Boys are harder than girls

The mother of these two boys
will not be having a third

A few weekends ago, we were visited by our friend, an out-of-town mother, and her four kids. Good golly, four kids. (As a side note, I learned that three parents and six children wasn’t much harder than two parents and two children – the best argument for polygamy I’ve seen).

This is one of two families we know with four kids. Let me explain how you get to four children – first, you have three girls and you want a boy. Then you realize how foolish it was to want a boy and quit. It’s the same in both families. Three girls followed by one boy. We have friends with three boys. I can assure you that our friends with three boys are not having a fourth. When you have two boys, you think maybe, just maybe, I can still eke out the energy to handle the little princess I’ve always wanted. But when that third boy comes, you know that if you have a fourth you will probably die.

Boys are harder than girls.

Let’s be clear. Parenting, irrespective of circumstance, is hard. All children are hard. Young girls are hard. They are fickle and demanding. They are irrational. They scream and whine and cry to get whatever ridiculous thing they want.

But young boys take it to a whole different level. Young boys are little monsters. They do everything listed under girls above, plus they destroy stuff. They are violent. Every object becomes a sword to swipe at things or a hammer to smash things with. On top of it all, they have so much energy that they run around until they slam into walls and damage them.

Cody, my little boy, is fearless. There is nothing I can say or do that will stop him from doing whatever knucklehead thing he wants to do. He literally laughs at – when my blood is really boiling – what he should recognize as mortal peril. Naturally, he’s too knuckleheaded to realize that the laughing increases the blood boiling and, in turn, the peril.

Andrea regularly reminds me that Chiara is 6 and Cody is 4 and that we can’t hold the 4-year-old to 6-year-old standards. And that is fair. But me forgetting how hard Chiara was at 4 doesn’t make it pleasant to be around Cody at 4. (Plus I actually do believe Cody at 4 is much worse).

There is also something about birth order. I think it really stinks to be the younger sibling. Cody can’t concentrate long enough to, for example, play golf. So, he isn’t invited to play golf. He has to stay home and smash things while Chiara gets to have all of the fun. As first born, Chiara is (at least at the moment) by-and-large a rule follower. Cody couldn’t give a flip about the rules. He has to carve his own way in life. The point is: if you are going to have a boy, make sure he’s first born.

It’s not all birth order, though. Andrea and I once stayed with my aunt and uncle in Tulsa, where I was a child. In telling Andrea about those early days, my aunt said “He was a perfect little…” there was a dramatic pause to let the listener’s brain fill in the blank, “[expletive].”

Andrea later told me she thought my aunt was going to say “Angel.” Instead of the expletive, she probably could have just said “boy.”

I Wish I Were Big

I wish I were big, so I could do taxes

Chiara only wants to eat off of porcelain bowls and drink from glass glasses anymore. The plastic stuff is too babyish, and she wants to be like a grown up. Cody has said “I wish I were a grown up, so I could make the rules.”

I’ll be honest, there are plenty of times when I wished the ageing process could be accelerated, ending the days of screaming matches over whether the pink toothpaste is suitable or only blue will do. And I have to admit, each milestone in parenting are nice to be past. I’m glad we don’t change diapers any more. I like sleeping through the night, and I like that the kids will sometimes, occasionally, sleep in past 6am.

I also must admit, being an adult has its privileges. I like sitting up for one more episode of West Wing if I want to. I like picking out my own outfit every day (from the pre-approved clothes which Andrea has selected for me). I like deciding what night is pizza night.

So, I’ve embraced this “I’m a grown-up” idea from the kids. That’s why I’m making Cody get a job or else he’s on the street. Chiara has to do the accounting and file our taxes. They’re about to get a cold dose of reality about “making the rules” – it turns out that as a grown up, you have to do the dishes even if you don’t want to. You have to use whatever darn toothpaste is around, and only occasionally get to throw a temper tantrum.

Personally, I long for nothing more than the days where the most stress I faced was an internal debate whether to play with Ninja Turtles or Star Wars figures. Where someone else took care of the big decisions and I could focus my attention on splashing in the tub (okay, with Andrea around it’s still kind of like that). Where I didn’t have to worry about making the mortgage payment and could just go to soccer practice. Would I trade all that for having to go to bed at 8:30? Heck, I want to go to bed at 8:30 most nights!

On the other hand, you want your kids to enjoy their short time as kids. For the children, life is fun. Chiara does math problems FOR FUN. She arranges her sock drawer FOR FUN. Cody’s hobbies aren’t quite as kooky as his sister’s, but let’s just say he’s not overly concerned with keeping his clothes clean if fun the alternative involves sidewalk chalk.

It’s just one more of the great ironies of parenting. You want your children to grow up. A little. And not too fast.

So the best advice I can give, but can’t always follow, is that life is much more fun when you accept that the kids are kids. Don’t own a beautiful house filled with delicate objects when you have a four-year-old boy. Don’t pretend he can handle himself on a golf course. Embrace the notion that blue toothpaste is better than pink toothpaste. Do your best to enjoy childhood, or adulthood, or whatever “hood” you may be in life.

The World Series of Parenting

Fortunately they don't award these for parenting

A friend recently posted a Facebook story where a stranger walked up and said something to the effect of “your kids are so well behaved, you must be darn fine parents.” Let me eliminate any mystery and let you know that no strangers ever walk up to us in restaurants and tell us that. In fact, I am usually in the uncomfortable position of explaining our kids’ behavior away. I usually say something like “they’re foster kids; they were raised by wolves.” That way strangers can rest assured that we are in fact, “darn fine” parents.

But we’re not darn fine parents, at least in the eyes of strangers. In my experience, strangers generally judge your parenting skills by your children’s ability to sit still and instantly do what they are told. Whether these skills are actually what helps them develop into well-adjusted, productive adults… nevermind, that’s a rant for another time.

