Bringing Up Bobbin

The Potty Vacation

Inspired by hours in our bathroom, reading Berenstain Bear books to Bobbin. The numbers in small italics correspond to the page numbers from the actual book, The Bears' Vacation, from which this was adapted. Enjoy :-)

Hooray! Hooray!
We're on our way!
Our potty vacation
starts today!
[3]

And here we are.
What a wonderful trip!
Let's sit on the potty.
Let's let 'er rip!
[4]

[Papa Bear]
Small Bear! Small Bear!
Don't you forget
to wash your hands
after you've done your bit.
[7]

[Mama Bear]
Don't you worry.
Don't you fear.
I'll help her with
her potty career.
[9]

[Small Bear]
I'm watching, Mom!
I'm all set to go!
[10]

[Mama Bear]
Then here is the first rule
you should know.
Obey all body signs!
now, tell me
what are some body signs
that you see?
[11]

[Small Bear]
Yes! I've got one.
And I think you should know
It feels like a tingle.
I think I must go.
[12]

[Mama Bear]
Ah, yes, Small Bear.
You are right. So you must.
Sit down on your potty.
No need for a fuss.
[13]

[Small Bear]
Yes, Mama! It's here!
I think I am done.
[14]

I'll be safe when I pee now.
That lesson was fun.
[15]

[Mama Bear]
You will be safe
when doing number two
after I give you
some pointers on poo.

Sit first. Then push
with all your might.
Let's give it a go.
Let's not have a fight.
[16]

[Small Bear]
Yes, Mom, I will!
But this pushing is hard.
[18]

[Mama Bear]
Never mind that!
Just disregard.
[19]

[Small Bear]
You proved it, Mom!
It's easier when calm!
[20]

[Mama Bear]
Right, my girl.
That is very true.
It's a pleasure to teach
the potty to you.
[22]

[Small Bear]
Mom, I'll remember
the rules you gave.
Now let's go have fun.
I'm feeling brave.
[23]

[Mama Bear]
First, we go on
to rule number three.
Beware of all rocks
when surfing at sea.
[24]

[Small Bear]
But Mama? What's rocks
and surfing got
to do with peeing
in a pot?
[25]

[Mama Bear]
You're right, small bear.
I've lost my thought.
So much potty reading
has me distraught.
[26]

[Small Bear]
I think I understand
the potty now.
Thank you, Mom,
for showing me how!
[30]

[Mama Bear]
But I have much more
to tell you, my girl.
More potty rules
have I still to unfurl.
[31]

When people are done
doing their stuff
they must wash with soap.
Water alone's not enough.
[33]

Using the soap pump
is rule number four.
Just push it once
No need for more.
[34]

[Small Bear]
But Mom, what about
the soap bar instead?
May I use it?
It's just as good, I have read.
[36]

[Mama Bear]
Wait now! Don't touch
anything yet!
There's another rule
you have to get!
[37]

Here it is...
rule number five
Watch what you flush.
It may be alive!
[38]

[Small Bear]
Rule five is creepy
and not sure how it fits.
But I'll heed it to avoid
a battle of wits.
[40]

[Mama Bear]
Okeydokey, Small Bear
Hop up to the sink!
You must learn the rule
for safe washing I think!
[41]

When at the sink
you must take care.
And here is rule number six,
Small Bear.

Cold faucet only.
Don't touch the hot.
And try not to splash
so you don't have to blot.
[42]

See? Like this!
Only a fool
would fill up the sink
with hot water, not cool.
[44]

[Small Bear]
It's a very good rule.
I can see that, Mom.
Without it, things might
go very wrong.
[46]

I've been happy to learn
all you had to teach.
Can I go now?
I'd really like a peach.
[48]

[Mama Bear]
I have one rule more
before we go,
and then you'll know
all you need to know.
[49]

One more thing
you must do in this room
before the rest of
your life can resume.
[51]

In the bathroom
like lots of other places
there are many, many
dangerous spaces.

And my last rule
is simple and clear:
Always flush AFTER
removing your rear.
[53]

The toilet seat
is big and wide!
You do not want
to fall inside.
[54]

[Small Bear]
But, Mama, I'd rather
use my own
than sit on one as big
as a throne.
[55]

[Mama Bear]
Good choice. As I said,
like other spaces
the bathroom has
many dangerous places!
[56]

FLUSH!

