I’m thinking about these parents as I try to figure out how to attach the Kinect Sensor to the XBOX.

If you had to distill the greatest challenges faced by this generation parents down to a single word, would it start with a lowercase i?

The Ghosts of Parents Past smirk and ask: “Really? That’s what you’ve got to deal with? Little light-up thingies that amuse you and makes life easier, and some imaginary gathering place invented by a twerp in a hoodie? Tough one!”

Maybe we’re a fortunate batch of breeders gone soft as church music, but if you want to  witness real panic and chaos, sneak up on a crowded PTA meeting and shout “Sexting!” “Violent Video Games!” and watch the gathering dissolve into a spastic, gibbering bedlam.

(You expecting and newborn parents are feeling smug right now, but that first teething-biscuit encrusted smudge on your smartphone is months, not years away.)

Maybe an iPad is less dangerous to kids than a steam powered loom, but it seems like the headlines announcing the prevalence of online bullying or the threat to literacy posed by auto-correct scream at us daily. From our iPads.

And it’s not just the tech that’s got us ‘rents jumpy, it’s the rate of change. I propose we get an injunction preventing the introduction any new gadgets that kids will want until the parental controls on 80% of the old ones are turned on.

Which brings me back to my Kinect — a gadget that makes gaming more fun by scanning and storing my children’s voices, faces and body sizes. Would I trade my misgivings about this harvest (what could go wrong?) for the worries of an agrarian dad of yore? Are we that different? Woods or web, we both keep a sharp eye out for predators, but both know that sooner or later, the children must go out there alone.

The Obliteration Room. © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc. / Photograph: Mark Sherwood

Our local credit union makes a habit of giving away a sheet of stickers when they notice kids in the car at the drive-thru. We long ago stopped fighting our boys’ creative desire to adorn their nearby windows with these adhesive cartoon characters and shapes, the natural consequence being a crappy view on road trips. An artist in Australia has harvested this urge to produce some interesting interactive art.

The Obliteration Room is an exhibition by Yayoi Kusama installed for the Queensland Art Gallery. This particular interactive children’s art is an iteration on previous work, made bigger and better. The exhibit depicts a domestic environment, complete with couches, tables, a television, and a piano. However, everything in this room is painted completely white.

Or, at least, it started that way.

Visitors were invited to contribute to the decor with little colored dot stickers. One at a time, color was added to the room until it was ‘obliterated’ by the collaborative choices of which colors and where to place each dot. [Editor: I want to know how those stickers got on the ceiling.]

Kusama has used interactivity as a creative medium since the 1960s:

A product of the postwar Avant-garde, [...] happenings developed as unconventional performance events increasingly relying on audience reaction and direct participation. Kusama’s happenings, known as ‘body festivals’ — or ‘orgies’, as they were often sensationally reported in the mainstream press — typically provided platforms for spontaneous and improvisatory behaviour within conceptual and aesthetic frameworks determined by the artist.
(Source: QAG)

More photos of the progression from blank canvas to living Seurat painting can be found at Colossal. There are also has pointers to other interactive exhibits: Room of Heights and kinetic art made using a helium ball.

The Kusama exhibition — “Look Now, See Forever” — runs through March 11 in the Children’s Art Center at the Queensland Art Gallery in Australia.

Stuffed animals.  

All kinds of stuffed animals. I had forgotten about most of them, but all those memories came flooding back to me of having to buy them, wash them, repair them, hide them, find them, and wash them again. My boys loved those little stuffed animals that they dragged all over the yard, the house, and of course they couldn’t go to sleep without them. I guess when I was in the middle of the madness that is raising little children I never noticed just how many there were until I watched those videos. And how they all ended up in the attic stuffed into every nook and crannie I’ll never know.

The family pet

When I was a kid we had a pet dog named J.D.. As far back as I can remember he was there. I guess I never knew any different growing up that we had a dog, and just about all my friends had family dogs too. But when it came to my own house full of kids, for years I refused to get a dog. It was going to be too much hassle, too much money, too much poop. So for years I refused even though our kids begged for a dog. When we finally gave in we realized just how much our kids wanted to love something like that and how important it was for them.

