Tiny Wolves, Little Tigers, and Mini-Mite Panthers…

So, I should mention that I inadvertently stumbled across a youth hockey program that’ll take a 3-year old player on the roster.

The “season” starts May 11th and runs for 8 weeks. I’m pretty excited and I hope Duncan’s enthusiasm as it stands now is still present on May 12th after the first practice.

The downside to this program, and it’s a big one, is that it’s just barely local.

Okay, it’s about an hour from home…

Yeah, it’s a haul.

While I’m less than thrilled about that part of it, I’m trying to look at it like a test run of what’s likely to come.

See, youth hockey involves a TON of travel. It’s just not as popular as soccer or baseball where there are dozens of teams at each age level all under one Recreation Department’s control so… even when they’re youngsters, hockey teams are generally of the “travel team” variety.

The other advantageous part is that, in the fall when he’s 4 years old, he’ll be able to “transfer” to a team (more on that inna sec) that plays out of a rink 15 minutes from where we live. This summer’s experience will make that commute, provided he still wants to play, feel like nothing at all.

Now, when I started playing soccer as a 5-year old, the team that I played for (Go Crickets!) and the league we were a part of were governed by AYSO which is the American Youth Soccer Organization. Our uniforms even sported their logo.

Since I was only in kindergarten at the time, I’m not sure if my parents had to sign any sort of contract other than the standard “We won’t sue if he gets hurt” form that would have been submitted with the payment.

When I moved to Connecticut, I just played in a town rec league. Yeah, just like a local group that threw something together without an organizing body calling the shots. Oddly enough, even at 7 years old, the players in this program were far, far,far more advanced than what I was used to in the AYSO.

I went from a stud to a dud. I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked that an organization with endlessly long tentacles did a terrible job of developing talent…

(Insert any anti-ObamaCare, pro-assault rifle, or big government arguments you want in the comments here… I won’t bother responding beyond questioning how one can play both sides saying big government is stemming from an apparently unqualified community organizer… Yeah, whatever… Healthcare is good, guns are bad, and I’m indifferent on the size of the government.)

Anyway…

So, fast forward 30+ years and change the sport to hockey.

Youth hockey in the United States is, as far as I can tell, governed from coast-to-coast by USA Hockey. In order to join a team, I had to register Duncan with them, which I did about a year ago, and he was given an ID number that’ll be attached to him until he’s 18, I’d assume.

Thankfully, membership is free for those 6-and-under.

And by signing on with this team next month, I’m totally serious about the “signing” part. As a 3-year old, he’s signed a contract with this specific hockey program under the guidance of USA Hockey.

In order to play for a different team in the fall, his “contract” will need to be “released” by his current team and then “approved” and “transferred” by USA Hockey to the new team — if they still want him.

This is for a FOUR YEAR OLD!?

I’m not certain on the reasoning for so much paperwork and, well, processing. I suppose that since, unlike school districts or town rec leagues that have residency requirements, hockey programs draw players from neighboring towns so you don’t want one team scooping up talent on the fly from other teams as if they’re minor league feeder programs without any governing body involved.

No joke, little kids have contracts that are “traded” just like the professionals.

While I’m sure it is all just paperwork and I’m thinking about this a little too much, can you imagine if there’s a dispute with a program? Like as if they won’t release your contract?

I am aware that it does happen, denied releases, that is, but I’m clueless as to the circumstances. Payment issues, perhaps… I dunno.

I just think it’s a bit much.

Sure, it’s a money making venture for USA Hockey to collect a fee from every player in the country to “grow the game” or whatever, which I totally understand and support, but even for the kids under-6 years old that aren’t paying that membership fee? Really?

Oh, and get this… Figure Skating is the same way…

Hopefully being a registered USA Hockey member doesn’t mean that he can’t play for Team Canada when the time comes…

Posted on April 20th, 2013 at 7:09 am by Brainy Smurf
Smurfling, Sports | 1 Comment »

Vicarious Days Ahead

So we’re counting down the days now until my first born turns 4.

(the second born actually turns 2…tomorrow!)

Crazy — right?

For those who’ve been reading the content on this silly website over the years, his “birth posting” probably doesn’t feel like that long ago. Sorry to tell you, it is.

Anyway, what’s the big deal with turning 4?

Organized hockey.

Yep, when he turns 4, he’ll be old enough to sign on with a USA Hockey sanctioned hockey team. He’s excited. And it’s safe to say that I’m excited too.

Very excited.

The downside is that he turns four just as the weather is, well, let’s just say it’s not traditional ice hockey weather.

Sure, with a little effort, elite level teenagers might be able to find a tournament only team to skate with in June, July, and August but a four-year old?

