Uncool is the New Cool

Despite doing everything to blockade its arrival, my new status  slipped through the radar, surprising and as unwelcome as a bulging zit on your wedding day, seared onto every nuptial picture for life.


I was anointed into the Not Cool Mom Club. Entry was free and I don’t think I’m going to be allowed out for at least the next 15 years.  Membership is co-chaired by non-members Remi and Chad.  Eden should join the committee in six months or so.  Todd's membership was activated last year when he decided to grow his hair down to his shoulders.  No matter that he isn’t a mom.

Ignorance is bliss -- I thought I was still cool 

Me? Not a cool mom. I thought compared to my mom, the odds were stacked in my favor.  Except according to Remi, nothing is cool about your mom showing up to the bus stop with red Jockey grandma undies showing out of her pants, just shy of her ribs. Not cool to have hair like mine – thick, opinionated, frizzy -  in the morning and even less cool to wear it out "like that."  

Laughing too loud is not okay; it's a cacaphony of embarrassment for my kids.  Any attempt at athleticism on my part, even running, sends the kids into fits of mocking laughter.  Mom in a bikini? Permanently scarring, no beach big enough to hide from the monster on the sand.  Ultimate treasonous un-cool act – Mom giving Daddy a kiss or hug in public, gross and gnarly.

The kids have an expansive list chronicling my not-coolness.  Not cool to see your mom dancing at a Bar Mitzvah to Pitbull. Super un-cool to see your mom naked getting out of the shower.  Beyond not cool to hold hands anywhere within 100 yards of school, friend's house, town, bus stop, doctor's office, the Fresh Kills landfill or the bottom of the Atlantic.  Singing to myself or joining in to Nicki Minaj's Super Bass is a federal house offense and makes my kids mime the "gag me with a spoon" act behind my back.  They forget eyes have grown out of the back of my head (that's gotta count for some type of cool.)

Not cool to wear a tank top and reveal my not-so-recently shaved armpit. A written letter from our sleep away camper, "Please don't wear the dress you wore on Rookie Day to visiting day. It was super embarrassing and it looks like a dress for a 12 year old.  Not cool."  So not cool to ever touch your son's bed head hair or attempt to pat it down at the bus stop.  Also not cool to rush in to proffer a hug after he crashes, head first into a tree he was playing tag around.  Parental public emotion or sympathy directed at you -- a deadly un-cool.

Winning is losing.  No talking, touching, singing, dancing, laughing, hair combing, red underwear showing is winning according to the older duo.  Losing is literally that.  Losing all the wacky, funny, sensitive, crazy things that make me me is like taking the splatter out of a Jackson Pollack masterpiece, rendering it a very boring picture and in my case, a very dull mom.

The beginning of the end of cool

Eden is 5 ½, and I still have a minimum of six cool months left with her.  She still likes to be carried.  Hugs are welcomed affection not dangerous afflictions.  My lap is the best seat in the house.  Snuggles are mandatory not-marginalized semi-retired forms of togetherness.  My harmonizing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with Eden often draws a thrilling comparison to Celine Dion.  And always, as her door shuts for slumber, she tells me, "Goodnight, I love you and you're the best." 

Chad still expects his songs at bedtime.  Remi likes back tickles and a verse or two.  Eden would be thrilled if I abandoned my marriage bed and bunked with her forever or at least for the next six months.  I'll take it.  Whenever and always.  There are moments when collectively, bunched on our green, mushy couch, legs labyrinthed underneath the blanket, I will find a smallish hand reaching out for mine.  A head will eventually weight itself on my shoulder.  All 37 pounds of Eden will be draped around my neck, and for the length of at least one Sponge Bob episode I'm the coolest mom on the planet.

Driving Safety

Agreed.  Texting and driving is hazardous.  Holding a phone and driving is dangerous.  Putting on mascara and driving is foolhardy and risky.  Driving anywhere with three children -- a challenge in safety.  There should be safety laws in place for drivers everywhere who have to share the road with SUV's crammed with children.

Future Mommy Driver

Clarification required.  Driving and car safety has progressed from the dark ages when my children think I was young, into a bright and promising new dawn.  As kids, Jess and I never wore seat belts.  The law didn't require it.  We rarely even sat in our seats.  Our Grand Torino's locks opened from the inside even when locked with the car in motion.  We were always up on our knees, arms wrapped around our parent's front seat headrests, blocking their rear view.  Or worse, we were in the front bench seat, three across, no seat belts used.  As infants, initially we weren't in car seats.  It's been described to me as a pram frame that held a bed that was lifted from it's base and "shoved into the back seat."  Rock on 1970's.

Limited driving distractions:  Cell phones didn't exist.  DVD players were a futuristic concept as were rear view cameras.  GPS's that take eyes off the road and require programming were reserved for NASA.  Rear heated seats, a pipe dream.  Then, cars were not land roving tanks with state-of-the-art blind spots.  Steve Jobs was in his late teens about to take his first bite of an Apple and the letter "i" was just a vowel -- not something that would eventually plug into your ears and your car.  But kids will be kids and cars bring out the worst in them and us.

Practicing Mommy-like Focus

If texting drivers, mascara appliers, cell phone hands-full-not-free navigators were the only obstacles that required vigilance, we'd get to our destination easily and peacefully.  Throw three kids into the back seat and eating a grenade is safer.

"Mom, can I have a snack one wants to know."  The other wants a water bottle to urinate in.  Constant demands.  Skirmishes.  The DVD player is stuck and the DVD is skipping -- "mom, can you reach back to the third row and jiggle it." Back seat rioting.  Windows up, windows down, hands out, faces out, American Girl doll air surfing at highway velocity.  Bickering.  Windows up and locked.  Open the Pirate Booty.  Open water bottles.  Poking.  Sneezes that require a tissue from the glove compartment.  Seat belts undone.  Seat belts too tight.  Headphones tangled in nautical knots.  Fighting.  Absolutely no awareness that the car is on the highway, 60 miles an hour and multi-tasking is a developmental need of mine.

