Dog Days of Fall

What could possibly possess a man to drive down the road on a freezing morning with his windshield covered in frost and his head hanging out the driver’s side window?  How could he not have enough time to let the van's defrost setting warm up and do its jobs? Or enough sense to drag a scraper across the frozen surface to create at least a peephole?

This may read like a rant against a dumb driver I saw this morning.  It’s not.  And I know what affliction can cause such behavior:  Children.   More precisely, Children who’ve missed the bus and are late for school -- again. 

For, this morning, I was that dumb driver.

The first reaction is likely, this sounds dangerous.  Normally, I’d agree.  But our trip to school is along all neighborhood streets, of which I had an unobstructed and clear view.  The only things in any danger were my eyebrows and any squirrels who didn’t hear us coming.  I also didn’t go faster than 15 miles per hour, being quiet roads, and seeing that my icy brow couldn’t take much more. 

I’m a bit of a safety nut.  So I can assure you it was safe, though certainly on the stupid side. 



Sometimes, I wish I had a layer of fur.

Still, why not let the defrost work before departing, or at least scrape the damn windows?  Answer: time and circumstance.  

This morning was the first deep frost of the fall, leaving a layer of white on everything in sight, including the cars.  I first noticed it when we came barreling out of the house in a mad dash to school.  As we scrambled into the van without a second to spare, I turned the defrost on full-blast and used the windshield wiper spray button – loaded with negative 15 de-icer -- to take off the layer of frost.  It appeared to work, and we departed.  

Yet, with the cold air moving across the outside of the front window and the semi-warm air blowing on its inside, the frost came back with a vengeance. 

The clock ticked on.  Our 7-year-old was almost certainly going to be late for church school, which she attends before elementary school one day a week.  It’s her first communion year.  Last week she was 15 minutes late for church school, which might be a mortal sin; I'll have to check my Catholic handbook.   Our 10-year-old, on the other had, had less than three minutes before the late bell rang out at the middle school.  Luckily, that's not a sin.  Still, both were late far too recently for another incident. 

Frankly, at this point the 7-year-old can be classified as a chronic offender, continuing her life-long challenge with making the bus and promptly arriving at school.  I remember a report card she got after one quarter back in 1^st Grade.  She read it, saying, “I got one 5 …”  Which, under the newfangled grading system, would put her off the charts.  Then she finished reading, “… but it’s for Tardy.”

You’d think waking them up an hour and a half before school starts would be enough.  That’s assuming they actually listen to instructions, like wake up, get dressed, brush your teeth, and eat breakfast.  It seems so easy when broken down into these four simple steps, but it never is.  

Clearly, as the frost overtook the window seconds into our desperate trip, I had few choices.  I could park the car and let the defrost blowing out of the AC unit catch up: estimated time, 3 to 4 minutes.  I could stop, get out, find the scraper I haven’t used since March, and see if this sort of frost is the type that can be scraped off: estimated time, 2 to 3 minutes, with a 50 percent chance success rate.  Or I could roll down the window, stick my head clear out into the cold morning air, and trudge onward to the two school drop points.

So, that’s what I did.  

I’m not proud.

Luckily, the window cleared before the first stop; my eyebrows defrosted by the second.  And both kids arrived at their destination safe and sound.  Only one was tardy, but she’s always late.    

One Fish, Two Fish, Dead Fish, New Fish

“Dad?  My one fish looks different.”

“How so?”

“Well, he looks kind of bigger...”

“So he’s growing.”

“And, he used to have a black tail. Now he has an orange tail.”

“Oh. That.”

Among other things, this simple exchange extinguished any delusions I had that I could get away with an actual crime, like a casino heist. Not to say I'd try; but, I’ve occasionally wondered if I could. Yet, clearly, I can’t even pull off a common fish switcheroo.

Every parent with fish-owning children knows the drill, often involving a late-night run to the 24-hour Fish Emporium looking for just the right shade of pink Beta, or goldfish, or some other tropical variety. We’ve all done it.  

Earlier in the day, I stood in front of the fish wall at Pet Smart staring at three tanks filled with Sunburst Platies -- in various hues of yellow, orange and red, some with black tipped fins, others with just dark orange fins -- trying to recall the exact color of my daughter’s recently departed Sunburst Platy, who went by the name of Sunny. 

Meet the new and improved, Sunny
the fish.  A bit larger, more orange,
and he still swims.  Yeah, Dad!  

I found Sunny this morning lying on the bottom of the tank motionless, the other fish swimming around acting like nothing was wrong. I figured, dead fish float, right? So I got the net and tried to see if I could get him to move. Nothing. And this is why my wife objected to the idea of getting the kids fish from the start, because of the certain eventuality of dead fish. It skeeves her out.

This isn’t our first attempt at fish. 

A few years ago we had the misfortune of winning a few goldfish at the state fair. We didn’t actually win, it was just one of the last nights of the fair’s annual run and the carney working the fish booth decided my kids deserved a few fish, even though they couldn’t get a ping pong ball to land in an empty fishbowl to save their lives. We left that god-forsaken booth with three fish -- one for each of the girls. It was a long ride home.

The next day I read about goldfish, and somehow wound up at the pet store buying sixty dollars’ worth of aquarium and aquarium accoutrements to keep the free fish alive. It didn’t work.    

Over the next three months I went to Pet Smart as often as Norm went to Cheers. The staff would greet me with, “Want the usual?” I became a master of the fish switcheroo.

