Cleaning house, and breaking a piano

I am currently on Christmas holidays.

One of my top goals for the holidays was to clean out our garage.  It has been accumulating junk for a while now.  Some of it we wanted to donate, some of it we wanted to throw away – but all of it needed to go.

There was one particular challenge though.  Our old piano.

We picked this piano up from a neighbor down the street when they moved away.  It is old, beat up and out of tune.  And it weighs a ton.

When we bought our new piano we asked about options for what to do with our old piano.  It turns out that people were not even willing to take it for free.  You see, in this area of the world any charity with the vaguest need for a piano already has been given a nicer one than our old piano.  Checking the local newspapers confirmed that there were numerous local residents with adds that offered free second hand pianos to anyone who would come and take the thing away.

Given all of this, the logical conclusion was to throw it out.  But that posed new problems.

Mostly around how big and heavy the thing is.  Our dump has size limits – which a piano certainly breaks.  And even if it did not – there is no way that I could personally manage to get a piano into (and out of) our minivan.

There was only one thing to do – break the piano into smaller parts.

I started with an electric screwdriver and slowly, meticulously, dismantled the piano.  I found some entertainment in seeing how far I could disassemble it while still being able to play it (and occasionally encourage the kids to play on it and see how the internal mechanisms work).    Once it became apparent that I was about the cross the line from playable into unplayable – I ditched the screwdriver in favor of a sledgehammer – and progress increased rapidly.

Let me say now – it is a very odd experience to take to a piano with a sledge hammer.  Noisy too.

When I was done, I was tempted to keep the metal frame from inside the piano.  If you have never seen one of these, they are quite elegant – and I could easily see using one as an artistic component of some furniture or other room decoration.  However, I concluded that it would just sit around and become clutter, so off to the dump it went.

Besides, if I ever want to make some piano furniture in the future I know of a number of people in the area who are just giving the things away!

Cheers,
Ben

The ears of a child

Today Kai was playing Skylanders.  When he chose to play with one of his characters – Trigger Happy – the character said its catch phrase “No gold! No glory!”.  Kai turned to me and said “He says ‘Don’t Go, don’t hurry’ – isn’t that funny?”

Yes, it is.

Cheers,
Ben

RD-Tee Toe?

Kai has recently started playing Star Wars Lego on our XBOX.  Now, Kai has never seen Star Wars – and knows next to nothing about Star Wars.  To him this is the “outer space Lego game”.  He is doing okay, and learning to play the game well enough (though there are certain levels where he frequently requires help from Isaac or me).  What I do find amusing is his name for R2-D2.  To the best of my hearing he calls R2-D2 “Arr Dee Tee Toe”.

This is made all the more obvious, as R2-D2 is actually his favorite character to play, and he talks to him all the time while playing.

As I was writing this sentence I heard Kai Say “Arr Dee Tee Toe, where are you going!?”

I have tried to correct him saying “His name is R2-D2!” – To which Kai responses “Yes! He is Arr Dee Tee Toe!”

Cheers,
Ben

Reliving the past

I have been reliving the past a lot over the last two weeks.

Kai is now 4 and a half – and has suddenly started discovering many of the computer games that I played with Isaac.

This started when we were down at the local GameStop and Kai found a copy of Super Mario Galaxy for sale.  Kai was very excited about the idea of a computer game that combined one of his favorite characters (Mario) with a recently discovered interest (Outer Space) and immediately asked if we could buy it.

When I told him that we already had this game, he was very confused.

You see, Super Mario Galaxy was released in 2007, before Kai was born.  Isaac and I bought it when it was new and played it through together.  Since then it has been put away in storage, and Kai has never even known it existed.

So, Super Mario Galaxy (and Super Mario Galaxy 2) have been dragged back out of the closet.  It is now (once more) my daily routine to play a little bit of Super Mario Galaxy each day with my son.

On the plus side – this time around I can ask Isaac to help Kai out with a level or two if I am trying to get some work done around the house!

