Life Choices

Jamie Dimon wishes he had your job

Some mornings, like this morning, the torture of the getting dressed process is so bad that it makes me begin to question my choices in life. What if we hadn’t started a family? What if Andrea and I had stayed childless, climbed the corporate ladder, worked on our golf games and become socialites? Do senior executives have to deal with this Baloney?

I can just envision the CEO of the public company where I work in a scene like this…

Investor Relations (IR) guy: [Calmly and smoothly] Okay, Steve, do you remember what we talked about yesterday? You have an analyst call today. It’s time to get your suit on!

CEO: I don’t want to get dressed!

IR: But Steve, you know you have to get dressed to present to the analysts!

CEO: I don’t want to get dressed! I want to wear my jammies!

IR: [A little strained] You know you can’t wear your jammies to the analyst call. You have to wear your suit. Look at this beautiful outfit I picked up for you! It’s Brooks Brothers.

CEO: I don’t like it! I don’t want to wear it.

IR: And I picked out your favorite tie. You know, the Hermes with the stagecoaches on it?

CEO: I don’t like that tie! I won’t wear it!

IR: [Frustrated] What do you mean you don’t like it? It was your favorite last week!

By now, the CEO is lying on his side, kicking his feet back and forth in a “running man” motion.

CEO: I’m not getting dressed! I WANNA WEAR MY JAMMIES!

IR: That’s it, I’m getting your VP of HR.

The HR guy comes barreling into the room.

HR: WHADAYA MEAN, you won’t put on your suit! We’ve talked about this a million times, mister. If you don’t put on that suit and tie this instant, I’m not letting you fly the corporate jet to Vail this weekend! And you’re not getting a sticker on your sticker chart. I mean it this time!

A heated standoff ensues for several minutes. Eventually the CEO relents and puts on his suit and tie in a huff.

IR: Now was that so bad? Ok, time to comb your hair.

CEO: I DON’T WANNA COMB MY HAIR!

***

The funny thing is, if you knew our CEO, the above scenario doesn’t seem all that far-fetched.

We all make choices in life, but I wonder how many of us are fully informed about the consequences. My friends who went to law school dreamed about courtroom drama scenes. What their roles mostly entail today, unfortunately, is 80-hour weeks of relentless high-stress wordsmithing drudgery. Parents start families for the beautiful babies and the rosy thoughts of high-school graduations and weddings someday. What they get is the relentless strain of just trying to get through the basic acts in life – getting dressed, feeding, getting in the car, bathing, going to bed, and then waking up to start it all over again the next day.

In the end, it’s foolish to question life’s choices. I’m sure there are aspects of my CEO’s life that are unpleasant, stressful, not living up to his expectations. I’ll bet that private jet to Vail isn’t so great. The leather seats probably get too hot and the Perrier doesn’t stay fizzy enough. I’m sure he’d do almost anything to experience the joys, just once, of getting two kids dressed and out the door for school. It beats an analyst call any day.

I'll Be Back

This is pretty much my kids
around electronics

Quite a while back, I wrote about how electronics were invading our family’s lives. I called that post “The Rise of the Machines.”

Little did I know at the time that back in April was just the dawn of the rise of the machines. That time was Terminator 1 – the kids and their Leap Pads were a low budget and bad acting affair. Their Arnold Schwarzenegger Cyborg desire to play Wii was menacing and tireless to be sure but nothing that couldn’t be handled by Linda Hamilton and me, and a huge industrial hydraulic press.

Unfortunately, our small victory over the electronics was short lived. The machines learned and rose and multiplied. Today the kids’ desire to be constantly inundated by electronics is Terminator 4’s Skynet – all knowing, all powerful. That one robot skeleton that attacked in the first installment has been replaced by armies of killer androids. They come in unending waves and attack from all sides. “Can I play Ipad?” says one from his evil skeletal maw, “What about Wii?” “Can I play on your phone in the car?” “Can I watch a show?”

There’s a scene in the HBO movie Stalin where it’s the middle of World War II and Josef Stalin is being shown a military map of the battles by his head general. Things are not going well, and the general tells Stalin that the Red Army is losing and retreating “here, here and here.” Stalin flies into a rage and starts screaming at the quaking general (who, since Stalin had executed all of his predecessors, had little grounds for debate) “I vill tell you vat ve vill do!” he screams, slamming the map at each location “ve vill attack zem HERE AND HERE AND HERE!!!”

That’s my kids: ve vill attack zem HERE AND HERE AND HERE!

Ve vill attack zem before they are awake, ve vill attack zem in their bed: “Can we play Scooby Doo on the Wii?”

Ve vill attack zem at Breakfast: “Can we watch a show?”

Ve Vill attack zem in ze car: “Can we play on your phones on the way to school?”

Ve Vill attack zem after school: “Can we play on our Leap Pads?”

Ve Vill attack zem before dinner: “Can we play on your computer?”

Ve Vill attack zem after dinner: “Can we play on Mommy’s Ipad?”

Andrea and I, the defenders, (the Nazis? God, this metaphor has gone astray!) are losing this war of attrition. Our meager forces are being ground to dust. Morale is low. We are suffering from trench foot, scarlet fever and dysentery. There are food and ammunition shortages. And I have to tell you, desertions are common. “Can’t you kids just go play with toys?” We beg, “Can’t you behave like normal children and play outside?”

But no. They are not normal children. They are tireless, relentless, future-cyborg-hopelessly-muddled-metaphor-with-communist-Russia-Red-Army electronics consuming armies.