Then one day, I decided to give up my hobby of replacing dead goldfish with live ones, and to use the whole goldfish experience to teach my kids a bit about life – and death. The next time a goldfish died, I sat the kids down one at a time and told them that it died. I expected waterworks. And at least one of the kids did cry. But I remember then 5-year-old Chloe’s reaction most of all. I told her the fish died; she looked at me and said, “Can we get a kitten?”

Within another two months all the replacement goldfish were dead, and the empty aquarium and accoutrements were stowed on a shelf in the basement.

This summer, when 10-year-old Maisie declared she wanted to get the old aquarium going again and set it up in her room, I anxiously agreed, with one condition: no goldfish. We read up on tropical fish and decided on Platies, and a few other hearty varieties. It’s been a few months, and everything has gone swimmingly. That is, until Sunny stopped swimming.

And, then I did what parents do. Yet I'm not sure why we work so hard to shield our kids from the death of a fish. As deaths go, it's an easy one to take. Maybe we just don’t want them to be hurt at all by any loss? Maybe we just want to protect them from all the harsh realities of the world? Or maybe we’re afraid they will get too used to those realities at too young an age? What happens when the cat dies, will they want a pony?

In reality, most kids take the death of a fish better than parents do, even if they’re not quite sure why it happened. It’s sad, but they move on. I’ve seen it. So, I’ve decided today’s failed switcheroo was my last.

Before she went to bed tonight, Maisie and I discussed what happened, and she pointed out to me the differences between Sunny and Sunny II. And, it’s true, Sunny II is a bit bigger. He doesn’t have the same gradient of yellow orange as Sunny, nor the black tips on his tail and fins.

She ended our little talk with a piece of advice:

“Dad,” she said as I began to close the door. “Next time, just tell me.”

Damn You, Soccer Socks. Damn You Straight to Hell.

If it’s a Saturday in Autumn, you can be certain of at least one thing: at some point in the day our house will be host to a desperate, frantic, tear-filled search for a clean pair of soccer socks.

I adore soccer. Yet I have grown to truly hate soccer socks. Maybe I shouldn’t say hate. As a rule we discourage casual use of the word “hate” in our family. So, let’s just say I detest soccer socks. Better yet, I loathe soccer socks.

Again, I really like soccer. I played all while growing up, and into high school. And, I’ve always been one of those soccer snobs who thinks following international play makes me a superior person. You know the type.  

I have a favorite premier league team: the Gunners, of course. And I have a strong opinion about who is the best midfielder in the world. And it’s not Xavi, or even Ronaldo, who’s more of a striker in my eyes. As you can see, my self-proclaimed affinity for soccer borders on the obnoxious. 

So when our kids became of soccer playing age, we did like most American families and signed them up. These days we have two kids playing, and I happen to be the coach for one of their teams and the assistant coach for the other. Luckily, my kids love soccer, too.

But do they love soccer enough to just put on any pair of soccer socks and play? No.

Our younger soccer player, in particular, refuses to wear just any pair of soccer socks, of which we have quite a few. And each Saturday in Fall (and Sundays now too, with both of them playing) the same scene unfolds, usually about an hour before game time.

 

“Do you have your soccer socks?” I ask, to blank stares from said child. And so it begins. 

“Let’s find them!” I order, as the anxiety of being late for a game I’m coaching gets the better of my tone, and we set off in search of the missing socks. 



Behold, I have seen the enemy. 
And, it has four pink stripes
and is made of cotton.
 

We start by searching for my wife, who often displays encyclopedic knowledge of the whereabouts of every piece of clothing in the house, to ask if she knows where said socks may be.

“Honey!”  I’ll call, either up the stairs or down the stairs, or in the general direction of where the mother of my children is at that moment. “Have you seen her soccer socks?!”

The answer goes something like this, emanating from whichever floor my wife is on at the time:  “One pair is in the basket upstairs! There's another in her sock drawer! And a third just finished up in the washer!”

You’d think knowing the approximate whereabouts of three pairs of soccer socks at this point would make finding and putting on a pair easy. But it doesn’t.

 

Invariably, the pair in the drawer doesn’t fit right and they never have, I’m informed. And, it turns out there’s only one sock in the basket, all alone, a state many socks tend to find themselves at the end of the laundry cycle. It was the wrong pair anyway. Because, you can almost guarantee, that the preferred pair of socks -- the ones with the four pink stripes – are almost certainly wet and in the washing machine. 

There are, of course, many other pairs of clean soccer socks in the house, a small army of seldom used stockings amassed over several years of our finicky kids playing soccer. But none of those others ones will suffice. This particular soccer player needs the pink-striped pair.  

Doesn't she know that once you're running around, you won't notice what socks you're wearing? She should, because I tell her this every time. She refuses to believe it. Doesn't she know that some kids in the world play soccer barefoot, on fields made of dirt? And that she should just feel lucky to have any socks at all, and a ball not made of duct tape? None of these logical arguments move her off the pressing need for this particular pair of socks.  

In all my years playing soccer, I don’t remember once caring about which socks I wore. Cleats mattered. Shin-guards mattered. But socks?

Yet, as our family goes through our weekly pregame ritual, the passion about socks becomes evident. There’s often screaming. A few tears. Occasionally, there are threats of never signing them up for soccer ever again, or of making them play barefoot, depending on which parent makes the threat. 

Then somehow, almost miraculously, the damned pair of pink striped soccer socks are dry and on the feet.

And, we finally get to go play and coach and watch soccer. Which, we do adore.    

