Through The Woods And Over The Hill

Estimated time of departure: 7 a.m. Actual time of departure: 7:10 a.m. This is almost unheard of in this family, especially when the morning began with this exchange:

JP (from his room): I can’t find my other shoe!
Me: Which shoe are you looking for?
JP: The other one!

To leave within 10 minutes of when I want to leave doesn’t happen for a weekly trip to Café Francisco for breakfast, much less for a six day road trip. But it did, because I rule with an iron fist, and because Kristy said, “Okay, I’m ready to go.” And she meant it.

Here are the highlights of the first leg of the journey, our trip to Greensboro, GA:

Mile 99 – C says, “Are we almost there?”

Mile 189 – C says, “Are we almost there?”

Mile 244 – Until now, the three older kids have sat quietly with headphones on watching DVDs and GK has slept. That’s right, GK has slept the first three hours, allowing me to make great time, which is what a family road trip is really all about. We make our first stop of the day and all hell breaks loose as we pull into the parking lot of the McDonald’s just outside Birmingham, AL. Once parked I look back to see that S had spilled her chocolate milk all over the front of herself. But S didn’t have any chocolate milk, not recently, anyway. She has vomited an earlier chocolate milk. Believe it or not, this is our first experience ever with carsickness and it happens 30 seconds before the door is open and she would have been standing in a McDonald’s parking lot. We get S some clean clothes out of the back and Kristy throws the soiled ones away. GK wakes up.

Mile 254 – GK wakes up again and she’s not happy about it, not at all.

Mile 301 – S and C fall asleep, just two more and my prayers are answered.

Mile 322 – GK wakes up again. Everybody is awake and we pull over for our second stop of the day.

Mile 341 – JP is asleep.

Mile 353 – GK is crying. Make our third stop of the day. JP is awake.

Mile 375 – GK is crying.

Mile 386 – GK is crying but Kristy gets her to stop without the van, and forward movement, having to stop.

Mile 470 – Arrive at Mimi & Pop’s community, blow past the guard shack at 40 mph without stopping and only GK’s right hand visible from the window, tiny middle finger fully extended.

Once we got to my grandparents’ house, the kids made themselves busy testing all doors that lead to the outside. The sliding glass door from the eating area to the deck went through a lifetime of sliding in 10 minutes and you couldn’t see through the handprint smudges at the three-foot mark. When they were inside, they were touching walls, every square inch of pristine cream color and the bright white moulding was manhandled. I wish now that we had made them wear their formal white gloves.

When their cousins, Alec and Terryn, arrived a short time later it began a full night of going in and out, exploring, frog handling, asking when we were going to do something else, complaining about the food and whining because we said, “No, we’re not going to the pool tonight.” Pop did cook some excellent food (quail, mashed potato casserole, green beans and mushrooms) and it was promising to find out that C likes the taste of quail, though this is probably the only place he’ll ever get it.

Today we travel on to Statesboro, GA, for more cousins and aunts and uncles. We’re looking forward to it, though not for the three hour drive ahead. I hope GK needs the rest.

Homeland Security

We begin our road trip in two days. The first leg of the journey will take us to my grandparents’ house just outside scenic Greensboro, GA. I've written about Mimi & Pop before, they’re lovely people who now live in a gated community with presumably heavy security. I think they live inside this fence with its guards not because of the crazies we see on the news each night, not due to the post-9/11 environment we live in or the evildoers it’s unveiled, but because these rested, wise folks have seven grown children, and their fear is that one or all of these people may come back and never leave. A valid concern, and security has been briefed on who they are. Apparently, however, security has also been made aware of who we are. I received an E-mail from Pop today with directions to his new house and it states, ever so matter-of-factly, “…turn left, go to gate and try to convince them you are our guest.” Frankly, this sounds like some sort of dare to me. Well let me say this, after spending eight hours on the road with these four kids, they better let us in. If they don’t wave us through, we’re moving into that little guard shack for the night, so they should go ahead and stock up with a frozen cheese pizza, chocolate milk and Pop Tarts, and install some sort of television set with cartoons. Otherwise they’ll have four road-weary, hungry and cramped children on their hands.

The idea that my kids couldn’t breach this line of defense is ridiculous anyway, and if you’ve ever seen The Quartet at home then you’d understand it’s because their favorite toy in the world is the front door. No one can go in and out, in and out, in and out, of a house like these children. They’re world class inners and outers, Lance Armstrong wishes he had their stamina. After eight hours strapped to their seat listening to Dean Martin, and with me allowing for only one bathroom break the whole day, they’ll have the security gate off the hinges within the quarter hour. It won’t be pretty, and I’m going to assume there’s some sort of homeowner’s association that pays for this type of damage. Whether we are allowed to drive through the gates with a welcoming wave and a smile, or whether the kids have to rip down the gates like four little jetlagged King Kongs, I am certain that security will be there bright and early the following morning to escort us out.

Monkey Convergence

Here's the setup: three families - six adults, seven kids - meet at a local restaurant together, eat, and review the evening from different perspectives. Where did we go? Pete & Sam's. How did the evening go? Read all about it over at the best blog in Memphis, Dining With Monkeys. Be sure to scroll down to read Stacey's review of the evening and stay tuned for other reviews.

Can You Hear This?

Summer is winding down. It may not seem so for those of you who still see weeks of scorching, Southern heat ahead, or those of you who still remember when summer ended when August did. But for those of you who, like us, have to figure out where you're going to drop your kids off every morning from mid-August to next June, it's time for panic mode. C will be back at Downtown Elementary and JP will be joining him. We're trying to get S in there, as well, in the Pre-K classes. GK is going to have to get a job to help offset the cost of her living here...somebody has to.

Kristy has explained the Pre-K situation in the Memphis City Schools to me a dozen or so times and I still don't quite understand it, but it seems that your kid has to be really slow or really smart to be admitted. Let's just say S qualifies and leave it at that. The city schools, though, can't make anything as easy as simply registering, so there are some hoops to jump through first, and the the first of these is a hearing and vision test. These tests aren't cause for concern unless the hearing test becomes a listening test. I don't think S could pass a test on listening. For instance, she hears me say, "Close the front door," and she hears me say, "Your shoes are on the wrong feet," and she even hears me say, "Let go of your brother's lip." I know she hears these things because of her grin and the way her pupils glow red like an ember as she shakes her head slowly from side to side. She just doesn't listen to any of it. Even after repeating myself two or three or 18 times.

I may not be sure what Pre-K is all about, whether there is any actual teaching going on or whether it's just another place to color and leave Play-Doh lying around, but apparently it will involve seeing and hearing, so let the testing begin. I'm not clear, either, what the tests will entail, but I assume she'll have to identify shapes or colors that she sees, which shouldn't be a problem for her. And I imagine she'll need to signal when she hears a certain tone - again, not an issue. But whatever these hoops may be that she's expected to jump through, I just hope she lets go of the tester's lip long enough to listen to the instructions.

Too Simple For His Shirt

C's Uncle Toby ordered a couple of shirts for him from Title Boxing. They're muscle shirts (I know what you're thinking, but have no fear, the Fashion Tips For Children post will be coming shortly), so C just came from his room after putting one on and said, "It's confusing because they're all holes."

Kong

My family belongs to Netflix. I used to belong to Netflix but then movies like Pooh’s Heffalump Movie started showing up in the mail and I realized that yet another slice of my domain had been compromised. But right now I’m sitting here with the DVD of King Kong. This is the most recent one, directed by Peter Jackson, and I’m wondering if I let The Quartet watch it. I remember being a kid and watching the original King Kong on Channel 3 when they showed late night movies, and what I remember the most is that it scared the hell out of me. But I liked it. I liked talking to my father about it and I liked telling my friends that I’d seen it. I think the fear was outweighed by the coolness of the movie and the experience. I also think that there was something spookier about the black and white movie with its stop animation and scale model Skull Island. Then I remember watching the version from the 70s starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange, and just being horrified at the poor quality. The newest King Kong, from what I’ve seen in the previews, looks cartoonish.

Will the kids be too scared? Kristy suggested a preview screening before letting them see it, which I’d be all for if it wasn’t a three-hour movie. At least at home I’m in control and can turn it off, pause it or forward through scenes. Besides, these kids live in Memphis where the local news is full of homicides, rapes and politicians bought and paid for. We’re talking about a giant monkey and dinosaurs, and what could be more fun than that? It can’t be any scarier than a talking stuffed bear and pink elephants or John Ford.

Snap!(?)

JP, lately, when he doesn't get his way, when we deny him the rented moonbounce from his birthday party for the rest of the week, or to take him out and buy him a toy for no reason at all, has begun responding with, "Oh, snap!" I'm not even sure what that means. I think I know where he got it, though. These are prime time kids and they love sit-coms, specifically My Name Is Earl. I'm not here to debate whether this is good or bad because I pretty much decided this was bad the Thursday night they cast the show in our living room. Much the same way I used to pretend to be Steve Austin (up until just a couple of years ago), C claimed to be Earl, JP was the brother, S was Joy and GK was Crabman. I believe the catchprase in question was ascertained from Must See TV. It was one of those nights that makes you proud as a parent. One of those nights that makes you want to rip the cord out of the back of the television set. Oh, snap!

