Archive for March, 2011

Nariah says… #21

Posted: March 30, 2011 in Comedy, Nariah
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Today is a two-fer.

#1. I’m eating my burger king, sitting on the couch, watching TV, and Nariah comes up to me with something hidden behind her back.
“Daddy, I have a surprise for you and  you don’t know what it is!”
“Really? Cool, what is it?”
“Its from school, my first set of pictures!” as she gets ready to pull them out.
“Now Nariah, you know I showed them to you first right? I was there and picked them up from school yesterday, remember?”
“Oh yeah… well, I’m still going to show you. You just pretend like you’ve never seen them before and act really surprised ok?”
Insert surprised look by daddy here…

 

#2. Later on, I’m giving Nariah a bath, and rinsing her hair because she had swimming lessons today. She reaches around blindly asking me for the wash cloth so that she can wipe her face. After she finishes wiping her face, she looks up at me with squinted eyes and the most pitiful face ever and says, “Daddy, I think my eyes are allergic to the water“, then she pouts.
Very very hard to keep from laughing in her face.

Nariah says… #20

Posted: March 25, 2011 in Comedy, Nariah
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Every Friday is show-n-share day at daycare. So you’re supposed to bring an item starting with the letter of the week. This week is “R” and Nariah is trying to find something before we head out the house.
“What do you think I should take daddy?”
“Hmmm, how about me? Ryan starts with R”
“Noooooooooo daddy, I can’t take you! I need a toy!”
“Well, let’s see what you have… you have this rabbit, and this pet rock. I think you still have that red race car”
“Oooooh yeah, the red race car! I have to find that”

So after looking around for a while, she comes back sad that she can’t find the red race car. I tell her to keep looking and I’ll help her after I put her lunch by the door.
“Oooooh, my Barbie car!!!! We can take this!!”
“Baby, that’s pink, it doesn’t start with R”

She puts her hands on her hips, tilts her head to the side and proclaims wth a big smile; “It does in Spanish. Rosado”

Ummmm, yeah… so how do you respond to that? I know she didn’t say it, but I felt a “Duhhhhh daddy” in my head. This is really going to get interesting when she gets older.

Thai Fried Rice w/ Honey Roasted Cashews

Posted: March 25, 2011 in Food, Main course
Tags: , , , , ,
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I’ve always cooked fried rice several different ways. Lately I’ve tried out Thai fried rice at several different food spots and thought that I should be able to expand upon my fried rice repertoire. So I asked Nariah what kind of meat, fruit and nuts she wanted in her fried rice and she suggested turkey sausage. pineapple, and cashews, I felt we had a winner, especially since we had honey roasted cashews. Should be enough time to have dinner ready before mommy comes home from work. The ingredients will be broken down into “types” based on entry points for you to alter food to your liking. In parenthesis I’ll put the type so you can know to put different meats such as shrimp, bacon, etc… or what type of veggies. Let’s cook shall we?

Basics :
salt, pepper, garlic powder
butter, favorite cooking oil
3 eggs, 4 cups steamed rice, (regular or minute)
soy sauce

First stage : (mostly meats, nuts, and veggies that take longer to cook)
turkey sausage diced, (the kielbasa type)
celery, carrots, onions, mushrooms

Second stage : (veggies that are somewhat precooked, canned, chives (scallions), baby corn, etc…)
sweet corn

Third stage : (mostly fruits,anything that will get soggy when heated)
pineapple

Lightly oil your wok or large frying pan and pre-heat medium high and dice turkey sausage (or other meats, shrimp, bacon, chicken, etc.)

When heated, add butter to the pan, and quickly stir fry the egg with salt and pepper, remove egg and place to the side in a bowl.

Add a little oil, and cook the meat(s) and mushrooms, stirring constantly.

Add carrots, celery, and onion and stir constantly.

Add honey roasted cashews, stir constantly and season to taste with  salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Remove and set aside to large bowl or pan.

Add a little oil and then add the rice.

Add a few shakes of soy sauce, not too much as you’re using salt already. Stir.

Add corn, and stir.

Add egg, and stir.

Add meats that were put aside earlier and stir. Taste and add more seasoning to your liking.

On the last 3-5 minutes of cooking, add pineapple, and stir.

Serve and let cool, it will be very hot! Experiment with your own ingredients. For me this method ensured the level of crispness I like in my veggies. The whole cooking process should take no longer than 10-15 minutes.

