Wow, time just keeps moving faster and faster. It seems like just yesterday that we brought you home from the hospital, the streets still not entirely cleared from the blizzard that hit us on the day of your birth. You are growing up so fast and every day you show us something new. Things I will remember from this year:
Taking on more and more complicated works on the piano and quickly conquering them.
Your daily workouts and your growing strength.
Always counting on you to make some of the deepest philosophical contributions during our family discussions.
It’s official. Our 1.0 family is now all in double digits. You may be bringing up the rear of our first wave but you are managing to head out in your own directions as well. Things I will remember about this year:
You and I being the only people willing to get onto looping roller coasters. Not once but twice! I bet if we had more time we would have done a bunch that day.
How much you help out with your sister around the house. So much so that she’s already learned your name.
Watching you plow through all of the Harry Potter books, now we just need me to read them and we can have a movie day downstairs and watch as many as we can in a row.
Seeing your innate mechanical ability begin to show itself. Helping me with stuff around the house it is very apparent that you will be handy.
Cutting your shoulder length hair and seeing the resolve on your face to just begin growing it out all over again.
Despite being our fourth you manage every day to challenge your mother and I in new ways. You know what you want when you want it – that’s for sure. Things I will remember about the past year:
Slowly losing the speech of a toddler and replacing it with that of a boy. It won’t be long till we no longer hear words like crash can, crockoohdyle, hehbehvohr, and panio.
Your obsession with dinosaurs. Your very first sight word was Allosaurus! You can tell the difference between an an Ankylosaurus and a Euoplocephalus AND pronounce them.
Your constant bartering what you can get for good behavior or following the rules. I feel like I’m living with an attorney at a collective bargaining agreement.
Life with you is anything but boring! Happy Birthday buddy – love you!
In my teens and twenties I always found myself on the cutting edge of music and technology. The first thing I did when my Dad brought home his first work PC was to tear it apart then put it back together again. Lather, rinse repeat with our first VCR. I spent a lot of time in smoky, dirty nightclubs during my college days watching groups like Pearl Jam and others struggle in anonymity – way WAY before they became the big thing. Now I’m in my 40′s and I zip from ‘oldies’ station to station. I don’t think I have a single artist that could be considered ‘new’ (say released their first album in the past 5 years) in my stable of steady rotation. I’ve often wondered why in God’s name people would bother with a service like Foursquare. I resisted Facebook for quite some time as well.
So what happened? According to Daniel H. Wilson this is all normal. In this article he outlines how we as humans learn. From the article:
Mark Zuckerberg didn’t create Facebook for people with kids and mortgages. Technology is created by the young, for the young. The young revel in new gadgets with small, deft thumbs. They beg for them in acronym-laden speeches because OMG, you need this stuff to be cool IRL. Then they use them to take lewd pictures of themselves, even though this is obviously a very bad idea. They are the fearless ones.
Why are the young able to thrive, tossing away instruction manuals and digging in with reckless abandon?
Thankfully, Jean Piaget, one of the first developmental psychologists, figured out part of this puzzle years ago.
Piaget observed his own infants rapidly gaining simple skill sets related to manipulating objects in their environment. Skills like grabbing a Cheerio and stuffing it toward their mouth holes. These skills are the starting point for exploring a diverse and ever-changing world. Piaget called them schema.
And a schema is designed to evolve. When exposed to some novel object, infants don’t start over from scratch. They choose an existing schema and enact it. With a rather limited repertoire, you can expect infants to exercise the “grab and gum” schema quite often as they explore the world. (This is why you don’t allow unsupervised babies near cat food.) This process of applying an existing schema to a new object is what Piaget called assimilation.
For adults, assimilation is a perfectly natural response to new technology. And as a result, we often get it completely wrong. This is probably why I once caught my grandfather speaking into a computer mouse as if it were a ham-radio mic. I’m not above it. A few years ago I bought an old-fashioned manual typewriter to write love letters to my then-girlfriend (now-wife—thanks, 1950s technology!). But every time I sat down to use that old Olivetti, I got the oddest feeling. Something was weird. Amiss.
