A Different Field of Dreams

Today’s column in the Patch takes a look at my dreams of playing catch with my son.

Click here for the full article.

Gentlemen, Start Your Numbers!

My son is becoming a fan of NASCAR.

When we were watching the Super Bowl, Kai saw a promo for the Daytona 500 and asked what that was. I explained that it was a car race and he said that he wanted to see it.

I was a bit surprised, given that Kai has never been much of a “car guy.” Like most boys, he’s received many toy cars as birthday and Hanukkah and Christmas presents over the years. But, unlike most boys, he rarely plays with any of them.

I thought that he might forget about the race; I certainly did. However, this past Sunday, he reminded me that it was going to be on. So, as with the Super Bowl, we turned on the television in the family room, prepared some of Kai’s favorite party foods, and got Mom to join us.

His interest in watching the race had nothing to do with the racing action or the speed of the cars. He was not even interested in all of the crashes.

The reason he wanted to watch was all of the numbers. Of course.

43 cars! Each with their own number! Oh my!

Kai was pulling for 24 and 48, but was just as excited when 88 took the lead. He even went to get his toy race cars so he could simulate the action on the coffee table. I had to blow the dust off of them before they would get on the tortilla chips.

In addition to the numbers on the cars, his favorite part of the race was keeping track of the laps. There would be 200 laps to count. Woo hoo! At 50 laps, he declared that the race was one-fourth over. Nothing like calculating fractions to get my boy interested in cars.

The 200th lap was thrilling. He let out a loud whoop that number 21 had won, though I’m pretty sure he would have done that no matter who won.

He’s already asking when the next race will be. So, it looks like we’ll be watching a lot of NASCAR races on Sundays.

As a guy who likes sports, I’ll enjoy it. NASCAR isn’t quite up there with football, but it’s exciting nonetheless. But, the best part is, I get to have more father-and-son bonding time with Kai. Go 48!

Super Sunday – Almost

My son had shown little interest in watching sports with me until a couple of weeks ago when we watched the Chicago Bears played the Green Bay Packers in the NFC championship game. At that time, Kai was very revved up and determined to see the entire game.

I wondered if that was a one-time event or if he would be just as interested in watching the Super Bowl. Being a football fan, and an American, I had to see the big game, of course. So, I’ve been prepping him for the past two weeks, telling him how fun it would be and that we would have a party as we watched in the family room. My wife said we would have chips and salsa and chili which are some of Kai’s favorites.

As we neared game time, everything was going according to plan. Kai was very excited. He took his bath in the afternoon so he wouldn’t have to miss any of the action. He even was looking forward to the commercials and the halftime show. When we turned on the TV and brought out the chips, he was all set. Everything was perfect.

Well, not quite.

I started to feel sick. By the time the game started, I had a fever and felt achy all over. Although I think that Christina Aguilera’s excruciating rendition of the national anthem was what really pushed me over the edge.

I sat on the far end of the couch away from my wife and son and tried my best to show some enthusiasm game. But, I felt too miserable. I wanted to at least stay up for the halftime show but I couldn’t even do that.

Kai, however, had a magnificent time. My wife tells me that he watched until it was his bedtime. His favorite part was the halftime show as he danced enthusiastically along with the music.

I’m sorry I missed it. But, it makes me feel a little better knowing that next football season I may be able to enjoy more father-and-son bonding on Sunday afternoons.

Now, all we need are the owners and players to reach an agreement so that we can have a season.

Bear Down

The Chicago Bears played the Green Bay Packers yesterday in what was one of the most anticipated football games in recent Chicago sports history. 

Before yesterday, my son had shown little interest in watching sports on television.  I think a lot of dads try to infuse their own love of sports onto their sons.  I haven’t had too much success at it with Kai, however, though I usually don’t force it on him too much. 

But, I really wanted to see yesterday’s game, so I set expectations that Dad would be watching football most of the afternoon.  Kai said that he would watch, too.  My wife set up lunch in the family room to make it more of a special event. 

As game-time neared, Kai got more and more excited.  But, I was still skeptical about how long he would be interested in watching.  Before, he would watch for short periods.  Numbers, such as the score and clock, would attract his attention, but it usually doesn’t last very long.  So, I almost never see more than a quarter or so of any game.

When this game started, I pointed out all the numbers in an attempt to maintain his interest: 1^st quarter; 1^st down; 10 yards to go; 35 yard line; 65 yards to go for a touchdown.  There are a lot of numbers in football.

As the Bears fell behind quickly, my enthusiasm for the game diminished a bit.  But, Kai still wanted to watch.

At halftime, the plan was to run out for our weekly trip to the library.  Kai protested that we would miss the game.  I insisted that we go.  What Bizarro World did I step into?  But, we had movies that were due back so we went to the library.  But, he was too angry to look for any books or movies.  He didn’t even want to find any Kidz Bop CDs.

He was angry that we ended up missing a few minutes of the game, but he settled down quickly.  For most of the second half, he was more interested in doodling numbers than in watching the game intently.  But, he still looked up when I cheered as the Bears mounted a comeback.

In the end, the Bears fell short.  But, I got to see most exciting part when I normally would be doing something else with Kai.  Maybe we can still share a father-and-son love of sports.

Now, can anyone find the Bears a better quarterback?

Bee is for Birthday

Tomorrow will be my wife’s birthday, but we celebrated it this weekend.

My son loves birthdays, and has been thinking of Mom’s for quite a while now. On Saturday morning, while we were driving from his ice skating class to his karate class, Kai asked me to stop at Walgreen’s so he could get Mom her birthday present. He knew just what he wanted to get.

