I can't make this stuff up

So after a 9-day cruise through the eastern Caribbean with my family, I am again reminded that the ability to suspend reality is alive and well among our children (mine at least). After five days of cruising, dancing, sporting, swimming, eating, et cetera, we disembarked in St. Thomas where we hopped an open-air bus, and rode for thirty minutes up steep hillsides with nary space for a passing iguana. At last we arrived at breathtaking Coki Beach, known for its incredible reefs ideal for snorkeling and scuba diving. We rented snorkels, masks and fins, and hit the reefs for the rest of the day, feeding dog biscuits to some of the most gorgeous scaled creatures we'd ever seen in the wild. Breaking for lunch, I sat beside my 5 year-old on a lounge chair, toes dug deep into the hot sand, when she asked, "Are we still on the cruise ship?"

Hocus Precocious

"Mommy, will these nibbles grow up to be boobs?" - spoken like a true-blue American-bred daughter (yikes!). Only four at the time when this gem was scribbled onto paper, my youngest daughter is filled with vision for her future as we generally spend hours each week pretending we're moms (still not clear who's doing the pretending), chatting on our cellphones, toting babies around, and making plans together. Her vision of motherhood and being a wife is at times hysterical, and sometimes so completely on-point that I convince myself that she really gets it. When she talks about her husband working late or I notice the way in which she so readily mirrors my facial expressions (eye-rolling mastered), I realize our kids really do reflect us. Anyway, not much of a blog for now, but it will have to do for a few days since I'm setting out for a short vacation. Stay tuned - I've got blogs in the hopper.

The Final Tuck-In

In my house, we have this thing called the final tuck-in. It is the result of many years of failed strategies for getting our kids to bed. Essentially, the final tuck-in is a work-around, buying time for our kids to delay bedtime without consequence. Oy vay. Anyway, final tuck-in works like a charm (most of the time). It goes something like this: Kids dress and groom for bed, parents read stories then head downstairs. Meanwhile, kids are entitled to quiet awake time in their rooms until said final tuck-in time arrives. At the appointed time, husband and wife exchange looks, shrug, wife sighs resulting in wife striding up the stairs, two at a time, to drop the hammer. Kids climb under covers and hugs and kisses are proffered. The best part for dad is that he always gets out of final tuck-in. No matter how tender and present are his bedside renderings, the kids always ask for mom. Again, audible sigh.

Television

I'm a TV kid, born before limiting television could earn you bragging rights. Still, I've always been willing to adapt to the new regime. Ten years ago as a fledgling parent, I nursed my first baby with abandon (in front of the television). As those days waned, I retained a routine which included NBC's Today Show. One day, my husband gently reminded me that the Today Show wasn't a news show per se. In fact, I realized that the Today Show provided nothing more than a video version of People Magazine. Say no more, I went cold turkey, eliminating any form of morning television believing it wasn't a suitable background noise for my kids, present or future. The only TV time that remained on the schedule for me arrived after 8 pm. When the kids go to bed, my husband and I join one-another on the couch for together time. Unfortunately, the networks aren't in cahoots because (in our opinion) TV sucks. Every night, we banish our children to their bedrooms in the event that the networks might deliver sixty watchable minutes (or even 30 for Heaven's sake). The kids don't always cooperate. They creep down again and again to glimpse our program, overtly coveting it. We know that we should expand our world to include our nine year-old (and maybe even our soon to be eight year-old) with suitable family prime-time programming. We are rigidly reticent to lose our precious adult time. Yet we both hear the clock ticking. Like it or not, our TV world will soon evolve to include our children.

Walking on Eggshells

How bizarre it is to feel as if you're walking on eggshells with regard to one of your children. One of my three is currently acting out in a way that needs to be curtailed. Step one, access severity of disturbing behavior. Step two, research and explore curtailment procedure. Step three, execute a livable plan for curtailment. Step four, hold your breath and walk on eggshells everyday until either the disturbing behavior is magically exiled or something more pressing takes center stage in you head.

Reading Cues

What is the deal with my children's complete inability to read the escalation of their parents' emotional cues? It's bedtime. The kids decide for the hundredth consecutive night that 7:25 p.m. is the perfect time for an "impromptu" dance party. Damn those built-in stereo speakers. We let it go, willing to wash a few more dishes while they exorcise their pre-sleep wiggles. Over the course of approximately sixty seconds, a fever-pitch is reached, break-dancing and full-on floor spins end with head-butts into furniture legs. Suddenly, the volume is too much to take. My husband interrupts for the second time, "Guys, time for bed." As the frenzy unleashes some of the most innovative dance moves of the night, it becomes clear that the kids didn't hear their father. He interrupts again, "Guys, that's it, upstairs now". Oh my God, they still don't hear him. He's abruptly loud and angry-sounding, but their faces glow with bliss and ignorance. When will my kids learn to read?

Bedtime Sage

"Mom, I always bees bad at Christmas time, and Santa still gives me presents." This is what I heard from my five year-old at bedtime tonight. What an absolutely perfect commentary on the breakdown of parental consistency and follow-through. It could have been the beginning of a 20/20 special documenting how parents threaten their children irresponsibly - wielding consequences on a whim, and exaggerating for the kind of self-derived amusement parents crave. Spelling out if/then scenarios is one thing, but if you don't have the stomach to deliver the final death blow, be prepared for defeat every time you step into the ring. Shaping kids behavior by dosing consequences with consistency and follow-through isn't radical or new. Hell, it's tried and true. Yet we all know how easily we get carried away, and how squeamish we can be when faced with actually taking television away for a week.

Baby Talk

Strolling outside with my pre-school ladybug, I was struck by something I said. "Oh my God, it's like sunscreen weather." Now forget my Valley Girl lapse for a minute. Instead, think about how focused I was in the moment. A short walk to the bus stop was now about whether or not my daughter needed the protection of sunscreen for the next twenty minutes. It happens a million times a day. The things parents say are forever one-step-beyond themselves - reflecting instead on the safety, entertainment, or enrichment of their offspring. At 8:30 this morning, I was almost rear-ended. Why you ask? I finally spotted the elusive black squirrel while in the company of my youngest child who was desperate to see one. As I applied my brakes and shouted, "Black squirrel, black squirrel. Look left", I was vindicated. All three kids caught a glimpse of a black squirrel playing with two grey squirrels.

Blog Job

I'm serious about this blog. For the first time in almost ten years when my first child was born, I am taking a genuine stab at something other than surrendering myself to the improvement of my home (and yes, cleaning toilets qualifies), or endeavoring to build genius material among my brood. Yet clearly I'm not cut out for this since just over two weeks into it, I find myself making pathetic apologies to my children for oversights. Last night, I promised to wash some clothes for my fashion plate. At bedtime, the clothes had indeed been washed, but I crawled into bed forgetting to dry them. By morning I remembered, and slunk downstairs to turn on the dryer. When my daughter was getting dressed and asked after her jeans, I hemmed and hawed, all the while apologizing that they were still tumbling. I suggested she wear her PJ bottoms until just before we leave for school. At the appointed hour, she extracted her jeans from the dryer, only to find that they were uncomfortably damp. I was annoyed, but I actually felt bad about the whole event. As she whined well past the time we usually leave, I thought a tardy would quickly turn into a "sick" day. She rallied, we left, and her jeans were dry by nine. How can it be that the addition of a thirty minute-a-day blog can wreak havoc for a family of five? And what does it say about the matriarch and her habits, schedules and accomplishments?