Father-Daughter Zobmondo

An email message from the school district dated January 23 laid out the next month's fun-filled school calendar:

Jan 26 -- PTA Meeting - Special guest speaker and NFL quarterback Jay Cutler reveals how he struggles with NFL defenses when he can't manage 2 (two!) kids at the same time without flipping his lid. Just get Mom home stat. AMIRITE ladies? Who am I kidding. I probably sent a few texts like that back in the day.

The silhouettes know what they're doing here.

Feb 4 -- Student Led Conferences. These are not your kids' fathers' parent/teacher conferences, the ones that were not only NOT led by you, but where the teacher and your parent representative made you sit in the hall while they discussed you like a science project. These days the kids LEAD the conference...no more sitting out in the hall, for better or worse.

Feb 12 -- No school. It may snow. We're just calling it now.

Feb 13 -- 100th Day of School/Show and Tell - Bring 100 of your favorite things to show your classmates, and be prepared to share 3 fun facts about each of these 100 things. Given class sizes these days, there will be no fewer than 2,500 things in class that day and 7,500 facts. Bonus points to the kid who brings 100 bouncy balls.

Feb 20 -- Father or Other Significant Male/Daughter Dance

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I have met scores of teachers from all grades-- kindergarten through graduate level college-- encompassing well over 1,000 years of classroom experience. I talk to some of these people weekly. One of them, I speak with daily. They have studied behavioral patterns of children of all ages and have taught adults how to recognize these patterns in children. Some have written books on the subject. Nobody has EVER clearly articulated to me why we celebrate the 100th day of school.

If you feel strongly enough about eradicating this pointless day from schools, start a religion, call yourselves the 100th Day Adventists, and 100th Day would be gone from our schools tomorrow. Teachers could still mark the occasion but would have to name it something antiseptic like "Frost Fest," "Random Day in February," or, in keeping with Common Core "(50+20+10+1+1+1+1+1+(115-100)) Then Write a Paragraph About It Day."

But it's the last item on the calendar that has me wondering. I really thought by the time we were old enough for one of these, that the Father/Daughter dance would have slid out of style, yet here we are. These things have proven such successful fundraisers precious moments that dads spend with their best girls, the trend has only picked up momentum, so much so that schools are now trying to double down with mother/son dances with mixed results. This, even though 4 of 5 parents report that their girls run off with their friends the minute they enter the building.

I'm not sure about this. Never mind that if I had thought of this and invited school-age girls to my own house, I'd be labeled a sex offender. How exactly are we dads supposed to act at one of these? Would you rather dance like an idiot in front of your kid's friends and faculty or go sit in a corner and make small talk with strange men? 

Both dancing and small talk are the introvert's kryptonite. So who knows? You're equally likely to see my patented Gangnam-Style Corn Cob Stuck Up My Ass Shuffle as you are seeing me in the corner talking about sports, or cars, or sports cars, as you are seeing me in the corner by myself looking at my watch 8 minutes in. Though I hear there's pizza :-)

This sounds an awful lot like a date. I've forgotten how to date. It's been almost 20 years since that happened, and if form holds, I'll be nervous enough to show up a half hour late with an empty gas tank, then forgetting to put the car in reverse in her driveway, or spill marinara all down the front of me at dinner. I hear there's pizza. :-(

The dress code is semi-formal. Like semi-sweet chocolate chips that are still plenty sweet enough, semi-formal is still PLENTY formal. A tie? Come on. I've worn a tie ten times in the last seven years.

Word on the street is that some dads show up in limos...I had no intention in turning this into the Prom, but if that's the case, I can go find my 1991 Toyota Corolla with no power steering and a back seat that can't accommodate today's standard-code car seats. Or we just show up in a minivan. 

I try to gauge my daughter's interest in the event. She has shown less than zero interest so far in attending Take Your Child to Work Day in April, so maybe this has gone off the radar, too. No. She squeals with glee and performs a series of cheerleader-y jumping scissor kicks. So there's little chance she'll forget. 

The follow-up question, then, is "how do these things work?"

"There are two slow dances and the rest is freestyle." Somehow she knows this even though she's never been to one; she has connected friends. Freestyle reminds me of a swimming pool though, so maybe I can pull off a few hold-your-nose-shimmy-down-to-the-ground-with-one-finger-in-the-air moves. Not sure I can sustain that for two hours without an on-site ambulance. 

"So we need to practice slow dancing." 

That's the least of our worries. I'd go for two hours of slow dancing if it wouldn't lend a funeral's atmosphere to the proceedings. But when I tell her I'm feeling kinda nervous about the whole thing, she plays her trump card:

"You can make new friends."

Sigh. We'll see. The introvert's go-to move is not exactly making friends. All I need to do is make small talk or dance like nobody's watching. Hoping nobody is watching. 

The Chronicles of Skip-Bo, Volume III

The final in a three-part series examining the mental fortitude required to survive a game of Skip-Bo. To get to Part I, go here. For part II, go here.

As the game muscles its way toward a conclusion, interest is waning across the board. You wonder if and when it ever really waxed, but we have entered a tangible decline stage. The piles sit a little messier and muddled together. Players other than me need pokes and reminders on their turn. Sixes start to look like nines. Every turn requires a full recap of which cards will play.

"You need a 2, 4, 6, or 11," my daughter informs me.