Cheers,
Ben

Small progress

My two youngest children – Elizabeth and Kai – have a tendency too argue a lot.  They both have short tempers, and they both have a desire to always be right.  The result is that small disagreements rapidly spiral out of control.  Tonight, before dinner, there was a dispute about who should be playing the piano.  Within 5 minutes it had all escalated to the stage where both children were in their rooms sulking – while their freshly prepared dinners were going cold.

That said, a small moment of progress was made tonight.

Usually, when Elizabeth or Kai throw a tantrum, they get so caught up in the passion and the fury of it all that they have forgotten why they got upset in the first place by the time the tantrum is over.  This makes it very hard to have teachable moments when problems happen.  But tonight was different.

After Elizabeth had calmed down she came downstairs.  I asked her why she had got in trouble and she was able to say “because I was fighting with Kai”.  We then had a rational discussion of what she could have done differently.  Progress! Yay!

Finally I suggested that Elizabeth find Mum and give her a hug and an apology, which she did.  Elizabeth also offered to make me a coffee (as a peace offering) which I happily accepted.

I did not have the heart to tell Elizabeth that the coffee was quite bad – it is the thought that counts after all 🙂

Cheers,
Ben

A 4 year old at work

Kai came into work with me today for a couple of hours.  He thought that this was great fun.  Surprisingly, I was able to get a lot of work done with him there.  I have a number of toys in my office and he happily played with them while I worked at my computers.  The only real interruption was the frequent requests to change my various transformers to and from their robot form.

I did take him along to a couple of one-on-one work conversations – which I started off by telling people “This is my 4 year son.  He repeats anything he hears – so if you use profanity my wife will know about it” followed by a glowering look from me.

When we did walk around the offices – Kai discovered that Daddy walks a lot faster at work than he does at home – so I had to give a number of piggy back rides to help him keep up.  He was very happy when after one meeting we wondered past the office of a developer who had cookies out for people to help themselves to (which Kai did – of course).

At the end of his stay – Werona came in and we went for lunch together.

Cheers,
Ben

Important Birthday Question

Tomorrow is Kai’s fourth birthday.  But, seeing as that is a Monday – we have had the party today (on a Sunday).  I have spent a lot of today playing with Kai, and playing with his new toys with him.  We have been discussing various things while playing – and the subject of his age has come up a couple of times now.

However, we just had an important conversation:

Kai: “Now that I am four – do I still start with a ‘K’?”
Me: “Yes, you still start with a ‘K'”
Kai: “Yay! Mummy, I still start with a ‘K’!”

Cheers,
Ben

A Boy and his Tank

Of all my children, Kai is definitely the most enthusiastic about remote controlled toys.  Tonight I was requested to get down the tank that Granddad Joe had sent us:

I rather like this tank, for a couple of reasons.  First, it runs on AA batteries – which means that I always have batteries ready to go.  Second, the tank makes an electronic engine noise – which means that it is never left on by mistake when the kids are done playing with it.  And third – it is a tank 😆

Cheers,
Ben

 

How cold is it?

We have been having a pretty strong cold snap recently here in Redmond.  How cold?  Well – in summer we bought a “water table” for Kai.  This is simple a little plastic basin on legs that he can use to play with his toy boats, etc… outside.  This morning (at around 10am) I went outside and found it completely iced over.  This has been happening a lot lately – but today it looked worse than ever.

I eventually used a brick to break through the ice:

My rough estimate is that the ice was about 1cm thick.

Later on in the day Kai and Elizabeth went outside to play and took great delight in breaking up the rest of the ice and then steering some toy boats through the mini-ice bergs.

Cheers,
Ben

Protective?

Lizzy got an iPad with a pink smart-case for her birthday this year.  The other day she came over to me and said:

 

“Look!  I figured out how to get it off!” 

 

She was holding the case and the iPad in separate hands.  I looked at her and said:

 

“You do realize that that is a protective case, don’t you?”

 

To which she rolled her eyes and said “Yes..” and walked away.  30 seconds later she came back and asked: “Dad.  What does ‘protective’ mean?”.  I paused and said “It means something that protects.  Your iPad case protects your iPad from scratches, or from getting damaged if it is dropped.”. “oh” she said.

 

Shortly after this conversation the iPad was quietly returned to its case.

 

Cheers,

Ben