Statesboro Blues

God help me, we’re planning a road trip. My grandmother’s 75th birthday is just around the corner so we’re going to see how many Italians we can cram into a La Quinta Inn in Statesboro, GA. Statesboro, GA, you have been warned. We’ve been on road trips with the three older kids and they do just fine thanks to the Mazda MPV minivan with built-in DVD player and cordless headphones. It’s as if the angels reached down from heaven and put that DVD player in themselves. The first trip we ever took with the angelic DVD player was the quietest eight hours I’d had in seven years at that time. But now we have GK, who will be eight-weeks-old at the time of lift-off, and is not one to be reasoned with when she’s unhappy. And we’ve never found out just how unhappy she can be when strapped to a seat for eight hour stretches at a time. What she needs to realize is that she has it easier than any of us with her ability to urinate in her own pants making pit stops unnecessary.

I called the La Quinta Inn in Statesboro, GA, this morning to reserve a room. To be honest, I thought of reserving two rooms – one for me and one at the other end of the hotel for the kids – but that seemed unfair, and expensive. I told the nice lady who answered the phone that there will be two adults and three kids (GK doesn’t really count and can be fit in an overnight bag to sneak her in and out) staying, and then the lady said something very interesting. She said, “I can’t put three kids in, so I put two.” Now, I don’t know if she means they don’t allow three kids in one room or if there wasn’t an option on the form she was no doubt filling out on her computer for three kids. Nevertheless, I’m faced with an awkward decision – I have to decide which kid to leave at home (as I said, GK doesn’t count yet).

Coming off of more than a month of World Cup soccer and Tour de France viewing, I believe the only fair way to decide who can travel is through qualifying. What will the qualifying entail? Feats of strength, time trials involving bringing me things from other rooms, cleaning, being quiet, and regular bathing, among others. C has the upper hand with his height and age, but that S is a scrappy one, and I fear JP is on the juice. JP and his juice, or chocolate milk or whatever it is, is an interesting factor because I’m not regulated by the IOC or MLB or any other acronyms, so if it takes a little something extra in their Spaghetti-Os to help them qualify for the trip, then so be it. And that includes bribery. There is no integrity in this tournament and I don’t want them hugging on me and looking at me with those big, loving eyes. I can’t be swayed by that. Cash will work, though. Cash in a plain Manila envelope, or in a sack, or in a Play-Doh can for all I care, cash is cash and it will propel any kid to the top of the list for consideration.

So, again, beware, Statesboro, GA, because we’re all coming, and we’re all going to need to eat and drink. Beware and stock up. Well, not all of us are coming, because an 8-, 5-, or 3-year-old will be left behind in Memphis to fend for him or her self for a long weekend. A long weekend of wondering just where their game plan failed, wondering what strategy to employ for the next round of qualifying for future trips, and wondering just how long to let that can of Spaghetti-Os cook in the microwave.

Summer Night

It was the perfect summer evening. Picture it in your mind, won’t you? A father teaching his son to hit a pitch. Turn sideways, feet shoulder-length apart, bat off the shoulder. Keep your eye on the ball. Warm and breezy, the possibility of a storm blowing in from the west, clouds turning orange and purple with the twilight. Fireflies like the lights at Wrigley Field and cicadas cheering the batter, imploring him to hit. Nice swing, now bring the bat through level, don’t chop - his technique more Mickey Mouse than Mickey Mantle. Brother and sister running around, trying to avoid the swinging bat, the ball that just misses. Daddy’s back spasms and sharp pains shoot down his right leg. Sun setting, darkness creeping into the diamond drawn out in the front yard – the car first (untouched), the scooter second, sprinkler third and home a deflated beach ball, or S, depending on what’s available on any given pitch. The neighbors are out front with their dog and applaud for the just-missed pitches. Eye on the ball. JP wants to pitch, wait, now he doesn’t, okay now he does, no?, okay, yes, yes, he’s going to pitch. The wind-up…someone get the ball out of the gutter. Daddy goes inside for a beer because it’s got to be the seventh inning by now. Good pitch. Good swing. Tip foul. Urf! Getting close, C, hands together, choke up. There you go. The street lights are getting brighter now, but still not as plentiful as the fireflies that hover, blinking, calling out pitches. S, bring us back the ball. Now. S! Come here! Don’t you throw it in the street. Don’t do it! S! (dammit) Look both ways, JP. Go ahead. Thank you. Eye on the ball, C, eye on the ball. Everyone is sweat-soaked now with summer heat and humidity and effort. C spits. He’s got that part of the game down. Good spit, C, good loft. Eye! On! The! Ball! There’s the wind-up, the pitch is a soft lob, shoulder high, C swings…contact! Line drive! Daddy goes down, he’s hurt. What’s wrong with him, JP? His wiener? Yes, that’s very funny, everyone laugh, har har. This is why we learn with a soft and cushy “baseball.” Okay, good hit, let’s call it a night. As we gather up our toys, listening to the roar of the cicadas and quietly reveling in the fact that there is no school tomorrow, no pressure tonight, we all realize, but don’t say aloud, that this is what summer is about. C even pauses to thank his old man for working with him, and he works on his gripping, watching the fireflies that are bringing the high heat now, he swings and that’s one less blinking light, one less day of summer.

Friday Night Is Gallery Night

I spent this Friday evening watching TiVo’d Comedy Central with Toby while JP and S ran around, jumped on his couch and tested the boundaries of his unchildproofed house. They ate pizza and fought over who had the larger piece of Silly Putty after I halved it to be fair. S tormented JP for the sheer joy of it. While all of this was going on, C was out at art gallery openings with his aunt Elizabeth. So it’s happened that at least one of my kids is cooler than me. Not that this should surprise anyone, it’s just that he’s eight. I thought this would happen around his teenage years at least. I thought I had another five or so years of being the hip daddy.

He had a blast and I’m glad he had the experience. My great-grandfather was an artist, as was my grandfather, father and Elizabeth herself. C already shows an aptitude for it and a definite interest in it. I once suggested he go to New York for art school when it’s time for college. “Okay, just remind me,” he responded. Tonight when he got home he told me all about the sculpture he’d seen at David Lusk Gallery and some of the people he met. He said they served milk and apple juice. I went to the gallery’s website and he pointed out the pieces of Pinkney Herbert’s and Mary Bennett’s he’d seen and which ones he liked. They went to L Ross Gallery for another opening and he met Bobby, Mel, Dwayne and a man with a red shirt and hair that stuck out. He said Mel gave him five instead of shaking his hand, and he thought her picture was pretty. I went to the website and he pointed out the face he saw in Bobby Spillman’s piece You Said What?!

It sounded like a great evening of viewing, and learning, about art and hobnobbing with local artists, all a positive piece of his education. I asked if Elizabeth explained the art they saw to him. “Yeah, she told me it was abstract and stuff.” I know he’s looking forward to their next outing. I know he’s looking forward to their next outing more than I’m looking forward to another Friday night preparing cheese pizza and chocolate milk, answering the question What can we do now? , and mediating the great Silly Putty Wars, although Toby was a gracious host and his Guinness was cold. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of hoping I’m invited to the next round of gallery openings so I can see and be seen before I become known around town simply as C’s Father.

Old Venice

We went out to eat and I told Dining With Monkeys all about it.

Nanny McPhee

The good people at NetFlix sent us a copy of Nanny McPhee today and The Quartet and Kristy are watching it. I declined because I gleaned that there was no gratuitous violence or nudity in it. There have been many, many questions regarding what is going on in the movie - it's as though Kristy blindfolded the kids before they pushed Play.

This exchange happend about an hour into the film:

S: Why don't the kids go to school?
Kristy: Maybe they stay home and the nanny teaches them their lessons.
S: What nanny?

Let's Do The Time Warp

When I left the house this morning for work S was three-years-old. When I returned home from work she had on lipstick, nail polish and glitter make-up all over her face. Heart palpitations ensued. Sure it was only play make-up she'd gotten at the store earlier in the day, but it was something I wasn't prepared to see. There needs to be some sort of warning phone call placed before I leave work when I'm to return home to a short little 25-year-old. It was made better, though, when she crawled up in my lap and snuggled up to me just like the little girl I'd last seen sleeping in her Dora nightgown before leaving in the morning. But then she got glitter on my shirt so I made her get up.

In other news: I gave GK her first bottle tonight after work. Apparently this is a milestone for mothers. I understand the importance of breastfeeding - the bonding, the nutrients, the antibodies, blah, blah, blah. What's the best part of breastfeeding, though, guys? The fact that I can't do it. Her leap into bottle feeding just heralds an era of something else for me to do. I'm still lobbying for breastfeeding in the middle of the night, though. She didn't even do that good of a job with the bottle, but she may have been distracted by all the glitter I was wiping off my shirt and onto hers.

Happy Birthday, JP

Today is JP’s birthday, and what can you say about JP? He’s five-years-old and he’s one of my favorite children. He was born in 2001 at 5:41 a.m. and it’s the last good thing that happened that year. In fact, it would be one of the worst years ever if it weren’t for him, but instead it was one of the best. I’m not sure if this is something that is usually said about five-year-olds, but JP is full of charisma. He has a smile that lights up a room and a wit that is nearly fully developed even if he is not. I could watch JP all day. Not so much when he’s just sitting on the couch watching Bugs Bunny because then he’s just like a little lump of a boy stuck to the cushion, like Silly Putty. But when he’s on his game, running and skipping and shaking his butt, there is no better entertainment for the money. He cracks me up. He is the quintessential little boy replete with bed head at two in the afternoon, dirty fingernails and bursts of energy like a Tesla coil, book-ended by periods of Zen-like rest. He’s a singer, he’s a dancer, he’s a showman. JP is our very own Sammy Davis Jr., only white, gentile, two good eyes and a hair taller than the original already. He was bald when he was born and his favorite food is bacon. He could drink a sinkfull of chocolate milk, scale a lamppost like a gecko and make up a joke on the spot all while you were still mesmerized by that grin of his. He can reach his nose with his tongue and his favorite Marx brother is Harpo. He still sucks his thumb at times, hates the morning and loves his Momma. He’s musically inclined and has developed a deep, guttural, fake belch. He’s a boy of few words and the typical middle child, sharing his toys with his siblings because he wants everybody to be happy. He is one of the four slices that make up the apple of my eye.