Immediately I go back one generation. Two, four, six, and 11 were the channels we got on TV growing up. "4" (ABC) came in clear pretty much all the time. "2" (CBS) was a little staticky but was clear enough. "11" (NBC) came in OK as long as it wasn't snowing, raining, sleeting, foggy, hazy, hot, humid, partly sunny, mostly sunny, partly cloudy, mostly cloudy, or some other "weather event" or weather non-event. "6" (also NBC but from a million miles away) required the rabbit ears to be set to a 34-degree "less than" angle (<) and one family member to dress in tin foil while standing on the roof holding an open umbrella. "13" (PBS) came in as clear as a lark and, if we're being honest, at times it scared the hell out of me, but nobody ever bragged to their friends about getting 13. Nobody under 30 years old understands anything I'm saying right now. But these days I get just enough channels to see Matthew McConaughey douching out in a Lincoln, "dint dewit tuhbee kewl..."

Well-shuffled.

"What do I need again? Two, four..."

I hold a 3, 5, 7 and 9 with a dreary tableau of 12s in front of me. But I draw a card that leads to an avalanche of card-playing. I empty out my hand, my extra crapload of cards down in front of me, and a fair portion of the vital Skip-Bo pile. An epic run like this earlier in the game would have caused anxiety, dread, tears, and a dented mini-basketball hoop. Now my opponents are rooting me on like a marathon runner on Mile 25, go, go GO, you can do it daddy! But I can't close the deal. Alas.

It's anyone's game now but nobody really wants it. All those 1s and 2s that we couldn't find earlier are sprouting up when we need higher numbers. People are asking out loud, "Can we be done playing Skip-Boo?" No. Because if we're learning from this interminable ennui, it's to finish what we start and not quit because we're bored or losing. And we ARE bored. And losing. We press on.

Wait, is that how this game is pronounced? An ancestor of mine pronounced it "Skee-bo" (rhymes with Tebow) and my wife pronounces it "Skip-Boo," a curious pronunciation that actually involves an inside family joke. (When your jokes center on the game of Skip-Bo, it may be time to re-examine?) A cursory internet search reveals what we all thought..."Skip-Bow" is the proper pronunciation. Let's not complicate things.

With that out of the way, a last push brings finally the game home to my daughter, who led wire-to-wire and held off my furious, one-hand avalanche rally and a few advances by my son who remains the unluckiest Skip-Bo player ever. Agony of defeat gives way to sheer relief, and we can all get back to our lives and our laundry after that Easter Vigil game. Whew.

"Now we'll see who comes in second."

Are YOU kidding me. I came as close as ever to cheating but gritted my teeth, Only a few more turns and I finally got my cards out. The boy then, relegated to third place and not usually one for drama but a veteran Sesame Street watcher, does a full-on Bert Faint and cracks his head off a bookcase. Injury has sufficiently augmented insult. My lame attempts at comfort don't work..."if this were the Olympics you'd have taken home Bronze..."

Soon he's back up on his feet; otherwise I'd make him clean up the game. And that's the biggest contest of them all...get out of the room before Dad can get out of the criss-cross-applesauce position that reduces his joints to a fine powder. "Hey, can somebody help me put this away..."

And they're gone. Probably not to do laundry, but they're gone. They'll be back soon to take another crack at Dad and as I stare at the burgeoning laundry pile, I'll be willing to play a thousand more of these games with them. The laundry can wait.

The Chronicles of Skip-Bo, Volume I

Standing in the kitchen drying sippy cups while we wait for a Biblical, rise-from-the dead revival miracle out of our busted dishwasher and I hear some of the best and worst words from a small voice from another room.

"Daddy, wanna play Skip-Bo with us?"

"Well, I have some things I need to do..."

"...I already have it set up."

From the makers of Waterboarding? Too much?

Skip-Bo is a tedious, torturous slogfest of a card game where you try to rid yourself of your pile of cards by playing them in sequential order in the middle along with your opponents. Games typically take 30-45 minutes unless you have my kids and a restless mind. Then they take 16 hours while your mind volleys back and forth between yardwork, paperwork, bills, broken down appliances, projects and other things you need to get done. When will that stuff get done? Who will

"Da-DDDDDYYYYY??!!"

"I'm coming...just, give me..."

"Do you want to play with 30, 20, or..."

"FIFTEEN. Twelve if we can, or ten...I thought you had it set up already?"

Games are more palatable when the piles are 15 cards. More palatable like Kraft Mac & Cheese versus Velveeta. It's still better than folding kids' laundry.

"OK, let's go."

Anal retentive card players get tested when they play with kids. The game has already been set up, and while I totally believe my daughter has not "set the deck" in her favor, I wonder if her small hands and erratic shuffling were enough to sufficiently randomize the cards. In a game where sequences are made, an unshuffled deck could result in too many natural sequences which increases the luck factor and decreases the skill factor. However, if it will make the game go quicker, I'll let it go. But then I see three random cards lying off to the side.

"What are those three cards? No, don't LOOK at them! Just put them on the bottom of the big pile, or in the middle, or put them in different places in the middle..."

Kids take winning and losing seriously. and any kid will tell you that the key to winning is going first. As if the game is the 100-meter dash in the Olympics and someone gets an undeserved head start. Sometimes going first is actually more important than the final result. And yet these kids can't understand the concept of a good, thorough shuffle? Kids, I tells ya...

