Decision 2008: Trick or Treat

Just a quick Halloween rundown today, starting with this curious picture:These two strange children followed me around all day without revealing their identities or to whom they belonged. I would have called the police or Child Protective Services, but they seemed to be getting prodigious amounts of candy thrown at them, and thus I figured they might be of some use to me.

Two straight days of glorious stomachaches later, I stand by that decision. If only D- and M- could have been there... J- and I might have gotten twice as much candy.

Elsewhere, in an effort to hone her pumpkin-carving skills as well as get out the vote amongst the elementary-school and elementary-school-chaperone demographic, my sister decided that night to carve the Obama-Biden symbol into a pumpkin, with the word VOTE etched above it.

The day after Halloween, there wasn't much left of it:I can't decide whether this was an underhanded voter-suppression move by neo-conservative squirrels or merely an innocent nibbling of the alternatives by right-leaning independents who had their fill of nuts over at the Palin rally.

Speaking of nuts, I hope to be acting it with a few hundred thousand of my new closest friends in Grant Park tomorrow evening-- in case I don't post tomorrow, I'll see you all at the end of this long, strange tunnel Wednesday morning!

Revenge of the Leafs

Since I've been so lax in responding to comments (and visiting people's blogs) in the past few weeks (and possibly indefinitely), I thought that instead of adding a bunch of responses now that no one would see, I'd write a separate post acknowledging your comments on this recent post showcasing M-'s language development through the lens of a leaf assault.

First off, I'd appreciate it if you guys would keep the violence of this neglect-ridden incident hush-hush. That is, unless Child Protective Services would be willing to work out some kind of time-sharing arrangement in which they would take the kids away from us only on Friday or Saturday nights, and maybe a day or so during the week as needed.

As for M-'s seemingly accelerated development in certain areas, I have nothing to offer in the way of tips or tricks, as requested, except to say that you should apparently try to spend as much time on the computer as legally allowed; never plan anything voluntarily or arrive anywhere on time; only feed your children random, disturbing combinations of food ALWAYS outside of whatever society tells you should be a Meal Time; and be ready to fend off many, many hard plastic finger puppets, because my friends, There Will Be Poinkings.

Keep friends close and let enemies pummel you

Okay, so maybe my 4-year-old son D- won't become an arch-villain after all, or at least not a good one. Observe this conversation from yesterday morning:

D-: Ow! Owww... Oww! Ow!!

Me: Hey!

M-: Sor-ree!!

Me: Why were you just standing there letting her hit you?*

D-: Because I was trying to tell her something!

Me: But why would you just keep standing there if she was hitting you?

D-: Because I was just waiting for her to stop hitting me, so I could tell her something... I wanted her to stop hitting me so we could talk.

Don't let him fool you... Gandhi, he ain't.

---

* Please note, Child Protective Services, that I asked with an inflection suggesting he should have moved out of the way and protested the treatment, not that he should have violently escalated the situation, at least under these circumstances. Considering the burgeoning fearsomeness (and penchant for eye-gouging) of his 20-month-old opponent, I would never urge him to step into that lion's den.

Momma's lieutenant

You know, I could pad this out by going on and on, beating around the bush by saying the same thing several different ways and not taking the time to edit at least half of them out before clicking Publish, as I am wont to do, but I think one paragraph* is really all that's needed:

I've decided that it says something important about my current lifestyle that at only 19 months old, M- has already been pressed to develop the ability to say something as complex as, "Eyem hun-gree! ... Wanna eat somethin', Daddy. ... Ged-dup, Daddy... please! Ged-dup and get food for [M-], please. Ged-DUP!" as she tugs on my hand when I'm just trying to blog in peace.


* Hi there! Welcome to my little hideout-- everyone knows footnotes don't count as part of the body, so I can say whatever I want without regard to my previous statements, common courtesy, or international treaties. I just wanted to note that in true hyper-little-kid form, she said this like so many other things lately almost in one breath, as if time somehow moves more quickly for her than for everyone else, and she'd finally given up asking nicely after 400 human milliseconds.

