Slip Slidin' away

First off, as I have said before, no, I was not babysitting. Just because my wife leaves for the weekend, it does not mean the children are devoid of a parent. True, they are devoid of a responsible parent, but that doesn’t make me a babysitter.
My wife left on Friday before school was out, which meant I would pick the kids up from school. I have picked the kids up on occasion, so it’s no great mystery to me.
What IS a great mystery to me, however, is how some people cannot immediately learn what proper car line protocol is. It is very simple, especially when you have lines approaching a single entrance from different directions: You take turns. One car from one direction enters, and then a car from the other direction enters. NEVER do two cars from the same direction enter one after the other UNLESS the driver in the other direction is clearly not paying attention because of yapping on a phone, putting on makeup, shaving, etc. Yet still, on occasion, I see someone riding the bumper of the car in front of them, making it painfully clear to all others that this is a two-car package deal, despite the fact that alternating entry is a basic default rule of life, much like the rule of calling shotgun, the rule of no line cuts without the tacit nod of approval from the person behind you, and the rule that when a second cashier opens up a business, the person who is second in line gets to go there, and the person at the back of the line does not sprint to the open register.
Sadly, this last one is only rarely adhered to. (Any business that uses a queue line to corral and move customers through? Aces in my book.)
So after rounding up the kids, I had to figure what to do with the rest of my day. I had to head back to work, so I dropped the kids off at home and went on my way. They’re 6 and 4 and would be fine.
Oh, settle down. My mother-in-law was at the house waiting for them. I assume.
When I got home that evening, I decided Parker and I would have a dude’s night. Allie went with my mother-in-law for a sleepover. I asked Parker what he wanted to do. He said, “GO WITH GRAN AND ALLIE!!!” I explained to him that they would be doing girl things. “BUT I WANNA BE A PRINCESS!!!” Sigh.
Eventually, I convinced Parker that we would have a much better time with our testosterone overflowing doing manly things. In no time, we settled into our booth at a gentleman’s club and... Ha! Little more humor for you.
I told Parker that we were going out to eat, and he could pick the restaurant AND pick something cool to go do before dinner. We could go to the park, we could go walk by the Carolina Bay, whatever he wanted. “I wanna go to The Houses,” he said, not missing a beat.
“The Houses” are favorites of Parker. “The Houses” are in fact the storage sheds in the parking lot of Home Depot. He loves going and checking them out, and telling me what we could do with each one. His favorite, of course, is the two-story one, which he has decided would be a perfect addition. His room would be upstairs, by the way.
After The Houses, I settled on a restaurant. At first I let Parker pick, but he opted for “Chick-fil-A McDonald’s Chili’s Ice Cream Gramma’s Dora the Explorer.” I am not sure where that restaurant is.
We reunited with Allie in the morning. I told the kids that if they were really good, I would have a special surprise for them. That was a mistake, because that meant from that point forward, they would be saying, “PLEEEEEASE tell us what our surprise is!!!”
They really don’t grasp the concept of surprises.
But after a few errands, I caved in and told them their surprise was a trip to the zoo, something they always enjoy.
When we reached the zoo, I saw a jam-packed parking lot the likes of which I have never seen at the zoo. I even had a momentary thought of trying to figure out how to explain to the kids that the zoo had, in fact, closed. I figured I would receive some serious negative karma points for that and opted to brave the crowds.
Once inside, it wasn’t that bad, as we are a fairly mobile and nimble trio. Oh, and for what’s it’s worth, I still find it amazing how 6-foot adults see nothing wrong with stepping in front of 4-foot children to see an animal. They are probably the same people who sprint from the back of the line to the just-opened register.
After completing the zoo, we headed home.
Parker fell asleep before we were out of the parking lot, which meant I had a large hill to climb in terms of getting him to fall asleep that evening. So I did what any forward-thinking parent would do: I stopped and bought a Slip-and-Slide. “Here kids – have fun! Run and slide until half past tired!”
Sure enough, after about an hour, they came to me, shivering and exhausted. They ate a huge dinner (always a good sign that they are ready to crash) and took their baths. In no time, I had them snuggled in their beds, worn out from a great day with dad.
As I checked on them one final time that evening, I gave myself a little pat on the back, and again said to myself that I am definitely not a babysitter. For one thing, I don’t get paid.

