Of Toddlers and Toilets

On September 22nd, my wife wrote:

A. is quite the determined little climber and very very busy. Here she is playing in the toilet with her bath toys. This is how crazy my day has been all day long with no letup. How was yours?

September 27:

Scene: it's quiet at home -- too quiet.

Katie: "Where's Amelia? I hope the bathroom door is shut."

I checked. It wasn't.

Yesterday . . .

After I left for work this morning, Katie had a delightful start to her day. Amelia climbed into the toilet at 6:30 a.m.


 Today, I offered a different perspective on my 15-month-old daughter:

Usually you hear about A. the Difficult. Allow me to tell you about A. the Adorable.

This evening, I walked over to the front door, locked the deadbolt, then turned back into the living room. A. came running up to me with her arms raised. Either she was refereeing a football game and someone had just scored a touchdown, or she wanted me to pick her up. So I picked her up.

She immediately turned to her mother and blew her kiss after kiss after kiss. I realized then that A. thought she was going bye-bye with her daddy. My fiddling with the front door had misled her into thinking I was departing. I set her down and told her I hated to disappoint her, but that I wasn't going anywhere. Then, for the first time in her life, she ran over to the front door, plucked one of my shoes from the pile of family footwear, and brought it to me. I tossed it back. Then she ran back to the pile and picked out one of *her* shoes. She followed me around the house with it, trying to convince me to take her out for a night out on the town.

So far I'm resisting, but the child can be pretty persuasive -- especially when she's so darn cute!

Then, half-an-hour ago:

So you know how I just posted about A. the Adorable? Never mind. This just happened. Notice the bath toy. She pulled it out of the toilet bowl when I walked in. Give. Me. Strength.

Bringing Up Fathers Without Tearing Them Down

Over the last few days, my nine-year-old daughter, S, has gone into the master bedroom alone several times and stayed in there for quite a while. Finding this behavior unusual, I have checked in on her to see what she was up to. Each time, I have found her sitting calmly in the rocking chair. And each time I asked her what she was doing, she simply brushed off my question and casually strolled out of the bedroom -- a little *too* casually.

Clearly she was up to something.

Today when she left the room, I noticed that she had left a book open and face-down on the filing cabinet next to the rocking chair. So I investigated. And learned that my little fourth-grader has been reading Kevin Leman's Bringing Up Kids Without Tearing Them Down -- a freebie I picked up at work a few weeks ago on a whim. She is currently on page 33. The folded down corners of quite a few of the book's pages, S's preferred place-marking method, prove that the child has been reading the book in short installments for much longer than I would have guessed.

Knowing S., she'll have plenty of parenting advice for me when she finishes the book. I trust that when she offers it, she will do so in a way that brings up this parent without tearing him down.

My Daughter is 8 going on 13, and I'm Not Ready for This Yet

This morning I took the kids to school during a rainstorm. We were behind schedule, so we ran out of the house and raced for the van. L. carried a rolled-up poster presentation on cyber-bullying that she had spent hours meticulously laboring over. She stopped underneath the patio awning and refused to move, fearing that her poster would get wet once she was out in the rain. So I took the poster and carefully shoved it under my shirt. That shielded it sufficiently for the brief trip to the van.

As we drove, L. asked how she was going to get the poster inside her school without it getting wet. I glanced around the van and spotted two plastic Rowlett Public Library bags on the floor. At a stoplight, I grabbed them and threw them onto the back seat. "Use these," I said, pleased to have found a solution. And L. did so, sliding a bag over both ends of the rolled up poster.

When I pulled up at the end of the carpool line at L's school, she asked, "Dad, do I *have* to use these library bags?" Knowing how hard she had worked on the poster and how important it was to her, I told her yes, she did need to use the bags. And L. burst into tears. "But dad," she said. "I don't want to go to school with the library bags. Everyone will stare at me! They'll all think I'm stupid!"

I assured her that they wouldn't even notice. I said, "School starts in three minutes. Every kid is racing inside and heading to class. They're focused on not being late. They won't even see you, much less what you're carrying."