No, our parenting will never meet the stranger definition of darn fine. The reason is we are big softies. But we are softies in different ways. Andrea is hard up front and soft later. I’m soft up front and hard later. In other words, when a child asks me if they can do something, I tend to decide right away whether or not it is okay. And I’m soft in that it is usually okay. But if it is not, I stick to my guns. No. Matter. What. This has the upside that I have a slightly higher compliance rate on first requests. It has the downside that trivial incidents tend escalate into the Cuban Missile Crisis. Soon intermediaries from Switzerland are visiting Cody and I trying to generate mutually face-saving solutions to whether or not he can have another bed time book.

But being hard up front and soft later also has its downsides. Here’s how it goes in this situation:

“Can I have another cookie?”

“NO!”

(Whine)

“No.”

(Whine)

“no”

(Whine)

“Well okay, since you were good today.”

Andrea and I used to play a lot of poker. In poker terms, my parenting method is to either fold or go all in. When you go all-in a lot, you win a lot of hands. But it puts you at risk of occasionally busting out. Andrea’s method is more like bet-bet-bet-fold. She busts out, but she does it slowly.

As a side effect, the kids are becoming master poker players. They can read Andrea’s bluffs; they know when to call down my all-in to a chopped pot. Andrea and I aren’t going to win the World Series of Poker any time soon. But we have a better shot at winning a bracelet than we do to be called “darn fine parents.”

Look! A Kangaroo!

This is how I spent my weekend...
What did you do?

Now that he is four years old, Cody has a new habit: lying. Or, more like fanciful storytelling. Here’s an example- we attended a Cleveland Indians Game, where Cody slipped on the stairs and busted his chin. He required stitches and missed most of the game. A week later, as he was getting his stitches removed, Cody explained to the nurse 1) that he’s 7 years old, 2) he has no siblings, 3) his chin was injured by being hit with a home-run baseball.

Cody has also been known to name himself Lord Coco of the plant Zebron. He’s also spotted kangaroos in our neighborhood. He’s all-in on these fantasies. Cody, if challenged, will defend them violently in anger.

In truth, I’ve learned something from my four-year-old son. I’ve learned that life can be a lot more fun if you just make it up as you go along. It’s just cooler to be hit by a baseball than it is to make a fool of yourself slipping on stairs. It’s better to be an only child than to be the littlest and take grief from your older sister. And the world is a cooler place if you can spot Kangaroos while driving down the parkway.

So, I’ve taken a page out of Cody’s book. That’s why I recently spent a week on holiday in Luxembourg, where my father is the 14^th Crown Prince. We raced our Bugattis on the motorway and flew our Courseair to our private penthouse suite at the Monoco casino. We drank $3,000 bottles of scotch, smoked $500 cigars, and ate nothing but rare Moldovan caviar. You haven’t heard of Moldovan caviar, because it’s that rare.

Sure, Luxembourg looked a lot like Houston. And the scotch tasted like Bud Light out of the can. But it’s a way cooler memory if it includes a Bugatti. Wait, Moldova’s not on an Ocean? In my fantasy it is.

I’ve got a long way to go and a lot more to learn from my son. This was just some crummy middle European Dukedom fantasy. What’s a Bugatti compared to a spaceship? And what’s Luxembourg compared to an entire planet? There’s room to go way bigger and way better.

In the end, the lesson is: be happy with what you have, make up the rest.

Don’t Wake Mama Bear

Today's post is a guest post by MamaBear who tells us a little bit about what it's like to defend one's cubs in the rough and tumble world of suburban Strongsville...

 

Mama Bear- ever vigilent

Hidden deep in the lush forest of the Midwest (the Strongsville Metroparks), lives an elusive creature known for her fierce, loyal, and irrational protection of her cubs.  As her offspring enter into what some consider the golden-years of cubhood (the ages between 6-12 when cubs become interesting and pleasant), there have been increased sightings of this wild protector.  Who is this insane animal, you might ask, and where has she been spotted?  You need only look to a nearby bus stop, playground or library story-time to locate her.  And it is there you will find… The Mama Bear. 

My day started out as any other.  The kids woke, got ready for school, and together we walked to the bus stop where we greeted several other moms and children.  Things were moving along quite nicely, children excitedly planning for the school day ahead, moms chatting about the weather…wait a minute.  Wait just a minute.  Did that kid just push my kid?  DID THAT KID JUST PUSH MY KID?!!  And then it happened.  My grizzly teeth grew sharp, my eyes got wild, my Jamberry nails transformed into claws right there at the bus stop.  I grew to a towering eight feet and broke right through my yoga pants and sweatshirt.   Mama Bear was awake!   I lumbered over to my child (who had moved on from the alleged (possibly misconstrued) pushing incident), and said, “Are you ok?” and then even louder, “Did John just push you?”  My son replied, “No, he tripped and bumped into me.”  Oh, ok.  And just like that, my teeth and eyes returned to their human form, my nails regained their suburban-painted status, and my clothes once again fit my 5’5 frame.  Mama Bear headed back to the cave. 

Returning to the house, my three-year-old and I decided to head out to the library story-time.  Honestly, can you think of a more benign, fun, and educational experience?  We got there a bit early so my kid could get a front and center seat.  He was happy.   And of course, I was happy that he’d reached an age where story-time no longer involved him climbing me like Mt. Everest throughout the entire 20 minutes of painful songs, rhymes, and finger plays.  All was going well as the other children filtered in, and I may have even patted myself on the back for our participation in this enriching activity.  Wait a minute.   Are those kids… ARE THOSE KIDS NUDGING MY KID OUT OF THE FRONT SPOT?!!  A deep growl emerged from me, and Mama Bear was awake!  Very loudly, so the other mothers were sure to hear, I roared, “Ben, don’t let those kids push you!  Batten down the hatches, honey!  Hold your position man!”  Then I glowered my big grizzly eyes at the offending toddlers.  (Did I just swipe my bear paw at that girl?)   I was on full alert, glaring around at the toddlers and parents in a frenzied, rabid sort of way, with a look that I am certain conveyed, “Don’t touch my cub, and you best find another place to sit.”   Thankfully, story-time started and all was well.  Mama Bear once again headed back into the cave.