Daring dining

When you’re a parent, your children’s signature milestones are moments of unending pride. Take my neighbors, who were beaming with pride when they shared a huge milestone with their one-year-old: “We went out to lunch – in public!!!”
Ah, dining out. The dreaded, frightening adventure into an a mysterious world where anything can happen. Things can be thrown (forks, rolls, temper tantrums). Loud unnecessary proclamations can be made at volumes normally reserved for marching bands (“I don’t LIKE food!!!”; “I NEEEEEEED more ketchup”; and “I’m stinky.”).
When our daughter was born, we took her out a few times as a baby. That was because babies can’t get away. Not that I would suggest this, but you could just set a baby on the floor and, at the end of dinner, you can bet your baby will be there when you’re done (assuming you dine at dingo-free restaurants). Again, not suggesting you just park your child like an umbrella. Just stating a fact.
And if a baby does start crying, she’s portable enough that you pick her up and go for a little jaunt, where you do that goofy little hop/dance and try to whisper/sing a song to soothe her, but because you haven’t slept in 11 days you can’t remember the words to actual songs, so you resort to trying to sing a song you thought you knew and just end up making up the rest:
“I can’t get no ... satisfaction. I can’t put a ... dog in traction. But I try. And I try. Please don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I can’t get no ... I’ll play Uno ... No, no, no ... And hey, hey, hey. L.A. Law’s Susan Dey...” Repeat.
But as Allie got older, she became mobile, and her reach and grip improved, meaning you could go to dinner and, if you made the mistake of looking away for a moment, such as to take a bite of your food, you would turn back just in time to see a pat of butter zoom across the room.
After a while, you decide you want to brave back into the restaurant world. My wife and I always made a point of selecting a restaurant that could drown out the potential noise. Unfortunately, firing ranges and airline tarmacs rarely have restaurants, so we would opt for a “family-friendly” restaurant.
It was at these restaurants where I first noticed something about people, and that is that some people will put themselves in situations they know are going to annoy them, and then proceed to act extra outraged, as though they would never have imagined that a pizza buffet line at 5:30 would have families there. I mean, for crying out loud, they have a RIGHT to go to a restaurant that advertises in HUGE letters that kids eat free and expect a monastery-like peace and quiet.
But after a while, Allie got to where she was pretty good at restaurants. She’s six now, so going out is a big deal, and she will often go get dressed up and look like an absolute princess. (In fact, she looks so adorable when she gets dressed up that she could pretty much come downstairs and get away with anything, and I will cave. “Sure, honey. Take the car. Your dress is too pretty to say no!”)
Of course, it’s not always as easy as taking a perfect princess out, because Parker is 4, and he’s still in the learning process of proper dinner etiquette. Some things we let slide (“Fine, eat the butter. Just use a spoon.”) Other things we try to curtail. (“Parker, pants. On. Now.”)
Allie is quick to condemn this behavior. I am quick to remind her she’s only a couple of years away from the “Don’t eat that – it’s a napkin, for crying out loud” stage and not to get all high and mighty.
But for the most part, I’d say we are at the stage where we can go in public and have a relatively nice dinner. The other night, we headed out to eat, and for various reasons did not make it to the restaurant until what was normally bedtime. We figured, what the hey, we can go a little off schedule on occasion. Plus, we engaged the Out In Public Safety Plan, which is for both my wife and I to drive. That way, if/when one of your children hits meltdown, you grab the other half of your burger, tuck the kid under your arm football style and make a beeline for your car. If your kids are like mine, when they start throwing a fit in public, if you can manage to get them in the car seat and drive about eight feet, they will be asleep.
When we were seated, we were at the very back corner of the restaurant, right next to the kitchen. In fact, you could see the kitchen and all the activity going on. At one point, the waiter asked how everything was. I asked him if most of his patrons hated this table, right by the kitchen. He didn’t really know how to answer and was probably assuming I was going to be a high maintenance customer. “I’m just saying,” I said, trying to ease his concerns, “you should offer this up to folks with kids in tow. It’s loud enough that they’re not going to bother anyone and, to be honest with you, they’re having a blast watching the kitchen buzz.” He seemed relieved, and also like he thought I was maybe just a smidge off my rocker.
That dinner ended in a rather subdued way, with both kids coming around to where I was sitting on a booth seat, leaning their heads on me and trying to go to sleep.
In fact, it was a really nice dinner. So parents, worry not – it’s just a matter of time until your kids will reach that milestone, too. And if you’re not quite there, just have patience. And let them have some butter.

