Superpower pirates: Bonding over games of one-upmanship

“Arghhhh, ye’ve grazed me hair with yer fire sword!” I bellow in my best swarthy pirate voice.

Never mess with a boy holding a flaming sword. Especially if it can also
shoot lightning, "volcano lava," super-hard metal walls, and more.

“No, it hit you right in the face!” my 6-year-old boy fires back.

“That were afore what I conjured me an ice shield with me trusty rapier!”

This game goes on and on, shifting between remarkably versatile weapons – i.e. sticks – sheared off the same tree in the park near our home. His stick spews “volcano lava” and mine strikes back with a wall of icy water to cool the ground into smooth pāhoehoe lava that leaves me a perfect path to the boy. His stick shoots lightning toward me and I absorb it in mine, which has just become heavily grounded rubber.

I get aggressive and shoot a sheet of ice toward him. He dodges and scurries underneath the play-set to severe the supports of the ship we’re fighting on.

Ice cream dump

Kids don't always know the words for things, and I sometimes love the results of them trying to figure things out. Tonight, we were dishing up home-made ice cream that had hardened into something more similar to a strawberry-pineapple iceberg.

But oh was it good…

A non-artist's (bad) rendition of homemade pineapple-strawberry ice cream.
 Come on, you know you'd love to eat this!

Anyway, I usually just use our spoons to scoop the ice cream since the two years I spent post marriage shopping for the right silverware were well spent. My wife frequently tells people how we agreed to disagree on silverware for those two years. But the good news is we came out better for it. Too many of the sets we found were just sissy looking and feeling. I want beefy silverware - a fork I can cut meat with if needs be. A knife that's consequently only used for sawing through butter or spreading peanut butter. A spoon that can scoop ice cream like nobody's business. 

So in that shopping period, I subjected every rare set of silverware we agreed to aesthetically to the “ice-cream test.” This is Guantanamo Bay for spoons.

Fatherhood tips: Trust falls

My oldest son doesn't always trust me. In fact, he's often downright scared of things I ask him to do and will flatly turn me down. Lately there's been two of these trust issues, as I see them.

Oh he'll jump off inanimate objects to the cold, hard ground, but
you put his loving father at the base to catch him and suddenly it's too scary.
Trust issues? I'd say so.

1. We have a bunk bed the kids line up on top of and jump to me. The two girls, ages 5 and 2, will sky toward me without a second thought, but our 6-year-old boy will stand there for 10, 20, 30 seconds as the girls and I coax him to jump. Sometimes Ms. Mischief will even try to push him off, which really freaks him (and me) out. Finally my arms get tired and I let the girls have another turn. He gets upset that I move on, even though he obviously doesn't trust me and/or himself enough to jump. Mostly me. 

2. My wife has been teaching the kids biology lately and we got talking about knee-jerk reactions. I set up a tall food-storage bucket in the living room and started whacking the girls' knees with a wooden sword to show them how it worked.

How not to play an April Fools’ Day joke on your kids

With a Mommy-made quilt this awesome, you wouldn't want
to share either, especially at 4 a.m.

April Fools’ Day is a fun tradition for a lot of families as parents trick their kids, play funny jokes and get a few laughs. But if it’s not done right, it has the propensity to make a fool out of the foolers. We learned that the hard way this April Fools’ Day, bright and early. Strike that, it was too early to be bright.

So you don’t make our same mistake, I’m passing on our valuable experience along with an easy-to-follow list of steps not to take  when coming up with an April Fools’ Day joke.

1. Don’t come up with a joke while about to fall asleep

Things seem funnier when you’re tired. Also, when laying in bed, you tend to only be able to think of sleep. So as my wife and I were discussing what kind of jokes we could pull on the children, they all seemed to involve beds.

When do my kids need speech therapy? AKA I'm going to give my kids speech disorders

I know, I know. I've read the literature that says you should be diligent in correcting children's mispronunciations. If you don't, researchers say that it can develop into a lifelong problem. Sometimes I don't like researchers.

Why? Because I sometimes like my children's speech to rub off on me and not the other way around. Take my two-year-old daughter for example. For some reason she can't pronounce the pairing "OL." Instead it comes out more like the pairing "ER." This leads to some adorable mispronunciations.

Who wouldn't want to "herd" this little girl,
especially when she asks so sweetly?