By the way, if you're  wondering who is the best midfielder in the world. Clearly, it's Cesc Fabregas.


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Actual Conversations with Kids: The Sphinx and Its Nose.

The setup:  Near the end of Dr. Seuss’s Daisy-Head Mayzie book, there’s an image of a news anchor saying Daisy-Head Fever is gripping the nation.  The anchor sits in front of an array of images from around the world, including one of the Sphinx with a daisy on its head.  Reading it to my 5-year-old and 7-year-old the other day,  I was privy to the following actual conversation.



Otherwise historically accurate, this image shows
a nose on the Sphinx.  Can you believe it? 

As I read the words on this particular page, Sadie, age 5, stopped me.  Pointing to the image of the Sphinx, which in this artist’s rendition had a small, but distinct bump of a nose, she said, “Wait, the Sphinx lost his nose, didn’t he?” 

 

Clearly, she was confused by this image – though, apparently unfazed by the flower growing out of the main characters’ head on the cover of a Time magazine.  

 

“Yes, it’s gone,” I responded, wondering how the heck she knew what a sphinx was, or that the famous one in Giza, Egypt, didn’t have a nose.  (Phineas and Ferb, most likely).   

 

“Oh,” she replied, clearly dismayed the image was wrong, and that the actual Sphinx was still nose-less. 

 

Then she added, as sincere as only a five-year-old can be, “I sure hope somebody finds it.”

Laughing inside, I didn’t know what to say.  Luckily, her big sister,  7-year-old Chloe, did.  Sighing at her younger sister, she replied with typical big sister wisdom and superiority, “Sadie, if they found the nose, it would be in the newspaper.”

Duh.  C’mon Sadie.  Clearly, that would be a front page story.  Not just reported via an old drawing in a Dr. Seuss book.   And so the global search for the missing Sphinx nose goes on -- at least in the minds of my children.

In writing, they say it's important to have believable dialogue.  Thankfully, in life, the same rules don't apply.

Bonzo for Bedtime

Ten years into this parenting gig, you’d think we’d be good at the one thing we have to do every darn evening. You’d think. Yet, without a doubt, bedtime at our house sucks.

The younger ones are supposed to go to bed at 7:30. The older one at 9:00.  “Supposed to” being the operative phrase. We usually send the kids to bed as close to the designated time as possible. If they are all asleep by 10 p.m., it’s been a raging success.

Between helping them wash up, reading to them and one of us lying down with the younger ones to help them settle down, it’s always at least a two hour process. More often than not, the one of us who lies down, falls asleep.

It’s a rare evening that we both make it through bedtime awake, with the kids actually asleep. Even when that happens, we almost certainly get a post-bedtime visitor, wandering back down the stairs claiming “I can’t sleep,” or “I had a bad dream,” or, my favorite, “I’m hungry.”

Sometimes they don’t even come down. We just hear giggling, or screaming, or the unmistakable sound of furniture moving across their bedroom floor as midnight encroaches.

Candid scene captured in my children's dollhouse, proving
frustration with bedtime is universal. At least in our house. 

“What the hell are they doing up there tonight?” I’ll ask from my prone position on the couch, as my wife puts her face in her hands and starts to weep. Personally, I don’t care where they put the furniture, as long as they don’t come down the steps.

We’ve thought about it for a while, and we were finally able to pinpoint exactly when the difficult bedtimes began.  Shocker, It was when our first child was born. To be more precise, it was on our second night as new parents.

Ironically, on our very first night as new parents, as we slept in a tiny room in the maternity ward at Georgetown Hospital – my wife in the hospital bed, me on a bizarre fold-out chair that kick-started a decade’s worth of back problems -- the nursing staff wheeled our new baby girl out of the room to the nursery, so we could get some needed sleep. As the sun rose the next morning, an older nurse who’d cared for thousands of newborns on their first night, wheeled our new daughter back in and told us she slept like an angel. We felt blessed. 

After the second night, the same nurse wheeled our child back in again and, this time, gruffly told us that our baby was up all night and was “inconsolable.” They sent us home from the hospital that day, and bedtimes have gone downhill ever since.

We struggled mightily with bedtimes as our child grew and became adept at the bedtime-avoidance arts. We asked more experienced parents, read how-to books, watched Supper Nanny – nothing worked. 

My wife read this one book, in particular, called the “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” The authors had not only figured out how to get difficult bedtimers to sleep, but they posited that failing to do so would result in unhappy children. Yikes.

These experts suggested setting up a routine. Like a bath. So we did it. They suggested reading to them, to help them wind down. We read. They suggested being firm. We were firm. Nothing worked -- at least, not for long.

As a last resort, the book suggested letting our young child cry it out. (We have since learned that "CIO" is a major dividing line in parenting philosophies). They said, most kids will only cry for about 40 minutes. And after a few nights, they'll never cry again.

The first night of “crying it out,” our daughter screamed for three hours before we relented. The second night, it was closer to four hours. Clearly our kid was more stubborn than the test children the authors experimented on. We just didn't have the hearts of the will power to do it. Maybe it's because we had hearts.   

We’ve added three kids to the mix in the decade since. And we’ve tried lots of “strategies” to get them to sleep.  We've sung songs. We used positive-reinforcement, like “Good-Bedtime Charts.” We’ve tried bribery. And, we experimented with yelling at them – at least, I did. Nothing worked with regularity.

Nowadays, we still use routines as the bedtime foundation; one routine being that we always read stories to them. (Though our oldest now reads to herself). Sometimes we lie down with a kid to help them settle. And sometimes we fall asleep.

