Falling in love with your children quiz

When I look at my children, I often think, "Man, I am lucky to be those kids' Daddy." I really see it as a privilege to raise these loving, adorable, happy and rambunctious children. Soon after thinking this, I often wonder if all parents feel the same about their children. Does every parent come equipped with pure, unconditional love toward their kids? So after thinking about it for a while (the time it's taken me to write this paragraph), I've decided to create a quiz that will teach you about your level of love for your children.

1. When your child sprays you with a water hose, do you:
    A. Laugh and take it like a champ?
    B. Take the hose from them and douse them until they go crying to the opposite parent for help with their figurative tail between their sad little legs?
    C. Playfully call them a punk, then take turns squirting each other until you fall laughing onto the lawn?
    D. Send them to time out?
    E. Take the hose from them and tell them to never do that again?

2. When your child gives you sass, do you:
    A. Give them a stern look and ask them not to treat you that way?
    B. Give them a stern look and ask them not to treat you that way while secretly turning and looking at parent #2 to see if they saw how cute said sass was?
    C. Let them give you sass, because hey, kids don't respect adults like they used to and you might as well get used to it?
    D. Sass them right back?
    E. Tattle on the sass-master to the other parent?

3. When you have some food you've been looking forward to eating for some time, do you:
    A. Hide behind the fridge door and snarf it before the kids realize you have any?
    B. Gladly share it, giving the little vultures that have surrounded you far more bites than you take yourself?
    C. Share, but snarf as much as you can between their bites?
    D. Put the kids to bed early so you can eat it in peace?
    E. Brush the kids teeth before you eat it so you can have a good excuse for not sharing?

4. When you get a movie that's not for children, but the kids keep wandering out of bed, completely not tired because you put them in bed at 4:30 to prepare for your relaxing movie/stay-at-home-date night, do you:
    A. Quickly stop cuddling on the couch and stand up, furious, sending them back to bed irately?
    B. Hear the pitter-patter footsteps and yell to turn them around before they make it to you?
    C. Intercept the wee tykes in the hall, gently take them by the hand and explain it's a Mommy-and-Daddy movie and they wouldn't like it anyway, and tuck them into bed with the fifteenth kiss goodnight?
    D. Eject your movie, invite the kid into the cuddle party, and put in Thomas the Tank Engine until they fall asleep in your arms?
    E. Stop your movie and let steam vent out of your ears while you daydream about making child-shaped holes in your wall?

5. When your child wants a puppy, do you:
    A. Say "No."
    B. Say "Oh, heck no!"
    C. Say "Ask your Mommy/Daddy," knowing she/he will answer A or B?
    D. Get them the puppy?
    E. Tell them puppies are now extinct?

Answer key:
For the most part, you should be able to guess which the right answers are. Some are not so obvious, however. The right answers may shift from child to child, person to person, or day to day, even. Since these are situations dealing with individuals, I will not provide a cut-and-dry answer key. Except on number 5. You just gotta let them know all puppies got eaten by dinosaurs that then got obliterated by an asteroid which then pushed said squished dinosaurs into the raging inferno of the sun, said impact causing the sun to implode and become a black hole, which only sucks in kitties, thereby helping with the followup question when they find out puppies are extinct.

My point here is that you should adore your children. You won't look back on your life and think, "I should have figured out how to get more movie nights with my wife when my kids were young." But you will always remember breaking your child's heart in situations like these. And if that heart breaks often enough, at some point it becomes nearly irreparable, causing lasting damage to yourself, and more important, those children of yours. It is a God-given privilege to be a parent. I hope everyone can feel that way about their kids. Do yourself a favor: List everything you love about your children. Don't list anything that bothers you - just the things you love. Unless you're Hitler, you're bound to come out with a pretty good list. Then, thank Heavenly Father for the privilege you have of raising children with all of those remarkable traits. You might just forget about all those things that bother you.

The real reasons why babies don't smile

Don't even think about making me smile.

I know so-called “experts” say babies don't smile because of that whole “not developed enough” thinger, but I think there's more to it than that. So I got to thinking what reasons a baby would have not to smile. All of this came to me as I was cooing and wiggling my head and grinning like an idiot trying to get my two-week-old daughter to smile at me and show off her dimples. Here's the list:

1. They're asleep: Yes. Even when they're awake they're asleep. Eyeballs don't mean anything. Just because they're looking at you doesn't mean they're consciously aware. They're just sleeping with their eyes open.
2. They're little: Think about it. If you were that tiny and everyone else around you were ginormous, happiness probably wouldn't be on the docket. Emotions you would feel? Paranoia, fear, helplessness, and indigestion. Technically the last one's not an emotion, though it sure causes some.
3. They have indigestion: Nothing worse than not being able to digest liquid easily. How hard can it be? But those little kids have a rough time on it, if the looks of concentration mean anything.
4. They're about to puke: All the time. My kids have never even been anywhere near what some kids have, but man have I gotten doused with our newest little girl. The word shower comes to mind, but not in a good way.
5. They don't see well: Their eyes are still pretty glazed over at two weeks. For all you know, they could see you as a fire demon or ogre making obnoxious noises or something.
6. They can't move: Would you be happy if your life consisted of sitting in one place wiggling arms and legs until someone decided to pay attention to you? Oh wait – that's what people running those mall kiosks do. I'm pretty sure I've never seen one of them smile either. Mobility is a blessed thing. Flailing arms and legs while trying to lift a head that's a third of your body weight? Not so much.
7. Liquid diet: Even when I try to feed my daughter ice cream, a muffin, or a juicy porterhouse, my wife disagrees with me. Not just a little either. If your solitary food source were human milk from you know where, I doubt your smile muscles would get much of a workout. Our social engagements often revolve around food. And that'd get pretty awkward if we all shared a baby's diet.
8. Your head fit through what? Ouch. My head hurts just thinking about it. Enough said.
9. They have siblings: Suddenly, the newest baby becomes a target of “affection” from the older siblings. This can only mean bad news for baby. But unlike the cat whose fur gets yanked out by loving children, baby cannot flee. Think about that for a second and then reread 6.
10. Let me sleep! We inflict our schedules and our desires on the little tykes, who just want to sleep, daggummit. We wake them to show them off to visitors, we wake them for feeding, and we wake them accidentally when we step on them...or something... They wake up on the wrong side of the non-bed like 375 times a day.

These are the real reasons babies don't smile when they are newborns. Muscle control doesn't have a lot to do with it in my opinion. Life is rough when you're that small and helpless. There's a lot more reasons than these too. Why do you think babies don't smile?

UPDATE: Yeah, things have changed already since I wrote this. Now, when I make weird noises she looks at me quizzically as if she's trying to process what category of life to fit my actions into and when it slowly drifts into place in the comedic bracket she gives a single giggle, waves her arms uncontrollably and shows off her one dimple. Guess my idiocy finally struck a funny bone somewhere. Here's a picture to prove it:

PS: This post ran first on Modern Mormon Men. You can check it out there with a few comments from people if you'd like.

Modern Mormon Men: Guest Post: Parenting With Zone Defense

It's just as easy as it looks...

Modern Mormon Men Guest Post: Parenting With Zone Defense: My first guest post on Modern Mormon Men is a condensed version of this post. Choose whichever you like. If you have kids, you'll laugh wherever you read it. Enjoy!

