frozen

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Dear Holly: A Glimpse of the Girl I Think You are Going to Be

21 weeks.

Dear Holly: A Glimpse of the Girl I Think You are Going to Be

Dear Holly,

By turning one of your recent sonogram profiles sideways, I am able to catch a glimpse of what you might look like once you are born. I had done this with your brother Jack, and he turned out looking like what I would expect, sans the sandy colored hair and blue eyes.

I see how you look like Mommy already. Particularly, I see some French and Croatian in there from her genes.

However, Mommy and I do both believe you will have darker traits, unlike your brother Jack.

The “baby gifts” are starting to come in the mail from family members. So therefore, your bedroom is starting to fill up with clothing that will help compliment your assumed personality.

Jack picked out that doll as his gift from him to you.

Mommy and I predict you will be a feminine girl, not a tomboy. However, we don’t see you as a particularly sensitive or dainty little girl either.

Dear Holly: A Glimpse of the Girl I Think You are Going to Be

Speaking of dolls, I saw this bunny doll today at Brilliant Sky and sent the picture to Mommy. We both instantly agreed that this style summarizes our thoughts regarding what you’ll be like:

Dear Holly: A Glimpse of the Girl I Think You are Going to Be

As Mommy worded it yesterday, “Holly won’t be a princess, just like Jack isn’t a prince.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with adopting such romantic and royal concepts, I just suppose it’s not our family’s style or culture.

(It doesn’t help that I loathe the movie Frozen because the whole plot could have been prevented had the parents not been psychos who locked their daughters in their bedrooms. On the other hand, I applaud and celebrate Inside Out for its intelligent plot revolving around a young girl and her developing emotional intelligence.)

We believe that the environment we will raise you in will make you a very independent, yet laid back little girl.

As I imagine Jack bumping into you with his toy cars, I see you laughing about it instead of crying.

Dear Holly: A Glimpse of the Girl I Think You are Going to Be

I picture you naturally wanting to join in whatever weird activity your brother Jack is doing, convincing yourself that soaking Halloween candy in warm saltwater (instead of eating it) is normal.

Sure, you’ll love baby dolls and tutus. But you’ll also have access to Jack’s exhaustive Thomas the Train and Hot Wheels collection.

Plus, I think my personal love for outdoors and adventure will guide you in becoming a fun little girl who is able to keep up with your brother and me.

Granted, you’ll also be exposed to all my quirky musical and video-making antics.

I am so excited to think about the fun little girl you will become.

Love,

Daddy

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The Lego Movie Is The Boy Version Of Frozen

June 15, 2014 at 7:50 pm , by

3 years, 6 months.

Dear Jack,

It has been well established that you and I are huge fans, as well as advocates, of The Lego Movie.

Not only did I write to youback in Novemberabout how excited I was that the movie was coming out, but then in February I wrote a letter to you (which got over 1,200 likes on Facebook) telling all about the two of us going to see your very first movie in a theatre; which obviously, was The Lego Movie.

So that helps explain why I was asked by Lego to do an “unboxing and review” of the Everything Is Awesome Edition of The Lego Movie on my other blog site, Family Friendly Daddy Blog, where I review cars, movies, food, travel destinations, etc.

With a release date of June 17th, it’s just in time for our annual family vacation to California which is coming up soon, so you can watch the movie while on our trip.

Seeing The Lego Movie again, after having recently seen Frozen for the first time as a family, I can’t help but compare the two.

It appears as if The Lego Movie is the boy version of Frozen.

By that, I don’t mean at all that the movies share similar plot lines. Instead, I mean that the themes that The Lego Movie deal with seem a little more relevant to boys; while the themes of Frozen are more feminine, in my opinion.

Maybe the best way to word it is that The Lego Movie is an action movie, while Frozen is a chick flick.

I still can’t get over the fact that in Frozen, the whole thing could have been prevented had the parents of Elsa and Anna, the King and Queen of Arendell, not taught their daughters to close off communication with each other.

Seriously, what normal parents decide to basically lock their daughter in her room for most of her whole childhood because she has a superpower? As the King and Queen, could they seriously not have found some kind of wizard dude to cure her before coming to such an extreme decision?

Frozen is worth all the hype, but it just bothers me that the whole plot was a result of the parents teaching horrible communication skills to their kids, as well as setting them up to hold in their emotions.

Meanwhile with The Lego Movie, while the whole thing is a fantasy, at least it doesn’t hinge on some easily preventable premise.

The plot instead is more like Die Hard and Braveheart, in which a regular guy ends up outsmarting and overpowering the bad guys and their whole system by recruiting average Joes to join the cause of the underdog, therefore freeing his people.

I’m not saying that Frozen is definitely for girls and that The Lego Movie is definitely for boys, but I do feel that your fellow dude friends at your preschool seem a little disconnected while “Let It Go” plays over the speakers at the end of the day when I pick you up.

But if it were “Everything Is Awesome” playing instead, there would be a class of full of little boys jumping around, singing the words at the top of their lungs.

 

Love,

Daddy

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The Real Villain In Disney’s Frozen: The Parents Of Elsa & Anna

May 14, 2014 at 9:29 pm , by

3 years, 5 months.

Dear Jack,

Had you been born a girl, I assume our family would have already seen Frozen a minimum of 37 times. However, you were born a boy, which means we just saw it for the first time this past weekend.