Which leaves humanity with only one hope. We must send a freedom fighter back in time to destroy the early electronics and impregnate Sarah Connor. Even then, I think we are in for endless high-budget sequels. I can tell - every time I turn off the Wii I hear a faint phrase in a distinctly Austrian accent:

I’ll Be Back.

More Hints on Holiday Cards

Now that we’ve gotten hints on how to take the perfectholiday picture from Kate, I’d like to offer a few of my own perspectives. Now that you have your pictures, I’d like to talk a little about Christmas card layout.

It seems whenever I open a Christmas card these days, I have the same heartfelt reaction: “Who are these children?” There, smiling up at me are one to three darling, well appointed, beautiful children whom I have never met in my life.

See here’s the thing. If we went to high school together, or college together, or you are childhood friends with my wife, or our mothers play bridge together, there is a real possibility I have never laid eyes on your children in real life. The last time I may have seen their likeness, if ever, was on last year’s Christmas card. You see your kids every day, but I don’t, and trust me they’ve changed a lot since last year.

So please, please, put your picture on the card somewhere. Your picture. The Adults. It doesn’t have to be the big picture. You can be off to the side. Or better yet, make the adults the big picture in the middle and put the kids small on the back. Put your names in big letters with arrows drawn to the person named. This would be a huge help with the kids (which one is Breanne again? Are they in order by age or the order they are standing in this picture?). I’m telling you, that would really make my holidays happy.

Here’s another hint: Use your names. Your full names. Half the time I struggle to remember who “Jeff, Gina, Haley and Chloe” are. Sometimes the last name isn’t on the card. Sometimes only the last name is on the card (Merry Christmas from The Rowlands!). Come on, people! Sometimes the last name replaces a maiden name that I once knew (how do we feel about cards saying “Seasons Greetings from the Martins nee Smith?”). The point is, full first and last names are the way to go.

And sometimes, and this is happening more and more as I age and the kids destroy my memory, I do know your first and last name but man, a visual reminder would sure help. So, once again, please put a picture of the adults on the card. Any other memory triggering clues will help. If you could take your picture in the location where we met, that would be great. Ages would help a lot, too.

To summarize, here’s an example of great Holiday Card:

Happy Holidays from the Rowlands

Jeff Rowland (38)

Gina Rowland nee Smith (36)

Haley (7)

Chloe (4)

 

(Plus a nice note) Hey Ol’ Buddy! Been missing you since our moms quit playing bridge together after you moved from Tulsa!

 

 

 

Here’s something I almost forgot, and this harkens back to my post on dogs. Some people insist on putting their dogs on their holiday cards. Please, stop the madness. Combined with my points above, I have literally gotten Christmas cards with a picture of a child and a dog, and I can’t tell whose name is whose (Merry Christmas from Jack and Hunter!). So once again, if you absolutely insist on putting a dog’s picture on your card… I can’t even complete the sentence. Dear God, make it stop!

Since I’m on the subject, think you could do the same with your Facebook avatar? Yes, we are “friends” but again a little visual reminder would help me out a lot. Please make it a picture of you, from the relatively recent past. I can’t always remember who you are from the picture of your kids, or a Barrack Obama logo. And determining your identity from your baby pic is no easier than from a picture of your baby. If you absolutely must include your child or significant other in that less-than-one-square-inch of real estate, well, I suppose I can live with that.

It’s just that easy! These simple steps can greatly improve your Holiday Card/Facebook profile. Your mailing list will thank me.

Yours truly,

Robert (your buddy from KiddleDad blog and/or we went to school together)

The Perfect Family Holiday Shot

 

Follow these simple steps and you can create
gorgeous holiday card pictures like this one!

As the holidays approach, we thought our readers could use some helpful hints to help make things more manageable. Today's blog is a guest post from Kate Rose, who brings us her expertise in today's post - The Perfect Family Holiday Shot:

What annual occurrence causes my pulse to race, my palms to sweat, and my lungs to constrict with each breath?  April 15^th, you ask?  Taking my kids for their flu shot? A visit from the in-laws?  No. None of these occurrences cause the fear, the frustration, the anticipation, and (hopefully) the eventual exhilaration of, wait for it…capturing the Perfect Family Holiday Shot.  That’s right, that picture which will go on our annual Holiday Card. That picture which will hang on the doors of friends and family for an entire holiday season.  That picture, which defines our family unit as well as my worth as a mother.  That picture which conveys all that we are pretending our past year together as a family unit to be (educational trips to the Botanical Gardens, flawless piano recitals, siblings embracing while singing at church).  In reality, though, what we want our family definition to be and what our family definition actually is (peanut butter causing an eyelid to stick shut, tantrums at the mommy-and-me music, goldfish-crusted car seats), are usually two very different things.

There are many steps that go into creating the Perfect Family Holiday card, from cropping, printing, mail merging, and stamping, to shoving those things into the big blue mailbox 3 days before Christmas.  While those are all important and tedious steps, today I am here to tell you about the most important, agonizing, heart-wrenching, wine-inducing step of them all.  We will refer to this step as “OBTAINING THE PERFECT FAMILY HOLIDAY SHOT” 

There are two schools of thought regarding the Perfect Family Holiday Shot, and I am going to briefly address both, and provide some valuable tips to help ensure your card will be the envy of all your family, friends, and of course, the all important frenemies. 

The first option (and one which my family has subscribed to for the past 5 years after 3 years of trying option 2) is:

OPTION 1: Starting January 1^st, take a camera everywhere, and torture your spouse and children by snapping shots ALL.THE.TIME. 