Nariah says… #19

Posted: March 22, 2011 in Comedy, Nariah
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Normally I handle the ironing of clothes and getting Nariah dressed and stuff, while Toya does breakfast in the mornings. Yesterday Nariah came upstairs after breakfast while I was in the shower and saw all her clothes laid out on the bed. When Toya came up Nariah surprised her by getting all dressed by herself and getting herself ready to brush her teeth.  Isn’t she a big girl?

Fast forward to the evening. I’m in the kitchen with Toya talking and Nariah on her way to the bathroom yells out in the hallway :
“Mommy! You forgot to put my underwear on!”
“Huh? What are you talking about Nariah?”
“You didn’t put any underwear on me!”
Toya and I look at each other confused.
“Nariah, are you joking? did you leave your underwear at school or something?”
“No daddy, look…”

And she pulls down her pants to show that she indeed didn’t have any underwear. Now there’s a mixture of laughter and “what in the world’s” going on as we try to fathom how our child is wearing jeans without any underwear and just now telling us.

“Nariah, remember, you dressed yourself today, you told me you did everything when I came upstairs. (embarrassed laughter) What did you do when you went to the bathroom at school?”
Nariah throws her hands in the air and has this big OMG expression and exclaims : “Mommy… I was shocked!!!! But I had to keep doing what I was supposed to do.”

Now we have to make sure not only does she always have clean underwear on, but that she indeed has underwear on, hilarious.

Nariah says… #18

Posted: March 20, 2011 in Comedy, Nariah
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I’m watching the UNC/Washington 2nd round game of the NCAAs. Nariah and I have just returned from a birthday party so I’ve missed most of the game so far, up to the last minute. Those of you that follow basketball know that the last few minutes were very gut wrenching for tarheel fans. I didn’t yell or anything, but I did show a little tension.

“Daddy…. Daddy…. DADDY!!!!!”
“What Nariah?”
“Take a deep breath.”
“Huh?”
“I said take a deep breath…”
(inhale)
“Now breathe out… slowly…”
(exhale)
“There you go, nice and calm now daddy! Now… let’s go tarheels!”

This girl needs a degree in something ASAP!

Nariah says… #17

Posted: March 19, 2011 in Comedy, Nariah
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Sometimes when you’re in a hurry you have to give your child that “wash-up” in the sink. Well this time we’re running late for a birthday party and I was going to bathe Nariah and do her hair while Toya ironed the clothes. So naturally when you’re standing in a room being wiped down, you’re gonna get cold somewhat.

“I’m cold daddy!!  Get my towel!”
“I know baby, I’m trying to go as fast as I can, we don’t want to get soap all on your towel”

What happened next confirmed that I need to have a camera rolling at all times in this house. She kept complaining about being cold and it turned out to be catchy.

“Get my towel… Get my towel… Get my towel…”
“Nariah, you sound like a song”
“I know daddy! Get my towel… Get my towel… Get my towel…”

What really is left to do but give her a beat? So I started beatboxing for her, a beat kind of like a mixture between Usher’s “OMG” (baltimore club version if you haven’t heard, click the hyperlink) with some generic Doug E Fresh sounds thrown in there.  This turns into an all out bath fest with Nariah even switching it up on me.

“Get my towel… Get my towel… Get get get my towel… Get get get my towel”
Then she slows it down on me with : “Get my tooooooow-wel… Get my toooooow-wel”
and “Tow-welllll…… Tow-wellllll….. Tow-wellllll”

So we’re now dancing around in the bathroom “getting our towels” and I know this child is still cold because we actually haven’t gotten the towel yet. I’m trying to keep up with her changing the tempo so I can keep the beats flowing and she completely caught me off guard with “Now break it down!”
I honestly wasn’t prepared but she led me with “I say towel towel, get my towel… I say towel towel, get my towel…”

We finally walk into the bedroom for her towel, she grabs it and finishes her song by yelling out “Willow Smith!!!”
I’m definitely going to have to play more Baltimore club music around her and also record a song with her, she’s something else.

And no, this wasn’t a quick wash-up. A bath or shower would’ve definitely been faster, but this was way more entertaining.

