We are home!  Janelle, Dylan, Julia and I flew from Fargo to the Phoenix area, rented a car, drove across the desert to San Diego and back, then flew home.  Whew!  We learned a bit about air travel with our kids (DON”T bring the car seats on the plane, check them!), played in the desert, mountains and ocean, went to the zoo and visited grandparents in the relatively balmy February sunshine.

Pool at Grandpa Warren’s

Feeding the ducks in Scottsdale, AZ

With Grandma Carol in Mesa, AZ

La Jolla “Dr. Seuss” tree

Sunset at La Jolla beach

The skies and the trees

Mother daughter beach snuggle

Playing on the beach at La Jolla

What a rush! Freediving near seals

Beach fun

At the San Diego zoo

Not a real lion

In a rain forest at the zoo

Mission Beach, San Diego

Through the mountains to the sea

Road tripping in a rental car

Triumphant in the Pacific

Goofy boy in AZ

Dylan, who is now five and a half years old, left a window open on the computer yesterday, an image search for “pee”.  The results were not filtered, which has now been rectified; from now on, the settings will be set to “safe”.

I suppose it all started back in the spring of 2008, searching youtube for Sesame Street sketches I remembered from my youth.  Dylan would laugh, yell, or yawn depending on the content presented, making his own digital entertainment choices.  A year or two later, and we wrestled with the decision of whether to let our three year old play games on the computer (and for how long at a stretch).  Middle ground was reached, the approved websites were allowed in parent approved doses, and the ability to point and click was hard-wired to our toddler’s brain.

Perhaps the next step was encouraging the boy to seek out answers to nearly all of life’s problems on the internet.  What does a baby eagle look like?  Well, let’s google it and see!  How do you solve the cloister of trials in Final Fantasy X?  Google it.  I have told him on many occasions that the internet knows almost everything because the internet is made up of all of the people connected by it.  That’s a lot closer to the truth than what I told him about Santa Claus.

So this morning, when he asked me for some privacy while he used the computer, I asked a few questions and assured him he could search for whatever he wanted.  It turned out he was searching for information on “poo” and ‘pee’ once again, this time with the filtered results.  There is a temptation for me as a parent to steer his searches away from such content, but I am aware that a stifled curiosity is likely to pop up anyway when I am not around to answer the questions that come with access to the world wide web.

We have now reached the more difficult part of his digital development, the ability to separate the trash, noise, and marketing subterfuge of the internet from the information, beauty, and utility of a connected humanity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF8SgA0zsxY

Is my first amateur bout going to take place on 11/24/12 in Grafton, ND?  Coach Alex approached me tonight and firmed up the date and explained I could register the day of the fight.  Earlier at the gym, D’arcy and I worked out a plan for light sparring taking turns on offense and defense, moving around and practicing getting hit (aka defense).  Also hitting I suppose, but the getting hit part is far more memorable to me.

As a child, I read a lot of Andy Rooney essays (also dictionaries and the phone book, I was a voracious bibliovore of a boy).  He taught me the importance of forgetting to all human endeavors, and it is a lesson I keep to this day.  If we remembered how hard relationships are, we would never recover from the break-ups.  Without the convenience of amnesia, we would attend far fewer family gatherings, or at least be more realistic about traffic and behavioral expectations.  If YOU are trying to get out of town on the weekend of the 4th, so is everybody else and if YOU are a bit grumpy from time to time during the holidays, so is everybody else.  Mr. Rooney’s example was his weekend “getaway” that involved huge amounts of stress and maintenance, a real distraction to the peace of his everyday routine.

Over the next two months, I plan to hone my amnesia to a razor’s edge, forgetting the fundamental laws of gravity and aging in pursuit of my dream:  to compete (and win) as an amateur boxer.  I will  forget the pain of training, the inconvenience of the inevitable injuries, and most of all I will attempt to forget about the other guy, and the fact that he is busy preparing for me.

Lost!

One tooth, lower incisor, size small.  Last seen in Island Park near tennis courts.  If found, please give directly to the Tooth Fairy, as she has been forced to accept an acorn in its place.  Although Dylan says he knows the Tooth Fairy isn’t real, he has already accepted payment for the lost tooth, so she must be compensated with the traditional dental offering.  Thank you, and happy hunting!

DylansMathBook

Check out Dylan’s progress on the math front, this is a page from the math book he is currently creating.  I credit our time playing video games involving adding and subtracting hit points.  Great job, Dylan!