There’s no question it’s a great movie, worth all the hype it’s received as one of the greatest Disney movies- I’m just simply acknowledging that you personally were more impressed by The Lego Movie– and I think a lot of that has to do with you being a boy.

Meanwhile, your (girl) cousin Calla, who is very close to you in age, is completely obsessed with Frozen… has the soundtrack, toys, dresses, and whatever else merchandize I’m not thinking of right now.

I personally really enjoyed Frozen. But as someone who loves to analyze things, having studied Literary Criticism as part of the requirements for obtaining my English degree, I couldn’t help but notice that for such an epic Disney musical, there was no official villain.

The Little Mermaid had Ursula. The Lion King had Scar. Aladdin had Jafar.

But as for Frozen, Prince Hans is the assumed villain because, near the end of the movie, he proves to be a jerk when he makes it clear he was only trying to use Anna to become a more powerful ruler.

However, Hans was not the character who who ultimately introduced the agency of evil in the plot. He simply tried to take advantage of the situation after the plot had been establishedyears before in the storyline.

Some might say Elsa, the older sister with the superpowers, was the villain- but it’s pretty clear she’s a victim who never wanted to hurt her sister Anna.

The way I see it, Elsa was simply the victim of her parents’ horrible (yet not intentionally evil) decision to keep their only children from communicating during most of their childhood, leading into adulthood.

Seriously, how messed up is that?!

Not to mention, Elsa learned to become ashamed of her special ability and cut herself off from not only her sister, but basically, the outside world.

So by default, the parents of Elsa and Anna, the King and Queen of Arendell, are responsible for whole darn crisis happening.

Though they died in the beginning of the movie, like most Disney parents seem to do, I didn’t even feel sad. Because for me, I felt like the villains were removed from the movie at the beginning, instead of the end.

Therefore, it provided for a more emotional plotline and resolve.

The pay-off, I suppose, is that by teaching Elsa to hold in her emotions most of her developing years, she was able to write and sing “Let It Go,” which is a song no one can get out of their head without having to overwrite it with something super annoying like “Karma Chameleon” or “Macarena.”

With all this being said, Frozen is a wonderful movie about love and forgiveness. I definitely appreciate the fact that the “villain” is not obvious. It’s one of the things that makes Frozen really stand apart.

In fact, I think it would have actually taken away from the importance of restoring the relationship of Elsa and Anna, had there been an official villain who further agitated the characters.

Elsa and Anna saved themselves- they didn’t have to be saved by a prince who defeated a bully. For me, that aspect made the movie more realistic and relatable.

But I’m guessing at age 3, you probably didn’t pick up on anything of this. You did, however, love Olaf and Sven.

 

Love,

Daddy

 

Images courtesy of Disney.

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Classic Magic Moments in Parenting: #2 Snowman Art

February 23, 2012 at 10:40 pm , by 

It’s realizing you’ve been staring too long at a picture of your kid as a snowman and have actually begun to feel sorry for him with those pathetic little stick arms.

Poor kid.

 

 

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The Most Popular, All-American Summer Activities for Kids

Notice I left out the word “normal”.

Now that summer is here, I realize I keep having flashbacks of my summers as a kid. The ways we all spent our summers as kids were unique in their own weird ways. I don’t know what a normal summer for a kid is supposed to be like. All I know is the version of summer that my sister and I experienced between the summers of 1989 and 1999 to keep ourselves entertained in Fort Payne, Alabama.

In the summer of 1989 our mom was obsessed with making homemade popsicles. She bought blue and red plastic molds into which she poured a random substance and placed in the freezer. Four hours later when it was frozen, my sister and I indulged in the flavor of the day. It started out as an alternative to “all those sugary popsicles they sell in the stores”. So orange juice was the first flavor. Then chocolate milk. Then yogurt. By the end of summer it was Dr. Pepper and eventually my personal favorite flavor of homemade popsicles: sweet tea.

The next summer, in 1990, we discovered water balloons. My sister and I would fill up about 30 water balloons, place them in a bucket, and take them out to the trampoline. One person would jump as the other launched the balloons at them. One point for every hit. Then eventually flashbacks from all that fun with the homemade popsicles gave us a new idea. We put water balloons in the freezer.

Not to throw at each other, but to throw into the air and watch them fall onto the driveway. I think the point was to see how many times the balloon could hit the asphalt before the broken ice inside would cut through the balloon. At one point we ran out of balloons to play with so our mom let us use some medical gloves. We filled them up with water and stuck them in the freezer. The funny thing is, there’s still a frozen glove in our parents’ freezer as of today. One last survivor.

My favorite classic summertime activity would have to be the paper rafts. It all started one day in 1993 when I drew and colored a cartoon man about 4 inches tall. Then I was compelled to grab some scissors and cut him out like a paper doll. My sister liked mine and made one as well. Ultimately we had made our own action figures. So in order for them to live up to their name (“action” figures), we decided to make paper rafts for them. So we drew, colored, and cut out Tom Sawyer style rafts and taped our paper men onto them, folding the men’s backs so that they sit down comfortably on their vehicle.

Now all we needed was a good river for our men on rafts. No need to looking any further than the nearest bathroom. We dropped the men into the toilet and flushed them away on an adventure. I clearly remember my sister waving and telling her paper man goodbye. Then we did the whole event over again later that day, only with improved, more detailed paper men. And again and again.

In fact, I really, really want to make a paper raft right now.