I Thought You Were the Babysitter

It's time to register Annabella for kindergarten. So, all three kids and I are driving over there in the pouring rain with birth certificate, immunization record, and proof of address in hand.

Annabella has had some unexpected anxiety about kindergarten. Before this visit, I suggested a few times that we register. Her response was a resounding, "No!" I didn't push it. This time I am able to intice her because we've been invited to hear a local children's musician who plays at the school every Friday.

In the morning I am anxious about this too. Kindergarten, already? If older friends of mine are to be believed, in a second I'll turn around and she'll be in her high school cap and gown. But right now we are running late and I am losing my temper this way and that as I tried to herd my cats out the door and into the car.

Note to self: A person should not be harried if they're on their way to hear a fortyish bearded man sit in a tiny chair and sing "I've been working on the railroad."

I assume that there's some sort of parking protocol, so in an effort not to have anyone yell at me I park a block away. In my rush to get out of the house, I didn't put raincoats or rainboots on any of us, despite the torrential downpour. It is not until I have everyone unbuckled from their car seat and ready to face the elements that I realize that my umbrella won't open.

"Shhhhhhhi," I say. I almost always manage to stop myself before finishing the word. Almost.

So, we're holding hands, tromping along like soaked rats by the time we see the crossing guard, a fortyish woman, who is already picking up her orange cones. I smile at her, but she doesn't smile back.

Finally we find our way to the kindergarten classroom, walking past door after door with cheery signs that say things like, "It's cool to be peanut-free."

The children's musician works his magic on Annabella, just as I expected. And my own anxieties are eased by the warmth of the kindergarten classroom and the joy emanating from the students and teachers alike. We head to the office to register. As I'm filling out the forms the crossing guard comes into the office.

She looks at me and says kindly, "There's a parking lot in the front that you can use."

"Thanks," I say.

"I saw you before, but I didn't say anything because I thought you were the babysitter."

For a brief second I'm flattered. I look young and spry enough to be a babysitter!

Then she adds, "Well, because you have no raincoats or an umbrella or anything. I just thought. Well, you know. Sometimes the babysitters, they don't know any better."

No Naps: A Play in 7 Acts

Last month I made the cocky assertion that Milo and Huck were going to stay in their cribs until they went to college.

I think they heard me.

On Sunday, September 2nd the unthinkable happened. It was naptime and the boys were quiet in their cribs. We assumed that this meant that they were sleeping, but what they were really doing was plotting.

We heard the door open with it's signature creak, a very different creak than the sound of Annabella's door. Then we heard little boy voices, conspiring voices. A few seconds later we saw Milo and Huck walking down the stairs. My heart sank into my stomach. Goodbye hours between 1pm and 3pm. Goodbye naptime.

Rather than bore you with all the specifics, I wrote this little play. Enjoy!

MONDAY - CONSEQUENCES

Me: I am going to take your trains away if you climb out of your cribs one more time.

Them: Here are my trains!

TUESDAY - BRIBERY

Me: If you stay in your crib we'll go to the pool and go swimming after naptime.

Them: I don't want to go swimming.

WEDNESDAY - NONCHALANCE

Me: If you get out of your crib I am not going to talk to you or look at you. I am just going to put you back in your crib and leave the room.

Them: Mommy, I'm out of my bed! Don't look at me!

THURSDAY - TRICKERY (AKA "QUIET TIME")

Me: You don't have to sleep. You just have to play quietly in your cribs.

Them: OK. (Five minutes of laughing and shouting later.) Hi Mom. We're done playing quietly in our cribs.

FRIDAY - LATER NAP

Me: Stay in your cribs. Stay in your cribs. Stay in your cribs. Please, stay in your cribs.

Them: No! No! No!

They finally fall asleep at 4:30 and when they're still sleeping at 6 pm I wake them up. They don't fall asleep until 9pm that night.

SATURDAY - NO NAP

Us: :(

Them: :(

SUNDAY - BABY GATE ON THEIR DOOR

Us: You can play quietly in your rooms and take a nap if you feel like it.

Them: (After an hour of play.) Mom! Dad! We're ready for you to let us out of our cage!

Us:

When a Mommy Chicken Loves a Daddy Chicken

In our house we like to multitask. Two babies at one time, three kids in diapers, two careers, etc.

So it should not come as a surprise that yesterday we tackled the issue of eating animals we love and reproduction in one interesting conversation with our children.

It all started when we decided to try a new organic farm stand that I'd heard about. Want to put off talking about the facts of life with your children? Skip the organic farm stand and just go to Whole Foods.

We picked out some strawberries and then watched the chickens for a while. When Milo started trying to scale the coop, we knew it was time to go. We paid for our strawberries and also bought a dozen eggs.

Annabella: Where do those eggs come from?

My daughter who eats eggs for breakfast twice a week and has become an expert at cracking them herself was looking intently at the egg carton. It's not that she's never seen eggs, she's just never seen them so close to chickens before.

Me: They come from the chickens.

Annabella: (Horrified) Are there baby chicks in those eggs?