Finally, I realized what the problem was: I wanted to flip its (nonexistent) on switch.
It turns out that my schema regarding keyboards was formed in the 1980s. Every device from a Speak & Spell to an Apple IIe required a plug or batteries. How silly of me, I thought. And yet… the urge to turn on my typewriter didn’t go away. I understood what it felt like to simply not get a technology.
For someone that always swore that he wouldn’t fall victim, I find myself doing just this sort of stuff. Maybe it is because I’ve never owned an Apple product – maybe – but I had a hell of a time getting my son’s Ipod Touch set up for him (the permissions were set up by default to prevent the addition of apps, once I set that to allow it was smooth sailing btw). This is coming from a guy that has written raw html and ran a weblog in the days when things like WordPress didn’t exist. I’m not a techno know nothing, I’ve never been a Luddite.
With music, I’ve tried, oh how I’ve tried. I remember being proud of myself having discovered Travis in 2007 and thinking – OK! I’ve finally tuned into something NEW. Sorry, they formed in 1997 – ten years ago at the time. Again and again I’ve tried and failed. I just can’t figure out how I’m supposed to like today’s music. What the hell happened to me?
Even more importantly, I’m the main source of music for the kids. What am I doing to them by exposing them to the music I find most appealing? Am I dooming them to misunderstanding the music of their generation?
I do feel a bit better now, knowing that this is just the way our brains work – I’m just following procedure. So get off my lawn, I’ walked 4 miles each way to school, I’m going to go listen to Bob Seger and spend the day mourning the passing of my technological/musical youth.
We are smack dab in the middle of Birthday Season in the Braglio Household. Our youngest and only daughter turns one today. I won’t lie, I never thought I’d say the words ‘my daughter’. It still surprises me to see the little girl clothing, the pink and purple toys, the headbands in our house. Over a year ago your mother and I sat in a darkened room, peering into your world, looking for the tell tale signs of just what you were. We’ve each seen enough ultrasounds to know exactly what we WEREN’T seeing but we both held our breath waiting to hear the words from the ultrasound tech. She asked us if we wanted to know what we were having; we said yes, she then said the words we never thought we’d hear. ‘Looks to me like you are having a girl.’ I could hear the emotion in your mother’s voice when she said ‘We’re having a girl!’ In a shaky voice I asked the tech to check again. She did so and instructed us to ask the Dr. to verify the sex of the baby when he checked. The doctor then came in and confirmed the techs assessment. I again asked the doctor to re-verify. He sternly told me he was sure it was a girl, he wouldn’t say it if he didn’t know.
We drove home from the appointment in a state of shock. After four other pregnancies and all four of them boys we were beside ourselves. Honestly, until the day I held you in my arms for the first time there was a part of me that still couldn’t believe it was true.
The past year with you has gone by in a flash. From a roly-poly lump to speeding around on all fours and beginning to take those first steps you have become a very active member of our house. You certainly are different than your older brothers. I love walking in the door and hearing you shriek, knowing I’m home. Just last week I heard you say ‘Hi!’ to me as I walked in.
I look forward to you growing up, like your brothers I can’t wait to see what your dreams will be and how you fulfill them. Happy Birthday Sweet pea – I love you.
Thirteen years ago today you changed my life forever. At the time I was scared of what that meant. Being responsible for another person can be frightening. Last night I sat in ‘The Boys Toy Room’ with your sister, looking at all the pictures we have of you on our walls. Seeing those pictures I realize that you still have that same smile, the same eyes. The angles are slowly changing to those of a man but I still see that same face. So many other things have changed. You have gotten so tall, I’m sure you will pass your mother soon and I’m certain that someday in the coming years you will look down on me.
Here you are on the threshold of the next part of your life. You are not that little boy anymore, even though I can still see him in your face. I’m proud of what you have accomplished this year in school, both academically and in track. I look forward to your teenage years as we get closer to seeing the man you will become.