 

We're still perfecting our methods.

But ten years in, there’s only one thing we know for certain: bedtime sucks.

The Revenge of the Red Bowl

I’ve already begun plotting my revenge. But it’s going to take at least a decade to pull off.   
 
The plan is simple. When my kids are all teenagers, I am going to take them to a restaurant that serves its meals on plates and bowls of all different colors – so it’ll likely have to be a Tex-Mex joint or maybe a Café.   

I’m going to order the soup. When the wait staff brings it, I’m going to act completely shocked. Then I’m going to stand and scream at the top of my lungs:

“What! No! Not the green bowl! I wanted the red bowl!”  

Then I am going to cry uncontrollably until someone brings me my soup in a red bowl. It’s fool proof.  

If my kids have learned anything from me, it’s that you appease the screaming person who wants their cereal in a specific bowl, or their apple juice in the Nemo cup not the Princess one. Because each one of our kids has done this to us, and each one has eventually gotten their way.

Clearly, some one has tried to
serve his food in the wrong bowl.

This childhood obsession with specific tableware usually starts around 2 years old and last well past 5. It’s a stage of development, I assume. I gave up trying to convince a screaming kid that Rice Krispies tastes the exact same out of any colored bowl. (It’s also true of the generic Wegmans-brand alternative Crispy Rice, which is 2 bucks cheaper).

Toddlers, preschoolers and, apparently, kindergarteners are simply not old enough to understand that the molecular structure of apple juice is in no way altered by the kid cup in which it is served. I stopped engaging in that argument a few kids ago.

Maybe by appeasing them, I’ve trained them to act so rashly. But with the first one, we really did try. 

We were determined never to negotiate with our first toddler. We were going to teach her to eat out of whatever vessel her breakfast was served in, and to be grateful for the pleasure. 

Of course, that led to long standoffs, where the cereal would sit there, between us, getting mushy in the wrong bowl. The screaming and crying would continue well after the cereal was ruined and dumped in a pile in the sink.
 

She could go hours without eating just to get her favored bowl. Apparently, there’s a strain of stubbornness that runs in either my family, or my wife’s. I’m not certain which.

We had similar stand-offs with kids two and three -- though, with each my breaking point became easier for the child to reach.

By the time our fourth kid entered the phase where he cared passionately about the color of bowl, type of spoon or brand of cup, I just said, "Fine, which bowl do you want?"

Even if I have to dig it out of the dishwasher and give it a quick hand wash, it's less trouble than listening to a kid scream through breakfast.

Over the years, our policy of tableware appeasement has saved time and cereal, and it also bought silence – at least occasional silence.

Of course, if a kid wants a specific bowl that another kid is already eating out of, well, that’s another story. They have to wait ... or they could just eat out of another bowl because it really is the same.

WAHHHHH! Fine, just wait.

I’m sure there are loads of people better than me at parenting that have an answer to this dilemma, who could solve my children’s propensity to scream when given an inferior vessel or an unwanted spoon. These so-called “toddler whisperers,” I imagine, could cure my cranky kids after just a few meals. But four kids into this parenting thing, I’ve got more pressing battles to win.

Instead, I plot.
 
My revenge is going to be awesome, and, I anticipate, a bit unexpected. Because, I’m hoping all my kids will be out of this stage by then; And, it really makes no logical sense to complain about the color of your plate or bowl so loudly that the establishment refuses to serve you a meal. Especially if it’s a really good Tex-Mex joint. I do love me some enchiladas.

On second thought, I’ll definitely have to find a Café to exact my revenge.



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When Did Back To School Become Its Own Season?

I knew it was going to happen eventually, starting a post with the phrase, “Back when I was young.”  So, here goes:

Back when I was young, we didn’t set aside the final three weeks of summer to focus solely on going back to school.  We just didn’t. 

 

Sure I remember buying some #2 pencils, and digging through my older brother’s dresser drawer to see if his school shirt from last year fit me.  We had to make sure it didn’t have too many stains, or that yellow tinge from the rusty water in our well.  But we’d usually do that the day before school started. 

 

What was so important she couldn't make it three feet
from the mailbox before opening?  Teacher Letters.

My kids, on the other hand, have been talking about back to school-related rituals and procedures since early August.   It began with the hype in advance of the so-called teacher letters – so-called because its from their new teachers, telling them which class they’d be in for the coming school year.  And, this year, two of our kids are moving up to new schools.  So it's a big deal, no doubt.  But, come on people. 

There were actually internet-based rumors in our town about when the local school would mail the teacher letters.  Vacations were scuttled so that families could wait by their mailboxes. 

Not us.  We happened to be out of town on the Saturday the letters finally arrived.  My wife and I got a text from a neighbor that the “letters have landed."  We decided it best not to tell the kids, to avoid them begging to go home early the rest of the weekend.  We told them on the drive home.  You’d swear we said Santa was waiting in our living room.

“Drive faster, dad!”

The letters are just the start.  Next, you have to read all that stuff.  Then comes the detective work determining which friends are in your class.  I almost needed another phone line to handle all the calls.

And the letters, of course, have within each a supply list.  That's when the real shopping starts.  Which is followed by the school meetings and tours.  Then more shopping.  There's more, but that's all I care to recall in my current back-to-school-season frazzled state.

Is there a Hallmark card for going back to school?  Maybe they’re behind this?

Or, maybe it’s a public school thing?
 
