Don't Let Your Kids Play Outside

This is what happens when kids are allowed to play outside:



I think what the mother means when she says "play outside" is "riding scooters in the street".  And when she says "I was watching the whole time", I think she means to say, "I was inside drinking and watching Lifetime."

What was she thinking letting her kids play outside in the first place?  Apparently, she's never seen an episode of Without A Trace.  The outside world is a scary place lady.  It's full of sexual predators, drug dealers, and politicians.

Kids don't need exercise and fresh air.  They belong indoors, away from sunlight, and plugged into some source of constant stimulation.   Each child should own at least two video gaming systems and either a desktop or laptop computer.  Desktops are preferred as laptops can be taken outdoors.

This will help cure your child's desire to play outside.  If he shows an interest in playing sports outside with the neighbor kids, you're in luck.  There are numerous sports games available, in fact, there are two or three new ones released every year. "But my kid wants to ride his skateboard" you say.  No problem, between the Tony Hawk franchise and Skate series of games, your child will be more interested in pulling off physically impossible moves indoors than moving physically outdoors.

Perfect parenting at its best.

The television is ideal for younger children who are easily entertained by bright colors, talking animals, and funny noises.  So what if your child never learns how to swing or ride a bike.  Those skills are only useful for a small period of time.  Most people stop riding bikes when they learn to drive and swinging is something completely different when you get older.  As a good parent, you should teach your child a skill they can use for life, i.e., watching television.

Eventually, your child may decide that sitting alone on the couch watching t.v. isn't enough.  Older kids crave social interaction with their peers.  Thankfully, there are cell phones.

Cell phones, if used wisely, can be a great tool for keeping your children indoors.  The danger lies in its portability.  If you can keep your tween confined to the couch, checking Facebook all day, then congratulations.  Beware though, the second your child walks outside to start texting, you run the risk of them deciding to ride their bikes.  Better to skip the anti-glare screen so using their phone in the sun is impossible.

The addition of sugary drinks is a classic parenting move.

I'm just thankful for the arresting officers' quick response that insured this mother was taken to jail immediately.  There's no need to waste time verifying the neighbor's complaint or asking the mother for her side of the story.    She was obviously just a concerned citizen whose quick decision may be the best thing for these children.  Slap those cuffs on and hash it out "downtown".

Hauling Momma off to jail in that pretty pink basket was the hard part.

A little parenting advice for all you concerned Mommies and Daddies out there:  If you want to avoid an 18 hour sleep over in a jail cell, it's best to keep your kids on lock down in your house.

You're not trying to keep burglars out, you're trying to keep children in.

Butterfly In The Sky

One of my favorite parenting jobs is to walk my son out to the bus each morning.  We have a short stretch to walk, but the conversations we have on this road are amazing.  We've discussed just about everything on this path from morality to banality and religion to science.  But that's not what I want to talk about.  While this road has helped to nurture the life of my son and myself, it has also taken the lives of many who walk in its way: worms, grasshoppers, snakes, and most recently, a butterfly.

This trail leads to certain death.......and Bus #24.

Every morning as we begin our sleepy-eyed walk to the end of the driveway, we encounter death.  Whenever we see a grasshopper, face-down in the gravel with twitching legs, it's a good time to talk about the circle of life.  It's also a good time to discuss the idea of "Mercy Killings".  Those shoes aren't going to break themselves in.  Stomp away boy.

On the 4 p.m. walk back to our house we encountered a butterfly with a broken wing.  In my head I'm thinking, kill it and move on, but our son hasn't had a chance to use the "Critter Carrier" he received for his birthday, so I figure now's the time.  Amazingly, he was willing to not only pick this gimp-winged creature up, but he allowed it to run along his hand for a good ten minutes.  He has some sensory issues and doesn't like to touch anything besides his trusty hanger, so I was proud of him.

He's giving this butterfly the finger.

Our oldest daughter was having fun watching brother hold the butterfly.  She's usually the adventurous one, but she refused to let the former caterpillar crawl across her appendages.  Things were going well until it was time to stick this critter in it's carrier.  That's when the fighting began.

