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Dad Diary

 For a long while, I was intimidated by the thought of "room decoration." How do I know what my children want in their rooms?


Then, oddly, a light went on. Marc took Josh to a particular gym in NJ, where the "chill-out room" featured an aquatic theme. You could stare at plastic fish and dig your fingers into synthetic "mermaid scales." This was mesmerizing for Josh.

So my son's room became the bottom of the ocean floor. Now, wooden fish swim across the walls. A 2-D turtle hangs out above the dresser. Everything, or nearly everything, is blue, and I'd like to add "decal coral" to the perimeter (but I haven't reached for my shopping cart, yet).

My daughter's room is sub-Saharan Africa; we have the giraffe, the hippo, and the lion, and I have a vision of papier mache birds (flying overhead).

Basically, the house is becoming a Disney film. A part of me doesn't understand why my own bedroom can't be the New Orleans of "The Princess and the Frog"--and why the dining room can't resemble the Sundarbans, as in "The Jungle Book."

But I understand (for now) that this isn't socially acceptable.

At the moment, it's difficult to take my kids out of the house; it's a challenge to have a short lunch at a diner. But the bedrooms are a way of day-dreaming. It's nice to imagine a wider world, somewhere on the horizon.
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