A One and a Two

One of the better strokes of luck I've had as a parent came on a night a couple years ago when things were looking a little desperate. The kids started using the couch as a stage. And as a pulpit. And somehow as a tightrope. And as a napkin. And as a diving board into the coffee table.

At wit's end, I was determined to punish them for disobeying my repeated commands to not abuse the furniture while also trying to smoothly transition them to a calming activity that wouldn't result in blood and the emergency room. (Ain't got no time for that.) But mostly I wanted to punish them. They were acting like jackasses, and I had no patience left to try to get them to sit and play Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders or to watch another episode of any of their idiotic cartoons. I needed something new, something fresh, something they had never seen before, so I could blow their minds and channel all that energy into something other than swordfighting with empty paper towel rolls on a cushionless loveseat.

So I made them watch the Lawrence Welk Show. PUNISHMENT.

It was sheer desperation, but it worked. They had seen entertainment shows before, all of them involving singing and dancing, and x's and buzzers, and judges and infighting and black stages and Cielo. Blah. This was a brand new world...an orange-ish stage mandated from the 1970s, the large band playing all sorts of musical instruments in the background, and of course the Geritol sign. (Question #1)

It was mostly the instruments that got their attention. The brass section, the woodwinds, the strings...it was probably the first time the now 4-year-old had seen some of these instruments, so he asked "What's that?" for all of them (Questions #2-6). Our daughter got into the singing duets and the dancing, and both of them were duly amazed by Arthur Duncan's feet.

For me it was a little bit of heaven. Not so much the entertainment but the quiet, although I always enjoyed when they played the song from the United Airlines commercial that was a part of most football telecasts in the 1980s. But all the noise and clatter from before had dissipated. There were no commercials that I'd be called on to fast forward through. And if there was a rating softer than "G", this show was that, save for everyone referring to Anacani as "our little Mexican girl." But that lack of subtlety proved too subtle for our young ears to pick up.

In a perfect story, my kids, after watching the Lawrence Welk Show and wondering out loud why everyone in the crowd looks like somebody's great-grandmother (Question #7), turned from unruly hellions into docile creatures that picked flowers, danced with unicorns and developed an appreciation for the fine arts. But in reality we have only watched "the singing and dancing show" a few times in the years since, even though I have two episodes still saved to the DVR, the last 2% that isn't taken up by Chuggington, Let's Play Sesame, Super Why, Tom and Jerry, Caillou, and of course classic NFL games from the 1980s.

Still, between that show and my wife taking my daughter to an education fair where she fell in love with a violin, and me mixing in one Mirror in the Bathroom Youtube video among the 12,000 straight views of the Muppets' Manamana that turned my son on to the saxophone, maybe we have accidentally created at least a respect for music in our kids. And who knows, maybe there's a talent there we can uncover that will best my musical peak, which is lip-synching to old U2 songs on the drive home. My daughter wound up playing the violin, and my son keeps pestering us to allow him to play instruments that are taller than he is. So there's hope.

The point is, although I have no definitive data to back me up, I think kids still like music. And if the kids are driving you nuts and you can't find any music around that they like, and you can't find any around that you like, introduce them to something you don't like. (You're a big boy/girl, you can handle it for an hour.) It may at least calm everyone down a little, and somebody may actually like it!

Questions Index:
1. What does that sign say? GERITOL. What's that? Don't worry about it.
2. What's that? A trumpet.
3. What's that? A saxophone.
4. What's that? A violin.
5. What's that? An accordion. Do you want to play the accordion some day? No.
6. What's that? A bubble machine. I want one. No.
7. Why does everyone look like great-grandma? Because everyone looked 25 years older than people the same age do today. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's their glasses. Why?

The Mac and Cheese Debate

Sounds like a no-brainer really, when you have a choice between a pan of hot, fresh, homemade macaroni and cheese and any number of oddly shaped store-bought mac and cheese brands cooked in boiling water. But in this episode of Point/Counterpoint, our six-year-old daughter makes a very compelling case for "the leading brand" over the homemade variety.