1.)    This option does require the entire family to dress nicely every day.  Or at least be showered.  Or maybe just have combed hair. 

2.)    You never know the time and place that the magic moment will occur…are you all together at the dentist, Dunkin Donuts, the grocery store?  Don’t hold back!  Snap, snap, snap and quite possibly you will end up with the perfect family shot (no one will ever know you were all at the DMV!)

3.)    (In direct opposition to number 2) Consider your background.  Hey, everyone looks happy at the beach!  Who doesn’t love walking through the woods! Even the most terrible-two-toddler can look cute making snow angels! 

4.)    Know your family’s limits.  If your 3 year old (for some God-forsaken reason) cannot understand how to ‘peak out’ from behind a tree, then he just can’t understand how to ‘peak out’ from a tree.  Leave it.  Don’t yell.  Don’t compare him to his siblings at that age.   Don’t take 80 shots.  Just leave it. 

5.)    Bribe, bribe, bribe!  (“I’ll give you an M&M if you’ll peek out from behind that tree!”) 

 

On to Option 2.  I’m going to be honest here…Option 2 is not ideal…I mean, go for it if you think your family has the wherewithal…I am going to give some tips, but really, I mean, really think about this before you commit…

 

OPTION 2:  Take your family to a photo shoot

1.)     Probably only have one kid (or less) if you are considering this option.

2.)     No drinks.  Nobody!  Or anybody.  Nobody drink anything for at least 24 hours before the appointment.  Parents—this is so there won’t be any puffy eyes or hang-over signs. You CANNOT be the limiting factor in these pictures.  Kids—nothing worse than breaking the photographer’s rhythm because Jonny “has to go potty”, or worse… “just did”. 

3.)    Identify the weakest link.  Does mom have a tendency to do “pouty lips” in pictures?  Does Bobby close his eyes when he smiles?  Does Mary scream when separated from her “My Little Pony” doll?  Whoever the weakest link might be…yell, threaten, and bribe.  Fix it, people. 

4.)    The photographer is joking when he asks if the family brought a change of clothes.  NO!  Are you kidding me?  You think anyone can drag three kids here in their holiday finery, snap a few shots, and then change their clothes? 

5.)    These professional places take 300 digital shots for a reason.  All you need is ONE.  Identify it.  Pay for it.  Mail it out. 

 

In summary, this post is titled “The Perfect Family Holiday Shot” for a reason.  Regardless of whether you decide on Option 1 or Option 2, I really wanted to call this post “The Perfect Shot”.  Because that’s what all parents will need after attempting to get the beloved holiday picture.

Dogs

"Want me to, hmmm, deficate on your rug?"

Every so often, Andrea says that she might like to get a puppy. All I can think is, “are you nuts?” You don’t have challenges enough already that you want an untrained juvenile animal running around your house? You want stains and surprises everywhere? You want holes chewed in your carpet? You want dog hair on all of your clothes? Not to mention the furniture - Cody wetting himself on the dining room chair, as he sometimes does, would be like an expert refurbishment compared to what a dog would do to it.

Never mind that Andrea is – ahem – a clean individual. The kids are – ahem – not. And dogs are – ahem, ahem – really not. Our children making messes creates enough friction. At least they are flesh and blood offspring and some evolutionary emotional restraint kicks in before things get too severe. I’m not sure what would save poor Fido.

I’ll be honest and say that I simply do not understand the desire to get a pet. I have nothing against them, really, but it is simply not a compulsion that I feel. I would no sooner snuggle and hug and kiss and roll around on the floor with a dog than I would a sheep at the petting zoo. As far as I can tell, pets are almost as much work as children without the (for me) emotional reward.

(In case you can’t tell, I’ve softened my statements in the paragraph above. This is because you do not want to get on the wrong side of dog people, who can turn violently insane at rhetoric like that above. So therefore, dog people, I want to take a moment and be perfectly clear: It’s not you, it’s me. It is totally normal and rational to want another species in your house defecating on the floor and destroying your possessions. I obviously have a deep character flaw.)

Here’s our one family experience with pets: One summer, at the church picnic, the kids won two goldfish as prizes from one of the games. My reaction was “oh man, God hates us,” which didn’t take too long to prove true. We found the burden of feeding a goldfish daily and washing the bowl weekly to be too much to bear. Goldfish are normally a short-lived species. This was true for us for one of them, who met his demise within three weeks. For the other, we apparently got the Methuselah of goldfish. 18 months after that church picnic, we were still faithfully scrubbing his bowl each Sunday and counting down the days to his passing.

As the pets get bigger than fish, the commitment only increases. The tank you have to clean gets larger. The weekly scrubbing gets harder. I know people who literally have to schedule vacations around their pets. I just don’t have the time or patience for that nonsense.

Therefore, we will never, ever, ever, ever, ever have another pet in our household so long as I have a say. Which means that, someday, we will have another pet.  Because I don’t really have a say. The world, it turns out, does not function on rationality. Otherwise, Gucci and Hummer and the band One Direction would be out of business. And the species would probably be extinct. Because, let’s face it, having children is about as rational as having a dog. Children don’t tend the farm any more. We don’t need them to fend off saber-tooth tigers. But some of us, the crazy ones, manage to convince ourselves we do need them to help clean the dog doo off the carpet.

How does a Wookie brush his teeth?

All parents know that Chewbacca works hard
to keep his pearly whites battle-ready!

