So I poke my head in there to see what’s going on. Maren is sitting their cutting pieces of paper into a million tiny pieces (which her mom will clean up a day later). In the corner is little Brant.

Playing by himself.

With dolls.

And a dollhouse.

I played with dolls when I was a kid. But we didn’t call them dolls, we called them G.I. Joe’s or He-Man or Macho Man Action Figures. We called them that because we’re boys and boys don’t play with dolls.

Last night he was all over the place with a pair of Buzz Lightyear toys, so everything’s back to normal. Then this morning, after I got him out of bed, I walked back in and he had a pile dolls, beds, etc. putting them all “night-night.”

Night-Night, baby dolls.

He offset the dolls with a Pirate t-shirt and a Lightning McQueen slipper that doubled as a bed. Still, when I get home today, I’m going to switch all the dolls out for Buzz and Woody and Lightning. I bet I can fit Finn McMissile in that crib, right?

“Dad, when is Brant gonna be able to go to the movies with us?” Maren asks once in a while.

Probably not for a while, he’s only 2, I tell her. I don’t tell her it’s tough enough to sit through a movie with a 7-year-old.

Monsters University is coming to a theater near us soon, so that’s probably next in line of films Maren and I will go see. I actually don’t remember the last time I saw a film in a theater with an actual real person in it. Such in the life of a parent.

But then I saw the above preview for Disney’s new Planes movie, out in August. It might be the one we have to take Brant to. He wears out Cars and Cars 2. He has probably seen each of them about 200 times, maybe more, and is certainly an offshoot of that.

Not only that, he digs planes. Maybe not as much as cars, but he loves them. Last summer we spent a weekend with friends in New Jersey. We took the kids to a playground which just happened to be directly along the flight pattern for Newark’s airport. Every minute or so for an hour a plane would fly overhead and every single time it did Brant would point up and yell “plane!”

So the countdown to August 9 is on.

Every once in a while (about once a week), Maren asks why she is never in the paper. The last time was actually the day before three of her best friends’ were featured, which poured a little gas on the fire.

Can you put me in the paper?

So for about a week, every day I get the same thing: Dad, when am I gonna be in the paper?

Probably never.

WHHHHHHHYYYYYYY?

Because you’re cursed, honey? You can’t have your picture in the paper because Daddy works at the paper. If your photo is in there, I’m gonna get a hundred phone calls. I ain’t got no time for that.

WHHHHHHHYYYYYYY?

Like I said, it’s just bad luck.

Holding in tears, she says “is that why I can’t enter the Halloween or Christmas coloring contests either?”

Yes, I say, stroking her hair.

“Well, that stinks.”

Baby Brant.

He likes to point things out and for the most part is pretty good at saying what they are. He knows motorcycle and bicycle (although he uses them interchangeably), copter, pains (planes), bus, big truck, Meeeekey Mouse and more.

Brant also knows Buzz Lightyear, but I think he’s confused on what Buzz says. “To da sky,” Brant says when playing with Buzz. I tell him that is Woody’s line, Buzz says “To infinity and beyond!” He looks at me, cries, and we move onto next thing.

The best Brant-ism in the world came via Mrs. Bowman (Happy Birthday!) to her Facebook peeps last night: “The world according to Brant: ‘Scary Potter’ is the book his dad and sister read at bedtime.”

Each night I crash on one end of my daughter’s bed and we read some Harry Potter. Brant has watched about 2 minutes of the first movie and knows it’s scary. But so are George Washington and Thomas Jefferson on Biography. He doesn’t say “scary” quite correctly, however. It comes out as S-car-ee, not S-care-ee. So when he walks in and sees us reading the book, he gets a frown, points and asks “Scary Potter?” Yep, want to come up and read with Daddy and Maren? “No, too scary. Scary Potter too scary.”

He’s sticking to Elmo and Clifford books for now. There not quite so scary.

Waves in the Pacific

My daughter and I were talking one day last week about how old she was getting now that she has officially passed the 7 1/2 threshold. I told her she was almost half way to driving age and then she drops this bomb: I’m gonna turn 12, then I’m gonna stop.

Kids at heart.

What?

“I don’t want to be a teen-ager,” she said absolutely straight-faced and without a hint of regret or irony or sarcasm of whatever else I was looking for on that face.

But what about driving, and going to prom, and going to college, and getting a job, and getting married and having kids? What about taking your own kids to Disney World or the beach or the lake?

“Nope, I just want to get to 12, then live with you guys. I want Brant to keep getting older and be the big brother. I’m just gonna stop at 12. I like that number.”

Parents quickly realize their little girls and boys aren’t quite so little anymore. They do more stuff, become more independent and don’t need us quite as much. It’s a sad realization for a parent.

But we just hope we’ve brought them up the right way, taught them the right things. Because as much as we want to see them stay 12 forever, we want to see them blossom into the people they want to be, the people they can be.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be 12 forever, believe me, my dad is still trying it. But there’s nothing wrong with reaching for the stars either.

Boom goes the dynamite

We have a picture, probably about five years old now, from when Maren was pushing a bus at daycare, pushed too hard on the back, it flipped up and bonked her in the eye.

First black eye marked in baby book? Check.

Well, we can now make the same check mark in Brant’s book, with as asterisk.

Brant was on a toy motorcycle that rocks on Tuesday, got so amped up he rocked himself right off the back of it. He held on for dear life, to the point where it flipped over and landed on him, giving him a tiny cut and a cute little shiner. I’m so proud.