Juggling babies: The transition from man to zone defense

Having three kids requires learning to juggle. But the
cargo is a little more precious than colored balls.

I'm pretty sure it was Confucius or some other wise philosophy type guy that once posited “When your third child you have transition to zone defense you must.”

The syntax makes me wonder if it was Yoda.

Who cares? I'm learning after our third child arrived last week just how true the principle is. Before, my wife would take one child and I would take the other, keeping mischief to a somewhat manageable minimum in the process. However, after my wife delivered our newest daughter with some complications, the man defense has been tossed. Now, my resting wife's zone happens to be a very large armchair with a sleeping infant on her chest. Since she's on doctor's orders to rest, relax and recuperate, I'm pretty OK with that, if not a little jealous.

Let's just say my zone covers a little more ground. Today, my zone starts in the kitchen, where the wife feeds me orders on how to cook up her favorite multi-ingredient oatmeal. She gives me the directions mostly from between snatches of slumber as she cuddles our snoozing baby daughter on her lap. It's the first time in history oatmeal has taken more than six minutes to prepare. I think I take an hour and burn the bottom layer. The process is something like this:

Me: What do I do here?

Her: Umm...zzzzzz

Me: Yes?

I wait five minutes, then remind her I asked a question while gently awakening her with a hand on her arm. Breakfast is her request after all.

Her: Oh sorry. One cup oatmeal and one cup water.

I pour oatmeal in the scalding hot pan and watch smoke drift dangerously close to the fire alarm. Then I add water.

Her: Bring the water to a boil before you add the oatmeal.

Me (to self): Now she tells me.

Me (to her): Then what?

Her: Get some Craisins and put them in after the oatmeal softens up.

Me: Where are they?

Her: Buried in the pantry somewhere.

Me (to self): I gotta go into that mess? We've only got like nine square feet of space in there under our staircase, which means the roof is widely variable in height, and we have six months of food storage crammed in there.

I find the Craisins stashed behind a box of graham crackers which is behind a can of unsalted peanuts which is underneath a 50-pound bag of rice.

Me: How many Craisins?

Her: Like a handful.

Me (to self): Does she mean a me-size handful or a her-size handful or a kid-size handful? These are hugely varying portion sizes in our household. I try to guess what her hand would pull out of the bag and scatter the Craisins into the oatmeal like a farmer tossing seed around a fertile field.

Me: Is that it?

Her: No. Two tablespoons brown sugar, a dash of vanilla, the rest of the can of evaporated milk and chopped walnuts. Use the small food processor.

I pour in the can of milk and realize I've drowned the poor oatmeal.

Me: Is it supposed to look like a few grains of oatmeal are throwing a pool party under a cow's udder?

Her: Add the other ingredients and see what happens.

I dutifully toss in everything else. Now it looks like the oatmeal invited some risque walnuts going shell-less at the milky pool party.

Me: Should I add more oatmeal now?

She's back to sleep so I repeat the question.

Her: If it's runny add just a little.

I wonder if the pool party counts as runny before I toss some more uninvited guests into the ruckus. It luckily thickens up and I feed it to my wife. Somehow she approves.

Long tangent aside, the kids aren't awake for the cooking time, or it would triple my already ridiculous time in the kitchen. When they do wake up my zone becomes feeding the two kids who don't want food while my wife occupies her big comfy chair snuggling seven pounds of perfection. Not that I'm complaining. I saw what she went through this week between childbirth and complications. The chair is hers dangit.

Then my zone shifts outside where I take the kids to the park. I get steamrolled, grass-stained, jumped on, slid upon and more. My kids ask me to climb the playground equipment in a different place, which means doing it all with upper body strength. I dutifully ratchet myself up some bars going across a bridge, only to find I have seriously strained some muscles in my neck and shoulders, giving me the equivalent of a kinked neck after a week of camping on sharp granite boulders without a pillow.

Park time is over, but the zone defense has only just begun. Returning home, I fertilize the lawn while doing my best to keep stray children from swallowing the weed pesticides in the lawn feed because they look like yellow Nerds.

Then my zone hops in the swagger wagon and goes to the store. My kids beg to get their own little grocery carts to help me pick up a grand total of four items. I relent, thinking I can manage for just four items. I rejoice when all the small carts are gone from their normal keeping place. This is the last time I'll rejoice before bedtime in my zone. My kids then proceed to profusely ignore me as I ask them to follow me into or out of the pharmaceutical section, where the kid vitamins and tiny colorful bottles are kept at my older daughter's eye level. Then I have to make a trip to the baby aisle, where my daughter wants to check out the Cinderella sippies. My son sprints around the corner and out of sight as I call him to come back. I decide at that point he's just going to have to get abducted or find me again on his own time. A couple minutes later I hear him whining for Daddy two aisles down. Finally figured out he ditched me and I had stopped chasing him. The baby aisle only has one of two items I need, so I return to the pharmaceuticals to find the missing link. Nothing but a bunch of colorful eye-level bottles for my girl. I think about stepping in line to talk to the pharmacist about where to find it, but the line is filled with about six women who look like they are there to fill out prescriptions for STDs.

I then wander the store trying to remember the last item on my list and to find an associate that can tell me where to find the other thing. I call my wife to remember item #4 and tell her I already want to throw my phone across the store. At some points, I want to just drag the minions behind me, but my kinked neck hurts so much I can barely turn around to find them much less actually carry them behind me. I look like a sideways hunchback with my neck cocked to one side grotesquely. While I try to usher my daughter away from the cute little bottles, of which she wants to know the contents of every one, she informs me she needs to go poopy. Now.

Exasperated, I toss the two items I had managed to find on top of some feminine hygiene products and race my daughter into the bathroom, where someone had viciously sprayed the entire seat with man urine.

“Are you serious?” I say out loud. My daughter takes my exclamation up as a chant and turns it into a song, altering the words to her own as time goes on. “Are you serious, are you serious, are you pear hook, are you bear head...” etc. It's actually really cute, especially when combined with the potty stalling dance she's doing. So while she sings I do a quick wipe down on the toilet seat with a wad of toilet paper fat enough to choke Rosie O'Donnell. I rocket the singing and dancing girl into place on a toilet protector hoping it'll do it's job.

When all is done there – I won't go into detail – I go back and pick up my two items off the feminine hygiene shelf and usher my children off to find a store rep. I wander the whole store looking for someone available to tell me where the heck to find the item. No luck. I go back to the pharmacy (none of this is as easy as I make it sound – remember, two rambunctious children.) The line has dwindled and filled with old men instead of STD magnets, so I step in line and let my kids peruse baby shampoo while I wait. I get to the front of the line to be told by a crotchety pharmacist they don't know where anything outside their “box” is. He motions me toward the customer service department.

“There's a customer service department?” I ask him incredulously, practically slapping my forehead at my own scatter-brained idiocy. I go there. Two Russian associates seem to be flirting at the customer service desk. I interrupt without tact, asking for the rather unflattering, post-pregnancy item I'm looking for.

“If we have that it'd be in aisle 4,” she tells me.

“Nope,” I tell her confidently. “Just spent a half hour or more there.”

