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!






  

The Storm Before the Calm

          One of the countless advantages parents of this age hold over the generation before is digital photography. Another one is kid leashes, and a third is not having your kids constantly ask if Air Supply is two women, two men, or a man and a woman. I wondered about that last one a lot. But the digital photography pretty much trumps everything.

Because now we can acquire a mountain of holiday pictures in the hopes that just one makes our kids look cute for the requisite holiday card. Our parents had to pick from six. Hence, awkwardfamilyphotos.com.

This extra probability virtually guarantees at least one altogether not terrible photo, one that belies all the chaos preceding and surrounding it. Still, the holiday picture expedition consistently proves daunting, taxing, frustrating, exhausting. Here, then, are some easy ways to diminish the storm before the calm:

1.    Clothing – it’s always important to pick out the kids’ clothing the night before the scheduled picture day. This will save important time the next morning, time to be spent extracting gum from the kids’ hair. However, if the kids are dressed and haven’t yet brushed their teeth, please do NOT let your kids brush their teeth after they have put on their holiday clothes. Unless you can find another outfit on the fly or can work the dribble into a snow scene on your son’s sartorial Winter Wonderland dreamscape. Maybe smoke coming from the snowman’s pipe? Maybe a mini-blizzard on Rudolph’s nose? Your kids’ teeth are just not that important, 4 out of 5 dentists will concede.

      1a. Shoes – 78% of all families who show up late to anything do so because they were missing a shoe. Everyone knows this. Simple solution: Buy two identical pairs of all shoes and keep the second pair in your safe deposit box and hire a full-time guard. You won’t be disappointed.

      1b. Helmets – There aren’t three greater indignities in the world than banging your head when entering or exiting a car, which results in tantrums and tears by folks of any age. To minimize the impact of a kid losing his or her shit by banging their head, provide them all with helmets to wear when exiting the car. Hockey, football, astronaut, the activity is immaterial. Just wear the headgear. Do NOT mess up the hair, though.

      1c. Pajamas – Leave them at home. Your kids will love you later for it. Especially the one for whom you bought that skin-tight candy cane number. Yikes.

2.    Ventriloquism – Teaching your kids ventriloquism will pay key dividends when you’re stuck with the overzealous photographer who gets too specific with the trigger words. Gone are the days of the simple “say cheese,” in favor of polysyllabic, often gross, bluster like “say chesseburgers” or “say elephant farts!!”

Two-year-olds will try to say exactly what you tell them to, so please, commercial photographers, stop requiring them to possess a degree in linguistics to get a picture. We had the “say cheeseburgers” lady, so we came away with two dozen pictures of kids saying the “ur” part. Go ahead, as you read this, say the syllable “ur” while smiling. Look how stupid you look. We got 72 of those faces. If only we had enrolled them in extracurricular ventriloquism school, we’d have an entire album of kids jamming their top and bottom teeth together into forced smiles. You can practically hear the teeth grinding.

2a. Teach your kids it’s okay to use the word “fart” if you haven’t done so already. This will avoid the 7 or so shots where your kids are all looking to your wife with the “she said it was ok to say farts!” face. Eyebrows raised.

This tree has nothing to do with kids pictures, but I'm required by law to add a picture.

3.    Nourishment – Make sure your kids are well-fed before the photo session. If they are not, you will be forced to bribe them with a trip to a burger joint afterwards, where they will say “cheeseburgers” over and over.

4.    Temper expectations – The probability of failure is very high. Always remember what your second-grade baseball coach taught you: “It only takes one.” Not sure what that meant in terms of baseball, but it’s quite clear in terms of kiddie photography. Just get the one good shot, it’s in there somewhere.

5.    Bonus item: Don’t order the wallet-sized pictures. Hint: Here in the 21^st Century, nobody carries pictures in their wallet. There’s this thing called Facebook. Or Shutterfly. Or Snapfish. 