Luckily my daughter is a born rules follower. and it was written that the youngest player goes first. So every time we play this game our 5-year-old son goes first. We've erased at least 10-15 minutes of infighting, intense negotiations, deal-making, deal-breaking, bribery, and hurt feelings just by following the rules.

The problem though, is in who goes SECOND. If the youngest goes first, it stands to the reason that the second-youngest goes second, right? Unfortunately, we have sat our butts such that our oldest child is to the right of her younger brother.

"Stop. There is no game in civilization where play runs counter-clockwise."

"What's counter-clockwise mean?"

"Like this," (makes a swirling motion)

??

"Instead of like a clock, which goes this way." (swirls in the other direction)

??

"Like a clock. Except backwards..."

Of course every clock they've encountered has been digital. Microwaves, phones, iPads...

"Here. We'll switch places."

We aren't playing counter-clockwise. And in games of four or more, we are not playing in some ridiculous star pattern. Just gives the kids one more thing to fight about when we all lose track of whose turn it is.

All that said, I think we're ready to play. Stay tuned for Volume II...

The Night Before the Night Before the Night Before the Night Before the Night Before Christmas

Adopt a new family tradition...or else.

In our house this year, Santa Claus came on the night of Saturday, December 21. The celebration thus starts early and doesn’t end until sometime after Christmas, or until the only method of communication between my wife and me is flipping the lower lip repeatedly with the index finger, making constant “blih blih blih” sounds, whichever comes first.

Thus, our meager preparations for Santa’s early arrival are catalogued below, through the voice of a timeless classic:

Twas the night before the night before the night before the night before the night before Christmas, and the house is a mess.
We’re wishing we were less like us, and more like the family Holderness.
Some stockings we’ve hung by the chimney with care
With hopes that they don’t catch fire, since the flames shoot right there.

The children are nestled, all snug in my bed,
Pile of half-eaten Saltine crumbs up by their head.
Idiot parents are we to allow this each night,
We do have a kitchen in this house somewhere, right?

Mamma wears no kerchief; I don no cap.
It ain't 1824 no more. Nobody wears all that crap.
We aim to “settle our brains,” (is that a euphemism for dying?)
But we can’t “settle our brains” til we remember where we hid the gifts, or die trying.

“They’re out in the garage,” Mamma says “or maybe the nursery,
Just remember to disable the alarm. The code is our anniversary.”
“Enough with the impossible riddles; just tell me the code,” I plead with her now.
“We must get these gifts under the tree before the kids wake somehow.”

I disable the alarm with some clutch memory; my wife should be proud
But then trip over a garbage can lid, Jesus LORD those things are loud.
Next thing I hear are tiny footsteps upstairs,
Quickly I drop all the presents of theirs.

“Daddy, is that you?” my daughter whispers down
In the moment of truth, I lie with a frown.
"Ho, ho,…uhh, no. Now off to bed, uhhh, good night!”
A piss poor rendering of Santa, sounded more like Barry White.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
Neighborhood teens beat the mailbox again with a ladder?
Didn’t bother to look, didn’t bother to care.
Little did I know Santa’s sleigh was parked right out there.

“Now Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on Donner and Blitzen!
Lauren, Catherine, Lana too,
Bette Davis… We love you!”

A full dozen reindeer these days Santa employs
Needing more horsepower for all the extra toys
And mixing in some females, Santa thought it best
To keep the long trip from becoming a total reindeer sausage fest.

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
Of course they did; I guess that’s what “coursers” do?
How did everyone fit up there, intact and all?
Not like we live in the damned Taj Mahal.

Someone then began the trek down the chimney
Next time just use the wide open doors, buddy.
Or, do whatever, try as you might.
Just whatever you do, don’t put out the pilot light.

He was dressed all in fur, at my in-laws’ he’d not freeze.
For inside their house it’s always 86 degrees.
But inside our abode, where fresh meat can be stored
He’d need every layer and perhaps three layers more.

He was everything I’d imagined: big boots, big belt, big beard, big hat.
No need for details of the shaking belly and all that.
I stood there in awe, my thoughts all inverted.
Poor kid who “saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus” – ew, how perverted.

 He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then started to twerk turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose
And blew a giant snot rocket giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

As he struggled to leave the ground, he noticed the wide open door
And decided “the hell with this, this year I’ve got 10 million chimneys more.”
Then he looked back at me and paused, dazed and confused.
When he saw who was atop the toilet, he was not amused.

“Buddy, is that you? Or Jingle, or Snowball, or Mike?
What the hell is your name? You elves all look alike.”
“His name is Holly,” I said with a shrug.
"Look, my daughter named him, I was leaning toward Doug.”

“Holly?” he asked. “Kids these days haven’t a clue.
Anyway, whatever, HOLLY, get off the can, you’re coming with me, too.”
And there went my elf, who sat upon our shelf.
Not gonna lie, I smiled when he left, in spite of myself.

His butt was so thin, too hard to place anywhere.
Would that I had such a compact derriere.
My kids would shout, “Don’t touch him! You’ll take away his magic!”
“Shove your brother in the laundry hamper one more time; the results will be tragic.”

Then Santa sprang to his sleigh, as much as a fat man can.
But before he got in, I wanted a word with the man.
“Where’s Rudolph?” I asked, pointing to the 12. “And what’s up with these guys?”
“Rudolph’s nose was bright, but that one right there, she’s got Bette Davis eyes.”

I assumed the boys all thought her a spy,
With her Greta Garbo standoff sigh,
But just went inside and settled my brain,
Shook my head, and thought “this will probably never happen again.”

