Entries Tagged 'being a parent' ↓

On a recent Saturday night, Lauren was at work and I let Allison stay up late with me on the couch.  As we watched the Graham Norton Show on BBC America, Allison took note of their English accents and wondered why they “sounded funny.”

I told her that the people on this show were from England so even though they speak the same language as us, they speak it with an English accent.  “That’s why they talked different than us in Mary Poppins too, because they were from England.”

“Right,” Allison said, processing it all. “They must sound that way because they’re from the future.”

Love that kid.

Can we talk penises for a minute?

Part of being the husband of a midwife means you’re pretty much piped in to every conceivable controversial issue that is in any way related to pregnancy, childbirth and parenting.  C-sections, homebirth, vaccines, co-sleeping, breast-feeding, best hemp strollers for hippies and of course, the pros and cons (mostly cons) of circumcision.  In the past seven years, beginning when we got pregnant with our first child who, at the time, might have been a boy, I swear I have talked more about foreskin than all the other years of my life combined.  So I feel fully qualified to get a few things off my chest right now.

For starters, can we just lay this on the table right off the bat: FORESKINS ARE WEIRD!!!

I say this, mind you, as the circumcised father of two uncircumcised sons.  That’s right we didn’t do it because, as I said, I married a midwife, and we’re about love and peace, not mutilation and being horrible wicked parents… at least that’s what the mommy blogs say.  And I fully accept that my narrow-minded appraisal of that floppy stuff on the tip of my sons’ winkies has everything to do with the fact that for the first twenty-eight years of my life, my only model for what a penis was“supposed to” look like was my own.  Sure sure, here and there, in the locker room for example, you couldn’t help but catch sight of other “examples.”  But either I was hanging out in predominantly Jewish gyms or else I just never looked closely enough to know for sure whether somebody, ya know, was or wasn’t.

I knew there was such a thing as circumcision, I wasn’t completely sheltered, but for the life of me, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around what an extra bit of skin would even look like.  In later years I guess I could have Googled the answer but, honestly, I didn’t care enough to risk someone walking up behind me while a penis was in close-up on my desktop.  My very first glimpse of an uncircumcised penis came the day my first son was born… and even then, you couldn’t really tell that anything was different because everything on an infant is always so wrinkled and out of proportion anyway.  It was only about a year later when the thing started retracting that I sat up and yelped, “Whoa, crap, is it SUPPOSED to do that?”

That’s right, I said it: my three-year-old’s penis creeps me the crap right out!

It’s not his fault, it’s just that, not ever having had access to the covered version myself, I have no idea how to advise him on such issues as, oh say, the relative strength and elasticity of his extra half-inch.  So when he starts yanking it back and forth in the bathtub, as little boys (and let’s face it, fully-grown men) are wont to do, I can only cringe because it sure as hell looks like he is less than a millimeter away from injuring himself in a way that I am frankly not drunk enough to deal with without freaking out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all the benefits of leaving your boy’s integrity in tact.  It makes intimate passion in later years something like a thousand times better.  Cutting it off supposedly impedes the early bonding process, which, hooked into the attachment parenting vibe is like totally unacceptable, man.  So whatever, I get it.  I’d never go back and change the decision we made. Go Team Foreskin!  Though when we were in the early days of the first pregnancy, I did ask an unabashedly loose friend, who had seen her fair share of junk over the years, whether she preferred one kind over the other.  I blame that damn Seinfeld episode where Elaine says the uncut have “no face, no personality.”  Not to worry though, my worldly friend assured me, she herself had been enjoying both flavors equally.  For years.  And if you can’t rely on the opinion of the promiscuous in situations like this, what can you rely on?

As he grows older, my son is not going to be able to rely much on me I’m afraid.  I can barely help him with his business now while everything is still normal and healthy looking, and where the worst problem I ever have to deal with is gritting my teeth as I help him remove a piece off fuzz that has somehow become, ya know, adhered.  But the minute he starts coming to me with smegma issues I swear to God and Ina May Gaskin I will slice him off with a c-section knife that was sterilized in Similac.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that, in addition to being the World’s Greatest Dad (and I’ve got the mug to prove it), I also qualify for the role of World’s Funnest Uncle**.  But as one comedian put it, there is a very thin line between “fun uncle” and “creepy uncle”… or words to that effect.  And few things define that line quite like a little game I played last night called, “Flapdoodle.”