Actually that's false. I totally destroy her, then pile on by offering a bonus recipe for a stuffed pepper casserole that is out of this world.

Her: Kids have different taste buds than adults. They may not be quite as advanced as an adult's taste buds, and our palates may not be as discriminating, but the fact remains that Mom's macaroni and cheese, with the thick, sharp cheddar cheese, is the worst thing I've ever tasted, after her stuffed pepper casserole. In fact, I'm not allowing her to look at Pinterest again until she makes me a year's worth of hot dogs and ketchup and potato chip sandwiches.

Me: It's macaroni. And it's cheese. It's macaroni and cheese. Mom may put a little flour in it and change around some of the cheeses, but it's still just macaroni and cheese. Look, I was like you at one point in  my life-- picky eater, afraid of anything that had a vegetable in it until I was 25 years old. To this day I still don't eat asparagus, artichokes, cauliflower, cabbage, beets, eggplants, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes unless they're diced, endive, kale, escarole, cucumbers, chick peas, snow peas, regular peas, and anything with the word "bean" in it. My great-aunt used to make jello salad stuffed with parsnips, turnips, fruit, nuts, bolts, and car parts that nobody ever ate except her fellow old people. I'd pick out every last piece of pepper and onion from my Manwich as a kid. So I know where you're coming from. Food is full of gross stuff. But not macaroni and cheese for goodness sake! There's nothing else in it! Look not even any onions "for texture."

Her: It's yucky.

Me: Can you please elaborate?

Her: The "good kind" of macaroni is the kind mom makes in the pot. They're shaped like shells or wheels or crescent moons, and the cheese either comes in a squeeze pouch that splerches all over the side of the pot, or as a powder that collects on the side of the bowl when you don't mix it thoroughly. That's the good stuff. Mom's is the "yucky" kind. Plus she just gets the recipe off of a box of pasta anyway...

Me: Shhh!!!! Look, I don't disagree with you. Any time you can ingest cheese-dust, you take the opportunity. And in my day, I ate entire boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. It was, and always will be, the Cheesiest. But, I'm telling you, once you give Mom's kind another chance, you'll never go back.

Her: Disgusting. Gwoss.

Me: We've warned you about your baby talk before. Did you know some of your favorite aunts also make their own macaroni and cheese?

Her: Yeah, and it's still yucky.

Me: Fine. Eat what you want. That's more for me, even though this pan could feed our entire family for a week or more. Do I need to get you a peanut butter sandwich?

Her: With brown sugar?

Me: Sure. Next week, we're having that stuffed pepper casserole, your other favorite.

Her: That's not my favorite...make sure you put enough brown sugar on my sandwich, but not too much. That's too much! Scrape some off. Oh, you scraped too much off! Start over...

You don't have to be George Stephanopoulos to see how clearly and decisively I win this debate. Even if it's true my wife just stole the mac and cheese recipe from a box. You can, however, find the recipe for the stuffed pepper casserole here. (Be sure to have plenty of peanut butter and brown sugar on hand because it's disgusting.) God Bless you Pinterest...I may not totally get you, but you've provided some wonderful meals this summer.

How to Handle Hotels - A Kids' Guide

Editor's Note: Guest-writing this piece are our children, who are the industry leaders in how to make themselves at home in hotel rooms. If they had a Web site, it would probably be called howtomakeahotroomelahome.com. But they don't.

Hotels are AWE-SOME! They are mini-houses that you can stay in when you are on vacation, and they always smell good, and somebody else cleans them. You should go to one sometime, because usually they have refrigerators and even swimming pools! And you can sometimes get breakfast there, if Dad can figure out how to cook waffles in the waffle iron (use that spray stuff first.) If not, Mom can always do it. So here is our list of ways we make hotel rooms awesome:

We didn't stay here, but if we did, the bed wouldn't be big enough.

1. Sign in. Immediately upon your arrival, take the notepad and pen sitting on the dresser and write your names and room number on all the pages. This lets housekeeping know you've arrived. If nothing else.