The chorus continues, "Chad, stop chewing so loudly, mom make him stop."  Battling.  "Hey, the radio is too low, make it louder please, change the station, again, again, again, stop."  Often heard, "Oh no, my lucky rock dropped in between the seats.  I want to play on your phone, hand it to me please.  Drive with the lights on so I can read and I can color."  "It's hot.  It's cold.  The vent is blowing on my feet.  It's so hot in here I'm melting -- please turn our vents off."  Who's brilliant idea was it to bring the dogs? "Mom, turn around, turn around, turn around and look what I made!"  "You promised us you'd teach us how to do the box stitch."

Today's distractions, Tomorrow's drivers

Getting from here to anywhere is an exercise in Andretti like driving skill and extreme focus with safety paramount.   I kiss the ground after safely arriving at our destination.

Todd's parents made effective use of the "stop-the-car-and-get-out" technique.  I've heard it was a kinder and gentler time for suburban kids left on the side of the road by exhausted and enraged parents.  Once, my mom did the "reach-back-and-slap" to ensure car safety and to still my fresh mouth.  The car wasn't even moving but she definitely felt safer after the TKO.  My dad used to drive with Jess and me bumping around in the back seat.  Windows were rolled shut while he smoked a Macanudo cigar.  Jess and I were rendered unconscious from lack of oxygen -- he has no memories of our distracting him.  I think he may have been on to something...

Feeding Time at the Zoo

My dad is a vegetarian.  Each meal eaten looks like a rainbow collage of color on his plate.  Me, salad and fruit and steak and fish and salad and salad and salad and more fruit.  Mom and my sister Jessica are healthy eaters in the form of many small snacks and occasional plate picking.  Their plates are always bright.  Todd will eat anything and it's usually bursting with organic hues.  Brother-in-law Brian is a fellow at UCLA Medical Center and he doesn't have time to eat but does his best to find color in the hospital cafeteria.

All this color, readily available to our children daily.  Rarely does this palette of health get consumed.

Rainbow Dining (absence of children)
Aunt Jessica and Uncle Brian

My college best friend Mara told me, "I'm sick of throwing out beautiful meals I make for my kids."  Agreed.  Her house rule, "if you don't like it, you may have a piece of bread with clumpy butter."  Nothing thrills her kids more.  They beg for prison bread with butter.  It kills her.

It kills me routinely -- serving my children quality meals ranks as high as good hygiene and being nice to others.  My children are pretty clean and mostly nice.  What's sad is that my husband Todd is the natural chef in our house, not me.  Anything he creates is delicious and salubrious and anything I create, he improves upon and makes it into an irresistible four food group feast.

The effort to do cuisine-right for my children is lost on my brood.  The responsibility for three meals a day, all in vivid-color according to anyone who doesn't have children under the age of 12 -- falls squarely, like a ton of brussel sprouts, onto my shoulders.  Add to the pressure -- often, having maternal grandparents present during feeding time at the zoo.  Grandma Barb likes to lord over what you're putting on each child's plate with a running tsk tsk narrative.  The other is not any easier, he's from a Polish Shtetl -- plates must be cleared and nothing gets thrown out, just reheated and re-served for the next meal in perpetuity.

You can lead a kid to Nobu, but you can't make him eat the miso black cod.

Memories of many meals growing up consist of an unhealthy amount of Macaroni & Cheese, Taco nights and bone-in slippery dark meat chicken that was thrown under the table to avoid ingestion.  My mom swears she only bought chicken breasts.  Our house was not the paragon of the four food groups.

Happier culinary memories do exist.  Delightful digestion of Doritos and Coca Cola as snack after a long day of school.  Chocolate donuts for breakfast.   Gino's pizza and Chinese food for dinner.  Sometimes a truly terrific home made meatloaf was served.  Not exactly the pinnacle of healthy dining or a food resume to hold in high regard -- yet somehow I am a thriving adult, held to a standard that wasn't delivered to me as a child, best efforts aside.  During my childhood, my maternal grandparents lived in Florida and surely they too would have chastised my mom about the contents of our meals -- albeit lovingly.

All hope is not lost... according to some article my mom read and cites during our children's meal time, "it takes an average of 10x to finally get your child to try and incorporate a new food."  Put the money on the meat Grandma.  Everyone has their own two cents to spare on the subject of feeding our children and yet no one is offering to foot the bill for the pounds of filet mignon that will go to the dogs!

Miracles are not reserved for the Gods only.  The kids will eat apples.  Eden loves artichokes dipped in butter.  Remi will eat tuna fish and Chad adores ham.  Recently the girls tried and liked hard boiled eggs.  Everyone enjoys chicken noodle soup and Saltines.  Edamame is a crowd pleaser -- sometimes.  Just not often enough.

Denial is a wonderful accessory to parenting.  It's easy to justify Dole canned mandarin oranges in syrup as a fruit of distinction.  Pop Tarts are certainly fortified with vitamins and minerals.  Frosted Flakes must help lower your cholesterol.  Yogurt tubes make your bones stronger and the sugar's got to be all natural.  Proudest parenting coup of them all -- the number of Perdue Chicken nuggets my children consume on a weekly basis.  Now that's quality meat and filler.  Cheese sticks?  Fabulous, on par with fresh cheese from an organic dairy farm.  Often the battles need to be lost for the war to be won.

The battle over today, wounds licked, the reliable post consumption question gets lobbed, "did I eat enough dinner for dessert?"  Lips pursed, tongue twitching, I control my urge to holler, "mini-muffins and jello for dinner is dessert.  Enough."  With failure as NO option, the fruit bid is extended, "Sure, go ahead and have as much of Nature's candy as you'd like!"  Bon appetit mon amie!

Remi and Chad enjoying Nature's Candy

Blood Type Coffee

It was a rough morning.  I couldn't get a snarled rubber band out of Eden's tangled mane.  She cried hysterically.  No Cheerios -- one of four foods he happily eats -  pissed Chad off, and Remi wanted to know how her vocal chords worked?