Caleb (in English):  "It's mine!"

Leah (whatever language she speaks):  "No, my fudderfy!" 

Daddy had a long day and wasn't about to listen to opening arguments regarding who should have full custody of the soon-to-be-dead animal.  Sometimes, it's best to just rip the band-aid right off.  "Leah, the butterfly is Caleb's."

She took it pretty well:

Years of playing in metal bands have given me an amazing tolerance for high-pitched squeals.

It's better this way; she doesn't have time to get attached.  She won't be as sad tomorrow morning when she finds out I slipped into brother's room in the middle of the night, stole the butterfly, and curb-stomped it outside in the pale moon light.  Mercy Killing.

Baby's First B-Day.

It's a tough question to answer, but one that many parents agonize over as their baby approaches twelve months on the outside.

"What gift do I get for the baby's first birthday?"

The correct answer is "Nothing".  Your baby isn't going to remember it, let alone appreciate it or even be able to express his/her gratitude.  My best advice is to skip gifts for the first three or four years of your child's life, this includes Christmas as well as birthdays.  Save that money up for when they get older and start asking for the expensive crap.  Plus, if you don't get them anything on these special days, they won't be disappointed when you only get them that one pricey gift in the future.

If you still feel the need to get your kids something those first few years, there is one way to get around spending a lot of money, i.e., borrow your gifts from the library.  If you read to your kids a lot, they'll love getting new books for gifts.  Plus, libraries are a great source for music, movies, and games too.  Just check a few books out of the library, wrap them up and let them read for a week or two.  When you return the books, more than likely, your kid won't even notice they're gone.  If they ask, just say it's lost.

She's excited about her birthday gift. It's due back on Thursday.

I realize this answer is unacceptable to many parents and you're going to want to get your kid some thing they can keep for their first birthday.  So here are a few ideas to consider.

The gift you get for your child's first birthday depends on how many children you have.  For example, the first child usually gets loaded down with gifts from doting grandparents.  This factor is doubled if it is the first grandchild in the family.  If this is your situation, you won't have much room left in your house for anything you buy.  Best to let the grandparents shower your kid with love, they don't have many birthdays left anyway right?  You just worry about splurging on a nice cake, Themed Candy, and some quality food.

If it's your second child's 1st birthday, it's going to be harder to make it special.  Babies are old news in the family now and everybody is feeling buyer's remorse over all that stuff they bought for the first kid.  Most of it probably ended up in some stupid yard sale, but whatever is left, you need to re-wrap and re-gift.  Your oldest hasn't played with it in a year or two and your 12-month old isn't going to know.  Not only have you saved money, but you've created a learning experience.  Your oldest will see his sibling playing with "MY TOYS" and when he hits her to take it back, you can teach about sharing.

The baby will also be teaching. She'll teach you what happens the next time you steal her toy.

If it's your third (and final) child, I'd like to offer some perspective.  Here is our firstborn's B-day cake:

Notice how there is a nice background, his name is on it and there are at least six inedible things topping his cake, three of which are actual toys he can play with once he licks the icing off.  Now here is our oldest daughter's first birthday cake:

She still gets a nice cake, six inedible pieces, and her name on the cake, but she has to share the spotlight with her older brother.  Now here's our youngest's cake:

No name, not even a "Happy Birthday", no toy toppers, and it was bought on the way home to the party.  We can always Photoshop her name in later.  Is there an "Icing" font by any chance?

The more kids you have, the less attention they all get.  We have at least three albums full of all the pictures we've taken of our first child.  The second has one album in which many of the pictures are of her and her brother.  The third...well...at least there's Facebook.  No bulky albums and plenty of online storage.

So for the first birthday of our youngest child (one that is often lost in the shuffle), we're going to try giving the gift of attention.  At this point in her life she has hand-me-down clothes, hand-me-down toys, and nothing to show for it but bruises from an older sister that insists both the clothes and toys are hers.  If you want to make your child's first birthday special, don't buy them anything, just give them a little more thought and time out of your day.