The flirty guy tells me just last week he was stymied when some woman asked for the same thing. Probably one of our friends. This enrages me because it means a trip to another store. One with toys. My kids like toys. I storm out of the store with three of my four items and get blown off when I ask my kids to hold my hands through the busy parking area. My daughter almost gets squished because of her refusal. I finally ignore my pain and bodily heft my kids off the pavement and throw them in the van. They throw a party in the backseat instead of obeying me when I ask them to get in their seats. I finally place them both, screaming, into their car seats.

I'm amazed by this point I have had the wherewithal to avoid making child-shaped holes in any walls. This is somehow worse than another time I went shopping.

I take them to the other store and, having learned from experience, I put them in a cart and wheel them directly to the baby portion of the store, where I find the item immediately. My kids want to see toys. I take them to the toys. I spend a long time at the toys. I haul kids whining about me not buying them toys away from the toys. I pick up an enormous plastic jar of comfort food on the way to the checkout. When we make it to the car, the kids again get their fiesta on in back. Not wanting to chase them down with a sore neck in a cramped space, I do the only logical thing I can think of: I tell them I'm leaving and start to drive. Like mice sniffing cheese at the maze's end, they scurry to their seats, where I can then buckle them into place for the final push into the endzone.

Upon arrival at home, I feed them a hasty dinner of cinnamon toast and put them to bed alone while my wife cuddles our infant daughter on the couch, mostly asleep.

In case you hadn't figured it out yet, zone defense is a lot harder to play than man. I just hope it isn't like this every day, or I'll find a way to switch back to man, no matter what Yoda has to say.

Goldernit: Cottonpickin' prospectors ain't got a right proper vocab

Cottonpickin' prospectors all look alike.
This prolly ain't the one I met, but sure looks
the spittin' image.

The visit started innocuous enough, but it got weird real quick.

"How you doing this afternoon?" I asked the man with a gray handle-bar mustache that attached right into his sideburns. He had just walked in to the fine art gallery where I work most days.

"Eh?" he responded, one eye bigger than the other as he cupped a hand around his ear.

I repeated myself a little louder.

" 'ell on a sca' o' one uh teh-yen, I reckon roun'abouts six an' se'en aiths."

I filtered the melee of wordish thingies through my universal translator and thought he said: "6 and 7/8." I went with it.

"I like how precise you are," I told him.

"Tha'sa wuh-ay uh be," he spewed like a computer attempting to read Swahili.

"Let me know if you have any questions." This was my way of dismissing myself from a conversation in which I was pretty sure I'd be the only one speaking English.

He immediately began coddling the wood work of one of my artists, telling me it was "mahty fahn" over and over again. Before long, my brother who I work with came into the conversation, asking if the man was finding everything all right.

"Eh?" he asked again. After my brother repeated himself a little louder, the man decided us gallery guys could probably help him with his dream.

"You woodint heeappuhn uh know wheres ah could find mahself a lid fer mah mercureetort?" he asked like we would know what in the heck he just said.

"A what?"

"Mercuree-eetort," he enunciated. Running it through the translator and asking for spelling, we finally figured out he was asking for a new lid for a mercury retort. We still had no flippin' idea what he was talking about.

"Ah wuz uhfrehd o' tha'," he said. "Ain't one eein teh-yen peeple I talks to what knows what a mercureetort eeis."

I silently marveled at how well he could slur together mercury and retort. I was starting to understand this guy, though I still wasn't fully convinced he was spouting English from his talk hole. He could make three syllables out of one and one syllable out of five. Ain't no way to fake an accent like that, goldernit.

After a quick Google search, my brother brought up pics of real live mercury retorts to confirm what the man was looking for. It turns out a mercury retort is a prospector's tool used to strip mercury of its impurities so you can use it to amalgamate gold flecks into nuggets, as I understand it. Click here if you want an actual doctor's explanation of this. After meeting this fellow that came right out of a Yosemite Sam cartoon, I have a hard time believing a doctor wants to be a prospector, but there's the proof right there.

Anyway, when we showed Yosemite Sam the mercury retorts on the screen, he lit up like a shiny gold nugget.

"Them's mahty fahn stuff," he said, ogling the computer screen filled with ugly metal pipes like a teenaged boy might view more, um, questionable portions of the Internet. (I double-dog dare you to click that link...)

"Lookithere," he kept saying in absolute awe of what he was seeing while pointing at the computer screen. "Cottonpickin' lookithere." Yes. He actually said cottonpickin'. Repeatedly. He even fit a "goldernit" into conversation, fitting the holy trifecta of prospector swearing into our brief conversation: daggum, cottonpickin' and goldernit.  I think "cottonpickin' was the word I heard out of his mouth more than any other during our "conversation."

When my bro asked which one in specific he wanted him to look at, the prospector had high praise for the whole screen.

"All-oh-i's good," he said. "Them's mahty fahn newfangled mercureetorts. Nah-yow, you says all them's jee-ust on thee-at Google thang? Daggum, I'ma hafta steal mah wahf's compyuooter! Ah could look at them thar mercureetorts all day!"

I'm not even making this stuff up. This is an actual experience. I have witnesses, half of them sane even.

Craziest of all, the guy almost bought a bronze from us after eying those retorts. I was surprised to know that someone I could hardly understand would find pleasure in art. Turns out the guy is a welder by trade, but loves to prospect by night, or vacation or whatever. He had a wad of $100 bills in his pocket nearly two inches thick, and complained to us that "Iffen I bought that, ah'd barely be able to make it to Coloradee, much less home agee-uhn." We're guessing the guy distrusts banks, so pretty much carries his life in his pocket and a bunch of small glass vials filled with gold flecks. His goal was to make it to "Coloradee" because he was sure he'd find a lid for his mercury retort there, what with all the mines and such in ghost towns down there.

It may sound like I'm making fun of this guy. I may be making fun of this guy. But I frankly liked him. He was engaging in the craziest way you can imagine. I didn't know people like him existed outside of cartoons, but goldernit, I'm glad they do. It makes my life a little bit more golden as I see the colorful characters that cartoons are made of.

Should I shave my head or not? Randomness I have learned from going naked up top

It may not be perfect, but it's not bad either.

As my hair has started looking less like a shag carpet and more like a teenager's beard, I have many times wanted to shave my head. Looking at my huge, kinda funny-shaped head in the mirror usually talked me out of it. Not to mention the frequent protestations from the wife department.

But recently, when the rim of my head started resembling Bozo the Clown after dying his hair dark brown I realized I just needed to get my hair cut – fast. So I got out my shaver and set it to 3. Reasonable length, something left to keep me company, but short enough to be out of my way. I got done and it wasn't enough. I wanted low maintenance. I dialed the shaver down to 1. I put a stripe across the side of my head and realized I had accidentally committed myself to premature baldness. So without telling my wife, I buzzed my head and then shaved it with a razor. Here is what I've learned since then.