Even with my own past of having a family pet it just escaped me how important it is to have one. Had I realized it sooner, my kids would have had one sooner.  Sorry guys.  I have come to realize that kids need things to love. That’s why they desire those little stuffed animals and nurture them like they do. And the next natural extension of that is the family pet. We have 2 dogs now, each with their own personality, good sides, and bad sides. They are truly another family member and our kids look at them just like that.

I look at those stuffed animals a little differently now. They taught my kids how to love and take care of something that needs taking care of.  Now, if I could just get the kids to take the dogs out more often, everything would be just about perfect.

Across the calendar a line of Xs stand upon the dates that we have kissed goodbye. Each line an ending, a memory, and one step closer to hugging someone at the last possible minute.

The year goes out with a bang, just as it arrived. It spends its last week sleeping off holiday treats and shopping fatigue. As the end draws near it makes a reservation, shaves what’s hairy, and puts on something that pops. It’s a party after all, and the year deserves it.

In the wings waits the next one. It is young and naive, full of hope and promises. It watches the current year and notes what it will do differently. It watches and it waits, one eye always on the hourglass. It too will dress in something smart, but not nearly as outdated.

People pull out resolutions and change the date accordingly. The one becomes an awkward two and everyone is the wiser. They are losing weight and quitting vices. They are eating healthier and trying harder. They have waited a year to repeat themselves. The first week is the hardest, and often the only.

The children want to stay up until midnight because everyone is doing it and the reviews are fantastic. They laugh every time someone makes a joke about seeing them next year. They are alive with apple juice and Chex mix.  They are why the new year rings.

The year will fall, another will rise to take its place, and the world will carry on regardless. There may be song and a spot or two of dancing. Laughter is strongly encouraged.

Happy New Year. You deserve it.

I had to see to a few meetings during which niceties and composures listed precariously close to capsizing until, capsizing, everything turned upside down. And by ‘it sucked’ I mean it was not enjoyable.

It’s times like this I drive home from the Big Bad World thanking God in heaven I have a warm, welcoming home to come home to. And it’s thoughts of gratitude just like that one that oft-times have me calling home to let them know I’m thinking of them and will be there shortly. I like to hear the chipper giggly laughter of kids in the background and the hum of a household fairly carbonated with life and drama three-kids strong. I like to be reminded that no matter how Not Nice the world is outside these walls, there is nothing so Not Nice that the love and acceptance I find when I cross my threshold can’t be dissolved in a big giant family hug.

And then I woke up.

From the nightmare of the day, that is. Which was quite the wakeup call, all things considered. And not a phone call. Not at first, anyway. It was a text exchange with Beta Male that went like this:

“When r u coming back?”

“45 minutes. Everything okay? My meeting is going longer than I expected.”

“Yeah we made some failure banana bread and it didn’t taste right, soooooo….yeah.”

Lord.

(calls home) “Hey kiddo.”

“Hey dad.”

“Everything okay?”

“Not with the banana bread. We undercooked it and then kept on cooking it.”

“Yeah I read that part. I’ll be home in a few minutes. I hope you cleaned the kitchen up though.”

“Don’t worry, we did. We cleaned it just like you left it.”

Which was such a happy thought that last few miles on the way to house with the yellow police tape surrounding it.

Because apparently “We cleaned it just like you left it” means I left it like a murder scene.

.

Don’t worry, I wouldn’t have agreed to write this if I didn’t believe in it. Also, they’re paying me. But mostly because they’re paying me. I mean, mostly because I believe in it. And I believe in you. Most of you.

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I did it again.

Disclosure: This winter I was given a rare opportunity to be a Upromise Ambassador, which means, yes, this is a paid post (the second of two). I hope that doesn’t offend you. The reason that I agreed to this relationship is twofold, a) I’m buying what Upromise is selling, and b) I would not have been able to purchase my children a single Christmas gift if this opportunity hadn’t come about. That’s right, people, you’re reading a Christmas miracle. Believe.