It's a good thing kids can only starve at the same rate as real people, or my "Dan-minutes"** and I would have gotten me in pretty big trouble long ago.

** I don't think I need to explain how this term came about, but I'll just say that many of my friends, family, and casual acquaintances have bonded deeply while discussing it.

Slipping on flop sweat

You may have heard that the NBA plans to fine players found guilty of "flopping". For those not in the know, this is what they call it when another player goes near you and you theatrically fling yourself to the floor to make it look like the other player just steamrolled your innocent self. The parents in the audience can see where I'm going with this-- stick with me.

The maneuver, when done strategically by an expert, is surprisingly effective at creating foul calls in his team's favor, but there are plenty of players for whom repeated failure at getting those calls is taken as a sign they need to try so often that the referees will be guilted into giving them calls at least some of the time. So this potential rule change is certainly a welcome one for fans as well as star players who find this to be many opponents' only defensive strategy.

This method is definitely not limited to the basketball court, though, so I believe the punishment shouldn't be, either. I reserve the right to fine small children at the playground for exaggerated victimhood, and lest their parents think I am merely trying to line my pockets (with pennies) at the expense of the local ice cream truck drivers' union, I am more than willing to allow those parents to fine my children for the same offense as needed.

I think the highest volume of revenue, however, would come from a very closed loop between D- and us, as he paid out huge fines while going through the learning process and we found reasons to pay him for things so he'd have enough money to pay us back. That's not to say that M- isn't coming into her own under D-'s unwitting tutelage, but her reactions, though frequently exaggerated, are usually pretty well-grounded in genuine assaults. I throw her a bone here and there while trying to discourage the drama.

D-, on the other hand, has been known to fall backwards with a look of betrayal and a declaration of "Owwww!" when someone does so much as give him a stern look. His reactions are so over the top and accusatory, that especially as a parent, being quite vulnerable to such impressions on the wrong eyes and later fantastical retellings to the wrong ears, it makes you want to give him something to "Ow!" about as long as you're already on the hook for the crime. Especially when he accompanies this with a "Don't push me!" Rarely do I feel more like a 1950s parent.

I can only imagine M-'s confusion and disgust when she's on the receiving end of these performances, but I can already tell that she's begun to study the technique, and knowing her, she'll come back as a virtuoso in just a year or two. Right now, she's limiting her experimentation, when she's in the mood to do so, to a still-cute "Ow?" when you touch her arm or tickle her or disturb the air molecules around her.

Maybe I should branch out across sports and start using a yellow car/red card system for these pre-literate kids, and I can build a penalty box to contain them when necessary. Since that sounds like a lot of work, though, I think for the time being whenever I'm appealed to for a "fair call" on a nonexistent offense, I'll just blow J-'s classroom whistle, make a T with my hands, and then throw the kid out of the game if I get an argument.

Parenting 101: I am a wonderful parent

You know what the best part of being a parent is? Knowing that one day, you'll be able to take your lovely, perfect grandchildren to your house for a sleepover.

Okay... have my parents stopped reading yet? Is the coast clear?

Actually, the best part of being a parent is being able to have a day here and there when your parents take your children away and you don't have to deal with them and all their high maintenance for one whole day and night. They don't really tell you this when they discharge you from the hospital, but babies are a lot of work. For like 20 years.

The nurses and such at the hospital are all "Ohh, what a special little miracle! He/she/it is so darling... (choking up) so special!" ...yadda, yadda, yadda. What they're thinking is, "Good god, babies may be cute (given a few days to unsmash their faces and everything), but am I glad my kids are old enough to be yelled at to leave me alone while I go take a nap. I'm gonna sleep good tonight! These poor bastards obviously have no idea what they're in for, or they wouldn't be smiling like that. That woman is pretty lucky, though, cause the dad sure looks like an exceptionally intelligent, handsome, and unbelievably witty individual."*

I assure you, though, if you don't already know, there's absolutely no sarcasm or even realism employed out loud in the baby-having section of the hospital. It's all sunshine and rainbows and (shudder) straightforward positivity.

