My first week returning to a stay-at-home dad status is nearly at an end. The first day was a bit of a bumpy ride, but we got through it. By the third day I was actually able to get a little bit of writing for http://www.darkdestinations.com/ done. I revised an article about Richardson High School in Richardson, Texas. It has an unfortunate anniversary today that is tied in with a popular 1990s song.

By Thursday, I was back in the swing of things enough to get back in practice with Kyra's hair. After roughly half a year of not dealing directly with those curls, I'm afraid I didn't do so hot a job on her hair the first few days. She was happy with the results on Thursday.


Next week Kyra and I will be touring a local elementary school that we are interested in having her attend. It has a progressive approach to teaching. It has multi-age classrooms and has a International Baccalaureate program. Kristy and I attended a meeting with teachers, parents and students from there last night. The students are encouraged to be outgoing, outspoken and to develop a love of learning through exploration rather than just having facts thrown at them and being expected to remember them. I think the school would be a great match for her. Enrollment is lottery-based, so we're crossing our fingers that she gets in. Getting our kids into this school could make our 2009 upheaval ultimately worth it.

In Eli news: Our little giant has been stepped up to 3 full feedings of cereal and one snack before bed. Replacing the usual bottle of formula before bed with a bit more cereal definitely seems to help him sleep through the night without waking up hungry a few times thoughout the night.

Earlier in the week, Eli had his first taste of sour. He sucked on a lime. He made a horrible face at first and seemed almost ready to cry after the first taste but then suddenly smiled and dove back down for more. We still haven't found a food that this kid doesn't like! Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough to grab my camera and capture his initial reaction. Here are photos of his later enjoyment of the lime.





Mmmmmmmm. Lime. :)

The Return of Son (and Daughter) of the Horror Dad Journal

The Horror Dad Journal will be returning in 2010, ending the extended break it has been on. I'll have to change the subtitle to "Stay-at-Home Dad with a Part-time Job."

My family and I continue to live with my mother. I've been working a low-paying full-time overnight security job for months. The schedule (1 am to 9 am) has made it difficult to spend time with my kids. Luckily, Kristy landed a job with a good hospital out here (with only a week to spare on her unemployment!). So, I am switching back to being a stay-at-home father during the day and will be looking for part-time supplemental income during the evenings. I will also be returning to writing (and thanks to being back in Rochester, possibly even filmmaking again). Unfortunately, we're still saddled with the old house back where we used to live. Hopefully it sells soon so we can finally stop making payments on a place we no longer live in and can move on with our lives.


In the time since I last wrote an entry, Eli has grown immensly in size. He is 98th percentil in weight and 100th percentile in height. He outgrows clothes faster than we can buy them. At 9 months of age, he's weighing 25 pounds and wearing clothing meant for 18-24 months of age. Kyra also began preschool in the fall and is absolutely loving it. She also insisted that we do a zombie walk this year, and even though I wasn't really feeling in the Halloween spirit this year, she got her old man out there and shambling with her and the other undead the night before Halloween. She was a vampire for Halloween itself.



I hope everyone has a Happy New Year. See you again in 2010!

Nightmares and Hallucinations

Kyra woke up just a bit ago from a nightmare. She had a bad dream in which she was being chased by Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons. It is odd how most of her bad dreams seem to be caused by animation. She used to regularly have nightmares about Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go.

We recently discovered that, like her father, Kyra has sleep hallucinations. Early last week, she woke up shrieking because her bed was covered in insects only she could see. At least she isn't sleep-walking like my brother and I did when we were young. I've read up on night terrors, hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations and sleep paralysis. None of them really seem to fit what my daughter and I experience. The experience is not always a frightening one. In all but one instance I've been able to move freely and talk while having the hallucinations. They also happen in the middle of my sleep cycle rather than at the beginning or end as with hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations. I've experienced both of those (mainly the former) and they really don't compare with the hallucinations I get in the middle of the night.

As a child, I would wake to find "ghosts" in my room. I could tell that I was no longer sleeping and felt awake, only there would be things in my room that shouldn't have been. An example: One night at age eight I woke up to see a man standing alongside my bed, staring out my window. The man, who didn't seem to notice me, was completely the same shad of white, from his hair to his skin to his clothes; the details of his appearance were black lines as if the man had been drawn on paper. He stood between my bed and my brother's crib. Frightened, I pulled the covers over my head so that he couldn't see me. I managed to fall back to sleep. Later, I awoke, suffocating under my blankets. I dared a peek out from under the bed clothes, only to see that the man had been replaced with a woman who was completely black with white lines, almost like a film negative. She was hanging by a noose in the same spot. As I stared in horror, she rotated on her creaking rope, so that she faced toward me. Her face was swollen and her tongue protruded from her mouth. I dove back under my covers and did not emerge until there was sunlight. It didn't help that I'd never heard of sleep hallucinations and was raised by a mother who was convinced that I was seeing actual ghosts... just like she did.

