From January 22nd to the 24th, I filmed 6 webisodes of Uncle Nick’s Enchanted Forest. Similar to the way I filmed 4 webisodes after the Christmas 2015 flash flood, I took advantage of the weather condition, making it the plotline of these half a dozen webisodes.
And starting with Webisode 18, I introduce a fun new theme song as well as a new animal hat…
I’ve gotten to the point where I pretty much just keep my camera, tripod, and Uncle Nick costume in my car with me; in order that I can always be prepared to shoot an episode on the spot.
Good thing I was ready on Friday, January 22nd, when the blizzard kicked in. I have a coworker, Shane Moore, who is quick and faithful to help me out with some of the shoots.
So he served as my camera man and assistant director for the first 2 webisodes of the blizzard story arc.
Webisode 14 features Mama Bear and Baby Bear, who get separated during the beginning of the blizzard. It’s up to Uncle Nick to reunite them!
In Webisode 15, we are introduced to a poor little homeless Husky who is stranded out in the middle of the snow storm. Uncle Nick must find her a new home to get her warm.
The remaining 4 webisodes of the blizzard story arc were filmed Saturday and Sunday morning; just me and my tripod.
Webisode 16 finds Piper the Penguin frozen to the ice. Uncle Nick must find a place to keep her safe until the other penguins return.
In Webisode 17, Uncle Nick must resuscitate a lizard he finds who is literally freezing in the river.
Then in Webisode 18, Uncle Nick encounters a sleepwalking pig, who is headed towards a frozen lake.
And finally, in Webisode 19, Uncle Nick must discover, and uncover, a frozen frog on a log.
In the next story arc of episodes, the plot will definitely be thickening…
If you haven’t checked out my Uncle Nick series, I encourage you to, with a younger child next to you. I predict it will be an engaging experience.
I feel it’s pretty easy these days to entertain people on my Instagram. I just simply take a picture of you when I come home from work each day.
Because typically, you’re into something interesting.
Tuesday as soon as I got in the door, you were having fun playing with a small container of slime that Mommy and I got you a while back.
“Look Daddy, I’m a pirate!” you proclaimed.
Clearly, that was your invitation to me to take a picture and share it with everyone.
After I snapped the picture, you bragged, “Daddy, I kept my eye open while the slime was covering it.”
In case “slime pirate” wasn’t a legitimate term before, it is now. You were a slime pirate.
That was funny enough, but on Monday, as we were finishing up dinner, you handed Mommy a sealed envelope.
You were so proud for her to open it.
The letter mainly consisted of variations of the word “boo,” which other than your name, which is one of the words you feel most confident spelling and writing.
Mommy read your letter out loud. There was one particular word that actually made sense. Mommy and I couldn’t stop laughing.
“You’re reading it upside-down,” you explained.
Turning the letter the other way revealed that your own name was now showing, but everything else was now more confusing.
I’m still not really sure what the letter was intended to say.
Whatever you believed the letter said, I’m sure it was kind, loving words for Mommy.
Actually, I’m pretty confused that as you wrote down random concepts of words on that paper, you had hoped that would magically translate into words than actually made sense; as if that’s how writing a letter works.
Either way, your love letter to Mommy was well received.
And then there was yesterday, too. I discovered your artwork. Amazingly, Mommy didn’t notice it first:
A dragon that clearly is able to breathe out fire, but not from this mouth…
This past weekend our family was able to get our hands on Elmo’s newest DVD; Elmo’s World: Elmo Wonders, which will hit the streets on February 2nd, 2016.
Aside from the bonus features, the DVD mainly consists of episodes of Elmo’s World. I let my son Jack decided which chapters he wanted our family to watch first.
He chose the “Firefighters” episode; his favorite part was the talking fire truck puppet.
But without a doubt, my son’s favorite segment was “Jumping.” As these pictures at the bottom demonstrate, Jack decided on his own that it was vital that he began jumping like Elmo and the kids on the video.
It’s been a while since the last time Jack was watched an Elmo DVD, so it was interesting to see how we reacted to Elmo; now as a 5 year-old, compared to when Jack was a 4 year-old.
Therefore, another one of Jack’s favorite parts was when Elmo would ask the baby’s opinion on the subject.
He laughed so hard, recognizing the absurdity of asking a baby a legitimate question.