Growing up, we went to a small, private school – which was not nearly as fancy as that sentence implies.  It was very small, and not exclusive.  We went there because my dad’s family had a thing for Catholic school education.  And because the public schools near our suburban-D.C. home were too big and not known for being particularly good at educating children.

My parents may have been concerned about us falling in with the riffraff at the public school.  As it turned out, we were the riffraff at our private school. 

As school started, sure we’d do a bit of back to school shopping.  But we didn’t have some big, all-hands-on-deck, multi-store trip, where everyone got new clothes, sneakers, new book-bags and more erasers than even my kids could ever need. 

For one thing, we had uniforms.  We made, maybe, one trip to JC Penney’s to get a pair of khakis and gym shoes.   That was it for clothes.  And we’d be lucky if we got some new, lined loose-leaf paper, a few folders and a lunchbox that didn't smell from being closed all summer.

We also had small classes at our schools.  So we knew in advance who the teacher was going to be, usually the same teacher that had been teaching that class for decades -- Sister something-or-other.

The school year would start when we’d pull up to said school, get out of the car, and our parents would pull away.  There were no big, instruction-filled teacher letter packets that I recall.  No orientations.  No soft-grand-openings.  No two-page long lists of supplies.  Okay, maybe once I remember getting a Trapper-Keeper.  But only the once. 

Still, I'm pretty certain it wasn't quite like things are today.  My mom may remember it differently.

Am I wrong?  Or am I just getting old?

The Baggage That Comes With Being A Dad ...

In the mountainous regions of Eastern Nepal, high among the Himalayas, live a people called the Sherpa. They are known worldwide for, among other things, their ability to carry ridiculously large quantities of bags, as their Western traveling companions tag along on the trek unencumbered.     

I think of the Sherpas, and my connection to them, every time I go on a trip with my family.

This past weekend, my wife and I took our kids on an overnight trip to my family’s house on Lake Ontario. It was just one night. Did that stop us from stuffing the mini-van so tight that I couldn’t see out the back windows? No. It didn’t. 

"Honey, don't forget the beach toys." Grumble. Grumble.

We took more for this so-called night away than we packed for the full week we spent in South Carolina in early July. Heck, we packed more than I took with me when I moved away to college some two decades ago. In fact, if you added up all the stuff I had packed on various overnights and weekend trips during my pre-married, pre-child days, it would still be less than what we took for one evening at the old camp. 

Gone are the days when I could just grab a change of clothes and a towel (a nod to the Hitchhiker’s Guide) and spend a week on the road. Don’t worry, I’d usually buy a tooth brush once I got where I was going. Usually. That was then.

Fast forward to this past weekend and we packed enough clothes for each kid to change outfits more than Cher at a concert. Plus sweatshirts, jeans and pajamas. We packed not only bath towels for each family member, but we also brought beach towels for each. We packed sheets, blankets, and pillows. Pillows!? As I said, in an instructional tone the morning of our trip, “When I was young, we used to roll up our jeans and use that as a pillow! C’mon people!”

We also packed sleeping bags, a tent, and the blow-up mattress, in case we decided to spend the night under the stars. Then we packed enough food to feed our entire family for the foreseeable future, including drink boxes in four varieties, snacks galore, water bottles and bottles of water (go figure), paper plates, paper towels, toilet paper, and dog food. As my wife said, you never know what the camp is going to need.

Let’s not forget the beach junk. We didn’t. Boogie board, umbrella, two beach blankets, three beach chairs, and 4 life jackets – in case we ended up on a boat, or a kayak, or a canoe. You never know. Sunscreen, bug spray, the camera, the phone chargers. You get the idea.

Once the van was completely packed – and I mean completely -- with enough provisions and gear to get us through fall, 5-year-old Sadie asked, in her concerned voice, “Are we moving?”

Luckily, we did have a van to actually transport the provisions and gear the 50 miles north to the lake house. Real Sherpas would have carried it the whole way. But I do feel bad for the poor soul who had to take all that stuff to and from the van, and then repeat the task the next day with 95 percent of the stuff. The kids drank the juice boxes, accounting for the missing 5 percent of cargo.

In our defense, we are packing for six people, nowadays. I must have heard that defense a hundred times, as I grumbled under the pile of blankets, or beach chairs, or whatever I was carrying.

I guess that’s one way I’m not like a Sherpa. They don’t complain. 

Oh, and they climb mountains.

The Year of the Turtle

Back in the mid 80s, when we used to take the extra fabric around the ankles of our jeans, then fold, wrap and roll it as tight as possible to our ankles -- in a fashion practice known as pegging -- I asked my mom how anyone could ever have thought bell bottoms were cool. She said, all things come and go. She even went so far as to predict that one day pegging would be seen as odd and bell bottoms would be back in style. I thought she was nuts. 

A decade later, she was right. It was the first time I remember seeing the pendulum swing so clearly, and it proved a powerful lesson. All things do come and go: even things as odd as excessively loose, or ridiculously tight pant ankles.

But even in her wisdom, I do not think my mother could have predicted a blast from the past that has come back recently to overtake our household. It’s a trend for sure, though not of the fashion variety, and it has become the singular obsession of my four children. Anyone who has interacted with my kids in recent months knows the scourge of which I speak: Turtles. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to be precise. Though, by my estimation, they are middle-aged mutants at best, by this point.

I remember the first time the series made waves in the late eighties. After that, I don’t think I heard a thing about them for a decade or two. Though I'm kind of out of it when it comes to trends.  Now they are back, stronger than ever, as a newly animated series has suddenly taken over Nickelodeon’s summer programing. 

