Not Our First Monkey Rodeo...Wait, Yes It Was

When we signed up for our annual minor-league baseball outing, we were excited to try to get tickets to a fireworks game. When we found out later that it was also Monkey Rodeo night, we dropped everything we were doing. Get the tickets now!

Not that we were rabid fans of monkeys riding on dogs, or even fans of monkeys riding on rabid dogs, but because we really just wanted to see fireworks, and anything involving monkeys stands to draw a crowd. Even the Wilmington Blue Rocks, class A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals. Sorry, ADVANCED Class A.

Despite our attempts to downplay it, the kids still had a sense of expectation that monkeys on dogs was going to be somewhere between awesome and private-dinner-with-the-Swedish-Chef awesome, and so the worst thing we could do to them is miss it. Because of the bad traffic situation in Delaware, we left our house 4 hours early, barely giving us a chance to get something to eat, get to the park, and watch the two-year-old throw his ticket in a puddle of water, then get his nuts crushed by the turnstile.

It must have been Attention Deficit Disorder night at the ballpark. Before we got to our seats, we were nearly run over by a mascot I didn't recognize (later identified as Coastee - another monkey - late for his appointment at the RightCoastPro Wrestling booth. Nobody told me they'd be here too!!!)

Then before the game started the Delaware State Police gave a demonstration where two of their dogs tried to rip the Michelin Man to shreds. It was actually quite impressive, and the poor chap tasked to play the criminal was glad he was dressed as he was in the 90-degree heat, else the dogs would have killed him if the heat didn't get him first.

Here's the painful truth: One you've seen police dogs in action, monkeys on dogs herding goats is not all that interesting. Twice between innings during the game you had goats in the outfield. Then you had dogs chasing them. And you had tiny monkeys on the dogs. So tiny that unless you were the monkeys themselves, it just seemed like dogs chasing really stupid goats. I started yearning for the days of the gun that shoots hot dogs into the stands and the Jumbotron shell game. The crowd roared its approval anyway.

Throughout the game you had the spin-around-with-your-nose-on-the-bat-handle-then-try-to-run-in-a-straight-line contest. You had the frozen t-shirt contest. You had the throw-a-ball-into-the-sun-roof-of-a-moving-mid-sized-SUV-for-prizes contest. You had the never popular kids-racing-in-a-straight-line contest. You had the put-a-beach-ball-at-either-end-of-the-stadium-and-see-which-fans-can-bat-their-ball-toward-home-plate-faster contest. You had clueless fans not paying attention to the rules, batting the beach ball the wrong way and getting just eviscerated by uber-competitive 13-year-old boys. Did I mention you had monkeys on dogs? You had dogs chasing goats. You had dogs attacking bad guys. You had a bouncy house, which my kids never saw and seemed even more ancillary than ever. Who needed a bouncy house?

You had a two-year-old spend innings 3 through 6 narrowly missing spitting on, kicking, and negligently pulling the hair of the young woman in front of him. You had that same two-year-old drink his siblings' drinks before passing out in a pool of his own sweat on his mother's chest in inning 8. Then after the game, but before the fireworks, which came before the throw-a-tennis-ball-from-the-stands-into-hula-hoops-strewn-across-the-field-for-prizes contest, you had one more go round of, you guessed it, cowboy monkey rodeo. This time, for the grand finale, they herded the goats INTO A SQUARE MADE OF FENCING. Then you had fireworks.

You also had a baseball game. A three-hour, seven-minute baseball game that ended 2-1, mercifully in nine innings. You had a home team with one player in the lineup batting above .236 (hint to non-baseball fans: that's historically awful. I hope for Kansas City's sake, they have other minor league teams to pull from.) Because when you have three-hour games that end up 2-1, you need all those hyphenated, between-innings events just to keep kids' attention in this day and age. At least that's what I hear. Come on baseball, speed yourself up.

But in the end, you showed the kids a good time. And you know you'll be back next year.