One benefit when Cody turned four was that he finally outgrew his morbid terror of brushing his teeth. Tooth brushing, which should be a quick and easy – even pleasant – undertaking, was a real challenge with Cody. Cody would fight and squirm and complain that I was hurting him while I brushed his teeth. I’ve always had very good dental hygiene and take it seriously, so when it’s my turn to aid with brushing I try to do a thorough job. Cody hates the thorough job.

To gain compliance, I had several tactics at my disposal. My native tendency – grabbing him roughly and screaming at him to brush – had obvious drawbacks. So instead, I had to get creative. Cody, as he’s aged, has evolved in his likes and dislikes, and so therefore my teeth brushing methods have evolved with him. Begging and pleading isn’t sufficient for the job, so I, as a grown man, became a twice daily circus act in the kids’ bathroom.

It all started with “Robot Toothbrush,” which goes something like this: Daddy stands and moves very stiffly and mechanically and repeatedly says (in his most metallic voice) “Robot Toothbrush. Ner-ner-ner-ner-ner.” The ner-ner-ners should coordinate with the up-and-down or side-to-side motion of the toothbrush in the mouth. Robot Toothbrush lasted for the better part of the two’s with decent success – so much so that Andrea started using it on her turns as well. As a side note, it’s one of life’s great joys to watch Andrea, whom I consider one of the most buttoned-up people I know, saying “Robot Toothbrush. Ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner.”

Times pass, and the fascination with robots has faded (unless, of course, the robots turn into cars or shoot people, which makes them super cool). So we lapsed back into begging and pleading mode. That is, until our latest Star Wars craze and the advent of “Wookie Toothbrush.” Wookie Toothbrush means Cody and Daddy open our mouths as wide as possible to allow guttural Rrrrrowwwwaggghh sounds to come out… and the toothbrush to go in. The toothpaste suds foaming at the mouth helps with the analogy. Pretending to be a Wookie buys you a solid 15-30 seconds of quality tooth brushing.

In between Robot Toothbrush and Wookie Toothbrush, for a time I was grasping with straws. For a while the fascination was with super heroes, so we tried various forms of “Super Hero Toothbrush,” such as “C’mon Cody, want to brush your teeth like… er, um… Spider Man?!?!?” The problem is, it turns out that Spider Man brushes his teeth more or less like everyone else, so Cody was never really convinced. (This week’s challenge is for you to come up with Spider Man inspired tooth brushing method).

What finally solved the issue, once and for all as far as I can tell, is Cody turning four and deciding he can brush teeth all by himself. Cody can now lightly glaze the toothbrush over a subset of his teeth for 3-5 seconds and consider it done. It ain’t thorough. It ain’t hygiene. But at least we are back to raising a human boy and not a Wookie or Robot.

Ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner!

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Ah, the Power of Stickers



The Holy Grail of Child Discipline:
Fruit Loops

I’ve discussed household discipline, or the lack thereof, in maybe my favorite post ever. Back then, our primary disciplinary method was time-outs. I’m going to be frank, they simply weren’t working. No matter how long or how short, on the stairs or in the room, the threat of time out simply wasn’t enough to motivate away from bad behavior.

So we changed strategies. Our next method was the withholding of privileges. First, the kids lost their wretched “Scooby-Doo: First Frights” video game for a week. This was as much a reward for Andrea and me as it was a punishment for them¹. Next came the “Robots” movie, which they had watched portions of a record 28 consecutive days in a row. Candy and cookies went out the door. So did the I-Pad and computer.

But here’s the problem – none of this worked. Pretty soon we were withholding basic human rights. Since the experts all say consistency and follow-through are the thing, we just had to keep after it. If we said, “stop hitting or I’ll cut off my left pinky,” and there’s another hit, the pinky’s got to go. And so it went with privileges: threaten to take away, bad behavior continues, privileges revoked. We even had a privileges chart that showed WHO had lost WHAT until WHEN, showing that Chiara could earn back the Scooby Doo game in time for graduation from college.

Things kept escalating, but when Cody lost food and water for a week we knew it was time for a change. And so we changed our strategy once again. Our new philosophy is “you attract more flies with Fruit Loops than vinegar.”

Thus began the sticker chart. I cannot believe the power of stickers. Our children will go from acting like animals to little angels with the promise of a sticker on a chart. Mind you, these are the same stickers they could reach into the drawer and reward themselves with any time they felt moved to do so. It’s not beyond Chiara’s reach to draw up a grid on a piece of paper and sticker it to her heart’s delight. But somehow, our chart, and the reward of stickers gets the job done. Plus, there is one additional prize at the end of the rainbow. If the children earn enough stickers over the course of the week they can have the sugar cereal of their choice for breakfast one day.

The children are small, and their minds work differently than mine. This is imminently clear. I would have thought the immediate threat of banishment to your room would curtail bad behavior, but it never seemed to. Little did I know that the distant promise of Fruit Loops in the future could get little ones in line. This parenting gig is a learning experience for sure, and many of those lessons are learned through trial and error. I just wish prior errors hadn’t cost me my pinky.

I do see one risk on the horizon. Chiara has shown some signs of taking a page out of the Cleveland Brown’s book: tanking. She’s figured out that you can’t lose the same sticker twice, and once the week has been blown, you might as well go for broke. What she hasn’t figured out is that losing all her stickers won’t get her Johnny Manziel. It will just lose you a bunch of bowls of Fruit Loops.