That night at dinner, my 6-year-old casually mentioned that one of the girls at school was being mean to her.  Smelling danger as any Mama Bear would, I asked her what the girl had said and she responded, “She called me skinny”.  My husband, who rarely gives advice, sat silently.  In fact, I think my whole family was waiting for my reaction.  And there it was.  My face heated, my breathing increased, my finger (paw really) started making that “Z” shape in the air and I heard myself roar, “She said what?  SHE SAID WHAAATTT?!!”  I think I might have seen my husband’s eyebrow raise a bit, but I was just getting started.  Mama Bear was awake!  “Well,” I rabidly howled, “What did you say back?  WHAT DID YOU SAY BACK?!!  Did you say, ‘I’m going to kick your--‘”  My husband shot me a look complete with the throat cut-it-off sign.  My daughter replied, “I don’t want to say that, mom.”  Getting all the more agitated, I crazily responded, “Did you tell her to shut up and mind her own business?  Or how about saying…”  My 8 year old cut me off and sagely stated, “Mom, Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek”.   Again I saw my husband’s eyebrow raise in question.  In full frothing Mama Bear mode I retorted, “Listen, Michael, different context.  Jesus wasn’t talking about mean girls!”  Everyone else at the table pretty much agreed that this was the exact kind of situation that Jesus was apparently referring to, and so one dad, his daughter, and her two brothers decided that the best response was to simply say, “Thanks.”   As a rabid Mama Bear ready and willing to protect her cubs at all costs, I questioned the retort, but all involved assured me that this method would work to curb this kindergarten bully.   “Fine”, I said with a low rumbling growl.  (Actually at this point it is more of a resolute Chewbacca-whine.)  “But maybe you can at least swipe a paw at her when you say it.” 

 

KiddleDad's 50th Blog Post

This happened to somebody else's blog
after 50 posts... you can do it, Mom!

This post marks the 50^th KiddleDad post. I’m amazed, since when it started I thought that I might very well fizzle out after four or five posts. But no, parenting is a treasure trove of humorous events. If you can write 500 words about the eating of oatmeal, there is seemingly endless supply of topics that can be covered.

One thing I have learned in 50 posts is that you can’t just create content; you have to market it if you want people to read it. So I’ve put in place a digital marketing campaign that I summarize as: post it on Facebook. I also have advanced analytics that tell me exactly how many people have read each posts, so I know what topics and what marketing attract the most attention.

I know, for instance, that after 50 posts I have roughly 100 page views. Given that Andrea reads the draft before it is posted (to remove all Pope jokes and curse words), and that I read it one time once posted to make sure it formatted okay, that means I have one person reading my blog – My Mom.

Therefore, in honor of my 50^th post, I called my Mom last night to get a list of her favorites. Here they are:

1.       A Case of the Yucks

2.       Buy High, Sell Low

3.       Ummmm… errrrrr…

That’s right, my Mom couldn’t think of a third. When asked to conjure up even a single memory of another post, she was stuck. Apparently the other 48 posts, which I know she dutifully read, have not made much of an impression. Looks like I shouldn’t be working on a book deal soon. (In fairness to Mom, she’s had a lot of heavy things on her mind lately).

What are my favorites, no one in particular asks? What, you want me to choose, like choosing my favorite child amongst my children? How can I possibly? Actually it’s no problem. Some were truly inspired, others I just mailed in. Here are my favorite 5, in order:

1.       Crime and Punishment

2.       The Brown Badge of Courage

3.       May The Cheese Be With You

4.       Kiddie Capitalism

5.       Captain America and Iron Man Share Wardrobe Tips

The other thing you might not realize is that I get paid to do this blog. Those ads for Irritable Bowel Syndrome at the bottom?  I get paid just for showing those to you. I get paid even more for clicks. So far, I’ve made a whopping $2.32. Would it kill you to click on a darn ad, Mom?

Hence my shameless plugs above to get you to go read old posts. Every view is worth like half a cent. So please – go back and read those old posts and a bunch more. Scroll and click randomly. Share the ones you like with your friends. Make this thing go viral. It’s worth like ten bucks to me – I’ll buy your kid an oatmeal.

I [heart] Obamacare

Ladies and Gentlemen:
The President of Ohio, Manack Banana

When you’re a graduate of Harvard Business School, you have many opportunities to be humbled throughout the rest of your life. Several classmates have made their fortunes many times over and are now writing sagacious blogs about how to be worthy business investors. One classmate’s father ran for president – of the United States, not SECPTA. Sal Khan (Founder of Khan Academy) was in our class for goodness sakes. This guy’s in TV commercials and was on the cover of Fortune! What have you done with the past 10 years, you schlub?

Another of our classmates, who at least still returns our emails (still missing you, Sal!) is running for Congress in California. I bring this up in a (mostly) parenting blog because our kids are really into politics these days. Or at least politics at a 4-year-old level. For example, they both know that the president’s name is Manack Banana, that he lives in the White House, and he is the president of Ohio. He flies around in Air Force one, which is a crumpled up plush doll plane that’s been on the bottom of the toy chest too long. We live in the state of Strongsville, which is part of the United States.

So this classmate is running for congress for the wrong party. Nevertheless, as friends we made a meager donation reflective of our Harvard status – don’t know how much Sal Khan gave, but we donated I think $50.

Big Mistake.

Let me be clear here, if you are ever presented the opportunity to donate to a political campaign, pass. Do not feed the bears. Having given that miniscule donation, I am now bombarded with an average of 5 emails a day with titles like:

Boehner Can’t Believe It!