All I could generate was a low pitched grumble.  Children, read my mind.  Have you seen me touch coffee to my lips?  Have you heard the melodic drip and whir of my coffee machine?  Anyone hear the tear of my Splenda packet?  Did you see my ogre persona recede back into its hiding place?  Children, if you've answered no to anyone of these questions, it's recommended you steer clear of the hazards ahead.  Mommy Liza is a monster.

I was only able to snap to when Remi, hand under her chin, big hazel eyes dead locked on the barberry beast standing at the kitchen sink said, "Mom, just drink your coffee and be happy.  Everything will be okay."  How right she was.

Without my morning coffee getting my legs into separate underwear holes is a challenge.  I have to force myself to brush my teeth.  Without a.m. coffee simple questions like, "what's the weather today, mom?" become hard as an advanced calculus problem.  I can't give blood because my blood type is the rarest of types:  Caffeine positive.  I am only with heartbeat before noon when I have caffeine dancing in my cells.

With coffee try and stop me.  I'm super in heroic proportions.  Every bed gets made military style, quarter tested.  I can learn how to in French and then one-handedly perform a fish-tail braid on Remi while frying up the bacon.

Mission Accomplished

Breakfast can take on Mother's Day brunch style proportions.  Want to paper mache before school sweethearts?  No problem.  There is nothing I can't do.  Does this make me an addict?   Am I something I preach against to my children -- a substance junkie?  Of course I am.  It's an excellent thing that coffee is coffee and not methamphetamine -- my addiction makes me a better version of me not a version of me that wants to take televisions apart.  Literally, my addiction makes the world a much better place for my children and the cast of surrounding characters that pour into and out of my cup of life every day.

Liquid Manna from Heaven

If there is anyone to blame for my addiction, it's the symbiotic partnership between my children and Starbucks.  My kids need me to be flexible like a Cirque Du Soleil performer, smarter than a fifth grader and inventive like J.K. Rowling.  Starbucks Breakfast Blend makes it all possible.  My kids have seen the alternative.  It's called Yom Kippur, the most solemn religious fast of the Jewish year.  By the time we break fast, I have already racked up a year's worth of new and horrific parenting sins I'll have to apologize for the following year.  In the interim, I take solace in knowing that Starbucks will never judge me.  Drink up.

Sharpie

Three years ago I blinked and this is what I missed:

Sharpie Face Art by Remi

It might have been cute except the artwork was created with Sharpies, permanent markers and the medium was face skin.  

Two years later I sneezed and this is what I missed, again:  shame on me.  Good thing this fit of creativity took place right before Temple.

Second Sharpie Installation 

I promise you my children were no more than ten feet from me when each of these art explosions took place.  I'm not proud.  I'd like to tell you that Sharpie falsely advertises and it's not 99% permanent.  I wish that Todd was on duty.  I'd like to tell you that I learned my lesson after the first round.  Increased my parental vigilance.  Stayed hyper focused and on guard.  Clearly I didn't and insanely I believed that hiding the Sharpies was enough to prevent this from happening again.  I also swear that Remi, Chad and Eden make smart choices -- usually -- except when Remi is the ring leader.  The kid can sell ice to an Eskimo.  Take a cue from me, hiding the crack doesn't stop a child from locating it like a pig finds a truffle.  It's only a matter of time.  

My children have 22,000 magic markers.  If you know me well, "why have five of something when you can have 5,000?" Regret numero uno.  Why the magnetic pull to the Sharpie?  I have no idea.   Nothing, in my opinion, makes a better coloring option than good old Crayola, pastelles if you can take the mess.  

I'm thrilled I opted for the ten pack of Sharpies instead of the single work horse black.  Todd flipped.  He finds nothing about Sharpies or kids using Sharpies funny.  At least I got a good chuckle out of this and had the common sense to memorialize it on film.  Todd particularly loved when Chad and his best friend Dylan created Sharpie super hero pictures in navy blue on our wood kitchen table.  As we learned when the pictures were lifted up, there was no need for paper because the perfect copy of each picture was tattooed on our kitchen table.  Todd's head exploded comic book style and splattered all over our kitchen.  It took Dylan a month to return to the scene of the crime.

As I parent, I encourage all forms of creativity.  Build a fort in our den.  Make magic potions using mud and pine needles.  Make me breakfast in bed and have me drink a ghoulish brown mixture you call coffee.  Style my coif using 80 hair accessories.  Dig a fortress in our backyard and pelt me with dirt bombs.  I'll never stop you.  Heck, I'll even join you.  Ever touch a Sharpie again -- please make sure you do it at your grandparents' houses -- they think everything their grandchildren do is "fabulous!"

The Sleepover or Sleepless over

Last night my older two children, their dad, along with their delicious cousins and Uncle, were treated to their first ever Islanders game.  Remi made it on to the Jumbotron.  All the kids got to high-five the players.  No one caught a shirt and Remi lost a tooth.  All the children arrived home at 11:00 p.m. for a cousins sleepover.  Great idea in concept.  Horrible idea in practice.

The boys, Chad and Cousin Ethan, easy and nonsense free, tripped their way into Chad's bed by 11:15 p.m. and were sleeping by 11:15 and 1/2.  Not early enough but certainly easy enough.  Gotta love boys.

Remi and her cousin Jordyn were another story entirely.  They didn't want to sleep in Remi's room.  They opted for our guest room with the cushy queen size bed, en-suite bathroom and jumbo TV.  Fine.  Except earlier in the day, Remi pushed the door lock button from the inside and I inadvertently shut the door.  So at 11:30 p.m., Todd and I were breaking and entering.  11:45 p.m. Remi couldn't decide what to sleep in.  Long pants and a tee?  Fuzzy shorts and a tank?  Undies?  Birthday suit?  Only Remi has an outfit crisis at midnight.  Finally lights out.  Except it wasn't.

