Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Many things change when you become a parent:  your sleep schedule, your tolerance for smelling poop, and your hair color to name a few.  But the biggest change comes in the form of your possessions--the fact that you no longer have any.  The baby products take over your man-cave.  Trucks, dinosaurs, and Barbies litter the living room.  And, somehow, Lego blocks end up in your bedroom, right where you plop your feet down.  The truth is, once you have kids, you can't have nice things.

Why We Can't Have...

A Dog:  Because Acne Cream doesn't work like shampoo.





A Sports Car:  Because over-crowding and flying elbows are a problem...



...also, those stains.


A Laptop:  Because Q, A, S, and our kids are out of Ctrl.



A Yard-Toss Game:  Because after twenty minutes of trying to untangle your mess, I opted for scissors.



Puzzles:  Because Penguins shouldn't be skinned.



Potted Plants on the Floor:  Because not all trees should be climbed.




Fish:  Because the oil in croutons is deadly to them.


Nice Furniture:  Because teething.




Lamps:  Because you almost burned our house down.



Nice Clothes:  Because Ice Cream.



I wish this was the end of the post, but I have a solid seven-years worth of pictures I could comb through for more material.  Also, I doubt the kids are done destroying things. 

Don't Eat Acne Cream. (Poison Control)



At least I made it through two kids without having to call Poison Control.  With Libby's love of all things that can fit into her mouth, I'm surprised it took this long for me to make a call.  The whole ordeal ran the gamut of emotions from frustration, to fear, and then thankfully, to funny.

Frustration:  It begins with noticing that your 18-month old has drug something out of its proper place (yet again) and smeared it all over the floor (see Exhibit A).  This often happens with the contents of her diaper and while that isn't what happened this time, it was, nonetheless, frustrating.

 Exhibit "A"

When I see a mess like this (which is to say "everyday"), my first reaction is to sigh and then let out a loud, "Who did this?", followed by "What were you thinking?" or "You need to clean this up!"  In this case, it was followed by a "What is this crap?

You!  Go get a towel.
 It was Acne Cream, and Leah was all to happy to point out that her sister was the culprit.  When I went to get Libby, I found this:

Please tell me that's powdered donut all over your shirt.
This is only half of the story.  This picture was taken after I had wiped the cream from her mouth.  At the time, I wasn't thinking I needed to take a picture, I was thinking I needed to read the acne cream label--so I did.  And then, I found the poison warning.

Fear:  That's when it kicks in.  Your mind starts asking a hundred questions.   How bad is this stuff?  How much time do I have?  Did she actually eat any?  Why isn't there a stupid poison control magnet on the fridge?

The phone book was no help.  After a five-second Google search, I had a number and was on the phone.  This is when your mind starts bombarding your parenting self-esteem.  "What kind of parent are you?"  How could you let your kid eat poison?"  "They'll trace your call and come arrest you for child endangerment!"  "They're going to take your kid away!"  Sometimes, that last one doesn't seem so bad.

I should have never registered with Insta-Trace.
 The Poison Control operator asked me a few questions and quickly alleviated my fears.  The active ingredient (Benzoyl Peroxide) is more of an irritant than a poison she said.  She told me to give the baby something to drink and not to worry.  That would have been great to know before my brain totally destroyed my self-esteem, but at least it was nothing serious.

Funny:  After all danger has passed, you can sit back, laugh and take some pictures for time immortal.  You can relish the fact that you called a 1-800 number and didn't have to be put on hold for twenty minutes.  You can spread the good word that Benzoyl Peroxide, regardless of the Poison Warning, is not to be feared.  But most likely, you'll stain stick that shirt, give the baby a bath, and lay her down for a nap because you're exhausted.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

O.O.P.S.

Some quick parenting advice:  If you're not familiar with the Omniscient and Omnipresent Parenting Style (O.O.P.S.), it's time to get with the program.  This is by far the best method for making sure your kids think twice before doing stupid stuff when you're not around.  Think about all the dumb things you did when your parents weren't around, now think about how the human race keeps getting dumber, now think about your kids.  Listen up!