Happy birthday to you, JP!

Someone To Watch Over Me

Fatherhood, in its most base form, is a position of protection. We are here to protect our family, just as the dominant lion is there to watch over his pride or the alpha male gorilla is there to protect his family, and scratch himself. And when we're unable to carry out our basic task, it's a wretched feeling. Such was the case tonight when I came home to find that our air conditioner was out. It was blowing, but it wasn't blowing cold and there was frost on the inside of the unit. The high today was 95, it's supposed to be 97 tomorrow. Now, I'm not a particularly useful man when it comes to electrical maintenance, though I believe myself to be at times. I did what I could, though. I took some of the unit apart and looked at it, stared at it, in fact. I jiggled some wires, cursed it, then put it back together, cleaned it out and turned it back on. Surprisingly, nothing. I'm as impotent as can be when it comes to things mechanical. So Kristy and The Quartet went out to her parents' house, which is way out east, but where the air blows cool, leaving me here to contend with the heat, and the sweet sound of silence. There is nothing to listen to now but the whirling of the ceiling fan above me. No one is here to say they don't want to go to bed, or they don't want to take a bath or they don't want to grant me a moment of peace. It's just me and the stillness and the cicadas.

I still need to deal with the air conditioner, and it should be a blast finding out what that costs on the Fourth of July weekend. But first, I'll need to fix the garbage disposal that stopped working yesterday (are they all connected?), because it seems a father's job is to guard his family and to mash food up so finely that it will flow through the pipes. Well, at least it will be unbearably hot as I crawl around under the kitchen sink with my bad back, making me feel even more like the father of four, I suppose. To top it all off, tomorrow is JP's birthday. He'll be five. I just hope that what he's been wishing for is a Badger 1/3 horsepower garbage disposal and a compressor (or whatever it may be) for a Goodman package unit.

Oh, Brother

GK and I were discussing epic Greek poetry this evening when the talk naturally came around to Homer, The Odyssey and the directing team of the Cohen brothers. I popped O Brother, Where Art Thou? in the DVD player but spent the first 10 minutes of the film explaining to C and JP that George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson aren't supposed to be brothers.

Then, in an unrelated conversation, S asked me if I lost my patience.

A Visit From Katherine

In the wake of a week-long visit from my mother, The Quartet’s Nonna, my sister, Katherine, just made a quick weekend trip up from the swamps of South Florida to meet GK. Let me say this first, my sister’s visit was a lot more expensive (for me) than my mother’s visit. We went to dinner at Central BBQ with Baskin-Robbins for dessert, a Memphis Redbirds baseball game, lunch at Café Ole and ordered pizza in. That was a Friday to Sunday visit. Let me also say that in lieu of another outing to AutoZone Park for a Redbirds game, I think next time I’ll simply turn a baseball game on the TV for the kids to ignore, pop some popcorn, take it out into the yard and dump it on the grass, then hand each kid a $20 bill and be done with it. But then, of course, I wouldn’t be able to see their smiling, cherubic faces as I hand money over to strangers simply for their enjoyment. But I digress. Katherine, as all good aunts should, came bearing gifts. She brought the older kids each a pair of Florida’s native footwear, flip-flops. She brought them noisy shoes. It’s funny watching them put them on, too. Funny or frustrating, depending on how soon you would like to leave the house. I think I could teach JP how to tie shoes blindfolded faster than it takes him to wedge those flip-flops between his toes.

Katherine’s visit, and our weekly dinners with my other sister and brother-in-law, are important to The Quartet, and they look forward to them no matter the frequency. The time I spent as a young person with my aunts and uncles are some of the best memories I have. I can remember looking forward to their visits from college just as my own kids looked forward to their Aunt Katherine coming from Florida. And I also remember when they’d leave and how I felt that there would never be anything as fun as a visit from them. C was upset last night when Katherine left and it brought it all back for me. My mother has six siblings – three brothers and three sisters – and though I was closer with some than others, they are all people I loved to be around then and people I look up to now.

A couple of these aunts and uncles, though, were instrumental in educating me on important life lessons, like how to be a good father, the importance of family, how not to drink a beer, how to grill a chicken and how to drive on ice (and that driving on that ice can be a lot of fun). A defining point in my adolescence was a road trip I took with Aunt Carol back to her home outside Chicago. She had come to Memphis for a visit and, for reasons still not clear to me, bought a Great Dane puppy while here. She didn’t want to drive back alone with the dog so I, all of 13-years-old at the time, rode back with her. I made her listen to The Big Chill soundtrack the entire way there – first one side of the cassette, then the other, repeat for eight hours – and she did it without complaint. While traveling through Arkansas, she was pulled over for speeding and told me to lie in the back seat and act sick while she explained to the trooper that she must have been paying more attention to her sick nephew than the speed limit. She got the ticket anyway. So I suppose she was also instrumental in teaching me to lie to the authorities, just not very well (in a brilliant display of karma the Great Dane became sick shortly after and threw up in the backseat). She told me stories about the seven of them growing up, including some stories I was probably still too young to hear, and I loved her for that. She treated me like a grown-up and it is one of the first times I recall being treated as such. She regarded me as so mature, in fact, that to get me back to Memphis she put me on an Amtrak train for a 12-hour trip alone, teaching me self-reliance and never to force Motown on anyone ever again.

Another memory is somewhat hazy because I was quite a bit younger, but I remember a Christmas when we were all at my grandparents’ house and Aunt Carol and Uncle Johnny had to run out for something. Naturally I wanted to go with them because where they went, fun was sure to follow. It was brutally cold and the purple Gremlin they all drove at one time or another broke down if you can believe that. We walked in the dark to the Market Basket, where Johnny worked, to use the phone. Johnny carried me and let me put my hands inside his coat to keep warm. When we got to the Market Basket he held me up to one of the giant overhead heaters to help fight the chill. It scared the hell out of me. It was like he was trying to grill me.

I hope my own kids have similar experiences with their aunts and uncles, without the beer, though, or the driving on ice, or the speeding through Arkansas or even being in a Gremlin…but you get the idea. If the week with their Nonnna and this weekend with Aunt Katherine are any indication, I know that they enjoy their time with family and that they anticipate more of it. I hope that they retain the appreciation for their immediate family and all of the things they’ll learn from them, skills and knowledge that might slip through the cracks at home and in school. I do hope they do a better job at grilling chicken, which I’m doing as I write this post, and which I fear is already burnt.

S is for Scary. Period.

S stands for Stubborn
S stands for Strong
S stands for Scrappy

S has always been a bit mean spirited. She is a menace to her brothers much of the time. To this, people are always quick with the explanation, “Well, she has to keep up with two brothers.” But this couldn’t be further from the truth, C and JP would not hurt a fly. They would never think to torment their sister for sheer pleasure the way she does them. There are many times we have to come to their rescue because their little sister is pummeling them again, or simply because she’s threatening to. With the introduction of GK, her demeanor has become somewhat exaggerated with extra fits and crying and general unpleasantness thrown in for good measure. She doesn’t direct this at her new little sister, but the boys seem to be fair game. We understand that S was the baby, and the only girl for a long time, and that GK is intruding upon that territory. We deal with it by making sure to make time for just her and reminding her how special she is and what a good big sister she is. We’ve also sent the boys into hiding, so you may not be seeing much of them around. They’ll be safe and they’ll come out when the storm has cleared. The boys have gone to the mattresses.

This evening, before we got to the park but after S had thrown a tantrum regarding pooping, Kristy said, “I think S is about to start her period.” A shiver ran up and down my spine that can only be likened to a ruptured disk.
“I don’t want to hear that again for 15 years,” I said.
“She’s 3 1/2 now, it’s not going to be that long.”
“I know, but I don’t want to hear that again for another 15 years.”

I know my daughters will grow up. I know this is coming and I’m scared of it like nothing else. The thought of boys and choices and periods makes me nauseous to think about now when I look into their little chubby faces. I’ve talked to other fathers who have teenage daughters and they all seem to handle the situation with a certain amount of distraction. They know what’s out there – they were all boys once themselves – but they don’t dwell on it. Well, there are times when I dwell on it. And it’s those times that I hold S close, tell her that she is the meanest little thing I’ve ever seen, and that I want her to stay that way for as long as she can.

Tonight's Entertainment

I know I made a big deal in that last post about seeing the kids when I get home from work, but tonight I came home and Kristy and all the kids were gone. That was pretty sweet, too. They were at the library picking up a passel of literature. When they got home I read the kids' books to them. S had selected Positively No Pets Allowed and Happy Birthday, Lulu, JP picked Famous Navy Fighter Planes, and C chose Ben and the Porcupine. I read all of them except JP's because his is pretty long and technical. In fact, we only made it through the first chapter which covered the birth of the Vought VE-7, the Navy's first American-built fighter. It was even fitted with pontoons eventually, making it able to take off and land on the water.