A Million Ways to Die in Your House

Judging by the local newscasts, the worst thing I could possibly do these days is drive over one of Delaware's many structurally deficient bridges to a birthday party with an outdoor bouncy house that blows into the ocean, where a riptide full of hangry tiger sharks voraciously lick the Level 200 sunscreen off my kids' faces, exposing them to the sun's harsh rays as they eat gluten-filled cake once the tide washes them ashore.

And that's before we get to the weather update. With dangerous heat, dangerous humidity, dangerous storms, dangerous floods and dangerous sun's rays constantly threatening our lives, it's no wonder the local weather yahoos  have named their segment after a Carbon Monoxide detector.

So the best thing to do for our kids is to not go anywhere and hang out in the basement on beautiful summer days, where it's cool and safe and dark, watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on 46 volume to clear the rusty din of the dehumidifier.

Which is exactly what we were doing when suddenly the middle child came crying like a Brazilian soccer fan over something he discovered in the toilet. (Should be no surprise that someone looking in our toilet would be moved to tears considering our house's already documented poor flush rate.) But in this case the tears were justified as a quick glance into the bowl gave us this latest threat to our well-beings:

Apparently the urban legend is not actually an urban legend. And apparently snakes in a toilet was an urban legend? The only urban legend I ever gave much credence to was the one where people hunt you down and murder you if you politely flick your headlights at night.

But immediately we flew into action, me to get a picture of the snake, and my wife to find perhaps the absolute worst-case scenario, just so I'd hurry up a little bit. The two-year-old, who spent more time around the toilet on this day than he has in his life to this point, brazenly flushed (so that's what it takes to get somebody to flush around here) and we were out of the woods.

So how did the snake get in the house in the first place? According to the computer, it's possible he--of course it's a he, that snake-- could have come in through the septic tank through a hole as small as the diameter of a pencil. It's entirely possible, the Internet continues, that a damaged septic tank can allow animals in, particularly if mice and rats are around. Dear God.

Or he just came through the basement door. There are any number of doors that we leave wide open in the summer, so it would shock nobody-- as we were settling arguments over bubble soap, the garden hose, or who has to use the littlest tennis racket-- that a snake, a bald eagle and three polar bears sauntered in, got what they needed, then either got out or got stuck in the commode.

The problem though is that, owing to either the strong swimming characteristics of snakes or the weak flushing power of our toilets, he came back 30 minutes later. And every time I reached in with my glove hand, (we could only find one rubber glove in the house) he swam back down the toilet.

So we had the suddenly brave kids stand watch while we poured Drano down every drain in the house in an attempt to get rid of the thing once and for all. After about four hours, with no return of the snake, we allowed ourselves to breathe. Then, while I was on the phone, my wife pulled the classic Abbott and Costello seeing a ghost routine while I put my hand over my other ear...(Full disclosure: I was trying to figure out a work issue. Seriously. So I didn't know that the snake had crawled out of the commode and was resting comfortably on top in the Klennex box. The Kleenex box?!?!)

Actually, it had kind of dried out by the that point, so we calmly picked him up and dropped him into the bucket and dumped him outside. Done.

All of this silliness further cemented my role as the "fixer" around the house, which is a joke (literally) because more often than not I have to ask my wife where the tools are. Somehow I got the title of "fixer" after seven years, just for replacing a roll of Scotch tape, tightening the knob on the bathroom door once, and getting rid of a snake after five hours and four tries.  THAT is why it's great having kids...you can be totally incompetent and nobody knows the difference...now what is that awful, shrill sound?

Sweet Jesus, I think we need to change the Carbon Monoxide detector.

Mid Year Milestones

With the diaper countdown now under way and the revelation that a giant dog would get our son out of our bed at night, times are a changing, mostly for the better. But as someone inspirational once said, any time a door is closed, a new one is opened.

I think that was supposed to be inspirational. But in this case, it means new challenges and questions await. For instance, will any of our kids take wiping their butts as seriously as they take singing the Frozen soundtrack?

