Dad's Summer Reading Program: Satisfying Book Recommendations

Having started Dad's Summer Reading Program two years ago, I can now qualify it as a moderate success.  The original objective of getting our younger son to read more might have happened anyway, but it seemed to kick start him that year, and he's been a pretty solid pleasure reader since then.

This year, the boys raced out to their first incentive milestone and then flagged a bit.  Family vacation and two weeks at camp cut reading time, although our older son reprised his adorable vacation habit of reading Dave Barry books aloud with his cousin who's about a year older.

Although the quantity of reading has not been fabulous, I was very satisfied when two books that I picked up at the library unbidden for our rising eighth grader resonated nicely.  Competent Mother and I both really enjoyed Lois Lowry's A Summer To Die.  Actually, that's the book that turned me into a reader-for-pleasure.  CM also loved Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.  Although the boy raved about neither book, he finished both of them before we knew it and said - with a thirteen-year-old's* nonchalance, "Oh yeah.  I liked them."  Super pleased that the (recent) classics still appeal, despite all of the new options.

Product Review: Pro Gold Breakaway Rim Basketball Hoop

Our boys love our finished basement.  They've gotten through five winters here playing a lot of "Nerf" basketball.  Although they'd had an over-the-door Nerf hoop at our smaller house, there was not a great place to use it.  The basement here is pretty perfect, although the ceiling is low and Charlie can dunk while flat-footed.

Due to the ease of dunking, we had a succession of Nerf hoops of the typical sort - a cardboard backboard with a plastic rim.  These tended to fail at the same weak points - a) the cardboard slot into which the hoop inserts, b) the thinner cardboard slit where the over-the-door hook inserts and more rarely c) plastic hoop itself.  Not a single hoop of this variety survived its time in the basement without serious plastic packing tape repairs or reinforcements. None of them lasted more than four or five months, either.

A few Christmases ago, Santa stepped up his game and brought the boys a POOF brand Pro Gold over-the-door hoop with a shatterproof plastic backboard and a metal breakaway

rim.  Unlike Nerf hoops, it comes with an inflatable ball about the same size.  Our boys use that ball interchangeably with various Nerf balls.  

The hoop has survived near daily winter use.  The rim tilts down now, as almost all toy hoops seem too before too long.  But the metal rim is much more solid than the plastic ones, which enables one to occasionally make non-swish free throws and jump shots.  The backboard has taken incredible abuse (the closet door will never really be the same again) and stood up to it.  Pricewise, it's about twice as much as a cardboard and plastic hoop but has lasted at least four times as long already without a single repair.  Plus, it looks cooler.

As always with CompetentParent product reviews, I have received no compensation from the POOF-Slinky corporation.  I'm just telling you what I like.

Sunday Haiku: Nap, interrupted

I can't take a good
nap in this house unless it's
completely empty.

Sunday Haiku: Hypo Con Man

He sure grimaces

when he remembers which part

of his body hurts

Wild Dogs

My boys love to stop in one little room at our local natural history museum that features a rather old-school nature video. The museum's famous dinosaur collection has interactive screens, some of which offer quite cool learning experiences. The nature video, though, captures their attention despite a little screen, stentorian old narration, strange little scrolling video notations and the really uncomfortable, sunken upholstery backless bench you sit on to watch it.

The video shows young animals of several different species play fighting: monkeys, wild dogs, big cats. Many of the scenarios depict young animals playing with their parents, pointing out that the play fighting helps the young learn tactics and test their physical limits. The video came to mind after a fierce wrestling match with the boys the other night. We were doing pretty much the same thing as the monkeys and dogs. There are lots of things that either mommy or daddy can do with kids, but this wrestling does seem to be the special provenance of daddies. With the four-year-old, I know that I can do certain things but he gets scared and can get hurt more easily than his eight-year-old brother. The eight-year-old holds nothing back, and I can be rougher with him. He still, though, lacks any real sound strategy to defeat me besides tickling, and I can neutralize that because I'm still relatively stronger enough to grab his wrists and redirect them wherever I like.

When I joined my wife's family, the vigor with which my father-in-law and brother-in-law wrestled alarmed me. It produced a certain cognitive dissonance to watch them bash around a living room whose decor that tended to the anglophile antiques. It was the nature video with a different species and in a very different habitat. I wrestled and punched and fought that way with my brother, but never with my dad. I'm not sure why. I do know that we tested our mettle against each other in an activity that was not an option for my FIL: sports. He's just not a sports guy, but he was willing to wrestle the heck out of his son right up to college. It definitely stopped before my BIL joined the Marine Corps, which was a good decision for my FIL's health and longevity.

Although my dad and I didn't engage in the wild dog training regimen as I said, my brother, he and I did have a venue in which to test limits: one on one basketball. My brother and I played a lot of one on one in the church gym while our parents were upstairs doing, you know, church stuff. By the time I was in middle school and early high school, the three of us played a lot of pickup basketball. My dad had a map in his head of every playground court within five miles of our house, and we would drive from court to court looking for "comp" (competition). If we couldn't find anyone else or at the end of the evening, when everyone else went home, we'd play one on one against each other. I still remember a cold fall night when I was 13, maybe just 14 when my dad and I played a series of games in which he wasn't holding anything back and he couldn't hold me off. Although I believe he won the best of 3 or 5 games, it was toe to toe. As we traded baskets and defensive stops, we both knew the transition point that we'd reached, and it both exhilarated and scared us a little.

When I wrestle with the boys, they still seem relieved that they can't lick me. They like perceiving me as a wall that they can hurl themselves at without really getting hurt. It makes them feel secure. I like it too, knowing that I can master these two ineffectual ninjas. There will come a day, of course, when they're pinning me down, and I'm crying uncle. I hope when that day arrives, we'll notice it and mark it and share the thrill.

Hello Boy!

Making one's way around tourist Cambodia - and to a lesser degree, Vietnam - with Teddy is like traveling with Justin Bieber. Not exactly, though, because although teenage girls lead the charge of adoring Teddy, everyone of every age and stripe there loves a little, blond, blue-eyed boy. Maybe it's more like traveling through Germany with David Hasselhoff. That sounds strange, I know, and before experiencing it, we were totally unprepared for it.

In restaurants, at the temples and in markets, people would call out "Hello, boy!" Groups would ogle and smile and giggle. Rather often, people would reach out and stroke his cheek with the backs of their hands or touch his buzz cut and say "so cute!" This included a uniformed guard outside the Prime Minister's residence in Phnom Penh. For the most part, Teddy took to this just fine; he's as comfortable with adoration as I assume the young Mr. Bieber is.

Traveling with four blond boys, we saw this reaction frequently, although Teddy being the youngest in our group and still carrying a tiny bit of baby fat got the most attention. His cousins - 9 and 7 - deal with this kind of public attention "at home" in Vietnam often and have tired of it.

In general, people commented on our family having four boys (and no girls) saying "so lucky!" That's true in a culture in which sons care for their aging parents. I observe that mostly daughters care for their elders in our culture and expect that Paige and I will be more or less alone in our dotage. Perhaps we should pray that the boys marry women of the dutiful sort.

If I do meet Justin Bieber, I'll say "Hello, boy!" and stroke his cheek. Until then, I'll just enjoy the fact that I get to spend so much time with the blond, beautiful heartthrobs of Cambodia.