But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"
As I turned to Momma to give her a kiss,
She said, “That elf…now that is something we will not miss.”

Happy Christmas!






  

What Did I Miss? November 6

Another day when my kids hit the sack before I get home...sigh...this is what happened...

We finally brought out the armada in the war against pooping our pants. Tired of listening to how continent our youngest can be within the walls of Day Care only to have him come home and slide away and hide under the kitchen table to load up, we bribed him with offered him a fleet of toy trucks. (Retail Price: $5.88)

The toys that will keep our house from smelling like poop. Pictured at bottom: A two-year-old pic of the Easter Bunny.

He declined for six weeks, opting instead to suddenly disappear and quietly soil himself instead of going through the rigors of pooping on the toilet. We suspected something was amiss when he started disappearing. He never disappears, he's always in our faces, making himself available at all times and leaving a trail of toys in his wake, which we find in the middle of the night with our feet.

Tonight he found the trucks and decided he wanted to play with them. This, shortly after once again smudging up the face of Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

"Ohhhhhh, no," my wife said she said, before explaining that he can't have the trucks until he poops on the potty at home ten times in a row. He seemed so agreeable to the deal that he immediately went to the can and tried to poop all ten times right then and there...nearly giving himself a childhood hernia, if there is such a thing? Or bursting a blood vessel in his anus. We'll see if the enthusiasm continues or wanes, but if trucks are on the line, then these days might be over (I hope you took the over.)

For Christmas and then his birthday last year, we got the middle one the complete set of mini-NFL football helmets. (OK, maybe they were for me, too.) Every week, we organize them in order of the week's NFL matchups, and each week, when I ask for the Seahawks, Texans, Bears, Falcons, Jaguars, Panthers, Ravens, or even Buccaneers helmets, he always hands me the Broncos, and I have to say a variation of "That's not a bird, that's a HORSE."

So now he has become obsessed with death, which always unsettles me when he speaks so frankly about it. Tonight he asked what people are like when they're dead. When my wife responded that they don't do anything, he insisted that Dad (who apparently will go first) will still eat with us, go to work, and, most importantly, move the football helmets. Somebody PLEASE move the football helmets for him when I'm gone.

Punkin Guts

My wife and I this week wondered aloud how bored the first guy who carved a face into a squash must have been. And how this bizarro act could have possibly caught on with the masses without Pinterest. Then we each offered the Gods of Spare Time a burnt offering of a month's salary in exchange for that much time to come up with our own weird phenomenon...or to get laundry caught up...before realizing that there aren't any holidays left.

So next summer we'll petition the month of August to create a holiday that celebrates dry brown grass or oppressive humidity, and we'll carve Tic Tac Toe boards into cow patties and eat pale, tasteless watermelon cut into the shape of William Howard Taft, proclaim that this should become a "tradition" and BOOM! an August holiday is born. Stay glued to Pinterest to find out to see how that works out.

In the meantime, a different Halloween issue has crept into our consciousness...whose job is it to clean the orange stringy crap out of pumpkins? More than one correspondent reported that boys have pawned that duty off on their moms, insisting that the inside of a pumpkin is a place they'd rather not go. BOYS, mind you. The same kids who will eat heads off of worms, pack dirt into their open wounds, and poop in their brother's pillowcase. But cleaning out a pumpkin goes too far for today's BOYS. Boys will no longer be boys.

Seems like a lot of work...

And I agree with them. The inside of a pumpkin is a hellish place that is better off left to nature. If pumpkins were truly meant to be gutted, all anyone would do is cut the lid off, flip it over, and let the seeds and strings slide into the trash can. Or, for the truly sadistic, onto a newspaper (daddy, what's a newspaper?) so we can separate the seeds from the strings, then cook the seeds and...do what with them, exactly?

But instead, the crap inside a pumpkin maybe trickles out but mostly just sticks fast to the side, grasping for dear life, forcing us to use perfectly fine eating utensils to hollow out a space for these faces, maps of the Baltic, or whatever we're carving in them for "fun." And it's always good to have a special utensil on hand that specializes in pumpkin-gutting. But if you live in this house, it will be lost before November. Or it will break in half at first contact.

This is where kids don't understand the impact of their actions. Several weeks ago, as we visited the pumpkin patch, picking our own pumpkins, contributing to the ever-burgeoning "let other people pay for the privilege of doing your job" industry (seriously, apple and pumpkin farmers have to be just laughing at us each fall), we go get the biggest, heaviest, fullest pumpkins we can find because Dad has never thrown out his back. When we announced the conception of our third child, the phrase we heard most often (ahead of "Congratulations!") was "zone defense." We survive most of the time, but this is one instance when we could have used a third, surrogate parent... either to carry the third pumpkin or the third kid or help us negotiate a twisted network of vines before our biceps ripped apart or our hernias arrived.

Unfortunately, at home one pumpkin never made jack-o'lantern status. An unseasonably warm October meant the garage was not the usual cool, dry place where we could house three pumpkins -- not to mention over 10,000 apples -- without some deterioration. One way to ensure a smooth exit of a pumpkin's insides to the outside is to wholly rot the thing out, then pick it up like an injured baby bird, only to have the guts predictably spill all over your dress pants, shoes, and, somehow, your car as you take the Lord's name in vain. And the whole garage smells like pumpkin stomach acid...which isn't latest flavor at Starbucks, though it could be. Luckily, we somehow managed to accumulate several "back up" pumpkins from who knows where, so our 2-year-old never noticed his prized squash died a very real, palpable death. Very palpable.