For instance, with her arms outstretched and a hopeful look in her eye, she'll say, "Will you herd me?" This is almost always at the top of the stairs when she doesn't feel like navigating the stairs with her own short little legs. Heaven knows she's fallen down them often enough. So I’ll indulgently pick her up, usually answering, “I’d love to herd you!”

It's even endearing enough to get me to lug bulky inanimate objects around for her.

The Art of Parenthood #2: Being Needed by Your Children through Daddy-Daughter Dates

Daddy-daughter camping dates are the perfect way to bond.

 "Daddy?" my 3-year-old daughter's frightened, trembling, needy voice pleaded with me to be there for her all with one simple word. Her hand touched my shoulder and I came out from under my covers with my headlamp shining in her face.

All the worry, concern, tiredness - everything - drained out of her voice when she knew I was there and awake.

"Oh," she said nonchalantly. "Why is the headlamp still on?"

We were on our first-ever Daddy-daughter camping date in Grand Teton National Park on Jackson Lake. It was 3:30 a.m. and the full moon shone overhead so brightly that I had woken up an hour earlier thinking it was predawn light coming into the tent. I was so alert thinking of impending morning that insomnia set in in a big way when I checked my clock and found out it was 2:30 a.m. So I had finally turned on my headlamp and started to read a book I had brought for just such an occasion.

But when her little hand touched my shoulder and I heard that wavering, higher-pitched-than-normal voice, I felt needed in a way I don't think I ever have before. It felt... good. Insanely good. I felt loved, appreciated, and even depended on. I knew had I not been there immediately for her, she would have burst into hysterics instead of calmly laying back down and falling instantly to sleep, which is precisely what she did when I told her I was just reading, tucked her back in, and kissed her goodnight.

Daddy-daughter camping also helped her feel needed, as I was
able to let her help gather kindling for our fire. She loved it.

Being needed may be the greatest thanks a parent ever receives. Had she awoken during our Daddy-daughter date crying for Mommy I would have been heartbroken. But she wanted me. Needed me. That is all the validation I ever need as a parent. And she made me laugh with her abrupt mood change, which made it all the richer.

The Daddy-daughter date came about because we have been having discipline issues lately with our son, 4. He is testing boundaries and really pressing us to see if we can make child-shaped holes in the wall. He began voicing to his mother recently how he feels like his only interactions with me were for discipline, and I could feel distance mounting because of it, as could my wife. I scheduled a Daddy-son camping date with him just to let him know that I love him, like to be with him, do things with him, and most importantly can do more with him than discipline.

We had a great time. We got doughnuts and other snacks from the store, we headed into the mountains, set up the tent together and he fell asleep as I read to him from a children's chapter book. The event brought us closer together and I can honestly say I haven't needed to discipline him as much since, although there have been plenty of bumps in the road. We are also more liable to play together again, something that was beginning to lack in our relationship as he did so many naughty things that could make Curious George blush. I'm now more of a necessity in my son's life since I took him camping.

So the Daddy-daughter date was a continuation of that. And boy did it ever work. Leading up to the camping with her after hearing of our son's experience, she would pump her fist and say "YES!" every time I told her it was almost time for Daddy-daughter date. After the fact, I feel closer to both my children after spending the night with them in the mountains. We laugh more together, they are more open to teasing sessions with me, and just enjoy being with me more than they have in a while.

Daddy-son camping helped build a relationship that had been
struggling through major obedience/discipline issues.

Of course it's a two-way road. I also feel more apt to want to do things with them, knowing now that they will be happy about it. Heck, my daughter has even been thanking Heavenly Father in her personal prayers for her Daddy-daughter date. There may be no better way than establishing one-on-one ties like this with children to truly establish a need- and love-based relationship, especially if things are faltering in the slightest. Try it for yourself and see, even if you don't camp. Just take your child to a movie, or to the park and really play with him or her. Certain doors can only open in a child's personality if you know where to find them. For me, I found doors in the mountains and forests, alone with my precious children.

The Perfect Moment: A Family Portrait

A camera wouldn't do it justice. A video camera would only be a shallow representation. The perfect moment cannot be captured in any place but your mind.

I had one tonight. It'll be there forever. I had no camera, no videos, and I don't care. It's better in the mind anyway.

I had taken my kids to the park to play while their mommy made dinner. They played, I watched with a smile. They brought in random strangers to be friends in their routines, both adults and children. They used the horseshoe pit at the park as a sandbox, driving toy tractors they had hauled from the house in my oldest daughter's pink bike bag over manufactured hills and valleys.