1. Bald heads make wives cry: At least mine did. I told her she could shave her head too if she wanted. She cried harder. I backed off to letting her get her haircut, something she had wanted to do for a while. I think that made her feel a little better, but she mostly just looked sadly at my bare bonehead.
2. I must have already been bald: Amazingly few people have commented on my new haircut. I'm starting to wonder if I'm the only one that noticed there was a little hair on my head before I shaved it off. I really expected more from people, like Nazi skinhead jokes or something. Nothing. I really was bald. Dang.
3. Thinning hair is easier to shave than thickening hair: It was a whole lot easier to shave my head than it has been for some time to shave my beard. I thought I would probably cut myself and bleed my brain dry, but apparently the blood already left my skull ages ago. Not even a nick. I think I can attribute this to the fact that my hair has been losing weight since I was a teenager while my facial hair has gotten obese. This is probably why many of the hairs don't even fit back out their own skin holes after a razor shave and just grow in coils in pus pockets on my neck until the little blighters pop out like an inch-long jack-in-the-box. Gross, I know. Sorry I subjected you to that unnecessary bodily information.
4. Hair is an amazing insulator: Ever had a sibling sneak into the shower and dump cold water on you while your back was turned? Well, that's about what it feels like every time I go outside in the rain now. Which has been just about every day since I shaved my head. Every cold raindrop is a little pinprick of ice which makes me shiver. And I really didn't have all that much blocking raindrops before, mind you. I've even shivered going to bed a couple times, and my temperature scale runs hot.
5. Hair is an amazing insulator: I know. It says the same thing as the last one. But this time I'm talking about heat. I work in a gallery with lots of heat-generating lights. When I walk underneath them now, my head feels like it passed inches from the sun. I can literally feel a painful heat walking underneath lights. Go figure.
6. Skin that has never met the sun burns easily: I think I'm really glad I never figured this one out at a nude beach. I spent three hours outside on a partly cloudy day soon after going cue ball and realized I'd changed the cue ball into a 3 ball. Totally not something I was expecting. I haven't been able to shave my head since. The pain would just be too great. Heck, laying on a pillow at night is painful. I need something softer...
7. My kids think I look funny: The morning I shaved my head, I came down to present myself to the audience downstairs. My daughter, quick to observe, pointed and shouted in a laughing voice, “You don't has hair anymore!” For the first few days she repeated this mantra every time she saw me. I think they're getting used to it now, but having my kids laugh every time they saw me was a bit of a downer.
8. Of course my driver's license needs renewal: Yes, I got my license renewed with the newly naked noggin. This may be a good thing if, in the future I get in trouble with the law and they're looking for someone matching my license photo, someone that looks like a peeled Mr. Potato Head with eyeballs. When they see me, a mild-mannered man with thinning hair, they'll have no idea I'm the culprit.
9. Rubbing a bald head isn't good luck: But it is fun. I can see why the tradition caught on. There's something soothing about rubbing the squeaky flesh up there that just releases positive endorphins. No doubt about that. And it's not too bad when the hair grows back either. But...
10. Hair growing back is like Velcro: Not the soft, squishy side – the mean, hooked side. When I throw a T-shirt on over my cerebral 5 o'clock shadow, it's like trying to drag a grape across sandpaper unscathed. Little bits of my shirt cling to my head desperately, trying their darnedest to stay inside the shirt, presumably for warmth – see 4.
11. Short hair is lower maintenance than no hair: Shaving your head takes time. Especially with a head as gargantuan as mine. And it needs to be done at least once every few days to keep the freshly shaved look. With short hair, you can pretty much just wake up and go to work if you want to until it grows long enough to give you bedhead in the mornings.
12. I actually kind of like the look: It took a few days to adjust, but now that my hair is growing back I'm almost disappointed. Maybe that's just because I can tell how much thicker the side hair is coming in compared to the top hair, but I really got used to seeing the smooth, shiny planetoid that is my head in the mirror every morning. But I'm sure my wife is pleased it's (mostly) growing back

Take it or leave it, this is my advice for anyone that wants to shave their head: It's a mixed bag. Though I thought I would hate it – and in some ways I do – the people that once said they would openly mock me if I shaved my head have ended up, well, liking it. It surprised me and it may surprise you too.

Daddies shouldn't shop: A moral tale

Shopping from a list is best done by someone that can take
orders without question. I am not one of those people.

Daddies shouldn't shop. Let me rephrase that: Daddies shouldn't use Mommy's shopping list to go shopping.

During my singlehood, I almost enjoyed going to the grocery store. I walked in like I owned the place, looked for cheap, junky food, and bought it. Rarely did I spend more than $18 in a single trip to the grocery store. And those 18 greenbacks would generally carry me through most of a week with Party Pizzas, canned soup and a 5-pound sack of cheese with a side of tortillas. The food was tasty, cheap and easy to cook. I mean heck, a quesadilla takes all of 60 seconds to make in a microwave, give or take 7 seconds depending on model.

Back then, it was a manly display of power to walk up to a checkout stand with nothing green in my basket, only to watch the chubby cashier stare in horror at the nutrition facts on my selections as they convey past her check stand. I caught many surreptitious looks at my waistline. I'm sure they thought my belly, sucked in to the point of pain, would slump out over my belt at any moment like gooey bread dough. But alas, nothing like this ever happened, so I just got hateful stares from these poor women whose metabolism didn't support the same kind of lifestyle.

Manhood, in the end, is really about the power to make choices or veto them. So choosing to fill my shopping cart with enough fat to make Santa Clause cringe felt good. Felt right. Felt...*grunt*...manly.

Nowadays, I go to the store with a list my wife has e-mailed me at some point during the day - usually right before I leave work so I don't have any time to argue about what's on the list before I go and buy it - no questions asked. The list is filled with little notes, which are little more than veiled threats.

I look down the list, which 90 percent of is found in the produce portion of the store, a place I could never "afford" as a college student.

"Bananas (2 bunches)
"Apples (lots)
"Grapefruit (if they're not a bad price)
"Watermelon"

"Watermelon?" I ask myself out loud incredulously, knowing how expensive they've been lately.

"(yes, a watermelon," the list answers me, exasperated. "We're going to be sharing it with the family we're taking dinner to...and I'm pregnant! Won't be able to use that much longer)"

This is how my wife squelches my arguments before I call. She knows me well enough to know the things I'll argue about spending money on, so she insists and plays the prego card. Immasculated, I thump watermelons, trying to judge how many .49 cent pounds they weigh since the scales will just spin around so fast the needle bursts the glass and embeds itself in some nearby broccoli.

Worse yet, I had talked to her on the phone just before going to the store, and she told me not to buy a bunch of stuff that isn't on the list. She wants me home ASAP. Even so, I try to make myself feel manlier by calling her to question specific requests that would more than double the price.

"CANOLA oil mayo," the list tells me with emphasis.

I pick up my cell phone for the sixth time in the store: "Does it have to be 'CANOLA oil mayo' or can it be 'Olive oil mayo'?" I ask, pointing out the Canola oil mayo costs roughly what I would expect a jar of gold dust the same size to go for, despite the sticker that proclaims "Low Price!" in huge bold letters. This is what our store puts on their food right after significantly upping the prices on something, trying to fool you into thinking it's a sale item when in fact they are wrapping a string around your front tooth to gank it out. I'm not stupid.

"Well, the canola mayo should taste less olive-y, but what's the price difference?" she asks. I tell her. I hear her body slump to the floor as she faints. My 3-year-old son picks up the phone she dropped and I walk him through the resuscitation process, which involves wet fingers and ear canals. When she comes to, she decides the olive oil mayo is OK by her.