We went in the store and he dashed to the cosmetics section. There is a brand of lipgloss called Wetslicks Fruit Spritzers that comes in many different flavors/colors. My son loves colors, but the real attraction for this particular product is that each flavor has a different number on the package. For Mother’s Day, he got 525 Tangerine, and 530 Watermelon. For the past five months, he has been thinking about what different numbers he would get for Mom’s birthday. He decided on 520 Papaya and 535 Raspberry, and also picked out a Peanuts birthday card for her.

On Sunday morning, while my wife was out working, Kai and I prepared for the birthday dinner we would have that evening. We started out with the birthday cake. Last year I tried to bake one but this time I took the easy way out and picked up a gluten-free, dairy-free cake from Whole Foods. All we had to do was to add the frosting and decorate it. Kai used decorating “pens” to write “Happy Birthday Mom.” We also wrapped his lip gloss presents and started preparations for the dinner.

In the afternoon, after my wife came home, he wanted to play ten different sports together with me and Mom. We had all ten picked out and started with football, before proceeding to baseball (or, at least, his Kai Ball version of baseball), then basketball, hockey, and golf. It was a beautiful day out and perfect for playing all these sports.

But, we never got past sport number five.

As we were cleaning up the golf equipment, we suddenly heard Kai scream, “A bee!” When we turned to look at him, he was clutching his finger and screaming, “I NEED A BAND-AID!” We did not see a bee, and I managed to unclutch his hand long enough to see that there was no stinger in his hand. He did not appear to be having any type of allergic reaction.

Still, the screaming was relentless. We took him inside. While I went on the internet to google “bee sting,” Kai was in panic mode as he emptied the contents of the medicine cabinet looking for a box of band aids. While my wife attempted to calm him, I discovered that as long as there is no allergic reaction, there is nothing to do except use ice to reduce the swelling.

I returned to the terrorized one and tried to gently put ice on his finger. In the midst of all his blood curdling screams, my wife asked him, “Are you sure it was a bee?” This boy, who usually takes forever to answer any of our questions, immediately replied, “YES, I’M SURE!”

The screaming continued. “I NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW! I NEED TO GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM!” We told him that he would be all right and that there was no need to go to the emergency room.

With tears in his eyes, he looked up at me and said, “Dad, I’m not going to see you anymore” as if he was about to depart for the hereafter.

The whole episode lasted for several minutes, though I’m sure it seemed much longer to Kai. When he finally started to calm down, I said, “If the pain was 100% at its worst, how much is it now?” He replied that it was 70%. A little while later it was 50%. Before too long, it went down some more. After that, worn out by his bee trauma, he took a rare afternoon nap.

When he awoke, I made dinner and we had our birthday celebration. We ate dinner, Kai and I sang the “Happy Birthday” song, and Mom opened her presents. Mom liked the lip gloss and birthday card that Kai picked out. We all liked the cake from Whole Foods.

But, best of all, my wife and I both loved that Kai was so enthusiastic about celebrating Mom’s birthday and did so much to make it fun.

Now, that’s really worth screaming about!

To see more pictures, visit Hanabi Boy on Facebook.

Are You Ready for Some Kai Ball?

The turning of the calendar reminds me that we are entering that special time of year – prime sports season!  When I was single, October was one of my favorite months.  My two favorite sports are in high gear.  Baseball season comes to an exciting finish with the playoffs and World Series while football is ramping up into mid-season.  As an avid sports fan, you can’t do better than that.

As a father though, I haven’t had time to watch many games.  My attempts to interest my son in sports have been met with only limited success.  In fact, the most success I had actually happened by chance. 

In June, while Kai was getting probes attached to his head for his 48-hour EEG, we turned on the television to keep him distracted.  A baseball game was on.  Although he previously had not shown much interest, this game caught his attention when it went into extra innings.  With his love of numbers, the discovery that a game could go to two-digits was positively thrilling for Kai.  It took quite a long time for the technician to attach all the probes and I was concerned that the game would end and so would Kai’s patience with the getting the probes put on.  But, we were lucky that the game lasted long enough for the technician to finish up.

For the next several weeks, Kai wanted to watch baseball at dinnertime instead of his usual videos.  It was my good fortune that his interest coincided with the White Sox’ best hot streak of the season.  I actually was able to watch several games as the Sox moved into first place.  But, as the summer went on, Kai’s interest in baseball faded, as did the Sox’ winning ways.

Kai’s interest in playing sports is, so far, only mildly more than in watching it on television.  We recently had the bad, and then good experience with soccer.  But, overall, he just has not been too interested in playing.

So, it’s been my pleasant surprise lately that he has asked me to go play baseball with him in the front yard.  Now, playing baseball with Kai is not like playing baseball with other kids.  In fact, it’s not really baseball at all.  I call it Kai Ball.

The only part that resembles baseball is that a ball is pitched and the batter hits it.  What happens after that is more a combination of tag and football.  The batter, usually Kai, runs around while the pitcher, usually me, grabs the ball and chases him.  There are no bases, just a lot of running all over the yard.  For a little guy, he runs really fast.  But, eventually I’ll chase him down and grab him.  If I’m not too exhausted, I’ll spin him around before gently “tackling” and tickling him.  Between the running and spinning, I’m usually dizzy and ready to pass out, but he sure loves it.  The best part for me is hearing him laugh and laugh throughout all the chasing and tackling. 

This October, I am not sure how many football games I will watch.  I probably won’t see too much of the World Series.  But, if I get in a few more games of Kai Ball, I will be happy.  After all, it’s now my new favorite sport.