As I watched them play with a warm smile, my wife unexpectedly came to join us with a stroller used as a dinner cart. Had we been there so long already? She pulled out soup and biscuits and we sat on a blanket. My kids built an imaginary fire by collecting all the loose branches they could into a pile and pretending to strike between one and five matches. We then made s'mores on the fake fire, describing every gooey bit as we stacked them up for each other. When I needed a marshmallow for my stick, my oldest daughter ran to a random point along the fence 50 yards away, grabbed marshmallows, and trotted back, placing the invisible fluff on every minor point she could find on my roasting stick. My younger daughter wanted more substance to her food. She had been begging for service berries from behind the fence. She asked with points and grunts since she is only 14 months old. I was happy to oblige.

No matter how well I describe it, what picture I take, or how you envision it, the full feeling will not be clear to you. It was special because it was us. Mundane yet unique. Simple yet perfect. I was in the park for 3.5 hours and never wanted to leave. I only did because it was the kids' bedtime. Family love can make just about any moment perfect. And for me today, it was an unexpected picnic in the park with the people I couldn't live without surrounding me. There is an underlying power in family. Despite imperfections, moments like this speak of perfection more than any art masterpiece. Yes, despite flaws and problems, a family is a perfect unit.

I will do everything in my power to protect the one entrusted to me.

Not much captures the feeling better than a photo like this, but it
is still a shallow comparison that lacks warmth and love,
especially for those outside my family.

Superhuman parenting: super speed

It was like one of those moments you hear about. You know the ones: Baby is about to leap off some precarious ledge and a mother covers a ludicrous distance in time to stop certain death for the child. Or there's the common story of the child (who has the propensity to sink faster than a man's heart when forced to watch "Twilight" with his wife) that ventures to the side of the pool only to be snatched out of the air by a father who just swam an Olympic-sized pool in under two seconds to avert the disaster.

I believe these moments are real - a moment where sheer parenting adrenaline flows so purely that a parent has super powers for a small snatch of time. I've heard enough of these stories from credible sources that I have to believe them. Every parent has one of these at least once, right?

So there I am in church, watching my three children while my wife played prelude music. One child I have given a tithing envelope to take to the bishop while the two girls, 3 and 10-months old, stick with me on the bench. I glance back and forth between my son, who I am watching with a proud smile as he delivers the envelope, and my 10-month old, who I know to be the tricksiest of tricksters.

One glance I spent a moment too long adoring my son, and when I returned my gaze to my daughter, she was falling upside down and backward off the bench. Time slowed down. It was like one of those movies where, you know, time slows down at a critical juncture. I watched as my baby fell, twisting into an upside-down awkwardness a few feet away. I felt those mighty parental juices flowing into my veins like pure injected Slushee. I knew I could catch her. Just as her head was about to bounce off the floor, I completely failed to snatch her out of the air. Yep. I did nothing. My parental juices spent way too long in the injection phase and forgot to move into action phase. My arm was still resting on the pew when impact occurred, despite all the slow-motion hubbub.

But luckily the juices flowed now. You have never seen a father snatch a baby off the floor and abandon his two older children to disappear from a chapel full of people wondering what caused the loud bump shortly before the baby started screaming. So while those things may happen to other parents, mine has a delayed kick in. It's like my brain had to have time to register the danger before my body would react. All systems were go, but I'm pretty sure I still wore the proud smile from watching my son with the tithing envelope when her noggin hit the floor.  Even my emergency system has to boot up first. So while I respect these stories when I hear them from others, so far they just don't happen to me.

Household magnetism: Attraction and repulsion between family members

I never know what to expect when I get home. Some days I am a chick magnet, with my wife and two girls racing to be the first one to hug me, then cling to me no matter what I do for a good portion of the night. Meanwhile, my son ignores me in favor of Hot Wheels. Other days, I get home to three kids that zip to me while my wife glares and gets as far from me as possible. As far as I know, I've done nothing to contribute to a negative mood. I'm just happy to be home with a (mostly) loving family. This got me thinking about magnetism within the family. Each person must have a north and south pole setting, and the settings constantly flip flop or even neutralize in these human magnets. Below is a list of potential familial magnetic settings, and the things that can happen to change the north and south poles to make opposites attract within the family.

