Category: FAMILY

DIY

Posted on March 25, 2008 by wrekehavoc

you can pick your friends.

you can pick your nose.

but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.

–anonymous

maybe you can’t pick your friend’s nose, but you can hire people to pick the lice out of your kid’s head. in fact, you can outsource all sorts of parenting challenges, from toilet training to saying no. some of the things you can get someone else to do for you, quoting NY Magazine:

… TEACH HIM HOW TO RIDE A BIKE
… TAKE HIM FISHING
… TALK TO HIM
… IMPART GOOD BREEDING
… TEACH HIM THE BIRDS AND THE BEES
… GO ON COLLEGE TOURS
… DRIVE HIM EVERYWHERE

understand that i’m not completely innocent here. when BC was young, we had a hell of a time teaching her how to sleep, compounded by a never-ending ear infection, reflux, and an inability to gain weight, which meant she needed to be fed around the clock. i read books, i tried a zillion things. the girl wouldn’t sleep. it caused problems in our health, our family life, our work and everything else.

to make a long story short, when jools was beginning to exhibit serious sleep issues, i heard of a magical person who would help us teach hellboy how to sleep. it was a good thing, too, because BS and i could not agree how to handle the problem. i probably would have never let jools sleep anywere except in our bed or in my arms until he was 40; BS would have simply closed the door and walked off into the sunset, leaving the boy to scream. all. night. long.

(when you’re sleep-deprived, few ideas seem insane.)

this was nearly five years ago, but for $300, this person performed nothing short of a miracle. she taught us how to teach our son to sleep. her sleep solution, somewhere between my and BS’s ideas about sleep training, put us dazed parents on the same page, allowed us to continue dream feeds for a time (jools, too, was underweight), and get the boy to sleep through the night pretty rapidly. the dude is still the best sleeper in the house, and it’s all thanks to the extremely wonderful magical sleep person. if i ever see her again, i will hug her endlessly.

by teaching us, she saved my family.

i often wonder about why some people have children. i think kids are just sort of part of an expected tradition in our society: get married, get a house, have kids. but some people simply should not breed. maybe they simply aren’t ready; maybe they’ll never be ready; maybe other things are more important to them. get a cat; don’t make a baby. unlike any other relationship in your life, the parent-child bond cannot be broken. you can divorce your spouse, ignore your siblings, end friendships.

but your child will always be your child. not an accessory. a living person who requires your involvement and your guidance. it doesn’t matter whether both parents work inside or outside of the home. it’s not the quantity of the time you spend — it’s the quality. and while every single solitary moment does not need to be a Mr. Rogers moment, there are certain things that a parent ought to do. and there are certain things a parent should want to do.

i wonder why parents outsource certain activities. teaching your kid to ride a bike and taking them fishing (or shopping or whatever your recreational activity of choice) — these are fun times not to be missed. and what parent doesn’t want to be there to ask and/or field questions when touring a college? (you can bet your ass i am going to make sure i find out about the party situation on campus and be as involved as the kids will let me when the time comes.)

and simply talking to your child? discussing sex? teaching him/her how to be a decent person? hello??? this is why you’re here. to share your ideas about how to be a kind and contributing member of society. it’s one thing if you need guidance on how to do any of these things; as the cliché goes, kids don’t come with a manual. so seek out help if you need it with some of the thornier parts of parenthood. read books. talk to clergy or professionals. ask friends or relatives.

but when the actual doing needs to get done, do it yourself.

in my house

Posted on March 19, 2008 by wrekehavoc

dear ~~playdate~~ ~~person who seems to have mysteriously landed here~~ friend,

welcome to our home. we’re very glad you’re here! please enjoy your time with my child. let me tell you a little bit about what i expect, conduct-wise, when you’re in my house.

i am honestly delighted to provide you with a snack or lunch or whatever foodstuffs i might have on hand. please let me know whether you have any food allergies; i don’t have an epi-pen handy and would prefer the playdate not end in the ER.