I recommend buying your older kid a computer. They won't want to be bothered. The time you'd normally spend with them can now be focused on your youngest.

Update:  My sister-in-law, who happens to be awesome at artsy stuff,  just sent me this Photoshopped version of the baby's cake.  Nice job sis!

Chaos Required

This past weekend, my wife and I had ourselves a little getaway, partly to celebrate her birthday, but mostly to just get away from the chaos.  It's been too long since we last enjoyed the company of each other without having to submit to the demands of the three tyrants that actually run this house (five if you count the dog and cat).  It was while we were away from all the mayhem that I realized...I missed needed it.

Our home for the weekend was a newly built log cabin, tucked away in the woods, in southern Illinois.  While it's not exactly a glamorous location, it met our needs: we didn't want to waste time driving and we didn't want to have to lock an adjoining common room door.  The peace and quiet (and lack of internet) proved to be too much.

We wrongly assumed that we would be able to sleep in until around 10:30 or noon.  Turns out we couldn't sleep at all.  The excitement of knowing we wouldn't have to wake up at 6:30 to answer the requests for chocolate milk, pop-tarts, and turning on Dora was enough to keep us from actually getting any shut-eye.

I was amazed at how hard it was to lay there in bed and listen to nothing.  We're so used to hearing a few "Good Night"  calls from the baby or listening to the boy's feet thump across the wood floor on his way to get a glass of water.  I missed not hearing those middle-of-the-night sounds.

We can always count on our oldest daughter to sneak her way into our bedroom at some point in the night.  I missed not waking up to her warm little body snuggled between her mother and me.  We usually try to put her back in bed, but sometimes it's like she's a ninja.  Her stealth and cunning are only outmatched by her puppy-dog face and beauty.

Don't be fooled, that pretty, pink, back-pack is full of shurikens, a sai, and purple-berry lip gloss

Strangely enough, on the first night of vacation, we couldn't sleep.  It wasn't because of getting up in the middle of the night to feed a crying baby or having to put our daughter back in her own bed for the fourth time, it was because we didn't have to do these things.

There was a sense of anxiety all weekend long, a feeling that we should be doing something or that we had forgotten something.  It's very hard to sit and be still when your normal day consists of picking up after everybody, getting people on the right buses at the correct times, wiping butts, cleaning puke, and doing homework.

I had plenty of time to just sit and ponder everything and nothing, a rare treat at home. This place had the perfect atmosphere for amateur philosophers.  A love-seat rocking chair overlooking the pond and woods invited me to sit a spell and muse.

You sit here.

You look there.

You sit.  You look.  And then you think:

"Why do people say that they hate 'organized' sports?  Aren't all sports organized?   Why do baby pants have pockets?  Where's the baby?   Whatever happened to the Baha Men?  Can a fantasy football team name be funny without parodying a curse word or being sexual?  I think I hear the baby crying.  Why do all of my favorite t.v. shows get cancelled after the first season?  Why does my son watch so much t.v.?  Why does he have to act so much like me?  At least he has his mother's clear skin.  Thank God for passing on good genes.  Humans aren't the pinnacle of evolution at all, it must be cockroaches, they can survive anything.  Where is that crying baby sound coming from?  I like beer.  Yep, beer is good.

Then the wife comes outside and asks: "What are you doing"?

"Nothing".

At home, I usually look forward to five minutes of sitting in silence and staring at nature; it's a nice break.  On a vacation from children, it's not a break, it's the only thing to do.  It's hard to relax when there is nothing to relax from.  I've always agreed with the concept of yin-yang and how polar opposites give rise to each other.   Seemingly opposing ideas are not actually in opposition, but instead, they complement each other.  For this Daddy to relax, I need the crazy, running around all day nonsense that only my children (and sometimes my wife) can offer.  Chaos Required!

Lao Tsu was all about the Yin.

Household Cleaning Tips

It's time for some more household cleaning tips.  In a recent post I showed you how to make cleaning hardwood floors fun.  Now I want to share some advice that can save you some serious time.  It's so simple, yet few parents take advantage of it.  Here it is.