Child milestones generally lose some of their luster after the first year. First words, first steps, first smiles and first teeth give way to first time they tell you to shut up, first time falling down the stairs, and first time knocking teeth out on the corner of the coffee table. Those things usually don't find their way into the baby book or the camera roll and for good reason. Like Phyllis Diller said, "We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up."  Still, we're not done learning things here, so...

Here is a mid-2014 review of some more important developmental milestones:

Milestones involving the English language:
2-year-old: Will purposely answer questions incorrectly and laugh about it. Progress: Mastered.
4-year-old: Will incorporate new vocabulary words into hilarious jokes about animals. Example: Why was the frog small? Because it was in a tree. Progress: Mastered.
7-year-old: Will get sarcasm. On a recent family vacation where everybody in attendance brought an industrial size can of peanut butter, Dad, walking back from the beach, wondered aloud if there would be enough peanut butter for lunch. "Does that mean we have a lot of peanut butter?" Progress: Success!

Milestones involving swimming:
2-year-old: Realizing he can't. Progress: This is why we're taking lessons. We're not about to add to those "more people die annually in swimming pools than..." statistics.
4-year-old: Jumping in the water. Progress: Surprisingly intimidated by jumping into a perfectly good pool of water.
7-year-old: Getting her face wet. Progress: OK, my kids have a healthy respect for water.

Milestones involving boogers:
2-year-old: Will not announce their discovery during church. Progress: Not good. Long way to go.
4-year-old: Will refrain from eating them. Progress: Remarkable, considering where we were just two short months ago. Older sister's taunts may have contributed.
7-year-old: Will recognize that she, too, may have some. (The nasal equivalent of "My sh*t don't stink.") Progress: Depends how sassy she feels.

Milestones involving toothpaste:
2-year-old: Will brush own teeth without getting hair soaking wet. (That happened on my watch somehow the other day.) Progress: ?
4- and 7-year-old: Avoiding this.

Progress: Nil.

Milestones involving the toilet:
2-year-old: Will use. Progress: Off and on.
4-year-old: Will use the ample amount of paper available to him hanging next to the toilet.  Progress: His next time will be the first time.
7-year-old: Will use the shiny knob in the upper left of the back of the apparatus. Progress: Alarmingly poor. Somebody FLUSH the toilet.

Milestones involving understanding the phrase, "Are you sure?"
2-year-old: Progress: n/a
4-year-old: Progress: Consistently gets tangled up in "Do you want vegetables?" "No." "Are you sure?" "No." "Oh, you're not sure?" What?" conversations.
7-year-old: Progress: Starts to get it. Slowly. Finally.

Milestones involving church:
2-year-old: Will keep quiet throughout the homily (sermon if you're a Methodist) to avoid racking up Walks of Shame during the service. Progress: Judging by the mean looks we get from the old ladies, not enough.
4-year-old: Will try to sit in one place for an hour without watching Curious George. (By the way, hey Man in the Yellow Hat, try to get your sh*t together one time. OK?) Progress: Still undergoes panic-inducing withdrawal symptoms when separated from the monkey who can only communicate in dolphin sounds.
7-year-old: Will try to sit in one place for an hour without watching Jessie. Progress: We're still waiting for the day she watches a Fresh Prince of Bel Air re-run and does a complete, 10-page compare and contrast paper on Philip Banks and Bertram.

Milestones involving cleaning up after oneself: 
2-year-old: Will learn to start putting toys away when he's done using them.
4-year-old: Will learn to start putting toys away when he's done using them.
7-year-old: Will learn to start putting toys away when she's done using them.

No progress to report. It's a small price to pay to keep them small.

You'll Be Sleeping with the Dog

This hippie dog and her babies have saved one family lots of sleep and bruised ribs, despite being a bed hog.

For his fourth birthday, our son got plenty of cool stuff...a soccer net, some books, and an eviction notice from his mother.

His mom kicked him out of our bed. Some time ago, we noted that of the three kids, the oldest and the youngest had no interest in co-sleeping with anyone outside of their stuffed animals. But the middle child couldn't get to sleep unless he had his fingers twirled around his mother's neck hair. That plus the consistent kicks to the crotch, kneeing in the small of the back, face-punching and eye-gouging equaled some sort of MMA thing every night in bed. The only thing missing was Gus Johnson calling the action bedside.