How these four mutant martial artists made it back from obscurity, I haven’t a clue. Heck, I don’t know how the trend caught on in the first place. This was a television series that jumped the shark in the concept room.   

They're mutants. They're reptiles.
They're ninjas. And they're everywhere.

Still, my kids love it. They've gone so far as to each adopt the name of a favorite turtle, along with a preference for the color of their chosen turtle's headband and constant repetition of key quotes from that character.

There's Leonardo, the leader (blue); Donatello, the smart one (purple); Raphael, the tough guy (red); and Michelangelo, the dumb, but funny one who likes to surf and party a lot (orange). I never quite understood why the so-called “heroes on the half shell” were named after four great Italian artists. They just were. Again, the idea for this animated foursome passed the exit for absurd long before the names were chosen.

And, of course, each turtle also has its own specific martial arts skill and a ninja weapon or two. Which makes for hours of family fun, as the kids pretend to fight evil and I scream at them to stop hitting each other with fake ninja moves.  

 

I’m half expecting this year’s Christmas wish lists to include nunchucks and throwing stars, as well as all the TMNT crap our local, neighborhood Target can cram into the aisle that all the retail giants will most certainly devote to the mutants this shopping season. That is, if this trend last until Christmas.  

 

As the old saying goes, the flame that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. That's right: I just quoted ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu. Circa 550 B.C. That's because the kids have decided that I am Splinter, the giant mutant rat that is their sensei. I take my pretend dojo lessons vey seriously.   

We’ll have to wait and see just how long this turtle obsession lasts. But it certainly proves again that all things come and go. No matter how absurd -- like bell bottoms.  

Though, I’m still waiting for pegged pants to come back. Or, did that happen already?

Welcome to the Lazy Lawn-Mowers Club

Any homeowner from Upstate New York knows the four seasons: Shoveling, Spreading Mulch, Mowing, and Raking. 

Right now, we are deep into mowing season.  So deep, in fact, that we’re in the rare time when the heat stunts the growth of the lawn, and it only needs to be mowed once a week.  This is far more manageable than the twice-a-week mows, which are needed from early Spring through mid-July, and again from late- August until the leaves fall or the snow flies, whichever comes first.

Like most, I take a certain amount of pride in my lawn.  Just, not that much. 

I rarely have time to mow on the exact day my wife thinks it needs to be done.  And, let’s just be honest, mowing twice a week is nearly impossible.  That said, I certainly don’t want to be that guy on the block known for the long lawn.  

As wet as it was this year, I fear I may have become that guy.

Friendly Neighbor Hand-me-down Toys ...
Or Best Lawn-based Insult Ever?

In my defense, it was a very wet spring.  If you failed to mow on the only day of the week it didn’t rain, you’d have a jungle out there by the time the rain stopped long enough to mow again.   

I missed the optimum mowing window more than once this mowing season.  I’d stare through the rain-spattered windows at my long, wet lawn, as my wife reminded me its "needs-to-be-mowed" status and as the neighbors would drive by real slow just shaking their heads.   

The worst of it occurred during our vacation week.  I’d planned to mow it the day before we were leaving, thinking it would grow just a little too long the week we were gone, but not too much to get attention.   Of course, it rained for a solid three days before we left, and I didn't get a chance to give it the pre-vacation cut.  By the time we got back from our annual excursion, the lawn had gone more than two whole, wet weeks without so much as a trim.

I practically needed a machete just to get the lawnmower out of the shed.  And it took me two mows over the next three days just to get caught up.

In the midst of the catch-up mows, I went out onto the lawn one morning to find a little gift:  Someone had deposited two plastic kid lawnmowers right in the middle of our yard.  These were toddler toys that looked like they’d been enjoyed for quite a few years.  

Maybe it was just a friendly neighbor whose kids had outgrown these toys, and thought my young brood would play with them. 

Or maybe it was the most clever lawn critique ever.  Maybe all the neighbors had talked, and come up with a plan to get these crappy toys from some yard sale and stick them in my yard, in a subtle tribute to my lawn-care lameness.

I still don’t know.   

Now that we’re in the summer doldrums, I’m staying on top of it without any problems – except for the darn crabgrass.

So, I’d like to take this opportunity to publically apologize to my neighbors and the rest of the lawn-mowing world, and ask if I can be let back into the well-kept-lawn club.  Besides, did you see the lawn of that guy on the corner?  It’s a total mess.

Underdressed and Overtired

Don’t mean to brag, but back in High School I was pretty fast.  Not sprinter speed, or anything, but fast enough to play varsity sports.

You wouldn’t have known it today if you’d seen me “sprinting” down the block, trying to catch up with the two-year-old boy who'd decided he wanted to go with his mother when she went to drop his sister off at a friends.  Of course, I was barefoot and a bit underdressed for our little neighborhood stroll, wearing my standard-issue, home-project attire.  But at least I had clothes on -- which is more than I can say for the boy.

Many young kids get upset when a parent leaves the house on an errand without them.  I’ve seen one of my daughters cry at the window for a full hour waiting for mommy to come back from the grocery store.

Occasionally, one of the kids has the bright idea to go outside and wait for mommy to come back.  It’s cute to see them sitting out on the lawn staring down the road looking for that familiar blue van's return.  

But in all my days as a parent, I have never had a kid who would go outside and then proceed down the block in hot pursuit of the missing vehicle.  The boy has done it twice.  The first time he was fully clothed, and he slowly meandered down the sidewalk as he cried, “I want mommy.”  He was easy to catch at that speed.

