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.