All right, score one for manhood and common sense!

I make probably seven of these questioning calls during my time at the store. Especially frustrating is this line: "Sub buns-the small yummy crispy kind :)" Despite the sideways smiley face, I'm a little confused by what she means. I scour the bakery aisle and find nothing that comes remotely close. Knowing the smiley will turn to a frowny if I don't get exactly what it's hoping for, I finally make an exasperated call after prodding various small sub-looking buns to check consistency: "Do you want to explain a little better what you mean by 'sub buns-the small yummy crispy kind'?"

She explains they were the ones we had with dinner when we had invited my parents for dinner a year or so ago. My Polaroid memory tries it's best to spit out a memory which I can then shake until a vague recollection shows up in ghost form in the background before materializing completely. But unfortunately, the image remains ghostly gray.

"We had my parents over for dinner?" I ask dumbly.

And this banter happens for the hour or so I wander the aisles feeling less and less masculine the whole way. By the time I've reached milk, I decide it's time to show my executive power as father and patriarch. I pick up the milk (2 gal 1%), and march triumphantly to the ice cream section, where I authoritatively throw two buckets of ice cream loaded with high-fat goodies into the cart, where they find a soft bed of greens to lay on. Then I run to the candy aisle and snag an 8-pack of fun-size Snickers (not as fun as full-size Snickers.)

As I check out, the cashier asks me how I am. I slowly nod and say, "I just went shopping."

"Enough said," she says.

"You'd be surprised how immasculating it can be to fill out a woman's shopping list," I tell her.

"Did you have to buy her tampons?"

"Fortunately, no," I reply, thinking back to other times when hordes of women swarmed around me in the sea of pink that is the tampon aisle while I desperately try to find the only plastic-wrapped case that is regular size, has wings and is not brand A, B,C or D. "She's pregnant otherwise I'm sure it would have been on the list."

We all have a good laugh about my list and I head for home eating fun-size Snickers. Once home, I forcefully show that I'm still not the one in charge by unpacking the groceries when my beautiful wife asks me to.

(Author's self-preservation note: I love my wife dearly. Don't take this column the wrong way.)

Toenail clippings in your eye and other life lessons learned from having a 3-year-old boy cut your nails

Though allowing a 3-year-old boy to clip your nails may
sound like a really bad idea because it is, it also isn't.
Allowing a child that age to help you when they want to
will aid in producing a lifetime work ethic in the kid.

Odd things happen when you involve kids in routine tasks like...I dunno...fingernail clipping.

My wife made this mistake recently and let our 3-year-old son clip her fingernails and toenails for her. Let's just say it was no professional manicure/pedicure. Her ragged nail edges now catch on anything remotely fuzzy (including our daughter's hair), some of her nails will probably become ingrown because of this, and I'm pretty sure one clipping has set up camp somewhere in her brain – possibly in her medulla oblongata. With a name like that, it can't be all that important anyway. That's why I just call my brain “the thinker.” You know what a “thinker” does. It's straightforward, easy to remember, and I didn't even have to consult Wikipedia for the spelling – I'm looking at you medulla...

Anway, this happened when our son, in his excitement, clipped a piece of toenail with such enthusiasm that it sailed through the sky with a smile on its invisible face into my wife's awaiting eyeball, where no smile was present. Wanting to make itself at home, the stray clipping tucked itself under my wife's eyelid and marched upward out of sight. Trust me: this is hard to do when you're hiding on an eyeball.

After playing “Go Fish” in her eye for several minutes without so much as a nibble, she came to me hoping I could find the toenail shard with her eyelid cocked halfway back like that creepy kid in high school that walked around with his eyelids reversed. No bones. Or toenails, as the case may be.

So I'm certain the little bugger is snugly wrapped up in some nice folds of gray matter, probably gleaning plenty of information from my wife's brilliant brain through osmosis.

But all that's beside the point. The whole point I want to impress is that my wife threw away all care for herself in letting a 3-year-old boy cut her finger and toenails. This is the gender that has found many ways to set itself on fire while drunk, fall off of cliffs and survive (mostly), and successfully forget they even had fingernails until a woman pointed out how dry and cracked they were to him. And he's three. Did I mention that?

This may be slightly crazy to some people, but what it demonstrates is of utmost importance. We must allow our children to participate when they are willing, otherwise there will come a time when they no longer want to help.

I got in a friendly argument with a woman I know through work recently about how to instill a love of work in children. I posited that you need to let kids do chores while they are tiny and want to “help” you or they will never want to help you as a teenager or whatever. Her idea was basically that children are pathetic weaklings and should go nowhere near chores until they are capable of doing them right. She then told me how much her 14-year old boy hates working in the garden.

Hmmm...maybe because she never let him near the garden when he wanted to be “mommy's big helper.” Attitudes established early on will carry through childhood and most likely throughout life. And if we constantly tell kids they aren't wanted in the kitchen, the garden, or anywhere else that doesn't involve SpongeBob SquarePants doing idiotic things, than they will learn to stay away from those places for most of their lives.

So next time your kid asks to help cut your nails right after a professional manicure, just roll your eyes and let the kid go to town. You'll have a much better household helper for it, even if a wandering band of fingernail clippings does start to terrorize your medulla oblongata.

"Bugs don't eat me"

A horde of mosquitoes at rest await the next
unsuspecting shopper to strike.

When hiking last summer with our then 2-year-old son, we pointed out mosquitoes to him, warning them that if he didn't keep them away, they would try to eat him.

He paused on the trail for a minute to absorb this information before teaching us a lesson as he continued to walk down the trail.

"Bugs don't eat me," he said. "I'm too big. I don't fit in bugs' mouth."

We laughed and let him know he was right in part, but let him know the dangers of the little bloodsuckers. Usually a careful child, he seemed entirely nonplussed. Soon after this experience, he began pirating hangers from his closet. He calls the hangers mosquitoes (pronounced MOSS-kee-toes, heavy emphasis on moss) and chases us around with them. The behavior soon spread to our younger daughter as well. Persistent as they are, they remind me quite a bit of the real thing, but a lot cuter. Also, the actual pests don't announce themselves: "I'm a MOSS-kee-toe. I'm gonna eatcha!"

But wouldn't the world be a better place if they did.

"Spring" at the park with two feet of snow

"Spring" in Jackson Hole, complete with two
feet of snow on the playground. Also,
sandals are a necessary spring accent.

Spring here in Jackson Hole has roared in like a lion. With it's mouth duct taped shut. And its mane shaved off. Underwater. In a solitary confinement chamber. In Antarctica.

Yeah, it's been one of those years. Just last week, we got more than 40 inches of snow in four days. You feeling me here yet? I guess you could just say it's winter right now on April 13. I expect to say the same of May 13 and maybe even June 13. Don't get me started on July.

Not that I'm complaining. The weatherman, however, is another story. Apparently, one of the local weather guys has gotten a lot of viewer complaints because he spends his three minutes whining about how bad the weather is. I'm pretty OK with the weather, but most people would like something more like, I don't know - spring?