Pop-Tart press

Busted.
I had no excuses, no alibis. I was busted. Guilty, as charged, of illegal use of a Pop-Tart.
Up until a few weeks ago, there were very few Pop-Tart related crimes in my household. Sure, if you whipped one Frisbee-style at someone you might find yourself on the business end of a time-out, but for the most part, Pop-Tarts were a fairly law-abiding member of the Gibbons food family.
Then my wife looked down. And when she looked down, she saw our carpet. Our carpet that had been cleaned a few months back. This did not look like a carpet that had been cleaned a few months back. Rather, this looked like a carpet that chimps had used as a food fight arena.
And in a way, that is what happened, since Daddy is very bad about letting the kids bring their breakfast up to the playroom. Here’s the way the scenario usually plays out: I get up with the kids, get downstairs and realize that I am not ready for breakfast, but would spend some quiet time inside of a coffee mug reading the paper and surfing the net. So, I’ll get the kids some breakfast, usually waffles or pancakes or Pop-Tarts. Yes, I know Pop-Tarts are not the most healthy breakfast. Neither are chicken nuggets, but sometimes that’s what they get, because I haven’t the energy to argue at 7 a.m.
The kids even had their own special table that I set up for them. It was cool – Cool Daddy and the Cool Kids having a Cool Breakfast in the playroom. And then the cool stuff starting getting ground into the carpet.
So my wife decided the carpet would be cleaned, and from that point forward, there would be a few ground rules:
1. No food upstairs.
2. No shoes upstairs.
3. No dogs upstairs.
I took issue with the first two, because it was implied this included me. “Yes, you too,” she said, clearing that right up. I told her that this was not fair because (a) I am quite responsible if I, say, want to bring some cold pizza upstairs as a snack and (b) as I have written in previous columns, I have this weird thing where I hate going around without shoes on. My wife told me I could keep my slippers at the edge of the stairs, and those could be my “upstairs shoes.” I told her that I was really good about making sure my shoes were clean. She told me that I have the biggest feet in the house, and am therefore responsible for the biggest tracks. I had no argument. I sulked into my slippers and went along my pizza-less way upstairs.
So fast forward a few weeks later. I had gotten pinched a couple of times for having my shoes upstairs, which was an easy mistake to make. We would be heading out, and a light would be on upstairs, so I would run upstairs to turn it off, not even thinking. My wife realized this was an honest mistake. But we were cruising good. Until the morning I was sold out.
It started innocently enough. My wife left with Allie for school, leaving The Dudes home to get ready. I was about to hop in the shower, when Parker asked if he could have a Pop-Tart for breakfast. No problem, I thought. “Can I eat it in your room and watch Disney?” he asked. I thought about it. How much harm can one Pop-Tart cause? I mean, if I set him up on the bed, tell him has to sit on a towel, and clean up afterwards, what can go wrong?
I get Parker situated and tell him the ground rules. “And remember, Parker, this is Daddy’s special treat for you. Let’s not let Mommy know our super special Pop-Tart secret, OK?”
“DEAL!” he said, sealing it with a high five.
So I’m getting out of the shower and I see my wife’s van pulling into the driveway. Odd, I thought. She must have forgotten something. At that point, Parker sees the van too, and goes sprinting downstairs. “Mommy’s here!!!” he says. I look over at the bed and see very clear evidence of a Pop-Tart breakfast. I work quickly to dispose of the evidence.
I head downstairs only to hear my son -- the one who had just made a high-five sealed deal with me -- say, “Daddy let me have Pop-Tarts upstairs!!!”
At this point, I considered going out a window and heading on to work, just until things cooled down. It occurred to me that I was wearing a towel, and that would probably be bad form.
So I peered downstairs only to catch my wife’s eye. I noticed she glanced as my feet to make sure I was not going to be charged twice.
“Look,” I stammered, “I was getting in the shower, and I wanted to make sure I could see...”
Her look told me not to finish. I was nailed. No point in arguing it.
I told her that it would not happen again, and I will work hard not to break that promise. If there is one valuable thing you can take from this, it’s don’t make deals with four-year-olds. I wonder if I can trust Allie...