 

¹I can hardly begin to describe how bad this video game is. One would think, as we did, that something branded Scooby Doo would be wholesome, harmless, goofy fun. Well this game is full of violence and frustration. First, the characters physically fight the abundant monsters. Scooby literally hits monsters with sausage links; Velma throws books at them. Second, characters must jump from platform to wobbly platform – this is tough sometimes even for me with my video game skills, much less my 3-year-old. And here’s the absolute worst part – despite the anger, frustration and tears, my kids want to play this god-forsaken game all the time. It is something they ask to do almost every day.

Captain America and Iron Man Share Wardrobe Tips

"Pssst... Is your name Pee-Pee Face?"

I’ve written before how Cody has many fewer activities than Chiaradoes. For many reasons, Cody has had to teach himself to play by himself. Those reasons are 1) Cody is too young to be in as many activities that draw adult attention; 2) As older and therefore a better communicator, Chiara is better able to interact with adults and therefore draw their attention; 3) As a second child we’re just way more worn out – it’s not pretty, but it is true.

Thus, Cody spends a lot of time playing with toys by himself. Superhero action figures are a favorite. He  will literally lie on the floor for hours acting out conversations between these characters.

Let me state publically that the writers at Marvel and Warner Brothers are at no risk of losing their jobs to Cody’s story lines. Cody’s action figures mainly discuss one another’s physical appearance and names. Here’s what the next movie would be like as written by Cody Kimmel:

 

THE AVENGERS 3: Is Your Name Pee-Pee Face?

The scene opens to The Avenger’s secret lair. Captain America works feverishly on the mega-computer. Something is awry. The huge screen flickers – static lines clear and the face of The General appears.

General: Captain America, we have an urgent mission for the Avengers. The Joker’s evil forces have been unleashed on the city!

Captain America (SHOUTING): DO YOU HAVE A MOUSTACHE?

General: Uh,yes. Yes I do have a moustache.

Captain America: ARE YOU WEARING PURPLE?

General: No, I’m wearing green… with gold medals.

The control room’s sliding steel doors open with a whisk. Captain America turns to see Iron Man enter the room.

Iron Man: I’M HERE, YOU CATOOHEY¹!

Captain America: IS YOUR NAME PEE-PEE HEAD?

Iron Man: I’M NOT PEE-PEE HEAD YOU, YOU TARKEYBOON¹!

Captain America: ARE YOU YELLOW HORSE FACE?

Iron Man: I’M IRON MAN!

Captain America: OH IRON MAN! HELLO IRON MAN!

Captain America and Iron Man slam their heads and bodies together repeatedly (this is Cody’s traditional greeting for all his Action Figures – their relationships are apparently built on mutual physical brutality).

General: Uh, hey, fellahs? We have a mission here. The Joker is out there and the city needs your help!

Captain America: DO YOU WEAR PANTS?

The General and the Avengers continue to discuss wardrobe and excrement-based nomenclature for several more minutes. Eventually they decide to go face The Joker, who is driving in his Joker Tank.

Iron Man: There he is!

No need for prolonged discussion or showdown scene here. The Avengers bash The Joker and his tank with their feet until parts are scattered everywhere. The entire climactic battle scene takes about four seconds.

After thoroughly trouncing The Joker, the discussion of clothing selection continues. The Joker and The Avengers quickly forget they were ever enemies…

Captain America (to The Joker): ARE YOU WEARING PURPLE?

The End

 

Every so often I ask Cody what his action figures are up to. Chiara has her babies, and if asked, will readily let you know that the baby is hungry, tired, going shopping, or whatever. Cody will say “they’re just toys, Dad” with a tone of “are you an idiot?” It’s a “duh” moment; Cody has reduced me to a human dodo… or maybe a catoohey yellow horse face purple pants.

 

¹Cody has a penchant for creating names to call people. Not knowing all the right and proper insults, he tends to just make them up. Many times while trying to get him to brush his teeth have I been called a Gahkie or a Scooch.

A translator

"I don't understand it, Bones. The translators
aren't working with these life forms!"

Over the course of my parenting journey, one thing I’ve learned is that young children and adults simply do not speak the same language. It sounds the same – it uses many of the same words, and many of the same phrases. But there are many different meanings and contexts depending on who is speaking. It’s sort of like how the English say “pram” and “lorry” when they mean “buggy” and “truck,” only a lot more frustrating and a lot less Monty-Python-like.

So, to help the uninitiated parent navigate this strange, alternative land of quasi-English, I’ve put together the following translation guide. Here are some examples:

Child says: I want to help (make a cake, clean the car, water the plants).

Translation: I want to dump the contents of that container everywhere, and help make your cake-baking process slower, messier and more work than you had ever planned on. As a bonus, once dirty, I’ll probably go running around the house, spreading the dirtiness on your walls and carpet. By the way, I’m holding you hostage at this point. If you refuse me the opportunity to dump milk on this counter, I promise you that I am prepared to throw the tantrum of a lifetime. Have you heard of a no-win situation? WELCOME TO NO-WIN TOWN, BUDDY!
 
Child says: I want (pasta, chicken, pancakes) for dinner.

Translation: There is some possibility that, if you go to the effort of making the dish I have requested, I will eat it. I reserve the right to complain about the food, ignore it, or even demand something else once it actually becomes time to eat it. I’m saying I want it now, not that I will necessarily want it in the future. Listen, Dad, there really are no guarantees in life. It’s really time you learned that important lesson.

Child says: Yes, I promise I will be good.

Translation: I will say absolutely anything to get that reward you are dangling in front of me. Will I follow through with my end of the bargain? Eh, we’ll see how that goes once the temptation to misbehave is back in sight. What did I tell you before about guarantees? Caveat Emptor, Dad.