Me: Um.

Marco: Only if they're fertilized.

Annabella: What does fertilizer mean?

Marco: Fertilized.

Huck: Fertilized!

Milo: Fertilized!

Annabella: What does fertilized mean?

At this point I would like to report that we had a long discussion about what happens when a daddy chicken loves a mommy chicken very much and fertilizes the egg, but if the daddy chicken is too tired or wants to watch "The Wire" on DVD instead then the egg isn't fertilized and we eat it for breakfast. But instead I answered her this way:

Me: Do you want some strawberries?

And that was enough to distract her, hopefully for several years.

How to potty train boys

Really, I'm asking you. How do you potty train a boy?

Hipster Parenting Meets TV Journalism

Found this Nightline interview about the "hipster parenting movement" on the Offsprung's hilarious Dadsmacker. It left me with some serious questions.

1. Why does the voice over make it sound like this is a story about getting SARS from school cafeteria food, large things falling from the sky, or some other way your children could be killed by something previously thought benign?

2. Did producers see the irony in the fact that the exact moment when Neal Pollack's wife Regina talks about trying to keep our children from being brainwashed by big corporations (read: Disney), the little ABC bug dances in the corner of the screen to get your attention?

3. I don't fully support a band that changes the words from "I Wanna Be Sedated" to "I Wanna Be Elated." (At the end of the day, I do want to be sedated and sometimes it would be nice if my kids were a little less elated or at the very least quieter about it.) However, the report seems to imply that it's better for kids to be sitting at home watching cartoons then it is for them to be jumping around singing and dancing with hundreds of other toddlers. I realize that's not a question.

4. Is there any stupider question you could ask a group of kids musicians than, "Do you guys have kids?"

5. The reporter says, "Not everyone is a fan of Pollack's book. New York Times columnist David Brooks calls him a 'whiny narcissist.'" To which I ask, is everyone a fan of David Brooks? I haven't read Pollack's book, but I did read Brooks' article and as far as I could tell it was basically encouraging parents to move out of the city so normal people wouldn't have to look at them.

6. Why is this interview with Pollack about this nebulous "hipster parenting movement" anyway? Why isn't it about something more socially interesting, like the fact that more fathers are insisting that they're jobs have flexible schedules so they can actually take their kids to the park?

Here's the thing. I kind of want to make fun of the parents they're talking about because they're way cooler than I am and it's always fun to mock people who are way cooler than you are. But I just can't get past mocking the report itself.

The Temperament Specialist

Last month I mentioned that I had an appointment with a temperament specialist because of Milo and Huck's biting behaviors. Someone commented that I didn't say whether the temperament specialist gave me any practical advice to stop the biting.

The answer is yes and no. She gave me lots of what I can only assume is practical advice in the form of a ream of paper handouts on different aspects of my children's personality. "I'm giving you a lot of homework!" she laughed. Even as she was handing over this stack of trees I think she and I both knew that I was not going to sit down and read those pages.

First, I should probably explain how temperament specialists work.

·       You fill out a long survey about your child's behavior.

·       You fill out a long survey about your impressions of your child's behavior.

·       You send in the forms and wait for several months while you agonize about how you were so distracted by your children when you were filling out the surveys that your answers are probably going to cause some expert to diagnose your child as having ADD.

The appointment, when it finally came, was without the boys. It was based solely on my answers to these questions (measured on a scale with other people's answers to these questions.) I believe in the power of numbers, but it's a little disconcerting to have someone who's never met my children say all kinds of things about them. Some of these things were true --"Your children are highly spirited." Some of them were not true--"Your children bite and hit because someone is invading their personal space." Huck is most likely to hit a baby strapped in a car seat or any other child who is ignoring him. He's so used to having his brother and sister up in his grill, that he hits when someone is not.

I am not an expert in temperament parenting, and if you are please use the comment section or my e-mail to correct me. Temperament specialists believe that children are born a certain way and although there's nothing you can do to change that temperament, you can change the way you react to certain behaviors. If you want to know more, search Google for "temperament parenting." I'm not going to say that I totally buy into this, just like I don't totally buy into attachment parenting or sleep-training, or any of the other parenting techniques that are slightly patronizing and always designed by someone who has never met my children.

Here's the good news. Both the biting and the hitting have miraculously waned. It's been weeks since either of the boys bit anyone (besides each other). And their biting of each other is now limited to one or two nibbles a day (coupled with some eye poking and face pinching.) How did this happen? They just grew out of it. This has been the case for every parenting challenge I've had in the past 4 years. You'd think by now I would have learned to wait it out. But as in most things, isn't "this too shall pass" just about the hardest pill to swallow?

When mom's mind wanders at circle time

So, you're happy. You know it. And you're face shows it, so presumably everyone else knows it. Then why should you have to clap you hands?

Is Violence Caused by Not Watching Television?

I recently met with a "temperament specialist" to discuss certain behaviors that Milo and Huck were exhibiting that caused me some stress. You know, like the biting and the hitting babies.