Then we went for a walk where C found a three-legged frog and brought it home to live in our flower garden.

Walking:

Father's Day 2006

On Father’s Day 2006, three confessions.

Confession No. 1: I have no idea what I’m doing as a parent. This isn’t something I’ve just grasped, I’ve known it since January of 1998 when C was born. I don’t know if I knew it before he was born, but the second his furry, misshapen head appeared, I knew I was in a world of trouble. Parenting seems like something that should come second nature once you’ve been doing it for a while, or once that second…and third…and fourth come along, but it hasn’t. Not for me anyway. I have often thought that if at any time during a moment of life lesson instructions or disciplining, if any of the kids turn to me and say, “You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?” then I would have to admit that they’d called my bluff and we would be on equal footing, and chaos would reign.

I’m like Luke Skywalker jousting with that floating orb and the kids keep shooting problems at me while I deflect them as quickly and accurately as I know how. And it feels like I’m dealing with the kids blindfolded, the way Luke was, and not with a light saber (which would make parenting so much easier) but with a spoon of peanut butter and the TV remote. As I take a swing at whatever difficulties they throw my way, all I can hope is that there is no ricochet, which hits them in the forehead, causing irreparable damage. How do we know if we’re helping our kids or harming them? I had a conversation with a friend earlier and he suggested that it would be 20 years before we know if we did a good job as parents. By then our children will be in careers, married and possibly with kids of their own. Or they’ll be serial killers. It feels like these are the two options and they’re based on whether or not I fed the kids enough (or any) vegetables, whether or not they watched too much Sponge Bob and whether or not I told them I love them every day before going to work.

Confession No. 2: I’m 35 and had a fourth child born three weeks ago, and I am only just now admitting to myself that I may never have the opportunity to circumnavigate the globe alone on a 32-foot sloop. You can call it maturity or you can call it a mid-life crisis if you like, though I was planning on living to 120, so the timing seems a little off. I am just starting to realize, too, the fruitlessness of my dream to play bass for The Attractions, backing up Elvis Costello, not so much due to my lack of talent and rhythm, or not knowing Costello personally, but because I don’t have the time to tour or practice what with getting the kids up and off to school, baths, feedings, etc. I may not find the time, either, to write my novel, direct a play, race in the Tour de France or perform stand-up comedy…all dreams of mine. But as quickly as I’m realizing all of this, I am just as quickly thinking that it’s okay, and I’ll give you four reasons: C, JP, S & GK.

My male point of view on childbirth is that mothers have a built-in bonding process what with carrying the child for nine months, pushing it out and then breastfeeding. But the whole situation is very unnatural for fathers. It has to be learned and it has to be learned quickly. The first thing we learn is that nothing is about us anymore – time, food, entertainment, boobs – nothing. It’s up to us to consciously see that the kids fill in the gaps, which takes a certain amount of effort, as gruff as that may sound, but soon enough we want them filling in those gaps. I know fathers who didn’t make time for their kids as they were growing and, subsequently, they lost them once they were grown. I can’t imagine not being in contact with mine every day. The best part of my day still is walking in the house from work and hearing the chorus, “Daddy’s home!”

Confession No. 3: I really like the way the mini-van handles. It’s one of the most comfortable rides I’ve ever had. This “confession” doesn’t really mean anything, but I just thought I’d throw it in there.


All in all, I think I’m doing a pretty damn good job. I have three smart, funny and happy young children, and one healthy newborn. All of this despite Confession No. 1, and the everyday frustrations and puzzles of fatherhood. My partner in crime, Kristy, is the major part of the children’s development, I know. I’m just here as back-up and to do the best I can with what I’m equipped with, mainly a stern look, a sense of humor and the knowledge of where the extra batteries are for the TV remote. But no light saber…not yet, anyway.

Friday Night Lights

Here is what my Friday nights have come to: ordering pizza in, watching kids' DVDs, and trying to convince JP that we almost named him Cheesedoodle instead.

Chompers

C went to the dentist for the first time ever today and what did the dentist do? He pulled a tooth. That's right, his first experience with a doctor of dentistry was to have this stranger rip something from his gums. He's doing fine despite that, even with his fat, novacaine lip. He had a cavity and the permanent tooth was right there about to surface so it just made more sense to pull it. Now explain that to an 8-year-old in a dentist chair with a blinding light in his eyes and suction in his mouth.

He got to keep the tooth, of course, as part of the scam to bilk money from parents through the guise of the tooth fairy. But JP lost that tooth in the backyard. Why was the tooth in the backyard? I don't know. Why did JP have possession of the tooth? I don't know that either. The kids weren't in the street and nobody was screaming in agony, so my job was done. I can't be responsible for body parts that aren't actually part of the body anymore.

Kristy suggested that C write a note to the tooth fairy explaining that his little brother lost the tooth, and then put the note under his pillow. JP said, "And maybe she'll bring you a UFO!" I'm as unsure what he meant by that as I am by why he was holding C's disembodied tooth.

C wrote: I got my tooth pulled out at the dentist but my little brother lost it. That's worth at least a dollar.

Dining With Monkeys

Another restaurant review by me can now be found at the best blog in Memphis, Dining With Monkeys. Check it out!

Spooky

For the past few months, C has had trouble at night with bedtime. He's an anxious kid, anyway, and something about that time of night tends to exacerbate it. He usually needs someone to lie down with him - he used to come into our bed, but since GK showed up and has begun her all night nurse-a-thon in our bed, that's out of the question. So recently I've been lying with him on our enormous sectional sofa until he falls asleep...then I leave him there. Last night we were lying there and C got up to go to the bathroom. When he came back he was whimpering as though he were upset. "What's wrong?" I asked, a bit perturbed now because it was getting ever later. "When I was in the bathroom I thought I saw something walk past the door." Well, this was crazy because everyone else in the house was asleep, so I assured him it was nothing and he calmed down immediately. But now I. Was. Freaked. Out. And now I'm lying there thinking about him seeing "something" walk past the door. While I was lying there, I thought I saw the lamp next to the couch light up. So I stared at it and, sure enough, it lit up again, then went out. I kept watching it and every 15 seconds or so it would light up again and then go right back out. It had the glow of a firefly so I pointed it out to C. We watched it a few times and then I had to get to the bottom of it so I turned on the lamp and we inspected the lamp and shade and, guess what, no firefly.

Now this is all pretty spooky if you're an irrational person, or if it's late and you're a tired person. But here's the thing, the other morning I was somewhere between sleep and waking when I heard some little feet on wood floors running into our room. This is no big deal in our house as you can imagine. I raised up to see which one it was but just heard giggling and the feet scampering away. I got up shortly after that to get ready for work and looked in on all the kids and they were all asleep. Sound asleep. There hadn't been time for them to run back to their beds and fall so soundly asleep, I was sure.

I'm not saying there are ghosts out in the world, much less in our house. And I'm not here to debate the existence of paranormal behavior and beings. But what I'm wondering is why a ghost would choose our house. I've divided the square footage of our home up evenly and I don't intend to do so any more, so this ghost better be content to hover near the ceiling, we're not using all of that space anyway. And if our house is haunted by some sort of spirit, I would respectfully ask that he or she or it fold the clothes in the dryer and load up the dishwasher. Nobody stays for free.

On The Porch

A helicopter pilot once told me that flying a helicopter is a lot like trying to push a bubble with a stick. Well, so is trying to take a walk with four kids, especially when most of that walk is on roadways without sidewalks. It's not as dangerous as it sounds as we live in Chickasaw Gardens (for those of you who live in Memphis, we don't really live in Chickasaw Gardens, but just outside - if Chickasaw Gardens has any structures that are 1200 sq. ft. then there are a couple of cars parked in it) so the sidestreets are fairly untraveled and the cars that are on them move slow enough. But we've been taking walks the past couple of nights and the three that can walk meander in and out of the street while we follow shouting, "Get back to the side! Get back to the side!" It's all very relaxing. GK, of course, was in a stroller, still upset about the U.S.A. loss to the Czech Republic in today's World Cup soccer match and not understanding why she was being rattled back and forth in this contraption. We realized tonight that she looks like an old man. We gave her an old person name, what did we expect?

After we returned home (all were accounted for) we played in the front yard and then, as it got darker, we all retired to the front porch to watch lightning bugs and talk, because somebody around here is always talking. C wanted to play with fire and so started rubbing two sticks he found together. He asked if it was going to make fire and I assured him it would. I even told him a few times that I thought I saw smoke. I told him if he was patient enough and if he blew on them, counted to 20 then blew again, he surely would make fire. For all I know, he may still be out there, rubbing sticks and blowing. JP was notified on the porch that he has a doctor's appointment in the very near future because all kids going into kindergarten had to get some shots, to which he responded, "Not this kid!" GK slept, because she's an old man. S, as philosophical as ever on this cool, summer evening, tried to convince us that we weren't on the porch. She began by suggesting GK wasn't there, that there was no one in the blanket Kristy was holding, then she moved on to the rest of us. But I know we were there. I know we were there because I saw the smoke. I promise.

Doing Stuff

In an effort to bring the kids down from a week of doing stuff with their Nonna, who had been here visiting from the swamps of south Florida, we decided that we would have to do stuff with the kids today. Two of The Quartet spent the night with their grandparents last night, so we took GK and JP to breakfast at Brother Juniper's. GK was born two weeks ago today and this was her first dining out experience. I’m afraid she was terribly bored by it all – she slept through the whole thing.