File footage of Overtired Boy on the run
-- properly attired this time. 

This time, he was running as fast as he possibly could, screaming “I want to go,” without a stitch of clothes on.  And his naked little butt is quite fast.  I was rumbling after him wondering whether I was more likely to pull a hammy or trip and crush my only son.  Despite my speed back in my glory years, I was unable to gain any ground.  I felt like I was in a scene from an Adam Sandler movie on parenting. 

 

For the record, Drew usually has clothes on -- usually.  Lately, he’s been disrobing whenever the urge compels him.  He'd just gone potty, and that was enough.  So it was off with the clothes.  Try as I could to convince him, he wouldn't put his outfit back on.  Then mom announced she was taking his sister to a friend's house for a party.  He wanted to go, naturally.  I told him he couldn't go unless he got dressed.  That caused him to have a meltdown, which ended in his birthday-suited dash down the block as they drove away.

 

Had he been clothed, he probably would have been able to go on the trip.  The irony was lost on this particular two-year-old.   

The whole being-naked thing is just part of a recent increase in antics by the boy, which my wife attributes to him being “overtired.”  Overtired is how she has explained our kids’ worst behavior ever since she read that book on healthy sleep habits and well-behaved children almost ten years ago.

By my count, Drew has been overtired since he turned two, eleven months ago.   Don’t even ask how long our ten-year-old has been behind on sleep.

You know who’s really overtired?  Here’s a hint: the guy who was just outrun by a naked two-year-old.

Road Trips and Sushi ... What Are Two Things That Do Not Go Well Together?

It may go without saying, but I’m saying it anyway:   If you ever embark on a 16-hour all-night car ride with children, and as you leave town you stop by the grocery store to get some snacks for the trip and one last non-fast-food meal, and the person running into the store to buy the food asks, “Do you want sushi, or something else?”   The answer is: something else.  Anything else.

We learned this lesson within the first half-an-hour of our annual overnight pilgrimage to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.   At this point there may be questions.  Let me answer a few.

Yes, we go to Hilton Head almost every year.  My wife’s parents have a timeshare there, which we started visiting when our first-born was little.  It has become something of a summer tradition.

And yes, we drive straight through to get there.  It makes the trip affordable.  And we’ve learned that piling on the miles while the kids are sleeping is the only way to make it manageable.  By leaving at night, and filling their little gullets with food on the way out the door, we’re able to get a solid ten hours on the road before one of them wakes up, usually somewhere in North Carolina, complaining about the sleeping arrangements and asking how much further.    

Sure, it’s a long drive.  But it adds to the mystique for the kids -- at least the younger ones.   On recent trips, Maisie has said, after an hour on the road, “If we flew, we’d be there already.”  My retort, “And if we took the private yacht it would take weeks to get there.”  

Back to the questions:  Yes, our local grocery store sells sushi, as many attempt to these days.   And our local store is a Wegmans.  So it usually passes the smell test.  Literally.

So, as we pulled up to Wegman’s at 7:30 pm on Friday evening, 5 minutes into our summer vacation, and as my wife prepared to run in get some snacks and more substantive food, like chicken fingers, I suggested, “Maybe get me some sushi.  Spicy, crunchy tuna, please.” 

Maisie then shouted that she’d take a California roll.  And Sadie screamed: “Dumplings.”

These little guys are never going with us to Hilton Head, again.

As my wife departed for the store, she asked one more time:  “Who wants sushi, and who wants chicken fingers?”  It was almost unanimous.  Only Drew, who abstained from voting, got chicken fingers – and that was by default.

After she returned to the car, with some bags of snacks and a few trays of Wegman’s sushi, we were ready for our all-night, bleary-eyed, we’re-not-stopping-till-the-sun-comes-up drive south.   And off we went.

Not three minutes later, before we even got past the McDonalds in Lafeyette, we were sitting with our individual sushi trays open on our laps when all hell broke loose.  Okay, that may be an overstatement.   But from the back of the car, Chloe asked for help with something.  Her mother, reacting with the quick reflexes of a supermom, closed her own sushi tray, flipping the lid back on.  Unfortunately, she had already used the lid as a soy sauce dipping vessel.   Soy sauce went everywhere, including her lap, her seat and the pillow that was next to her seat ready for the long night’s drive.  Soy sauce splatter patterns were scattered throughout the front of the car.

She immediately called for the paper towels, as she danced on her seat trying to avoid the pool of soy sauce that had collected under her.  Of course, the paper towels were conveniently tucked in the back of the van behind the seat holding our two eldest children. They scrambled to get the paper towels, and in the process, Chloe’s ginger-infused dipping sauce for her dumplings fell to the floor.  Reports from the back of the van could not confirm whether the container’s lid was still on the ginger-infused dipping sauce when it fell.  And, now, the ginger-infused dipping sauce container itself was missing.  At least, neither properly-seat-belted child could get a visual fix on the sauce container.   I had visions of ginger-infused dipping sauce slowly soaking into our van’s carpet.

So, there we are, screaming down the highway – and I mean screaming, not driving fast – trapped in a van that was smelling increasingly like grocery-store-bought Asian food. 

Luckily, there was a truck inspection pull-off just ahead of us.  That’s where I pulled over and calmly (it's my blog, so my description) … calmly took care of the spill and the missing dipping sauce.  I also collected the remaining sushi containers and pronounced then and there that we would never buy sushi on a car trip ever, ever again. 