Having had enough, we sat him down and gave him the "You're 4 years old, you're a

big boy now" speech which never works on anybody of any age, including adults. But yet, somehow, it seemed to work this time. The light bulb suddenly went on as the lights went out every night. He laid down in his bed with his feet hanging out the bottom of the sheets.

The first few nights he looked pretty uncomfortable, so we removed the books, the baseball bat, the dump trucks, the Thomas trains, the lawnmower, and the Dirt Devil from his bed. "Here, this might give you a little more room." Then I insisted that he cover his feet with a blanket, despite the heat, because really, who sleeps well with their feet hanging out of the blanket? He relented, closed his eyes and turned his body dismissively away from us.

We were a little shocked that it was that easy. Once again God had given us only as much as we could handle, and once again He looked at us, snickered, shook His head, sighed, and gave us a huge break.

The first few nights, as half-expected, we were greeted in the wee hours by a semi-conscious kid coming back and either tapping one of us on the arm or crawling over us into his customary spot in the middle. So we had to reprise the "big boy" speech, to no effect. But progress was progress, in my mind, as at least he was starting the night in his own sack.

But I wasn't my wife, still getting her neck hair pulled and her butt kicked nightly. So we confronted him once more and asked why he was still coming over.

"Something was flying me over there while I was sleeping." It's no wonder kids believe in Santa Claus.

"Well, we'll have to tell that thing to stop now, won't we?"

(This was not much different than the time our oldest blamed all of her behavior on an imaginary friend named Baby.

"Baby said we should jump upside down on the couch with scissors."

"I told Baby not to, but she said you said it was ok to dump the whole box of Cheerios in the crack between the refrigerator and the counter."

At one point, we threatened to ship our daughter to a different family if it meant some time apart from this Baby character. At four, we couldn't afford to have her running with the wrong crowd. Baby quickly became imaginary unfriended.)

Our saving grace was a stuffed animal. Our family dentist gives away a stuffed animal monthly, and on a recent visit, the co-sleeper accompanied me. But I had forgotten to bring all the things that keep kids quiet in quiet places, like electronics and lollipops. Though I imagine bringing a lollipop to a dentist's office would get me on a list somewhere. Luckily, my son kept quiet and watched whatever movie they were showing on the TV. (It's entirely possible I am this dentist's only adult patient.) The receptionist encouraged us to sign up for this month's drawing.

The whole thing seems a bit fishy in retrospect. As I was lying in the chair, with tools hanging out of my mouth and angry drills threatening me, a cheery woman came in from behind and announced that my son had just won the drawing. Fishy for a number of reasons:

1. We just entered the monthly drawing 15 minutes ago.
2. My son was scheduled for his own appointment in two weeks and appeared as genuinely scared of the drill as I was.
3. My son, much to his credit, wasn't acting like a total jackass the way most kids do when they're bored.

The prize was a dog twice the size of Marmaduke. Imagine the biggest stuffed animal you ever won at the fair. Then imagine that animal training in the off-season with Barry Bonds. We had to re-arrange the back seat of the car to fit her (and her two babies!) to make sure everyone made it home ok. I was less nervous bringing the kids home from the hospital for the first time.

This presented a problem at home, as now my son wanted to sleep with this huge dog. And us. And the two babies.  Or it presented a solution. Given that two of us are in the 90th percentile for weight (for him that means "healthy", for me that means "obese") adding a big dog to a full-size bed was not an attractive option, since my wife and I had already been sometimes forced to each sleep with one foot on the ground, Newhart style.

So it was either "sleep in your own bed" or "sleep with no huge dog up your butt." He chose to sleep in what was left of his own bed after the dog, and the rest was history. And the parenting tip here is: If you want your child to sleep in his own bed, get him a larger-than-life stuffed animal that simply doesn't fit anywhere else. Also, simply tell him to behave in public and maybe somebody will rig a lottery in his favor. The results can net you that extra sleep you've been waiting for.