The move did not come as a surprise. If my wife and I have learned nothing about him it’s that he got a lot less fear built into him than his older sister. He stands on tables, tries to walk down the steps without holding the railing, walks backwards as often as he can (his goal now is to become the world’s best backwards walker). When we visited his new daycare and spent some time with him, he played on the exact same toy. Within 10 seconds we were warning him about rocking too hard and dumping it over on him.

First one, won’t be the last. But now we can frame it and put it next to his sister’s.

The day I returned from vacation, two (insert your own adjective here) bombed the Boston Marathon. Went from the happiest place on earth to reality pretty darn quickly, this one did.

So I offer you my go-to when in the dumps about humanity: Kid President.

I originally saw the above video back in the winter and I probably watch it once it week. It makes me laugh. Every time.

This just goes to prove how much you can learn from a kid. It’s not all rocket science all the time. In spots like this, it takes a kid to tell you to cheer up.

On Saturday, my daughter and I were talking about what was going to happen to the Boston bomber who survived. “What’s gonna happen to him?” she asked innocently.

“I don’t know,” I said and honestly as possible, hoping the topic would switch quickly.

“If he helps the people find out what happened, maybe he can just go to jail forever. But if he doesn’t help, he should go to a jail where they never let him out of his room.”

You can’t hide the news from kids, try as you might. And especially someone like me, who works in newspapers, which means the news is all over our house in some form, whether actual newspapers, apps, or open laptops.

But certain things you try to hide. Things like Newtown and now Boston, because there’s only so much a 7-year-old brain can digest. So they ask, we walk on egg shells and tell them what we think they need to know and hope the next cartoon starts soon.

What is on the TV, or in the paper, we can tilt to help them understand. The photos, the faces, they leave indelible marks that stick with you, no matter what the age.

Tell me you will ever forget the photo of Martin Richard holding that poster that says ‘no more hurting people.’ You won’t, I won’t, they won’t. And we shouldn’t. Just like we shouldn’t forget the 20 glowing faces from Newtown.

I see those photos and I wonder. I wonder what they would have done, who they would have become. They won’t grow up to accomplish what they were supposed to, dreams just vanished in an instant. They won’t score the winning touchdown or go to college or get married or have kids.

It makes you hug your kids a little tighter, push cars on the floor or brush Barbie’s hard a touch longer, too.

Before

After

Just back from vacation, the reason for the awful delay between posts.

So over the next few days we will catch up. Starting today with our road trip, or trips, to and from Pennsylvania to Florida. Just before we left, the conversation in the office here centered around driving to Florida, and I said something to the effect that “the last time we drove to Florida …” A co-worker said “That is one sentence you will never hear me ever say … The last time we drove to Florida.”

But we did, two cars, six adults (3 drivers) and two kids. It’s about 1,050 miles to Orlando. Driving down is okay because you’re excited about going on vacation. So you break it up, drive 6 hours the first day, stay in a hotel, finish the second day.

Can you get me out of this car? Now? Now?

Problem is the 7-year-old knows she’s gonna be in the car a long time. The 2-year-old doesn’t, so first stop for gas is total meltdown. Hungry. Tired. Confined. Full of energy. And still buckled up.

So we talk him off the ledge and forge ahead. We pass time by watching movies and looking for license plates (we found 42 states on the way back, plus D.C.). And then there are weird town names that always make you laugh. Garysburg, Bowmansdale, Micro, Sunbury (Ga.), Midway, Dumfries, Skippers, Coosawhatchie, Gross and more.

Oh, and the signs, which can be confusing, but on a 20-hour trip, they pass the time.

I think we could have purchased the world’s largest cigar, cigarette, 10,000 pairs of Wrangler jeans, illegal fireworks, legal fireworks, a questionable burrito and beef jerky in one place. And if there aren’t 1,000 signs for Cracker Barrel restaurants on Route 95, there aren’t 10.

All in all, driving 20 hours (twice) with 2 kids, it went as well as can be considered. Nerves got frayed, for sure, but we are still speaking.

Whenever I hear that question, or something similar, I think “trick question.” It’s like the “do I look fat in these jeans?” question. There’s no real right answer, only answers that can get me in trouble.

So I tip-toed around it. “I don’t know, honey, I’m pretty happy being me, you know minus some pounds.”

“I’d be Hermione Granger,” she screeches back without a bit of hesitation.

War and Peace is next

For the uninformed (which was me up until about 3 months ago) Hermione Granger is part of the J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the smarty-pants girl who keeps Harry and Ron Weasley on the straight and narrow. It’s not a bad choice for my daughter. Hermoine is uber-smart, very loyal and courageous. Not a bad set of values for a wizard, or a 7-year old.

Maren got her first Harry Potter book for Christmas and while she is a very good reader, they were a little too much for her to digest. She’s been tearing through Boxcar Children’s books for a couple of months, but we have had to work on understanding what we are reading and not just reading for the sake of, you know, reading.

So far Harry Potter’s been extraordinarily enjoyable for both of us. Since she can’t quite read them and I’ve never read them before, we’ve read bunches of pages every night before bed. Since Christmas we’ve knocked out the first two years (books) and are now 50 or so pages into the third book.

They have cost each of us some sleep. On Thursday night there was about 50 pages or so left in the second book. I finished a chapter, shut the book and looked at her and her eyes were like saucers. “Couple of more pages, pleeeeez,” she begged. Forty pages later we’re still going and I hear “it’s five minutes until 9, put the book down!”

At that point, there was no stopping the Bowman Reading Tandem. We were finishing it, no matter how mad mom got.

I love to read books myself because I love reading good writing, sometimes dreaming I will one day be able to write like that. But it’s a thousand times more enjoyable reading to her and now she and her little brother crawl up on a chair together and she reads to him. Makes me melt every time.

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