We went out to pick up C and S and then surprised them by taking them to a movie. I would rather have sat around watching the World Cup matches, but Sunday is my only day off work and The Quartet get it in their heads the other six days that they want to spend a day doing stuff with me. It was supposed to be 105 degrees today, making Peabody Park out of the question, so we went to see Cars. Or, as JP called it as we pulled into the parking lot of the theater, “Disney’s new movie, Cars!”

Pixar, once again, went above and beyond with the animation in the movie. However, I put all of their movies up against Toy Story, which I still think is their best, and which this one didn’t even come close to. I didn’t realize that there were not going to be any people characters in Cars. There were cars in the stands watching the cars race, which was weird. C and JP really seemed to enjoy the movie. S, exhausted from either staying up too late at Grandma’s, or from picking on JP through most of the movie, fell asleep for the last 15 minutes. GK told me later that the film left her feeling hollow, like that last scene in Planet of the Apes. These cars seemed to inhabit a world that was built by humans for humans – there were buildings everywhere, obviously meant to house people, and tractors which, presumably, would have been used to harvest food. “Where were all the people?” she asked. “Did the machinery rise up and destroy the population like an episode of Twilight Zone or a Philip K. Dick novel?” I didn’t have the answers. Damn you, Walt Disney!

So it was a big day for doing stuff and for GK – her first breakfast out and her first movie, which led directly into her first lecture from Daddy on how movies are too expensive when they really needn’t be, and that the snack bar is an unconscionable scam which should be investigated by the federal government. The cost, by the way, for two adults and one child having breakfast at Brother Juniper’s: $26. The cost for two adults taking three of-age kids to the movie with large popcorn, Coke and bottled water: $40. The cost of spending time with my kids on my only day off: $66.

Career Talk

GK and I were laying around the other night watching the second season of Rescue Me on DVD and talking about what she'd like to do for work in the future. She's not quite two weeks old and, therefore, uncertain what she wants to do when she grows up. Uncertain, even, what 'growing up' means, or what I was saying, or who I even am. But watching that show, which is about firefighters, reminded me that JP wants to be a firefighter some day. His two little friends at school want to be Power Rangers, he says, and I'm just thankful he's got a good head on his shoulders and realizes the pay for Power Rangers is steadily declining and the job itself will probably be outsourced to India by the time he's grown. C has said, since the time he could talk and hold a crayon, that he would like to be an artist like his aunt Elizabeth. I'm not sure about S. She hasn't said what it is she might like to do eventually, but I could see her as a prosecuting attorney, CEO or Mongolian warlord.

My Mom is in town this week and as part of her duty as grandmother she brought a bag of goodies which included embarrassing stories about me to tell my kids. It seems that when I was a young boy my goal was to be a gas station attendant. Lofty goal, indeed. I think I remember talking about it and I believe my reasoning was that it was a profession that didn't require schooling. I never did like school. Alas, I never became a gas station attendant because there are no more gas station attendants (The Quartet didn't even know what she was talking about), it's all self-serve now. Instead, I own my own business, which also requires no schooling, but which pays considerably less than a gas station attendant. (Other items in Nonna's bag of goodies, by the way, included airline wing pins she got in the Tampa airport for the older three to wear on their shirts, or to just stick themselves with, and junk food. She has been very popular this week as the kids have put on weight, mocked me and my childhood tales and bled just a little bit.)

Whatever my kids decide to be when they're grown, I hope that it makes them happy and that they excel at it to the best of their ability. I also hope they make enough money to take care of their elderly parents and to pay us off to keep the silly stories about them, including this blog, quiet.

Pest Control

We have bugs and Kristy has had enough. The crumbs and morsels left lying around are too attractive for these vermin and there is way too much of it for us to control them ourselves. This time of year, too, with the warm weather, makes it worse because they seem to multiply exponentially and criss-cross the kitchen two and three at a time. So she called a pest control company to come out this weekend and rid us of the pests. But I told her, "Kristy, they're not pests, they're our children." We named them and fed them and clothed them and we've watched them grow, but now all the scampering when the lights come on and eating whatever food has been lying around is all too much for her. I hope the pest control guy brings big traps so it's all humane and they can eventually be released back into the wild. And I hope there is pizza in whatever wild they're released in because that's really the only food all of them enjoy.

A Life's Work

This may be the greatest accomplishment in my 8 1/2 years as a father: I've got the kids racing each other to take my shoes off. At the end of a long day at work I can come into the house, plop down on the couch, and say, "Who's going to take Daddy's shoes off?" And these kids actually come running.

Now that I think about it, this may be my greatest accomplishment, period, because I've never had anybody racing to take my shoes off for me until now.

X Marks The Spot

Don't you love it when your kids act like kids? I don't mean the screaming and fighting bedtime and fingers in orifices, I mean when they use their creativity to entertain themselves. When they take that sense of adventure in its most innocent form and create worlds for themselves that can, at times, seem better than the one we live in. We don't realize how they absorb everything they see and hear - music and movies and stories we tell them - to use later, to become what they want to be at that moment, to make them happy and more, well, kid-like.

My kids went on a treasure hunt this evening, scouring and scavenging for whatever riches might be nigh. It reminded me of being young, of playing outside until the cicadas starting calling, digging around in the dirt with a stick sharpened to a point on the concrete. I searched high and low. For what? I didn't even know at the time. Sometimes I'd find an old Coca-Cola bottle buried for what I felt sure must be a century, sometimes an old tool that someone had left behind, every once in a while a coin or two. But it wasn't so much what I'd find as the hunt itself. I was in another world then, I was a pirate, a scavenger, it was the thrill of the hunt that I loved.

So tonight JP and S suspended reality and did a little exploring of their own. They sailed to a world far away, to a distant and unknown land lush with vegetation and sandy beaches - they went under the sofa. They got the one tool they thought they might need - my flashlight - and went hunting. This was my good flashlight, too. You know the one I'm talking about, guys, my Mag-Lite, the one they've been told over and over again is not a toy. They got down on their knees with their scrunched-up faces to the floor and their butts in the air to see what they could find under there. What did they find? What did that strong and sure beam of light (what beam is left with the weakening batteries) reveal? Let's see, they found marbles, they found some Hot Wheels cars, they found a part of a part of an unidentifiable toy, long forgotten, and they found a stuffed animal. Actually, once the dog hair was removed from the sticky substance that was stuck to whatever was underneath, it turned out not to be a stuffed animal at all. I'm not really sure what it was, it was thrust back under the couch - catch and release. They found a little bit of food, which surprised me, I really thought they'd find a lot more foodstuff. They either didn't eat it, or had the good sense not to let me see them eat it. It was all very interesting to them, much more interesting than the perfectly good toys in their rooms. And squatting down on the floor like that wasn't in any way a nuisance to those of us trying to make our way through the living room.

I'm glad that those two are starting to indulge their curiosity, I just wish it was outside, or in a book, and not under the Bermuda triangle of a sofa we sit on. I at least wish that if they really wanted to find out what's under there, that they'd do it with a broom, dustpan and Hefty bag. Even real pirates had to swab the deck and scrape barnacles off the hull every once in a while.

The Quartet

C, JP, S & GK

Be Afraid

I’m a worrier, a born empathizer. I’m anxious. I’m Woody Allen without the cool, come-what-may attitude. I get nervous. Becoming a parent is most likely not the ideal situation for a person with these qualities; I now have four times the people to worry about as I used to. But it’s too late for that now.

I took the three older children to Davis-Kidd Booksellers this evening to get them out of the house and in an effort to give Kristy the chance to relax with just GK. Naturally, upon arrival, they had to go to the bathroom. Now, I know that there are all sorts of things for a parent to be concerned with when it comes to their children – violence, drugs, kidnapping, Caillou – and, rest assured, they’re all in the back of my skull, stewing, just waiting their turn to be brought to the forefront. But they’ll just have to wait, because tonight one of my greatest fears was realized once again – the public bathroom. Is there any criminal so insidious as a small room, containing other, smaller rooms, where the general public is allowed to relieve their bladders and bowels? Yet here I was, actually opening the door for my children, my offspring, to enter. It must have been 200 square feet of porcelain and tile, and it felt like the three of them did everything in their power to touch every square foot of it. This was a bookstore, however, and you’d think that the patrons, the learned people, men wearing tweed and glasses, would have the courtesy to lift a seat, would be practiced in their aim. Judging from the puddles and smears and paper thrown about like so much confetti, these people were just like any other people. And there, amongst it all, amongst the dribblings of colds and flu and plague and whatever else was festering and growing in there were my kids. These kids are not pristine by any stretch of the imagination, yet my first inclination was to have the boys drop their drawers in a corner and, without touching anything – ANYTHING! – pee in the corner. I wanted to sit S on the sink, on a bed of paper towels, to do her business. Truth be told, I thought about taking them back out in the bookstore to pee out there, probably in the self-help aisle, and more specifically, in the OCD section because I know it would be neat and orderly and clean to my specifications. But they’re “big boys and girls” now and insist on doing things themselves, actions such as lifting lids and flushing, the boys leaning precariously into the gaping maw of the urinal. Once this is all taken care of, my next inclination is to scrub them raw before we leave, because I still may have to touch them, and there is the possibility that they will be on or near my bed later. But the water in the faucets doesn’t get nearly hot enough, it never does, and most public restrooms these days have stopped stocking steel wool for just such an occasion. So they did their business, cleaned up as best was possible without a decontamination zone, and exited.