The OOPS method is simple, but you need to implement it while your children are young.   So how does it work?  Like this...


Let your kid play outside unsupervised.  I've warned you before about the dangers of letting your children play outside, but I think that for the sake of the future good of your child, it's worth the risk.  Make sure that your toddler knows that he or she is alone.

In this example, I let our youngest daughter, Libby, play outside on the back deck.  While she was busy walking around and tripping every ten steps, I found a place to observe from.  It's important to make sure that you can't be seen.

Now you just sit back and wait.  Libby has a thing for food.  Actually, she has a thing for sticking anything she can grab into her mouth, e.g., pencils, toys, kitty litter.  Recently, she has been fascinated with the dirt in our potted palm trees.  We "solved" that problem by covering the dirt with rocks.  She wouldn't eat rocks, right?

Wrong!

So now rock-eating has become a problem.  Thanks to the O.O.P.S. technique, it won't be an issue for much longer.  All I had to do was lurk in the shadows until she went for the rock-tasting portion of her outside play; it didn't take long.

As soon as she picked up the rock and started going for the mouth, that's when I yelled.  "Libby!  Put down those rocks!"  Startled, she threw the rock down and turned around looking for the voice.  She couldn't see me so she went back to playing.  A couple minutes later, she's back to the rock-eating.  "Libby!  Put down those rocks!"  She kept looking for me, but without success.  At this point, I continued to let her play.  She avoided the rocks from then on.  Are you starting to see how it works?

This is a great tool for letting the older two play together outside.  Caleb is fond of his sister, well, fond of pushing her down and hitting her anyway.  She often comes in crying and babbling something about "Brubber do dis", but he always denies it.  With O.O.P.S., there is no denying it.  I saw it all.  Usually I can catch it and yell at him before anything happens, but sometimes he moves like Usain Bolt, and before I know it, Leah is on the ground.

Your children need to know that you are always watching them.  They need to know that even when they think they are alone, Momma or Daddy know what they are doing.  What better way to achieve this than for your child to hear your booming voice seemingly coming from the sky?  It's not quite the voice of God, but if it puts the fear of God in them, that's close enough.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Sleep With One Eye Open

One minute, she's sitting there coloring, enjoying some artistic time with her Daddy.  The next one...she's plotting.




Today's Parenting Tip:  Sleep With One Eye Open!

 

 



Monday, April 8, 2013

When We Were Kids

It's sad to think about how things have changed from when we were kids to how our children are growing up now.  I suppose every generation feels the same way as they ease into the older stages of life.  Whereas older generations would sit on their front porch, rocking back and forth, smoking a clove-laden pipe, complaining about how this world is going to hell-in-a-handbasket, our generation has the internet to voice our concerns; it's about as useful as front-porch venting.  Here are a few things that I'm sad my children will most likely never get to experience.

 #10.  Hand-written Plagiarism:  Back when I was in school, you couldn't just copy and paste straight from the internet.  You had to do honest research before you could just rip the words right from the author's pages.  It was easier to plagiarize if you had access to an encyclopedia, but if you wanted to steal from an actual book or peer-reviewed paper, you had to use the index.  Do today's children even know what an index is?  This generation will never appreciate how hard it used to be to cheat.




#9.  Phone Books:  Today, you can look up pretty much any number, instantly, online.  Not true twenty years ago.  If you wanted to call somebody, you needed to know their name.  If it was a common name, you had to know their address too.  Ordering a pizza wasn't as simple as clicking a button on the computer.  You had to look up the number and talk to an actual person.  To make things worse, some places only listed their number in particular phone books.  At any given time, we would have at least three different books and would most likely, need each one.  Plus, trying to figure out how the publisher listed the specific business you were looking for was like trying to figure out what women want.


#8.  Chalkboards:  When I was in school, we didn't have fancy, computerized, white-boards.  We had chalkboards.  And chalk.  If we were called to the board to write out a math problem, you were guaranteed to have chalk-covered clothes for the rest of the day. 

This, of course, assumes that you could actually find a piece of chalk that was long enough to write with.  Then there were the teachers with long fingernails.  Nothing gets the attention of a class like nails scraping a chalkboard.  Be thankful for your white-boards children.