With breathless text explaining: Boehnercantbelievetheresponsewevegottentothepetitiontooverturntherepublicanbudgetjust13moredonationsbeforenoontomorrowandwellhave200,000donatenowrecommendeddonation$5!!!!!!

Now I even get emails from Nancy Pelosi (shaking my head). Like I said, big mistake.

And the email that caused howls of laughter around our dinner table – I have no idea why I checked this email at the dinner table, but I did – was the one that said for $5 I could get a free bumper sticker saying “I [heart] Obamacare.” The kids absolutely think this is the funniest thing they’ve ever seen, and routinely ask to see that email again. One mention of the word “Obamacare” is now enough to ignite our carload into rapturous laughter.

I think the email’s funny, too, not so much out of any grievance I have with Obamacare, but more at the notion that anyone could [heart] such a thing.

Not that the Dems have the market cornered on this tripe. I have grandparents at the opposite end of the political spectrum, who routinely send me politi-spam bemoaning how school kids don’t sing the Star Spangled Banner anymore and that the democrats want to sell our Bibles to pay for condoms for drug dealers.

So with this constant, competing noise blaring in each ear, I feel I have a unique perspective on this whole political thing. Here are my findings:

1.       John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi are constantly being taken by surprise. Apparently they are not very savvy.

2.       Obamacare is the funniest thing in the world.

So let’s lighten up, people. And whatever you do, do not feed the bears.

Easter Bunny. Perfectly Normal.

RAH RAH RAH Easter!

With Easter coming to a close, I like to reflect on the sweet gullibility, er I mean innocence, of young children. Evidence: Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Elf on the Shelf. This year, we even had a leprechaun visit for St. Patrick’s Day. What with the Tooth Fairy visiting a couple of times a year, we seem to have mythological creatures in and out of the house all the time. But not monsters. Sure, there’s this Fairy out there who for some unknown reason wants to trade money for your teeth. She has free and easy access to your bedroom to come and go as she pleases. Perfectly normal. But Monsters? Monsters aren’t coming in your room. There’s no such thing as monsters - Go to bed!

Chiara, for her part, is too smart not to have figured out all this mythological baloney, I think. But, she plays along since there is money, chocolate and presents involved. If not, it’s reaching the point where I have to question her intelligence. Just look at some of these logical loopholes that should have raised a question or two:

Whenever Santa’s workshop is depicted in a movie or TV show, the elves are working away, merrily building by hand well crafted, wooden toys. In other words, the kind of toys no self-respecting child in 2014 would be caught dead near. What shows up on Christmas day are packaged, branded toys, most of which look like they came out the action end of an injection molding machine. So what gives? Does Santa own the injection molding machines and the packaging lines? Do the elves painstakingly re-create the toys and packaging that they could buy in the store? Why go to that kind of effort? I can just see Jingle the Elf hand-painting the Play-Doh logo on a box to mimic the one at Toys-R-Us. Or does Santa just go to the store? In that case, why are there so many elves building the wooden junk? Have they lost their jobs like so many American factory workers?

Whatever Santa’s illogicalities, it’s nothing compared to the Easter Bunny. Easter night, a bunny hides eggs and puts chocolates in a basket. Now that doesn’t make one darn bit of sense at all. Bunny. Eggs. See what I’m getting at here?

And at least when you see Santa at the mall, it’s a man. Or a Jolly Old Elf. But anyway something that looks reasonably like the thing he is pretending to be. A mall Easter Bunny is a 6-foot-tall college football mascot. He looks nothing like a real rabbit. No one is fooled. “It’s a man in a suit” says my daughter. So who comes Easter night? The mascot or a real-ish bunny?

Today’s Easter Bunny has to be technically savvy to boot. Some of these Leap Pad games don’t even come in cartridge form, so they have to be downloaded directly from the internet. So this rabbit has to sit up late at night making the crummy Leap Pad download application work. Then he has to put the child’s same old Leap Pad in the basket with a note explaining there is a new game on it. Do you know how hard all that is when all you have is paws, floppy ears and a wiggly nose to work with?

On a side note, the person who really raises my Easter ire is Curious George and his egg dyeing ways. Never have the wits of man conceived an activity so well suited to staining clothes than dyeing Easter eggs. A tiny wire dipper carefully lowers an Easter egg into a vat of dye. That’s the theory - a 4-year-old doing this more than once is just tempting fate. But Curious George was curious, so he dipped his eggs in two different colors to see what would happen – you know, yellow and blue make green. So now we have to dip our eggs in two colors, too. Darn you Curious George! Why do you have to be so gosh-darned curious? Can’t you just be curious what it’s like to dip one egg in one color? Can’t you just put a lid on your curiosity, George? Can’t you just get your act together, CURIOUS GEORGE!?!?!?

This Post is Making Me Crazy!

As you may know, we are in the process of selling our house. We knew it was time to sell because we had run out of renovation and redecoration projects. The house has now been redecorated into a state of absolute perfection… rats, time to sell.

Whenever Andrea has her interior decorator over, I know two things are going to happen: I’m going to put in a lot of effort on a project I don’t care about, and life is going to get a lot less convenient. The secret to interior decoration is to pretend no one lives in your house. Of course, four people live in our house, two of whom are small children, so it’s a serious inconvenience to pretend we don’t.

When the decorator re-did our kitchen, all of a sudden everything was off the counter – napkins are now stored in the knife drawer and must be replaced every third day or so. The kitchen table now sits on a textured rug with groves that are perfect for trapping mushed peas and dried Play-Doh. I have the handyman skills of a trained monkey, and break into cold sweats at the thought of hanging a towel bar, but somehow I inevitably end up assembling IKEA shelves with Swedish instructions and three key parts missing.

Andrea moves from room to room in a house and grumbles “we have to do something with this [name of room]. It’s making me crazy.” Andrea is made crazy quite often; in our existing house she worked her way through the kitchen, family room, dining room and basement.  So after months of Andrea saying “we have to do something with this mud room,” I knew I was in trouble.