L. wailed, "Why do you want to embarrass me, dad? I don't want to go inside my school looking like a doofus!"

I explained that I had no desire to embarrass her and assured her that nobody would think she was stupid for covering her poster in plastic bags on a rainy day. L. disagreed. She especially objected to the use of "dumb" library bags, which she thought would bring her nothing but ridicule. I pointed out that I use Walmart bags to protect my papers and books every day on the way to and from work. And L. said, "Just because it wouldn't embarrass you doesn't mean it won't embarrass me!" Then the waterworks started again, and L. begged, "Please please please, daddy! Don't make me use these dumb library bags! It'll be so embarrassing! Everyone will think I'm stupid. I'll look like a doofus!"

In then end, I relented. I told her it was her homework project, so it was her choice whether or not to let it get rained on. She tore off the bags, leaped out of the van and, poster under one arm, raced through the rain and into the school.

My eight-year-old daughter is too embarrassed to use plastic bags to protect her homework from rain. What's next? L. ducking down as I pull up in front of her school because she's too embarrassed to be seen in our minivan? Or worse, too embarrassed to be seen with her father?

The kid's only in third grade and she's already this worried about what her peers will think of her?! Isn't this sort of thing supposed to start in junior high? She won't be a teenager for another five years! I'm so not ready for this!

A Daughter's Secret Food Storage Program? Or Kitchen Midden?

Two days ago, my eight-year-old daughter pulled a slice of bacon out from under the kitchen table, showed it to my wife, Katie, and then put it back. Not a piece or a small fragment of bacon, mind you, but an entire slice. Puzzled, Katie investigated. And discovered a wide assortment of food resting on a wooden support underneath the tabletop.  Sound unlikely? Well, check out the way our table was engineered. Here it is, all innocent-looking.

But underneath, there are two "secret" compartments -- one above each table support:

Upon the above platform, Katie found far more than just bacon. Also present were large pieces of dinner rolls, taquitos, chimichangas, quesadillas, and fish sticks, among other things.

Thoroughly grossed out, Katie left the stash untouched and awaited my return home from work. The moment I walked through the front doorway, she told me what my first project would be that evening.

First, I scooped all the food out from its secret hiding place:

Then I swept it up.

Two mysteries surround this secret cache of cast-off food: first, the identity of the guilty party; and second, why she ditched yummy food. Bacon? Seriously?! You're getting rid of bacon? Why not vegetables?

If my parents had had such a table when I was a young child, and I found so perfect a hiding place, I would have filled it with peas, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and all manner of vegetables. But mostly, I would have filled it with bread crusts. I hated bread crusts more than just about anything. Why? Well, because they were so, uh, crusty. I used to discard them by simply dropping them on the kitchen floor underneath my chair. This meant that they were discovered quickly, and made it very easy for my mother to ID the guilty party. As I grew older, and therefore more sophisticated, I discovered the adhesive properties of peanut butter. This meant that crusts from my peanut butter and jam sandwiches ended up glued to the underside of the table. It took my mom longer to find those, but find them she did.

Given the extreme degree of desiccation, it is likely that the food has been squirreled away under our tabletop for a very long time. My guess is, most of the items date back to the Cretaceous Period.

Congratulations dear daughter or daughters! You have been far more successful than I ever was at hiding unwanted food! May you always find such success in every endeavor you pursue!

Leasing a Fireplace in the Texas Heat

This sign recently went up in our neighborhood:

 I just about died when I first saw it. I couldn't believe my eyes. The absurdity! It's early September! In Texas! And the rocket scientist who put this sign up thinks advertising a fireplace will attract renters to their home?! It's a thousand degrees outside! And I ought to know -- I just finished mowing the lawn. What's more, in Texas it is too hot to use a fireplace for 11.875 months out of the year.

We have a fireplace in our living room, but in the more than three years we've lived here, have never used it. It has zero value. If anything, it should lower the value of the home. We put the couch in front of it. It is an inconvenience, a very poor use of perfectly good wall space.

But back to the sign . . .

It says "HOT" on the bottom. I'm confused. Is that a reference to the fireplace? Because everyone knows that, when in use, fireplaces are hot. Or is it a reference to the current temperature? Because everyone knows it's hot the second they waltz out their front door. At best, this portion of the sign is an insult to people's intelligence. At worst, it is a terrible marketing ploy -- "Hi, we know it's hotter than the surface of the sun all year long in Texas, but by golly, we've got a fireplace in our rental unit! When it's 90 degrees outside, you can come curl up in front of a nice hot fire!"

Three days later . . . 