North pole: Daddy
South pole: Everyone else
Mommy has had an excellent day with the kids. Everyone played well together and behaved themselves. Daddy comes home to a blissful feeling in the air and a total of four clingons that just won't let go. Daddy walks around with kids hanging on his legs for most of the night or asking to get on his shoulders. Mommy gives lots of hugs and kisses. Daddy has good chances once kids go down to bed, though bedtime will take a long time since minor magnets won't let go of his legs as he tries to walk away.

North pole: Daddy
South pole: Kids, Mommy
This setting happens when children misbehave and fight constantly, or when Mommy gets an annoying phone call just before daddy arrives home. South poles open the door and run into the snow without shoes because they need the north pole so badly. Kids cannot get far enough away from their fellow south pole and her accompanying mood. Their north pole is viewed as sanctuary, and you can feel the repulsion between the poles. This is an interesting setting though, because Daddy's north pole only attracts the kids' south pole. Somehow the mommy south pole only works for the sake of repulsion. While Daddy is still fully attracted to Mommy, Mommy imitates a north pole with all its frigidity and runs off to hide from the family with a long book which she reads in one night.

North pole: Baby sister
South pole: Older sister, a futile baby sister (toward older sister only), Daddy
This one is pretty much a constant if no other magnets have been switched on. No amount of fatherly swatting can dissuade the 3-year-old sister from pouncing with great alacrity and insistence on baby sister, who so wants to share a pole with her older and heavier sister. Baby sister starts to resemble a wailing pancake as the overwhelming magnetic forces plaster her to the ground. Baby sister crawls as hard as her miniscule body will work toward Daddy, who is simultaneously repelling the older sister, who is attempting to maul said baby. Baby clings with futility to Daddy, who is preoccupied fending off the frenzied south pole.

North pole: 3-year-old daughter
South pole: 4-year-old son
This is one of the daddy's favorite settings, though he must remain magnetically neutral if he hopes to observe it. Either that or open an east-west pole between him and Mommy. The children play pretend, using actual toys that substitute for the pretend toys they would like to be playing with. They love and cling to each other as they zip around the house with toys. No fighting erupts, and the poles can stay aligned like this for hours, inducing the east-west poles to try to figure out how they can somehow attract the same kind of love they are seeing between siblings.

North pole: Baby sister, Daddy
South pole: Mommy (i.e. milk truck)
At eight months old, it amazes Daddy how fast baby can crawl to reach the milk truck at meal time. As she beelines it for the free meal, she often buzzes the word, "Mmmmmmaa-ma," holding the first "M" to show her appreciation for the anticipated meal. This can be a dangerous magnetic setting, since if Daddy holds baby on his shoulders or in his arms, baby will relentlessly dive toward its opposite polar coordinate, leading to some close calls which the Daddy with zero magnetic pull would prefer to forget.

North pole: Daddy
South pole: Mommy
With such a variety of settings possible, this one, so well known as newlyweds, is hard to align with three children present. Usually Daddy has to bring flowers, purposefully lose a game of Scrabble, or do a laundry list of chores around the house without being told. And doing it without being told is increasingly hard since the Mommy is quick to point out her "Honey-dos." This leads to a situation where the Daddy no longer gets correctly polarized while doing the chores. He only appeases the Mommy enough to keep her in a neutral mood. He also doesn't enjoy the chores in this scenario, since he sees the polarities reversing as she speaks the words he had intended to accomplish without hearing them first.

With only two poles, it's difficult to find the right balance within a family to maintain magnets that attract each other. Luckily, or unluckily as the case may be, no magnetic setting lasts forever. Even the earth's poles have supposedly reversed themselves during the course of history. If the earth were my family, the poles would be as mercurial and inconstant as the familial settings I've described above. As constantly as the poles shift, though, I have never seen a situation so bad in our family where there wasn't at least one north pole and one south pole. Love is a strong thing, far more magnetic than magnets could dream to be. The ultimate goal of every family should be to make every family member have both a north pole and a south pole which help the family fall into a neat line of perfectly aligned magnets.

Funny Kid Story #3: Dancing Baby

This morning I was listening to Internet radio on my headphones while holding my infant daughter. Until now the kids have only ever known that headphones were good for removing the little buds just to annoy Daddy. But this morning I introduced to them what they were really for right after they woke up, sticking a bud in each of their ears.