No such luck. Especially in the United States.

But that won’t deter us. We’ll work on his stick handling and hockey sense more this summer (as well as with the soon-to-be two years old brother who I’ll predict right now will be the better player eventually) to give him a HUGE advantage over other kids his age.

That said, I think he’s already light years ahead of most in his age group, skill-wise, anyway, and that’s not just because I taught him everything he knows.

I’m realistic enough to know that he’s likely not the next Wayne Gretzky.

He’ll be a darn fine Mite. He might even be a good Squirt before the other kids start catching up…

(Youth hockey levels have the silliest of names…)

But the key thing we need to work on is his skating.

He can be the best stick handler in the world or even have the hardest slap shot but it won’t mean anything if he can’t skate…and, as of right now, there are definitely kids in his age group, though a very select few, that are much further along.

He’s been on skates now for almost and entire year.

There have been really promising ups… and some discouraging downs along the way.

One week I think he finally has it and then, the next, it’s like he’s lost all ability to balance himself on strips of metal 3mm wide…on ice.

He’s three.

I get it.

I’m not going to push him like a crazy honey boo-boo type of parent but I’m certainly going to encourage “hockey” every chance that I get.

So far, my enthusiasm is met and both kids take direction really, really well. I’m ecstatic.

The plan is to be on the ice at least once a week from April through September — with a slight chance of a “real” learn to skate class worked in as well.

Most hockey programs require a learn-to-skate class (within their program) prior to joining a team, especially with such a young player, but I’m hoping to bypass that entirely.

He can skate in circles or around cones all he wants with me during a public skate. What I can’t offer is a real hockey environment in full equipment.

He wants to be a “hockey guy”, not take lessons.

I took a learn to skate class as a kid. For me, it felt more like an introduction to figure skating… and that’s not really what I wanted or needed at the onset.

Don’t get me wrong, while I’m not real keen on ever seeing my boys in tight sequin shirts, figure skating is awesome too. The speed a figure skater can generate in two strokes, going backwards, is truly amazing.

It’s no wonder than NHL teams usually have a figure skater on staff (usually female too) continually showing the multi-millionaires how to skate properly to improve their game.

Most figure skaters could skate circles around any professional hockey player. While twirling.

Anyway, for me, while I was a bit older than three at the time, what I needed most was… ice time.

Observation, which my kids get plenty of, and ice-time to mimic the movements.

Ice-time is clutch.

A 45-minute session with a world class figure skater once per week, while definitely valuable, isn’t what I think would be best for a little kid just getting started.

Two practices a week and cross-ice games on Saturday and Sunday — in addition to a public skate with the family — would make skating like second nature in short order.

That’s what jumping right on to a team will offer.

Are five days a week on the ice too much for a four year old?

My head says yes — perhaps even too much of a time commitment for me.

But my kids want to “play” hockey in the kitchen pretty much all the time so… maybe it’s not too much.

And, as a bonus, my kitchen floor will be spared some abuse.

Posted on March 30th, 2013 at 1:29 pm by Brainy Smurf
Life, Smurfling, Sports | 1 Comment »

Family Artwork

Now I have to admit, whenever a folder full of artwork comes home from daycare, it’s pretty unusual for me to take the time to actually look at it.

I’m not proud of that.

But last night my wife went through a bunch of it and hung (masking taped) some updated stuff on the wall. By “updated”, I mean more recent than 2010.

Here’s one of my favorites by my younger son Henrik…

Now, I know, this is clearly not the work of un-aided toddler. Their “real” artwork has more of an abstract expressionist (not to mention worthless) feel to it.

That’s okay, though.

I never really had my hopes set on either of them becoming artists anyway…

Posted on November 28th, 2012 at 8:41 pm by Brainy Smurf
Photo, Smurfling | No Comments »

Smurfling Photo Update

Since I’ve been referencing them in my posts lately and I’m the exact type of person to silently exclaim, “This post is useless without pictures,” I thought I should post an updated photo of them.

Posted on July 15th, 2012 at 6:11 am by Brainy Smurf
Photo, Smurfling | 1 Comment »

Smurfling Update

No one mentioned anything but, while recounting my recent debt payment payoff success, I noticed that I hardly have any photos of Smurfling 2 on here but tons and tons of Duncan (Smurfling 1).

That’s not fair, so here’s a shot of Henrik from this past weekend.

He turned one back on March 31.

Posted on April 24th, 2012 at 8:44 pm by Brainy Smurf
Photo, Smurfling | 1 Comment »

Duncan’s Guitar and a Debt Update

I can’t tell you how awesome it is that Duncan can now draw something totally recognizable.