Remi needed her noise machine.  Go get it we told her.  Remi needed to refill her water bottle.  Go fill it.  Remi needed to change her outfit.  Go change it.  Jordyn had a foot procedure earlier in the day and it was bothering her.  She needed medicine.  A band aid.  Remi came back because she was hot.  Jordyn came back because she wanted to know where Remi was.  Remi returned unsure if her lost tooth would be found by the tooth fairy in the guest room.  12:45 a.m. we threatened their lives and shackled them to the bed.

1:00 a.m. Todd and I were finally horizontal under the covers -- the tooth.  Out of bed.  Quick exchange of tooth for treat and finally finally lights officially out.

Good thing we signed up for the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot at 8:00 a.m. Thanksgiving morning.  Four miles for Todd and his brother Jon.  1k for my kids and their cousins.  Based on our motley, under slept crew yesterday morning, a more appropriate race name would have been The Thanksgiving Turkey crawl.    My kids barely function on twelve hours of sleep.  For every hour under twelve they miss, they exponentially race towards savage beasts.  Easy requests become gigantic battles.  Brush your teeth.  Not happening.  Make your beds.  Ha.  Be nice to each other.  Not possible.  Listen to what I''m telling you to do.  Impossible.  And it was only 7:45 a.m.

Children without enough sleep are a parent's worst nightmare.  Sharing a house with them and painfully navigating through a day is like the L.I.E during rush hour -- incredibly frustrating, totally stop-and-go.  It often involves profanities -- several long strings of them.  Being an effective parent with poorly rested children is harder than qualifying for MENSA.  Add to the challenge, Todd and I are cumulatively exhausted and barely able to think logically -- potentially a Darwinian survival skill.  If we really thought about what lay ahead of us, extinction might be our leading option.

All was not lost.  We were having Thanksgiving dinner with three well rested, relatively youthful grandparents at 1:30 p.m.  Kids, whatever, you need, ask a grandparent.  Our plan?  We were going the route of turkey overdosing and then claiming the tryptophan defense.  Lights out!

Augmentin

As usual, there is someone in my house on Augmentin.  The volley is usually between Chad and Eden, both whom suffer from chronic sinus infections.  This week it's Eden.  This is one club Remi doesn't complain about her lack of membership in.  She has her dad's sinuses -- infection free.  We don't just rush to Augmentin.  Who would -- it's the absolute worst ever.  Despite its being the work horse antibiotic of my children's generation, it is easily the hardest medicine to get down their throats.  Inserting a rectal suppository covered in thorns would be easier.

We have tried the Omnicef route.  Say hello to a recurring sinus infection ten days after my children have completed their Omnicef cycles.  It tastes good, but its efficacy on stubborn bacterial infections in our house is garbage.  We have tried nasal irrigation.  Netty pots.  We have treated the infections as allergies -- children's Claritin, Allegra.  We have done nothing at all, assuming the infections were viral and non-responsive to medication.  Invariably, we end up knocking on the devil's door and battling demons for ten straight days, twice each day.

Want a guaranteed route to fighting with your spouse?  Ask them to hold down your psychotic child while you try to administer "the-medicine-that-will-make-you-feel-better-sweetie-after-you-stopping-retching-from-trying-to-swallow-it!"

Tell any parent you have a kid on Augmentin and the responses are immediate:  "Ohhhh, man, that stinks."  Or, "my kid hated that crap, good luck with that."  My favorite, however, is the "have you tried this technique?"  Read the angry silent bubble above my head my friend... Yes, of course I've tried that technique.  I dare you, parents of the world, give me a trick that will work getting this horribly thick, chalky tar into my kid's mouth, swallowed and eventually into his/her blood stream.  It begs the question, "how can something that tastes so disgusting be good for you?"  Can it possibly be true, that what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger -- even if you lose some of your psyche through the process?

Thanks for the option of flavoring the Augmentin -- you really know how to fool kids.  Pediatricians, FYI, a fish still smells like a fish and bad sushi can practically kill you.

No parent wants a sick kid, but I know lots of parents who briefly tangoed with the idea of letting their kids stay sinus-y just a bit longer to avoid the Augmentin samba.  Starting your kid on Augmentin is like quitting smoking:  there's never a great time to begin.  As a matter of fact, knowing you have to handle 2x Augmentin playdates with your kid for ten days, is enough to actually make you start smoking.  I'd rather get bitten by a black mamba than administer Augmentin.  What's worse, is that you can't hide the foul taste of Augmentin.  No drink camoflogues over it.  No dose followed by a brownie bite chokes off the gag.  I'm at the point where I'm promising Eden a pony if she'll just swallow the white tar already.

Eden thinks Augmentin is the "worstest".  No argument here.  As soon as her pediatrician hands me the script she wants to know, "is it that white icky stuff?"  Instant tears.  Not even promised candy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack and bedtime can stop the water works.  I felt like crying too from the dread of knowing I now had the Augmentin battle to add to my list of "things to do" each morning and evening for ten days.  That's why I took one for the team, made the sacrifice and left the chore of dose Number One to Todd.

Getting the medicine into Eden this past Monday, Todd accomplished the following:

• One dose completely spit out onto our sisal rug.
• 8 massive gags.
• Second dose partly on Eden's mouth, partly in her hair, up the nose, down her Justin Bieber nightgown and splattered on her right foot.  
• More violent gagging.
• Todd and Eden rosy cheeked and sweating.  Todd from Augmentin stress and Eden from her debut kitchen WWF cage fight with the medicine world's meanest Heavy Weight.
• Todd was pissed and told me he fired himself from the medicine administration job.
• Eden was weepy and in shock from the taste and procedural brutality.
• One more titanic gag for dramatic effect.

Grade for Dose One:  D-.  Not an F, because Todd did manage to get 1/16 cc of her 1.5 tsp dose on to her top lip.  The adult equivalent of ten days on Augmentin might be twice daily barium enemas forced upon us by our smiling children.  I can only imagine my oldest staring down at me as I cowered in a corner, "don't worry little mommy, I promise this will make you all better!"