In my early 20s I terrified my ex-wife one night when I hallucinated a wraith in our bedroom that was trying to get her. She woke up to find me over her prone body, wrestling with something she could not see. The "wraith" evaporated in moments. It was the first time I began to get a clue about what was really happening. The wraith had been a dead ringer for the ones in Patrick Swayze flick Ghost that I'd watched earlier that week on cable. I was able to get back to sleep, but she spent the rest of the night awake and scared that something supernatural was coming to get her. It is the only instance where a nightmare I had caused someone else more fear than me.

Over time my hallucinations have changed to primarily be animals. I've woken up to a tarantula tickling my lip and to feel water dripping on my head, only to look up and see that the water was dripping from a dead rat that is now plunging toward my face. Those times caused me to throw back my blankets, startling our cats. Kristy has adjusted pretty well to it over the years, and carries on conversations with me while in this waking-sleep state. Once she woke to me telling her not to move, because I could see a cobra coiled between us, swaying its hooded head back and forth. She held a conversation with me during one of the few non-threatening hallucinations once. I was sitting up and staring over the edge of the bed at a glowing starfish that was crawling around the floor, playing with my sneakers and probing at the clothes laying next to the bed. I'd seen the movie Minority Report earlier that day. The star fish resembled one of the little robots that scurry about in that film.

I explained the hallucination thing to Kyra as best I could. She's still a bit too young to fully grasp the concept, but at least she's not going to spend decades thinking that a trick of the mind passed down through genetics is something supernatural and scary like I did for far too long.

...and Still Waiting...

Kristy is now five days overdue with the baby. We get phone calls, emails and instant messages on a continuous basis asking if the baby has arrived yet. This morning, my father-in-law called and asked if anything was "going to happen in the next couple of hours" because he needed to go out and run errands. I told him that as far as we knew nothing was happening.

My mother has been staying with us the past two weeks to help out. She took Kyra to a local playgroup this morning while Kristy and I stayed home. When they returned Kyra had a funny conversation with Kristy. Kristy mentioned to Kyra that she'd taken a shower. Kyra asked if it was a "baby shower." Kristy told her that it had been a regular shower. Kyra replied, "Every time you take a shower with the baby inside you, it's a baby shower.”

Last week I bought a new Duncan Butterfly yo-yo and have been playing around with it. Back when I was in the Air Force I got into the yo-yo habit. It was something I used to do to pass the time while waiting to service aircraft. It is sort of like pacing, only it annoys people less and is healthier than smoking. It's been a while since I carried a yo-yo on me like some folks carry a pack of cigarettes. I passed my old worn yo-yo on to Kyra to play with. She likes to drag it around on the floor. So she has part of "walking the dog" down.

Kristy has an appointment with her mid-wife tomorrow. Hopefully we'll be discussing an inducement plan in case Elijah keeps hitting his snooze button.

If She Had Been a Ninja...

This morning, when I went to wake Kyra up, I saw a Kyra-sized lump under her blankets. As I reached out to the lump to wake her up, Kyra called out from behind me. She was hiding underneath of her brother's crib. She'd taken a pillow under there and slept there in her makeshift shelter all night. She fooled me, so I'm sure she also fooled the closet monsters.

Lucky for me, Kyra isn't a ninja. I so would have wound up with a blowdart in the back of my neck had she been.

Reminder to self: Don't get Kyra blowguns or shuriken for her birthday.

Funeral, Angering Prison Guards and Still Waiting for the Baby

We made it to the funeral service and back home without going into labor.

Kyra has been having a tough time with Grandma Frieda's death. She seemed not to be affected much by the news at first, but that night she started crying at bedtime. She said she was crying about an old stuffed animal of hers (named "Boo Bear") that she had placed in the crib for her brother many weeks back. She was suddenly worried she was never going to see Boo Bear again. We had a talk and what was really bothering her quickly became apparent - knowledge of what had happened with Grandma Frieda had sunk in.

We've had a few talks about Frieda and the grief that Kyra is feeling. She seems to be dealing pretty well with it overall. Kyra made cards for Frieda by cutting and decorating construction paper, writing the words "Kyra", "Mom", "Dad" and "Nana" on the pieces and gluing googly eyes to them. This morning we placed Kyra's cards in Frieda's coffin along with the photos of Frieda's cats and great grandchildren that had been placed there by other relatives. The service was well done and now Frieda is back with her husband Bob, who passed away a couple of years back. When our son is born, we're giving him the middle name Robert in honor of Bob.

On the way home we passed by the prison that had once held Amy Fisher. Prison articles are popular for Dark Destinations (because there are usually a ton of stories with each one), so I pulled over across the road from it and snapped a few photos. I immediately had a corrections officer pulling alongside me in a big blue truck and telling me to "Git!"

