Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Tub Thumping

"It's bath time kids." 

My children hate hearing this as much as I hate hearing "Daddy, I'm kinda hungry."  If only they knew that I hated bath time just as much.  Honestly, I don't have much to complain about, I can't remember the last time I gave the kids a bath.  The boy takes showers now and the wife usually handles scrubbing the girls down.  The  cleaning, soaping, and scrubbing isn't so bad.  Sure, there is a little whining when you dump a bucket of water over their head, but getting the kids in (and out) of the tub is much worse.


The fun begins with trying to get your kids out of their filthy clothes.  Young children don't understand that pants and socks come off easier if you sit down to remove them.  Instead, they will stand erect, put their right foot on their left pant leg and perform some sort of tribal dance in hopes of the Denim Gods aiding them in their quest to remove los pantalones.

Eventually, the child will fail to please the Lords of Levi's and fall to the floor.  This is when they realize it would help to take their shoes off.  This breakthrough doesn't happen over night.  It took the boy until the ripe old age of five before he figured out that shoes should come off before pants.  The order is reversed for getting dressed, but we're still working on that.

Once the bottoms are done, it's time to move the party upstairs.  You'd think removing a shirt would be pretty straight forward.  You're wrong.  I'm not sure if there is scientific evidence to back up this theory, but here it its:  Raising a child's arms in the air and covering their eyes, flips some sort of "drunk" switch. They start swinging their arms around, knocking towels down, and running into the toilet.  Basically, everything ends up on the floor, except for their shirt.

 Once the madness of undressing is over, the real fun can begin.  But before you can start washing, rinsing, and repeating, the kids have to decide what color their bath water is going to be.


It doesn't matter what color it starts out as, the water will always be some shade of dirt by the time your kids are done.  With the water a bright neon yellow, or blue, or red, or a secondary color, or some sort of new color unknown to man that involves throwing the entire contents into the tub, it's time to make an even tougher choice.



 Which dissolving capsule do I choose?   One of the Serengeti animals?  An insect?  Creatures of the Ocean Deep?  It's tough having to make such important decisions at so young an age.    Now that the formalities are out of the way, you can actually start chipping away at the funk that has infested your children.




As I said before, washing isn't that bad.  You'll have to lay the law down when it comes to splashing, but watching your child freak-out when you pour water over their heads is quite enjoyable.  There are plenty of products available to make washing easier, but I say, sit back and enjoy tormenting your children a bit.  They've done it to you all day and payback is hell.  I should know because my parents warned me that one day I'd have kids just like me.  They were right.  And it's often hell.

Getting out of the tub is an adventure in itself.  From what I've seen, there are two methods of coaxing a child out of the tub.  One is to sit patiently on the toilet as you let the child sit or stand in the tub, shivering, while he watches the tub drain completely.  Why the boy prefers this method, I do not know.  The other is to crouch down like a professional baseball catcher and hold the towel open in the same fashion as a group of firefighters waiting for a high-rise jumper.   This is the girl's preferred exit.

There is no calm, in between.  Your child is either a sloth, making sure the water is completely gone lest he slip and thump his head, or a dare-devil, trying to set a new long-jump record from the top of the rim.  In spite of all the possible headaches that come from bathing, there is a silver lining.  Once the kids are cleaned and put into their pajamas, it's bedtime.







Thursday, February 21, 2013

Sign 'Em Up and Sort 'Em Out.

With so many kid activities available today, it's easy to become over-scheduled.  Instead of spending quality time at the dinner table, a family eats fast food on the way to karate practice, girl scouts, or any number of sporting events.  You have to find a healthy balance between getting your kids out of the house and enjoying family time together.  Sometimes, this means your kid will have to give up some activities, but how do you choose?

It depends on the kid and what you want them to get out of their extra curricular activities.  For example, we've signed our son up for just about everything that's available to him.  We want to give him the opportunity to try everything.  At the same time, we don't want to push him into doing something he doesn't want to do.  The only problem is, our son never wants to do everything.

Regardless of what activity we sign him up for, the first month of going to the events are met with cries of "I don't want to", "Why did you sign me up for this", and "You're ruining my life."  So, sometimes, your kid needs a little pushing.  We've always had him finish whatever he was enrolled in.  Usually this isn't a problem.  Soccer, basketball, and tee-ball only last for six to eight weeks.  Then we signed him up for Cub Scouts.  Cub Scouts never ends.  It just goes on and on and on.  And on.