They both got cute little grins and announced how silly it was that music was coming out of there. Pretty soon, my infant started squirming with hunger pains on my chest while the other kids listened intently to their shared ear buds on my lap. My older daughter got a cute grin on and said, "I think baby's dancing."

It's fun to watch kids build the framework of understanding around their lives.

Funny kid story #2: Little donkeys

As we were driving through Grand Teton National Park earlier this week, our 2-year-old daughter spotted some pronghorn antelope in an open field. Not knowing exactly what they were, she improvised as best she could in an ecstatic voice: "Mommy, Daddy, I see some little donkeys out there!"

 At least she didn't call them the Biblical alternate.

We saw some of these "little donkeys" in Grand
Teton National Park the other day.

If it were an adult calling a moose an elk or asking when the elk turn into moose, we'd all laugh because that person is a complete moron. But when coming from the mouth of a two-year-old, it shows major intelligence. We laugh because it's still funny, but at the same time we pat ourselves on the back for teaching her well enough that she could come up with a reasonable explanation for what was out there on the fly. She has had hugely limited experiences up until now, so it was fun to see her make such a connection. Watch for these funny ways your kids communicate the world as they know it. They help to brighten your day and you can begin to see intelligence taking shape.

Funny Kid Story #1: Standing in the sunshine

Glacier water cools you down real quick,
but our 2-year-old daughter spent 10 minute
chunks of time in up to her waist.

We went to the glacier-fed String Lake in Grand Teton National Park yesterday where the water temperature hovers just above absolute zero. Swimming in the lake is a little like cryostasis. I'm pretty sure you could live forever by floating in this lake if your heart doesn't fail when your toes hit the water. I swam in it. Briefly.

But my daughter put me to shame. While all the adults were daring each other to go and egging each other on whenever the sun came out from behind the clouds, my daughter spent 10-minute segments of time buried up to her waist in the freezing water. She busied herself by digging mud off the bottom of the lake and placing it in a pail to make us "soup." At the end of each 10-minute segment of water time, she traipsed up the hill to make sure we got some of her lovely broth, colder than gazpacho and uglier than black bean soup.

Delicious...

Anyway, she would come out sometimes and shiver just outside the water in the dappled light of the shoreline. We being good parents, while her teeth chattered, encouraged her to come up and wrap up in a towel and get warm. She being my daughter (as opposed to my wife's) just refused by answering, "No, I standing in the sunshine." Immediately after making the statement while her knees knocked together and her teeth clattered like wind chimes made out of hundreds of small rocks during a hurricane, she would tear back down to the water and go back in to her belly button. It was like she thought we'd deny her the privilege unless she took advantage of it that instant.

I have to say that I liked her rationale, though. Standing in the sunshine is the quickest way to warm up. And you can look at this from a general perspective on life that when your life is coldest, you need some sunshine to warm you up. Your sunshine might come in different ways: time with loved ones, pursuing a hobby or giving service. Whatever that sunshine is, though, if you seek it out and bask in it when you're up to your neck in life's cold, the water won't seem as cold the next time you have to dive in. Heck, you might even enjoy it.

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.

Bloodsuckers, Arches, and Paranoia, oh my!

My kids and I at the pre-Delicate-Arch arch. This is the climb that induced a
panic attack which still hasn't gone away completely more than a week later.

The woman walked past our little family with a smile on her flushed face. She looked at my 8-months pregnant wife holding our 3-year-old son's hand with our supplies on her back. She looked at me carrying a huge camera bag on front and a kid backpack on back with a 2-year-old girl that just wanted to be on my shoulders anyway. She internalized we had come roughly two miles on a steep trail under such circumstances.

“I guess I need to stop complaining now,” she said to us. We politely laughed. She was probably the third person that had said that exact thing to us that day.

We were in Arches National Park for our reprieve from car shopping (more on that in later posts). We had just finished hiking to Delicate Arch – you know, the iconic one. It was beautiful, we loved it except for one thing: paranoia. And that in abundance.

Going to Delicate Arch involves hiking along a trail literally carved into the red rock on the side of a cliff. This got our son, who tends to believe his mother when she warns him how scary the world is, a bit skittish. This was made worse by the fact that he got a little bit stranded on the the arch you can climb up into before you reach the main one. Being the good daddy I am, I wanted pictures with my family inside the arch looking out at Delicate Arch. So I dutifully carried my daughter to the arch against her will and encouraged my son to make the sketchy scramble.

