The Cody Kimmel School of Humor

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

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

Cody: Poop! HAHAHAHAHA

Chiara: Cody said poop! HAHAHAHA

Cody: Pee-pee! HAHAHAHA

Chiara: Cody said pee pee! HAHAHAHAHA

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

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

Chiara: Cody peed on the floor! HAHAHAHAHA

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

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

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

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

Chiara: Daddy said scatologist! HAHAHAHAHA

Butterflies, Attack!

The Terror of Strongsville: The Butterflies!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kitchen Closes, 7pm!

Behold: The Kimmel Family Dinner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May the Cheese Be With You

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Truth About Educational TV

Almost everything my kids have learned, they’ve learned from one important source: Nickelodeon. On a very regular basis, one of my kids tells me something I’m amazed to hear they know. “Saturn is the Ice Planet,” I learn; or “mammals have fur.” Upon prodding, I invariably find they’ve pick up their factoid from Dora the Explorer or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Unfortunately, they’ve also learned that monkeys can talk and that baby dragons come from magical eggs. I guess we can live with some confusion in that realm. Heck, maybe monkeys can talk.

I do have a few bones to pick with these shows, however. Number one on my list is Dora. In the course of her various adventures, Dora is constantly doing something like climbing Cupcake Mountain or rowing across Chocolate Syrup Lake. The goal of her adventures is always hot chocolate for Grandma, or ice cream for Boots or birthday cake for Isa. Dora frequently says things like “Mmmm, I love lollipops!”

Listen, Nick Junior, it’s hard enough to get your kids to eat their veggies without their animated icons gallivanting around chasing after sweets. Can’t Dora climb Broccoli Mountain and row across Applesauce Lake? Can’t she chase down oranges to make orange juice with Papi? How about “Mmmm, I love Brussels sprouts?!?!?”

I know the reason here – Nick Junior is free with no commercials. But Nickelodeon for big kids is chock full of commercials for sugary snacks and cereals. So how to get the little kids hooked early? It’s the closest thing to product placement they have for this age group. I predict that it’s only a matter of time before Dora is riding her Kit-Kat barge to Dorito valley to see the great strawberry Pop-Tart monument. You heard it here first.

A few notches up the dial, Disney Junior is clearly staffed by Calvinists. How do I know? Toodles on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Toodles is the one who carries all of the tools for Mickey’s adventures. But how in the world can Tootles possibly know in advance that today, and only today, Mickey is going to need a whistle, a hair dryer and a ladder? Predestination, obviously. Disney is clearly trying to teach our children that their futures are predestined and they should accept their fates. It’s another way for The Man to keep us down and it starts in preschool. Am I the only one who thinks of these things?

Another overarching issue with both Dora and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is what it teaches kids about problem solving. Instead of learning that they should run, screaming, from crocodiles, Dora is teaching my kids that they can get past them if they can only make them giggle or build a rainbow bridge over them. Mickey Mouse is teaching them that to solve their problems they just need magical flying tool kits named Tootles.

At least things have come a long way in the realm of animated storytelling. Dumbo, the Disney movie, was released in 1941. How’s this for a story line? In this little ditty, the main character is ostracized for a physical defect. His mother is imprisoned for defending him and he has to live with his outcast companion. Contemplating their troubles, they become so drunk that they hallucinate and pass out. They are awoken by embarrassingly stereotypical minority characters who tease Dumbo into turning his physical defect to a strength.

Uh, I’ll take giggling crocodiles any day.

Lunch

This is second in my 3-part series on why meals stink when you are a parent. For breakfast, see here.

One of the tasks I dread in life – because it is relentless, every night - is packing lunches. Packing for Andrea and myself is bad enough. At least there we can rely on a few good standbys like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It’s boring, but it gets the job done. The kids, however, don’t eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or any kind of sandwich. So you have to get creative. Cheese stick and apple sauce? Does that count as a meal? How about hummus and pepperoni?

Part of the process, every night, is checking the menu at Sweet Kiddles to see if the kids will eat the next day lunch there. There was a point where the novelty of eating the school lunch was enough to get them to eat almost anything that was served there (“Mommy, mommy, today we had Foie Gras and I liked it!” … well, okay, maybe not). No more. Now one or both children won’t eat virtually every meal. Beef Goulash? Chiara loves it, and Cody hates it. Chicken Patty Sandwich? You guessed it, Cody loves it, Chiara hates it. Plus the curve balls- Cody liked Swedish Meatballs last time but four weeks of deep thought on the subject matter and they no longer suit his more mature palate. Forget that someone needed a lunch that day and you are in hot water later. Luckily Miss Lynn has many cream-cheese-and-cracker tricks up her sleeve.

There is one, and only one, blessed meal where both children will eat it: Macaroni and Cheese with hot dog pieces. Chiara loves macaroni. Cody loves hot dog. It is the greatest dish conceived by man as far as we’re concerned – at least since Sweet Kiddles stopped serving Foie Gras.

Ladies and gentlemen, this week Wednesday, August 21, 2013, was macaroni and cheese and hot dog day. It was a great day. And that made Tuesday, August 20, 2013 a great evening.