Sure, it might look a little like a leg of lamb or one of those giant turkey legs you see at Disney World but he called it a guitar and my wife labelled it as such.

As proud as I am, though, and as truly excited I am to soon see those horrific family drawings in the near future (you know, where everyone has a huge head, crazy hair, and no legs), in an odd sort of way, I kinda wish he’d drawn an instrument, you know, that all the cool people in high school play(ed).

Like a tuba or something.

Maybe next time…

- – - – - – - – - – - – -

In other news, my total credit card debt balance is down to $7045.14.

Not too shabby — that’s $1350 lower than it was at the start of the month.

Winning!

Oh, and yes, I played the tuba.

And I was tres cool.

I’m just sayin’… the tuba is really cool.

Posted on January 25th, 2012 at 7:53 pm by Brainy Smurf
Music, Smurfling | 1 Comment »

Blue Two Seaters

Hmmm… seems that I’ve passed on my propensity for impractical vehicles.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Posted on September 6th, 2011 at 9:50 pm by Brainy Smurf
Life, Photo, Smurfling | No Comments »

Trusting a Hunch…

This afternoon we headed over to a local “Extravaganza”.

Seriously, that’s what it was called.

It was one of those municipal events where they sell fried dough, cotton candy, and over priced inflatible somethings to benefit the Parks and Recreation department or something.

This one had a full blown carnival with a dozen or so rides and even some miniature horses for the kids to ride.

But the one thing that caught Duncan’s eye was the fire department’s ladder truck — ladder fully extended and spouting water from the top.

He wasn’t dressed for running through the water but we took his shirt off and set him free anyway.

As we did so, I surveyed the scene and pinpointed one kid.

He was a little too old to be frolicking in the mist and, well, he obviously had no regard for anyone around him. You know the type…basically, he was a threat.

It was one of those things where I “knew” it was going to happen — I even said as much outloud — but I wasn’t about prevent my kid from having a good time because of one moron in the crowd.

I’m not the over protective type.

But it’s not like you can take a preventative stance these days either and go up to someone else’s kid and say, “Hey, quit being an idiot and watch where you’re going…” without having their even bigger idiot parent getting all up in your face about it…

So, instead, my kid got bowled over.

Go ahead, it’s okay to watch it a few times. Frame-by-frame, even…

That’s the beginning of my reaction at the tail end of the video.

Had I kept the camera rolling, you’d have heard my expletive laden description of how I really felt about what I’d just witnessed.

No worries — I didn’t say it loud or anything but the camera microphone most definitely would have picked it up.

Of the nine or ten adjectives and one noun that I uttered, well, “little” was the *only* word that could be considered safe for this website…

To the kid’s credit, he wasn’t without remorse.

Immediately after it happened, he stopped in his tracks and just stood there looking at Duncan (who was laying in a puddle on the pavement with his hands over his face and feet in the air) as my wife ran into the fray to make sure he was okay.

As my wife picked him up, I could plainly see that the kid felt bad. He had that sort of posture that kids get when they want to say “Sorry” but don’t know how or when exactly to do it. I mean, it’s not like he did it on purpose…

I also watched him look over his shoulder to see if his parents were calling him over — which they weren’t because, well, I’m sure you guessed it, they weren’t the type that supervise their kids.

Might explain why their kids are morons.

Anyway, once the kid realized that he’d “dodged” a bullet, well, back he went to running around with total disregard.

Seriously, he’s way too old to be afraid to open his eyes when running through a glorified sprinkler. Is it just me?

I dunno, a helmet and shoulder pads shouldn’t be required for running through the hose…

Not being the overprotective type, once Duncan’d composed himself, we sent him right back out there.

As you can see, Duncan’s okay.

And in a weird sort of way, I’m pretty proud that he could take a hit like that.

I’d still be laying on the ground.

Posted on July 16th, 2011 at 3:32 pm by Brainy Smurf
Rants, Smurfling | 1 Comment »

Yard Work on a Free Weekend

Okay, so this morning, since it’s finally warm outside in New England, I went outside to do a little lawn work and within 5 minutes or so, it became apparent that I’m still not ready for lawn work just yet.

The answer is yes, it hurts.

I just can’t believe that it took less than 5 minutes to tear a hole in myself…so I guess it’s good that my primary job is behind a computer screen.

I know, I know — it’s a tiny blister.

I’ve had far worse but this one is in just the WRONG place. I’m telling you, it’s worse than it looks.

Anyway, I thought I’d expand a bit on Friday’s post about Smurfling 2.

Duncan’s new little brother is named Henrik.

Say what?

Well, it wasn’t that long ago that I mentioned that we were partial to “weird (by North American standards) Dutch or Scandanavian names” and Henrik certainly fits that criteria.