Photo by:  Mom, Face by:  Augmentin

I Dare You to Try and Open This...

I recently had the misfortune of having to supermarket shop with my children.  I would rather eat sheet rock for a week than go food shopping.  I find nothing about it enjoyable.  I freeze my tail off in the milk aisle.  I never find the right end of the fruit bag to open -- it's always a fight.  One egg is always shattered and secretly oozing.  I am usually behind someone buying cold-cuts for the entire high school football team at the deli and without fail, I get the cart with the bum wheel that requires Andre The Giant like force to move up and down the aisles.  I also always pick the check out line that moves as efficiently as check-in at the Delta terminal at JFK.  It doesn't.  Dragging my off spring along with me on my journey to Hades is literally Hell.

So I did what any great parent does:  I took them to the candy and toy aisle and said, "pick out a treat and once we are back in the car, you may open it."  Chad found nothing he liked and was pretty much okay with it.  This is, after all, my child who handed me his navy blue velcro wallet with his $74.00 life's savings in it and asked me to send it to Haiti to help victims after the devastating earthquake of a few years back.

Both girls picked out Barbies.  I speed shopped.  Skipped the Deli.  Sent Chad to the milk aisle.  Fruit and vegetables went into the cart commando style.  Picked the wrong line to check out on and then hauled ass to my car.

I made the girls wait until we got home to open their Barbies because I am so smart and I was not yet recovered from my pugilistic food shop.  I also knew that there was no way, ever, that I was going to easily get those Barbies out of their fortress like packaging.  Break into Fort Knox, I guarantee you it will be easier.

Want to rip every newly manicured nail off each finger?  Open a kids toy.  Really want to be stupid?  Try to use your teeth to rip open the plastic packaging.  The only thing you'll open is a space where you tore your molar out.   Want to give yourself the meanest plastic cut?  Use your fingers on the joint of a plastic packaged kids toy.

Got the plastic off?  Good luck dealing with all the microscopic rubber bands, staples, prison wires and sheet metal holding your anxious child's toy tight in its sarcophagus.  I relish getting the points of the twisty metal wire under my finger nails where they expertly separate my nail from its skin.  I'd also like to thank the genius whose brilliant idea it was to put a plastic attachment inside each Barbie head and then attach it to the packaging?  Her head?  Come on folks.  Have the toy companies not gone completely safety and theft proof crazy?  Is there such a thing as too secure?  Do little girls try to swallow Barbie heads while they are still in their packaging?  I mean, really, if four grandparents, two parents and one jaws-of-life metal cutter can't free the damn toy, maybe, just maybe its overkill?

Want to really know what it feels like to suffer under the watchful eyes of your children?  Buy, open and assemble a Barbie Dream House under pressure.  I promise you, eat dirt, it's easier, faster and makes more sense.  Opening and assembling the Barbie Dream House or the Barbie Nightmare took one CIO, one mom and one MBA.  Time spent:  3.5 hours.  Moments of joy:  zero.  Want to utter every curse word in your lexicon in front of your kids, despite promising yourself you'll never potty mouth in their presence?  I dare you -- buy a Barbie Dream House.

Remi once got so angry on the way home from the toy store because I made the mistake of telling her she may open her toy NOW instead of waiting until we arrived home.  Sadistic on some level, I know.  She lathered herself into such a rage when she couldn't get it opened.  Her ire only intensified when I was unwilling to free her toy while I was driving.  Her tirade got so wild and so over the top that her anger morphed from the toy to me.  "You're so not fair!" she taunted me.  "A good mom would know how to drive and open a toy at the same time, I'm not living with you anymore.  Leave me at the curb when we get home.  I'm up for adoption."  Good I thought and take that toy with you to your new home.
 

Does that Answer your Question?

Yesterday afternoon while I was cleaning out homework folders, emptying lunch boxes and sorting out who had what homework, Remi told me she stumbled onto the word "Poop" in the dictionary.  "Mazel Tov" I told her. "Oh, that must have made you so happy," I said to her knowing full well how hysterical she must have been at her discovery.

Back to business sorting, emptying out backpacks.  Making afternoon snacks.  Letting the dogs out.  Letting the dogs in.  Remi again.

"Mom?"
"Yes Remi."
"Guess what?"
"What?"
"I also found the word Sex."
"Really, next to the word Poop?"
"No, but I just found it."
"What does it mean, what's the definition?"
"Moooooommmmmmm, I did not read it.  That's for grown-ups!"

Phew.  Because in between serving Chad his 100th ham roll and Eden Nutella, my parental dictionary did not have a perfected answer to my own question.  The closest we came to addressing any form of sex education was how babies are made.  Also not my best work.  My eighth grade health teacher, Mr. Salinsky might have given me a C- with a big frown on his face.   If you ask Chad how babies are made, he'd tell you you mix a little bit of daddy with a little bit of mommy and you get a baby.  He might even mention that it has do to with little fish that get involved some how.  It was the best we could do at the time.

Years earlier when asked the same question, "Where do babies come from?" before either Todd or I could answer our inquisitive 6 year old, Remi answered her own question for herself.  "They come out from your belly button."  Great I thought.  Asked and answered.  We're done.  Except no, we're not done.  "Remi, that's not where babies come from" said her brother Chad.  "Babies come out of their mother's mouths or ears, not their belly buttons."  Dodged that bullet big time.

(Baby having just been delivered from my ear)

Once during a late weekend family dinner, I was relaxed from my favorite Cakebread red wine and in response to the same question, muttered that in fact babies come out of their mommy's vagina.   Lead drops more lightly.  "What?  That's not possible." I heard from Remi!  "Seriously mom, no seriously mom, that's gross, don't ever say that again" I heard from Chad.  Eden got hysterical, "you said Vagina!!!!!"  I shot Todd a wifely SOS look and we jumped right into a dinner-time "Would You Rather" game.  Salvation.

