steveprattfamily.com The adventures of the Pratt family in Vancouver - Steve, Lisa, Cedar, Dawson, and Sandy (the dog).

Our friends, The Yandles, posted this on their blog recently.  Our children became insanely jealous after watching it and made a response.  Here are both very LONG videos for your enjoyment.  Apologies if the song stays in your head for the next week!

KUNG FU YANDAS

PRATT REPLY

Posted under Children

An odd headline for someone living in Vancouver, where ‘fall’ generally means torrential rain and bone-chilling temperatures.

Yesterday, however, was spectacular.  I took full advantage and went to the beach with Cedar, Dawson, and Sandy and took some great photos…

Posted under Children, Vancouver

Spiderman and Little Red Riding Hood went out with their friends (Ben - Spiderman #2, and Bella - Fairy Princess) and canvassed the Main St. neighbourhood for sugar, salt, and fat last night.  The horrid forecast was totally wrong - it was actually pretty great - warm temperatures, no rain, and LOTS of candy.

Today, however, is another story.  The Day After has so far been a wee bit of a disaster. Sugar-addled maniacs with short attention spans, wound up like a top, fighting with each other, and all with the volume turned up to 11.

So to burn some of the crazy energy, I took the kids out to the beach for a bike ride / dog walk this morning and it was LITERALLY over two hours of non-stop, stream-of-consciousness babbling and an endless loop of annoying children’s songs blended together into the most annoying audio experience I’ve ever had…

B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, and Bingo was his name-o…
A doe, a deer, a female dear…
Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat.  If you don’t, I don’t care, I’ll pull down your underwear…
Little boxes, on the hillside, and they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same (we’ve been watching Weeds!)
Hush little lovebug, don’t say a word - the moon’s in the sky and the nighthawk is heard…
B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O…
A doe, a deer, a female deer…
There’s pink one, and a yellow one, and…
I’ll pull down your underwear.

AND ON AND ON AND ON…

AAAAAAH! It’s like having an insane person standing on your shoulder talking into your ear ALL THE TIME.

You know how sometimes evil things are described as “The Perfect Killing Machine?” (Terminator, Dick Cheney, etc)

On days like this, I think of small children as the universe’s “Perfect Annoying Machine“- efficient, effective, and completely focused on their mission to drive their elders bonkers.

I just wish that for special occassions like The Day After Halloween that the wee ones came with a mute button.  (Yes, I know I’m a heartless, horrible father…)

Posted under Children

Cedar has recently become obsessed with money.  I think it’s because she’s wanted several toys, including something called a Canadian girl that costs about $100 (!), and we’ve told her to wait until her birthday and Christmas.  She’s become frustrated that she can’t get what she wants exaclty when she wants it and has decided that getting lots and lots of money is the solution to all her problems.  (Scary how early that gets ingrained…).

Cedar and I began bargaining - she wanted me to give her $100 for doing nothing.  I told her that you don’t just get money for free because you want it - you have to earn it.  If she wants money, she has to do something of value, like chores.  I also told her that no matter how many chores she did, I would never give her $100.  Maybe $1.

After about 15 minutes of hard-core negotiations, we came up with a win-win solution yesterday.  Cedar rubbed my feet for 5 minutes and I gave her 65 cents.

The Maggot is infuriated. (She claims its horrible that I paid our daughter money to rub my feet, but I think she’s just jealous that she didn’t think of it first.)

Posted under Cedar News, Children, Humour

This is what happened when Dawson went upstairs to play with Cedar in her bedroom…

Posted under Children, Humour

Went a bit crazy with the camera at the beach this morning, but got some VERY cute pics of the kids…

Posted under Children, Vancouver

It’s Friday night and I’ve now been parenting both kids solo for 8 days.  Lisa has headed back East to visit family and friends, so I’ve taken vacation time and become full-time dad.

I’m a classic Type-A nutjob and idle time is generally my worst enemy, so it’s been quite a week.