[Small Bear]
Wow!
We learned that rule
very fast!
[58]

Tell me, Mom,
was that the last?
[60]

[Mama Bear]
Yes, that rule
was the very last one.
My safe potty rules
are done!
[61]

[Small Bear]
Pa!
You won't have to worry
anymore!
Ma taught me how
to poop safely and more!
[63]

In 4 weeks I expect to have a similar adaptation of War and Peace ready to post. Stay tuned ;-)

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Generation "R" for "Relaunched"

I was standing in the checkout line at the local PCC, listening in on the conversation between the guy bagging the groceries, who looked to be all of 16 years old, and the cashier who looked to be in his early 20s. The conversation went something like this:

"Transformers [the movie that just hit the theaters] really rocked! You know, it's kinda funny because a lot of the people who went and saw it were like, in their late 30s because that's the generation they were big with when they first came out, and people get surprised when they find out how much I know about them and am into them, and then discover my age. It's kinda like G.I. Joe. He came out in the early 80's and I'm really into that stuff too. I guess I just really find stuff from that generation interesting. People end up thinking I'm much older than I really am because of my tastes and interests."

Oh, so much was wrong there, but I was too busy holding in a gaffaw to be able to provide a pop culture history lesson much less a crash course on product marketing tactics 101. Instead I smiled, picked up my bags, and shuffled my fragile old body out to the car.

Just for kicks, I decided to do a little fact finding on the internet. Not because I was questioning my own knowledge of the era in which I grew up, and the toys that even then were being recycled from earlier generations and relaunched with big marketing hype, but just to provide some completeness to my story :-)

As most of us cronies know, G.I. Joe actually made his debut as a character in a comic strip for a US military magazine during WW II. (That's World War Two, for you young'uns. and no, I wasn't born until several decades after that war myself, thank you very much). 1964 is when G. I. Joe came onto the scene as a 12" action figure produced by Hasbro. In fact it was the product that coined the term "action figure" because Hasbro figured (and rightly so; it always all comes down to marketing) that calling it a "doll" wouldn't be really good for sales to their target demographic - little boys, and of course the fathers who earned the money that would pay for it. Because what real father would buy his son, or approve of his wife buying his son, a "doll"? An action figure of course, is perfectly masculine. Never mind the fact that whenever I got together with my friend David, who owned the 12" "action figures", we would invariably end up either marrying them off to my barbies, or having them take part in some courageous act of valor in rescuing these same barbies from some sort of captivity from underneath the bunkbed. G.I. Joe went through a series of relaunches, but the 1982 relaunch was the one that released the smaller scale figures, an animated tv series and a comic book series.

1982 was an interesting year because it was also the year in which the My Little Pony product line first launched, along with their own animated tv specials. These were relaunched first in 1997 which is when they started sporting their slimmer and longer-legged bodies, and but the 2nd relaunch in 2003 is what really revived them. 2003 was heralded as their "Celebration Year", and of course, this coincided with their 20th anniversary which meant that all of the 8 year-old girls who were collecting them in the 1980s were now 28 years old and starting to get married and start families of their own. Coincidence? Of course not. Opportunistic marketing? You betcha.

But that's not all that happened in 1982. The Care Bears made their debut as greeting card characters in 1981, and in 1982 they were announced as a toy line for production . 1983 is when the stuffed bears that we all know and... uh... know were introduced to the general public. Their marketing launch also included animated TV specials... what product launch at this point didn't? Hey... if it works, repeat it.

The care bears, like the ponies, were also relaunched in 1996 and 1999 but with much less success than the original. However in... can you guess... 2003 (their 20th anniversary) they were relaunched a 3rd time and this time they were successful. Why? well, because those same 8 year old girls who were collecting the My Little Ponies were also collecting the Care Bears and... yadda yadda yadda.