This next bit is one of the most frightening parts, because I’m sorry to say we didn’t leave the store at that time. I’m sorry to say that they were sent back out into the store, among the books and toys, amidst your very own children.

One Of Us

Well, we’ve decided to keep her. The way we understood it, we could return her to the hospital if we were in any way dissatisfied. We have 30 days to do so according to the fine print. Yet after only three days we’ve decided to hold on to GK. Jumping the gun, you say? That is possible. We should wait until the 30th day to be absolutely sure, you suggest? Well, now that you mention it…no, nope, it’s decided, she can stay. The other three kids are attached already and, besides, she doesn’t take up all that much room right now. In fact, she’s staying in a basket on a table. How about that? No crib, no bulky baby bed to be put together and adjusted. Kristy found a basket someplace and GK fits in it just perfectly, just like a loaf of bread. They call it a Moses basket, but its buoyancy has yet to be tested. And the Moses basket is on an end table next to our bed. So she’s like a knick-knack.

We live in a 1200 sq. ft. house. You read that right – twelve-hundred square feet. With six of us now, that means 200 sq. ft. apiece. I could play the dictator card and take considerably more for myself, breaking up the rest of the square footage according to seniority or according to who can fetch a beer from the fridge for me the quickest, but I’m a fair, benevolent dictator. I may, however, claim as part of my 200 the bathroom. Living in such close quarters there are some rules GK is going to have to learn fairly quickly, the sooner the better. An example of some of these rules are: 1) turn off the light in your room when you leave it, 2) everyone is to remain quiet while Daddy is watching his DVDs, 3) any food that is unwrapped, peeled or prepared in any way must be eaten in its entirety, 4) flush the toilet. When these are learned then her stay here will be much more pleasant. And once she learns them all I’ll need her to explain them to her three siblings, who appear not to have learned any of them.

So welcome, GK, to your new home. Know that you are welcome and know that you are loved, not just because you are our newest daughter and sister, and not simply because we found only the nicest wicker basket for you to sleep in, but mainly because with a full 27 days left on the agreement with the hospital, we decided now to keep you.

Top 10 Questions

Top 10 questions regarding GK during her first 48 hours in the world from C, JP & S:

#1 - Did Mommy's big belly pop?
#2 - Can I hold her?
#3-10 - Did she poop?

Introducing

GK
Born Sunday, May 28, 2006, 10:28 a.m.
7 lbs. 2 oz.
20 inches
Baby, mother, father and siblings are all doing terrific.

Tick-Tock

It's 5:25 a.m., Sunday, May 28, 2006. Kristy is walking around the house with contractions seven minutes apart. Today is the day. Stay tuned...

Radio Free Memphis

This post has been a long time coming. Over a month ago, you'll remember, I wrote a post about the longshot possibility of me being on the radio. Just to catch you up, a friend of a friend suggested I record some of these VERY (his word, his italics and all-caps, if I remember correctly) witty posts for NPR to be played in the days leading up to Father's Day. Long story short - read the post for yourself, it's VERY (my italics, my all-caps) witty. So here we are just over a month since then and I haven't heard boo from the contact at NPR, leading me to the only viable conclusion: that NPR - National Public Radio - hates children. Not just my children, but all children, your children. Hard to believe, I know. There is the possibility that the idea just didn't appeal to them, or that they didn't find Urf! as witty as we all do, or that they just couldn't juggle enough time slots in their production schedule for such bits, but that's all a very vague probability that we needn't waste time on just now. It's much easier to assume that NPR is full of kid haters. This is unfortunate because it's the kids who are their future listeners and it is they who NPR will eventually go to with their hands out when it's time for the annual Begging For Money.

Still I wonder, did The Trio somehow offend NPR? Is all the talk of boogers and farts (sorry, Mom - my Mom told me she didn't like that word, that it offended her, before hurrying me off the phone during a commercial break for American Idol, a show which offends me) and childhood antics too much for the delicate sensibilities of NPR's listeners? Well, now that I read that, it's possible that that's the case. Who wants to turn on the radio only to hear me say fart (sorry, Mom)? Who wants to hear a broadcast of JP singing a Beastie Boys song or S reciting most of the alphabet? Who? We do! So let's start an E-mail writing campaign! Just address it to...well, I can't find her name now, but send it directily to NPR at...okay, Google NPR for their address...and let's make a difference! Let's show them that our children are people, too. Maybe not people with money, not yet, not that I know of anyway, but people just the same - short little poor people. The producers and writers and Garrison Keillor will bow quickly under the pressure caused by the onslaught of E-mails from all 36.97 daily viewers to Urf!, unless 20 or so of those daily viewers are my Mom, as I suspect. But even then, she has all night to write E-mails now that she's boycotting NPR and American Idol, blessedly, is over for the season.

[Happy Birthday, Mom!
Happy Birthday, Nonna!]

Something Burning At The End

We're down to the wire. There's a light at the end of the tunnel that is the school year. The Trio all have their last day of school tomorrow and I am anticipating it with all the gusto of my own days spent in class because when they're finished with school then I get my mornings back. I can go to the gym. I can have a leisurely breakfast at one of my favorite downtown restaurants. I can sleep in. Kristy will spend the summer at home with four children while I get up and virtually sneak out of the house before anyone else is awake. Is this selfish? Probably. Should I feel guilty? I probably will, eventually. But there'll be time to think about that over a Spanish omelet at Bon-Ton Cafe. For the entire school year I've been responsible for getting these three little morning-time monsters up, dressed, fed and out the door (you can read more on that here), so for a couple of weeks anyway, I'm going to revel in just a little Daddy Time.

Before Daddy Time starts, though, the people that run the school where JP & S go, the work camp we send them to every day, are going to extract a little more precious time out of us. There is some sort of program planned for tonight. I don't know anything about it other than there will be food (nine-month-pregnant Kristy is required to make a desert today for it) and singing and that my presence is expected. JP is holding a flag and S is holding a candle during the singing portion of the program. For that, I give up a Thursday evening. JP sings every night, the flag is just gratuitous showbiz glitz as far as I'm concerned, and S is always walking around with candles, or matches, or some such incendiary device. I suppose there will be other children there, all running around, wiping their noses on whatever is handy, their hands most likely, and then my pant leg.

My fear is that this sort of thing will become the norm. I was talking to a friend yesterday who had spent the morning watching his daughter "graduate" from kindergarten to first grade. Seriously, people, these kids are going to have enough milestones in their lives without us parents forcing them on them for the sake of our scrapbook needs. Isn't the promise of summer enough? It was for me. But this has all snowballed beyond my control.

So this will be one last hurrah for the school year. One last chance to play with friends, one last chance to sing and run and laugh. One last chance to poke your neighbor with the flag you're holding but not paying attention to, and one last chance to catch a playmate on fire with a candle. Screaming and singing and general carrying on is on tap for this evening, it's the final price we pay before a summertime of sleeping late and "staying up late," as C has been looking forward to, and Daddy Time.

Rock'n'Roll

I've been linked to by the Memphis blog Rock'n'Roll Minor Planets, wherein she misspells Urf! and practically dares me to continue blogging. I suppose it's better to be linked poorly than to never have been linked at all. I've also decided to list a few fellow Memphis bloggers over there to your right. I know this list will grow, but I'm beginning with the ones who have linked to Urf!

Imperfect Parent

The Imperfect Parent is pointing at Urf! If you got here from there and then I just sent you back there, then I'm sorry, I know how confusing the internet can be. Thanks Imperfect Parent! Check them out!

Family Motto

I was recently reading a very touching piece in The New Yorker by Calvin Trillin on his late wife, Alice. In the article he mentions a family motto that he, his daughters and Alice had, "Pull Up Your Socks." Trillin recalls Alice lamenting that this motto may have been too "flippant." It got me to thinking that maybe we need a family motto. I found it odd, in fact, that we didn't have one in place already. My family, my little fiefdom, should have a motto to look to for inspiration. A few came to mind right away - "We're Out Of Milk," "Where Is The Remote?," "Your Shoes Are On The Wrong Feet." It will need to be a motto The Trio can take pride in, something they can shout from the top step and one day tattoo across themselves, or at least write it in their own dust. I believe any of the aforementioned mottos are a nice enough fit. Other possibilities include "I Want," "Where's Mommy?" and "Don't Touch Daddy's Drink."

Once we come up with a decent motto, though, we may need a coat of arms - something that really strikes fear, or confusion, in the hearts of the other families at the park. Coats of arms have really fallen out of style in the 21st century. In fact, I don't think I know one family with a coat of arms, nothing they're willing to display with pride anyway. So what would our coat of arms look like? Perhaps a shield with a Pop Tart emblazoned on it, or a sippy cup full of curdled milk or maybe just a likeness of me looking addled. Or maybe it won't be a shield at all, we rarely use them around here. Maybe it will be a TV screen or a trash can or a refrigerator door left standing open. Other coat of arms design possibilities include: a silhouette of bedhead, a toothpaste-caked toothbrush and a pile of laundry, possibly clean, possibly not.

Once you start thinking of a motto and coat of arms, then we naturally have to consider a family song, a battle anthem. Currently, on the way to school, The Trio is enjoying "Shake Your Rump" by The Beastie Boys off the album Paul's Boutique and "People Watching" by Jack Johnson off the Curious George soundtrack. Neither of these seem appropriate. I would have to nominate "Goon Squad" by Elvis Costello off Armed Forces, "Fly Me To The Moon" by Frank Sinatra, the version on Sinatra at the Sands, and "Run Run Run" by The Velvet Underground from The Velvet Underground & Nico.