It’s interesting to see how once Jack grew past the age of Elmo (who is supposed to be around 3 and a half or 4 years old), he began to appreciate Elmo even more.
Because in theory, Jack is now in hindsight able to see the maturity level and coping skills of a younger kid, or red furry monster.
With a newborn sister scheduled to arrive in 3 months, I can see Jack becoming more away are his upcoming role as big brother. I can tell that he sees Elmo as a younger kid.
This DVD especially came in handy last weekend, as we were grounded in the middle of the blizzard. So when we weren’t playing in the snow, we could come inside and watch more Elmo.
As part of my plan to quickly build the library of my newest web series, Uncle Nick’s Enchanted Kingdom, I am now shooting new webisodes during my lunch breaks at work.
One of my coworkers just happens to be one of my most faithful watchers, so I didn’t really have to twist his arm in order to convince him to be my camera man/assistant director on these “during our lunch break at work” video shoots.
Last Thursday, we shot two new webisodes; during one 60 minute period.
First is “Webisode 12: Beanie the Bat”, where Uncle Nick serves as a real estate agent to a bat who likes to live in trees; with a sort of “House Hunters: Animal Edition” style of plot line.
During the shoot, I sliced my hand on the tree I was climbing. I just wrote it into the script.
The other webisode we filmed is “Webisode 13: Petey the Possum.” There is no doubt this is one of the most stand-out webisodes of Uncle Nick.
Very close to where I work, there is a drain tunnel the same height as me. I decided it would make the perfect setting. I am so pleased with how it turned out.
Not only do I feel the plot line is captivating, but the tunnel itself is intriguing because it’s a rare event to get a tour down into something so mysterious.
I’ll say this; I wouldn’t be willing to walk in there alone.
So now I can make videos throughout the week, instead of having to just wait for the weekend.
I feel my Uncle Nick series has so much potential and that kids would really like it if they watched it. But for now, it remains undiscovered in the corner of YouTube.
But that doesn’t stop me from continuing to grow my collection.
Uncle Nick has plenty more up his sleeve!
Here’s an overview of what some previous webisodes are about:
Webisode 7: Paulie the Puppy– When Uncle Nick decides to hike a new trail, it leads him to an empty old building and a mysterious barking sound.
Webisode 8: Pokey the Pot-Bellied Pig– Uncle Nick must figure out a way to cross the river to save the little pot-bellied pig who is stuck on the other side.
Webisode 9: Ralph the Red Panda– While hiking later in the evening, Uncle Nick discovers a rare animal as it begins getting dark outside.
Webisode 10: Slither the Snake– Freddie the Fox gets trapped by a hungry snake at the top of a large rock. It’s Uncle Nick to the rescue!
Webisode 11: Barry the Bear– When a scary-looking bear is soon in the Enchanted Forest, Uncle Nick decides to investigate; leading to a lesson about not judging a bear by his cover.
Barry the Bear was first introduced 4 months ago in my other series, Jack-Man:
I had every reason to be an advocate of spanking my child.
After all, I was raised Southern. (“Nuff said.”)
Not to mention, I was also raised Southern Baptist. And that means that a particular Bible verse got more than its fair share of attention; Proverbs 13:24:
“Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.”
Hence, the popular phrase, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.”
However, I now translate that verse as, “It’s better to physically strike your child with a wooden object than it is to refrain from disciplining them at all.”
It appears to me that one extreme is being compared to another; an “either/or” situation.
I am able to comprehend that disciplining my child and spanking him can be two separate entities.
Assuming that verse in Proverbs explicitly endorses spanking, in my opinion, would make hypocrites of us:
I’ve yet to meet a Christian who gouged out their own eye because of temptation to look at something that would cause them to do wrong, when Jesus said this in Matthew 18:9…
“And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter (eternal) life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.”
Or their right hand either (Matthew 5:30):
“And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose part of your body than for whole body to go into hell.”
In other words, address the actual issue initially, that way you don’t end up with a worse outcome.
Yes, it’s true: I am an official advocate of disciplining my child without spanking him.
But obviously, between how I was brought up and my son currently being 5 years old, something fundamentally intervened in regards to how I think.
What caused such an abrupt conversion in my life?
My wife.
Like me, and like nearly all of us parents who are Eighties Children, she was spanked as a child too.