So anyway, here's a disclaimer: I love my kids, they crack me up, they're so special and smart and amazing and stuff, and like all parents, I can't wait to see them grow up to appreciate and worship me... That being said, man did I sleep good last night. Heck, I may even go back to sleep right now. This is the life.


* Your experience may or may not match this, which was undoubtedly my personal experience.

Can't I be a Stay-At-Somewhere-More-Fun Dad?

The select few people older than 4 who I meet these days sometimes openly wonder what it's like to be a stay-at-home dad, often with either a sympathetic or subtly tortured look on their face.

I can promise you that certainly being one is much less remarkable now than it was decades ago, but that doesn't mean that nowadays, even in a place as diverse and culturally amorphous as the particular Chicago suburb where I live, you won't become a stare-worthy oddity akin to a dog walking down the street on two feet with a cat on a leash.

For example, the other day when we arrived at a park we’d never been to before (there are probably at least 20 parks of varying sizes within a half-mile of our house), two kids saw me approaching unchaperoned with the kids, and once we got to within 3 feet of them, the older girl asked her dad (while staring into my eyes, bewildered), “Is their Mommy at the doctor today, too??" In all fairness, what other possible explanation on Earth could there be for a man to accompany children to a park at 3:30 in the afternoon? Just go ahead and try to think of one, before you judge her... shame on you.

I’ve only hinted at this kind of thing here and there, but that’s because a) it’s been done many times before, and better, b) it doesn’t really bother me all that much, and c) it doesn’t come up as often for me as it does for others, because we don’t go out much during the day beyond the park, library, and my parents’ house (my dad is semi-retired and works mostly from home). That’s still enough, though, to generate a healthy inventory of stares, comments, and other encounters to make sure I know I am living a bizarre, unnatural life, and even that I only may or may not be providing any tangible benefit for my family or its well-being. And that I am merely lazy.

Actually, that very last part was just me projecting, because I got confused into thinking this was a confessional. Sorry, world.

So what does it feel like to be a man spending more than a few hours each evening with my children? (I’ve done that too, and will do it again, so I’m not bad-mouthing it.) Well, most days it feels an awful lot like moderate groin pain (moderate is an average of all days), because abusing groins is how children seem to amuse themselves. I think digging deeper into this area (no pun intended) may clue scientists into how we humans developed our traditionally rigid gender roles. Women have to be “fancy on the inside” (thanks, Mr. Rogers) as a measure of protection against our species’ sadistic and conveniently-heighted children.

That, or children are directed by women to help even the groin-pain score.

I’ll spare you any gory examples, because no one wants to hear about such things... wait, I’m just getting word that people LOVE to hear about such things… news to me. Okay, well, I already mentioned one in #5 of this post, and of course there’s the usual kneeing, stepping, and standing that kids of all ages make sure to do when climbing onto laps, particularly whenever a computer might be a momentary rival for parental attention*.

A more specific event, or ever-whimsical series of events, as it were, involves M-'s new habit of getting my attention (even when I'm already looking at her) by reaching up and quickly grabbing fistfuls of my pants until she finds something good to rupture inside. You may say, "But Dan, this just means you need to stop laying around blogging, playing videogames, watching movies, refusing to feed your children, and all the other things you clearly spend your entire day doing!"

Well, I will say to that that while I do obviously blog each day, and I occasionally play videogames, I generally do the latter with my children (that makes me a good father, right?) and only very seldom. That’s why I talk about it so much-- I’m pining. But most importantly, I promise you that while I may spend time doing some unconventional things, I make up for it by dedicating almost no time at all to cleaning or general household upkeep. So the time spent playing with my children or taking them places ends up evening out. So there.