Well, we have a lot to work on around here so I better go. But rest assured and beware, The Trio will soon be coming to a park near you to take over your swings and your slide and your plastic tube they like to crawl through. And you'll know them right away, they'll be the ones marching up with a banner reading "No Shoes On The Couch!" and wearing shirts printed with stylized pictures of a half-eaten waffle and singing "Shake Your Rump" at the top of their lungs.

Ready For My Close Up

JP announced his plans over the weekend. Well, not so much announced them as whispered them to his mother, but she can't really keep a secret. He says that he and S are going to make movies. He already has the titles, the first is to be called I Keep Forgetting and the second will be called Not Very Smart. Naturally, I hope he succeeds with his filmmaking dreams, but I'm afraid there are a couple of deterrents that need to be dealt with before beginning. The first is that he has very little budget for one, let alone two, movies. In fact, he has no budget at all. There is some change laying around his room and he may be able to trade up on a Power Ranger action figure, but nothing in the quantity that JP will need to have his dream flourish. The second hindrance these projects have against their being made in the near future is JP's almost complete lack of ability to write the alphabet. Now, granted, most Hollywood blockbusters these days require very little use of the English language to appreciate them, but if I know JP he is going to go for that smaller, arthouse feel, and for this reason command of the written word past the letter D may be crucial. There are other obvious problems as well: union labor agreements, demanding studios, monomaniacal stars, and a bed and bathtime that prevents shooting too late, on weekdays anyway.

I'm curious as to what a JP Film would even look like due to his inspiration being largely Rugrats In Paris and Clifford, The Big Red Dog cartoons. He does have some appreciation for The Marx Brothers' Monkey Business and the chase scene from The French Connection, but I fear this may be too little too late. I feel that, despite the obstacles ahead, with hard work and dedication and without the distraction of dinosaurs and juice boxes these films may have a chance. Whether they succeed or not, I certainly don't mean to dissuade him, and I hope that his and S's partnership is fruitful - I can't recall a brother/sister film collaboration right off, but could see theirs being a Cohen Brothers-style working arrangement, once the money and alphabet situations are corrected.

Friday Night Is Nail Night

Toenails. Is there a more useless piece of body ornamentation than the toenail? Infinite in its unimportantness. Yet tonight is when The Trio gets theirs cut. C started it by asking his mother if he needed his cut. What is she going to say? No? Not likely. On any given night, any given kid will join us in our bed and that is where their little toe knives go to work, slicing and dicing our legs and backs. So of course she was going to cut his toenails. And of course JP would want his done and then, naturally, S. And it went in that sequence, too, as though birth order decreed clipping order. What an odd little group we've put together here, fighting bath, fighting sleep, fighting vegetables, but loving the pedicure.

Recovery

I started Urf! to talk about my kids and the silly things they do, but I feel as though I've been talking more about myself lately. Of course, the kids have been pretty boring of late. I had my surgery yesterday and it went swimmingly. I was wheeled back to the operating room shortly after 7 a.m. and left the building before 2 p.m. to go home. I had a piece of broken disk removed through a one-inch hole in my back. I have some pain back there now but it's a different pain than I had, it's a better pain. It's the kind of pain that you know will go away at some point. And the sharp pains that shot down my right leg are gone as well. Thank you, Dr. Feler.

I went to work today because I own my own business and nobody is paying me to not be there. My regulars seemed surprised that I was back, amazed even. I'll tell you what was amazing - going to work for the past eight weeks in the kind of pain I was in. That's what's hard to believe. The pain I have today is nothing in comparison...but that could be the Loritab talking...or the gin.

The Trio have been good and have maintained a wide perimeter. They haven't asked me much about my condition and I haven't shown them the incision, which is being held shut with glue by the way. I imagine one day, in the next few years, I'll show the new baby the scar and try to convince her that that's where she came from.

I'd like to thank everyone who has written and called to ask how I am feeling. Thanks especially to Kristy who has been taking care of me even more than usual and who now has to do all of the heavy lifting instead of just most of it. Thanks to my sister, Elizabeth, who herded the kids to school yesterday morning, brought us dinner last night and then was gracious enough to take The Trio to a baseball game tonight, leaving Kristy and I here alone - she eight months pregnant and me hobbled by surgery so there's no chance of a romantic evening, unless the Loritab and gin have something to say about it.

Surgery Eve

Tomorrow morning, 7 a.m., is my surgery. Cross your fingers. Not you, Dr. Feler!!

Candy From Strangers

I was at the Schnuck's on Union this morning getting some things for work when I came up to a bottleneck in one of the too-narrow aisles in that store. There was an old man in the way - one of the typical characters of Midtown with his wild gray hair, disheveled clothes and walking stick protruding from his basket and taking up even more space in the passing lane. With my typical aplomb I rolled my eyes and pushed by him anyway, but being sure to say excuse me as I did and to assure him that he wasn't in the way. This man followed me, calling to me for what, I assumed, was a handout (this is Midtown, remember). I finally admitted to hearing him and stopped. He asked if my mother was still alive, which seemed an odd question. I said she was and he asked me to tell her that she did a good job raising me, that I was very polite and you don't see that much anymore. He explained that he was just a simple old man, a Southern gentleman and a retired psychologist. I thanked him and agreed with him that people weren't very polite these days. Then I felt guilty for rolling my eyes and for trying to outrun a crazy old man. The guilt is probably something else gained from childhood.

We try to raise The Trio to be polite people, good citizens and helpful to humanity. Or at least to not fart in public, at least not at a restaurant, at least not on an acoustically balanced wood booth. I figure we'll concern ourselves later with Peace Corps applications and Nobel Prize nominations. For now, I'd just like to hear them answer with a yes, sir or yes, ma'am - not to me, because that was never an issue in our house growing up - but to strangers, elders who they haven't been told to call by their first names yet.

It's nice to see something you were taught as a very young person be validated as an adult. To be polite was taught to me in ways I didn't even realize at the time. It's not taught as a subject in school, but with a look, a gentle reminder and then another look, more stern this time with the upper lip curled slightly under. Thank you. Please. May I. If the parenting is effective, it becomes ingrained in us as much as eating right, playing nice, washing our hands and not talking to crazy-haired Southern gentleman ex-psychologists we don't know.

More Dining...

As you saw in the previous post we at at Cafe Ole yesterday. You can read more about it at Dining With Monkeys, a blog created by the amenable Stacey Greenberg, who lives in Overton Square with her husband and two little monkeys.

Mother's Day 2006

Today is Mother’s Day and we all know what that means – only 34 days until Father’s Day. In preparation for the upcoming Father’s Day, The Trio wanted to fix their mother breakfast in bed, so we got out the two eggs we had left due to poor planning, some bacon and bread for toast. Because it’s a special day and they love their mother so much, they washed their hands before touching her food. Since that was the last of the eggs we all sat around watching her eat. After breakfast I fell asleep and I’m not sure, nor do I care, what went on around here. It was a beautiful day, in the low 70s with a nice breeze, so after that nap we went to Peabody Park to swing and slide with the other kids and their moms. All the running around in the sun, and the fact that only one of us had eaten any breakfast, made us all famished so went for lunch and a round of margaritas at Cafe Ole on what must be the nicest patio in Midtown. From lunch we went to Davis-Kidd bookstore, one of our favorite hangouts, then home where we all fell asleep. Well, we all napped except JP. I’m not real sure what he did while the rest of the house was asleep so I’m sorry if anyone received any odd phone calls. The cars were still parked where I left them so I’m fairly certain he didn’t go anywhere, or else his parking has just really improved. After waking up I did for Kristy what I do best – chores. I mowed the lawn and did some laundry.

For the most part, the kids behaved themselves for Mother’s Day and that’s always the best gift, isn’t it? That, and to be left alone.

My own mother told me years ago to be careful and conscientious because you never know what kind of future mother you’re marrying. She didn’t say this to dissuade me from a relationship with anyone in particular, it was just good motherly advice. She said a lot of things and you can categorize this one under Something I Remember. It’s true, though. You can know your prospective wife is a good dancer, a good painter, a good conversationalist and a good kisser, but until she gives birth there is no way to know what kind of mother she’ll be. I got lucky. The girl I met when I was 17 has turned out to be a caring, compassionate and enthusiastic mother. Not only is she good at actually having babies, but she’s good at protecting, nurturing and loving them as well.

In a few weeks I’ll have two daughters and all I can hope is that they’ll learn mothering – if it can be learned – from their mother. I am fortunate to have been raised by a supportive woman and to be married to one, and I’m sure that one day I’ll have grandchildren who will have mothers that are just as competent as their predecessors. They’ll raise their children to the best of their ability, unconditionally, loving them even when there is the slightest chance that one of them didn’t wash their hands before cooking them breakfast for Mother’s Day.

Power At His Fingertips

On the way to school this morning C taught JP how to roll down his own window in the backseat. I don't think JP will be any more excited when he actually learns how to drive a car.