Sex.  Babies.  So the question is really when, not if we will ever have to address these subjects with our children?  What will we say?  I can see our migration.  My young children thought babies just happened -- poof, abracadabra.  My preschool and kindergarten children knew you mixed a little of this with a pinch of that, bake at 375 and a baby arrived out your mouth or ear!  My elementary school children are getting shrewder (thanks Miley Cyrus) and discovering bits and pieces that when compiled, will paint a very different picture.  Do parents still reference birds and bees?  Should we now be talking in terms of Angry Birds and Chop Chop Ninjas?  Mario and Princess Peach?  I'm not sure I know the answer yet.

Here's what I do know.  The other day, Todd and I were being snugly and kiss-kiss and our older two children told us we were gross and disgusting.  The mere sight of our kiss sent them running, their retinas shielded from Sodom and Gomorrah.  So I say, "go in peace my children.  Fast, run away from your teen years, sprint blindly back to your youth."  And for goodness sake, stay there for as long as humanly possible.  Or at least until I can turf this line of questioning completely to your dad!

Life As I Know It... For Real: Gag on this...

Life As I Know It... For Real: Gag on this...: We have a rule in our house: anyone that intentionally, knowingly or purposefully makes our son Chad vomit -- must clean up the vomit by ea...

Gag on this...

We have a rule in our house:  anyone that intentionally, knowingly or purposefully makes our son Chad vomit -- must clean up the vomit by eating it.  Judge me if you must...

At a very young age, Todd and I discovered, horribly, that our son Chad has a gag reflex more sensitive and easily triggered than a land mine.  Mind you, it's not just a gag reflex but a gag reflex that leads to a vomit festival.  It's a gag reflex that can be triggered by smell, sight and descriptive visual and verbal cues.

Our inaugural gag-trigger-to-vomit debacle could not have been better scripted if Quentin Tarantino wrote the screen play himself.  Chad was just under two and desperate to not wear his diaper.  He had his eyes locked on a Target three pack of power ranger underwear.  Why not we thought?  If the kid is ready, let's forge ahead.  Running around the house in his birthday suit, chasing our neurotic yet spunky Vizsla, Chad ran right through all his body's signals that he had to poop.  So he pooped right there on our hardwood floor in between our kitchen and our family room.  "Maaaaaaaa maaaaaaaa" he yelled.  "Foot, foot maaaaaaaa foot foot" he continued.

I rushed to where he was standing to find a "man" size bowel movement on the floor, colored very green from Chad's broccoli adoring stage.  The man poop was staring at me, taunting me to find a vessel big enough to pick it up with when I realized that Chad had also stepped in the poop which formed a poop cast around his foot like a podiatrist would make to create orthotic molds.

"Don't move" I screamed to him, "don't move little buddy, mommy is going to get this taken care of, don't move."  That's when I looked in my son's eyes and noticed they were glassy.  That his nostrils were starting to flair and that his lips were pursed.  "It's okay Chad, it's okay.  Mommy is not upset.  Don't cry baby."

Oh how I wish he just cried.

I Prefontaine'd to the kitchen and grabbed the paper towels as fast as I could.  I was too slow.  In the nanosecond  it took me to go there and back, our dog Ella Beth had arrived at the new scent.  She must have liked what she smelled (hopefully it was the broccoli aroma) and she ate it in its entirety, the whole poop entree.  Oh man.

I felt panic and was in need of a strong sedative.  "Holy shit" was all I could come up with.  That's when the liquid avalanche sealed my fate and initiated in the era of many gag to vomit soap operas in the house, at school, anywhere.  Chad had reached his gross saturation point.  The spew came flying out of his mouth until he left everything on the floor short of his two year old soul.

Chad's gag reflex accompanies us everywhere and it now comes with a warning -- don't trigger it.  Once while reading Chad the book Dirty Bertie, Bertie's dog licked him and Bertie licked the dog back.  A picture of Bertie sticking out his tongue with dog fur on it got me a lap full of vomit made up of partially digested Cheerios.

There was nothing like inviting my new neighbor Donna over to swim in the pool with her children.  I was looking forward to becoming friends and I wanted to make a great first impression.  Who knew that Remi styling her wet hair like George Washington would make my son gag so violently that he covered my pool deck in three phases of projectile vomit.  Thanks George.   Donna and I are still friends and we don't let the girls style their hair in the pool ever.

In nursery school Chad sat next to a child who brought in a glob of yellow for lunch.  Poor kid ended up being served a portion of Vomit a la Chad.   It never ends.  My Aunt's dog Spike had drool running down his mouth -- we had to leave the house before the onslaught.  The smell of a soiled diaper being changed -- vomit.  Anyone chewing gum.  Vomit.  Dress-up wigs.  Vomit.

This brings me back to our family rule:  you cause the gag on purpose, you eat the mess.  Why the rule?  Why so disgusting an ordinance?   One word:  Remi.

Remi realized that making Chad gag was an easy way to seize sibling power.  Triggering a gag aria became sport for Remi.  She also learned that triggering your brother's gag reflex is like the game Jenga:  exciting until you're the player that crumbles the tower and mom or dad has to clean up yet another vomit mound.  Remi accidentally discovered her power through the use of fake teeth -- in her mouth or her sisters'.  Add those teeth to the list.  Vomit.  Some kids suck their thumbs.  Others twirl their hair.  Many pick their noses.  My son's party trick?  Gagging to conclusion.

On their school forms I write Remi:  sensitive, funny, likes art and sports.  No allergies.  For Eden I write: joyful, doesn't eat more than two bites of her lunch, great sense of humor.  No allergies.  For Chad I used to write: sweet, compassionate, easy going.  Peanut allergy.  Now I write all of the above and in big, bold capital letters:  NOT A JOKE -- SEVERE GAG REFLEX... TRIGGER AT YOUR OWN RISK!