In closing, my points are as follows:

1) Most people are inherently suspicious of stay-at-home dads (I'm sick of that term).

2) If you're thinking of becoming a Male Homemaker (is that better?), I'm not going to lie to you-- prepare to be ridiculously emasculated on an almost-daily basis. It's a good exercise, by fire, in beginning to truly not care what other people think (in the good way). This has been a difficult experience for me, but definitely rewarding.

3) Being a stay-at-home dad is a lot easier if you're bad at it, but you have to resist that temptation and find a balance. At the same time that society's expectations can put a lot of pressure on you, it also conversely takes a lot off, so much so that your wife will become insanely jealous of the behaviors people tolerate from you that might be ruled child neglect if she engaged in them.

4) We rarely clean our house, so I don't know when our kids might have friends come over.

5) I really wish my kids would stop hitting me in the nuts.


* As an aside (I know it’s uncharacteristic), let me just put the word out to any kids reading this-- when you knee me in the groin, even when I’m sitting down and semi-protected, while you will definitely get my attention, you will not win my affection. The computer certainly has never done that to me, and notice how many blog posts I’ve written-- get the message? I should expect this from M-, but I'd think D- would at least have an inkling of the need to be more careful. Maybe I’ll just have to hold out for that sympathy until his friends gracefully descend from the antechamber, as it were.

A onesie for all seasons

Having just yesterday packed to the gills a 22-gallon tub with baby clothes M- has outgrown, I can promise you that I have quite a few issues with the children's clothing industry. Let me further clarify that, as a man, and in fact at least in this respect a super-man, when I pack a tub, you can be sure there's no need to worry about moths because there isn't more than a cubic centimeter of air left inside that thing.

That's a lot of clothes. And I'm not quite done yet.

Like most corporations, the clothing makers in this country (and now worldwide, as the virus spread long ago) have discovered that with fiendishly effective planning, they can make sure most of their products are functionally useless to anyone shortly after their purchase. If they play their cards right and things last just long enough that people forget exactly when they bought them, no one will be surprised or even upset by their deterioration. It's a fine line to tread.

For instance, people have forgotten by now that cars used to last for decades without fatal problems-- you could easily be driving a car today from the '50s in roughly the same condition as a car from the '90s (I can personally vouch for the low quality of American cars from the '90s). Anyway, that's a separate rant.

As I packed away clothes, some of which M- never got a chance to wear, I saw things marked 9 months that were smaller than things marked 3-6 months, and on down the line. I mean, I expect shoes to vary a bit by maker-- I wear a size 13 in Nikes, Reeboks, and most dress shoes, but I can get by with a 12 in New Balance and some other more generously-sized shoes. With baby clothes, I'm talking about M- still wearing 3-9 months onesies, while we pack away 12-month-sized pants and shirts.

The stated size on clothes is nearly meaningless except in relation to other clothes of the exact same type made by that particular company. I say this because even within a single company, you can have absolutely no faith in the actual size of a piece of clothing or the way it will fit. This leaves people (like me 4 years ago) who have no idea what a baby looks like at a certain age, or what is appropriate for one to wear, to just guess at what they should buy for a gift and to be wrong most of the time. Out of guilt, the parents will put the kid in it once and take a picture, then it's off to a consignment shop at best, or a garbage dump in most cases.

The same happens often when parents themselves buy something and find out one maker prewashes clothes for a more accurate sizing gauge while most others do not, and some of them make clothes so primed to shrink to half their size at the slightest touch of moisture that I'm surprised boxes don't violently implode on loading docks across the country whenever it rains a little.

The worst of all wasted kids' clothes are the holiday or season-specific clothes. Granted, it may be cute to have a timely piece of clothing on a baby, but do you know how maddening it is to later have a perfectly good onesie sitting in the drawer unavailable for selection on laundry day just because it says, "Bee Mine" or "SomeBunny Loves Me"? I'll answer that rhetorical question for you-- it's quite maddening.