The ants go marching

“One thing is for certain: There is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.” — Kent Brockman, The Simpsons


It was an all out ant attack.
OK, so it was not all out, or even really an attack. But it was enough to tip my wife’s happiness meter WAY to the bad side.
It started a few months back when Parker got an ant farm. It’s one of these space age farms with the blue gel, rather than boring old sand. The package advertises that NASA uses it. I really have no idea why they would be taking an ant farm into space. Perhaps they are avid hobbyists. Maybe one guy is taking his baseball cards, another is hauling up a coin collection. Who knows.
But the point is, Parker loves his ant farm save for one thing: No ants. Generally, an ant farm is not an ant farm without... well, ants.
So I finally got around to ordering the ants. I was going to go outside and just gather up some ants, but I figured I should follow the directions on the package, which essentially said, “You can buy some of our ants, or you can risk going outside and collecting your own ants, which will probably turn on you and, after just moments, eat your face.”
I went to the company’s website and placed an order for some harvester ants, which apparently are ideal for the farm. (They have experience in tractor repair, I guess.)
Each day, Parker would ask if his ants had come, which was the occasion for a valuable lesson. My wife, showing her wisdom, said, “Next time you order something for Parker, don’t tell him about it until he gets here.” Turns out, children have very little concept of time, and even less concept of priority mail. Every morning, he and I would go out to get the paper, and he would sprint to the mailbox to see if his ants had arrived. “Parker,” I would say, “the mail doesn’t come overnight.” “But they’re bringing my ants, so they might,” he would say. Sigh.
Eventually, the ants came. Fortunately, I was able to get to the mailbox before Parker knew they were there, because when I opened the package I found a lovely tube filled with very still ants. I gave them a little shake, thinking they were perhaps asleep. It then occurred to me that I don’t know whether or not ants sleep. Closer inspection revealed that these ants were way past sleeping.
So at this point I was in a pickle. Parker knew his ants were coming any day now, but I didn’t want to let him know that they arrived dead. It isn’t that he would be upset, but rather that he would opt for carrying around the dead animals. Remember, this is the kid who, for several days, toted around a dead beetle that he had named Hoo-Hoo Lava Jam Jesus.
In the package was a slip of paper that told you what to do if the ants arrived dead. I sent an e-mail, and they responded a short while later to inform me a new batch of ants was on its way.
After another week of waiting (and checking for surprise overnight postal service deliveries), the package finally arrived. Of course, the arrival also caused my wife to whip the package Frisbee-style into the neighbor’s yard. Apparently, during shipping, the tube that the ants were in got crushed, setting them free to scurry about the cardboard box. So when my wife opened the package, the ants came marching one by one, hurrah!
When my wife called me, she made it clear that she was not pleased. I told her to go get the envelope of free-range ants and place them in a container for when I got home. “No,” she said.
“Just pick up the envelope by the corner and put them in a container,” I said in my most assuring voice.
“No,” she said.
I told her there was a storage bin in the garage that was large, and she could just pitch them in their and I would deal with it when I got home. She made it clear that, should one of the ants bite her, I would receive swift and certain retribution for forcing her to pick up an envelope covered in angry ants.
When I got home, the ants were in their storage bin. Somehow, my wife had been able to conduct the whole ant recovery mission without Parker knowing what was going on, so he had yet to see his brand new ants. I opened the bin and found that a whopping six ants had survived the journey. I assume that the trip killed them again, although a 30-foot toss to the neighbor’s yard probably didn’t help.
So I carefully moved the six remaining ants to their new habitat, which Parker has found wildly entertaining. (He insists they have breakfast with him each morning.) His sister is less than excited, and woke up the first night we had the ants saying she had dreams that the ants had gotten out and were in her bed. Perhaps Daddy should not have been playing the “ants are crawling up your back” game with Allie during dinner.
So we are now waiting for yet another order of ants. Hopefully, these will arrive soon. Alive. And contained. Parker and I will continue to dutifully check the mailbox until they arrive. But they need to get here quick, because Parker is getting... wait for it... antsy.