26.2 Mile Parenting

I just finished a solo 24 hour run with my three children (Todd was prepping for a marathon) which included the following highlights -- most of which I think are on an enjoyment par with the prep for a colonoscopy, anything to do with the DMV, the raw food diet and seeing someone else's kid with a giant-swimmy-gelatinous booger hanging out of his or her nose.  Mostly a serving of down right bloody torture on the rocks with a twist of laughter.

First rewarding activity worth mentioning was the search through my entire house for Eden's favorite stuffed animal named Ella ALL DAY LONG, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, ENDLESSLY, TIRELESSLY, UNTIL MY HAMSTRING CRAMPED FROM OVER-EXERTION.

 According to Eden, she CANNOT sleep without Ella dog.  I searched the car.  I lifted our two ton couch using the World's Strongest Man technique.  I combed through hampers, our basement, under Remi's bed.  I called the restaurant.  I looked through our garbage's, begged the dogs to promise not to have eaten her, checked showers, excavated closets and searched our swing set tree house with a flashlight.  No Ella dog.  I could kill Ella dog if only I could find Ella dog.  I could strangle Ella dog for being the only $1.99 dog on the clearance shelf of Michaels -- once and never sold again.  I could torture myself for an eternity for ever buying Ella dog.  She has no replacement, no substitute.  No stand in for Jennifer Aniston here.  It's Ella dog or bust.  I busted.

At the same moment yesterday I realized I was out of milk and out of Cheerios.  For my son Chad, this equates to intentional child abuse and neglect wrapped up in a nice package of "worst parent ever!"  I deserve to be punished.  There is no milk alternative and without Cheerios my son Chad will quickly starve to death.   His blood type is CH positive.  This stands for blood packed with cells that don't contain DNA material but instead CHeese and CHeerio matter.

Cheerios and water? Doesn't work.   Cheerios and orange juice?  A sure fire recipe for a vomitpalooza.  Odwalla smoothie and chocolate chip cookies?  No milk?  Not quite.  Chocolate apple juice instead of chocolate milk?  Never.  Sure honey, I'll have some Pellegrino in my coffee with a Splenda.

Milk is the fuel my house functions on daily.  My house without milk is like a car without gas.  My house without milk is like flying to Mexico without a passport.  My son without milk and Cheerios becomes the "incredible child hulk," mean, nasty and downright irrational.  I had to take care of the Hulk yesterday until I got milk and Cheerios back into his system.  The damage was already done.

One dog left me a poop package in our den.  My male child left me urine on every toilet bowl and seat he used all day long.  I also found a poop in our purple bathroom toilet but no toilet paper?  Sit on that one for a minute...

Back and forth to tennis four times.  Laughed very hard when after tennis Remi asked me to rub the "Galactic acid" out of her sore back muscles.  Squeezed in a photo shoot at the beach for a friend.  Tripped on the rocks at the beach and gnarled up the arch of my left foot.  Cleaned the house every fifteen minutes for 24 hours -- still no Ella dog.  Needed to load and unload and reload the dishwasher twice.  Broke a bottle of Canadian ice wine on our kitchen floor with three barefoot children within 3 feet of its shattered perimeter.  For a split second I actually thought about licking it up off the floor to take the edge off.  I bathed the kids and wish I could say the same for myself.   24 hours ago, I put a jug of Poland Spring water into the fridge only to find out it had a slow leak after it bloated every item of food in its drippy path.

Where was Todd while I was running my mommy marathon?  Todd was in Brooklyn preparing for a literal marathon, with my blessing.  Today, Todd ran the inaugural Brooklyn marathon and we cheered him on with a vengeance.  The kids and I cheered so loud my vocal chords checked themselves into a sanitarium.  Why?  I was proud to see him finish another race and even more excited that my 24 hour solo 26.2 mile trek concluded at the same time Todd crossed the finish line.

To TV or Not to TV?

According to my son Chad, the worst thing that could ever happen to a 6 year old is to see more than one Cablevision truck outside your home.  Waking up and finding 5 Cablevision trucks outside your home is cause for panic.  Walking into your den, still holding your blue teddy named Ten, finding the beloved remote control, relishing the touch of the smooth power button under your finger, aiming at the TV with more purpose than an Olympian going for a world record and then pressing the life line to our 60 inch behemoth and seeing ... nothing -- catastrophic.  Worse than nothing, a black screen with nothing?  Call 911.  No sound.  No signs of life.  Silence.  Get the paddles.

Chad literally passed out from shock.

When his first breath came back and his big beautiful brown eyes opened to lazy slits, we told him the horrible truth.  Cable was out.  Cable was going to be out for days.  We told him no phone worked in the house.  No computer to bang out URLs on and no television.  Chad told us he was going to be sick and no purple vitamin was going to make him better.

Cable was down for five days at our house.  Chad was on IV life support.  He could barely manage to eat a bowl of his favorite Cheerios.  Even after cable service was restored, cable television never came back to our house Monday through Friday (this was no accident.  This was parental brilliance).  This was a year ago last July.

Immediately after we lost our lifeline to the world, we met with the following as parents:

Chad:  couldn't focus.  Walked around the house aimlessly as if looking for something, anything.  Periodically grabbed a remote and begged it to work its magic.  Lamented (often) that his life had no direction without the television.   Todd (my husband) and I could swear we even saw a single tear cascading down his cheek for months after the tragedy.  He also started hanging out with us in the kitchen, telling us funny stories about his day, building Lego empires and... wait for it... READING!!!!

Remi:  boy was she pissed-off that she was missing "THE BEST EPISODES EVER" of Full House (really?  Todd and I would rather watch paint dry than anything with the Olsen Twins.)  She also blessed us with her daily sermon titled, "Why am I the ONLY child on Earth blah blah blah!"  She also went back to creating massive dollhouses out of old shoe boxes and cartons.  She created a beading extravaganza on our kitchen table that had me wearing 22 bracelets, 16 necklaces and several rings that cut off circulation.  She decided to hang with her brother, sister and her parents and chit-chat about her daily life and she realized that her dad was actually really funny (although not as funny as her mom!)