Now, faced with the daunting task of cleaning out these rotunda-sized plants, kids were regretting their decisions to pick huge pumpkins and were also regretting their choice in dads, since theirs ran to the sink 16 times during the process to clean this menacing, orange, flesh-eating gunk off his wrists. Luckily, their mother isn't as selectively OCD, and she helped finish the job, mostly because she wanted the process to end before midnight.

So, who in the family should go in there and get the guts out? The dad? The kids? The mom? What do we do with those seeds? Is pumpkin-carving still necessary to a successful Halloween? There are still many unanswered questions to this odd-but-still-not-as-odd-as-a-fictional-rabbit-hiding-decorative-eggs-that-house-candy holiday tradition. Does anyone have any answers? Or are we still going to do this because that's what we did last year? Cause next year we can just pick watermelons or something. Less mess, right?

Holding Back: Why Our Five-Year-Old Isn't Going to Kindergarten

Monday was a big "first day of school" picture day on Facebook. We did not participate. We did celebrate a "first day of second grade," with photo documents and colorful signage as proof; we just didn't post them anywhere. Not because we're that worried about our daughter's privacy or believe that she is now fodder for a new wave of cyber terrorism. We may have just forgotten, or maybe it will be part of a "can't believe how she grew in just 9 months" montage come early June. Or because her brother isn't going to kindergarten this year and we don't want to draw his attention to it.

There were decidedly fewer "Held out of kindergarten this year" signs showing up on my feed today, though if we were so inclined, we could have pulled one off. We held our middle child-- all 5 years, 1 month of him-- out of kindergarten this year. It was not a frivolous decision-- this is one we struggled with for a while, back and forth, over and over. Right or wrong?

His July birthday puts him at the younger edge of the kindergarten class of 2014-15. In our opinion, this would put him at a disadvantage compared to his other classmates. Not for his entire academic career, but for the all-important first 3-4 years, up to third grade, when students generally get frustrated easier and begin to hate school.

The disadvantages aren't severe. Intellectually, he probably could handle the workload. And if they've added recognizing state shapes or translating hideous Curious George bleats into English to the kindergarten curriculum, he may have graduated this year with honors. He passed the 10-minute test administered to him at registration in March, even though his drawing of "Daddy playing baseball" looks exactly like his printed capital R. But there are other, less discernible factors weighing into the decision...areas that are often overlooked when green
lighting kids for kindergarten that won't show up in a 10-minute registration session.

• Social and Emotional Factors -- He gets frustrated easily when things aren't going his way, or when things aren't perfect, to which the dent in the wall after a third-place finish in a family game of Trouble will attest. Poor sportsmanship aside, he also gets frustrated when he can't do things and, as we'll see in a second, there are quite a few things he can't do. In Day Care, he also tended to play with the younger kids anyway. Why throw him in with a bunch of older kids then and let him feel like the low man on the totem pole?

• Physical Factors -- As we found out in a well visit to the doctor a month ago, this kid has inherited all of his father's physical shortcomings. He's on pace to learn how to tie his shoes in 4th grade. More importantly, at his first Occupational Therapy visit, a test of hand strength revealed he actually has no muscles in his arms. (Not really, but he scored a 0, whatever that means.) He has been working with his Occupation Therapist to build hand strength by threading beads with one hand, lacing string through cardboard, and pulling small tiles and lining them up with weights tied to his hand. Watching him struggle makes me physically uncomfortable, but watching him eventually succeed gives me hope. Hope that he continues to build this strength so that when he's asked to write 5 sentences by the end of kindergarten, he'll at least be able to hold the pencil.

          Also, after his first day of Day Care, one which involved a two-hour nap, he came home and nearly passed out in his spaghetti. He's not ready for full-day kindergarten.

None of this is done with sports on our mind. Our genealogy has made it quite clear we do not have the next Babe Ruth, Peyton Manning, or Larry Bird on our hands. We don't even have the next Rafael Belliard, my all-time least favorite baseball player. Fear not, fellow Delaware parents...our son will not enjoy any distinct athletic advantages over your kid and will not be awarded athletic scholarships at yours' expense because he's months older than your child. (Though if he did, it would in a very small way make up for my district's 6th-grade Track Meet, where we all lost to some kid who looked like '70s Ted Nugent. Digressing.) Talent determines worth in sports, not a few extra months of age. 

There are many, many reasons to simply forget all this and enroll him in kindergarten. One reason for every dollar we'll pay in Day Care costs this year, in fact. Plus we'll be delaying his earning potential on the other end when he graduates school, as people have noted. But he'll be working into his seventies anyway, plenty of time to get beaten down by the man. This will afford him another year to just be a kid.  One more stress-free year, with the hope of more stress-free years in the future.

How much would you pay today to have another year of your childhood back? This is in some ways a gift to him, one that he will never quite understand and certainly will not be able to justify or quantify when we can't buy him a car on his 16th birthday. Or even his 21st. But a gift nonetheless.

I come from a family of teachers. My parents, step-parents, brother, sister-in-law, step-sister-in-law, aunts, they are all over the family. I married a teacher. Probably close to 200 years of teaching experience at our fingertips and not once has any of them heard someone say, "I really regret not pushing Johnny through." You hear plenty of the reverse, however. But each child is different. Many with July birthdays are ready. My son would definitely survive.