Rip those stupid cloth covers off.

 

Kids get car sick easily.  Even if your kids don't get motion sickness, they will spill drinks and/or food all over their clothes and seat.  What does this mean for you?  Well, it means you're going to be wrastlin' with a cover for about ten minutes.

The booster covers aren't too bad; they come off easy enough.  It's the convertible 3-in-1 seats with five-point harnesses you have to worry about.  When it comes to these contraptions, you're looking at a minimum of three eff-bombs to complete the task.  I don't know who designs these things, but it must have been the same woman that invented the bra hook, because they both take me ten minutes to take off.  Save yourself the embarrassment of cursing  in front of your children (and the subsequent explanation of bad words) and strip your seat down before they sit in it.

If you have taken my previous advice, then your kid should already be sitting at the dinner table sans shirt.  Great, but that's only half of the battle.  Wiping your kid down after a meal is easy, but what are you going to do about the plush cover that is now stained a nice bright orange with carrot purée?  How do you plan on getting those smashed peas out of the five-point harness crevices?

The answer is simple...remove the cover.  Your baby will either puke or poop (most likely both) in this chair.  I guarantee it.  You can either rip that cloth covering off now and save yourself some time or you can spend twenty minutes figuring out how to squeeze the harness latch through those tiny slots in the back of the chair.  Then you can spend another forty  minutes washing and drying it.  Then comes the hard part...putting it all back together.

No covers, no problems.  Wipe it down with a wet-wipe after every meal or better yet, let your dog lick the leftovers out of the chair.  A case could be made for the comfort level that a cushioned covering offers your little one as he or she dines.  I'd like to make the case that I want my kid to be as uncomfortable as I am at dinner time.  Why should my 3-year old (Leah) get to sit back in a nice plump seat that conforms nicely to her tiny hiny, while I'm stressing out about the boy not eating, the baby not chewing, and Leah feeding my "meal prepared in love" (chicken nuggets) to the dog?  It's not gonna happen.

Floor food is just the appetizer. Every dog knows the good stuff is in the baby's chair

We've covered food going into the body.  Now, let's talk about food leaving the body. If you don't know what this is, congratulations on getting your wife or baby mama to change all the diapers.  For the rest of you guys, this is a diaper changing pad.  For some reason, when you purchase these things, they come with a cloth cover that fits over it.  Why?  Nobody knows.

These things are just asking to be shat on.  Have you ever tried to scrub poop out of cloth?  It's not fun.  Your fingers already run the risk of coming  into contact with either poop or pee, anytime you're near this thing.   There's really no point in having a cloth cover laying there.  That's just one more tushy target that you're going to have to rip off and throw in the laundry.  Rip it off beforehand and just wipe the plastic down once or twice a month.

The time spent on removing, cleaning, and re-assembling these baby items can now be spent on more important things like managing your Fantasy Football team, creating memes, or napping.  I suppose you could focus that extra time and energy on teaching and developing your child, but then you run the risk of eventually home-schooling your kid.  You owe your kids a better life.

Yard Sale Weirdos

After ten years of working in the casino industry, I've met many interesting people. If one was so inclined, he or she could create a successful blog simply writing about all the pot-smoking, drug-dealing, underwear-flashing, peeing-in-public, drunkards that you meet; you could also talk about the customers. This past week has taught me that it's not only in the window-less, clock-less, dark corners of the gaming floor that these "interesting" people lurk. They have crawled across the beer-soaked carpet, through the casino's revolving door, and into their cars. They're driving around searching for the next big hit and they're looking in your yard. That's right, they're making the yard sale rounds and they know where you live.

Giant neon yellow signs attract crazies, like bug zappers attract flies. The only difference is that you can't shock weirdos with a sign.

I'm ready to close the doors on this baby factory. Three kids are enough; more than enough some days. My wife isn't completely sold on the idea yet.  I've told her many times that I don't care if she has another baby as long as the guy pays child support. Since coming to this decision, it only made sense to get rid of all our baby stuff: tubs, rockers, toys, and other pointless baby items to name a few.