With sports, we could just wait out the boy's constant complaining until the end of the season.  The only seasons in scouts are Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and they meet during all four of them.

We can't wait this one out.  But we still take him.  Why?  Because it's the one activity that we feel he actually needs.  Sure sports can help build coordination, something all children lack, but they don't offer him as many real-world skills and experiences like scouting does.

So we keep pushing.  Although the first two or three months were full of protesting, we took him and kept taking him.  He's starting to come out of his shell a little and he was even excited about going to the recent Pinewood Derby Race.  We couldn't believe it.  Our son.  Excited about something that didn't involve watching television.

If you're one of the thousands of parents that find their plate is too full, here's a breakdown of  fun kid activities to help you decide which to keep and which to ditch.

Extra Curriculars

There is no shortage of fun kids activities.  That can be a problem for busy parents.  Here's a quick pro and cons list of some of the activities that we've enrolled our children in.  Hopefully it can help you decide which ones to sign 'em up for and which ones to avoid.

#5.  Cub Scouts:  It's like a fraternity for little boys.

Pro:  It helps your child to become more social.  Con:  It means that I (an introvert) have to be more social.
  
Pro:  Your kid learns appropriate behavior, manners, and good-will.  Con:  Your boy will call you out on it when you don't exhibit these qualities yourself.   

Pro:  Your kid gets to go on cool camping trips.  Con:  If you've never heard about anything bad happening on scout trips, then I won't ruin it for you.  I do, however, strongly recommend that you tag along.







#4.  Tumbling:  You pay another person to let your kid roll around on their floor.

Pro:  Your little girl will love dressing up in the outfits.  Con:  Them outfits ain't cheap. 

Pro:  Most tumbling operations won't let you stay and watch as it distracts the girls.  Con:  You could be paying $30 a month just so your kid can do somersaults every week and nothing else.  Then again, it's like having a reliable babysitter each week so who cares? 

Pro:  Your child becomes close to the other girls in her class.  Con:  Sometimes that closeness happens when they practice spin-kick-twirls.  Bloody nose.







#3.  Basketball:  Because somebody thought it was a good idea to have 3 foot 9 inch kids aim for a 10 foot tall hoop.

Pro:  Learn eye-hand coordination through passing, dribbling, and rebounding.  Con:  Passing, dribbling, and rebounding often end with jammed fingers. 

Pro:  Develop aim and upper-body strength by shooting free-throws.  Con:  If your kid actually gets the ball to hit the rim, it will bounce back and hit them in the face.  Bloody nose.   

Pro:  Lots of exercise like running and jumping.  Con:  White kids can't jump.









#2.  Soccer:  The most popular sport for kids that aren't good at sports.

Pro:  You get to play indoors when the weather's bad.  Con:  The indoor arena smells like sweaty balls.   

Pro:  Kids can learn teamwork.  Con:  The fastest kid hogs the ball while the others just run around chasing after. 

Pro:  Kids learn eye-foot coordination.  Con:  Your kid is going to trip over the ball and start pulling up grass more than he kicks, passes, or scores.



#1.  Tee-Ball:  I've written to some extent about t-ball and participation trophies already.

Pro: It gets your kid outdoors.  Con: It's the middle of summer and you're outdoors.  I don't know about your park, but at ours, none of the t-ball diamonds have shade. 

Pro:  Your kid gets to wear a sweet uniform.  Con:  Part of that uniform involves stirrup socks which you'll have to wrangle your child into.   

Pro:  Your kid can get some exercise.  Con:  If your child isn't pitching or catching,  he will be sitting (not exercise) and digging in the infield dirt or pulling out the outfield grass.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Brown-Noser

Disposable baby diapers are wonderful.  They're cheap, handy, and easy to dispose of.  In fact, they're so easy to dispose of that even a baby can do it.  And, unless you duct tape that diaper to her, your baby will dispose of it.

We almost made it halfway through the month before something gross happened.  This is the price you pay for two weeks without poop, pee, or puke related mayhem.   I'm no rocket surgeon or neuro-scientist, but babies must be born without olfactory perception.  That's the only way I can understand how a child can blow-out her diaper, smear it all over her nose and continue smiling.  It must have been a parent that came up with the phrase "shit-eating grin".





Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Most Annoying 3-Year Old In The World