I know, I know, but I was told this by my Kindergartner tonight while lying down with him.

2 weeks of elementary school for my son, two bike crashes for yours truly enroute to school. Not high speed skids and roadrash epic crashes you see, but those slow humiliating, I see those coming thuds; worst thing is my first one was right in front of the 1^st grade teacher lady. AKA the humiliating, you didn’t really see that did you, kind of crash.

At least I am teaching the kids the value of a bike helmet, which I’ve been struggling with lately with my 5 YO. Ya, that’s it!

I was getting off my bike because of the young, growing crowd, you know being responsible and trying to show proper etiquette but I had my Bob attached and my foot got caught on my rear pack making me fall when she came over and tried to pick me up from under the arms causing her to strain in her attempt. I got up myself and thanked her. Parked my bike and commenced in our morning ritual of finding a place to park his bike, stow his helmet in the Bob and then locking his bike; I deposit him in line to get his name badge teacher cheat with little Miss Brooke, then I can punch-out for 5 hours and leave for a Dad Ride ending at the KS mini Starbucks a mile away.

Then there was this morning, we hung at the playground for 5 minutes longer than we should have before riding the rest of the way to Rock Ridge, mistake! Foot traffic of moms and kids were everywhere and within 50 feet of the bike park zone I made a wide birth through the grass to catch up with my son around the last group of three foot passengers. I tried to merge back onto the sidewalk over a three inch sidewalk curb edge from some dirt when my front tire hit the edge and just skidded left sending me into a slow roll to the right where I could either try and take on a 4 foot brick wall fence, or try and melt the best I could before I impacted the wall; I opted for the later. Let me explain before I get too far along, I run semi bald mountain bike tires I inherited from my wife when she decided for real mtn. bike slicks for Ride the Rockiestwo years ago and they had no gripchion to climb the small step and just skidded forward sending me down.

Anyway, as I lie there in a hump with my Bob folded around me, this mom comes running up saying “this makes my epic morning” and tried to pick me up under the arms like the teacher did, baby like. As she grunted and groaned she asked me if I could walk, I said yes I can walk I’m not even bleeding but my ego is another matter. I thanked her untangled my mechanical mess and walked to carry our morning drop off ritual out.
That must have been a good looking crash and burn I just performed, Miss Brooke’s mom asked our mom tonight at pickup if I was OK because she saw the whole thing but didn’t want to rush over me like the rest, giving me some needed space.

We “knuckled” our have a good day departing ritual, and I set out for the biggest bike hill I could find to punish me. This hill I have been a little scared to ride up, but not today.

That hill was nothing and will be on my “daily” till the snow flies. I got home did another 15,000 aerobic steps to give me 21,000 aerobics for the day and was happy and tired; my bike does not count steps so that bike spin is added aerobic value.
I had lunch and caught a 30 minute power nap before my dishes duty in the kitchen. Got the kitchen back in order and had time to post yesterdays 365 photo before heading to Denver for a fitness program meeting that we are designing, all without training wheels!

Today’s 365 made me feel better and it was so worth the humiliation!

Click here for my 365…

Totally online!

Yes, you heard it here first. We have an online catalog of merchandise to sell for our son’s 1^st fundraising event of the year and it is all online!

I mean you still have the option of going around and knocking on doors door to door even though the brochure does not recommend it, and who wants that?
Any sane parent will agree this is the way to go.

Here is the link: I left out his ID number out of privacy concerns and you can see the brochure on my 365.

Everytime this happens in my day it is just too cool.  We’ve come along way in five years, my little man!  And I thought pulling you in the Burley was great, then you could stop and start on two wheels and then things got really good!

Not to brag or anything, but seing the guy do things that older neighborhood kids have not mastered yet like swimmimg in the big boy pool for real, not just splashing in the baby pool makes me just a little prideful (that’s MY boy), then there is racing me on our bikes to and from the local shopping stripette are just some of the things my 5 and a half, 1/2 year old can do.