With exuberance he started toward Daddy. However, when he made it more than halfway up, he realized he didn't know how to go up or down and he went into freak out mode, whimpering in a hystercially scared voice, complete with hyperventilation. I ran to the rescue and pulled him up into the arch, where it happened to be very windy...right next to a cliff. Bad combination. I coaxed a smile out of the boy anyway for the picture that a Japanese guy offered to take for us.

So after returning to the relative safety of the cliff-side path, our son was a little anxious about putting one foot in front of the other. We really had to goad him upward. And then, after 1.5 miles of upward stop-and-go with easily distracted children, we came out at the main viewpoint for Delicate Arch. The splendor. The beauty. The delicateness (delicatessen?) The child in total freak out mode thinking the wind will sweep him into the awaiting chasm.

Yeah, that last bit didn't conjure a long stay at the arch viewpoint. Meanwhile, our daughter just sought refuge from the stiff wind behind a ledge we pointed out. She was totally nonplussed. As we reluctantly hauled our whimpering child back down the path, I tried to figure out why he flipped out so much. Yes, he's small. Yes, the wind was fast. Yes, he was safe anyway. Yes, we told him that. No, did he listen.

So to allow other hikers to enjoy their moment in the crowded park, we skedaddled. Down the mountain went a lot faster than up.

Notice the shadow of the person standing in the Arch.
This is the double arch in Arches National Park. Way
fun to photograph at sunset.

I have never quite figured out why he urgently needed to leave that situation. I've never seen him so horrified. Not even during the part in Sleeping Beauty where the witch turns into a dragon.

I think I found one of the root causes a few days later after returning home though. Now that some of the snow has melted off our yard (see this post), mosquitoes have come out in force. Two summers ago, when we introduced our son to mosquitoes, this was his reaction. Now, two years later, having been spoon fed reasons to be scared of the world, this is what happened.

Us: <Driving into the driveway>

Mommy: Oh no, there's bloodsuckers on the windshield. Kids, see these bugs? They'll eat you. You better run as fast as you can to get to the house.

Son: Can we just stay in here?

Daddy: Mommy! Kids, there's nothing to be afraid of, we'll just go in the house.

Kids: <Believing Mommy>

Daddy: <Goes and unbuckles the daughter, who walks calmly to the door through a small cloud of mosquitoes.>

Mommy from car: Hurry! Run inside so the mean bloodsuckers don't get you!

Daddy: <Eyes roll so far back they do a loop-de-loop inside my face and I oddly find myself looking straightforward again. I unbuckle the boy.>

Son: <Frantically fights the hand I have around his wrist, sprints up the stairs to front door, yanks the handle down and throws his shoulder into the still-locked door multiple times, jiggling the handle as hard and fast as he can manage. He nearly starts crying in his hysteric dance. He probably bruises his poor shoulder, possibly squishing some of the bloodsuckers in the process.>

Daddy: You seeing this Mommy? Great job with the scare tactics. Son? It's OK, the bugs can't really hurt you. Calm. Down. Please.

I've never seen anything quite like it. It was like a scene in a movie where a guy in a bike is getting chased by a turbo-charged tank. This kid thought his life was truly at risk between the car and the house. I'm almost surprised he didn't perform a James Bond diving roll somewhere on the way.

So that brings me to the point. Don't use scare tactics on your children. It backfires. It's easy to do. I catch myself doing it all the time. (“Daddy, can I have another snack before we go to Grandma's?” “No, your stomach will swell to the size of a beach ball and we'll have to roll you to the car, where we'll have to pop you to make sure you fit in your car seat.” Oops. Guilty.)

The problem is, for better or worse, your kids trust you. So if you tell them two conflicting things, they will probably believe the worst-case scenario of the two. Which is why when our son was bashing his shoulder to break down the front door, he still believed Mommy's “bloodsucker” statements, not Daddy's cool-down, easy-voice reassurances.

This is one I have to be careful with because I tend to be a lot like Calvin's dad from Calvin and Hobbes. Yeah, I make stuff up if I don't know the answers.

Which is exactly what I do with this column.

No wait, just forget I said that. I don't want to use scare tactics on you to keep you from reading this.

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.

Family Home Evening - Easter style

The makeshift "tomb" for our Family Home Evening lesson
about Easter and the resurrection. I know, I know. It isn't
much to look at, but it was a great teaching tool.