also, regarding food, i have been teaching my eldest child that when she is a guest, she can indicate preference for food if her host gives her a specific choice; however, she is not to turn up her nose at things but try them unless they are pork or foods she knows she cannot have because she’s a red sea pedestrian. (i’m quite proud of the way she actually ate a sandwich on whole wheat bread the other day at a playdate and didn’t say boo about the bread. that’s one major leap for parentkind.)

how nice it is that your parents will make you a completely different meal if you don’t like what they’ve made for dinner. that rule, unfortunately, does not apply in my house. please, if you don’t like something, simply say no thank you. diatribes about how nasty a food is are not necessary. further, i’m sorry if you don’t like the brand of frozen pizza, peanut butter, or what have you. if it is unsuitable, i suggest you eat before you arrive.

you may not go upstairs and play in my room. that’s my room. i’m the mom, and i say so.

the vents come out of the floor. i don’t know why. that doesn’t mean you ought to pull them out. they actually are somewhat functional and probably aren’t appropriate for use as a child’s toy.

that pinball machine? it’s a vintage 1980s piece of our family history. my husband, BS, looked for three years until he found it and bought it. he carefully had it shipped first to the airport and then to our home, where it was put together. is it a little crazy to have a 20 year old pinball machine in your home? perhaps. but it is the same game we played when we were dating back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and it is probably among the top five of the most romantic gestures my BS has ever made for me. hence, while i don’t mind when you and my child play the game, i would appreciate it if you did not angrily bang the glass each and every time your turn ends.

do not act mean to my younger child. while he is a major bruiser and is known in these parts as hellboy, he is still nearly 5 years younger than you are and doesn’t take kindly to insults. as he is a boy of a certain age, he also may resort to physical expressions of his displeasure. and, if i know he has been provoked, i will of course attempt to stop him from such expressions, as i know he can probably hurt you a lot worse than you can him. and i will make a mental note.

despite the fact that casa de wreke usually looks like a bomb hit it, do not be fooled into thinking that the floor is a proper receptacle for trash.

i ~~love~~ loved the pretty tulips. the ones you just trampled. is it customary to step on garden flowers in your own yard? please do not step on them in mine.

i truly enjoyed your explanation of how you get your way in your own home. it was especially entertaining to hear how you have taught your sibling your technique. i would humbly suggest that when that child is a little older, he/she will respond as hellboy would: he/she will whack you. worse, he/she will use it on you. just so you know.

i know you think i’m a mean, hardass mother. please be aware that i expect the same behavior and deportment from my own children. i really do like you, you know. but just as i am teaching my own children how to behave when they are guests in others’ homes, i am expecting that your parents have been doing the same. alas, to paraphrase something my BS often reminds me about others, i cannot expect that everyone in the world has been raised by me. (more’s the pity.) so don’t be alarmed if i gently remind you of our home rules as the situation arises. i am treating you, in essence, as i treat my own.

yours,

wreke

p.s. you’re not sleeping over.

you never give me your money

Posted on March 18, 2008 by wrekehavoc

as my MIL always says, class shows — no matter how low.

unhappy with her ex-husband’s lawyer, heather mills decided to throw water all over fiona shackleton, former solicitor for paul mccartney during their less-than-collegial proceedings. this, after being granted about $48 million dollars after only four years of marriage… oh, and that figure doesn’t include money for their child beatrice’s education and protection, jewelry, and important works of art. and no, we don’t mean some candlesticks from the wedding — this means works by warhol, haring, john lennon, and julian schnabel. not too shabby.

the UK papers are having a field day with her latest ranting: it’s hard to pick which is better:

The former model’s face is all over today’s front pages, accompanied by unfavourable if funny headlines after she was awarded £24m in the couple’s acrimonious divorce. The Sun excels with “Mucca chucksa cuppa water over Macca’s lawyer Shacka“. The Mirror plumps for “Wet it be“.