I upgraded this Blog yesterday without a problem so I thought I would backup my 365 and upgrade it as well! 

Wrong!  I got as far as creating a folder on my hard drive but never FTP’d the data back to me because of well, 5 YO driven hot spot fires and I got redirected without performing the backup.  Then the wheels came off my Project 365and it crashed after an upgrade .  So once again you may get errors when clicking on a 365 link.

I was able to resuscitate the database but my data files went away.  I am not sure what or why it happened, only that it didn’t happen as intended.  No problem I thought this morning after sleeping it away, or so hoping.  I went to the folder and it had 0 bytes in it, then it all came back, the thrashes I was put through yesterday with all the rain and my son not being able to go outside without an umbrella.  He had an umbrella at times yesterday but was always losing it after all of my threats of “do not break the umbrella”.  So he one uped me and didn’t break his umbrella, he just lost it, which made me lose my 365, and I didn’t even loose it!

Oh great!  A tornado warning has just been issued for the next 30 minutes!  Sa Weet!! 

Gotta go…

Yep, my son got his Red Power Ranger glasses and see great now for Kindergarten.  Not only that, he looks good as well! 

Getting your kids eyes examed before school starts should be a requirement for good parenting!

You can see him on my 365.

Every day after day camp we ask our son what he learned or did today at his Y sponsored camp and we get the old “oh nothing” response.

Tonight I was laying in bed with him waiting for him to fall asleep when he started in on this story that happened today.

He was talking about swimming in our Olympic sized “Big boy” pool in third person, when his “he’s” turned into “me’s and I’s” as he went on.

It turns out he passed the swim test so he can swim in the “big boy” pool without me or mom! He swam the length without stopping or touching the lane rope or edge. He reassured mom after I told him he better tell her the big news and that he would still swim with mom in the big boy pool.

I believe what he was saying because of the detail he was using down to the color of his swim bracelet that identifies him to the lifeguards as having passed the test, as being green in color and they are, I know. Then he went into getting his name put into their log book and the lady guard couldn’t spell his last name right and he had to help her, bonus points for his correct spelling here!

Then he talked about what a long way it was to the other wall he had to swim to, and that the girl lifeguard who passed him wasn’t the regular guard, this girl had a white tank top on over her suit and it had red letters on it where our girls had red tank tops with white “Lifeguard” printed on them.

It has been my goal for him to do this and I wanted to be there for the big to do event but he was a big boy in camp and took it upon himself to get ’er done and I missed it!

Oh well, that’s my boy! If that ain’t big news in his life; I don’t know what could possibly be bigger than that!

5 years old and he can swim an Olympic length pool, which is huge! Even huger, is Kindergarten for him starts in 8 days! I wonder how that’ll rate with him, I wonder how I’ll find out about big events…

I am a proud papa! That’s my boy!

I get the feeling I am not so popular among the Metro Y summer camp staff at our clubhouse, the Ridgehouse.

We have been attending now for just over three weeks and I am paying attention and thus seeing not to mention hearing things at home and calling them on things.

Let’s see, since we have started going to the kid’s camp with kids up to 12 years old, he is bringing home a new level of tiredness brought on with a new level of nastiness. Going off topic now but still related. Two nights ago he punched mom in the stomach because he didn’t want to come inside and go to bed. We have set an 8 o’clock curfew with an 8:30 bed time, anyway, he does not try his antics with me; only mom. So much to the point, after getting socked in the gut she grabbed her keys and left saying and I quote, “I don’t need this shit”. Not knowing when or if she would return, I continued to try and harness the monster and did after he took and flung the bathroom waste can into the hallway.

I figured I would pick it up later and continue to wrangle him in, I grabbed him with a hand around each bicep and picked him up and carried him to bed and he said stop it you’re hurting me. I told him that whenever he gets him like this I am going to grab and carry him this way. Two reasons:

1. My personal safety, when I try to move him like you carry a kid normally, I get kneed in the crotch.
2. I can control him for the reason that he is in a compromising position because I have his arms, he cannot grab at corners or railings or box me in the ears as he has done his mom.