Nariah says… #16

Posted: March 14, 2011 in Comedy, Nariah
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I wore my grandfather’s leather jacket today, which honestly is the first time I’ve worn it since he passed about 5 years ago. When Nariah comes downstairs and sees me with it on she says: “Daddy, you look like you’re going to do a show, and you’re trying to win or something!”
“Hahaha, thanks boo!”
I went to get something from the kitchen and Nariah had said something else when I was walking back in and I heard Toya laughing.
“Say it again Nariah, daddy didn’t hear you”
“Daddy, you look flooded and handsome!”
“I look flooded? Is that what you said?”
“Yeah, flooded”
“What does flooded mean?”
“It means you’re cooler than a polar bears toe!”

I can imagine my grandfather had to have been watching this from Heaven and chuckled somewhat. He was a smooth dude. I imagine him saying something like: “I know Nariah, my jacket was fly when I wore it and now your dad is trying to be fly like me. 🙂”

I’m flooded ya’ll!

Lessons understood… flowers for the living

Posted: March 10, 2011 in Family
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I called my parents last night… to thank them. Toya and I were talking about school and how we were to prepare Nariah for school when she comes of age and whether or not we were going to still remember Pythagoras theorem, the molecular makeup of  air, or how to diagram a sentence. Nariah doesn’t have “homework” now in preschool, but we try to be involved in her learning, to at least make it fun and interesting for her. It seems from what we’ve experienced in daycare that the more interest and time parents show, the more the teachers go the extra mile. So how do you do this when you have two working parents with highly demanding jobs which seems to barely give you enough time to fix dinner and ask how was school before its bedtime?

Growing up it seemed like my dad worked 18 jobs, I know that’s not true, but it really seemed like he did. Come to think of it, he was in Grad school or getting a PhD at UNC at the time too. I can’t keep track of it right now, but I just know that he has way too many initials after “Goldman”. I don’t know how he did it because my one job right now is a doozy. But the amazing thing is not that my dad worked multiple jobs and stayed “sane”. It was that those jobs seemed negligent when it came to family time and especially school work. Whenever I would have a question about math or anything, he was excited to help, like a child on Christmas morning. Sometimes I would dread asking for help because he was too excited. And if he was busy, my mom was right in the mix. I vividly remember her helping me put together a working model v6 engine for a science project in early middle school. Who gets help from their mother to put together an auto part? Well this guy right here did, we were both clueless but we got it done, and it’s a memory forever etched into my brain.

Back then, growing up, I would’ve told you I had the pushiest parents and that they’d never let me do anything and that I had nothing. Looking back over the years, as you grow older, you start to see the things they DID for me. They DID let me stay on the basketball team in middle school after getting an E on a report card (my only one in life, I was one scared kid bringing that home) provided I bring up the grade, which I did. All the fancy graphing calculators (everybody remembers when TI-81 came out right?) I had in my possession. But we don’t see that, we see the name brand shoes, the newest Nintendo system, etc… that we didn’t get.

Now that I’m a parent I appreciate so much more what they did and what they went through. I know I was a handful, I’m still a handful. I can’t imagine what its like to have an infant with meningitis in a time period when kids were dying left and right from it. I can’t imagine surviving the meningitis scare (Thank you God for having me reside in the City of Medicine!) to find out a couple years later that your child has lost all hearing in one ear and some of it in the other ear due to that meningitis. I’m sure worrying about how to care for “normal” child is stress enough. But they made it work, speech therapy, hearing aids, everything, they made sure they were there for me every step of the way. They may not have known how rough it may have been for me as kids are pretty cruel, and being a the “hearing aid” kid kinda gets old after a few years, but they were there for me.

I called my parents last night… to thank them. I thanked them for embarrassing me in 2nd/3rd grade. My dad would send me to school with an index card. This index card would have different items on it, I don’t remember everything exactly, but something along the lines of homework completed, what new homework was due, and behavior. I had to have the teacher sign off on this for every session of the day. Talk about embarrassing to stand up in front of class to get this done every day. I’m not a teacher, but in retrospect, I truly believe that teachers help those most who help themselves and those who’s parents are actively involved in their children’s education. These embarrassing steps accomplished two things in my mind; they let me know that my parents were “watching” me, and they let the teacher know that they wanted their child to succeed. Pretty soon that allowed me to change from the “hearing aid kid” to the “hearing aid kid who’s pretty smart” to the “pretty smart goofy kid” (I hid my hearing aid in the mailbox during high school, just couldn’t do it, I had to be “cool”).

