Thursday, July 26, 2007

Circus tume

At some point in the near future, I will find my son in a contorted position, his leg stuck behind his head. And I will find my daughter dangling from a chandelier, trying to figure out how to get down.
And I will blame Ringling.
I took my kids to the circus twice this weekend, which is two times more than I normally go to the circus in a weekend.
Parker’s favorite was the contortionists, a father-son team who made me very uncomfortable. I don’t know much about the human body, but I know how it is NOT supposed to bend. During the act, my wife nudged me. I looked over and saw my son trying to pull his foot up over his head, a la the plastic men on the arena floor. He got his foot up to his forehead, and then became a little frustrated when he couldn’t get it all the way over his head. For those of you familiar with 4-year-olds, think about how they channel frustration. Take, for example, when two puzzle pieces will not fit together. Rather than consider the possibility that they were not the right pieces, kids will opt for brute force. Parker will often offer a growl for maximum effect. He took the same approach here, pushing harder and growling loudly, the only result being a sandal imprint on his forehead.
Allie, meanwhile, was fascinated by the woman who grabbed hold of a big silver circle and was pulled up high above the floor where she spun, twisted, flipped and flopped. It was quite graceful and even more unsettling. The most disturbing part for me was when she hung by her heels. You know what the heel’s purpose is? I can assure that its purpose is NOT to dangle upside down from. As she sat there and spun in the air, I looked over at Allie, saw the big grin on her face and thought, “Uh-oh.”
A few other random thoughts from our double circus duty:
1. I heard several complaints about traffic going into the Convocation Center. I had the same reaction as when I hear complaints about traffic around town, and that is to shudder about Atlanta. Every time I go there, I long for the traffic of Aiken. And a few-minute wait into the Convocation Center? When I go to Falcons games with my father-in-law, the wait is brutal, and the folks who constructed the Georgia Dome not only opted for one of the more frightening areas of Atlanta, but you also have to traverse several mountains and valleys to get into the stadium. Basically, the wait into the circus was not that bad, and you didn’t need a Sherpa to get you in.
2. Be careful what you use as a reasoning chip. As everyone now knows, the elephant did not fit in the Convocation Center. They opted to set the elephant outside for folks to see after the circus. After the first night, we started to head out, and my wife opened the can of worms by saying, “Who wants to see the elephant?” Apparently, my vote of “Not me” did not matter. As we were moving with the masses to the elephant, I had this conversation with the kids:
ME: Let’s not battle the crowds to see the elephant.
KIDS: BUT WE WAAAAAAANT TO!!!!
ME: Kids, we have a season pass to the zoo. We can see elephants — and a whole lot more — whenever we want.
KIDS: WE’RE GOING TO THE ZOO!!!!
3. Be careful what you agree to without all of the details. The kids wanted a snow cone. Sure, I said. Everyone should have a snow cone! Let’s just put it this way: The cups the snow cones come in better be in use WELL into their college years. And the clown hat Parker got? Don’t even think of taking it off, bub.
4. Cut clowns some slack. It has become too easy to offer up the “creepy” clown aspect. Truth of the matter is, a serial killer and a crazed Stephen King psycho have given the hardworking lovable clowns a bad rap.
5. Trapeze should be an Olympic sport. Or even remove the net and put it in the X-Games. But either way, the stuff they do is way more entertaining than most Olympic offerings, in particular USA basketball.
All in all, I consider the circus a big success. It passed the one and only test I require for family events — did the kids have a good time? The answer was a resounding yes. We will certainly be back the next time the circus is in town. Assuming we get Parker unstuck and Allie off the ceiling.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Face off