So yesterday the sun was shining after some snow showers, a balmy 40-something degrees. No really - it felt balmy. So we went out to the park with the kids. Insisting it was spring, I wore my shorts, a T-shirt and a light, unzipped jacket with sandals. It felt beautiful. My daughter wore a mishmash outfit of blue jeans under a pink skirt with a green top under a red coat topped off (bottomed out?) with purple boots. My son, having seen the sun, insisted he didn't need a coat or anything, so he just wore his hooded track suit. Then we went outside.

Suddenly he wanted his coat.

Completely unstaged, our daughter grabbed
her brother'shand and they looked both
ways to cross the street to the park.

As we walked to the park, our daughter, 2, spontaneously offered her hand to her brother, 3, and they walked hand in hand down the neighborhood road toward the park. Some snow had melted off the expansive lawn, but large piles still stood around the marshy grass, and the playground itself had a good 24 inches still packed in there. We almost just walked right on by, continuing to the post office. But the kids bee-lined through the snow straight to their beloved playground equipment. Reluctant to follow through the snow in sandals, I watched from a distance as they climbed up through the slide.

My daughter, always ambitious, tried her hardest to go up the slanted tube, but found herself lacking, and began asking me for a push. Unable to resist, I tiptoed through the snow, only post-holing a couple times on my way. Toes reddened, I pushed her up the tube and followed her to the top. From there, I watched as the kids happily shimmied around the equipment. After every time they went down a slide, they would struggle through the snow to get back on. Several times, Daddy had to rescue a little girl stranded up to her knees in soft snow, which was cascading into the top of her boots. And this in sandals. Good times.

Our daughter even took a cue from the dogs that aren't supposed to be in the park and peed on a tree. It's OK, we were the only ones in the park. Shortly after the impromptu potty break from the girl who just can't hold it, the sun went down and we drug two reluctant children away from their summer fun in the snow.

So lousy spring weather doesn't mean you shouldn't treat it like spring. We even had a barbecue the other night just to show winter who was boss. The kids loved their time outside, even if they were dressed for winter.

What do you do when spring weather is lousy?

Turning party time back into bedtime

You have two kids. Your house has two bedrooms. That makes four people in an 1,100 square-foot house. The baby has outgrown the walk-in closet. You share a bedroom with your wife (for your sake I hope this is the case.) You have to face the inevitable mathematics. The kids are going to have to share a room too.

Dun, dun, DUHHH!

Dramatic pause.

That puts a nasty kink in bedtime, which formerly involved placing one child in his bed, then walking across the house to put the other child in her bed. Now, the children, who also happen to be best friends, find themselves in the same nightly cage. Party mode naturally follows. So what can you do to quell the bedtime bedlam?

Another dramatic pause - mostly because I have to gather my thoughts.

Basically, you're hosed. At least during the honeymoon period. Unless you're willing to use some pretty harsh discipline to keep the kids in their own beds, there will be miniature havoc wreaked in that bedroom - fact. Let me just share a typical experience during our "combined resting antics period" - CRAP for short. 

We put the children in their beds. Easy enough. We turned out the lights. Check. We left. Wrong answer! Instantly we would hear the flick of a light switch from the living room, which our son had recently discovered he was tall enough to reach. Uncontrollable giggling promptly followed. We returned to the room to find the pillows piled at the end of the bed, sheets torn apart, and our son climbing the bars on his younger sister's crib so he could perform the daredevil feat of a quadruple back flip with a half twist onto the pillows waiting to stop his fall on the bed. Our daughter, loving the show, squealed in delight from her crib.

We firmly ordered all to return to a sleeping position on beds. After they rush to obey Mommy and Daddy, we flick the switch and walk away again. Mere steps down the hall, the click of the light switch stops us in our tracks while introducing a new nervous tick.

We found we had to use some pretty firm discipline to get them to stay in their beds in the end. They're best friends. They are 14 months apart and love each other to pieces. We work hard to keep it that way. However, we just want them to ignore each other when the lights go out. After various failed or lackluster methods, we finally came down in physical discipline's camp. 

Yes, we spank. And it works beautifully. During the first three months of shared bedroom, we avoided the S-word like it was an actual swear, like so many touchy-feely self-help books would have you believe. Consequently, bedtime was not so much a single event but a string of less-effective disciplines that stretched bedtime into a nightly 3-hour occurrence. We often fell asleep on the living room couch at 11 p.m. to the sound of delighted screams from the back room. 

As soon as we began doling out immediate retribution for something they knew they weren't to be doing, the results came quickly. The best part? We only had to spank a couple times before they knew we meant business. Now we'll sometimes listen to one or the other singing or gabbing away for an hour or more from the confines of their bed, but they don't leave it unless they have to use the potty. 

Try to get those results with timeouts and loving talks.

I'm open to other methods, but that's what worked for our fun-loving children. We always made sure they knew we loved them after "reproving them with sharpness," but that's what we had to do. It's the only thing that worked. Do you have your own methods for turning party time into bedtime? 

Definition of an Apparent Parent AKA Jungle Gym Parents Unite!

Being an "apparent parent" means involving
your children, no matter how tired it
makes you - and the children.

When my kids are awake, my 6-foot-5 frame converts into monkey bars, a climbing rope, a jungle gym, a slide, a rocking horse (or a walking horse if I'm not too tired), a swing set, a particle accelerator and more. The short way of saying that is my kids crawl all over me as a substitute for the playground I won't buy them. Within a few seconds of walking through the door from work most nights, my daughter will usually say, "I want a ride," while my son says, "I want to wrestle you on my bed."

Oddly, these things cannot be done simultaneously. So I do them in rapid succession. I swing the children onto my back and begin the grueling crawl into their bedroom. I start in the carpeted living area but soon transition to the wooden portion of the floor which leads down the long hall - haul? - to their bedroom. My knees refuse to participate in this part. I weigh 200+ pounds without two kids clinging to my back, neck and shoulders while draping their security blankets across my vision. So the added weight and awkwardness of balancing two children that have known how to walk for less time than it took Lady Gaga to burn her hideous name and personality into the soul of America makes it uncomfortable to crawl on wood in my customary shorts.

That was definitely a run-on sentence. But I like it.

So I end up scurrying down the hall in a bear crawl (anyone remember those from football practice?) with my homemade weight set clinging to my back or face as the case may be. It's great calisthenics, but it's tiring. Then I dump both kids on my son's bed and proceed to wrestle with the children. This usually involves me tossing the kids around like crash test dummies while they laugh uncontrollably. Then when I stop, they ruthlessly tackle me until I start again. Then, when I tire of the crash-test routine - heaven knows they never do - I break out the "spiders." My hands turn into the spindly little creatures that have to crawl all over the most ticklish parts of the children. More laughter comes between statements like "I want to squish the spiders!" coming from the kids.

Why play on the playground when you have a
perfectly good daddy to slide down, tumble on,
tackle, swing around on and harass?

Then we'll often move into Jack-and-the-Beanstalk mode. This is where one kid is the giant and the rest of us are Jack cowering under a blanket so the giant won't find us. In fact, it was during one of these games that my daughter learned one of her first words before she even turned 9 months old. "Hide, hide, hide, hide," she would say with a grin as we draped blankets over our head. Nowadays, it's more like a frantic, "Daddy, we need to hide so brother won't eat us."  And as we get under the blanket, brother comes stomping in roaring, "Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an English bum. Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread." I'm always surprised how much violence he can get behind those words. Then after he tackles my head (always my head - particularly annoying when you wear glasses) under the blankets, the kids switch positions and the game repeats itself until the kids tire or figure out something else that's fun to do.