The problem is motivation. We have an entire room in our basement dedicated to crap we'll either never use again or haven't used in three years. I hate yard sales as much as the next guy. They were cool when I was little, but now it's all work and little reward. While it'd be easier to pack it all up and give it to Goodwill, there's no motivation in it. The possibility that somebody might actually give me some money for all this junk is motivating.

Once we finally set a date for the sale, it was go time.  A week's worth of evenings spent sorting clothes and arranging knickknacks on tables was all it took to get ready.  Follow that up with three six-hour days spent outside waiting for potential customers and you have yourself primed to make a quick $100.  I figure it works out to somewhere around $3.57 an hour.

But, it's not about the money.  It's mainly about knowing that none of that stuff is coming back into my house.  But more importantly, it's about the people you meet and the stories you'll be able to tell later.  I'm not much of a talker, but the strangers that browse through my trash don't seem to know that.

Let's Talk

As a hardcore introvert, it amazes me that unknown faces can just walk up to other unknown faces and start speaking.  By speaking, I mean telling their life story.  There was one old dude that I actually didn't mind listening to.  He had the same sense of humor as my Dad and Grandpa, except his jokes were actually funny.  I learned all about the idiots he worked with, one of which turned on the machine that took his arm.   He told me about his family problems, none of which I can repeat here.  Let's just say it was "kinda racist".  He had me going when he told me about his wife's drinking problem.  Turns out she drank gas.  Turns out he was talking about his truck.  Turns out I resorted to my usual nodding and smiling response.  Works every time.

Then there's the creep that showed up during my lunch run.   I rounded up the kids in the van and sped off to town to pick up lunch for everybody.  You would think this to be an easy task, but when your mother-in-law wants Subway, your kids want Chicken Nuggets, and your Chalupa craving is acting up, you're going to be busy for awhile.  I expected to hear there was a lot of business while I was gone.  Nope.  Just one guy.  And here's what he wanted to talk about:

Weird Dude:  "I was at another yard sale and asked if they had any porno movies for sale.  They said 'No' so I asked if they wanted to make one.  They got mad."

My Wife's Response:

WTF?

Then he bought Dude, Where's My Car? and left.

Let's Haggle

Then you get the hagglers.  I hate haggling.  I would rather listen to the life stories of total strangers than argue over the price of my crap.  I'm no good at it.  It's not that I give in to easy, it's that I'm stubborn.  If I put one dollar on something, that means I want one dollar for it, not fifty cents.  I would rather give something away for free than give it to your cheap ass for fifty cents.  Logically, I know it's stupid to not make at least something, but it's not about the money.

It's about principles.  That little neon-green $1 sticker made it quite clear what I was expecting for my old, used up deck of cards.  I don't care if I replaced the 8 of diamonds with a card from another deck.  If you can't pony up your Washington, don't try to stick me with a Kennedy.

It began the first day.  With the first shopper.  I wanted ten dollars for this:

I even cleaned all the poop, puke, and petrified nuggets off

An Evenflo Five Point Harness Covertible car seat.  This thing costs around $60 brand new.  Of course, it's been used and that should warrant a slight price reduction.  I figured fifty dollars off was fair enough.  Not my customer though.  She figured $53 dollars off would be more reasonable.

Stingy Chick:  "Would you take seven dollars for this?"

I'm thinking, sure, I'll take seven dollars and then for another three, I'll let you take it home.

Me:  "No, it's ten."

I told you I wasn't good at haggling.

Don't try to low-ball me at 7:30 in the morning on the first day of a three-day yard sale.  I haven't even put all of my crap out in the yard and you're already hassling me over price.  Come back at 1:30 Saturday afternoon and we'll talk.  She gave me the ten dollars and I packed it up for her.

Then there are the people that love to tell you everything is marked too high for a yard sale.  These are the pros.  They have one of those fanny-pack coin-sorters and are ready to make it rain nickels and dimes all over your 25-cent table.  One woman argued with me over the price on every thing she brought to my table.  I finally told her there was no charge for anything.   She looked at me in shock and said she would gladly pay for it.  I just wanted her to take it and leave.  She insisted on paying me two dollars.