But the zaniness didn't stop there. No. In 1982 the Cabbage Patch Kids brand was "born" when artist Xavier Roberts created the name, and when Coleco signed the first licensing agreement with the Roberts company and began mass producing them for public "adoption" in 1983. As near as I can tell, the Cabbage Patch Kids actually managed to maintain a fairly steady level of popularity through the 90s, with a Kid actually journeying to outerspace on a U.S. Space Shuttle, being named the official mascot of not one but two U.S. Olympic teams, being selected in a nationwide public vote as 1 of 15 commemorative U.S. postage stamps. However they too jumped on the "Generation 'R'" bandwagon, and in 2001 for the first time ever, the original hand made Cabbage Patch Kids became available for adoption on the Web, with adoption fees ranging anywhere from $170 - $225 for regular editions, which includes the name and birth date of your choice. Because what Gen-Xer wouldn't shell out $225 for an authentic replica of the exact same prune-faced doll that she had as a young girl, for her own little precious princess?

But what about Transformers, you ask? There too, is more than meets the eye. They appeared on the scene originally in 1984 as action figures and comic book characters (if you were an action figure without an animated series or a comic book character, you were apparently laughed off the toy store shelves by your tv-star peers). They had several failed relaunches in the 1990s too, but again the one that really started taking off was the relaunch of Transformers in 2003-2005. The series launched in the latter part of that period (Energon Line) contained many homages to the original Generation 1 line. And of course, there is the movie that just launched that will undoubtedly spawn a resurgence of interest and popularity in the toys. The difference being where mommies are buying Little Ponies and Care Bears and Cabbage Patch Kids for their daughters so they can sit back and watch them enjoy the toys as much as they did at that age, Daddies will be buying Transformers for their sons (and hopefully some daughters too), but will actually end up spending large portions of their time playing with the toys themselves and reinacting battles and scenes from 20 years ago.

I have admittedly fallen for the tactic myself. Bobbin has a Fisher-Price Little People house (albeit the Little People don't bear any resemblance to the little block figures I played with), the Fisher-Price corn popper (albeit an electronic version), and many other toys that are similar to toys I had in my childhood. Of course, there is a fine line between "classic & timeless" and "relaunched"... or so I'd like to think :-)

In the end, the moral of the story is this: If you launch a wildly successful toy that is hugely popular with the 8-12 year old crowd and achieves iconic status for a generation, wait at least 20 years before relaunching, so that your original audience has had time to establish a dependable income, mate, spawn, and has entered the "nesting & nostalgiac" stage of their lives. And when you relaunch, make sure you release a feature-length movie at the same time, and try to get Steven Spielberg or George Lucas to direct it.

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Nostoylgia

The weekly emails I get from Fisher Price, Baby Center, Toys-R-Us and others telling me about the latest must-buy toys for my toddler has me harkening back to my own childhood and most beloved toys. So I thought I'd see how many of them I could dredge up on the internets. And was not surprised to find that I was able to locate quite a few :-). And so, I bring you "The Collection", helpfully categorized for your perusing pleasure.

1) Toys that were deemed Choking Hazards by the parents of the latest generation and hence they and their accessories were redesigned for the good of humanity

I had all the Little People play set essentials. The bus, the jet plane, the family & pets, and the house and all the home accessories - bath, kitchen, nursery, bedroom, living room, laundry room. And I never choked on a single one.

2) Toys mimicking real objects that are unrecognizable to any child born after the year 2000

Of course, you have to start out with the old, analog, dial phone. That's a phone? Oddly enough, we got a rather nice hand-me-down one from some friends and while Bobbin thought it was cool and fun to push and pull around, she never actually tried to use it as a phone, whereas she tries to use our kitchen timers, calculators, ipods, and other pocket-sized electronic devices (real or toy) as phones all the time.

The Fisher Price Camera - What kid born in this digital age would recognize the shape and the rotating flash cube at the top?

Do schools even use chalk boards now? Or is everything a whiteboard? This was my Fisher Price chalkboard desk. I loved this thing. It kept me entertained for hours on end.

Long before the advent of CDs there were these things called Records. And Fisher Price made a rough-and-tumble toddler-proof plastic version complete with "records". My favourite one was "Edelweiss".

And before ipods and mp3players there were these things called Radios, and they had these big knobs.

