Tag Archives: parenting

Is the sibling who was mean to you in this courtroom today?

One of the joys of parenting growing boys is watching them mature to into playing cooperatively together. Seeing them sit and help each other tear apart a LEGO set I spent hours helping them build, so they can mix the pieces irretrievably among the remains of other disassembled LEGO sets I invested hours in, is pure gold.

Seeing any two of them sit shoulder to shoulder in the chair, quietly intent upon the cartoon on TV is a gratifying experience. Even when Big Brother helps Buster through one of the difficult parts of a video game, though I’m kind of supposed to feel bad for letting them play so many video games, I get a feeling of pride for my boys’ desire to be friends with each other.

two mintes of peace

The boys are playing nicely together. Grab the camera!

Of course, nothing gold can stay.

The giggly roughhousing turns sour when somebody catches an elbow. There’s one, insignificant LEGO piece that every boy needs to have in his hand right now, though it’s only value to him is that his brother wants it. Big Brother helps Buster with his game to such lengths that his assistance has turned into a tug-o-war over the tablet.

Peace between young brothers is so gratifying because it is so fleeting.

tackle

It’s always fun until somebody loses a temper.

The two most common phrases in my house are currently, “I’m telling!” and “[Brother’s name] is mean!”

Even Big Man, who can’t pronounce any of the words, lets me know when one of his brothers is mean, and leaves no doubt about who is the culprit.

I most often overhear “I’m telling!” from the next room, but I have to look accusations of meanness right in the eye. It’s not always easy to do with a straight face.

It gets a little tiresome having to hear about mean people several times a day, every day. I’d like to hear about nice people every once in a while, but who notices, much less mentions, when his brother is nice?

Last time Buster came to me to file a meanness complaint against his big brother, I let out my exasperation with their perpetual denouncements. “I know, I know,” I told him. “Everybody’s mean.”

He shook his head. “Everybody not mean.” He held up a solitary finger. “Only one mean.”

“Who?” I asked.

He turned his little, bony finger across the room toward Big Brother. “That one,” he said in his best voice of condemnation. “That one mean.”

At least he didn’t call him stupid, that time. Three-year-olds love the word stupid. It’s their first insult, and insults and brothers go together like farts and giggles. Stupid is not a nice word, though, so we’re trying to get him to call his brother intellectually challenged instead. It will buy some time while he learns to pronounce it.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue acting like we’re listening to all the pleas and accusations that come running to us. In between, we’ll enjoy those fleeting flecks of gold that sparkle when brothers are best friends.

I’ll return your call as soon as the baby gives me my phone back

We’ve gone nearly two weeks without losing the TV remote. At first glance, this would seem good fortune. But it may be merely that the biggest culprit has moved on to hiding other things.

I’ve never owned a cell phone. Someday society will force a cell phone upon me, but I’m trying to hold out at least until 50, when age may make me less embarrassing to my family as I proudly wield my new, operator-assisted Jitterbug.

Jitterbug

Easy-to-read buttons will make it simple for me to phone customer service and complain about people calling me.

In these days when a reliable cell phone is a higher priority to most humans than a reliable liver, I am able to exist without one only because I have become a singularly unimportant and disagreeable person, so no one needs or wants to call me.

I have a home phone line. It is mostly used by telemarketers; they don’t discriminate against the useless or the surly. Occasionally, I use it to expedite my affairs, but mostly it’s just a tease for telemarketers.

Unlike his father, Big Man loves talking on the phone, even when he is talking to dial tone. He demands the phone any time someone has it in hand and screams bloody murder if he’s left out of a conversation. When he gets his hands on it, he walks around the house with the phone resting on his shoulder, oozing happy baby talk to the spirit of Alexander Graham Bell.

What? No smart phone?

His love of phones dates back to his childhood.

He knows more about using the phone than his father does. One day he changed the ring tone so it played Für Elise. Who knew it could do that?

We used to have two cordless phone sets. For the past few weeks, we’ve had one. The one that isn’t mostly broken disappeared. Rather, it was taken. Big Man climbed up the bar stool next to the counter, grabbed the phone from its dock, and scampered off with it.

That’s the last anyone saw of it. Now, we’re left with the one containing an unreliable battery. And the baby hasn’t even taught me if this one can play music when it rings.

I’ve searched his normal hiding spots for the good phone, not because I’m missing important calls, but because I hate to lose things, especially the less-broken versions of things. My wife pointed out Big Man’s abbreviated height. “It could only be in so many places,” she concluded.

And I’ve looked in all of them.

what's in this hole?

No, it’s not in your stash between the love seat and the lamp post. I already looked there.

I asked Big Man where he put it. He hid his guilt behind the excuse of not being able to speak English yet, but he gave me a little smile that said, “I’m sure a cookie would help me remember.”

Nuts to cookies! I know when I’m being played.

I don’t think he remembers where he put it. He’s moved on to Mommy’s iPhone now. Yesterday, he snatched it from her purse and purged her calendar. Mommy’s life is written in that calendar, or was.

That puts it into perspective for me. Poor Mommy has no idea where she’s supposed to be. I just have one fewer phone not to answer. I guess I made out pretty good.