The Inevitable Surgery

Well, I visited with the neurosurgeon a couple of days ago and I have a ruptured disk in my back. The L4 disk, to be specific. And he wants to do surgery next Wednesday because, well, that's his job. The procedure, from the way he explained it, seems fairly simple and there is minimal risk of, shall we say, "accidents." However, should there be an accident, should I be rendered paralyzed from the waist down, there is something I want all of you to do for me. This concerns my children and how I want it explained to them. Consider this a living will for how to handle the kids as they come to terms with the fact that they will never see their father walk again, that we will never be able to ride bikes or just amble around the block. And this is especially for my daughter who is yet to be born, who will never have a memory of me pushing her in the stroller or walking her down the aisle at her wedding. I want each of you to swear to me that you will tell the kids that I was a world champion distance runner in my day. What are they going to do? Deny it? I'll never be able to prove it. Don't worry about the medals and memorabilia, we can buy medals at a costume shop and use Photoshop to craft a scrapbook full of news articles. But I need your help to help me lie to The Trio and to keep that lie up, this is not going to be easy. It's not so hard to believe, I am a runner and I have run a few 5Ks. I was planning on running a half-marathon or two this year before the disk ruptured, so there is always the possibility that I would have become a world champion distance runner at some point.

There is a very good chance that nothing bad will come from the surgery. In fact, there is every reason to believe that I will sail through it and recover quickly and easily, possibly even running again in the near future. In that case I will need to come up with some other scheme to impress the kids. I'll think about that while I'm recovering. But until then, thanks in advance for your help.

Oh, one other thing while I'm thinking about it - if I'm confined to a wheelchair, don't let JP take me out of the house alone. He has a short attention span and I'm afraid he'll take me down the block, get sidetracked, and leave me someplace. Thanks again.

Baby Shower

Kristy is currently carrying our fourth child. I'll do away with the suspense for you - it's a girl. Since this will be the last of the brood (really, it will be, I promise) I see no reason for you all to spend a lot of money showering us with gifts. However, we'll need a new stroller, so I've included a picture of the model I like below. The only design change I will request is that the box itself be one for a Sony 32" flat screen plasma television, HD ready, of course. In fact, if you'd like to just send the box with the TV in it, then I will assemble the stroller myself. And if we can get this kid watching television early enough then there really won't be any need for the part with wheels - she can just watch the world go by on 32 inches of flat screen technology.

Time Travel

I found myself today driving around the neighborhood I lived in from 1977-1985, and noticed that it was growing up. I don’t mean it was spreading out into the nearby community, but that the smaller houses had been torn down and the new houses built on their lots are huge. I wished my kids had been with me, and I’d like to take them back soon so they can see a part of where I grew up before it’s completely changed. It also made me wish that things could stay as they are, that my kids would stay young and never grow up, get jobs and move out of my house. And then I laughed and laughed and laughed…

I’m currently reading the novel Oracle Night by Paul Auster, and in it he discusses the idea of time travel and whether it would be morally wise to change the outcome of history. It got me to thinking, “What if time travel were possible?” Seriously, this is what I was thinking. And I wondered if I could travel back to any day of my past, with my kids, what day would that be? What did young me do that would impress these little people? What would help explain to them who I am and, indirectly, who they are? I finally decided on Christmas Day 1974 because I got some cool stuff, like an Evel Knievel motorcycle with action figure, some sort of plastic train engine and, more than likely, an inchworm – JP would’ve loved this array of goodies. And I’d like to see The Trio, who all look like me anyway, in washed-out 1970’s photos sitting there playing with me, dressed in similar plaid pants and turtlenecks as I wore. And wouldn’t those old photos freak people out now? To look at them and see me sitting there with my own children. At least it would have given me some sort of idea as to what to expect. If we time traveled today then I’d know I’d have three kids someday. If we waited about a month then I’d know there’d be four, but you really shouldn’t time travel with an infant that young. Of course I wouldn’t know who their mother is because she was only two on Christmas Day 1974 - her daughter would be three. And there would be all kinds of stuff I could do to them if I were four and they were three, four and eight. I could push them down or tell them to “shut up” or take one of their toys away from them and run and hide without feeling guilty or being arrested because we’d be peers, and at that age I didn’t know any better. I’d get in trouble, sure. My mother, their grandmother, wouldn’t have any of that behavior on Christmas Day.

But now that I think about it, really think about it, this whole idea might not be such a good idea. Time travel could probably mess things up. These kids have systematically lost every little battery door on every TV remote control we’ve ever had. Can you imagine if they lost the battery door of the time travel machine and the batteries fell out somewhere between now and 1974? Nobody ever thinks to buy extra batteries for Christmas Day, so we’d be trapped. Trapped on Christmas Day 1974, which would be fine for me because I’d age normally and still be 35 now, but my kids would be 35, 36 and 40, and they’d probably still be living at home and still hogging the Evel Knievel motorcycle with action figure.

Dining Out

The latest post isn't here. It's here.

My friend Stacey writes one of the most practical blogs I've ever come across. It's called Dining With Monkeys wherein she eats out with her two sons and reviews the restaurants from a parent's point of view. A few days ago she put a call out for guest writers and I obliged and it is now posted for your enjoyment. However, it's not the first one I sent her. When she put the word out, I was lamenting the days when we could go out and eat on a whim (and a $20 bill), so I wrote a review of ordering a pizza in. I found it to be very witty. Stacey did not. She roundly rejected it, I could just see her printing it out for the sole purpose of crumpling it up and throwing it across the room, laughing at the inane idea and the elementary writing...but I digress. I also give you the submission below. But go to Dining With Monkeys and read that one, too. And bookmark Dining With Monkeys and visit it often for it is chock full of good writing...and some writing of mine as well.

Entry number one:

Kristy and I, and our Trio, ate at Soul Fish Café last night, which Stacey has brilliantly reviewed in a previous post. We don’t get out much because, well, we have three kids and play a weak zone defense which is why S fell off a bar stool last night. And since the kids are bored with wasting food from inside our house, we ordered from without tonight. I’m not sure this is what Stacey had in mind when she invited guest reviewers but, as I said, we don’t get out much.

There was an all too quick decision made for pizza – three raucous votes for pizza – so Kristy called Domino’s. It was delivered fairly quickly and, to our surprise, came out cheaper than what we had been told over the phone. A full $7 cheaper – perhaps they’ve stopped the practice of charging the idiotic delivery fee. Kristy paid and tipped – tipping is done before eating here, not so much for the quality of service as much as the “waiter” knows where we live.

The Trio, given the options for various toppings had chosen the always adventurous cheese, while Kristy and I had sausage and mushroom. I prefer everything – everything you could think to put on a pie – on my pizzas, but I deferred to the lady of the house, the very pregnant lady of the house. The nice thing about dining here is we are allowed to take our seats in separate rooms. The kids chose a room with a television theme and were amused by dinner theater with the likes of Steve, Blue and Magenta. They love them some pizza and the sound of lips smacking almost drowned out the incessant blathering about clues, thinking chairs and whatnot. The beverage of choice was milk, JP accepted some Ovaltine in his. S made a few furtive moves for the couch but was quickly rebuked and put back in her place.

Kristy and I ate in the traditional dining room, which I found to be dim and the table littered with a TV guide, half-finished Soduko puzzle and unopened mail. But there was original artwork by Elizabeth Alley and good reading material – I perused The Believer magazine while Kristy read a young adult science fiction novel. Along with our pizza (which proved to be predictable) we had hot wings (which Kristy found to be very hot), homemade sweet tea and a Red Stripe. I ate three pieces of pizza and three hot wings but learned long ago not to comment on my wife’s food intake.

We were made to clean up after ourselves and were somewhat put off by the full-to-overflowing garbage can in the kitchen. Someone should take that out, but it will have to wait until after the Kroger-brand chocolate ice cream, the sole offering on the sad desert menu.

Peanuts Redux

Not eight hours after writing the previous post, S and I were watching Woody Allen's Match Point when she commented that it looked like the boy in the film was sucking on the girl's mouth. So I turned off the movie, sang her the tainted peanut song, and sent her to bed.

Peanuts

In theory, we try to limit our kids' television viewing. In practice, they watch television. They have their DVDs - Dora the Explorer, Looney Tunes, Rugrats, et al - and they watch some shows - Caillou, Big Big World, The Simpsons - and then there are the grownup shows. C has taken a shine to How I Met Your Mother and Lost, but it seems the other two could take prime time or leave it. I don't screen TV stringently for nudity or language, but there are shows such as the CSIs and the Law & Orders that show the results of violence in scenes that are far too graphic. When previews for horror movies come on, too, we'll have the kids look away.

I'm not sure that this was such an issue when I was growing up. I remember watching Welcome Back Kotter and McCloud and those didn't seem so bad. Going to see Grease at the drive-in was about as risque as it got until I got a little older and then depended on aunts and uncles for the good stuff. The Amityville Horror and The Omen came out when I was young, though I wouldn't have dreamed of seeing those. But there was a song my mother sang us - it was like a lullaby about a peanut. Does anyone know the one I'm talking about? It's about a child who found a peanut, found a peanut, found a peanut, and it turns out the peanut is rotten, but he ate it anyway, ate it anyway, ate it anyway. Well, long story short, the kid dies of some weird rotten peanut botchulism. He goes to heaven, which is a nice, sweet touch, I guess. But it's a song, nonetheless, about a child dying from eating something as unremarkable as a bad peanut.

She sang me a lot of other songs that I sing to the kids - Row Row Row Your Boat, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Mary Had A Little Lamb - but with all due respect to my mother, who is a wonderful and concientious one, I believe I'll stay away from peanut poisoning ditties, at least for tonight, because tonight is when we all gather around the TV to watch The Sopranos, mother#*%&$@*%!!