I thanked my parents because they did what they knew was best for me. Regardless of how many times I would tell them I hate them, or that they were the worst, they kept at it. I thank them now for giving me the hope, that if I put forth effort like they did with me, take control of my children’s education, then maybe one day Toya and I too can receive a call maybe 30 years from now that tells us “Thank you”. Sometimes parenting’s best lessons are just reflections of your own childhood. Things you hated growing up may actually have been the best thing for you, they may just have to be tweaked with the ever changing times and technology.

As I thanked them, my mom in turn thanked me, “Thank you for giving us our flowers while we are alive”.

Nariah says… #15

Posted: March 9, 2011 in Comedy, Nariah
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Picking up Nariah from preschool always has a potential for comedy and today was of no exception.
“What did you learn today baby?”
“We learned about health and the letter of the week is ‘F’”
“Like father? And funny? And fish?”
“Yeah daddy, ooh I know, we can rap about the letter ‘F’! You go first!”
So we get to the car and I crank on some music and say a couple of rhymes about words starting with the letter ‘F’ and I get ready to “pass the mic” to Nariah. Why is she in the back seat bobbing her head with a mean mug face on? She “grabs the mic” and says… “Fly like a G6… Fly like a G6…”
I have no words… LOL

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Daddy on “Bath Time”

Posted: March 7, 2011 in Fatherhood, Nariah
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“Bath time Nariah!”
This can either garner a response of cheers or moans, you never can tell these days. Toya and I each have our own different takes on bath time experiences, each of us with our own versions of both ends of the spectrum coming from “lets hurry up and get cleaned up” to “let’s have fun in the tub”. As your children get older and their imagination soars its up to us to stay on our toes and build upon that imagination. Last night Nariah was in a “so-so” mood about bath time so I suggested, “How about we go fishing in the tub?”
“Yeah, that sounds fun!”

Little did I know how much work that meant for me. We have this Elmo fishing set which is magnetic and comes with a cloth like octopus, crab, and starfish. (Why they don’t have an actual “fish” in this “fishing” set is beyond me).  Catching the octopus and starfish were a piece of cake. It was after those that it seemed Nariah had a slight case of ostraconophobia, pronounced “fear*of*CRABS”. Boy you’d thought this child would jump out the tub when I tossed the small crab around. After calming her down and finding out she’s scared because the crab can “pinch” her, we talked about how you can grab it from behind, throw it in the pot, and eat ’em later. That seemed to work, kinda. So we needed something else. This is where imaginative kids tax your brain. I actually let Nariah tell me what she saw in the “ocean” that she wanted to catch next.  This started out with a tuna fish, a shark, a dolphin, a whale, and finally a octopus (which she didn’t like so a shark had to come eat the octopus).

I personally do not  know how a tuna fish swims or sounds, but Nariah made sure to tell me I was wrong in my attempts. The shark was pretty easy to mimic with my hands, and after she caught that with the rod she said we had to throw it back, not only because it doesn’t fit in her bucket, but because we can’t eat them. Still wondering who told her that bit of info. The dolphin she wanted to catch just so she could play with it. This turned into a SeaWorld type event with Nariah being the trainer and my hand trying to do all the dolphin tricks. The blue whale was the most interesting and taxing. I didn’t realize sounding like the blue whale from “Finding Nemo” for about 5 minutes would tear up your vocal chords, and I should’ve realized splashing around and making waves like a blue whale would leave water everywhere in the bathroom including on myself. But it was definitely entertaining so see Nariah pulling and straining on the rod trying to “tire” out the whale, and telling it to “come on!!! come on!!!“. I think I made her a little upset when the whale, (my hand), let go of her hook and she had to hook the whale again. Now the daddy version of the octopus was different from the magnetic toy version. Even though it only had 5 arms, it was still maneuvering around that tub and sneaking nips at Nariah’s toes and knees, all to the glee of a jumping and giggling child. She wasn’t even trying to catch it, moreso just beat it down with the hook. So to save her, a shark came and ate the octopus and all was well again in the Goldman Sea.

Look at the time, I guess we have to introduce soap to this bathtub before Mommy wonders what happened to us up here. As I actually bathe her I start to think for future bath times do I try to come up with ideas or do I let Nariah’s creative start the flow? It looks like it might be more fun if I let it come from her.

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