• I toilet trained Dawson, beginning with tinkles on Saturday and moving on to poops today.  He’s been wearing Diego and Spiderman underwear for a week now.  I’m celebrating our family’s official end of diapers with a drink and sense of disbelief that 6 years of changing them every few hours, every single day is finally over.
• Sanded down and oiled an old teak deck furniture set (pictured above).
• Cleaned the entire house and the shed.
• Got Dawson his first REAL haircut (after my disaster home job)
• Took a bunch of old strollers, car seats, child swings to a) the Salvation Army, who rejected all of it b) two consignment stores, who rejected all of it  c) the dump, who accepted all of it with a payment of $6.  (so ridiculous to waste all this stuff, but NO ONE would take it!)
• Rented a boat and cruised up Indian Arm in the gorgeous sunshine (only bummer: the water was filled with jellyfish, so no swimming)
• Taught Cedar how to cut food with a knife and fork
• 5 days at the beach at low tide, making sand castles and swimming with the kids
• 1 trip to Kits Pool
• Attended 3 birthday parties and a Canada Day party (and discovered the creepiest busker EVER at Granville Island on Canada Day - see pic)
• Trimmed all the trees in our backyard
• Loaded up our garden with impatiens, marigolds, and geraniums. (thanks, Kooky!)
• Walked Stanley Park
• Stocked up on supplies: groceries, beach sandals, new bathing suits, sand toys, a lifejacket and the Diego and Spiderman undies.
• Taught the dog to jump to ridiculous heights to get a milkbone.
• AND Cedar will lose one of her teeth before tomorrow is over.  It’s hanging
  by a disgusting thread of flesh in her mouth and she’s constantly
  wiggling it. (It’s literally lying down horizontally in her mouth!)

Tomorrow, we’re off to see Wall-E.  Woot!

I have to say, I was kind of dreading flying solo for this long.  I was certain that they’d be fighting constantly, waking up all night, getting up at 5am every day, refusing to eat anything I cooked, and driving me into an alcohol-fuelled stupor each night.

But it’s been completely the opposite.  I’ve LOVED this week.  I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun with the kids.  They’ve been amazingly good, sleeping well, playing together well, and loads of fun with all the activities we’ve been doing (especially the beach).  We’ve even had some major breakthroughs like the potty training for Dawson.  Strangest of all, there has been NO TV or DVDs at all this week until this morning when I had to get on a conference call for work (Bah!).   

I know the kids have had a good time so far, but perhaps the biggest benefit has been for me - I’ve got a renewed sense of confidence as a dad after a year of way too much business travel. It’s certainly affirmed that I need to make more time with the kids, even when work gets crazy.  And - cheeze alert - confirmed that I’m really, really luck to have two terrific, hilarious, kind, and fun-loving kids.

Posted under Children

Cedar’s school had their spring concert this week.  It was a 2 hour extravaganza featuring a student-written opera, a student written play, dancing and singing.  Being in Kindergarten, Cedar had about 3 minutes of stage time, but it was pretty great.  The class sang a few songs about colours, waving streamers and dressed up as crazy hippies in tie-dye shirts and headbands. 

Posted under Cedar News, Children

Cedar draws constantly.  We go through a ream of paper a week.  Usually, she draws about 1,000 of the same thing - a princess over and over and over again. 
This week, she started trying to draw a bunch of family members.  Here are her final portraits, plus a recent photo of her subject (although she draws without any reference photos).  I LOVE the phonetic spelling of all our names: Lisa becomes ‘lesu’ (lee-suh), Steve becomes ’sdev’, Dawson becomes ‘dosin’, Kooky becomes ‘coce’ (coo-kee).  Why I am the only one with ears, I don’t know.
And, as for her self-portrait, she nails the spelling of her own name, but the nose is somewhat… er, disturbing.

Posted under Cedar News, Children, Family

My children are obsessed with Tim & Eric’s sketch, ‘Spagett!’  Okay, okay, so maybe I ‘helped’ get them obsessed by playing it about 50 times.  However, while mindlessly bored in the rain this weekend, we made our own video tribute to the original.   Here’s Cedar and Dawson’s Spagett!…

And here’s the Tim & Eric version:

Posted under Children, Humour, Television