In fairness, communication is a two-way street, and certain things you think you’ve communicated do not come through the way you think they do, so we need a reverse-translator. Here are some examples:

You say: Don’t tell your sister (you got a treat, you went to this place).¹

They hear: The moment you are in your sister’s presence, taunt her mercilessly about having gotten something she didn’t. Send any issues my way! I’d be delighted to clean up the inevitable mess this is going to cause in your relationship.

You say: Not now/not today.

They hear: Badger me endlessly about this. It will annoy and possibly enrage me, and may result in punishment for you. It will almost certainly ruin a perfectly good car trip. But hey, there’s an outside chance I might capitulate. Or at least cut a deal. This negotiating tactic is great training to make you a Tea-Party Congressperson someday.

You say: Be nice to your brother.

They hear: Hurl insults at your brother. Mock and scorn him. Physically abuse him and scream at him. Yes, I agree it really is important that you play with that one toy, right now – even though you’ve had no interest in it for weeks, and in fact had no interest in it today until the moment he picked it up.

With these simple translations, you’ll be well equipped to understand your children. Not that better understanding will do you much good – you’ll still be at their mercy. You’ll just understand what you are getting yourself into better.

Maybe next time, I’ll create a translator for communicating with your husband. (Hint: It involves lots of grunting).

 

¹Thanks to Kate Rose for reminding me of this one.

The Cody Kimmel School of Humor

Those weeks where I’m feeling lousy and it’s hard to get in the mood to write a humorous blog post, I have a fall back derived from the Cody Kimmel school of humor: talk about poop. This probably explains why I’ve blogged about pooping a couple of times before, for example here.

Cody thinks that poop is the funniest thing in the freaking world. Nothing, I mean nothing, makes a car ride more entertaining than a discussion of bodily functions. Try running errands with this going on in the back seat at about a thousand decibels:

Cody: Poop! HAHAHAHAHA

Chiara: Cody said poop! HAHAHAHA

Cody: Pee-pee! HAHAHAHA

Chiara: Cody said pee pee! HAHAHAHAHA

We could drive to Chicago and the discourse would never stray far.

As much as Cody loves talking about going to the bathroom, he doesn’t seem too interested in the act itself. Cody averages one accident per day, and has days with as many as three accidents. We tell him, every single time, to plan ahead. We beg him to go before we leave the house. But no, I don’t have to go! I don’t have to go! Oops I had an accident!

Chiara: Cody peed on the floor! HAHAHAHAHA

This trend has changed only recently now that Cody has discovered the wonders of peeing standing up. This makes the act much more entertaining. Of course, there are a few basics to master which Cody is still working on. Most important: Aim. Accidents used to be confined to underwear and pants. Now, no item below about four feet – be it wall, wastebasket, towel, rug, or small animal, is safe.

The reason Cody really likes the new urination style is that what Cody really, really likes to do is touch himself. I mean, it’s getting really embarrassing. Cody is absolutely fascinated with his privates, and what they can be manipulated to do. It’s all the better when he has an audience with his sister who howls and cackles and encourages him to be a total exhibitionist. This, of course, embarrasses and enrages his mother and me. I know we are probably stunting his development, causing him negative feelings about his body and his sexuality. But, I do not give a rip: Get your hands off your junk.

Speaking of messages, we have friends who refer to their children’s anatomy by the proper medical names, even directly with the children at a very young age. We do no such thing in our household. Cody has determined that everything below the belt, back and front, male and female, is called “butt.” We are too prude to correct him – that would just mean more uncomfortable conversations best left to his friends in middle school.

I am not a puritan. I generally feel people should be able to do whatever they want in their bedrooms so long as there is consent. I do not, however, extend this philosophy to my children. At 5 and 3, my feeling is they should be asexual angels. But apparently it is beyond my control. Apparently, I’m raising an auto-erotic scatologist male stripper instead.

Chiara: Daddy said scatologist! HAHAHAHAHA

Butterflies, Attack!

The Terror of Strongsville: The Butterflies!

It’s 9am and the girls take the field. I understand that as you get older, space is more constrained and you might have to play at 7am, but Strongsville soccer has only four 5-year-old girls soccer teams and so there is enough space that you can split the teams into two games and give everyone more playing time. Each team has a distinct color – red, yellow, blue, green. Chiara is on the red team.

The girls get to pick their team name. Chiara’s team – clearly intending to strike terror in the hearts of their opponents – chose the name The Butterflies. It’s reflective of their competitive spirit. Many of the five-year-olds haven’t grabbed onto the concept of competing, winning and losing. Our hats go off to our energetic coach, Josh, who does his best to keep them as motivated as possible. He arranges cones, does drills, and plays the role of five-year-old coach perfectly.

There are no real soccer skills, per se, on the Butterflies. There is more a range in terms of assertiveness in pursuing the ball. At one end of this spectrum, girls go after the ball with reckless abandon, grabbing shirts and pushing others out of the way, irrespective of which team the shirt owner belongs to. Other girls on the team have all the aggression of daffodils. They’re mainly spectators in the game, keenly interested in seeing, up close, who will kick the ball again. Our team will literally sit and wait for the other team to kick the ball as if it were their turn. Sigh.

Unfortunately, this week we are paired against the Green Team, who does in fact have per se soccer skills. These girls can dribble and they kick booming goals. They also are all good at attacking the ball. Basically, we lost this game on draft day. The league is like Basketball in the Olympics – the other three teams are all playing to determine who will win silver to Green’s Dream Team gold.