Sleep apathy

I usually stay up late. It’s just kind of my nature. One reason for this is I tend to get a motivation groove late at night, whether doing work related stuff or things around the house.
Everyone else goes to bed, the house gets quiet, and I am suddenly in the zone, able to go until the wee hours of the morning.
It’s amazing how much work you can get done when you don’t have to stop and say, “DO NOT throw earthworms at your sister!!!”
Normally, I go to bed around 1 a.m., and I get up around 6:30 in the morning. I have an alarm set, but I generally do not need to use that, because far more effective than an alarm clock is a 4-year-old nose touching your nose saying, “Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. I’m hungry. Make some waffles. Daddy.” He occasionally pokes me just to make sure I am paying attention.
But every so often, I decide I need to catch up on my sleep. I used to do this on weekends courtesy of a nap. Years ago, naps were a daily staple. Over the years, as kids came along and my work schedule changed, naps became relegated to weekends.
Of course, my weekends now tend to get a little hectic on occasion, too, so oftentimes my naps get pushed to the side. (Apparently, it is bad form to curl up for a nap in the middle of a walk through the zoo.)
And since I usually get home during the week pretty close to the kids’ bedtime, I can’t in good conscience walk in and say, “Hey, kids, good to see you. Now, quiet time while Daddy gets a little shuteye.”
So that means that the only way I can catch up on my sleep is to do what used to be the unthinkable – go to bed early. Seems like a simple enough concept.
Every week or two, I just decide I will forego work or house projects and hop on under the covers around 9:30 or 10. Maybe watch some TV. Maybe flip through a magazine.
This would be a great plan if the cosmic forces would ever allow me to actually fall asleep and stay asleep until morning.
There are three kinds of forces that get a heckuva chuckle out of making sure that the nights I try to go sleep early are the longest nights of my life: (1) Natural forces (2) supernatural forces and (3) brutal physical forces.
The natural forces usually come in the form of dogs, although the cat on occasion mixes it up. (Dachshund vs. evil cat underneath a bed makes for good times.) Sometimes it’s as simple as a bark every 10-15 seconds.
After about a minute of this, I get up, go downstairs, and walk the dogs outside. They agree to walk outside, while I stand in my kitchen and invariably glance over at, say, a pile of papers sitting on a desk.
Hey, I suppose I could just straighten this one pile of papers up, and you know, sort out the mail, see if there is anything that can be trashed, that sort of thing.
Before I know it, it’s two hours later, the fridge is spotless, the books on the shelf are arranged by height and the kids toys are all in bags in the garage. (They are usually retrieved the next day, after my wife overrules my “They Haven’t Played With It In, Like, Hours!!!” standard.)
The supernatural forces are the most entertaining, because they usually involve waking my wife out of a dead sleep, having her sit up straight in bed in a panic and then wakes me up, using saying something in a half-delusional babble that, while it wakes me out of my early sleep, is good for a laugh.
We’ll both be sound asleep, and, say, the ice maker will cut on. My wife will hear it, sit up in bed, grab me and say, “Michael – listen. The moat’s overflowing.”
I’ll tell her we don’t have a moat.
She will start to come to and say, “I...uh...I know...But go downstairs and make sure the doors are locked.” I think the last part is just punishment.
The final force is the brutal physical force, and it occurred the other night. I was exhausted and decided I had to check out early.
I plopped down on the couch about 9:00 to watch some TV. I needed just to rest for a second, I thought.
By about 9:03, I was snoozing good.
My wife woke me up and suggested I go to sleep in an actual bad. I told her I was on my way, which was apparently not true, since at about 11, my couch nap ended and I headed upstairs.
The nap did not rest me up too much, which further told me that I really needed some sleep.
As I climbed under the covers, I only gave passing thought as to which force would wake me up.
I found out in the early morning hours, when I woke completely drenched in sweat. I mean head-to-toe. It was like I had just stepped out of the shower and into the bed. Very comfortable feeling. I was burning up, so I went and turned the ceiling fan on.
And can you guess what happened then. In about two minutes I was shivering cold.
This process went on for the better part of the night, back and forth, back and forth, each time ending with me trying to find a new section of the bed that I could occupy that was also not soaking wet.
By morning, my side of the bed was stripped off and I was huddling with a blanket that I found on the floor, and I think just may have been a dog’s blanket.
By morning, the temperature fluctuations had subsided. I have no idea what was going on, and think it must just be a cruel joke to make sure I didn’t get sleep at night.
I suppose in a few days I will try another approach at getting a little extra shut-eye catch up. Maybe I’ll go the zoo. They might have changed their rules.