If you have kids and haven't gone to get your pictures taken yet, maybe some of these hints will prove helpful. If you're in receipt of one of our cards, just consider the above before tossing it in the trash. Or maybe your kids are beyond the age and you're in the "been there done that" phase, and you're jealous of all the advances in photography. Regardless, enjoy the holiday and say "Stinky cheeseburger farts!"

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.

No More Pets Until We Find the Remote

We have four fish, all named Sarah, so feeding time is painless. Just call "Saaaarahhhh," once in the morning and once in the evening, as you stand over the tank, and they'll rise to the surface and eat. Nothing else is expected, no going outside to do business, no face-licking, no trips to the vet for any sort of impaction... dental, fecal, etc, no having to explain that you married your best friend, you didn't just neuter him. If we need to spend more time and money caring for complicated, expensive, high maintenance things, we'll have more kids or buy more lawn equipment.

But disposable pets are a good thing. They teach kids some of the most basic, valuable life lessons, like responsibility, respect for animals, and basic subtraction skills. Unlike their more "fixed" counterparts, we don't have to go through extensive emotional strife when we lose one. In fact, the three-year-old has already prepared for the day we say goodbye to one of the Sarahs by informing me "if they die, we'll have to go buy more." Textbook definition of disposable pets by someone who assumes unlimited disposable income. So we're in a good place now with our animal situation, and let me make this abundantly clear: As anyone in this house will tell you, we will not be pursuing additional pets at this time or in the foreseeable future.

"Mommy said when I'm 8, we can get a guinea pig," says the oldest this morning, remembering a conversation from 143 days ago while half-heartedly searching for her shoes that are "probably here somewhere" as we run habitually late for the all-important last day of school. We actually owned three guinea pigs in the days leading up to child-rearing, because feeding animals that sleep 20 hours a day three times a day so prepares you for colic. I guess having a guinea pig around the house would symbolically complete our little Circle of Cleaning Up Poop. (Help me out, Elton John.)

But no. Right now we have a much larger problem on our hands. We're not getting any more pets until someone can find the remote control. The remote is our pet. Like a housecat, it wanders off for days without any real notice. Like a housecat, it turns up eventually. Unlike a housecat, it doesn't need to be fed, so its sense of urgency is reduced. Like a housecat, it acts like it doesn't really give a damn whether you notice it or not. Unlike a housecat, it sits on my lap all evening as I pet it and treat it like it's royalty. Like a housecat, 0-year-olds tend to really enjoy it and play with it. Like a housecat, I usually find it in a sock drawer or trapped in luggage.

Between finding the remote and drilling the essentials behind which light switch turns off the lights and which one resets the entire damned satellite dish for 35 minutes in the middle of a playoff hockey game, we have plenty to keep us busy. I repeat: Plenty to keep us busy, and so we do not need any more pets. Not even the cute ones. We're simply not ready for the responsibility, am I right, family?

"How about a turtle?"

"Not even a little, tiny kitty?"

Stop. Let's find this remote first. Who had it last and where?

Probably the three-year-old, watching Sprout, eating a Nutty Buddy in his parents' bed.

OK, so we'll need to change the sheets and pick tiny little nuts out of our ass tomorrow morning. Does the three-year-old know how to use the remote?

Only to turn the volume up to 65, he's not fast enough to type the channel numbers in.

Ok, so it's possible the wife had it last? To turn the TV on?

Very.

OK. At least that would mean the remote is where it "belongs"? Where does the remote "belong?"

No idea.

I see. Have you checked under the sheets, under the bed, on the nightstand, on the dressers, and under those gargantuan, decorative pillows that get thrown on the floor before bed every night?

All of those places per current protocol.

I see. Was the one-year-old in the room?

He strolled in and was spotted carrying his mother's feminine products out of the bathroom into the playroom.

We'll need to investigate the one-year-old. He was last seen...

...Screaming a fit after his mom re-claimed the products from him.

And so, in a fit of rage, he went back into his parents' room, took the remote, and jammed it down the diaper genie. It all makes sense now. I believe this case is solved! See, you just take the clues, put them together, use a little parental intuition, and you can find important things.

Now, let's all go get a Great Dane.