Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 499

For the consummate Patriots fan

In light of this weekend’s Patriot’s victory and their clinching of the AFC East title, I give you the toast.

Patriot’s style. 

Yes, it’s real. Yes, it makes a great gift. And yes, it comes in other team logos, but why would you want anything but the best?

I really don’t need my daughter questioning my abilities as a provider

Everyone is a critic, including my three-year-old daughter.

While I was trying to put Charlie to sleep, my daughter kept entering his room, dragging in a crate full of her baby dolls.

“Clara, I’m giving Charlie a bottle and putting him in his crib. You can’t be here! Just let me get him to sleep!”

“But this house is too small, Daddy,” Clara said with great earnestness. “We don’t have enough rooms. I’m trying to put all my babies to sleep, and I need to use Charlie’s room because all the other rooms have babies already!”

After some back-and-forth, I finally managed to extract her from Charlie’s room. But when I emerged fifteen minutes later, I found babies all over the house and was greeted by a further admonition from my daughter.

“You can’t use the toilet, Daddy. Madeline’s sleeping there because we don’t have enough room for the Madelines. I had to use the bathroom. I can’t believe it.”

I pity the man who marries my daughter. 

   

Frightened

An un-staged, honest-to-goodness look at my wife as we watch the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead. 

She does not handle scary things well at all.

Why our Thanksgiving Day table was better than Whole Foods will ever be.

Like Whole Foods, our Thanksgiving table, located in the home of my brother-in-law’s parents, was piled high with delicious, attractively displayed  food.

Unlike Whole Foods, there was also Diet Coke on the table, a product which Whole Foods will not deign to offer its customers.

Best pizza in town, yet I can’t get a Coke to wash it down. It makes no sense and is just one reason why I avoid shopping there.

I prefer my food without the side order of pretention.

This is real. Frighteningly, horrifyingly, disgustingly real.

Affirmation from a Moth audience is unbelievable. Affirmation from a bunch of kids is damn good, too.

As a second grader, comedian and actor Jamie Foxx was so talented at telling jokes that his teacher used him as a reward.

If the class behaved, he would entertain them.

I don’t know who Jaime Foxx’s teacher was, but I suspect that I would have liked him a lot.

One of the rewards I give students throughout the school year is stories from my life. Most often these stories are about my childhood, but not always. There are also occasional stories about my children, my wife and events from my adult life as well. I will be reading a book aloud to the class or listening to a student tell me a story when I am reminded of a moment from my past, and I’ll say something like, “Oh, that reminds me of the strangest pet that I ever owned.”

“What was it?” a student will ask.

“Oh, you won’t believe the pet I had as a kid. It was amazing. But I don’t have time to tell that story now. But maybe later. When you’re especially productive.”

My personal secretary (a student) will then add the story to the growing list of topics lest I forget, and when my students have been especially productive and achieved their goals ahead of of schedule, I will offer to tell them a story from this list. The personal secretary will review the list and choose one for me to tell.

It’s a five minute reward that my students adore, and it also serves to reinforce the elements of effective storytelling with my kids. Oftentimes I’m also able to embed some meaningful life lessons into these stories, and best of all, I am able to make my kids laugh.

Kids who laugh at school like school, and kids who like school learn more.

It’s that simple.

The strangest pet ever, by the way, was a raccoon. His name was Racket. Perhaps I’ll tell you that story someday.

Of course, you must be a good storyteller in order to make this reward work.

Earlier this year I was telling a story that included one of my fellow teachers, and halfway through the story, he happened to enter the classroom. He heard the story being told, realized that he was an integral  part of it and sat down to listen. A minute later he jumped in to clarify a point and then proceeded to tell his part of the story for himself.

“Stop!” one of the kids said after few moments. “You’re not telling it right. Let Mr. Dicks tell the story. He knows what he’s doing. Just listen.”

Several others nodded their heads in agreement.

And they were right. He wasn’t telling the story right. He was butchering it.

Winning two Moth StorySLAMs and placing second in four others over the past year has been a dream come true for me (actually, the second place finishes have been damn frustrating), but that moment of affirmation from a bunch of ten-year-olds meant just as much to me.

I adore authenticity, even when it hurts

Someone offered me a compliment this week (one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me, but not nice enough to crack my top three list), but she prefaced the compliment by saying, “I really hate to offer you a compliment of any kind, but…”

I think I appreciated the preface almost as much as the compliment itself.

The smell of breakfast whilst you shave

I’m not sure which I like better: The product or the ad copy.

The product is bacon shaving cream. While plain old soap typically does the job for me, I could get behind this idea.

But the ad copy might be even better. Every paragraph contains a sincerely selling point wrapped in a joke that will at least make you smile.

Nothing is more powerful or captivating than the smell of bacon. It is truly the smell of victory (and breakfast). Now you can work yourself into a rich, bacon lather with J&D’s Bacon Shaving Cream.

J&D’s Bacon Shaving Cream is a high end, luxurious bacon-scented shaving cream for all skin types. It is best used after a hot shower or before an important date with someone you may want to spend the rest of your life with.

With just one use of J&Ds Bacon Shaving Cream, you will smell and feel like a champion. We image that this is what Vikings would have used this to mow down their impenetrable forest of man-beard.

Our rich moisturizers and essential oils ensure a high-performance, smooth shaving experience. Advanced heat-activated aromatic technology lasts for hours and delivers maximum bacon scent when you need it most.

With J&Ds Bacon Shaving Cream, prepare to be loved, admired and possibly be eaten by bears.

That is some damn good writing.

Little girl engineers

I cannot attest to the quality of this product, but I like the idea behind it a lot, and I’m happy to report that her Kickstarter campaign was fully funded in a matter of day and far exceeded engineer Debbie Sterling’s goal.

We need more stuff like this in the world.

Progress with a painful price

My little boy is beginning to sit up on his own.

   

That’s the good news, unless of course you ask my wife. If she had her way, Charlie would remain an infant forever.

The bad news is that Charlie has also begun rolling over on his own, meaning that we can no longer swaddle him at night. As expected, this lack of swaddling impacted his sleep considerably last night.

On Wednesday night, Charlie slept for almost 13 hours straight without a peep.

Last night he wailed for 40 minutes after I put him to bed, and he cried again for lengthy stretches of time at 10:00 and midnight. 

Listening to a crying baby is never easy, and I was home alone last night, which compounded the difficulty.

Except I wasn’t actually alone.

After putting Charlie to bed, I joined my three-year-old in her bedroom to read books, sing to her, brush her teeth and tuck her in. As we read, we listened to Charlie cry on the other side of the wall. At one point I said, “Poor Charlie. I hate to listen to him cry.”

Clara said, “He’ll go to sleep, Dad. He just has to cry for a little while.”

I told Clara that Mommy and I did the same thing for her when she was a baby, because we knew how important it was to teach her to go to sleep on her own. This is a child who loves her bed so much that she refused to sleep in our bed after banging her head on the floor and suffering a possible concussion. Instead, I had to wake up every hour to check on her.

If done right, sleep training works wonders. But it’s not easy. 

“It was so hard listening to you cry, too,” I told Clara. “But we wanted you to grow up and be a good sleeper.”

Clara smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”

It still wasn’t easy to listen to my baby boy cry it out in his crib, but after talking to Clara, it was a little easier.

The wisdom of a three year old. I know many parents who would do well to follow it. Myself included.