Here’s a great phone call to receive at work: I answer the phone, and it’s my wife. “Come home now. Or meet me at the doctor. Just start driving this way.” Click.
My first reaction was to say, “HELLO? HELLO? HELLO?” even though I heard her hang up. It’s as though people think saying “HELLO?” louder and louder will somehow reconnect the call.
I headed out of the office and called my wife with my cell phone. We had this exchange:
HER: Are you on your way?
ME: Yes, what happened?
HER: Parker cut his head.
ME: How?
HER: Just get here. Or meet me at the doctor.
Click.
ME: HELLO? HELLO?
A few moments later my phone rang. It was my wife, calling to provide a few more details. Turns out she needed to get me in motion but didn’t have a lot of time to talk because she was working to stop the geyser of blood coming out of The Dude’s forehead. He apparently opted for a head butting contest with the corner of a couch. The couch, it appears, won.
She had put in a call to the doctor’s office, who said to bring him in. I was near the house, so I went there to help with loading the kids up.
When I came in the door, my wife was on the phone again with the doctor, and a neighbor was sitting with Parker. Parker looked like he had just finished a bar-room tough man competition. He was wearing a pair of blue jean shorts and about four pints of blood. I walked in and saw him, and he looked up at me. Did he cry? Did he whimper? No way. The Dude lifted the cold compress off his head and said, “Daddy -- look.” This is the kid who, when he was two, got a shot from a nurse. She put the Band-Aid on his leg, and he responded my peeling it off and handing it back to her, along with an icy stare.
Underneath the compress was a big nasty gash, even bigger than the one I gave myself a few months ago when I went a round with a door (the door won). Naturally, my caring and compassionate nature led me to respond with, “Cool! We’re gonna have matching scars!” Parker thought that was cool, too. Based on the stares from my wife and my neighbor, we were alone in that feeling.
When we got to the doctor’s office, I went to unload the kids. In putting Parker in the car, I guess I kinda focused a little too much on the whole not bleeding over everything component. My wife asked where his shirt was. Uh... Shoes? Hmmm.
So there we were, blue jeans shorts and a head wound. As I was carrying him in, I am sure it looked far worse, as though I were just carrying him from a disaster scene. “Forgot the shoes!” I said to several people I walked past, as if this would somehow explain to people why my four-year-old son was covered in blood.
Parker was very calm, and seemed to almost wonder what all the fuss was about. When the doctor started looking at his head, he looked over at me and said, “Daddy, should I close my eyes or not?”
The doctor said we would probably be able to fix the wound with glue, rather than stitches. Allie, who is almost seven, has never been a fan of doctor’s office, and she was even less of a fan of watching her brother get super glued back together. “Uh, I’ll just go sit in the waiting room,” she told us as she tried to bolt the room. I told her that everything was OK, and that the super glue could also be used to keep little girls in their seats. She was not entirely certain I was kidding.
We were told that he had to keep his head dry for five days, which is not a very fair sentence for a kid in the summer who lives at a house with a pool. My wife and I weren’t trying to punish Allie, but it would be pretty unfair to let her go swimming while Parker sat at the window watching. We sat both kids down and explained to them that the pool, unfortunately, had sharks in it for a few days.
One nice thing about head wounds on children is that people immediately assume you took a hatchet to your child. I for one make a point of NOT justifying the wound to anyone. When they stare at me with that look, I just stare back and say, “You want some?” And then my wife jabs her elbow in my ribs.
During the healing process, my wife and I did distinguish ourselves as either very creative or very bad parents (the jury is split on it). Any time Parker would fuss, fidget, sass or otherwise be a four-year-old, I would say, “CAREFUL PARKER! Your cut will open up!” And he would freeze. It’s amazing what the fear of your brain oozing out of your head will do for behavior.
The wound is slowly healing up, although it is still rather nasty. He’s definitely going to have a scar, but it should (a) be mostly covered by his hair and (b) add an air of mystery later in life. Maybe he and I can stroll along, our matching scars, people wondering if it was a father-son run-in with ninjas or something. Oh, and for what it’s worth, the healing has occured at just the right time -- I finally got the sharks out of the pool.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Water world

Some notes you don’t want to find posted to your door:
“Took the kids for a drive. See you soon. – Britney Spears”
“Sorry I missed you. By the way, you left the liquor cabinet unlocked – Lindsey Lohan”
“The City of Aiken has detected a massive leak on your side of the water line and disconnected your water.”
Imagine my joy at seeing the latter. We had received a note the prior month that we had a small leak and that we should check around the house.
I contacted the water folks and asked if sprinkler use could have something to do with this. Indeed it could, they said. This made tremendous sense, as I had not used my sprinkler system in two years.
On occasion, I would drag out the hose and a sprinkler, but this was (a) a pain and (b) a reason for me to resent my neighbors, as their timed zones mocked me by evenly watering their yards.
So I assumed that the uptick in my water bill was simply because I was not making my yard die of thirst any more.
The bill came, and it was about $10 higher than normal. A ten-spot for my plants, I told my wife. They’ve earned it.
Then the next bill came. Apparently, the plants had upped their allowance considerably. It had been extremely dry and I had been watering my yard a considerable amount.
I decided I would monitor my water usage a little more closely, and also refrain from my all-day Tuesday showers. And then a few days later the note hit my door. It was a Friday afternoon, so I was starting to panic, thinking I would not have water for the entire weekend.
I managed to get through to someone, and someone from the City met me at the house. I told him about my sprinkler usage thoughts, and he explained to me that, over the month of June, I had essentially filled four swimming pools up with my water usage.
My sprinklers were not capable of that. He and I went around the house, searching again for the elusive leak, to no avail. I called a plumbing company and found one that, thankfully, considered Saturday a regular ol’ working day.
So the plumber rolled up bright and early on Saturday morning. I went out to meet him, eager to find his high-tech leak detection device. I assumed it would look like a ray gun.
I was very disappointed when he pulled out a long stick. He looked around, took a few steps inside my azaleas, and plunged it into the ground. “Found it,” he said, pulling the stick out and showing me how it was wet.
I took a step inside my azaleas to peer in, and at that point I, too, found the leak, as my foot went about calf-deep into mud.
(QUICK BREAK FOR A GARDENING TIP: Want beautiful green azaleas that grow at a rate unlike any you’ve ever seen? Pump about 100,000 gallons of water underneath them for a month! And when you’re asked for wise comments on how half of your azaleas are growing at a freakish rate, just shrug and say, “Yep. Crazy, huh?”
Back to the column: So he finds the general area where the leak is coming from.
I go in the back to play with the kids, confident my problem will be solved in no time. About an hour later, I came back out front and found there was now a small pond in my front yard, and I am fairly certain that I did not have a small pond an hour prior.
The plumber told me that he had finally found the leak, but it was far worse than he thought. In addition to the line being roughly 400 feet underground, it had apparently been attacked by tree roots that were not content being tree roots, but were actually setting out to destroy my pipes and checkbook.
We had two options: Bring in a backhoe and dig up half of my azalea bed or completely reroute my water line, bringing it into the house from an area away from the vicious attack trees.
We opted for the latter, mainly because they were going to have to dig a big trench across my yard, and that would save me hours of future yard work.
Now, I could ignore the bare spots, and if anyone should comment that my yard looks somewhat like a sandlot, I can say, “Yeah, had some plumbing work done. Dug it up good.” Hopefully, they would not ask, “Did the plumber plant all of the dandelions, too?”
It took him the better part of a day, but eventually my water line had been rerouted, and the underground ocean was put to an end. I guess I should be thankful that the water underneath didn’t cause extensive damage to my yard and house.
I guess what I’m saying is that it could be worse. Britney could have the kids.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Road show