Eden:  Huh?  Eden was almost four.  Eden is our third child.  Eden never was able to use the remote control.  She didn't have the sheer strength to get it out of Chad's death grip.  She was also never allowed to choose what she wanted to watch.  That was up to her brother and sister.  Poor thing was tortured repeatedly by Power Ranger Megazords or the Olsen Twins.  She was and is always with her parents anyway.  She thinks we're pretty cool and certainly better company than Bob Saget and a bunch of Ninjas!

The Trade-Off.
Todd and I definitely work harder as parents without our televisions on Monday through Friday.  We certainly have moments when this one wants to play Zingo and that one wants us to tape her in a feature film and the other one wants to play NBA basketball in our driveway.  It can really be impossible to make a fort out of pillows, run a tumbling gym on our king size bed and pretend to be Princess Ariel all at once.   Occasionally we can corral everyone into a Danny Terrio style dance-off, an aggressive game of Hide-and-Seek or family dinner with at least two of the recommended food groups represented.  Mission accomplished.

It has taken over a year of strong conviction.  The pull back to the television is like the pull of heroine to a Junkie -- tempting, intense and ever present.  The pure joy of staying TV sober is vibrant interaction with our children, rewarding conversation about their days and a lot of silly laughter.  Sometimes it can be like water torture -- I'm being honest.  Sometimes the mere sight of another Barbie to dress is enough to drive me to channel surf Nickelodeon with my eyes propped open with bamboo shoots.  But I don't.

I would rather pull my back out trying to dance-off Todd and the kids in our kitchen any day than sit in muted silence being numbed by Ashley Olsen and her Full House.  Our house is "Full to the Top!" and we wouldn't have it any other way.

The Bus Rush

Good Morning... or was it?  This is my first posting, on my first blog ever.  Why?  I realized this might be an easier way of sharing the joy of my daily routine with my 3 children, 4 dogs, 2 birds and 4 fish with my friends and family instead of texting my morning joy, phoning my morning pain, emailing my morning disasters, faxing my morning funnies or morse coding my daughter's 35 outfit changes before we had to be at the bus stop.  You see, by the time my coffee wears off I can't even answer about or remember any of the moments of my morning to retell them despite their seeming so important and share-worthy while they're happening.  Why?  Because I am already gearing up for the 3:30 to 6:30 afternoon witching hours when my 3 charming children crash land back home from school and I get to do it all over again.  Oh, I see you know what I'm talking about... you must have a child of your own.

This morning when my alarm rang, I did not try to smack it off my night-table because I was fortunate to have made it through the night without Remi (9) sleep walking into my room to ask me for a piece of pie, Chad (almost 8), not telling me at 3:30 a.m. that he has yet to fall asleep and can he now get up and watch TV and Eden (5) arriving in my room while the moon was high in the sky to tell me she needs to have her blanket fixed?!?  I had a full night sleep which equates to about 6 hours without seeing a child.  So I rolled out of bed (literally) and staggered to the kitchen to make coffee (how did I get through college without it?)

The bottom line here is that coffee gets me to a adequately functioning level of parenting for America.  Not sure if the European or Asian countries would concur.  In suburban Huntington it works.

This morning's delights included the following:  Remi decided it would be nice to spend the morning looking at old baby pictures of herself on the computer.  That would be fine, but it was already 8 a.m. and the bus comes at 8:45 a.m., Chad was still sleeping and  so was Eden.  Did I mention that she also wanted each picture to be accompanied by a running narrative of her life.  Did I also mention she wanted to start this process from when she was crowning in the labor and delivery room at NYU hospital.  I told her, "no."  She told me that, "I'm no fun and why don't I make time for important stuff like this?"  Huh?

Eden I have to wake up.  She's easy.  I wake her.  I pick out her outfit.  I brush her teeth, while she empties her tank.  I answer the same question each morning "Is it a school day?"  I put her hair in some form of a pony tail, bumps and all while she asks if she can wear it down.  I tell her, "that's not happening kiddo, you have lice in your class...).  I know, I just gagged writing the word lice.  That will have to be another blog entirely, but suffice it to say, We got lice the week before school started...

I'm also feeding the dogs, picking the couch pillows up off the floor, begging Chad to flatten down the back of his hair from his aggressive bed head and losing, making my bed and realizing the hard spot I kept bumping my face into all night was my ipad, redoing Remi's ponytail because it apparently had too many bumps while I was being chastised for not being able to create an inverse-french-braid-diagonal-twisting-fishtail-creation that also included the use of the "Bump It."  I'm making sure lunch boxes go into the right backpacks with the right color ice packs, that this one has snack, this one has an extra water bottle and that the other one puts her social studies book in her bag for the 300th time.  Have I clued you in that despite the temperature being a balmy 37 this morning, Chad is wearing shorts, no jacket and a light sweatshirt.  I'm waiting for the school phone call asking me where exactly my focus is when my son is getting himself out the door.  I've fed the fish, opened the shades, said hello to Rosie and Flex, Remi's two hostile love birds, dematted four dogs and managed to actually get my bra on before having to stand outside at the bus stop.

I've run a load of laundry, emptied the dishwasher (on par with unpacking groceries -- hate it,) quizzed Remi on New York's climate and what the difference between "weather" and "climate" is, beer-chugged my second cup of coffee which I kept misplacing, microwaving again and then misplacing.  I shoved vitamins down their throats while having to listen to a year old complaint about why the vitamin people stopped making pink and orange vitamins and now everyone is stuck with purple.  I took a phone call, missed three phone calls and got to the bus stop three minutes before the hulking yellow bus arced down Beck Place.

I put three kids on two different buses, stood twice on the curb waving my calm, steady wave as the bus pulled away and then triumphantly walked back to my house rejoicing that today was Friday (a reprieve from the routine) and wishing back the long days of summer!