For the uninitiated, the “mud room” is the small room where we enter the house from the garage. Andrea calls it the “mud room” without irony, which is odd since no mud would ever, ever be allowed in there. Perhaps “mud room” is short for “room for items which formerly had mud on them.” It’s where the washer and dryer sit, a utility sink, our coat closet, and a shoe cubby. There is a crummy white wire shelf above the washer dryer that holds all manner of junk – washing stuff, obviously, along with some tools and wrapping paper, for example.

Basically, the mud room ranks right above the utility room where we keep our old paint cans on my list of places I could give two flips about its appearance. But it’s made Andrea crazy so now it is time for renovation.

And so, despite my apathy about this room, and my aforementioned lack of handyman skills, I’m suddenly hanging pictures and assembling drawers for inside the closet. The wire shelves are still there but are decorated in a sea shell and sand motif. And from now on, to get a hammer, I have to use chopsticks to remove it from a 14^th century Ming Vase.

With the mudroom complete the house is complete and it’s time to sell. The new home is theoretically perfect. But I know that soon enough, Andrea will be grumbling that “this [garage/pantry/walk-in closet] is making me crazy!”

Parenting Advice From KiddleAunt

KiddleAunt explains a few things to KiddleDad

This week's blog post is from KiddleDad's younger sister. She doesn't have kids, but she does have plenty of parenting advice to share:

It’s not uncommon that my older brother needs some guidance, and I thought after years and years of potentially ruining his children, it’s high time I step in to teach him how it’s done. Do I have children? No. Why would that matter? I have a dog, I have a younger sister that I have basically been telling what to do her entire life, and I have only been fired from a couple jobs. Clearly I’m responsible and could show KiddleDad a thing or two about how to raise his children properly.

 

Gastronomic Curiosity

1.       During my visit, the children have asked (and been given) snacks almost every day. Worse even, they weren’t shamed at all for requesting cookies, crackers, and yogurt drinks for these snacks. If you don’t make your children feel guilty about wanting to eat these things, how will they ever learn that they need to spend their later years obsessing over calories and the size of their waists? I am truly worried that my niece and nephew might grow up thinking something ridiculous like beauty comes from the inside.

2.       When it comes to mealtime, Cody’s palate is unrefined. It’s clearly a parent’s role to help his son understand the complexities of flavors, and as far as I can tell there has been no effort here. Chiara on the other hand favors foods like candy, chips, and the like. When we’ve talked about Brussels sprouts, sushi, and fois gras, she referred to them as “yucky,” and she has requested Chipotle for roughly 75% of our meals. There are many approaches to broadening children’s culinary horizons: a treat after each broccoli spear and rubbing their head while saying, “Who’s my good boy? Who’s my good boy?” have always worked well for me.

 

Culture and Worldly Interests

1.       My brother and my lovely sister-in-law are doing a decent job with keeping Chiara well-cultured since they have recently incorporated “Les Misérables” to her bedtime story repertoire. 6-year olds need to spend more time “Examining the nature of law and grace, the history of France, politics, moral philosophy, antimonarchism, justice, religion, and the types and nature of romantic and familial love.” However, I question their dedication. After two weeks, they’re 10 pages in, and my niece reports that “nothing has happened.” Sigh.

2.       Cody on the other hand has been fully neglected in this regard. Looking through his bookshelf you won’t find a single Dickens, Tolstoy, or Dostoyevsky. How they can sleep at night knowing Cody has been in the world for over four years without some proper literary exposure, I have no idea.

3.       Cody also lacks appropriate guidance in world-religions. When I mentioned Shintoism this morning, he looked at me blankly. Not once has any member of the family spent more than 10 minutes in meditation or quiet reflection. I’m considering calling Child Protective Services.

 

Personal Development and Self-Control

1.       During a fieldtrip with the Sweet Kiddles preschool, I was informed by several of the kids that no one was going to win at the bowling alley. This is incomprehensible! Chiara is now 6, and Cody either 4 or 5 depending on who you’re talking to (he says 5, his birth certificate and every other person on Earth says 4 – jury’s still out, I guess). The time has long past since they needed to learn that there are winners and losers in this world. Not everyone gets a blue ribbon, and the sooner we expose our children to that harsh reality, the better.

2.       Having raised a dog since it was a puppy, I think it goes without saying that I could have a child well-disciplined child unquestioningly following my every command within just a few short weeks. My brother and sister-in-law started off without this robust training skill-set when they had children, so I can hardly blame them for any short-comings here. They have gotten wise to the most important elements of behavior modification, but I have a couple recommendations that could help. First, set aside 3-4 hours each day to perfect a whistling routine with the each of the kids. Soon, Chiara will know that three short bursts means it’s time to sit down quietly and await food, Cody will know one long blast means it’s time to put on shoes, grab his backpack, and get in the car. It would be much easier than wrangling the kids every time you want to eat or leave the house. Second, it’s always handy to carry around a baggie of bacon or other treats is useful for when the kiddos get rowdy in public. You’ll have them sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, salivating in no time – eagerly anticipating their reward.

Poor KiddleDad and Andrea need a lot of help, but I think too much guidance at once could get overwhelming. Hopefully my visit will have shed a little light on how parenting should really be done, but I worry these two slackers have already done irreparable damage. If they don’t take action to right the ship soon, I’m afraid Chiara and Cody may be doomed to a life of guilt-free happiness and lack flawless self-control. I only want the best for the children, and it might be better for the kids to be raised by someone like me who is already an expert. Clearly I would know; I do have a dog.

You can follow KiddleAunt on Twitter at @Kalyn_Kimmel or visit her blog: debaclesindating.com

Buy High, Sell Low, Too

Today’s post is a quick follow-up to last week’s parental financial advice titled “Buy High, Sell Low.” In the closing of that post, I mentioned the upcoming resale event in Strongsville that weekend. Well, we attended said event and demonstrated almost immediately our Buy High, Sell Low mantra.