 #7.  The Konami Code: Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Select, Start.  When I first started playing video games, we could only do two things, one of which was always jump.  The other was punch, kick, or shoot.  That's it.  The games were so hard, you had to put in a cheat code to beat most of them.  Plus, if we got stuck, we couldn't hop online for tips.  Now, controllers have more buttons than we have fingers and if a game is too hard, you can put it on easy.  You kids have it too easy.



#6.  Television Commercials:   The boy is good enough to use the television remotes (we have 3) now.  In fact, he usually has to set up the t.v. for Me-Maw when she comes over to watch them.  While this has given him much needed freedom and independence, the DVR has given him just as much frustration and impatience. 

He refuses to watch "Live TV" now.  If it's not pre-recorded, he's not watching.  He doesn't know how good he has it.  I've tried to explain to him before how his Momma and I had to watch commercials all the time when we were little and if we wanted to record something, we actually had to watch it while it was on.  This brings me to my next point...


#5.  Saturday Morning Cartoons:  Today, the kids have at least ten different channels dedicated solely to their demographic...and that's just on our basic programming level.  Growing up, we had six channels and two of them only came in if the sky was clear and you said your prayers.

 If that wasn't bad enough, we only had one chance to really watch cartoons--Saturday Mornings.  Sure, if you got up early enough on a school day, you could catch half an episode of He-Man, but the really good shows came on the weekend.

 Magically, it was easy to get up at 5:30 on those days and watch television until noon.  With the wide availability of cartoons now, I can't see how they can be nearly as meaningful.  To be fair, today's cartoons are more educational-based than the sword-wielding, muscular-Swede based toons of my younger days.

 #4.  High-Speed Danger:  Some of my favorite memories are those ones were my sister and I sat in the bed of Dad's truck, bouncing off the side walls as he zoomed down the highway at 60 miles an hour.  Thanks to the gub'ment, there are now laws in place that make this favorite pastime highly frowned upon.  Some even go so far as to call it illegal.  Next thing you know, they'll be requiring kids to wear helmets and knee pads when they ride bikes.  Ridiculous!


#3.  Getting an "F":  Our school system has implemented a new report card grading system.  Instead of the A, B, C, D, and F letters, they use a P (for "progressing towards requirement") and an M (for "meets requirement").  Useless. 

When we were kids, our parents knew exactly how well we were doing.  If you brought home A's and B's you'd get something nice.  C's meant you got a strict talking-to and D's and F's, well, let's just say if you brought one home, it would probably be the last time you did so.  Now, all I know is that my son is either doing the work they expect of him or he's trying to do it.  Very helpful.

#2.  Pay Phone Fun:  As pay-phones across the country disappear, so does an important male-bonding experience---prank phone calls from pay phones.  This was the thing to do after school.  I still remember walking home with my buddy Travis and stopping by the courthouse pay-phone near his mother's apartment.  This is where we raised some hell pranking local businesses and outstanding members of the community.

It may also be the source of breaking up a marriage.  See, we also used to call "900" numbers and try various 16-digit combinations.  I remember one day it actually worked.  We must have stayed on that phone for thirty minutes.  I fear that some husband out there had to explain a 30-minute phone call to his wife.  Now, kids can get online and do all kinds of weird crap for free.  Where's the fun in that?

#1.  Audio-Cassette Piracy:  It goes without saying that music today is nothing like music used to be; I said it anyway.  Over-produced, over-edited, and an over-saturated market leaves today's music widely available at best, and, well widely available at worst. 

When we were kids, we had limited options.  We couldn't download music instantly, we had to go to stores and purchase audio-cassette tapes--all of this under the eyes of censoring parents.   You didn't get to buy any quality music until you could drive to the store yourself. 

It wasn't as easy to share music either.  You couldn't just touch your phones together and swap playlists.  You had to playback the tape and record it onto another tape.  This leaves what is called a generational gap between the original tape and the recorded tape.  Much like generational gaps of today, the later generation wasn't anywhere near as good in quality.

Of course, I guess it doesn't do any good to complain about the next generation does it?