I got him to bed that night and after him whimpering and explaining that his mom was now gone and I didn’t know if she would be back or not. I told him I love him and it is hard when he gets like this and I will always be there for him and not leave him. I got him a sleep in three minutes after I was done explaining to him what he had done because he still wanted mom. Battle one was now a sleep.

Mom showed back up talking loud and still upset. I agreed with what she said and told her she has a lot of explaining to do to our son because he thinks you are now gone forever. She said why should she have to explain anything? I told her, he thinks you are gone forever and I don’t know if that was the right move or not but you need to reassure him whenever you see him again. She went to bed and was asleep in minutes. He woke up yesterday and called me to his room and when I walked in he asked “did mom come home this morning?” I said yes but she had left for work already. We got dressed and off to camp thirty minutes later.

Back on topic now. Last week he was getting tattoos drawn on him by the older kids with Magic Marker, not just little marks but big black wide arrows pointing down his arms and legs. I showed up the next day and told Miss Brigid the camp director; I was concerned about who was really in charge there, the ladies or the older kids. She assured me not so assuredly that they were in charge and why do you ask? I explained the tattoo issue and the behavior issue and brought up the nasty language he now uses after listening to the older kids. She said she does not stand for any of that when she is there and she is only there ½ the day, the other camp leader has had power issues in the past. I said it sounds like you need to talk to Lizzie and get her focused on being the person in charge and not their best friend anymore.

So far this week, things have been better, Miss Brigid is there all day and no sign of Lizzie, don’t know if she was canned or not and really don’t care, but things are better.

I told Dakota last night after another bedtime power struggle that was much tamer by the way, that there was no camp next week, we are taking a week off before Kindergarten starts the week of the 11^th. He said OK, I told him we would bike and swim as long as he was nice to his mom; otherwise it was going to be a long week for both of us staying inside. We really hated putting him back in camp this week, but I had a meeting in Denver yesterday on a project I am involved in and I wanted to give the Y staff another chance as everything else we have been involved with has been top notch!

Then this morning was another field trip and I asked Miss Brigid if they were going to watch the kids and make sure they only did age appropriate things at Jungle Quest and she said they would as she rolled her eyes.

One last comment:

I hope the Y see this as a referral hit in their stats and addresses the way Miss Briget dresses and makes her put a bra on when at work!

Sorry readers if you visited 07/15 during the day and got some mumbo jumbo sql error.  I tried an upgrade that failed miserably, good thing I backed ‘er up!  So now onto my regularly scheduled rants, raves or whatever!

This public service message was brought to you courtesy of MileHighDad’s next recent post.

Why is it that when the battery dies in your home smoke detector it always happens late at night in the kids room?

Why can’t they put a onetime per battery voltage snooze alarm button on this life saving device so when the battery does start that evil chirp reminder that it is now time to change the batteries so it does not become a full family event regardless the time?

Why can’t they program the dang thing so that when it does start that irritating chirp so the light that flashes to show it is operating properly shine continuously red when it chirps so you can easily find the offender and replace it’s battery first so it’s not a game of roulette finding and replacing the battery?

Why does the smoke detector have to go off when reconnecting the primary power source? Wouldn’t a solid red light ran by the battery be enough warning it’s not connected properly?

Why can’t they have battery backup using a NICAD battery that last more than 8-11 months before the incessant chirping starts?

I have replaced batteries before with half on my fleet using Duracell and the other half with Energizer and have found the Energizer fails first and Duracell rules! FYI, so if your batteries will not make one year till the time change in day light savings as recommended you can use the battery with the longest life.

You can’t live without them so why don’t the manufacturers cut the end user a bit of slack!

I just searched HomeDept.com before publishing this and found the same old detector in a wide range of prices.

Smoke detectors save lives and it’s agreed you need them; this At Home Dad as consumer, think it’s time to upgrade the technology!

We have put men on the moon, are computerized and deserve more from this lifesaving device!