Since “announcing” the birth, we’ve heard all kinds of comments regarding the name…

Most are convinced that he’s named after a hockey player since I’m Canadian and that automatically makes us fans of the sport — Sedin, Zetterberg, or Lundqvist.

Maybe, but not really. None of those guys are Canadian or play for our favorite team.

Or maybe since I’m a nerd, it’s paying homage to Niels Bohr? His middle name was Henrik.

Amazingly, I knew that his middle name was Henrik but I’m not enough of a nerd to name my children after turn of the century physicists.

We’ve even been told that Henrik is the name of one of the major characters in the “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo“.

Thankfully he’s a good guy, apparently. Not surprisingly, though, I’d never even heard of the book (or movie) until after the fact. Even still, I’ll likely never read it.

Or… since we’ve got a super German last name, we wanted to go all Nazi and name him after SS leader Heinrich Himmler.

Um, no. That would be insane — though it certainly led us to steer clear of that spelling and pretty much every single other German first name.

In reality, though, I think it was more of a Henry Ford type of thing that my wife and I agreed on — but all of those baby name books out there right now list Henry as one of the “uber-popular” names for the next few years.

With that in mind, and the memory of having 12 Jennifers in my class during the third grade (one even permanently switched to her middle name of Neel for 4th grade), I wanted to avoid a similar situation.

Unable to think of something better than Henry (which we still agreed on), we went Scandinavian on it — some folks still look at us like we made it up.

Then again, those are the same folks that thought the name Duncan was spelled wrong too.

Damn you Dunkin Donuts…

Posted on May 1st, 2011 at 7:23 pm by Brainy Smurf
Life, Smurfling | 1 Comment »

Some Long Overdue News!

Where’ve I been?

Seriously, it’s like I’d just up and quit this whole PIAC thing…

Not true — I am far behind on keeping everyone informed on my financial status and, yeah, some of that is by design. I’m embarrassed.

No worries, I’ll spill the beans before too long. It’s been a rough couple of months on the financial side of things.

But I also though I should let you all know that back on March 31st, we added another smurfling and officially joined the two-under-two club. Pretty exciting stuff.

Posted on April 29th, 2011 at 8:51 pm by Brainy Smurf
Blogging?, Life, Smurfling | 7 Comments »

Musings on a Snowy Day

So as I was out shoveling the snow this morning with my shoveling partner, I started to salivate at the thought of doing my taxes…

I mean, usually, a month from now, I’m finishing up my taxes and waiting for that nice big check (I mean, deposit) from the government. This year is no different — February should be pretty nice on the income side of things.

On the other hand, with another shoveler on the way in less than 90 days, well, we need a new car. One that’ll fit four of us. Comfortably.

Yep, that’ll cancel out the tax refund.

And then some…

Posted on January 8th, 2011 at 1:10 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Photo, Smurfling, Taxes | No Comments »

Guest Podcast from Duncan Smurf

So today, as I took on the role of Mr. Mom (daycare is closed today), Duncan came to me and asked to do another guest post.

His first post was a bit cryptic but, to his credit, he *was* only 5 days old.

Then, a month later, when I was practically in full Mommy-blog mode, he did a guest video post.

At the time it was pretty exciting.

Now, though, it’s pretty, well, it’s just another “baby babbling” video on YouTube. You know what I’m sayin’…

For his third post, though, now nearly 18 months later, having grown tired of being seen here on PIAC but not heard, he wanted to do something different and show off his speaking voice and newly discovered command of the English language.

Here’s his 17-second podcast:

Okay. I’ll admit he doesn’t speak much English… but he speaks a mean Tiger, dontcha think?

And, sorry if this ruins the whole Brainy Smurf image for you. I sound nothing like him — I’m actually frequently told that my speaking voice (when recorded) resembles Kermit the Frog.

I don’t hear it, personally.

Maybe it’s a bad Steve Whitmire version of Kermit but certainly nothing like the original Jim Henson Kermit…

Anyway, the real reason for this post is because I’ve recently found out that a lot of people in my “close” family have been following Duncan’s, well, life through this website.

There are even a few unrelated readers that only seem to enjoy the Duncan photos that I randomly include in my postings — they’ve emailed me saying just that.

So I figured that I’d take it a step further and let you all hear him too (while making great use of the digital audio recorder that Santa brought me).

No worries — I don’t expect to make a habit of this but…Duncan’s time in the spotlight is waning as Smurfling #2 rapidly approaches so enjoy it while it lasts!

Raaarrrr!!!

Posted on December 31st, 2010 at 7:04 pm by Brainy Smurf
Blogging?, Smurfling | 1 Comment »