I understand prison guards having concerns, but there are no signs posted condemning photography or stopping along the road. It is a residential road. In fact, we were parked right in front of the house my wife lived in as a toddler right across from the prison. I'm aware of my photography rights and was well within them with what I was doing. However, I'd already gotten enough shots and am not in the habit of arguing with surly liver-spotted prison guards (especially when I have a woman in the car who could go into labor at any time). We mosied along and had an otherwise uneventful trip home.

Now we should be staying put at home until Eljah decides to be born finally.

Growing Pains

Kyra definitely seems on the track to becoming a tall person. She's taller than most kids her age and continually suffers from growing pains around her knees. We can usually tell which nights she will have growing pains as her appetite is usually voracious in the day leading up to it. She'll suddenly transform from her usual slow-eating goofing around meal time habits to devouring everything like a piranha and asking for more. We've taken to giving her pre-emptive strikes of Tylenol just before bed on nights such as that. It decreases the number of times she wakes up crying in pain.

I remember my own mother using Bengay ointment to try to calm my own growing pains as a child. Kyra's the type of kid who would somehow find a way to get the ointment into her eyes even if she's zipped into footy pajamas with a padlock on the zipper. My wife's grandmother stated that her mother used rubbing alcohol on her legs to soothe growing pains. I don't see how that would help. It seems like that would only have cooling and disinfecting effects. It left me curious as to what other means people have come up with for helping kids who are going through growing pains. Anyone have any homeopathic (or otherwise) means of reducing growing pains?

Various Kyra Pictures Taken During the Holidays

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Bella dancerella: Enchanted Tales

Over this past weekend we got together with some of our family for Christmas gatherings (more to come later in the week). My dad and stepmother gave Kyra a number of presents, including a toy called Bella dancerella: Enchanted Tales. The toy is one of the many Disney Princess items I see all over the place. We opened the toy up for Kyra to play with this morning. She absolutely loves it.

The toy comes in three parts; a DVD, a dance mat and a magical princess wand. The wand is actually magical and turns little brothers into frogs. Alright, maybe not... but it does light up in different colors and make different sounds based on which of three Disney Princesses the child chooses on a selector (Ariel, Aurora and Belle). The dance mat is not electronic and is just a guide to various foot placements during certain dances shown on the DVD. The DVD itself features live dancers in princess/ballet costumes along with clips from Disney films. They dance and sing six different Disney songs. It basically equates out to a aerobic workout for the child. Unlike the electronic dance games, the child isn't just stepping on sensors on a mat: they are working their entire body. It had my daughter dipping, stretching her arms up and moving all over the place.

The toy gets a big thumbs up from me as a parent and as for Kyra's review, just look at the expressions on her face as she danced to it this morning (note: the princess clothing didn't come with the toy being discussed; Kyra just wore it for the occasion). She's danced to it three times already today. Thanks Dad and Kathy!

Rewards

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I'd discuss the rewards we're using in attempting to guide Kyra towards positive behaviors. During the initial potty training stages we used stickers as rewards for using the potty. It worked well for a while, but because she also gets sticker books as gifts, the novelty seemed to wear out quick for her. Back in April, after her time with daycare ended and she began to stay home with me, her potty training regressed a bit, most likely because of the changes in her schedule. That and she was probably a little upset at not seeing Lori, her daycare provider, on a regular basis anymore. Lori was, and still is, very close with Kyra. She stops by for visits and even volunteered to babysit Kyra for free so that they could hang out. Lori has a son that is slightly older than Kyra and Kyra loves him too.

Anyhow, back to rewards. We resorted to using candy for a short while. It worked, but we were doling out too much of it. We stopped, rather than risk tooth decay. Currently, for potty training we've switched to using a chart that tracks each day she hasn't had an accident. She puts a sticker on each day that she doesn't. At the end of 7 days of stickers in a row, she gets to pick a toy out of a bag full of dollar store toys we purchased as rewards. This has worked great. She hasn't had an accident since we started the program. She's also begun to show more of a tendency to use the potty at night. On her chart, we don't count wet pull-ups that were worn while sleeping. However, we give her praise for the times she's had a dry pull-up in the morning and used the potty at night. It seems to be working very well.

This past week, I began trying rewards that would be less cluttering (this kid really doesn't need more toys). I dug out a box from storage that had my toys in it from when I was a kid. I've now been rewarding positive behavior with allowing her some time with these "special" limited-availability toys. I put them back away after the playtime is over so she has to earn them again. It works. It also helps that I was a child of the 1970s and she's currently on a Star Wars kick (She currently sleeps with Star Wars McDonald's toys her Uncle Shawn gave her). So, she's thrilled when I pull out the old Star Wars action figures and the toy lightsaber my best friend Lance gave me as a gift back in the mid-1990s. I also have a toy that was given to me as a gag gift years ago. It's an electronic toy that looks like Frankenstein Monster's head. It talks and you can pull off pieces of it's facial anatomy in a variety of games. That too has been a reward hit.

