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