2. Turn on the TV and immediately ask to watch the Sprout channel. Hotels never have Sprout, but we ask our parents for it anyway, then we whine and cry so loud that they'll turn on anything even remotely age appropriate to keep us quiet...God, maybe even Cartoon Network. We may have seen an episode of Assy McGee for all I know. (Side note: All hotel TVs are programmed to start at Channel 1, which is either an infomercial for the place you're staying or a channel previewing a movie where a woman is murdered in her hotel room. When it's the latter, your parents will literally fly across the room and rip the remote out of your hands as if you're carrying an open canister of flesh-eating acid. Then they'll turn on Assy McGee. Trust us.)

3. Locate the $4 bottles of water and $8 bag of peanuts and ask if you can have some while trying to open them. Again your parents, who have just set down the beach bag full of 99-cent boxes of dry cereal and Capri Suns, will leap across the room to keep it out of your hands. Then, locate the vending machines and ask for something out of those. Be persistent. Never take "We'll see" for an answer.

4. Hotels always want you to feel as if you're home, so feel free to kick off your shoes and immediately lose them. It might sound hard in a smaller space, but the balcony is a good place to start, or under the beds, or in the microwave..

5. Also on the "at home" theme, it's perfectly fine to run up and down the halls yelling and screaming. Those are some big halls, and why wouldn't everyone want to know "I have a belly button" and "My brother just pooped his pants?"

6. Force your parents to let you unlock the front door. Hotel doors are cool because they don't use keys, but rather "credit cards." Wait until both parents are loaded down like pack mules, then, in your highest voice, screech out your desire to open the door. If your parents are nice, they'll patiently yet wearily watch you fail to open the door three or four times before, once again, ripping it out of your hands and grumbling, "Here. I'll do it." But hotel room doors are awesome.

7. Use the secret code on the radiator to irreversibly turn on the heat. Make sure to set it for some ungodly temperature that starts with an 8, then pretend not to notice as your parents get more irritable looking for your shoes while wiping sweat off their brow. We could have put the tooth fairy out of business if we had trademarked the phrase, "Why is it so God-damned hot in this room?" Also, petition the Grand Hotel Authority of the Universe to remain steadfast in their refusal to put such knobs out of the reach of 18-month-olds.

8. Maintain an irrational fear of the bathtub. Yes, it's just a bathtub, and, yes, Mr. Rogers' time-honored maxim of You Can Never Go Down the Drain holds as true as ever, but, by God, we just saw a lady get murdered in her hotel, and we're reasonably sure it happened in the bathtub. Trust no bathtub, even those in the Taj Mahal or your grandparents' house, because they are just not your bathtub. Also, scream at the top of your lungs when your parents rinse out your hair.

9. Point out how weird the hangers are. Ask your parents why hotels always have weird hangers. We have 22,000 hangers at home, so I don't know why they'd think we'd steal theirs.

10. Screw around with the bedding arrangements. Our parents, such stodgy traditionalists, usually try to sleep sister and brother in one bed and mother and father in the other, with little brother in the cage pack -n- play. By 1:15 AM, we have ourselves in perfect sister-mother-brother-father formation in one bed, with Dad sleeping between in the crack between the bed and the wall, even though the bed is at least 50% larger than any bed we have ever owned. The other bed then goes unused.

These should get you started. If you have any others, please relay to us through our parents because we don't have e-mail addresses or Web sites. Remember, staying in hotels is F-U-N fun fun fun!!

Birthdays and Bedpans, Part 2

It's Caillou playing hockey for the Penguins. Any comparisons to Sidney Crosby will be summarily rejected.

Warning: The following can get a bit graphic. If you get queasy at the sight of synonyms and euphemisms for "puke," divert your eyes. Also, Part One is here.