all the laughter aside, what i find appalling about this case is that mills’ rants are so self-centered. it’s all about her. when she speaks of beatrice, apparently conceived immaculately, as she is always her child, she worries that the little girl will not be able to travel first-class like her dad does. i suspect sir paul won’t let beatrice languish — heather is fighting to have information about what paul will pay for bea’s care kept private — but one does wonder — if she’s concerned about stuff like that, what about all the acrimonious things that may end up as public record down the line? what happens when bea reads that stuff? what is she to think? and will mills poison the child against her father?

in every breakup, everyone shares some piece of the blame. macca i am sure has contributed to the breakdown of this union. but mills bizarre public behavior, ranting, and obnoxiousness generally makes one wonder whether she got what she deserved? she probably got more than she deserved. as a feminist, i am somewhat appalled by those who would stand up for her and say that she is a deserving partner in all of this. these are monies earned long before she entered the picture. what makes her entitled to them? i don’t begrudge the child a thing, but the mother?

ugh.

so sad, so sad. it’s just another day.

don't know much about history

Posted on March 14, 2008 by wrekehavoc

i have been quietly but officially branded as The Idiot Parent™ by BC.

i was trying to do six things at one time yesterday as i tried to help her with her math homework from afar. long story short, girlfriend (AKA einstein junior) suggested a way to solve a word problem, and i told her it was incorrect. fast forward to later in the evening, when she was finishing her work with BS. BS told her that her solution was actually correct, and i was wrong.

from here on in, BC only wants to do math homework with BS.

i should be happy about this: one less task (check.) truly, i do have the mathematical ability of a raccoon. my scholastic math experiences didn’t help matters. but over the years, i have built up my confidence, at least to the point that i think i’ve mastered things like long division. (do they teach that anymore?) but where i memorized my multiplication tables to multiplication rock as a child, BC is learning more about thinking about numbers in a way that i never did as a memorizing fiend.

i just don’t want to set a terrible example for her. while i find math about as interesting as watching grass grow, i know i have to put on a big show about how cool math is. (anyone have ideas as to how i do this convincingly, let me know.) and yes, i know math is important in the world; no preaching required. i just never found it interesting the way i found reading interesting.

and, in a related vein, girlfriend wept last night. she has to give a report on the sun. she worked on said poster and picked out five interesting facts about the sun all by herself. however, she is afraid the boys in her class will rip her apart. her sun facts apparently aren’t terribly impressive to anyone but herself. after giving her a mini-lecture about how she shouldn’t care what the boys think (boy, do i see this as something that will come up again and again in the future), and that she should only care about what she herself thinks about her work and what her teacher thinks about her work, i started to have a mini-reverie.

and i got pissed.

in this family, i make my kids do their own projects. (i passed third grade. i don’t need to pass it again.) i was surprised when i went to her parent/teacher conference last week and saw some of the other solar system posters, which clearly had serious adult contributions. what the hell? i want my kid to learn all by herself, and here she has to compete with projects completed by forty-plus-year-olds? i sure hope teachers see through this sort of thing, as it is unfair to compare her work, which clearly looks like the work of a third grader, with the work of a grownup.

what do parents think when they do their kids’ projects? do they think they are helping them? will they be walking into chemistry class later on in high school to help their child complete an experiment? joining them on job interviews? i don’t get it. and i hope my kid doesn’t get penalized down the road because she did her own work. why the hell do they need to start the competitiveness crap this early?

in short, grownups need to grow up.

let's go crazy!

