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.

Car Trips

Over the holiday break, Andrea, the kids and I drove to Boston. That’s right, drove. A car trip.

There’s a reason we drove. Ever since the kids passed the age of 2 years old, we’ve had to pay for a seat for them when we fly. And since Cleveland is a “hub” city for United we get all the benefits of that hub status – i.e., getting to fly to Chicago or Newark on the way to wherever we want to go (seemingly the same as non-hub cities), and paying monopoly prices for the privilege. Boston, a 90-minute flight that would probably cost us $49 a seat if Southwest ever decided to connect the two cities, becomes at a minimum a $1000 outlay on United. So we save the money and pay for it in auto miles.

Boston, according to Google Maps, is 660 miles or 10 hours from Strongsville. That’s with no stops. But of course there are stops. The kids specialize in announcing their need to go to the bathroom either 1) as we’ve completed pulling away from a rest stop or 2) as we’ve just passed a rest stop and the next one is in 54 miles. So of course we make several stops on the drive. But I will say this – Andrea, god bless her, is good at getting us in, getting the job done, and getting us out. Potty and gas stops are like 15 minutes, meal stops 30 minutes. Basically we can get to Boston in about 11 to 11 ½ hours.

Cody, whose hobby is the study of bodily functions, loves rest stops. They have “stand-up potties” (urinals), automatic hand dryers (great for sticking your head or mouth under), and motion-sensing sinks. They also have water fountains and video games and ice cream. We don’t need Disneyland; we have the Pennsylvania welcome center.

Back on the road, the kids actually aren’t too bad in the car. We have a secret weapon- a seatback entertainment system. Not the kind that’s built in – we don’t spring for the $1500 built-in system and regret it every day up to the day we buy a car when we make the same decision – instead, it’s the kind that’s held in place with straps and Velcro and a plug running down to the cigarette lighter. They fall down a lot, and the kids need a lot of help picking up the remote they can’t seem to keep off the floor, so Andrea spends a lot of time unbelted, turned around with her butt up in the air trying to fix whatever is wrong. It’s frustrating and maddening, but I will say this – my family took car trips when my sisters and I were kids and I don’t know how in the world my parents survived them without seatback DVD players, even the ones that fall down and come unplugged.

But no matter how you slice it, 11 hours is a long time – in Disney time it’s about 7 movies long. That’s a long time even for hardened electronics junkies like my kids. And although there are two screens, they can only play one movie. So Cody eventually tires of princesses and Chiara of pirates. Plus I forgot to mention the key to this whole thing – their earphones, which are the only thing that makes 11 hours of Disney movies tolerable from the front seat, begin to hurt their ears. So starting at about the 10^th hour or so, which puts you in the evening “witching hour” timeframe anyway, the whining and crying begins.

It’s a long car trip, but the last hour seems longer than the rest. On this last trip, the weather decided this would be a great time to start the driving rain, slow down traffic, and extend our trip an extra hour. Boston is in sight, tantalizing you, but you just can’t get there through the jam. It’s also now too dark to color or do anything non-electronic, so we suffer through the same 2 “Madeline” episodes, sans headphones, about 3 times each. Madeline even joins the Yankees in one of them, which just seems like the icing on the cake in our own personal Hell.

You have to stay long enough to justify the long drive – a week is about right for 11 hours. But we spend the week with conflicting emotions of 1) glad to be there, 2) wishing we were in our beds and bathrooms and considering an early departure, and 3) dreading the trip home.

KiddleDad’s Dieting Tips

Many people like to start off the year with a resolution to lose weight. We never learn. You go through the pain and agony of weight loss, show great success, look great, feel great. 18 months later we’re breaking out the fat pants again and it’s time for another diet.

Andrea’s choice for this New Year is called the “slim and sassy” diet. Those of you who know me already know I’m regarded as “slim and sassy” all too often. So, I don’t need the diet, but I’m doing a modified version on my own. My diet’s easier. And almost as effective.

Here’s some dieting tips from me to you. These are proven to be… dieting tips. They’re easy and some are effective. Either way, it doesn’t matter, you’ll yo-yo back to your old weight so you might as well follow my advice and do the easiest diet ever:

Do the first weigh-in at your heaviest: Go out for a blow-out dinner, order the porterhouse for two, drink enough beer to kill a horse. Don’t pee yet. Now it’s the perfect time for your first weigh in! Try to set a record. Maybe even wear your clothes on the scale. You’ll thank me on your next step.

First weigh-in should be at your lightest: Don’t weigh in the morning after that porterhouse meal! Diets take time, for goodness sake. Put in a good, painful day of eating nothing but celery and water. Then weigh in the next morning. BAM! you’ll have lost like 2-3 pounds. Diet’s done - tell all your friends and family what a great success it was.

In case you wanted to lose more than 2-3 pounds, this will give you that much-needed shot of motivation to get through the next 2 agonizing days.

Have one blow out meal per week: This will provide the same motivation cycle as the first week. Those porterhouse pounds from Saturday will just melt away by Monday.

Count calories: But let’s not go overboard here. That cookie doesn’t really count, does it? You wouldn’t normally eat it on this diet, after all. It’s just this once.