We have Family Home Evening almost every Monday night. To those of you who aren't LDS, that means we have a little lesson about the gospel or family improvement and than do a fun family activity. This has been encouraged by our church for a lot of years and there's good reason for it.

Since the important side of Easter often gets swallowed up by the commercial side of Easter like, I don't know, Easter candy by ravenous orphans, we thought it fit to spend a little time on the resurrection for our FHE lesson tonight. (Self criticism: probably should have done this before  the Easter bunny came with barrels of goodies.) We use a nursery manual as the basic groundwork for most of our lessons, and it works really well.

But tonight, as I was reading over the lesson before delivering it, a brilliant thought struck me: Why not recreate the tomb somehow? The necessary tools came to my head quickly once the thought blasted into my gray matter. Sizable cardboard box. Dusty exercise ball in garage. Photo of Jesus. Paper Towel. That is all.

So when I started to explain the resurrection to my kids, I could give them a visual experience much less forgettable than the standard primary presentation. The box was the tomb. (“Daddy, why is the box going to be a tomb?” “You'll see, just wait.” “But why Daddy?” *exasperated grunt*) The newly dusted ball was the large stone. I think you can guess about the photo, and the paper towel were the sheets they wrapped his body in before laying him in his (not) final resting place.

So I carefully explained how they dressed him in sheets, laying the paper towel over the picture of Christ before setting it in the “tomb.” Then I explained how they rolled the stone in front of the tomb to keep Christ's body from being desecrated. This is the fun part – the kids got to roll the stone into place over the tomb's mouth.

Then I told them after Christ lay dead in the tomb for three days, angels rolled away the stone. The kids got to be the angels, and happily pushed the “stone” off to the side. Then I explained how Mary came to find the tomb empty of all but the folded sheets they had wrapped around the Savior's body. My children were hugely attentive as I worked up to how Christ approached Mary and asked her why she was crying.

It was amazing to me to see how large even small attention spans can be when treating subject matter in unique ways. And I think my children ought to have a better understanding of Easter and the resurrection than they ever have before.

How do you teach Easter to your young children?

"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? 

A few thoughts on schooling and education

Today I read a post on a blog somewhere about a parent who was upset that their child was disciplined with a verbal warning by a teacher for taking the name of the Lord in vain. This parent was about to take the matter to the principal or superintendent or some such nonsense. Now, I don't care whether you agree that that is swearing or not, that teacher should have a little authority over her classroom.
Stay with me here. We send our children to schools to be taught. Children and teenagers, as a general rule, don't want to learn. They would rather goof off in back texting to friends, talking, or otherwise not paying attention. With me so far?

OK, now we take a teacher who desperately wants to teach these kids, but can't get anything through because they are busy talking, texting, and probably even taking the name of the Lord in vain. Now, imagine this teacher tells the kids to quiet down, put cell phones, iPads, and MP3 players away and heaven forbid, pay attention to the lesson.

Then, when the children are forced to do these things, they go home and whine to their parents about what their teachers made them do. The furious parent calls the principal, wanting justice for their child, who had such a hard time because of a private, verbal reprimand. The poor tender feelings of their young one must be considered. The principal, knowing he answers to such taxpayers in one form or another, reprimands the teacher for what? Disciplining her class in a way she sees fit.

Suddenly this teacher has no ability to take care of matters that prohibit, in her eyes, education. In a school. When I was in school, no student whined if a teacher told him not to swear. It was understood that you walked into that teacher's "house" when you walked into their class, complete with house rules. Whether or not you consider taking the Lord's name in vain, that teacher's ability to keep an orderly class, and therefore educate your children has diminished. That teacher, hands tied, is forced into mediocrity and a lack of discipline.

19th century teachers could cane a kid's bottom publicly for failure to spell "flog" correctly. Now overly concerned parents have steered teachers toward mediocrity by saying discipline should remain in the home, where discipline is in scant supply, I imagine. If you don't like what a teacher does, home school. You have full control over your children in such a situation. But if you want to send your children off to surrogate instructors, you better be prepared to allow those teachers a little influence over your child, including, yes, disciplining them when they do something the teacher finds offensive or someone else in the class could find offensive.

Is this the way to to shape our kids education? Or should teachers be allowed to punish children for doing things that even their parents might say are OK in their book?