The assistant coach is assigned to our field. She tries to maintain a fun and carefree environment. “Who wants to throw in the ball?” she sings. “Keep it up!” Chiara’s parents, with MBA’s from Harvard, are having none of that. “This is a disaster” says Andrea “Spread out! Get up the field!” Her comments are bigger-picture, field presence stuff. I’m amused she thinks that four five-year-olds can coordinate their positions. My comments are more individual, tactical. “Attack the ball!” I shout to pig-tailed girl with a happy face who skips down the field.

I have a tendency to get into sporting events too much. I can go watch two little league baseball teams on which I do not know a single child, will choose one side at random, and become the most vociferous fan of that team. I also like to use humor. I think I’m being a tremendous wit. Andrea thinks I’m being an obnoxious loudmouth.  Today is no exception. “Shoot, shoot, shoot… Woohoo!” I shout, in a game amongst five-year-olds where no score is taken and standings don’t matter. The other parents sit blithely in their folding chairs reading Facebook on their I-Phones. Many of them have older sibling children – they’ve been down this road before.

There’s no keeping score at this level. But we know, we know. By the second half, the Butterflies are getting murdered 7 to 2, and Andrea is praying that I don’t say anything offensive. She and I start talking strategy. Some teams put a girl back in goal to defend. Given most scores in this league are uncontested rolls into an open goals, simply putting a body in the way, however immobile, has the effect of reducing scoring dramatically. It also allows you to provide at least one player some rest without taking them out of the game. The others, racing up and down the field in a huddled mass, exhaust themselves and are begging to be subbed out by the fourth quarter.

For his part, Cody is not pleased to be sitting still on the sidelines watching girls play soccer. To entertain himself, when he’s not dumping Chiara’s ice water down his shorts, he takes to a particularly vicious version of the Robert Kimmel School of sports cheering. “I hate the Green Team!” He shouts “I want to kill them!” I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty certain Cody’s team next year will not be named The Butterflies.

Another 10-minute quarter later, the game comes to an end. The Butterflies have had some lucky breaks on both offense and defense. The green team has scored another 3 goals to our 2 to make the score 10 to 4. Given the number of near misses to the outside, we’re lucky the score wasn’t 50 to 4. The girls, oblivious to the loss, shake hands and go get treats. Andrea and I sigh and pack up our chairs – needing a rest after expending too much energy on a game that strangely somehow mattered and didn’t matter at the same time.

Kitchen Closes, 7pm!

Behold: The Kimmel Family Dinner

This is the third post in my series on why meals stink when you are a parent. See here for breakfast and lunch.

This happens about four nights every week – Andrea and I look up from what we are doing around 6pm and say to one another “What the heck are we doing for dinner?” The fifth night we’ve usually already planned to eat pizza.

The result is exactly what you might imagine. We have several, simple-to-prepare meals that we lean on heavily. We eat microwaveable food. We eat leftovers. We snack instead of dinner. Some nights are known as “every man for himself,” where all of the above are options.

The biggest problem with dinner is that it takes pre-planning. Meat has to be thawed. Ingredients have to be purchased. Veggies need to be chopped. The slow-cooker needs to be turned on. The disgusting, half-eaten, goopy cucumber in the veggie drawer has to be thrown away and replaced by another half-eaten one that can be left to rot properly.

To Andrea’s great credit, she does plan a couple of meals a week and get the necessary prep work done. I have no idea how she manages this, because most evenings all I have the strength to plan for is a bag of Skittles. The problem with the pre-planning is you never want what you planned for. Our “future” selves always want light and healthy faire - Lots of veggies and salads. Our “current” selves are too darn hungry and tired to be bothered with all that. Just give us another ham and cheese Hot Pocket, please!

There are bonus nights when the kids will eat the same thing as the adults. But usually we are making not one, but three meals on the fly. Soup for the adults, mac and cheese for Cody and pepperoni with crackers for Chiara is a possible combination. The experts and grandparents say “make them at least try the grown-up dish” and we do that… sometimes. Usually the result is that we end up making mac and cheese while the grown-up dish goes cold.  

We insist on at least some vegetables, with post-dinner sweets as the bribe. The kids, who could apparently subsist on nothing but chicken nuggets (Cody) and buttered noodles (Chiara), will have almost nothing to do with veggies. They each have one, and only one, vegetable which they will tolerate. For Cody, it’s raw baby carrots with a hefty amount of ranch dressing; for Chiara, it’s broccoli. We go through Costco quantities of broccoli and baby carrots. By “go through,” I don’t necessarily mean “eat;” the kids resist even the few pieces of each we put on the plate, and admittedly some nights the vegetable consumption that justifies the candy can be measured on the molecular level.

We have a chalkboard in the kitchen where Andrea has written “Kitchen Closes, 7pm!” It’s written in jest, but the joke is mostly on us. Chiara is always last to start a meal – there are baby dolls to be put to bed, after all – and she is slowest to eat. She’s routinely barely getting warmed up by 7pm, much less ready to allow the kitchen to close. The other part of the joke is that what little we manage to get into the kids at dinner time is often not filling enough. About the time bedtime rolls around they need something else to eat – which is a leading contributor to the rapid decline of their parents’ mental health.

One thing I am proud of is that we have eradicated TV watching from dinner. Andrea and I are not averse to TV in general – the kids have very structured, TV-free days so a little couch time in the evening is okay as far as we are concerned. But TV and meals are contradictory. The kids stare at the TV gape-jawed and don’t move a muscle towards lifting their spoons. I do sometimes think I could slide a feeding tube down Chiara’s throat during those rare TV-meal occasions. That might be one way to get her to eat the grown-up meal and her three broccoli sprigs.