When I was little, I remember my dad packing up our station wagon and leaving a nice little cubby area back in the back.
That was my spot, and I would be the last one in, complete with an activities kit my mom had prepared for me. I would climb in, and my dad would shut the tailgate, reminding me how AWESOME it must be to have my OWN room in the car!!!
It took me well into my adult years to realize that I was, in fact, being put in solitary confinement. This was for my own protection, as my three older sisters in the front may very well have considered ejecting me somewhere along an Alabama highway.
Since that time, we as a society have realized that stowing children as luggage is not the best mode of transport. (Other modes now deemed a poor choice: Stashed up on the back window ledge; curled on the floor board, using the seat as your pillow; on the hood.)
Fortunately, though, car comforts have come a long way, so when you do have to strap your children into their car seats for the duration of a long trip, you don’t feel like you’re depriving them of the joy that is having a suitcase cave in the back of a station wagon.
The main way that travel has become more comfortable for kids is through TVs. I know there are some of you out there who would NEVER put a TV in the car with your child.
After all, you never had one, right? These kids today, right? I was once one of you. I told my wife we would NEVER have a TV in the car.
They can read a book or play the license plate game or count cows or whatever it is we did back last century. And they’ll like it!
And then I left Destin, Fla., one cool winter morn, a 9-month-old in the car.
She began to scream, oh, about the time we put her in the car. She did not stop. She did not pause. She screamed.
And it was so loud, my wife and I could barely discuss what to do.
My wife considered climbing into the back seat to feed her. We opted to pull off at a rest stop to feed her.
If driving made her mad, stopping made her madder. We somehow endured the rest of the eight-hour trip. If memory serves, she fell asleep about 10 minutes from our driveway.
The next time we traveled, we went out and bought a small TV. We put it on the middle console of the car and strapped it down with bungee cords.
Allie, sensing we were about to travel somewhere, immediately began to wail. And then, I hit play and – ELMO!!! Good-bye, tears, hello Elmo on constant loop for the next eight hours.
From that point on, we never traveled long distances without our trusty TV/VCR combo.
We eventually upgraded to a smaller one, and now have one that’s factory-installed in our van. We have a few strict rules on the player:
1. Movies only go on for trips longer than one hour. This would be far easier to stick to if someone would stop putting movies on for trips to the grocery store. It would also help if certain people would stop ratting out that someone to Mommy.
2. We do not fight over the movie. Allie picks, then Parker picks. If there is a fight, they are forced to watch Pauly Shore’s “Son-in-Law.”
3. The driver is not allowed to try and watch the movie, even at stoplights. This rule was challenged, but was overruled on a 1-1 vote of the Household Supreme Court.
4. If one child falls asleep during his movie pick, you CAN switch over to “Cheetah Girls 2” but you have to switch back as soon as first child wakes up, even if he insists on watching “Cheetah Girls 2,” as he does not need to watch “Cheetah Girls 2.” If necessary, we’ll put on “Die Hard” or “Terminator” or a replay of game 6 of the 1995 World Series, but he’s not watching “Cheetah Girls 2” and that’s final.
Again, I am sure there are plenty of you old schoolers out there who find it abhorrent that parents use DVDs to hypnotize their children during trips.
But do remember that it is not just pacifying the children. There are perks for the grown-ups, too. For example, although I have never seen the movie “Cars,” I have listened to it about 4,000 times. You couldn’t get that kind of thrill back in 1978!
The fact of the matter is that, as parents, you do what works for you. And for us, a DVD player works quite well. Even if we’re just going to the grocery store.