Here’s another calorie hint- if you eat it in several small servings, it doesn’t count. So break a corner off the cookie. Wait a while, then eat the rest. Didn’t count. See? Dieting is easy. Relatedly, if you eat something off someone else’s plate it doesn’t count either. So try to marry someone who likes fries with their burger.

Record your weigh-ins: Again, let’s not go crazy. Are you up a pound or two? Don’t write it down. Remember, we need to maintain our willpower and motivation. You’ll get that pound off after tonight’s Porterhouse.

Salt and exercise have something to do with it: This is, like, a fact. Experts have studied this somewhere. Salt and exercise influence weight loss. We’re just not sure how. One day you splurge and eat a bag of Doritos, and you lose a pound. Another day you run a half marathon, eat a cucumber and gain a half pound. How does this happen? Damned if I know, but seems like salt must have something to do with it.

Booze has nothing to do with it: At least not in my book. So drink up! I have nothing to back this up, but it’s as scientific as your silly cabbage soup diet. So leave me alone.

Listen, the long-term trend of life is towards heavier, fatter selves. Humans average like a pound of weight gain a year. I think I know why – constantly surrounded by chicken nuggets and Twizzlers by day and in desperate need of Bourbon and Ice Cream at night, there’s no question we pack on the pounds during the years of having young children.

You can’t stop fate. So do what I do – give up!  You can shovel the sand off the beach for a summer, but the tectonic plate of life is slowly pushing you into the sea. So have a Porterhouse or two and enjoy the slide.

Tubby Time

I took a breather from blogging over Christmas and New Years and took some time to read back through my posts from last year. Looking back, I was amazed to find a startling omission: Tubby Time.  I think this is because Tubby Time does not carry the acute pain of, say going to bed or getting dressed. Rather, it is a slow, dull ache that just makes you feel old.

Tubby Time is the Chipotle of child rearing. Chipotle, the burrito restaurant, is terrific – great food, reasonable price, somewhat healthy. Their barbacoa with just the right ratios of hot sauce, cheese and sour cream is a culinary feat. At one point, Andrea and I were averaging a couple of trips to Chipotle a couple of times per week. Then it happened- Burrito Burnout. Now on most days I would rather stick one of Chipotle’s plastic forks in my eye than eat one of their burritos.

Of course – of course! – Chipotle is maybe the kids one and only favorite. As in “Who wants a special treat?” “YAY CHIPOTLE!!!” And all I can think is… ugh… can’t you kids, just once, choose Flemming’s? But happy kids means happy life – or something – so we soldier on to Chipotle. I do my best to mix it up- maybe today is a bowl day or taco day or, in moments of true desperation, a salad day. I’ll have plenty of time to decide, because inevitably we choose to go to Chipotle at the same time a girls soccer tournament let out, so my kids will have a solid 30 minutes to demonstrate to the world what animals they are while we wait for 25 “not too much sour cream” and “lots of guacamole” make their way through.

So that’s what Tubby Time is like. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it – in fact, Tubby Time at one point was pretty fun- watching the kids splash and make bubble beards and be inappropriate with their privates has some heartwarming entertainment value.

But then, and this was back when we felt the need to bathe the kids every day, I hit that same Chipotle point – Total Tubby Burnout. We’ve since cut back but it hasn’t done much to my sense of dread.

The thing is, it’s not the actual bathing itself, which is a tiny fraction of the Tubby Time process. Here’s a timeline of how Tubby Time usually plays out:

30 seconds - Getting out Tubby Time stuff (towels, wash cloths, soap, shampoo), getting undressed, turning on the water

0:35 - dumping approximately half a bottle of Spider Man bubble bath stuff nowhere near the rushing water because “I want to help.”

0:40 – dumping approximately half a bottle of Hello Kitty bubble bath stuff (which, by the way, is the same exact stuff, down to the color, as spider man stuff but with a different label) because “Cody got to do it.”

5:40 – spend five minutes tweaking the faucet because it is too hot, too cold, too high or too low to get our hair wet.

5:50 – Cody BATHES FOR 10 SECONDS

10:50 – Spend five minutes begging Chiara to wash herself

11:10 – Chiara BATHES FOR 20 SECONDS (extra step – she uses conditioner)

21:10 – 10 minutes of splashing, making soap beards, and being inappropriate with genitalia

26:10 – Dad, who is now bored to tears, begs the kids to get out for five minutes. Several repeat trips to watch football ensue.

36:10 – The highly involved post-bathing process, which involves drying, brushing out hair, moisturizing skin, clipping nails, and cleaning ears. Mostly this process involves begging the kids to let you complete these steps, which in total would take about 2 minutes but sans cooperation take 10+.

46:10 – Two warm, clean, soft children are in jammies and now so amped up they won’t go to bed for weeks.

Plus, as I seem to every time, I’m sure I’ve forgotten a step. “What do you mean you forgot to clean under their fingernails?” you might as well ask me before I even begin.

Everyone has chores that, for no good reason, they like or don’t like. You may think it’s crazy not to like Tubby Time, just like I think washing dishes or emptying the trash is no big deal. But when the time comes, when there is an option to do Tubby Time or something else – like stick a fork in my eye – I’ll usually choose the alternative.

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.