Anyway, that kind of rough-and-tumble interaction just doesn't happen with every parent out there. And I think it's important. Heck, I'm the first to admit that it's easier to watch TV, play a video game, bust out a sudoku book or build a nuclear reactor with your thumbs duct taped together than be an "apparent parent." But interacting, talking and showing love by just paying attention to the little critters is what makes someone an "apparent parent." It is obvious that I am the parent of my children. I still have my fair share of "not right nows" and "wait a minute, Daddy's talking to Mommy"s, but my kids know they can generally get my attention if they want it.

My dad once told me something that is way too true in many instances. He said, "Mothers cook, clean, play, color with crayons, change diapers, read books, sing songs, teach lessons and generally interact with their children all day. Fathers are vaguely aware there's some little people running around the house."

I don't want to be that kind of father. An "apparent parent" will be called "Daddy" by his children long after his children's friends have stopped calling their parents by that sacred title. I don't want to be father or dad. I want to be "Daddy." A lot of love comes through in that word. An "apparent parent" knows what's happening in their kid's life. Kids are an integral part of that parent's life. Some parents would rather they never had children. An "apparent parent" loves the fact that he has someone to call him "Daddy."

What does "apparent parent" mean to you?

When Mommy's away, the Daddy will play - unless he's locked out of his house in shorts and T-shirt with a former U.S. Marshal

Leading a former U.S. marshal packing heat with a laser
sight can't possibly be a good idea. Or can it?

My wife took our two children to her family's ranch in southern Wyoming yesterday. We only have one car right now while the other one takes its job of gathering snow and occupying a parking spot on our neighborhood's road seriously. So when she dropped me off at work, none of us had really thought about the fact that she'd be taking with her the keys to the house on the car key chain.

Oops. In the meantime, I picked up a story for our local newspaper last night about a gun club celebrating the 1911 Colt .45's 100th birthday. It was carpet-moving and painting day at work, so I had dressed accordingly - shorts, T-shirt and sandals, despite the mounds of snow that are still falling this spring in Jackson Hole. So when I got home with a borrowed car to change and go cover my story, I realized I was hosed when the door was locked. No hidden keys at our house, though I get locked out enough that we should have one.

Anyway, I manned up, went and bought some high-tech reporting supplies - pen and paper - and went to the gun club dressed for summer. The birthday-party goers were naturally curious about my attire, given the copious amounts of spring snow we have received. After relating the story to a few people while questioning them on why they showed up at a gun's birthday party, one man stepped up to my shattered plate.

"You want help with that?" he said, pulling out what looked like a folded-up knife from his pocket. I looked at his outstretched hand, confused by why a knife could solve my problems - apparently weapons can solve a lot of problems in the gun club.

He caught my confusion and pulled out what I thought would be a blade. "This is a professional lock-picking set," he said, withdrawing various implements from the tool's belly.

"You serious?" I asked. He assured me he would love to help, and just to flag him down when I was done with the party coverage.

"I carry these things around in case I can help someone," he said. He told me later he used to earn steak dinners from his neighbors when he helped them get in to their houses. I offered him the same treatment, which he kindly refused. Blown away by the man's generosity for a complete stranger, I went out of my way to get to know him during the event. The guy was a pharmacist recruited by the army and trained in various programs - including lockpicking.

"They teach us how to be burglars in the army," he told me. As if the army needs to use subtlety. Whatever the case, he got the training on taxpayers' dime and still uses his abilities to help out the average taxpayer, i.e. me. After his time and training with the army, he went into the U.S. Marshals, where he stayed for 20 years before retiring.

The party consisted of an IDPA shooting course with lovingly held 1911 Colts of various makes with ammo donated from local outdoors outfitters. One guy even let me borrow his gun for the event so I could shoot too. Something fun about trying to hit three targets as fast as you can from behind a wire barricade with a large-caliber handgun. Following the shooting course, we all went in and sang "Happy birthday dear nine-teen-e-lev-en!" and ate cake and ice cream. I had a blast with those gun enthusiasts, no pun intended.

So after the birthday party, I led the U.S. Marshal to my house 10 miles away, which he didn't begrudge me at all. He just wanted to help. There was a brief moment where I wondered what I was doing leading a former U.S. Marshal driving a black Tahoe to my house who was packing heat with a laser sight and a set of lock picks in his pocket. The moment passed and I led him up on my doorstep where he got down on one knee in fresh snow on my porch and went about trying to break into my house while I held a flashlight for him.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, my lock held firm under his probings, which made him declare "Either I'm losing my touch or you have a great lock." He then told me there was a time when he could brag there wasn't a safe or lock in the world that could keep him out. Comforting that our army personnel have that kind of training.

I graciously thanked him, and as we parted ways he told me about his gun collection: machine guns with suppressors (silencers are probably what you know them as), shotguns and sniper rifles. He even told me he'd let me shoot his machine gun at the range.

"You know, everyone thinks these guns are illegal," he said. "You just have to have valid permission to use them."

And that is how I led a machine gun-owning, lock-picking, laser-sighting former U.S. Marshal to my house - on purpose. The guy's a patriot in my book. I have always been pro gun, but after meeting a roomful of gun owners and hanging out with them for a couple hours, I have new respect for people who love guns.

What do you say? Would you have led a guy with a set of lock picks in his pocket to your house after meeting him at a gun's birthday party?

The parental definition of "sleeping in"

As I rolled out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to go help the pitter-pattering feet downstairs use the potty, I was surprisingly thankful for the sleep-in.

Yes, I called 5:30 a "sleep-in." Lately, the bare feet have been running down the hall at between 2 and 4 in the morning, so 5:30 was a blessed reprieve. I hope the day comes when 11 is a sleep-in again, but I think that's not really plausible considering I'm going to relinquish all nighttime sleeping rights to my wife when our third child comes in June. Putting that differently, I'd say she'll have smaller matters to worry about at 2 a.m. when my charges escape for potty breaks. In even other words, she has refused to take a rotation on the other kids at night when she'll be the only one capable of feeding the smallest one.

So I will now be in the position of parental graveyard shift every night, just like wifey. Woohoo!

Luckily, a recent adjustment we made has helped with the night wanderers. I found that most nights the children were more thirsty than anything, so I started leaving a glass of water by our daughter's bed. Unfortunately, that just exchanged one problem - water breaks - for another problem - potty breaks. Ah, the joys of parenthood.

So how do you help your 2- and 3-year olds sleep through the night?

Anytime Potty Training

Middle-of-the-night potty training is not made brighter by the
blinding colors of inane children books.

I tackle this topic reluctantly (can you tackle something with reluctance?) But as I was falling asleep on the bathroom floor at 4 a.m. the other morning I realized there are certain things to be aware of when potty training.

The chief among these is “let the kid go when she wants to go.” Unfortunately, that meant for me getting tackled (no reluctance) at 4 a.m. by a little girl wanting to use the potty. It was my night to be “middle-of-the-night parent,” so after rolling out of bed onto my knees I tackled my fatherly duties (reluctance.)