And then it happened...the ultimate haggle.  I had marked one of my wife's knickknacks with a $1 sticker.  Then I heard this come out of someone's mouth: "Would you take five pesos for this?"

WTF?  Did I just get haggled in Espanol?  Si, Senor.

5 pesos you say?  In other words, you want me to take 38 cents for this thing and then take another hit on the currency conversion charge leaving me with somewhere around 25 cents.  Did I fall for it?  You bet your ass.  That's a peso with a story to tell.

The five peso piece. It's like having thirteen nickels in one convenient nickel size.

So why do I tell you all this?  It has nothing to do with raising kids or heavy metal does it?  No.  But I tell you this for two reasons.  One, it's been a solid week since I last posted anything and I need to vent.  And two, I hope that you will learn to never have a sale of your own.  If you do, just remember it's more about the stories you'll be able to tell later than about the paltry money you'll make.

Going Green = Seeing Red

I told you it wasn't pretty.

Smart cars seem like a great idea, but the truth is they aren't nearly as Eco-friendly as the satchel-toting, pony-tail wearing hipster that conned you into buying it would have you believe.  In fact, you probably didn't even buy that highway death-trap.  (Have you ever seen a smart car crash?  It's not pretty.)  It was most likely given to you by some corporation in exchange for driving so many miles a week with a huge billboard plastered all over it.   Way to save the environment and sell out at the same time.  You used to be cool man.

I've never had a problem with smart cars until yesterday.  It's bad enough that I had to babysit my kids all day.  They started school on August 15th and since that day they have had exactly one full week of school.  This is due largely to "School Improvement Days" and holidays, or, as I like to call them, "HUGE SCAMS".  But, I'll rant about that another time.

I had just regained a smidgen of freedom from the past three months of Summer Servitude and now I'm back in my cell.  I wasn't about to spend the day at home pouring glasses of chocolate milk, altering the molecular composition of processed chicken, and breaking up bedroom border wars.  What's a guy to do?  Road trip to Grandma's!!!

This sign doesn't tell you that you'll spend the next five hours listening to how you're raising your kids the wrong way.

Whilst on this road trip, I found myself following one of these "cars" for a good 8 miles, 8 miles that happened to take about twenty minutes.  When I see an opportunity to daydream, I seize it.  The results of my on-the-road philosophical journey?  Smart cars are dumb.  You can squeeze two anorexic people in comfortably, but anybody with a weight over 130 is going to be cruising solo.  Top this off with a cargo area that accommodates one gallon of milk and a half loaf of bread and you have yourself a fancy paperweight.

The cars that clowns squeeze into aren't this small.

The only person saving any gas money is the grandma that's pedaling this hunk of plastic down the highway.  The two or three dollars she's saving driving it around are more than cancelled out by the ten to fifteen cars that speed up to get around her.  I'm not falling for it.  I'm not going to waste my wife's hard earned gas money just so you can save a couple of bucks.

I've never watched this, but I assume it's about some chick that works two jobs so her husband can stay home and play Call of Duty all day.

Vans were designed for breeding, not speeding.  Granted, I'd only have to get it up to about 60 or 65 to get around you, but those kinds of speed in a mini-van can blow a rod.  I'm also not about to put my children's safety at risk by speeding out into oncoming traffic, just so I can get to Gram-gram's house two minutes quicker.  To top it all off, that ad for American Insurance or Waste Disposal or whatever it was, only makes me want to completely boycott that company for advertising their product on such a crappy product.

The only way smart cars are going to help the environment is if everybody is cruising down the interstate at 45 miles an hour in one.  Until then, while you're decreasing your carbon footprint, you're increasing road rage and the carbon footprint of the rest of us.  Way to go hippie.  My advice to you conscious drivers pedaling around in these things is this:  Sell your car and buy a moped.  You'll still be able to carry the same amount of people and cargo and moped owners at least have some shred of dignity.  To those of you stuck behind these drivers, put on a good cd, reflect, and tailgate them 'til they rev it up to 55.