But would he thrive?

Champions, All! 17 Kids Who Should Get Trophies NOW.

As we sort out who deserves trophies and when, and what the trophies are even intended for, here are 17 kids who are the exception to whatever arbitrary rules exist and should receive trophies tomorrow, no questions asked.

(Note: This covers only the 2-7 age bracket. If you are the parent of a 16-year-old who has accomplished any of the below tasks, congratulations, give everyone involved a pat on the back, but do NOT, under any circumstances, give them a trophy.)

Please hold your applause to the end. And before it's over go visit Me, Myself, and Kids, whose owner, Larry Bernstein, unwittingly put this idea in my head. So if you like it, give him the credit. If it's terrible, you can blame me.

Our trophy winners are:

We really need Pop Tart minis.

1. The one kid with the patience and appetite to eat an entire Pop Tart in one sitting - Raleigh, NC*

2. The one kid who is unable to finish the Pop Tart but has the presence of mind to either wrap it up in a baggie or just throw the damn thing away before ants literally the size of carpenters carry it off to the bottom of the magazine rack -- Grand Rapids, MI*

3. The one kid who is able to predict, within 1.5, the number of hot dogs he'll eat when dinner starts in 10 minutes -- Ogden, UT*

4. The one kid who is able to sense when her younger siblings are angry or upset and has the courtesy and restraint to shut up and silently revel in the fact that she's not the one in trouble this time -- Omaha, NE*

5. The one kid who shows genuine compassion and remorse for wrongdoing by artculating the words, "I'm sorry" without sounding like Sgt. Schultz from Hogan's Heroes -- Youngstown, OH*

6. The one kid who is able to sit through an entire meal in a restaurant without asking to go to the bathroom -- Des Moines, IA*

7. The one kid who can limit himself to one bottle of body wash per shower -- Boise, ID*

8.  The one kid who can properly put away a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray without handling it like it's a ham sandwich -- Wilkes-Barre, PA*

9. The one kid who realizes that, although you may not have directly acknowledged it, you did hear him ask for milk, and does not repeat "I want milk. I want milk. I want milk. I want milk. I want milk. I WANT MIIIILK!!" -- Cincinnati, OH*

10. The one kid who understands telephone etiquette and sarcasm enough to laugh when Dad tugs on her little brother's pant leg and screams "AHHHHHHHH!" directly in his ear when he's pretending to talk to his grandmother on the Fisher Price phone -- Provo, UT*

* - These are the 10 best cities to raise a family, at least according to Forbes. (Are the Rust and Wheat Belts making comebacks?)

11. The one kid who understands syrup is not a finger food -- Pittsboro, NC**

12. The one kid who understands a nose bleed is not the sign of the devil incarnate -- Findlay, OH**

13. The one kid who understands vomiting is not the sign of the devil incarnate -- Nashua, NH**

14. The one kid who can encounter a cheap set of plastic cymbals and not frenetically bang them together -- Pierre, SD**
Note: I am ALL in favor of music lessons at a very young age. And I am in favor of all sorts of developmental milestones for young kids. But show me a cymbal player in a marching band playing them like one of those stupid wind-up monkeys, and I'll soon show you a former member of the marching band.

15. The one kid who resists the urge to talk like Curious George -- Bremerton, WA**

16. The one kid who can take a perfectly gender-neutral task like wiping a child's butt or reaching the shampoo and call for help from both Mom and Dad equally, rather than requesting a certain parent ("I want Mom") when that parent is currently bent over carrying a bowling ball out of the back corner of the attic -- Los Angeles, CA**

** - These are just random cities that have called my cell phone recently.

17. And of course, the one kid who listens to everything you say the first time-- No qualifiers

There you have them. Look at the parents, so proud. And they should be! Their kids are one of a kind. Give them all a trophy.

Got a kid who you think deserves a trophy? Nominate your bundle of joy in the Comments section!

Then visit the Facebook page: 

10 Weeks 'til Halloween

From Left: Michael Angela, Raphael. Not Pictured: Elsa

Not long ago, I checked in with my two-year-old son and told him I loved him. He quickly told me "No" and changed the subject to one of the more pressing issues of the day, the status of his stuffed ninja turtle, "Michael Angela."

"He seepin'."

You probably thought when you saw the words "pressing issues of the day" that we would discuss public breastfeeding, play dates, or sex in the delivery room. But no. Those were soooo last week. This week the focus in this household is solely on Halloween...and why not? It's only 10 weeks away, the kids already have their costumes (Michael Angela, Raphael, and Elsa, for the record.) And even though the radio stations aren't playing their favorite Halloween music yet, thankfully the card stores have their stuff out. So we're in good stead.

Halloween is a big deal in our house for reasons that aren't supported by biology. My wife has officially named it her "least favorite" holiday, and I was never one to dress up for fun myself, especially in 4th grade when I went to school as a pirate and had to wear my great-aunt's winter boots. Still, our kids rigorously scan the catalogs and select their timely, topical costumes three months in advance without regard for whether they'll remain timely and topical on the day they show up on other people's doorsteps for candy. But really, how could they not be timely? Everyone knows who the Ninja Turtles and Elsa are, and everyone will still know them on October 31, unless they suffer a horrific head injury between now and then.