Flapdoodle, according to its Amazon production description, is “a totally silly game for kids and families. Use your creativity and imagination to answer crazy questions and do silly stunts.” For each of these questions and stunts, you get to move forward a certain number of spaces.  List three things from the ocean that you would NEVER want on your sandwich (seaweed, algae and, let’s face it, oil) and you move ahead one space.  Use the back of a chair like a steering wheel and pretend you’re a motorcycle for 60 seconds, and congratulations, you just bumped up three spaces.

Now I’d say 95% of these questions and stunts would place any adult male safely into the category of “fun uncle.”  For instance, “In a rockstar voice, repeat the words WET RAIN and DRY LEAVES until the timer runs out.”  Perfect opportunity to elicit some giggles from my ten- and six-year-old nieces with my AC/DC and Metallica impressions.  Or how about pretending your two big toes are named Gus and Earl and you need to make them have a conversation about potato chips.  Fun Uncle GOLD.  But wait, then we get this card: “Close your eyes and have all the players line up in front of you.  Identify each player using only your sense of smell.”

(AGH! AGH! AGH!)

(WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!)

I’m sorry, but if my female niece, who stands perched precisely on the threshold of puberty and adolescence, goes home and tells her mom that “Uncle Brian was smelling me,” I’m guessing there won’t be any more sleepovers at the Hodges house.

Still, barring a couple cards that, while most definitely cute and harmless when played exclusively amongst 6- to 12-year-old girls, but which are borderline we-may-have-to-send-Dateline-to-check-out-this-guy’s-computer-history once you get a 30-year-old involved, it really is a fun game.

Especially for kids with the world’s funnest uncle.

**Excluding, of course, any and all uncles under the age of thirty who drive a convertible and are still in the amusing early stages of full blown alcoholism.

Jesse clearly has trouble with his hearing since, ya know, we have to tell him like ten times to go put on his pajamas and yet thirty minutes later he’s still just finally getting around to taking his socks off.  Yet somehow that boy’s ears can hone in on the precise frequency of a Mellow Yellow bottle opening on the other side of the house and it sets him off running: “Daddy, c’I haf some SO-DA???”  Wonder if that’s some kind of selective X-Man superpower?

I should come clean right off the bat.  I freakin’ LOVE Miley Cyrus.  I think her music is catchy.  I think her TV show is pretty damn hilarious.  I think she’s a cute kid and, if her performance a few weeks back on Dancing with the Stars is anything to go by, she’s going to be a smokin’ hot woman.  So I’m clearly coming from a bit of a biased standpoint here, but…

I can’t help but crack up at people who make fun of Miley Cyrus.  Well, let me clarify.  I kind of get people busting on her for her silly personal life trials, her controversial photo shoots, and that Twitter rap she did which embarrassed even ME vicariously.  But when it comes to her MUSIC, what is there to make fun of?  First of all, you’d really have to be made of stone not to AT LEAST tap your foot to the bubblegum pop beats of at least some of her songs.  (I’m looking at you “Ice Cream Freeze“).  But beyond that, guess what grownups, THESE SONGS AREN’T INTENDED FOR YOU!  Not sure if you’ve noticed, but Miley tends to get most of her airplay on a little station called Radio Disney.  Her target market is tweenage girls who are still too young to have discovered how to be musically pretentious.  So to mock and belittle the “overproduced, mindlessly peppy” music (which, by the way is earning her MILLIONS) is kind of like that loser sixth grader who made fun of Kindergartners for watching “Mister Roger’s Neighborhood.”  Of COURSE you think it’s stupid.  It’s intended for people HALF YOUR AGE!!!

So please, for the love of your own dignity, if you’re over the age of 25, leave Miley alone. LEAVE HER ALONE!!!

When you’re over at your aunt and uncle’s house, it is impolite to pull down your pants and pee all over the floor.

Last night, Allison and I finally sat down to wrap the presents we got for Lauren, Jesse and Max. I’m thinking she was a little bit punchy from a combination of being up late, a few extra Christmas cookies, plus the fact that I finally gave her carte blanche to work the tape dispenser. Either way, at one point she broke into a spontaneous rendition of Wham’s “Last Christmas.”

“How do you even know that song?” I asked, fairly positive that it didn’t exist in our iTunes Christmas shuffle.