8:00AM
We had gone 36 hours without anyone else in the family succumbing to the bug or whatever it was that knocked me down for about 48 hours earlier this week, though to be fair, the word "bug" wouldn't seem to do it justice. "Stomach-eating viral infestation from Hell" sounds more accurate. It lasted too long and involved too much lingering "general malaise" for it to be just bad food, so we were leaning toward it being the rare virus that comes in and strikes just one lucky person and leaves the rest of the family intact. I don't know what kind of virus you would call that, but I'm sure Dr. Nancy Snyderman knows. Our own medical diagnoses complete, we were able to concentrate less on illnesses then and more on our son's 4th birthday.

6:30 PM
I got home from work later than I wanted, which meant that we needed to jam in a dinner out, opening presents, and cake and ice cream all before bed. I'm thinking most parents have their kids in pajamas by 6:30, but not us. Our kids never go to bed before 9 o'clock anyway, because we're terrible parents.

I changed out of my work clothes but could only find a pair of jeans...not the optimal dress for the current weather, 97 and hazy (in other words, standard USA summer weather) but since we were going to just sit in air-conditioned comfort and were pressed for time, jeans it was.

But because the birthday boy has been waiting since March to open presents and has openly wept on recent occasions when there has been no mail specifically with his name on it, he was hungrier to tear into some wrapping paper than to tear into some food. Which was understandable since he never eats anything anyway. So we waited and watched him stoically open his presents (no 4-year-old in history has ever showed less emotion on his birthday; I wasn't sure if he was opening presents or watching Schindler's List) while our stomachs rumbled.

When it's your birthday in our house, you choose the restaurant where we eat, and nobody is allowed to throw a fit, especially the parents. We were not surprised, then, to hear that on this special night we would be eating at Friendly's for perhaps the fifth or sixth time in the last 30 days, but we were surprised at the reason why:

"They'll sing to me there."

We have a six-year-old daughter who dances on stage in front of hundreds of people, but our son, when he's at his most comfortable, usually stares into his feet when he talks to people. So who volunteers to be serenaded by high-school and college-age servers and hosts in front of an entire room of people? We couldn't believe it. And after pointing out that virtually ALL other places in the area will sing to you, that you don't HAVE to pick Friendly's, he stood his ground. It's his birthday.

We noticed that the parking lot was relatively empty. On the way inside, we threw out several theories why...we were there later than usual, too hot even for ice cream, it wasn't the same since the original Friendly's burned to the ground after a lit cigarette started a fire in the adjacent flower bed. An exiting patron had the answer..."AC ain't workin in there, awful hot." We stopped in the entry way, holding our diaper bag and our booster seat and our toddler, and I flashed my standard "My balls are sweating profusely just thinking about this," look, but all I got back was an "It's his birthday" counter. So we entered the conservatory dining room and of course were seated next to the kitchen.

7:45
Fanning ourselves with menus and wet napkins, we let the server know that we had a birthday celebrant among the 14 or so people in the house, and if they didn't mind coming over and doing their thing in this oppressive heat, we'd appreciate it. They did, and our son was overjoyed. I think. He had the same reaction as he did when he opened his gifts, which is the same reaction good players have when they hold a losing poker hand. So we have no idea if he enjoyed it or not. My daughter was mortified. In either case, there was an echo in the restaurant as they were chanting something in military cadence.

Of course, by Federal mandate every Friendly's party must order at least one ice cream treat, and so we sat and tolerated watching the two boys struggle to stay in front of two melting vats of ice cream by eating it with their hands. (If you are lactose intolerant and OCD, it would have been your worst nightmare.) As it got more apparent nobody was going to finish their ice cream before smearing it all over their hands and the table, we abruptly picked up and left, which started an epic temper tantrum with the 1-year-old.

Nobody working at Friendly's that night has kids, we think, because in the middle of our emergency evacuation when we were offered balloons. Never, ever offer balloons to parents who have the "we gotta get outta here" look. For some reason we stopped to accept them, perhaps to quell the temper tantrum, perhaps to avoid two more.

Once we got outside, all three balloons fell off their sticks (why sticks? Is this 1945?) and so we chased those down while we held the diaper bag and the booster seat and the toddler, then get all that stuff into the trunk, except the toddler, maybe. Daddy's starting to get a little impatient, and the sweat is pouring into previously unreached areas.