Last night was primary night and our area had several important school board positions up for grabs. Like many other school districts ours is having all kinds of funding issues. Our school boards initial solution was to cancel the majority of extra curricular activities for any grade below the high school level. We normally try to vote in every election both primary and general but this one has extra import to us. After dinner I headed over to the local fire hall with our soon to be four year old son. His running commentary included observations that the parking lot looked like the pet store, that there were a lot of older people here and that they all seemed to be blocking our way to get inside.
Once inside we signed in and had no wait to get inside the booth. The conversation went something like this:
Me: “So all of these people want to do different jobs and this is how we choose them.” I select the one candidate for school board that I really want to see get in then begin to ponder the others. “Then when we are done we push the vote button.”
Son: “Like this?” He presses the vote button!
Me: “Ok kid, let’s go. We’re done.”
Son: “Why do we have to leave?”
Me: “Because you pushed the vote button. Once you do that we’re done.”
Son: “Sorry, sorry, sorry Dad.” He always apologizes in rapid fashion like that. It sounds more like Sorrysorrysorry Dad.
Me: “It’s ok buddy – next time try not to be a button pusher.”
I don’t think we spent more than 10 seconds in the booth. I’m just glad I got my one vote in before he sealed the deal.
Son #2 has completed a little over two years of musical instruction. This past September he added the Saxophone to his practice schedule. He has picked it up very quickly. Last weekend was his recital for piano. He performed along with another 20 or so students. His teacher (which you can see in the video) also teaches several other instruments to students both young and old. It’s a nice afternoon and it’s fun to see students from prior years come back improved.
Here he is playing his solo piece:
Here he is playing a duet:
Way to go kid! We are all very proud of you and can’t wait to see where music takes you.
Music has always been an important part of my life and I’ve tried with varied success to instill that in our children. My musical awakening occurred very early for me, I can still remember sitting by the gigantic stereo system my parents owned – I’m sure anyone over the age of 35 may remember them:
It was literally a huge, honking piece of furniture. The speakers were contained in the corners of the cabinet. Certainly not like the ipod of today. Inside you would see something like this:
The side compartments usually had storage for many albums, this was before digital media would shrink everything down to microscopic size. Flat black records were king. Starting in third grade I spent hours and hours sitting on the floor of our dining room listening to my Mothers albums. I’m sure I drove my parents crazy listening to Sgt. Peppers to the point where they bought me a new modern record player and speakers that I placed in my room. The probably regretted this later as I dove into Van Halen and other bands of the day and listened to them at deafening levels right above their heads.
My Mothers record collection was not overly extensive. One thing she did have was Beatles albums and I played them to the point of wearing them out. I do have distinct memories of driving around with her in our old beat up Volkswagen square back station wagon (ours was powder blue) listening to my Mom sing Top of the World by the Carpenters.
As important as music was, I don’t recall any one song being our family’s theme song. That one song that would define us and my memories. That has happened for me with my own family.
As silly as it may sound, the reassuring chorus of The Rolling Stones – You Can’t Always Get What You Want – has certainly become our theme song. People in our house may feel at times that they don’t get what they want, but in the end they do realize, they get what they need. Anytime this song pops on the radio we all sing along, several of the younger ones out of key, but we all join in. Sometimes, when things aren’t going the way one of us really wants them to – the rest of us will begin to sing the song as a gentle reminder. I know it sounds crazy, maybe it is, but it’s what we do.
The look I get when I tell people about my family can usually be best described as a quick search for insanity. Is this guy crazy? Seven people in one house, five of them under the age of 13, leads to a very hectic day. Taking those twenty-four hours and dividing it evenly you end up with 3.43 hours to devote per person. Take away six hours of sleep and you end up with just over two and a half hours per person. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for slack time.
Between music lessons, pre-school, track practice, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, CCD and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things…it’s critical that everyone be ready at the right time to go to the right place.
I’ve been relying on Facebook and Flickr to post updated pictures of the kids. I recently picked up a new camera body and I’ve rededicated myself to documenting the kids with it. Hopefully I will manage to post them here.