Not ten minutes into our annual vacation and we had already learned an important lesson.  When, embarking on a car trip, and asked if you want sushi, or something else, the Answer is ... all together now, "Something else."

Over the next 16 hours, the lingering smell of soy sauce reminded us of this lesson.

And So It Was Written, Friday Night Is Fun Night.

[My children requested this post.  Yes, they actually read the blog. ]

Back before we had kids, before we were married, back when life as we now know it was but a distant “dream,” Friday nights were dedicated to fun. Nothing crazy, mind you. No raves, or hallucinogens, or anything weird. Just regular, run-of-the-mill fun, with the occasional hijinks mixed-in.  

It would usually start with happy hour at the Blarney Stone, and end with a late-night breakfast at the Quick-Cup after the bars told us we had to leave. In between, well, my kids read this blog. So, just regular fun stuff. More than once, though, I crawled through the Leprechaun door at Coleman’s Irish Pub. Ah, Good times. Good times.

Just about every Friday for a couple of years, I had the same fun-filled goal and a similar result.

Yes.  I did.  There
were witnesses.

When my then-girlfriend, now-wife would suggest that we break from tradition and go to a movie on a Friday night, I’d be like, “No way. That’s what our parents do on Friday nights.”

Fast forward 15-plus years, and going to a movie on a Friday night doesn’t sound lame at all. In fact, just renting a movie sounds nice. Even fun. Sure, I’ll probably be asleep before it’s over, and there won’t be any late night diner trips involved (the cholesterol alone, rules that out). But it still has the makings of a fun night. Recently, it has even become something of a tradition.

That is, until a new tradition was born.

A few weeks back, my wife was working late – trapped in her home office as Friday evening arrived. I served dinner and cleaned the dishes, while the girls and their little brother bounced off the walls with nothing to do. There weren’t any good movies to rent that night, for the kids or the adults. 

Instead, we decided to kick-off the first night of the weekend with a “dance party.” Which means I spun some Katy Perry and Bruno Mars tunes on my laptop while the kids danced around like pop-stars who’d had too much sugar and lost their choreography. In our house, dance parties are commonplace, as are plays and improvised musical performances. Sometime, I feel like I’m living in the Cosby Show.

Usually, I just watch the dancing. Kind of like the first dance I went to in 8th grade. And 9th grade. And 10th grade. My seven-year-old calls this a pattern. This dance party, though, my kids coaxed me onto the impromptu dance floor in our living room. Before we knew it, they're taking turns being swung around by a dad who's watched one-too-many episodes of Dancing With The Stars. (For the record, one episode is too many, which means I’m way over the limit).


Where are the kids?

The kids' favorite dance was the exaggerated tango, where I’d strut cheek to cheek with one of them with our arms straight out, humming, “Vrump, vrump, vrump, vrump. Da, da, da, da, da.” Then we'd turn, dramatically pointing our arms up and emphatically in another direction, practically giving the kid whiplash. They’d laugh, as those watching would yell, “My turn! My turn!” Even little Drew wanted in on the dance. I obliged, whipping him a little less vigorously then the girls. 

When I ran out of moves and breath, I started acting like I had no idea how to dance at all -- it wasn’t that hard. They called it “Dancing With The Dummy.” Each took a turn or two. 


Stacked like cord wood.

The Dancing ended when we couldn’t agree whose turn it was next, causing two of them to jump on me at the same time, knocking my spent body to the floor. That led the others to yell, “Pile on Daddy!” Before I blinked, I had four kids, totally hepped up on goof balls, jumping all over me.

Luckily, they were my kids, and I knew how to neutralize them.

“Tickle Torture!”

Sure, it sounds like an oxymoron. But vigorous tickling can make someone beg for waterboarding. Especially, when they’re too young to know what waterboarding is.

After my successful escape from the Daddy Pile-On, we moved on to Hide-and-Seek in the living room. We learned quickly that there aren’t too many places to hide in our living room. A few long curtains, and some fluffy couch cushions, that's all. Somehow, it kept us happy for a solid half-an-hour.   

No.  They couldn't possibly...

The night went on and the games continued, each leading into another impromptu romp, while mom typed away at the computer. She'd finished work by then, and decided to do some online window-shopping, rather than join the ruckus in the living room. And, oh, what a ruckus it was. By bedtime, all four kids were exhausted and ready to pass out. As was I.

I’d thought it a fun, but forgettable Friday night – no movie, no major hijinks, and certainly no Coleman’s.
 


Geez, maybe we could down-size.

As the kids woke the next morning, they all began asking when we could have another “Daddy Game Night,” as they had named it. I told them we’d do it again, someday. No promises.   


When I finished mowing the lawn after lunch that day, I came in the house to find out the kids were all hiding in the living room – really hiding. While I mowed, they had hatched a plan, clearing games from the cabinets to create real hiding places.  I knew then that our random night of silly games was something more than that in the minds of my children.

And when the next Friday night came, we did it again. We added a few new silly, made-up games to keep it fresh – like “Stand Up Dad,” where the kids try to make me stand up as I pretend to be half-asleep – and they again had a blast.

Years from now, they won’t remember half the crap I tell them each day -- all the random facts and life lessons that spill from my mouth in their general direction. Yet I have a feeling they’ll remember “Daddy Game Night.” And while it’s been a decade since I’ve even been to the Blarney Stone, and I no longer fit through the Leprechaun door at Coleman's, I promise you that Friday nights have never been more fun.