9:00 PM
We live only 10 minutes from the Friendly's, but that was plenty of time for the 1-year-old to fall asleep, so we joyfully dumped him in his crib when we got home, despite his desperate need for a power-wash, maybe stopping to take his shoes off. We still had cake to get to, so we lit the candles, turned out the lights, sang Happy Birthday, watched him blow out his candles, cheered, realized we forgot to hit Record on the video camera, then did it all over again but with 67% less enthusiasm. It has to be close to midnight by now.

Everyone passed on cake at that point because all anyone wanted to do was go to bed. As you can tell from the photo, this cake could be used to stop flooding. At least six inches high and wide enough to feature Caillou playing hockey for the mid-1990s era Pittsburgh Penguins. Don't ask. It's his birthday.

10:00 PM
It wasn't actually midnight but at this point who even notices. Even the kid who earlier opened all his presents wanted to go to bed instead of playing with them. Except for the batting tee and real aluminum bat; he wanted to use those things in the living room, within reach of some important knick-knacks. But mostly he wanted to go to bed, so he did, along with his sister. One of the more painless bedtimes, but considering all we had been through, the path there was arduous.

At last it was time to reflect on the day that was...chaos at work, chaos at home, chaos in the sweatshop restaurant, more chaos at home. Time to watch the least chaotic sport on TV...baseball, just to settle the nerves.

10:45 PM
Until there was crying. There might not be any crying in baseball (though tell that to Pirates fans the last 20 years) but there was crying in puking, as a certain six-year-old managed to throw up all over her bed and on her bedroom carpet, a messy trail covering a single flip-flop as she gamely tried to get near a toilet.

No problem...we'll just get this cleaned up and strip the bed and put some new sheets on, and you'll be as good as new. We may tend to fly off the handle and lose our tempers as parents at times, but there is always a soft spot when one of your progeny has just vomited all over her things. On top of feeling physically bad, now she feels regret for messing stuff up. And the taste is horrible. I always feel really bad when a little kid throws up.

11:15PM
As we were just finishing patting ourselves on the back for the efficiency and compassion with which we handled that situation, we heard some more footsteps struggling down the hall, and some coughing, and...oh shit, we didn't give her a garbage can, did we?

This time she got closer to her ultimate destination, stopping a stride short of the bowl before re-launching. Really? Just one more step and you had it...but compassion, yes! We still showed close to 97% of the compassion we did the first time. After her second bout with this, though, our daughter did request a sleeping mate. (There's a moment of truth for a parent, who among you will volunteer to sleep next to a spewing machine?) My wife came up with the best solution of both worlds; she would sleep on the couch and let out daughter sleep on the air mattress next to her.

Really there was an ulterior motive here. I think she did this less for our daughter and more because she gets tired of the now 4-year-old twisting her hair and kneeing her in the kidneys all night, so a night on the couch next to a sick kid is preferable.

1:00AM
Somehow unable to sleep after all that, I turn on the NFL Network. As much as I love football, the NFL Network has some pretty terrible programming, and not much of it. Can only watch the Walter Payton thing so many times.

2:56 AM
I'm awakened by the bed shaking, and my bedmate shaking, followed by a BLLLLLLLAAAAAAAACCCH cough cough couuuuugh three inches from my head. Victim number two has been identified, and I fly out of there like he's an axe murderer. Where's that garbage can? Where's the toilet? Is he done yet? Where is the backup to the backup set of sheets? My wife is awakened by the chaos and affords our son the same comfort we afforded our daughter (the first time) while I dry heave in the bathroom sink. She does not offer to sleep with him, however.

"I frue up a yil' bit," he declared when asked the mostly rhetorical "What happened?" question. Still very stoic, businesslike, matter-of-fact. No panic, no fear. Everybody pukes. Most impressive is that he turned down a drink of water after his ordeal. But this is no big deal. I fetch him a new pair of pajamas for the rest of the night, and he points out that "they don't match."