I can promise you that you and your child will not be greeted with quite the same amusement or adoration when people see the same whimsical clothing they loved so much earlier in the year out of that season. I can also promise you that your significant other will not appreciate your efforts to "Fight The Man" by taking her kid outside the house wearing a shirt with a kitten in a witch's hat popping out of a pumpkin anytime outside of October.

I saw pieces of clothing yesterday I would have thought were meant for dolls had I not seen them only lightly stretched across a much larger baby not that many months ago. I saw several shirts wider than they are long, and if you think I'm exaggerating, I encourage you to double-check the name of this blog and then be assured that I did in fact take out my tape measure so I could report to anyone who cares that at least one of these shirts was eight inches long and TEN AND A HALF INCHES wide from seam to seam. The visual effect of this differential is hard to capture in words, but unfortunately I don't have a picture for you because this particular shirt is currently gasping for breath somewhere in the middle of the aforementioned tub.

My answer to this problem is for more clothing manufacturers to remember that just like there is a finite number of customers for their products(hence the crappy quality of most merchandise), there is also a finite amount of space on this planet for useless products. Make more timeless clothing, more unisex clothing, and more clothing that allows for differently-shaped and -sized children, as well as the constant growth of said children.

Right now, the accommodation for this "startling phenomenon" is a niche market, catering to those who care, but it shows that it can be done. Someone even came up with a shoe that can expand to cross over (I think) two full shoe sizes, which means it's one pair taking the place of four. I saw it quite awhile ago so I don't have a link for you all, but if you're interested, I'm sure you may either already know of them or know where to find them.

I'm breaking off the end of this post into a new one for tomorrow, since this is already so long, but rest assured I'm spent and tomorrow's post is much more fun.

A conversation with J-: Momma's watchin' her stories

I figured since I published conversations with D- and with M-, I might as well be fair and do some conversations with J-. So consider this number one of an as-yet undetermined number.

I found this a fantastic example of our very makeshift style of parenting, while J- was watching TV and casually sharing pieces of her pretzels with M-, a bolder beggar than any terrier I know:

Me: (looking over just as M- is reaching for more pretzels from J-'s plate) Don't let her have any more-- she's still got some in her mouth.

J-: No, I haven't given her any in a few minutes, she should be fine now.

Me: No, J-, she has actual pieces of pretzel sticking out of her mouth. She's gonna need another minute...

J-: Aww, why'd you have to ruin my fun?

Me: With a choking baby?!?

J-: Yeah!

Disclaimer: Despite the implications of this conversation, I must state for the record that J- is almost always way more responsible than me. When it comes to the kids, anyway... not cleaning, maintenance, organization, or finances. There's a reason I'm the stay-at-home parent.

Disclaimer disclaimer: I realize the above disclaimer will still get me in trouble, so I'll further state for the record that J- is generally awesome and definitely my best friend. She's good at lots and lots of things, like cooking, teaching, and knowing what I'm thinking most of the time, but they're just not as amusing to me at the moment.

I don't like blue eggs and pain

Or, How do you like your eggs: scrambled, fried, or on your forehead?

It seems we have an epidemic at our house of late-- our kids have each developed swollen black and blue bumps on their foreheads. I can only guess that the cause is either some kind of viral infection or their shared habit of bombing around our house with reckless abandon until their faces hit something solid.

It's gruesome to watch these little skin balloons swell up like eggs before your eyes, and painful to see them healing so slowly, with each day bringing a totally different-looking bruise than the day before. The one common denominator for each day's bruise, however, is that it looks like you've thoroughly beaten your kids.

The reality is, of course, that the closest they get to (exasperated) beatings is only after they illegally run through the house for the 400,000th time and finally smash themselves badly enough to have your logic possibly start to sink in, when literally 5 minutes later they take off on their 400,001st run.