Andrea worked the event while I took the kids to ice skating. While there, she saw a real find: a Barbie Princess Castle. It was a little faded from age, but otherwise was in pristine condition. Retailing at well over $200, she bought it for $50.

After ice skating, I brought the kids to the event, mostly to avail ourselves of leftover bake sale goodies. Andrea showed Chiara her prize. Chiara demonstrated her excitement by almost immediately breaking off one of the clock hands off the tower clock.

Just so I don’t put too fine a point on it, let me re-emphasize. Somehow this other family, with children the same age as ours, had lovingly and carefully maintained this castle doll house in excellent condition for years and we, the Kimmels, couldn’t manage to leave the building without breaking it.

It gets better. We brought the castle home. As I was reassembling the staircase, I broke a piece of the wall off. I super-glued it back on, but it is visibly marred.

In one hour of ownership, we rendered an “excellent” condition toy worth $50 into a “good” condition toy worth $10. We bought the tech stock the day before the market crashed. It was classic Buy High, Sell Low strategy.

There’s an obvious profit opportunity here: short sell the toys that the Kimmel family will buy. Let’s say you know you’ll be in the market for a “good” condition Barbie Castle two years from now. You could buy the castle from the first family, immediately sell it to us for $50 and then buy it back in two years for $10. You’d have your castle (albeit with fewer clock hands and crack-free walls), and you’d have turned a nice $40 profit. 

Buy High, Sell Low

Our parenting financial plan:
Repeat until broke.

I’ve mentioned it in a prior post, but children are really destructive. Attention people without kids – do you like your stuff? Do you have really nice stuff that you are proud of, that’s rare, has sentimental value, or even real market value?

Think long and hard about how much you love your stuff. Kids don’t give a crap about sentimental or material value. They will play with an object just because it looks fun. They might even break it intentionally just to see what the experience is like.

They’re not careful. They’re still developing their motor skills so they can’t even be careful if they want to.  Cody, for example, can’t even be relied on to stand up straight in the same spot without leaning on something or enter a room without banging into a wall or door. And he has a ridiculous amount of kinetic energy. In the absence of toys or activities, Cody will literally jump up and down in place or run in circles, until he bangs into some foreign object.

Cody knocks large, heavy, securely mounted pieces of artwork off the wall which cause all manner of reciprocal damage. So how well do you think he handles a tiny, delicate, antique Japanese porcelain cup? You know exactly how he handles them – and we have now sent several tiny, delicate, antique shards of Japanese porcelain cup to the garbage dump.

Do you think Andrea and I learn from our mistakes? No, we do not. Having outgrown the train table in the playroom, we decided it was time for a craft table instead. So we went and found one – a beautiful one from Pottery Barn Kids, with four beautiful chairs. This whole setup was like $300 (I only put that number so you won’t think we are outrageous snobs; Dear God I hope the price was that low). We put it into the playroom and the kids went to work on that. I have no idea what it is they’ve done to it, but after six months of use its former gorgeous shiny mocha veneer now resembles your grandfather’s workbench.

When you’re a first-time parent, everything just has to be new. No item can have been soiled by the slightest touch of other children who don’t share your cleanliness fetish or moral upbringing. You pay premium prices for the best products. Months or even weeks later, you’ve outgrown the item physically or realized its impracticality. So you take it to the resale event.

There’s a resale event in Strongsville tomorrow, which will be your opportunity to buy formally pristine items at a fraction of the cost. The exchange rate is roughly $100 new equals $5-20 if lightly used. I know for certain that our $300 Pottery Barn would fetch around $50 and we would call it a win.

$300 out, $50 in. Buy high and sell low. That’s our motto.

The 2nd law of parenting

Sir Isaac Newton.
I cannot compete with this guy.

I guess I had some notion that the day-to-day stuff would get easier. We have routines, it’s the same thing every day. You wake up, you get dressed, you brush your teeth, you eat breakfast, you get coats and shoes on and you get in the car and go. That’s, what, maybe 30 minutes of total value-added activity? Perhaps 15 minutes if you are under the gun? If the kids aren’t up already, I wake them at 7:00, and they’re usually up well before that. So we should be out the door at 7:30, right? So why are we sometimes struggling to leave by 8:30?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because, the actual process is: wake the kids up – beg and scream and cajole – get dressed – beg and scream and cajole – eat breakfast – beg and scream and cajole, and so on. Basically, weekday parenting is herding cats. Two cats. But very independent minded and obstinate ones.

We’ve been doing this for over two years, so by my calculations that’s something like 500 attempts at getting out the door and into the car. After 500 goes at this, shouldn’t our reasonably intelligent children understand that, once the shoes and coats are on, the next step is to proceed directly to the car, get in, and get in the booster seat? And yet, opening that door to the garage is akin to unleashing juvenile German shepherds from their travel cage into the room – within seconds, toys and bikes are out, messes made, and coats and clothes are dirty. Do I really have to explain that, no, today is not the one exception day where we can play with sidewalk chalk before going to school?

I have a theory to explain this behavior. The children, it seems, are more bound by the laws of physics than by the more human motives of rationality and process. Newton’s second law of physics is centered on entropy – the general trend from order to chaos. The children, it seems, are contributors to entropy on a grand scale. Observe the process of putting on coats 500 times and you can easily see how my children are marching us ever closer to the heat death of the universe.

That door to the garage isn’t just a portal, it’s a vacuum. We all know that nature hates a vacuum, and as the door opens, you can almost hear the whoosh of young-child mass being sucked in. Getting into the car isn’t a controlled reaction, it’s an implosion, with all the destruction that entails.

Watch any Disney movie, and you’ll learn that love is the strongest force in the world. I can tell you that Andrea and I love our children with great strength indeed. But parenting is no match for Sir Isaac Newton- the universe itself conspires against our parental attempts at order and routine.