The children’s menu cut & paste game

Whenever we take the kids out to eat, I feel like I’m playing a game of culinary Tetris, rearranging the meals to fit the appetites of children with varying tastes. If Big Brother isn’t going to eat the fries that come with his cheeseburger, that means Buster and I can share them, which means Buster will only want half his macaroni and cheese, so if I eat half Buster’s mac & cheese, and half of Big Brother’s fries, then I don’t really have to order a meal for myself. But will there be enough left over for Big Man’s burgeoning appetite?

Kids have no conscience when it comes to wasting food, or the money that went to pay for it. As the one who has to make the money cover all our needs, I have a slightly different attitude.

Restaurants seem to have perfected the art of sizing every kid’s meal to be the perfect amount of food for 1.5 children, priced accordingly. This is surely the unconscious factor in our decision to have a third child. Now, all we have to do is work on getting them to agree on two meals to split three ways.

Not how it was meant to be used

“Let me know when you figure out the economics of feeding me. I’ll just be right here under this high chair.”

Playing the mix-n-match restaurant game is even more difficult on vacation. The chicken strips in a strange eatery may differ slightly from home-town cooking, throwing the entire table into rebellion. The serving sizes are a wildcard, and the prices are sure to be higher. God forbid it’s one of the fancy-pants joints that cuts their fries on site or has a notion that pizza is something that should be reinvented.

It is especially difficult when Daddy can’t read. This happened on our most recent visit to Washington D.C. So full of himself at finding a burger joint amidst the upscale restaurants, in which feed himself and the two older boys, Daddy decided the menu said what he wanted it to say, rather than what it said.

Using his best gastronomic puzzle-solving skills, Daddy deftly planned out the purchase that would feed all three perfectly, and for only about $12. He confidently approached the counter and ordered the cheeseburger with fries and the macaroni and cheese. He was met with a blank stare. After an awkward moment, the young cashier explained, “We don’t have macaroni and cheese.”

“Of course you do,” Daddy remonstrated. “It’s on the menu.”

The young lady screwed up her face. “There’s no macaroni and cheese on the menu.”

Daddy probably rolled his eyes as he grabbed a nearby menu and promptly pointed out the line that clearly indicated the availability of grilled cheese sandwiches. “Hmmm,” he hawed. “I could have sworn that said macaroni and cheese.”

It’s hard to be quite as deft about plan B when you’re on the spot.

Thirty minutes, and $29 later, they exited, carrying a doggie bag containing a completely untouched grilled cheese sandwich and nearly two full orders of leftover fries.

I guess Daddy’s brain went on vacation too.

Hay still smells good, but Daddy’s done with cows

For some strange reason, it smelled like a haymow on the second floor of my building yesterday. It’s not the kind of space that should smell like hay. Maybe somebody was just wearing an extra dose of Barnyard by Calvin Klein. Whatever the reason, it sent my mind reeling back to the 1970s.

The images in my memory were not ones of attempting to lug hay bales as big as myself, or of scratching up my arms on the rough edges of cut hay. They weren’t of getting blisters in the joints of my destined-for-office-work fingers from the friction of baler twine. They weren’t of trying to balance on a moving wagon while keeping out of the way of bigger kids who could actually heft the bales up onto the stack.

My memories were of building forts with bales in the mow; of playing hide and seek and tunneling between the stacks; of the hay smelling fun, not being the odor of sweat and hard work.

haymow diplomacy

Ah, those good old days! Making forts, hiding out, and negotiating international treaties in the wonderland of the haymow. It was good to be a kid. (Image: Ridson Tillery – US Farm Security Administration)

My wife once asked me if I regretted my children not having that kind of upbringing. I said no.

They’ll have much more opportunity in their suburban childhoods than I had in my rural one. They will have schools with more resources, and a wider variety of people with which to interact. They will miss out on some particular brands of fun, but they’ll miss much of that fun merely because it’s not the ‘70s anymore. Even in the country, it’s 2015, with 2015 rules and regulations.

A farm life would be good to teach them the value of hard work. It might teach them that you can smell bad and still walk tall, as long as you smell bad for a good reason, and only when necessary. It could teach them humility, as it did me when my job was to hold cows’ tails. Cows’ tails can get to be very – let’s call it grimy – and having to hold them tight can make a young dandy have to swallow a good portion of his pride.

All the cows are doin it

Even with a friend along to help talk to the cow into it, I still don’t want to do any more milking. (Image: John Vachon – US Farm Security Administration)

There can be many character benefits to a farm life, but I don’t want it for my boys. The selfish truth of the matter is I don’t want it for me, because if they lived on a farm, I’d have to live there too, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to start work at 4 a.m. and knock off after dark. I don’t want to carry blisters on my still perfect-office-worker fingers all through haying season. I don’t want to coerce milk from an animal who doesn’t feel like giving it up, or even one who does. I don’t want my livelihood held hostage by the weather or a far-away commodities market. And I never want to have to grab hold of another cow’s stinky, sticky, wet tail again.

I’ve decided the second floor of my building smelled more like a silo. Silos were always dark and damp inside. I never had any fun in a silo.