Saturday, March 10, 2007

Hard to believe ...

... but we've managed to keep Kaylee in relatively good health for the past 100 days. What were the Vegas odds on that?

But that's not why we're here. We're here to discuss blocks. Yes, blocks.


My Aunt Mary sent us a set of blocks for Christmas this year. (By "us" I mean Kaylee, but I play with her toys more than she does.) Now these blocks are cooler than I first thought. (But trust me, I was pretty excited about the blocks already. Toys that don't make noise or eat batteries? Awesome.) These are special blocks.

Magic blocks.

Here's what the card that came with the blocks has to say about it all:

GOOD FORTUNE WOODEN BLOCKS
In Korea, on a baby's 100th day, family and friends get a peek into the child's future. During the celebration, parents place objects representing different professions on a table and whatever the baby touches is said to fortell their destiny.

See? Magic blocks. So we laid the blocks all out and she touched one ...

But we didn't get a picture of it.

So we decided we wanted to throw out the rules.* We're not content with her just TOUCHING a block – we need more concrete proof than that. Kaylee needs to pick up a block ...


So we let her peruse the blocks. Taking her time to choose the perfect one ...

And she grabbed "e." I was excited, because I always wanted to have an elephant trainer in the family. That's job security. Everyone, everywhere will always need a trained elephant. They're great in the circus – or to help you get a stranded cat out of a tall tree.

But then Rae showed me that "e" stands for engineer. I was a little worried about that – trains went out of style decades ago. How will she ever make a living driving them?

Then I saw the picture on the block – it's some math tool thing. So it's not even a cool engineer. It's one of those physical / chemical / environmental / margarine-making / poly-hydrogenated engineers. It's the kind of job no kid wants - it's the kind of job for old men. Real old. Like Grandpa Charlie old ...

Poor kid.**



* Actually, we never had the rules. Rae, in her infinite wisdom, removed the card back in December to put away in a baby book or something. So we were just winging it. I didn't really know the rules until I looked them up on my sister's site so I could steal them for this. So if Kaylee grows up to be a "T stands for teacher" and not an elephant trainer, that's why.***
** There are many fine engineers out there. And I'm sure many kids aspire to grow up to be them. One happens to be my father, hence the ribbing. And I'm sure he'd rather be an elephant trainer too.
*** Nothing to see here. I just wanted to see what it looked like when a footnote got a footnote.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not long after daddy Mike was born, an engineer friend of mine said that what we needed to do was to put him through the WASP version of the block game. He said to put Mike on the floor and put both a sliderule and a stethoscope just out of reach, and...



every time that he reached for the sliderule, to slap his hand.

(I suppose that now you'd use a calculator.)

Anonymous said...

Now why must "e" stand for elephant trainer, or engineer? Don't they have entymologists in Korea? or Easter bunnies? or egg boiler? how 'bout entertainers? English teachers? Egyptologists? Eager mechanics? (okay, i know that one's a stretch, but i remain hopeful!)

Love you guys!