“They play it on the bus,” she said before launching into another chorus.

Last Christmas… I gave you my heart.
The very next day… you gave it away.
Next year… I’m gonna give it to somebody special.

At which point she stopped singing, looked at me and said, “I know who that is.”

Assuming she meant she knew who sang the song I asked, “Oh yeah, who?”

“God and Jesus.”

That stopped me for a second. George Michael has been called a lot of things, but I imagine Lord and Creator of the universe is not one of them.

“God and Jesus sing this?” I asked.

“No, that’s who she’s going to give her heart to,” Allison clarified. (Apparently they play the Taylor Swift version on the bus) “Because God and Jesus are really special.”

That stopped me a second longer.

Applying what she understood about life, love and the world to this cheesy Christmas song, Allison knew that no matter how fickle other people could be with their affections, God and Jesus would never take her love for granted.

You all know the place I’ve recently come to regarding religion, but how can you argue with a faith like that? In churches all over America, Christians talk about having a childlike faith in God. But very few of them ever come to the place where Allison already is, where the only thing that matters is that God loves you and you love Him… no questions, no qualifying conditions, and no eternity of torture if you mess something up.

I was rendered speechless for the barest of instants before saying through a slightly tighter throat, “You’re right Allison. They are special. I think that is who she gave her heart to.”

No matter what your faith this Christmas, whether your reason for the season is Jesus, family or tradition, I hope you all experience this simple joy of loving and being loved. Whether it’s a spouse, a child, a close friend or an invisible man in the sky, I hope you all have somebody special to give your heart to, somebody who will keep it close to their own and never give it away.

Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth.

Allison and I have been reading “The Tale of Despereaux” before bed for the last few nights. First off, it’s an amazing book so far. I find I’M getting to the ends of chapters and saying to Allison, “You wanna read just one more?”

But the name of the human Princess in this book’s name is Pea. Which, when you’re reading visually, is a very cute name. Princess Pea. You can almost picture her, a tiny little girl, dressed in green, maybe sitting on a royal chair that looks like a pod. But when you’re reading it out loud to a kid who can’t really follow along with the words, she’s just hearing it phonetically, so she can’t keep a straight face every time an exchange happens like this:

“Her name,” said Despereaux, “is Pee.”
“What?”
“The person who loves me. Her name is Pee.”
“Nevermind her name. Did you allow her to touch you?”
“Yes sir,” said Despereaux, “I let Pee touch me. It felt good.”

Ask anyone with a four- to ten-year-old and they’ll tell you: Knock-Knock jokes are the bane of a parent’s existence.  I’ll take the three-year-old “why why why” phase any day over the Knock-Knock phase.

It’s not just that Knock-Knock jokes are inherently unfunny.  But because the setup is so dang simple, kids feel like it gives them free license to write their own material.  Which is basically the equivalent of somebody reading Harry Potter and thinking, “Hey, I like to read.  I could be a novelist.”  Or my personal favorite, a woman who told my wife that she could be a midwife because she watches A Baby Story every day.  So Allison will frequently come out with such gems as:

Knock-Knock.
Who’s there?
DVD.
DVD who?
DVD like the movies!

Knock-Knock
Who’s there?
The couch.
The couch who?
The couch that you sit on to watch TV!  Ha ha ha ha!

As a parent this really is a no win situation.  By laughing I encourage her to keep making lame attempts at humor.  By not laughing, I of course destroy every shred of her self-esteem and scar her for life, right?

On the other hand, the fact that they find such disproportionate levels of humor in something so insanely stupid can, in fact, make a parent’s job easier.  For the last two years I have been able to make both my kids laugh without fail using this very simple formula:

Q: What did (x) say to (y)?
A: You’re so silly because you’re a (y) and I’m an (x)!

Mind you, the punchline is always delivered in a frantic almost stuttering manner and punctuated with a heartfelt “Ba-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!”  But the effect is always the same: both my kids laughing hysterically at what essentially amounts to restating a question with the question itself.  Hopefully I’m not raising them to be TV pundits.

Q: What did Barack Obama say to the deficit?
A: Y-y-y-you’re so silly because because because you’re the deficit and and and and and and and I’m Barack Obama! Ba-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Roll your eyes all you want, but this little technique has come in quite handy on many a JC Penney portrait days after said children have been cooped up inside a car for an hour and then forced to sit in a chair and smile during what should be their nap time.