Escorting her to the bathroom, I found out she didn’t actually have to go. She just wanted to break a little wind while I read her inane book after inane book. Being confronted by a sunny, happy pile of Care Bear and Strawberry Shortcake books in the middle of the night is only a slight upgrade from waking up with a kink in your neck, a massive headache and a toothpick doused in cinnamon oil in your eye — don’t ask me how I know this.*

After 20 minutes of reading the lousiest trash I’ve ever read accompanied by pictures so bright they’d make an owl lose its night vision, I finally left the princess to her own devices on her pearly white throne. On the tile floor — at least it’s heated — I rolled into a fetal position and balled up my daughter’s silky pink blanket for a pillow.

Just as I got comfortable, an indignant shout roused me. “Daddy! You forgot to read that one!” My eyes fluttered open to see an accusing, miniature finger pointing at the last Care Bear book on the once sizable unread-potty-book pile.

That’s when I decided she was done tootin’ on the potty for the night. Motivated by sheer hatred for Love-A-Lot Bear, I plucked my daughter off the porcelain and paraded her back to her bedroom.

After this definitive action, I was sure to have peace the rest of the night. Until she wanted water, of course. Her shouts for water soon woke up her brother, who shares a bedroom with her. So when I rushed back downstairs to literally pour water on the shouting fire, I was welcomed by my son wandering out of the room. Through a thick haze, he said, “Daddy, her wants water.”

“Oh, great,” I said, not unaware of her loud desire for liquid.

I ended up spending the rest of the night awake with my kids, the whole time wishing to be asleep. They didn’t seem to share the sentiment. All because of potty training. The good news is that the porcelain princess is making impressive progress. The fact we are willing to drop anything to let her use the bathroom has made it possible for her to see how easy it can be and how important it is.

We started potty training only a couple weeks ago, and she is already sleeping dry through most nights, and makes it through most days without accidents. I find many of the accidents that do occur happen when she and I are in the throes of wrestling or some other full-attention activity. She just forgets she needs to go when she’s having fun.

She doesn’t, as you might have guessed, forget when it happens in the middle of the night. I get woken up at all hours to escort her to Pottyville. For me, this usually means sleepless nights while she thinks of every excuse in the book to get out of going back to sleep.

After a particularly trying potty experience at 2:30 the other morning, she came up to our room after two separate trips asking for water and her blankie to tell me she had a boogie on her finger she needed wiped off. I laughed despite being dead tired.

“You seriously came all the way up here to tell me that?” I asked.

“Yes,” came the timid reply, her eyes downcast.

I took care of the problem and sent her packing. She stopped in the doorway of our room and stood there for a few long moments, as if not sure she wanted to leave. After staring at her feet and then me for a while, she finally asked, “Daddy? Can I have rock-a-byes?”

The cuteness was just too much. I took her down to our comfy recliner where I cuddled the night away with my beautiful little potty-trained daughter.

As much as I hate some of the inconvenience of letting her go when she wants to, it has been miraculous to see how much just letting her go when she asks has helped. And for three short months until we meet our next daughter, this house will be gloriously diaper free.

*If you must know, I’ve experienced the kinked neck and headache, but only have an overactive imagination to consult on the toothpick.

What's your favorite potty training trick?

Age and Entitlement

A kid shouldn't necessarily get everything
he asks for, especially when it's almost
pure fat and gristle.

It seems the older a child gets, the more they feel entitled to. My 3-year-old documents this well with his current fascination with the number three. We made homemade pizza this evening, and when the pepperoni came out he let us know his rights: “I need three pepperonis, ‘cause I’m 3.”

Though he still pronounces 3 “sree,” this is just one bargaining chip the little genius has picked up to help him with his supposed entitlements. I’ll grant the kid “life, love and the pursuit of happiness,” but beyond Constitutional entitlements, the kid’s really not guaranteed a lot.

That doesn’t mean I don’t entreat him to some of his arguments. If I’m in a good mood, and I don’t think his requests are too far off base, I’ll usually grant them. Three big greasy pepperonis? Definitely needs to catch me in the right mood. Three M&M’s? I’ll usually hook him up. When he asked for three pieces of pizza after I sliced the finished product up, I told him no initially before I got my wicked parent grin on and sliced the single piece I’d already gotten him into three smaller pieces. The kid was happy and nothing really changed.

Problem is, he’s smart. For a 3-year-old kid, he puts up some pretty sophisticated arguments sometimes. I just envision myself in ten years when he’s a teenager and sounds like a mini prosecution lawyer when I don’t give him his way like I did when he was just 3 years old.

It’s that mental fast forward button I have that often makes me say “no” even when I think it’s harmless. I think establishing a role as a loving provider who is able to say “no” without questions asked is important when they’re young. If the guidelines are set when the child really has no say in outcomes, the guidelines are much more likely to stick into teenage years and beyond.

Saying “yes” too often to invalid arguments could land you in trouble. Though farcical, I think of a scenario with a teenage boy coming home and saying, “Dad, I need 16 cars.”

Me: laughs.
Kid: “This is serious, Dad.”
Me: “Everything is serious at your age. But fine, I’ll hear the nonsense argument you have.”
Kid: “Here goes. I need 16 cars because,” (bet you know what’s coming) “I’m 16.”
Me: Laughs uncontrollably. “Boy, that argument hardly ever worked back when you were little and cute. It’s not going to get you one car now, much less 16 of ‘em.”
Kid: “You’re ruining my life!”
Me: “That’s what you said when you turned 6 and I told you you couldn’t have 6 baseball gloves.”
Kid: “Really? I wanted 6 baseball gloves? I don’t even like baseball.”
Me: “You should probably stop liking cars too because this argument’s leading down the same road.”

Yeah I’m sure there’s no son that doesn’t belong to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie that would actually use that argument for 16 cars, but you see my point. A parent has the right to say “no” at any age to any request. By virtue of the fact we have raised the child the best we know how, we’ve earned that entitlement. But no age, whether 3 or 13, comes with an entitlement from parent to child.

So I guess my point is to know when to say “no” to a kid. Yeah, many requests are harmless, especially coming from the innocent mouth of a 3-year-old boy convinced that 3 pepperonis will make him grow big and strong like Daddy. But I don’t want to plant myself behind a wall of precedent where I find I can no longer reasonably say “no” to unreasonable requests from my children.

For a while, when we went to a certain store, we loved to see how our kids lit up when we got them a $1 Hot Wheels car every now and then. Pretty soon, we found we could no longer go to that store without them feeling like they got to walk out of the store with a brand new toy. The magic was lost to the spirit of entitlement. Saying “no” became difficult and I found I was becoming one of those parents I have always abhorred that will let their spoiled brats pick out a toy every time they are in a store.

Let’s just say this is not a pleasant corner to paint yourself into. We have since made severe course corrections, and have devised methods to make sure they know they are entitled to nothing at the store. So maybe next time your child comes to you with a request, ask yourself if it will put you in a scenario where giving in will become habitual. Maybe a “no” should come out, even if the kid is just asking for “sree gummy bears, ‘cause I’m sree.”

How do you combat child entitlement in your household?