For years I have tried to hold the Halloween costume as a behavior control mechanism, much the way the famed child psychiatrist Santa Claus uses a lump of coal or dog poop. "If you're on the naughty list this Halloween, you have to go as grapes" I instruct my mortified kids, threatening to take away their princess and superhero turtle costumes and letting them know that their behavior won't be tolerated, lest the whole family dress up go out as the Fruit of the Loom gang.

You think I'm kidding...the youngest would go as a banana, the other two kids go as grapes, one purple and one green. My wife will be the leaves and I'm the big red apple. This is happening some day. And for their sake, they'd be better off if it happens some year sooner rather than later.

Usually our Halloweens involve both parents scurrying home from work just in time to jam some frozen fish sticks and french fries down before heading out with each child for some candy. Unfortunately, our neighborhood also participates in the Halloween ritual...by dressing itself as Hell. No street lights, a darkening, foreboding sky, numerous houses with no lights on (don't worry, we weren't going to visit you anyway, don't flatter yourself), it looks like a setting more equipped for an ax murder than a benign holiday tradition.

This actually works to our advantage. Because neither I or my wife really enjoys Halloween, we can go to the 8 houses (of 75 in the development) that actually participate and rake in about 35 houses' worth of chocolate. Because we are apparently the only practicing Halloweeners in our demographic, we often are the only customers these eight houses see, and they just stuff entire candy bars and chip bags into our sacks. It makes for a short, efficient evening of groveling.

Sure, there are missteps. Last year, as my then year-old Mickey Mouse reached for a bag of Sour Cream and Onion potato chips and I reflexively blurted out "Yucccckkkk" to him like I did when he tried to eat lint out of the vacuum sweeper. I meant it as "you're never going to eat those, grab something you will eat" but it sounded totally ungrateful. Sometimes my mouth is better off duct-taped shut in all social situations.

But, um, yeah, we're all looking forward to Halloween already (half eye-roll). We've tried on our costumes, we've recited every line from the various pieces in which our characters have appeared ("it's heroes, not turtles in a half-shell) and, where applicable, we've practiced ninja moves on each other, mostly without incident. We'll store these costumes in a safe, dry place and pray to the Gods of All Hallows Eve that nobody grows much this fall, because if they do, then they may have to go as grapes.

People in Houses Shouldn't Throw Golf Balls

The other day I heard a golf ball bouncing on the hardwood floor, followed by the perhaps mistakable sound of the one-year-old blurting out "Ball?!", followed by the very unmistakable sound of my wife declaring, not asking, "What was that," in her "That better not have been something that will break my living room" voice.

The whole sequence was surprising to me. I didn't know my youngest could say "ball." (So proud.) I didn't know someone in this family could innocently toss something without breaking something important. (Who knew?) Most of all I didn't realize we had a real golf ball in the house. (I hate golf.)

Hate, as they say, is such a strong word, and I don't use it lightly. But I really, really hate golf. Not "hate" in the racial sense that makes everyone cringe, not even "hate" in the sense that a guy talks about his on-again, off-again lover as "I hate her," even though he really loves her and enjoys that sort of conquest.

More in the sense that kids hate asparagus. I took one look at golf, saw that you had to wear khakis to play it, and decided I didn't like it. Since then, as I've matured and mellowed and grew to understand new things, I hate it even more. No matter how Big the Bertha I was using, I'd hit nothing but groundballs to short and foul pop files down the right field line. I got more contradicting advice than a Price Is Right contestant, standing there with my body so contorted as I sliced another tee shot onto a different hole's green. And seriously, khakis to do all this?

Watching golf is even worse. The sport's two main characters are a joyless, pompous docuhe-stick (another word I don't use lightly) who screws women and whose only discernible skill after golf is treating the fawning media and fans with scorn and sarcasm, plus an out-of-shape, country-club flake who wears accounting visors and whines that he has to pay taxes. (Though I'd love to find my elementary school gym teacher and remind her that she taught us from an early age that "There's no such thing as a left-handed golfer.") Plus there are guys who have withdrawn from tournaments for toothaches and who have fired their entourage because the golfer himself showed up late for a tournament and was disqualified. Golfers need entourages? Blah.

At any rate, for some reason, my older boy likes it. When he watches the golf highlights, and he sees a beautiful 200-foot approach shot to within 5 feet of the pin, he shouts at the TV, "He missed it!" I had to correct him and let him know that if a golfer gets it so close, you're supposed to clap your hands like you're holding an injured baby bird and shout platitudes such as "You're the man!" and "GET in the HOLE!" Yes, GET in the HOLE! is a platitude. Later, after seeing a poor schlep flub a 6-footer for par, I asked my son rhetorically how the guy could miss that one and he told me, "Yeah but he got it so close!" You're the man, son. Keep practicing your golf clap.

While the presence of a golf ball on the premises was as confounding and unwelcome as that of a Watermelon Oreo, the fact that my younger son can say "ball" is encouraging. Also, he somehow managed, unprovoked, to say "ball" when presented with a Pittsburgh Steeler logo, even though he's lived through just one football boot camp season which ended five months ago. I have no idea how that happened. Everyone tells me that, despite all my parental efforts to the contrary, my three-year-old is "just like" me, including the unhealthy addiction to sports. I worry that I'll forever subconsciously favor him over the other boy, especially if the latter doesn't soon shake this habit of using my toothbrush to clean the toilet. "Ball" is evidence that the younger will force my subconscious to take note.