At the end of every dinner is clean-up, which is a structured, proceduralized process in the Kimmel household. Parts of the process might not be otherwise necessary but there is nary a meal without a mess - the kids are totally incapable of eating without making one. Spills, too, are frequent. So the vacuum cleaner, Windex and paper towels are only an arms-reach away at every meal. You don’t want to be frustrated by a spill, you really don’t. They’re kids, after all. But, darn it, the spills are so preventable that they are enough to send you into a “fugue state” as follows:

Child: “Sorry I spilled my milk again. It was an accident”

Parent, sputtering: “Well, yeah it was an accident… But we told you not to leave your spoon… It’s the same as last… BWAAARRRR!” (Fugue state ensues)

Our diet is not what it should be. We eat too many processed foods and nowhere near enough fresh fruits and vegetables. We top it off with sweets and alcohol and pizza. But Geez, we are busy, stressed people with small children. Someday, the kids will be older and we’ll be less busy and stressed, and we will eat a lot healthier. Or at least our future selves will.

May the Cheese Be With You

In the search for a freighter pilot to smuggle them to Alderaan, Obi-Wan Kenobi takes Luke Skywalker to the Cantina at Mos Eisley. It’s not for the faint of heart: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy,” Obi-Wan warns Luke.

Well, Obi-Wan, you are wise in the ways of The Force, but I have indeed found such a wretched hive. It’s called Chuck-E-Cheese, and it’s where I spent time on my Labor Day weekend.

Sure, Mos Eisley has vile bandits, privateers, bounty hunters and mercenaries. But Chuck-E-Cheese has vile video games, animatronics and The Cupid Shuffle*. Han Solo had to shoot the bounty hunter Greedo to escape the wrath of Jabba the Hut; we had to shoot skee-ball to avoid the wrath of our children. Han charges 17,000 imperial credits for the trip to Alderaan, almost enough to buy a whole starship. Look at the ticket requirements for the good toys at the prize counter and that starship starts to look like a real bargain.

I have to give Chuck-E-Cheese credit, though - a while back I posted my admiration for our dance troupe and our gymnastics studio for the efficiency with which they parted us from our money. But Chuck-E-Cheese is a force never reckoned with in the realm of parental funds. It is an unbelievably efficient money-destroying machine, turning dollars into tokens, which turn into a small chance at winning tickets worth a tiny fraction of your original dollars. It goes through this money-token-ticket-junk cycle with unparalleled efficiency. The Death Star can destroy whole planets - Chuck-E-Cheese can destroy whole paychecks.**

These tickets and their token precursors are like Wookie Nip to my kids. They run from machine to machine, slugging tokens faster than the Millennium Falcon on hyperdrive.  They can run through 100 tokens in under 12 parsecs.

The Death Star has the tractor beam, but Chuck-E has mass media. They sponsor Curious George, which tells you right away that PBS has gone to the Dark Side. Inundated with commercials, our kids beg to Chuck-E-Cheese weekly. No Jedi mind tricks will work: This isn’t the pizza you’re looking for, go about your business might be effective with weak-minded Stormtroopers, but not with kids who have a steel-trap focus on tokens and tickets.

In order to escape the Death Star, Obi-Wan had to sacrifice his life to allow Han, Luke and Leia time to get away. His light saber duel with Darth Vader ended in tragedy. To escape Chuck-E-Cheese, we had to go to the prize counter with our hard-won tickets. As I watched my $20 turn into a crummy plastic slinky with the life expectancy of a fruit fly, I felt Luke’s pain as he watched Obi-Wan’s robes crumple to the ground.

Star Wars, of course, ends on a high note. The rebel alliance eventually defeated the Death Star. Its defenses were designed for bigger ships; the small X-Wing Fighters were able to fire missiles into an exhaust port that led to the main reactor. Luke Skywalker used The Force to guide his one-shot chance at destroying the evil space station.

Well, Luke has The Force, but I’ve got nothing. I wasn’t able to find any vulnerabilities in Chuck-E’s mighty defenses. But Chuck-E was able to shoot down my X-Wing – I couldn’t destroy the Death Star, but my kids used the Fun Dips they won with their tickets to destroy the back seat of my car. Please, kids, I’m begging you: The Saab 9.3 is a peaceful car. It has no weapons. Show mercy!

So, the next time you feel a great disturbance in The Force, beware. It could be a million voices suddenly crying out in terror and suddenly silenced. It could be that the Death Star has blown up another planet. Or, it could be worse. It could be a day you have to go to Chuck-E-Cheese!

* Cupid Shuffle is apparently the required theme song for dancing mascots at kids’ places, which anyone who has been to The Jump Yard knows. My god, the poor souls who work at these places must, having heard this song 10,000 times, lay awake at night with to the left, to the left, to the right, to the right ringing in their ears.

** It was very tempting to compare Chuck-E-Cheese to the garbage compactor that the heroes ended up in after rescuing Leia from the Death Star brig: dark, disgusting, dirty, with an animated monster pestering them and the walls closing in. But, I have to be fair to Chuck-E. The restaurant is actually quite open, airy and clean with abundant natural lighting. The animatronics, games and all of the furnishings were in good shape. That said, I’m sure Imperial Star Destroyers are quite comfy-umfy for the laser gun operators who live in them -- that doesn’t stop them from being part of The Evil Empire!