Apparently the owners are unable to generate any interest in their property and are getting desperate. The sign changed yesterday. Check out the new top line:

When we drove past it today in a car that lacks air conditioning, my sweat-soaked eight-year-old daughter noticed it. She said, "Dad, why are they advertising a fireplace? It's way too hot for that. Ugh!"

Me: "Yeah. I think they'd have better luck renting their home if they advertised a walk-in freezer rather than a fireplace."

I wish the owners the best of luck in their futile endeavor. Perhaps people will be more interested come January when the heat of the Texas summer finally fades.

Laundry Day

Yesterday, my wife did the laundry -- washing, drying, and folding each girl's clothing into orderly stacks. Then she asked each child to put away their respective piles of laundry. This they did, but only in accordance with their own interpretation of the phrase "put away." One child's interpretation of her mother's instructions differed quite sharply from Katie's intended meaning. This morning, Katie went into S's bedroom and discovered one stack of the child's neatly folded laundry stuffed under her pillow, a second stack of laundry shoved inside the bedroom closet, and a third stack crammed into a toy bin.

I dare say little Miss S. will be hearing from her mother upon her return home from school this afternoon.

P.S. Dear 9 y/o daughter, couldn't you just throw all your freshly laundered clothing into a single heap on the floor like most kids do?

Weak Brothers, Muscular Brothers

Sometimes my kids come up with the most random comments about stuff. Yesterday, I was talking to my 6 y/o daughter and she asked me about her Uncle Randy, who towers over me.

C: "Dad, is he older than you?"

Me: "No. I'm older than him."

A confused C., pointing to my sternum: "If you are older than him, then he should only be this high on you."

Me: "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I weigh more than he does."

C: "Because he's really weak?"

LOL. That's right, kid. Compared to my little brother, I'm just one solid mass of muscle. He got the height, and I got the finely chiseled, muscular physique.

smh

A Star Wars-themed cereal box featuring C3PO, R2D2, and BB-8 gets me in trouble with my wife

A couple days ago, Katie sent me to the grocery store to get a few things. While searching for the items in question, I traveled down the cereal aisle and came across this little beaut'. 

Naturally I bought it. After I arrived home and piled the bags of groceries on the kitchen table, Katie sorted through the contents and discovered the contraband. She held up the box and said, "How did this end up in the cart? Are you purposely trying to get yourself banned from going grocery shopping?"

I assured her that I was not.

And she said, "I told you to buy cheap stuff, and only necessities."

And I said, "But honey, STAR WARS!!!"

She did not find my carefully argued defense persuasive. I, on the other hand, thought it quite convincing.

Later, I showed my prized cereal box to the girls, who I figured would be a more receptive audience. And, lest they think me crazy, I quickly pointed out the feature they would find most appealing. I showed them the back of the box (see below), and said, "See, I can even cut out my very own Star Wars poster and put it on my bedroom wall!" This got no visible reaction from my daughters, but it caused my wife to roll her eyes.

So I guess C3PO and friends will not be adorning the walls of the master bedroom anytime soon.

A Trip to The Home Depot's Kids' Workshop

One of the things the girls and I did together on Saturday, my last work-free one for the next few months, was go to The Home Depot's Kids' Workshop. Home Depot holds these workshops on the first Saturday of each month, and the kids enjoy participating in them. This month, they had fun putting together small wood-framed dry-erase boards.

The nine-year-old insisted on painting the wooden frame of her dry-erase board, much to my dismay. Just as I feared would happen, she got paint on her shirt.

The eight-year-old was content to simply cover the frame with stickers. But the stickers were covered in glitter, which we all know was spawned in the infernal realms.

The six-year-old begged to be allowed to paint her frame, but she was wearing much nicer clothing than the nine-year-old. So I told her no. She put a bunch of stickers on, and then asked her oldest sister, who was already painting, if she would consent to paint hers also. She agreed. Unfortunately, the six-year-old still managed to get blue paint on the white lace trim of her shirt. Grr!

Two of My Daughters, Budding Scientists, Turn the Bathroom into the Okefenokee Swamp

Sunday: a day of child-caused chaos.

Can we start this day over again?