But as much as I pretend-complain here, the fact is I really do bring it on myself.  I recently introduced the Chicken Joke and its one truly funny manifestation to Allison:

Q: Why did the frog cross the road?
A: Because it was stapled to the chicken.

Now she simply substitutes any animal or inanimate object for “frog” and tells it like it’s a brand new and utterly freakin hi-larious joke.  And okay, the way she cracks up every single time is kind of adorable as hell.

We’re T-minus any day now for kid number three (boy number two), so I figure it’s about time to get this dormant blog fired up again with all those random musings about childhood, parenthood and randomhood that all three of you faithful readers have come to expect.  So without further ado:

RANDOM PARENTAL MUSINGS AS OF LATE:

Bibbity bobbity BOOM

I was watching Star Wars with Allison the other day.  Upon watching the Death Star obliterate Alderaan, she turns to me and says: “Where is the Princess going to live now?  I guess she’ll just have to marry someone with a house.”  I, of course, blame Disney.

Jesse is two and a half and has taken to playing with his penis pretty much non-stop.  I don’t want to necessarily scold him and lay the foundation for weird sexual hang-ups later in life (that’s what walking in on mommy and daddy mid-coitus is for).  On the other hand, with the way he yanks on that thing, and the fact that I can’t personally attest to the tactile strength and elasticity of foreskin, I don’t want him to, ya know, break anything… which, I imagine would affect his future sex life even more.  That’s why the phrase, “Only in your crib,” is uttered an estimated three hundred times per day in our house.  Because the fact is, he’s probably fine.  I just don’t want to see it.  This is why this standup bit is the funniest damn thing I’ve seen in months.  And as a side-but-related-note… even though I don’t doubt our decision not to circumcise, I just have to say: foreskins are freakin’ WEIRD.

Allison and I have been reading chapter books before bed.  We recently started “Ramona the Pest” which I thought would be great since Ramona, like Allison, is starting kindergarten.  Yeah, then on her first day she gets into trouble like five times and has at least three kids making fun of her.  Allison was psyched about kindergarten, but then you have jerks like Beverly Cleary making her ask, “Why was Ramona sad on her first day of school?”

I have not pooped by myself in about four months, which is coincidentally about how long it’s been since Jesse learned how to open doors.  I don’t know why he insists on joining me while I drop a load, but I’ve lost the will to fight him anymore.  Now I simply have fun with it. Like sticking my foot out so that Jesse, running at full speed and expecting the door to open all the way, plows into it head first.

Whereas we had all our girl names picked out a good three months before we were even engaged, Lauren and I have really had to struggle to eke out a boy’s name, preferably at least a couple days before they’re born.  We’ve been settled on Max for several months now.  At least I thought we were until the other night when Lauren announces that she’s freaked out about what we’ll name him if he comes out with red hair.  “Max just always struck me as a dark haired name,” she says.  In case you didn’t already know, both our kids have red hair, I have red hair, Lauren’s sister and grandmother have red hair, my entire paternal side of the family has red hair.  Recessive genes be damned, if we don’t have a redhead, I’ll be pretty freakin surprised… after which I’ll apparently be one of those parents who, in fact, did not pick out their kid’s name ahead of time.

I’ve discovered that no matter how cranky Jesse gets, or how hopped up on adrenaline he becomes, I can pretty much diffuse the situation and make him laugh by hurling a pillow full speed at his head.

I find having Jehovah’s Witnesses come to the door actually provides a good opportunity for discussing world cultures with a five-year-old and explaining how “some people don’t believe the same things we do.”

In the last couple months Jesse has mustered up the strength to open the refrigerator door.  In the last week he has mustered up the strength to lift and move his step-stool in order to reach the microwave.  Absolutely nothing in our house is safe anymore.

I had my first “there’s no such thing as monsters” talk with Allison before bed the other night.  Hearing her say, “Thanks, Dad,” at the end and then throwing her arms around my neck was, perhaps, the highlight of my entire summer.

Santa gave Jesse a Matchbox car ramp for Christmas.  Few things let me bond with my rambunctious son more than staying up until eleven o’clock on a Friday night, racing these things down the ramp over and over again, and busting a gut every time they crash into each other.