It has been our father-and-son tradition for Kai and I to carve Halloween pumpkins together. Years ago, I did all of the carving, but in the past couple of years Kai has started to carve much of the jack-o-lanterns after I got things started. This year, I had to go away for the weekend so Kai did the carving all on his own.
He even used the occasion to make one of his YouTube videos, complete with a little Kai humor.
He went on to finish up his jack-o-lantern.
The kid is growing up fast. He did a nice job all on his own.
Kai is still making his YouTube videos, usually 3 or 4 every week. Here's a short one he made last weekend when we were on the beach in southwest Michigan.
The water was frigid. My ankles were numb just filming and I didn't dare submerge my whole body that day. But hopefully you can tell that Kai had a great time!
Kai’s obsessions the past few months have been plushies and videos; specifically making videos with his plushies and then posting them onto YouTube.
While most kids start to get into plushies when they are toddlers, Kai never showed much interest in them until this year. But like with most things he takes an interest in, his interest quickly became an obsession. Mostly with the money he’s been earning for his allowance (for doing assorted simple chores), he’s assembled a fairly vast collection of plushies.
For a much longer time, he’s enjoyed watching various silly videos on YouTube. But recently he’s started to make his own videos that have been partially inspired by the videos he watches.
He asked that his own videos be posted on YouTube. I think he has aspirations of being a YouTube star with a million views. I’m not even sure I like the idea of him making these videos let alone having them viewed by millions of strangers.
With a bit of trepidation, my wife and I have been his cameramen and helped him make the videos. I can rationalize it as a modern form of imaginative play of sorts. But I insisted that the videos be loaded as Restricted, not Public (which means that only the people that have been provided the URL or link can view the video).
I won’t be sharing most of the videos, but he created one specifically for the Fourth of July that is not too long and will give you a small taste of what he’s been up to. (You may want to skip ahead to the 4:30 mark for the exciting part).
By the way, we do not permit him to drink caffeinated soft drinks (and rarely any soda of any kind), but after we were done filming and when I went to get the hose to clean up, he took several big swigs from the leftover Diet Coke. That night, he woke us up a few times complaining that he could not sleep. No more Diet Coke for this guy!