Sentimentality

Our box of our kids' keepsakes

When you have kids, it’s easy to be sentimental. Sometimes, sentimentality is all you’ve got- when you’re frazzled and stressed and tired, sometimes you need the shot of joy that for a few fleeting moments make it all seem worth it.

A good summary for “sentimentalist” might be “pack rat.” We have a box in our bureau containing various crafts and artwork, projects from school and other bric-a-brac. This box is now a teetering, overflowing morass, threatening to take over the contents of the rest of the bureau.

The challenge is the sheer volume of materials that two young children can produce on a daily basis. Each day, school sends them home with several items each. Each item needs a review, and the review committee needs to answer the eternal question: “Am I supposed to keep this?” A marked up Letter D writing worksheet with “coby” (“Cody” with a backwards lower-case “d”) ham-fistedly written on the top. Am I supposed to keep that?

I am the force behind the pack-rattedness. I am the sentimentalist. Not knowing what will make us gushy down the road, my bias is to hold on to it. Pretty soon every snotty Kleenex, so long as one of my children wrote “I love you Daddy” on the back, becomes a keepsake worth holding onto. We can always re-evaluate after three months of seasoning and discard in the periodic purge. The trouble is, the purge never comes.

Andrea’s feeling is more aligned with Joseph Stalin’s: “Sentimentality is a sickness of dogs.” (Side note: I seem to quote Stalin a lot more since becoming a parent. What gives?) Andrea takes one glance at the send-home papers and shoves them directly into the trash. More than once this has gotten her in real trouble.

“Where’s my butterfly picture?” asks Chiara.

“I don’t know, did you look in your room?” says Andrea as she furiously digs through the refuse.

“It’s not in here!” Chiara starts to whine.

“I found it!” Andrea exclaims.

“Why is it so wrinkly?”

The kids, of course, angle hard in my direction. Never ask your kids if you should keep something. The answer is obvious. I remember once in summer camp in elementary school we had a “swap meet” where you brought items and sold them to the other kids, then used your profits to buy from others. My sister, probably 5 at the time, spent her little bit of money to buy back the fish guide that we had brought to sell. It was an adult book that she had never spent more than 30 seconds looking at, and I doubt ever looked at it again, but that’s sentimental value for you.

I know, or at least I’m desperately hoping, that there will come a time years hence when I will look back on these times with romantic hindsight. In some sense, I’m planning for it. But I never know which letter D worksheets hindsight will show to be of great value, and which will just be snotty Kleenex.

The King Needs an Heir

Prince William is really falling behind on his
Grand Theft Auto V playing time

A woman walks into a room and asks “do you want to have a baby?”

Here’s what is going through the man’s mind: Yes, of course I want a baby. The King needs an heir. Strapping young boys to take the family name and take over the family fortune, preferably. We’ll shoot guns and ride horses and camp in the forest. The boys will probably play in the NFL. Someday all these things will come to pass, and it will be a wonderful time.

…Wait, did you mean, now? Well, er, um, that gets more complicated. No I wouldn’t say now is a great time. I just got Grand Theft Auto V. And bowling is going very well.

Men want offspring in the theoretical sense. Women want babies in the real sense – like now, today.

The problem with the king and horses imagery is that Kings have servants. They have peasants: chambermaids, nannies, cooks, cleaners, bakers, candle shop makers. In the real life, for real schmucks like ourselves, you’re doing all that stuff yourself. You have to change the baby’s diaper and change your chamber pot as well. You have to dip your own damn candles.

Not that women’s imaginations are any more accurate than men’s. Many times I have spoken to women who thought that their kids would be cute, quiet, sweet and well-behaved. Despite all the images and communications to the contrary, many childless women have this bizarre fantasy where kids are easy and inexpensive. They are easy to teach and impart values on for the right mother. There are no stitches and constipation and croup and pee-pee accidents. Just wonderful bundles of cuddley nom nom.

And, in fact, they are for a while…

I’m convinced it’s a trick they pull to ensure propogation of the species. Around nine months old, babies are just about the cutest and sweetest things you could imagine. You just cannot imagine your great fortune of having such a wonderful, beautiful child as your son or daughter.

So you think to yourself: what could possibly be better than one wonderful, sweet and beautiful child? I know! TWO wonderful, sweet and beautiful children!

You conceive a second, and right around the time they are due, the first child pulls off the mask and demonstrates they were a horrible freaking demon child the whole time. The terrible twos are upon you, and now with a second one in your arms, you will be juggling diapers and breast feeding and naps with a screaming toddler tugging on your pant leg. Plus you’re in the tunnel for a long time - stuck in “terrible” two-three-four phase for almost five years. Just to ensure you never rest, they pull this trick where they take turns in their good and bad phases. The moment one enters a good behavior phase, the other exits. You’re always stressed about one or the other; sometimes both. This happens on almost a week-to-week basis.

This is why I can’t figure out how some parents have a third. I would literally rather cut myself than have a third child. And yet we even know people that are working on their fourth. I can only think “you people are still having kids?!?!?” In our later 30’s, the thought of having another is absolutely crushing. The women you occasionally read about in tabloids having children in their 60’s, or the families with like 12 children… I mean, this is a blog, but I just don’t have the words.

There Will Come Messy Kids

In the Ray Bradbury classic science fiction short story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” people of the future live (or lived) in a highly automated house. One image from that story has always stuck with me – the ashes from the cigar that the house automatically lights and then burns down because no one smokes it are automatically swept away by robotic mice that scurry around cleaning up even the tiniest mess. It’s an interesting fantasy and probably a great labor saving device. But we don’t need scurrying robot mice in our home. We have Andrea.

Andrea scurries around behind the rest of our family, cleaning up every tiny mess. Crumbs left from your piece of toast are vacuumed up. Tiny bits of leaf brought in from outside are disposed of. Smudges on the windows or floors or counters are wiped away with Windex. Every item has an assigned place, and anything out of place is quickly returned. She keeps a beautiful house. And it’s infectious – after ten years of marriage, I too am an official clean freak.