Earlier in the week, while experimenting with getting Kyra to clean up her playroom by using fractions of the room rather than time increments, I tried another type of reward. After each quarter of the room was picked up, she was rewards with "dance time." I'd play a song on a CD and we'd dance crazy together. It was a hit. It wasn't the dancing to music itself, which she gets to do regularly anyway, it was the fact that daddy was there dancing with her. It was fun. I also got some cardio exercise out of it and it was another bonding experience. It's a total hit.

On a further note, Kyra's now dancing the "Time Warp" at times, even when there's no music to go with it.

My Friend the Increment

Lately I've been finding it easier working with my preschooler by making tasks or requests that are broken into increments of either time or scope. I've tried using a timer while getting her to clean up her toys. I set it for 10 minutes of cleanup time, then set it for 5 minutes of playtime break. I alternated back and forth until the room was clean. The process took a long time, but did achieve results without dad having to resort to threatening to throw out toys.

Yesterday, I tried something new in setting her a goal of picking up toys in a quarter of her playroom, followed by a reward and then having her return to clean another quarter of the room. The effect was far faster and more effective in achieving a measurable and noticeable difference for each increment.

This morning I wanted a little bit of quiet time so I could work on some writing. I set the timer and told Kyra when it went off she would get a reward (more on rewards in a future blog) if she managed to play quietly during that time without making a large mess. In this instance, the timer was ineffective. Within moments she was in the den, tugging on my shirt and looking for me to entertain her. A few moments later, she was back again. Reminding her of our deal didn't work one bit.

I asked what she could do on her own that she'd like that would give me the time I needed. Kyra asked to play the toddler reading games on Starfall.com. Now, she's quietly playing on our old PC with headphones on with me a couple feet away working on the newer PC. It has worked far better.

I recall when I was younger, how much larger increments of time seemed to me. While a few minutes seems incredibly scant to me, it may feel like forever to her. Perhaps it has to due with the physics concept of time relativity. It is said that time moves slower the closer you get to a center of gravity. Perhaps being those extra couple feet closer to the ground makes time go slower. I may just try lying on the floor all day sometime next week and see how slow the day seems to pass.

While incremental staging of tasks definitely gets a thumbs up from me, I don't see the timer really working for anything beyond setting a limit on quiet time punishment. The goal will be increments based on clear physical results. It is easier for me to measure and easier for her to understand the goal.

Meet the Family: Kyra

This is our daughter Kyra.

This is also Kyra.

She can go from Shirley Temple to Wednesday Addams in an eighth of a second. Most times she's in between the two, playing with her Cenobite action figures and her My Little Ponies (though most recently she's been on Star Wars kick). She's precocious as heck and one of the most out-going preschoolers you'll meet. She also shows definite signs of a being a blossoming horror fan herself. At age one she giggled at people in monster costumes at a horror movie convention we brought her to. The same year she was terrified upon meeting Santa Claus. She wakes up and tells us she had nice dreams about monsters, yet has woken up yelling because episodes of Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go! have worried her (the episodes where animals are in peril due to water seem to be the ones bothering her).

Her favorite monster currently is Frankenstein's monster. She fell in love with him after watching Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and The Monster Squad. She also shares her daddy's affinity for Scooby Doo. She also shows an increasing interest in music and will hopefully take after her mother in that regard (her daddy is tone-deaf).

Kyra also has an active imagination and a wonderful sense of humor. For example: When I informed her that we were having stuffed zucchini for dinner tonight, her response was to tell me she couldn't eat it because a ghost had pooped on the food. How can I argue with that? I have no conclusive means disproving the presence of invisible phantom dung!

Kyra is named after Kyra Schon, who played the role of Karen Cooper in Night of the Living Dead (1968) (hence the masonry trowel in the second picture above). So far, she's happy with the association and excitedly points out the iconic image of Kyra Schon whenever it is present on a poster, T-shirt, DVD case, etc.

The first three months of her life, I was a stay-at-home dad before she was placed in daycare so I could take a job that ate up all my time and had me as a slave to a Blackberry device 24/7 365 (even on vacation/holiday/whatever). After going through a couple of years of my job making everyone in our family miserable, we looked at the figures and realized that with us planning on having a second child, the job that demanded so much of my time was barely worth it if we had to pay for daycare for two kids. I left my job in April, 2008. Just a bit shy of 3 years old, Kyra had her daddy back. It's been an experience for both of us over the past seven months.

Kyra is very excited about becoming a big sister next year.