How awesome would it be to have not one, but two boys who love sports? Even if they play the normal roles that I see in two-boy households. Although it's strictly empirical evidence, I see in most cases where the older boy takes the games so seriously, identifies favorite teams, memorizes all the players' stats and trades the team makes, and then lives and dies with that team each season, while the younger boy understands the game but can't remember any players, knows none of the stats, and maybe openly roots for a rival team just so he can taunt the older brother. I'd take that. Of course with an older sister around who dances and plays the violin, they'll not dodge some of the finer things in life. Both of them have taken an early interest in music, so we won't raise two complete sports-nuts. I don't think.

So go ahead, boys, watch as much golf as you want, but please stop throwing the golf balls in the house, for your mother's sake.

What We Found Will Shock You

We're back now at 7:38 and I'm joined by national investigative correspondent Chris Rossen- or is it Jeff Hansen?-- who is taking a look at kids' behavior in Day Care and other public places compared to what they do at home.

Thanks Matt. That's right, we followed two kids to school and Day Care, places where their caretakers say they have exhibited exemplary, even award-winning, behavior. And then we followed them home, where things take a drastic turn. What we found will shock and frustrate you, especially if you happen to be these kids' parents.

This is six-year-old Sophia - not her real name, but the top girls baby name in 2007, so more likely than any other name to be her real name. Sophia is in kindergarten, and we hired a staffer to dress as a parent volunteer to follow Sophia throughout a day in school. We also followed her to Day Care during a teacher In-Service day. We noticed Sophia playing beautifully with other kids, picking up after herself, politely talking to the adults in the room, even earning an orange water bottle from her Day Care teachers for helping to clean up the class garden when all the other kids ran to the bathroom or the toy shelf. Her kindergarten teacher goes so far as to call her "a joy to have in class" and one young lady calls Sophia "my BFF."

At home? Well, we hired another staffer, a really hot, young, tan, well-built staffer, to pose as Sophia's dad. We saw a vastly different Sophia. Aloof, lazy, argumentative. With our hidden cameras rolling, we see her room, a complete mess. Dress-up clothes all over the floor, regular clothes all over the floor, doll baby clothes all over the floor, stuffed animal clothes all over the floor. Basically there is no floor.

And watch this exchange between Sophia and her mother that we also caught:

Mom: Sophia, I need you to clean up your room.
Mom: Sophia, now.
Mom: Sophia, did you hear me?
Mom: Sophia, I said I need you to clean up your room.
Mom: Now.
Mom: NOW.
Mom: Sophia, you also have to clean your easel.
Mom: Sophia, it's time for dinner.
Sophia (staring at iPad): OK, in a minute.
<10 minutes later>
Mom: SOPHIA!
Sophia: I said I'd be there in a minute!

We also followed Aiden, who is three. Again, our cameras caught Aiden playing reasonably well with his friends and acting shy most of the day. We have Day Care staff members admitting on camera that they wish he'd "come out of his shell" a little more often. Like his sister Sophia, he was commended for his work in the "picking up after everyone else" category, which earned him a trip to Chik Fil-A. (Note: He did not earn the trip to Chik Fil-A just because it was Wednesday. Promise.)

Once again, we saw a different side to Aiden at home. That shy, kind helpful little boy at Day Care? He had transformed into a back-talking, lazy, belligerent fellow at home. We saw Aiden push his little brother to the floor over the TV remote, which 3 minutes later was lost for days. He also had some heated discussions with his mother over his role in helping the family clean the living room, which you'll see here:

Mom: It's time to pick up your toys, Aiden.
Aiden: No, it's time to pick up YOUR TOYS, Mommy.
Mom: Aiden, I don't have any toys. These are your toys, and you need to help pick them up.
Aiden: <unintelligible>
Mom: Don't you talk to me that way, Aiden! Go to your room.
Aiden: No, you go to YOUR ROOM, Mommy.
Mom: That's it. You're going to bed now.
Aiden: No, YOU'RE going to bed, Mommy.

We confronted both Sophia and Aiden after taping and showed them some of the footage for their reactions.

Hi, I'm Jeff Hansen with NBC Dateline.
Wait, That other guy wasn't my daddy?

When shown the video of their shenanigans and rude behavior at home, both Sophia and Aiden giggled. Then they giggled some more. Then they asked to see it again. Then they giggled. Then they giggled some more. Then they asked to see it again. Then they giggled. Then they giggled some more. As we tried to move on in the interview, they asked to see the video "just one more time," and we agreed to show them the video just one more time. Then they asked to see some of our video equipment and proceeded to make pig faces into it and recite in unison the "Someone help me, I have a flat tiiiiirrrrre!" line from the GEICO commercial. Then they asked to see that and they giggled. Then they asked to see it again...

Matt, this type of behavior seems to be taking over youngsters in many parts of the world. Gone are the days when teachers challenged our kids with, "Are you allowed to do that at home?" These days  it's the parents who are asking, "Are you allowed to do that in Day Care?" It's quite a transition.

Jeff, we look forward to your full report tonight on Dateline, where I also understand we'll hear from the Grandparents Coalition?

That's right, Matt, we did speak to the Grandparents Coalition, who released a statement on behalf of all grandkids yesterday saying, "They're fine." We'll hear their side as well tonight.

All right, Jeff, we'll be watching, and we'll be watching this weekend for your in-depth expose on Kids And Boogers. What makes them so interesting to our kids?