This morning, L. (8 y/o) and C. (6 y/o) decided to engage in a series of scientific experiments: testing a variety of items to see if they float in a bucket of water. It reminded me of that classic scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) See: Witch Village

The problem? When their experimenting was done, L. attempted to empty the bucket's gallons of water into the bathroom sink. And failed. Instead, she poured water all over her lab partner, soaking C. to the bone. The water covered the bathroom floor with a layer so deep that I considered hiring a lifeguard to oversee it.

The water spill would not have been so bad if the girls had not first strewn six million square feet of toilet paper across the floor, as well as peppered it with small rocks -- some of which had been crushed into a fine powder. [Sir Bedivere: "What floats in water?" Would-be witch burner: "Very small rocks."] Mixed in with the toilet paper and rocks were the girls' "hair things" -- barrettes, clips, scrunchies, and elastic band pony tail holder thingies.

All of this had gone on while S. (9 y/o), separated from her sisters' makeshift science laboratory by only a shower curtain, serenely soaked in the bathtub.

The serenity was not to last, however. S the Unflappable became, uh, flappable, when her baby sister climbed into the tub with her.

With the Okefenokee Swamp still not completely cleaned up, a fully clothed 14-month-old A. gleefully splashed and played in her big sister's bath water.

Give me strength!

Bounce House Fun

The girls had free passes to a "Jump Zone" (read: super-sized bounce house) in a nearby city. Since today is my last work-free Saturday for a few months, I decided to take the kids to redeem their passes. I took some photos and a few brief video clips of the girls at play. Here's a sampling for your viewing peasure:

Big Fat Sweaty Daddy

Day 3 without the main A/C unit:

S. climbs on my lap. "Dad, you are sweaty."

Me: "Yup."

S. wraps her arms around my shoulders, squeezes me, and says, "My big fat sweaty daddy!"

Is it Monday yet?

Four Sweet and Sour Sisters

A week ago . . . 

Sometimes my kids freak me out. They bicker and fight so much that that seems the norm -- so much so that I forget what sweethearts they can be.

This morning on the 20-minute drive to school they fought and fought and fought. This afternoon on the 20-minute drive home from school they fought and fought and fought. It was ugly and very mean-spirited.

During dinner tonight (after the conversation related in my last post), C (6 y/o). got excused from the table and sent to bed for behaving very badly. Once in bed, she cried and cried. By this point, Katie had left home for the evening. Alone I tried to wrestle with a very fussy baby A. and a loudly bawling C.

Amid the chaos, S. (9 y/o) came up to me and said she was going to go talk to C. to calm her down. I said that was fine. What I did not know then was that S. sneaked two books into C's room with her. She read two bedtime stories to her little sister.

Meanwhile, out in the living room, I wrestled with cranky baby A. She wanted nothing to do with me. She only wanted L. (8 y/o) (she just *loves* L.). So L. picked her up, and baby A. cuddled up and laid her head on L's shoulder. L. got the baby's pacifier, blankie, and favorite stuffed animal. She also picked out pajamas for the kid. Baby A. was quite content as long as L. held her. A short time later, L. set her down on my lap and went to her room. Deeply distraught, baby A climbed off my lap and went waddling down the hallway calling out L's name: "YaaaYaaa, YaaaYaaa." So L. took over once again.

This evening my two oldest girls voluntarily took good care of my two youngest girls. And they did a great job. They were so sweet, gentle, and patient with the cranky little ones. It surprised me. And warmed my heart.

The following day . . .

Remember how S. was really sweet to C. last night, reading her bedtime stories and comforting her? Well, today C. wrote S. a thank-you note. As near as I can make out, it says "Thank you for all that you do. I will give you a kiss and I'll say I Love You! I am . . . that is a . . . one more big smooch." Then C. applied some type of "lipstick" and kissed the paper -- hence the grease stain right in the middle.

At the bottom of the paper, which you can see best in the second photo, C. drew a picture of a panda climbing up a bamboo plant. She did so because, as you probably know, pandas are S's favorite animal.

I sure love my big-hearted six-year-old! Where on earth did that kid come from?

A conversation about how I am unlike my siblings

Scene: dinner table

C. (6 y/o) <very sad, whimpering>: "I wish I was big like S. [9 y/o], or a baby like A. I am so different from my sisters. I'm not like them at all."

Me: "That's okay C. I'm different from my siblings as well."

C: "You are?! How?"

Me: "Well, I--"

L. (8 y/o): "You're short!"

Uh, well, I guess there is that, yeah. *Sigh*