"Put them on, anyway." Three sets of pajamas and two sets of bed clothes later, we may be finally ready to...

6:02 AM
Beep, beep, beep, slap.

6:11 AM
Beep, beep, beep, slap.

6:20 AM
Beep, beep, beep, slap.

6:29 AM
Beep, beep, beep, crash landing into the far corner.

The show must go on.

His sister made the 4's herself! Including the backward one. Reversals are ok through second grade, from what I understand.

Birthdays and Bedpans, Part 1

Everything turns upside down in the house when one of the parents is sick. Not sick like the sniffles or a headache. And as I've said before, not sick like awesome, the way you twenty-somethings use it. Dad would never be sick in that case. No, sick like deathbed, can't move, flu kind of sick. This place is always a madhouse, but when one of the tall people is suddenly felled by illness, the wee folk remarkably show some compassion and keep their behaviors in check, their tantrums to a minimum, and their desires for impossibly high items like fly swatters and mail catalogs directed mostly toward the healthy parent. Except for the wee-est one, who still batted me on the ears with a rake and threw baseballs into my crotch as I lay on the couch and moaned.

Maybe we're just lucky then, that two of our three kids are courteous enough to totally ignore us when we are at our worst, instead of ratcheting up the annoyance when they sense weakness, like wild animals. Maybe, as we tell each other all the time, God really does only give you what you can handle, and so we got two really easy ones and one sorta easy one who we might groom to an easy one if we have enough energy left.

I mean nobody came and offered to take my temperature with a plastic thermometer or listen to my heart with a plastic stethoscope, but that's fine. Their respectful distance meant more than their half-hearted attempts at taking blood pressure and my half-hearted attempts at explaining what the imaginary numbers would have meant. Of course when anyone got near me, I told them I'd make them throw up, so that might have played a role, too. Oof! Another rake to the side of the head. I'd put him in his bed as punishment for that, but I couldn't lift a tissue. "You can go to bed if you want to," offered the three-year-old in his expert medical opinion. I took him up on it.

The next morning everyone trod lightly. There was a certain amount of anticipation, though. Not quite Christmas morning but probably more than Easter morning, as the two oldest tried to enter my force field of sick. They looked curious, perhaps to see if the miserable adult they left last night was back to being his more normal morning sort of miserable. Eyes still glazed with sleep, fingers in mouths, they approached, shy, like they would an adult they had never met before. They usually want cereal at this hour, but they aren't shy about that. What do they want?

"Did you throw up last night?"

When I nodded my bedhead yes and smiled a little, they moved in, guards down, sitting up straight in my bed, rapt with attention like I'm a WWII veteran finally opening up about my experiences. They came prepared with an arsenal of follow-up questions, one of which wasn't, "Might you throw up again with us 3 inches from your face?" Apparently they thought throwing up was a one-and-done exercise,

What color was it?
What bathroom did you do it in?
Did you get it all in the toilet?
How come I didn't hear you last night?
Did Mommy throw up too?
Did it hurt?
Did you cry?

At the risk of being too graphic the answers are, in order, horrendously brown, my own, yes this time, because I was tiptoeing the whole way (alternatively: I have no idea how you didn't hear Bert going, "HONK. HONK. AYUUUUUUUUGA, as I tripped three times over your brother's Sesame Street car/dashboard thing that is loud enough to scare away intruders), no, no, and no in fact it was the happiest I'd ever felt while doing it.

As in any family, though, the two next questions after someone gets really sick like that involve (1)  whether it was a virus or did I just "get a hold of some bad meat," even though it's usually the bad meat that gets a hold of you, and (2) who's next in the family, which usually gets as much speculation as the name of the Royal Baby, complete with odds.

Since our three-year-old is preparing to celebrate a birthday in the next day, we figured that with his typical middle-child luck, he would come down with some horrific virus that would make us debate hospitalization. So if Vegas were posting odds, I'd bet the house on his being the "next" one.