Calling from Tokyo

I thought I'd share a little video that was taken last month while I was away to Tokyo on business.

Let me preface this by saying that for the longest time whenever Anthon would pick up a toy phone he would pretend to be talking to his Dad. Even if I'm working late, going to school late or on the road for work - I try to call home and get some interaction with Shelley and Anthon. But for a while it seemed like that was the only source of interaction we had. When we first used to talk on the phone, Anthon could really only repeat things that Shelley would whisper in his ear. Now he can go off on all sorts of random things - the zoo, a song, food he's eaten, friends he's seen, his stuffed animals...aynthing.

This little video captures one such conversation. Anthon was in a really good mood and was singing "Old McDonald" and wanted me to kiss his ouchy finger through the phone.

Parenting, Anthon Style

It is rare that you get good honest insight into your parenting skills. On an almost daily basis, Anthon parents his stuffed animals with many striking similarities to how we parent Anthon. This poor little stuffed kitten, pictured on the left, has been given a time-out for apparently hitting Shelley. This isn't the first time it's happened and it's hardly the kitty's fault. Anthon normally takes the kitty and bumps him against either me or Shelley. After the offense, Anthon took the kitty and put him on the piano bench, giving him a timeout. Anthon normally gets a timeout by having to sit on small red chair underneath a picture of Jesus...not on purpose, mind you. Jesus was just there coincidentally!

When Anthon deemed the kitty ready to be done with his timeout, he went up to him, put his hand on the kitty's face and made the kitty look at Anthon. We do this to Anthon to make sure he looks us in the eye when we tell him what he did to deserve the timeout. Finally, Anthon says to the kitty, "no, no, kitty, flick cheek" and Anthon gave the kitty a tiny flick on the cheek - as seen in the picture to the right. While we hate doing it, we sometimes will give Anthon a light flick on the cheek as a means to punish him when timeouts don't work. To show the stuffed kitty that there were no hard feelings, he walked him into the kitchen and declared to Shelley that the kitty was going to have a cupcake now. I think this was Anthon's sly attempt at getting a cupcake for himself, however. The best part about the timeouts is the reconciliation afterwards. It's never fun to punish your kids and I feel much better when I get a chance to tell Anthon that I love him. And no, we don't give him a cupcake after every timeout. Anthon would be much heavier if there the case.

Anthon certainly revels in being the parent to his stuffed animals. And it doesn't stop at discipline. Anthon has wanted to put his animals in the tub, tuck them in at night, put a diaper on them, hush their cries, put a binky in their mouths and brush their teeth.

So, We're Parents of an Axe Murderer?

File this story under the "wait and see" category because we can't be sure what path Anthon will travel down in his life. He can be a doctor or lawyer, or anything he wants to be. A sword wielding limb dismemberer can't be ruled out quite yet, either. We didn't know Anthon had channeled King Arthur from Monty Python's Holy Grail, but he seems to take a keen liking to using his foam USC Trojan sword, donated by the man sitting next to us at the USC vs. Oregon State game, to hack at our friends Jono and Jill.

On our way to church the next day, after a fun weekend with Jill and Jono had come to an end, a visibly sad Anthon clutched to his foam sword in the car and kept saying in a very sad voice, "Jill, Jono, slice."

We'll have to keep an eye on Anthon to see if he displays any more of this child-like glee over de-limbing people. Just as a precaution, however, Shelley and I are making sure the Cutco knives aren't anywhere within grabbing distance!

Click on the picture below to see Anthon play Hack-a-Jono with a foam Trojan sword.