The temperament specialist did a very good job of explaining to me that these behaviors had to do with their "temperament" and there wasn't anything I'd done to make them this way. Likewise, she assured me that I had no business taking credit for what an easy child Annabella has been so far.

I nodded and took notes and when it became clear that she was ready to usher me out and replace me with her next patient, I threw out this theory I'd been mulling over in my head lately.

I said, "Do you think they would bite and hit each other less if they watched television?"

She gave me a blank stare, so I went on to explain that sure, many studies say that television can lead to more aggressive behavior. So, how to explain the fact that my kids, who are often the most aggressive children on the playground, don't watch any television at all?

They don't watch movies either. At least they don't watch them at our house. Annabella now goes on playdates with friends from school where she sometimes watches movies. It seems like an odd choice of an activity with a friend, but it's their choice and that's fine. When their kids come play at our house, we sometimes play "give Annabella's mommy a foot massage."

We have a great big TV, but it doesn't get any TV reception and Marco and I only use it to watch DVDs after the kids go to bed. In my opinion, anything worth watching on television these days is available at Netflix or iTunes.

The kids know we have a TV, but to them it's like Diet Coke or vodka tonics. OK for mommy and daddy, but not for them. 

Let me explain also that Marco is leading the no TV or movies charge, not me. I grew up on TV. I spent many early years imagining I was the brunette Brady cousin who came to live with the family when my parents got sucked into that same vortex as the Brady boys' real mom and the Brady girls' real dad. But Marco thinks that the kids will watch enough television in their lives and that as long as we can control it now, we should.

The simple fact is that he feels more strongly about them not watching television than I feel about them watching television, so he wins.

It should also be noted that I spend many hours of the day working in a little office above our garage while other people are helping to care for my children. If I didn't have that break, I don't know if I would feel the same way I do about television. Moms, dads, you do what you have to do, right?

And finally I know that because I have three children very close in age, they can entertain each other for long periods of time, without the television. Sometimes that entertaining happens to come in the form of hitting and biting. And this brings me to the point I was making to the temperament specialist. Are you following all this? I told you I grew up on television, people.

So, I asked her, "Could it be that violence is caused by not watching television?"

She was quick to point out that my children's behavior wasn't violence. (Moms of babies that Huck has hit at the park might disagree.) And she said I could make up my own decision about whether or not my children watched television, but she hadn't read any studies that said it was necessarily good for them.

I know my kids won't be TV-free forever. Nor will they be Internet-free. And as much as I love technology, a small part of me wishes they would be, for no other reason than I could continue to blog about them for the rest of my life.

Happy Daylight Savings Time

Some people's favorite holiday is Christmas. For others, it's Halloween. My favorite holiday is Daylight Savings, the spring forward kind.

This is the best holiday ever invented. I like it so much that I want to send out cards to honor it. I want to give people meaningless presents. I want to decorate my house in gaudy lights that say, "Daylight Savings Time was created to give me an extra hour of sleep in the morning." I want to leave these lights on all day long just so people know that Daylight Savings Time was designed to honor me and energy conservation is merely an unrelated bonus.

Why do I love Daylight Savings Time?

As you might remember from last year at this time our boys weren't sleeping that well. But then we miraculously sprung forward, which made 6 AM the new 5 AM and pulled me back from the brink of insanity. Back then I credited the overnight diapers, but no longer.

You see, my boys have these pesky internal clocks that seem to tell them to wake up at the exact same time each day. We tried to put them to bed later. We tried to put them to bed earlier. We tried blackout shades and sensory deprivation tanks. It is always the same and it is always too early.

Since Sunday morning we've gotten a reprieve. It is absolutely amazing to wake to our boys talking in the next room and to look at my watch and see that it's 6:02 AM, instead of 5:02 AM.

Naysayers, do not tell me this will pass. Do not tell me they will adjust to the difference, just like they did last year. Ruining this holiday for me would be worse than when my 6th grade boyfriend didn't get me anything for Valentine's Day because he told me that the holiday was created by Hallmark.

I think we should spring forward every month. Who's with me?

The Benefits of Eating Dinner Together

Recent studies have shown that the children of families who eat dinner together will be healthier, smarter, less likely to be depressed, less likely to do drugs, less likely to be sexually active as teenagers, more likely to become President of the United States, less likely to become a prostitute, more likely to become Donald Trump, and less likely to die, ever. Or something like that.

Our family has tried this so-called "eating dinner together" and I'm here to tell you that parents of families who eat dinner together when their children are 4, 2, and 2 are much more likely to go crazy and much less likely to stay married.

So, for now we compromise. We all sit down together at the table at 5 o'clock, but instead of trying to eat, Marco and I play defense. We keep our boys from climbing on the table and standing in their dinner plates while simultaneously trying to encourage them to eat more than just grapes. We do our best not to ignore Annabella, lest she suddenly realize that she is not the squeaky wheel in the house, which inevitably leads her to do something squeaky. We do not attempt to have adult conversation.

The kids are in bed at 7 and that's when we sit down to eat. And we hardly ever throw food at each other.