BayDad

Bryan in his rocket ship

When my oldest, Ethan, was four, and Mom was on bed-rest, pregnant with twins, we started doing “Special Days with Dad.” Just me and him. Undivided attention. Breakfast out, maybe a trip to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk or Happy Hollow (sadly closed till Fall ’09). Whatever you want to do, kid, it’s your day.

When the twins got to be about four, we turned this into a nearly annual tradition for each kid, typically on a three-day weekend (which works out rather nicely with three kids). We rotate who goes first. The planning and anticipation of it as nearly as much fun as the day itself.

The rules are pretty simple:

• You get to do whatever you want.
• I’m buying. Toy shopping sprees are off-limits, but shopping for a craft that we will do together is encouraged.

We just had our Special Days this past Labor Day weekend. Ethan and I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and saw the new juvenile white shark. Katie wanted to see the flowers at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, then have sushi in Japan Town (she’s my only kid that likes sushi), then walk around Chinatown and go to the Fortune Cookie Factory. Bryan loves to build stuff, so after breakfast at Peninsula Creamery (his favorite place for french toast), we went to the hardware store, bought PVC pipe, and made a rubber-band powered marshmallow shooter (which turned out to be more of a marshmallow squisher, but we’re still working on it…). Then he wanted to end the day with nine holes of golf.

A few years ago, Bryan wanted to build a rocket ship, so we found an old refrigerator cardboard box and cut and painted it. Another year, he wanted to sit in front of Jamba Juice and play with Pokémon cards (which, if you really spend time to learn the rules, is a surprisingly fun and involved game; we played for three hours…).

The thing I love most about Special Days with Dad is how well the kids respond to the undivided attention. We have sparkling, insightful conversations. They are polite and well-behaved, I think because they understand what “Special” really means. And most of all, it really lets them be who they want to be and do what they want to do, without having to compromise with their siblings’ desires. There are 364 other days for that…