It's the Diaper Countdown

How many diapers do I have left?

The other night driving home my mind wandered out to the edges, and I asked myself that question. Given our careful planning of each pregnancy to ensure a constant monthly diaper expense seven years and counting, but with a full-fledged toddler intimating a need for advanced potty-training, ("I poot on the FLOOR!")  misty eyes started looking ahead to the cleanest, most humane of childhood milestones...potty training the last child.

I think I have thirteen diapers left to change in my lifetime.

The calculation is simple but not frivolous. We are aiming to train our youngest to go on the can by mid-August, by forcing him to wear underpants that cause all sorts of uncomfortable leakage issues if he goes anywhere but the potty. That's seven weeks from now. At an average of 1.5 diapers per week, plus allowing for 2-3 emergency diapers, and given my expectation of becoming that uncle/friend/"uncle"/grandfather who will hold a baby quite literally all day until the moment they fill their pants, then, scurrying, hold the baby out with arms extended as if holding a radioactive, exploding bag of crap, (which it is) I will present the baby to his parents:  "I think this is yours."

(The difference between uncle and "uncle" should be fairly intuitive. An uncle is family, your parent's brother or brother-in-law. An "uncle", then, is someone of no relation but who is so close to your parents that he deserves an honorary title, especially when he's letting you eat ice cream for breakfast and use his couch cushions as wrestling props...essentially the older brother you never had... way, WAY older, which is why he was never your older brother.)

HOLD ON. Someone in the crowd wonders, where does this guy get off changing 1.5 diapers per week? Either his kid has a life-threatening constipation issue or someone's got a case of the lazies. Deadbeat dad alert! This guy can't be bothered to change his kid's diaper but one-n-a-half times a week...

It comes down to choices. Not that I choose to let my child sit in his own filth, though he still seems cool with that. But, as she does with her kindergarten kids daily, my wife "empowers" me by allowing me to make my own decisions. "I'll change that diaper if you clean the kitchen floor..." "I'll change the kid's diaper if you pick up the basement..." "Would you rather change his diaper or stay on hold with the cable company?"

I still fall for it every time. Every single time. The "other" alternative, seemingly benign, has a hidden undercurrent of "fail" to it that makes a simple rotting diaper the least of the family's concerns. That kitchen floor? We had rice tonight. Gotta pick every one up, including the 3,000 that get stuck in the broom. The basement? Nobody told me they re-enacted the Boston Juice Box Party all over the couch. The cable company? Shoulda seen that one coming.

And once you make your choice, you're stuck with it. If you try to opt out, offer to stick your whole head inside the offending diaper for the right to change your mind, it is over. "You made your choice." The "and now you'll live with the consequences" is just sort of understood. There is little more deflating than realizing your misery is the result of your own choices. Kindergarten class of 2014-15, beware.

But besides all of that, there may appear to be a monetary benefit to this. The penny-pinching, corporate type in me wants badly to estimate how much money we have spent on diapers over the years, then compare that number to the price of a pretentious, douchey, over-priced car. There won't be any real savings anyway, because the money not spent on diapers will surely be spent on something else kid-related, like Frozen Dance Camp.

Frozen Dance Camp sounds like cheap fish sticks but is actually a week-long summer event based off of an obscure Disney movie that you're probably only vaguely familiar with. Frozen Dance Camp came to us by accident in a series of events so involved that the average length of the "Long Story Short" version is still three minutes and 26 seconds. By the end of this week, the participants, which include my daughter, will have created a Tour de Force of Frozen je ne sais quoi that, given their immersion with the subject matter, could match any of my daughter's former dance studio's annual output. Just not sure that it will be in French.

But that's for another time. Our diaper days are numbered and that makes my wife sad, because it's soon another milestone behind us. Maybe one last messy diaper for the baby book. But it makes me sad, too, because at least I knew when my kids were crapping in their pants instead of the toilet, we could be reasonably assured someone was then wiping their butts.