It was from Andrea that I learned the meaning of the term “spotless.” In a previous life, it was a theoretical construct, essentially a synonym for “clean.” In an Andrea Kimmel household, the meaning is literal. “Spotless” means “No spots.” Not one spot. If you see a spot, you clean it up. If you see a crumb, you vacuum it up. The mice in Soft Rains are tireless, ceaseless, mechanical, robotic. In our house, we’re tireless, ceaseless, mechanical, neurotic.

(Spolier Alert) The house in Soft Rains is cleaning up the mess after a nuclear holocaust, but Andrea is cleaning up after something much worse – Cody Kimmel. Cody is the opposite of Spotless. Like Spot-ful. Many Spots. Cody simply cannot engage in an activity without making a mess. His favorite meal, grilled cheese, becomes a crumb shower for himself and his surroundings. He’s spilled every drink he’s touched. Every trip to the fridge ends with yogurt on the floor. Every dinner can be transferred to sleeve which can then be transferred to wall.

All that is accidental. It’s the intentional stuff that is particularly infuriating.  Let’s face it, kids- especially boys- just destroy stuff. Do you like your stuff? Don’t have kids. Kids take all your nice, lovely stuff – the stuff you’ve worked hard to obtain, lovingly selected and cared for, collected and cultivated – and they break that stuff. Destroy it. Render your priceless collection into worthless crap. Cody loves nothing more than to kick a hole in the door or scratch a big scratch on a wall. Those smudges that Andrea is furiously scrubbing away? He’s planting big fat new ones on the windows.

And Cody’s very favorite activity, which takes him almost no time at all, is making a giant mess of a room. Cody will dump the contents of a drawer full of toys on the floor and then minutes later, with his short attention span satiated, will move on to another room and another drawer. Andrea or I will take a moment to clean a few breakfast dishes and literally turn to see we have a giant mess in the playroom which needs to be picked up before we head out for the day. You can see the self-perpetuating madness in this – in the time it takes to clean the playroom mess, Cody will have created two more in his bedroom.

The title There Will Come Soft Rains is from the poem the automated house reads to itself as the day winds down. It plays classical music and shows colorful animal images on the nursery wall. The house is quiet, happy, clean (at least until it burns down in holocaust fires). It turns out that it takes an empty house to make a clean house, but until the day the kids go to college or they invent robot cleaning mice, we’ll have to rely on Andrea to keep us spot free.

How Parenting Could Solve the Mideast Crisis

I said one piece of chocolate,
Mr. Khamenei, and that's it!

In between the news organizations’ estimates of “Omaha” counts predicted to come from Peyton Manning this weekend, you may have actually heard some real news – the US is in talks with Iran over their potential creation of nuclear bomb technology. The two sides are locked in deep negotiations. My recommendation for Secretary of State John Kerry? Try Candy. But only at the right time.

All parents know a principle that diplomats use all the time – leverage. Here it is in a nutshell: leverage is when you have an advantage over your negotiating partner. For example:

Russia: “I have a huge army and would like you to buy our oil, what do you think?”

Ukraine: “Oh yes, we certainly agree. Very fair.”

Here’s an example of leverage gone awry:

Dad: “Here, son, have some candy.”

[Child munches on candy]

Dad: “And now, since I was such a generous and loving father, I’m sure you won’t mind cleaning your room in thanks.”

Son: “Screw you, Dad!”

[Child proceeds to damage every piece of furniture in the house with a toy airplane]

Never, ever pass up an opportunity for leverage. This is a standard negotiating tactic: always get something for what you get. “Can I play Wii?” is a brilliant opportunity to extract some value.

Similarly, never give leverage when you don’t have to. Somehow, we seem to forget this lesson all the time. “You promise if I let you order dessert you’ll be good on the car ride home?” is a regular slip. “Oh yes, oh yes” the children promise “would we lie to you?” they say, winking, and you can almost see the twinkle off their gold tooth. 20 minutes later we’re screaming at them in the back seat, reminding them of their promise. Remember, guilt is not leverage. Guilt has no impact on these children.

Instead, if you’re ever in a position of having to act first on the promise of future results, remember a principle important in finance: future value discounting. Remember J. Wellington Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today?” No, no, no. If you buy a sofa today with cash rather than take their “pay later” deal, you should get it for less, right? Same thing with kids. Except, here’s the deal. The discount factor for that couch is probably 15%. The kids discount factor needs to be, like, 1000. So if they promise you good behavior for a day, expect maybe 10 minutes. Factor those 10 minutes into your value calculation for that ice cream they want.

Unfortunately the children have a way of creating leverage out of nothing. It’s called: whining. And they are expert at knowing how to maximize that leverage: whine in public places, loudly. Embarrass your mother in the checkout line, and some portion of the time she might actually buy that candy bar. And god is it tempting to pay off the whining. But this only reinforces the tactic. It emboldens them to whine harder and longer next time and makes it even harder to say no. Don’t let your children know this works. Never negotiate with terrorists.

I’ve written before about the amazing positive impact ofsticker charts in our home. Sticker chart something and the problem goes away almost overnight. And here’s a great thing – the prize they earn at the end of the week can still be held out for more of the behavior you want. “If you want the toy you’ve earned, you have to be good in church.” This is called extortion, and it is an important tool in the parents’ toolkit. “That’s not fair!” the children scream, and they’re right. Ignore the tugs on your conscious. Remember how fair they’ll be the next time you cut a deal.

The children are like rogue actors. They’re not rich and powerful on the household stage, so they have to use a more creative tool set to forward their agenda. And they know you are a diminished version of your former self. Sure, you have the nuclear arsenal, but you are never going to use it. You’re never going to win if this thing goes to protracted land war, but if you artfully use the tools outlined above, you can at least steer the family to a relatively stable détente.