The macaroni and cheese, as well as every other meal at Sweet Kiddles, is surrounded by fruits and vegetables in an attempt to ensure a healthy diet. As far as my kids are concerned, these are just garnish. They would no sooner eat the peas served at lunch than you or I would eat the sprig of parsley atop our Morton’s Steakhouse steak. When we pack a lunch, we often pack veggie crisps since they eat them and they maybe, just maybe, get some nutrients into the kids. We’re being delusional, of course. Reading the nutrition label on veggie crisps reveals they provide 2% daily allowance of Vitamin A, 0% Vitamin C, Sodium 26%. Read the ingredients: potato flakes are listed first. Yes, veggie crisps are Pringles with some food coloring in earth-toned packaging.

There’s one more course at lunch, which we have no problem getting our kids to eat – it’s the candy course. We must pack a piece of candy in each lunch, or we hear about it later. The kids also usually get a piece of candy on their way home from school at the end of the day, and often one more at dinner. I often wonder: How did we end up giving out so much candy? The simple fact is: it’s the law of precedent in action. A loving gesture on their mother or father’s part one day long ago turned into candy every lunch, ride home and dinner, presumably for the rest of their lives.

The rewards of parenting are far away and the pain is close. Sort of like dieting. And like dieting, sometimes you need the little cheats to get through the painful parts. One Hersey kiss isn’t going to wreck your diet, nor will it wreck your child’s upbringing. You can tell I’m an expert at both diet and childrearing: the first by my masculine, athletic physique and second by my calm, collected presence with my children. The secret to the physique is veggie crisps. The secret to the collected presence? Macaroni and cheese and hot-dog lunches.

The Pre-history of Sleep

Each night in our household goes through a series of phases, each of these are an assault on sleep. It seems that the law of natural selection has favored those qualities in our children that are most adept at keeping me from my slumber. Here’s a walk through the pre-history of sleep:

At the dawn of the sleep era is the Early Gotobedium period (c. 7:30-9:00pm). Dinners and tubbies are done and the house is cleaned up. Now the fight over sleep can begin in earnest. The defensive tactics that evolve during this time period can be summed up by the phrase “delay, delay, delay.” This can be done several ways: claim hunger (a good mechanism for this is to refuse to eat dinner); refuse to get on pajamas; refuse to pick out books; and - when all else fails – the battle cry of sleep avoidance: laywithmelaywithmestaywithmestaywithmeIdontwannagotobed!!!

Next comes the Middle Gotobedium period, sometimes called the Gotofrickenbedium period (c. 9pm-10pm). Here, the parents are just trying to get some work done, for goodness sake – there is always work – so that they can watch a little TV and relax. But regular interruptions can be expected. A great defense against sleep at this point is to be scared of the dark. When the lights are left on, you have to get creative, but since you’re not sleepy at all, monsters can be imagined anywhere you put your mind to it. Bonus points in this phase if you re-waken your sister and get her involved, double bonus if one parent is out of town and has to put both kids back to sleep.

Finally, finally, the kids are asleep and we begin the Late Gotobedium period (c. 10pm-12am). Here the wounds on sleep are mostly self-inflicted by the parents. Work gets wrapped up or postponed until morning (when it can then be postponed until evening), and it’s time to go to bed. But wait, I’m not a robot! I’m not a nun! I can’t just work and take care of kids all day and not have a little me time. So even though we really shouldn’t, we cut into our sleep and watch some TV. A snack and maybe a drink help to do even more damage to our mental and physical health, but we deserve them.

At some point we enter the Early Whattheheckium period (c. 12am-3am). Parents are in early, light slumber or even still awake trying to fall asleep but wound up from the work and TV show. This is the perfect time for Chiara to interrupt and totally derail the falling-asleep process. The need for potty usually works great here. Sometimes, you can even refuse to go back to your bed and wiggle your way in between mom and dad for a time.

Late Whattheheckium (also known by far worse names, c. 3am-5am). Here you are in deep, deep sleep. Long, uninterrupted periods are absolutely necessary to wake feeling rested. Thus, this is the perfect time for physical brutality. This is Cody’s period, and snuggles up before you are aware of his presence, which allows him to start kicking you in the ribs and knocking his head against your jaw. Getting dowsed with ice water would honestly be more regenerative than cuddling with Cody.

The Ohgodsoearlium period (c. 5am-7am). No matter how late they stayed up or how late you think you will get to sleep, the kids will be in before this time (the exception is when you have to be somewhere early; they’ll decide it’s the perfect day to sleep until 9am). This period is characterized by the rise of the children to dominance and the complete extinction of sleep. The kids usually overtake the bed, forcing parents to seek refuge on places like the settee, for a few more minutes of desperately needed, if crooked-necked, sleep.

Which brings us to The Waking Era (c. 7am-present). Aided by stimulants such as hot showers and caffeine, the parents can usually bring themselves to a functional, if zombie-like, existence. Down in the kitchen, they sit in silence contemplating the brutality of facing the day to come. Meanwhile, the children, who seemed to get no more sleep than the adults, race up and down the upstairs hallway, knocking into things and screaming like frenzied howler monkeys.

I went into this parenting gig with eyes open, knowing it would be tough at times. I knew there would be sleep interruptions while the children were infants and needed feeding. But never did I imagine that, almost 6 years into it, I would still be sleep deprived. Perhaps I was naïve and did not know Darwin’s Law of Sleep Selection: species rise and fall, tectonic plates shift, but one thing never changes – children hate, hate sleep.