As bad as it is to have to comfort an injured child as if they hadn't just deliberately disobeyed you to obtain that injury, you quickly realize that beatings would have no effect anyway, given their willingness to head right back out to do the exact same thing that just caused them horrific pain.

Given their appearances at the time, I was reluctant to bring D- and M- to storytime at the library Monday, but I decided that I can't be the only person who's been in such a situation, and since I have nothing to hide, I took them anyway...

I think any of the moms who might have been thinking about actually talking to me changed their minds that day. Oh well.

Developments at our house, Vol. 1

Some developments at our house in the past day or so:

1. Last night, I offered M- a bottle of milk since she was trying to steal D-'s cup. She looked frustrated as she took a step back, shook her head, and then surprised herself by saying "No" in a very thoughtful way. Against my better judgment and future sanity with regards to this particular word, I praised her for speaking her mind.

This goes along with her saying "mo' " several times recently when signing for more, the dozen other words we got her to say later on last night (including "yeah", "car", "kitty", "shiny", "hurt", "sorry", [see #7 below]"dude", and "poopy"), and the ones she has been saying for awhile now (such as "daddy", "momma", the names of most of my family, "hi", "bye-bye", "doggy", "guy", "go", "wow", "uh-oh", and "nigh'-nigh' "). Unsurprisingly, I cannot get her to say any of these this morning.

2. D- has inexplicably taken to speaking in a 3-year-old's approximation of a southern accent. I would place it somewhere around Imaginary Tennessee.

3. Just as J- was finishing up changing M-'s diaper, M- suddenly flipped over, stood up, grabbed the old diaper, and ran across the room while shaking it vigorously. Was there Number 2? Oh yes, of course there was.

I never thought I'd say it, but thank god for constipation...

4. D- has decided that wearing camouflage pajamas requires him to repeatedly march with a mean face towards the TV, point at his reflection, shoot himself with screwdriver, and then fall down dead. I'm not sure where he learned this, but he may soon be joined by 20,000 more 3-year-olds seeking to put a stop to this menacing force.

5. M- discovered that tossing an aptly-named throw pillow on the floor provides her with a portable and comfy seat from which her feet only just touch the floor (if you can believe it). She also found out the painful way that on such an uneven surface, bouncing on one's bottom out of sheer joy at this discovery will cause one's head to hit the floor surprisingly hard almost as many times as one tries it.

6. I learned that a 1-year-old will actually struggle to find her brother hiding under a blanket right where he was sitting for the past half an hour, even when said brother is giggling uncontrollably. (She eventually found him, but only after walking around for several minutes calling him with her hands turned up in a "Where on Earth did he go?!" posture.)

7. J- learned that you never tell a baby she can't have the phone back immediately after hanging up on her aunt, because that baby will be bound by Baby Law to shriek once loudly and then head butt you in the mouth at full force.

Note: Here are the other volumes.

Eeeeeeeeee!!

Building on her success in signing for "more" to get what she wants, M- has moved on into attempts at speech, in a big way. When she's concerned we're not getting her 20-time-daily-feeding message, or when she wants to celebrate that we got her message, she will smile and say "Eeeee! Eeeeeee!!" (for "eat") as she steadily approaches us or the food source:
And in case you were wondering, yes, she does quite resemble a zombie repeating a single syllable as she toddles over, rocking from side to side in that "leave me alone, I'm still learning to walk" way that 1-year-olds do.

Meanwhile, J- and I are stuck watching in horror, feeling an oppressive wave of impending doom, knowing we may be destined to live the next year either in front of a high chair, allowing a child to feed herself from the floor (because that's where all food ends up when M-'s in charge of it), or strapping a feed bag to said baby's face and hoping Child Services isn't making surprise housecalls that day. It's a tough situation to be in, but I know I'll make the right call.

I'm just not sure which call that is at the moment.