country that has free basic healthcare for ALL of its citizens I find the level of care, or lack thereof, in this country shameful. The wealthiest, most powerful country on earth cannot even give its people the most rudimentary of care. I moved here 12 years ago and even back then the politicians were talking and talking about healthcare reform. And after 12+ years of talk things have only gotten worse. And the same politicians are doing nothing but talk still. And its funny, because if the voters in this country REALLY cared about healthcare, made it their number one deciding factor come election time, then there would be a much better chance for change. But as long as Bush and the wacky Christian right are allowed to dumb the debate down to "national security" or "gay marriage" or "pro-life (give me a break)" then this is what you are stuck with. These guys sure arent gonna change things. These...

The past few weeks have seen The Sprite's vocabulary increase at an impressive rate. He is stringing small sentences together, he's somewhat comprehendible and working the word 'actually' into almost every phrase. "Shall we wear the red t-shirt today?" "Yes, red t-shirt, uh, it's actually green" "No, it's red. It'd your red shirt with the drums on" "No it's not drums, it's actually green" "Okay sunshine whatever you say, green it is" "No, it's not sunshine, sunshine is actually outside" "Alright, now you're just being a smart-arse" "It's not smart-arse daddy. Thats not a good example of the language one should use in front of a toddler. A better example would be smart-alec. Actually" As you can see from the accurately recreated discussion with The Sprite from this evening, he is also becoming quite contrary. We say black, he says white. Or green. It is usually...

The latest health related episode the Sprite of Fury has had to endure occured this past weekend. After a perfect day Saturday working outside in the back garden, with Lil' G helping out or playing by himself for pretty much the whole day, we wrapped the days activities with a little hockey practice. While I practiced my reverse crossovers and close-quarters stick handling in the street (yes, a terrible example of safety I know) The Sprite followed along and retrieved errant pucks for me. We played a little kerb-side catch as he would throw me the puck and I shoot it back to him, before turning in as the sun went down. A great end to a very nice, productive day. The troubles began a little before 11pm that night. After eating all his dinner and doing our bedtime ritual, he settled down to sleep around 9pm. Less than 2 hours later our Pay-Per-View movie for the evening was interupted with loud and painful cries from his bedroom. I go to see what is wrong and find a large puddle of v...

Bad things always seem to happen when you are no position to do a thing about them. Say, perhaps, 8000 feet above sea level nestled in the mountain pines for a little ski vacation. With no cell towers within any kind of reach, I felt severely cut off from civiliziation. At least, cut off from "the grid" - SMS text messaging and twitter which is about as much contact I have with civilization these days. It was in this state of incapacitation I recieved a text message that slipped through a crack in the trees. My grandmother, back home in England, had been taken suddenly and seriously ill. Don't you love those brief and vague snippets of info, that may as well have come through in morse code. "Dot dot dot dash dash. House gone. Fire. tornado. Send info later." So, desperately I try to reply to the message to confirm I am now in the know, but as luck would have it the crack in the trees mysteriously closed and no message came or went for the rest of the weekend. Y...