We had always planned to spank our son, too. The deal was, that I would be the one to actually spank him. And that was it.
Never was the issue that “I simply just didn’t have it in me” to spank him. Because like most of us, I had reached the point of being “fed up” enough to do it.
Believe me, I had it in me…
But yet, I never have spanked my son; nor has anyone else.
And if you’ve met him, you know how bright, intelligent, creative, funny, and well-behaved he is. Is he simply the exception to the rule? Is it just because he’s the first born and therefore more eager to please?
I’m sure at this point, any skeptics out there are tempted to say, “You lucked out with your first kid. Well you just wait until your little girl is born in a few months. She’ll be a whole different story!”
To that, I could only say, try me. Let’s revisit that question in a few years, because you better believe I will on my end.
My official moment of conversion occurred during our first trip as a family to Louisville, Kentucky; to visit the zoo, when our son was around 2 years old.
It’s just about a 2 and half hour drive from where we live in the Nashville area. So we decided just to leave straight after work on that Friday.
What a miserable road trip there! No matter what we did as parents, he screamed and cried. I had to roll down the windows just to drown him out.
He finally fell asleep in the car, after about 10 PM.
But then the next morning, as my wife was buying food supplies for us at the local Whole Foods, my son and I waited in the car for about 20 minutes. He was screaming and “pitching a fit” the whole time.
While being trapped in our little car with him, I had reached my limit. I had officially decided that I would spank him for the first time.
Every cliché redneck phrase was going through my head:
“I’m about to show that boy who’s boss! He’s past due for some good ole fashioned discipline. It’s about time for me to put him over my knee!”
But like any good husband should do, I asked my wife’s permission first.
And she gave me the red light.
She simply pointed out that he hadn’t gotten good rest the night before, as we as the parents had thrown his sleep schedule off the night before, since we were driving when he would normally be put to bed.
From that day, until last week, I had accidentally been formulating a 5 point checklist to decide why my child is “misbehaving.”
I shared it officially for the first time this week. I came up with this alone; I did not extract it from any other website nor did I hear it first from any other person. This is my original work and let the time stamp of today’s blog post prove that true.
Hungry, tired, bored, lonely, or sick.
They need to know when to eat (hungry), when to sleep (tired), when to play (bored), when to engage in conversation (lonely), or when they are physically incapable of feeling well (sick).
These are the times when your child is simply more prone to have restlessly energy and/or be extremely sensitive to the slightest thing, causing them to have a meltdown.
While I alone did invent that check list, I didn’t invent the following 5 step check list for alternatives to spanking. I learned these while serving as Parents.com’s official daddy blog.
Ignore attention-seeking behavior; pay attention to good behavior; redirect your child; teach consequences that make sense; and use time-outs for serious offenses.
This is a lesson I am still learning/reminding myself of.
My wife and I have officially come to the realization that whenever we visit my parents for the weekend, we have to leave their house before 11:30 AM on Sunday; we can’t wait until after lunch.
Our son’s body starts shutting down by that time, as he is needing a nap. It’s not fair to him to expect him to “behave” when he’s having to wait later to eat and sleep later just so we can have “more quality time as a family.”
The exact opposite happens instead: He has a meltdown, and therefore, that extra time as a family is not quality time.
He is simply more prone to have restlessly energy and/or be extremely sensitive to the slightest thing, causing him to have a meltdown.
Instead, we need to leave earlier so that he doesn’t slip into that mindset, and therefore, we as the parents don’t get upset either.
I am so grateful I married such a level-headed woman.
Otherwise, I would be hitting my kid ultimately because as a parent, I wasn’t proactive to provide for his needs ahead of time; regarding him being hungry, tired, bored, lonely, or sick.
What about for the parent who read this and comments, “Well I have always spanked my kid, and they too, are very well behaved.”
I would respond, “That raises the question: If my child is well behaved without spanking, and yours is well behaved with spanking, doesn’t that prove that spanking is unnecessary? If the two methods are simply equally effective, why physically strike your child when there are equally effective alternatives (when applied proactively and consistently by the parent)?”
It is my belief that a lot of people assume the minority of us who don’t spank their children (about 20% of the American population) actually don’t discipline them at all. When in fact, I have a very proactive and detailed discipline system in place.
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