Scott Nagele's Blog, page 28

Stop acting like a child, kid!

I’ve got five-year-olds figured out. When they hit us with whining, histrionics, and petty stubbornness, it’s all a bluff to lower our expectations of their sophistication. Secretly, those little sponges of knowledge are picking up every tiny bit of data and storing it away to use to their advantage. Sometimes, though, they get too full […]

Buster’s birthday bash

It was right around April Fool’s Day when Buster walked into the room with one hand hiked up into his shirt sleeve. Holding out that arm, he practiced his most scared face and yelled in mock terror as he stared at the empty space at the end of his sleeve. He couldn’t stop giggles from […]

Mice Capades: Part 2

As everyone sooner or later learns, the key to removing a mouse from your house is having enough kitchenware on hand. What we needed was a lip-less cookie sheet and a pitcher with a snug lid. Having assembled the proper tools, it was time for man and wife to argue about how to proceed while […]

Mice Capades: Part 1

It’s been a cold winter, followed by a none-too-balmy spring. This has been difficult on the animals with which we share the swamp our town is built upon. It’s not been a good year to be a deer or a skunk. We haven’t seen our favorite ground hog (a.k.a. the little man who lives under […]

Protect your parts

We’ve signed our kindergartener up for soccer this spring. It seemed like a good deal until we realized we had to buy him a jersey, a ball, spiked shoes, and shin guards. I don’t know if we were required to get the shoes, but everything came as a package at the sporting goods store. They […]

The stubborn contrarian doesn’t fall far from the tree

We had our spring parent conference with the boy’s kindergarten teacher last week. The good news is that the boy is doing well academically. As I often tell him, he’s too smart for his own good. On the citizenship front, he’s not quite the hotshot he is academically. He’s getting better at focusing on his […]

Lessons from the great heifer attack of 1974

It was probably 1974, that day when my little brother and I were playing in the pasture behind the barn. I was skipping pebbles across the creek (pronounced: crick, in this story). My little brother was shooting pebbles at the backside of a Holstein heifer. I wasn’t paying attention to my brother. I considered neither […]

Daddy’s just a big faker

Daddies aren’t supposed to get sick. That must be a rule among little kids because they never believe that Daddy feels like crap and needs to be left alone for a while. It’s funny how little respect my five-year-old has for my illnesses considering how much attention he demands on his own sick days. When […]

Where thumbs go to die

Every first Saturday of the month, we pack up our complimentary, kiddie aprons and head off to the Home Depot kids’ workshop to build something. This event provides a great opportunity for kids to learn how to use tools and for parents to go insane. Okay, that’s hyperbole. Many parents at the workshop don’t go […]

Secrets of the universe traded for pocket change and snacks

I’ve mentioned our one-year-old’s penchant for using the words Mommy and Daddy interchangeably. He’s getting better at differentiating the proper usage of each, but he still backslides once in a while and uses a universal Daddy to cover the nomenclature of both parents. It feels as though this child is adopting the English language slower than […]