Remember when milk was delivered in glass bottles to your door by the milkman? No... neither do I. Even that was a tad before my time at the height of its popularity. But that didn't stop me from having tonnes of fun makebelieving at milk delivery with the fisher price milk bottles.

3) Toys that were discontinued for no good reason that I can understand apart from the fact that their appearance dates them to the 1970s.

Baby Beans! This cutie was such a popular dolly in our household that my sister got her very own brand new one when she was a baby, as opposed to inheriting mine. I loved my baby beans, and Sarah loved hers.

Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub... maybe it was discontinued because they couldn't come up with a politically correct marketing campaign for it in later years when that stuff started to matter more?

Hickory dickory dock, I had this fisher price clock.

And this sewing kit, the scissors of which I used to use to cut the grey hairs out of my Grandpa's perfectly snowy-white hair-covered head, at his suggestion, as he lay on our couch napping. He wasn't fooling anyone including 6-year-old me; this is how he got a nice relaxing scalp massage :-)

And one of my all time favourites - the Fisher Price Wagon!

There were a couple of other favourites I didn't locate - my little yellow plastic ride-on duck with the red wheels, my Holly Hobbie Cardboard play house, and my little yellow oven that really baked (not an easy-bake. Mine actually looked like a real stove and oven which was way cooler). And of course my teddy bear and my favourite doll Velvet (until I coloured her face like a clown with a permanent marker while playing "circus" alone in my room. but that's another story). And I used to love playing with my sister's cool Fisher Price stove top and sink (despite being 8 years older) but I didn't come across those either. They were fun. I used to arrange them in the basement rec room on top of the toyboxes to make a pretend kitchen. I also had tonnes of barbies and barbie accessories, but that could be a post in and of itself.

All in all, we seem to be doing pretty well on the toy front. Bobbin still gets daily playing in with all the toys she got over a year ago at Christmas, her birthday and this past christmas. So we must be making pretty decent choices :-). Still... I wonder what Little People and Weebles will look like when she's my age? And what will the toy version of however we consume our music look like? And will there be any such thing as a toy that doesn't have a battery (they're getting rarer and rarer to find!)

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Home Sweet Farm

While I'm posting old pictures, here is one that means a lot to me. This is the farm we lived in, in Pembroke. I think we moved there when I was 2 or 3 - drove out from Edmonton. I actually think I remember parts of that drive.

I only lived in the house for 3 years of my life - 3 very early years at that. But it formed a very strong impression of what "a house" is in my mind, and also what "a home" is.

It was interesting when we first set out on the adventure to design and build our dream house. Our architect, Rob Harrison, has a pretty detailed questionnaire on his web site that he likes his clients to fill out so that he can really get to know his clients' likes, dislikes, what is important to them in a house and a home, what their day-to-day lives in that home will be like, etc. And as we went through the process of answering the questionnaire, very vivid memories of this farm resurfaced and wove their way into our responses. Not just the structure or physical features of the house - which to this day still characterize what a real house looks like for me. But also the memories - of birthday candles being blown out at our dining room table; my dad trying to teach me how to whistle in the family room; galloping across the room on my "horse" that was really the antique trunk in the corner; My parents waking me up on the couch to go to bed and my sleepy protests that I was just "resting my eyes"; Mom making peanut butter cookies in the kitchen and letting me put "the dents" in them with the fork; "Old Heck" sitting at our kitchen table telling Mom and Dad his stories; Squeaky giving birth to kittens in the bottom drawer of my dresser; Picking fiddle-heads with my Dad and searching for old glass bottles in the swamp behind the house; stockings hanging by the fire at Christmas, phone calls from Santa on Christmas Eve, and reindeer hoof prints leaving a trail in the snow that mysteriously and abruptly ends... Good memories.

When we moved to Germany we lived in an apartment. Which I thought was cool too, in its own way. And in the PMQs we lived in, they would hold a window painting competition during the Christmas holidays. One year, for our entry, Dad reconstructed this photo (but in colour) on our living room window. We didn't win the competition. But I thought it was the greatest artwork I had ever seen.

Someday Tim and I will drive past the farm. Maybe even knock on the door, and ask if we can look around :-) I'm sure it'll seem much smaller than I remember. So maybe it's best if we just drive by. I'd like it to be winter, though, when we do.

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