Posted on March 11, 2008 by wrekehavoc

…because it is absolutely critical to buy your kid $250 converse sneakers.

guilty pleasure monday: the music from Hair

Posted on March 10, 2008 by wrekehavoc

yesterday, it was my birthday. i hung one more year on the line. i should be depressed; my life’s a mess. but i’m having a good time. – Paul Simon

okay, not too depressed, especially since it’s:

guilty pleasure monday!

anybody still with me out there?

cool. since i’m reflecting on my younger years, i thought i’d drop this heavy trip on you, you dig? groovy.

when i was a little kid, i used to listen to hair incessantly. and yes, i danced around the living room and the basement, just like this little kid is doing. i wanted to let my sun shine in, i wanted to let my freak flag fly, i wanted to understand what the hell these people were doing and whether their parents knew. (i was 4 when this came out, people. remember, i was a rather ~~messed-up~~ precocious child.)

a long time ago, i ranted about how much i hated the movie version of hair and how my parents let me run around the house singing a song with nasty, awful words i’ve declined to put in the blog because: a) i get enough weird search referrals, and b) if i did, one day, my kids — probably hellboy — will do a search to find all the naughty words on earth — and he’ll find them here in his mama’s blog? and need lots of therapy? thank you, no.

i don’t need to rewrite the tale; all i can say is that if someone threatened to barrage me with showtunes while i drove cross-country, i’d probably be ok with that if the show was hair.

(it’s my birthday. or at least it was. so indulge me, please.)

older woman

Posted on March 9, 2008 by wrekehavoc

the only reasons i didn’t smack the person who sent this to me are:

1) she’s in austin– my arms are too short;

2) can’t be mad at someone who remembers the bugaloos; and,

3) as she, my oldest friend in the whole world — since age 3 — is older than i am.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC0L7VXFvWY

happy birthday to me

Posted on March 9, 2008 by wrekehavoc

IF TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY…

March 9, 2008 — Your way with words will make it easy for you to get what you desire over the coming year but, having got it, you may then decide it was not what you wanted after all. Never mind. Life is not about finding one sure thing and staying with it forever. Each day should bring new challenges and delights.

(from the NY Post, so it MUST be true.)

the israelites

Posted on March 7, 2008 by wrekehavoc

this morning, BC and i were working on her hebrew homework. i’m stepping up my efforts a bit in israelite land, as i learned last week that BC has been actually memorizing everything rather than reading it. there’s a certain amount of intelligence in having a photographic memory, as she apparently does; but there’s also value in actually learning how to read it properly.

bizarrely enough, i did the exact thing when i was her age. i was terrified of my 3rd grade hebrew teacher, an excruciatingly thin orthodox lady with a scary flippy pageboy wig and a habit of sitting on the desk before us, chewing on her nails. i don’t really know why she scared me so much, but i spent the better part of that year either hiding out in the shul bathroom or feigning stomachaches and staying home to watch the channel 7 4:30 movie.

so when i actually “returned” to hebrew school full time, i had to catch up. i had learned a bit in 2nd grade, with the happy adventures of koopi kof (koopi the monkey) and the idiot children uri and riva, so i at least had a base. but i had to catch up. fortunately, i can memorize anything if you put it to music. (i memorized chemistry formulae in high school later, having put them to a billy joel tune. ah yes, i can sing it now: mole over liter is molarity; mole over kg is molality; p1v1=p2v2…yeah, i slayed in 10th grade.) once i started singing prayers, i knew it would all click.

it all worked fine until the cantor caught up to me when i started bat mitzvah lessons at 12. i couldn’t write my full hebrew name. he made me write it 100 times: sharon chava bat menashe v’etta riva. (i don’t actually have a hebrew keyboard, and most of the people who read this don’t read hebrew, anyway. so you’ll just have to imagine it 😉

yep. the jig was up.

but the beauty is that the cantor also understood that if he made a tape of my haftorah, i would not only sing along with it, but i would read it. and read it i did. (it was a weird story, too, one about which i always felt conflicted. at the time, i went along with the whole remembrance theme, but i was always a little disturbed by that story and remain so to this day.)

but i digress. per usual.

so while i am not too worried about BC learning hebrew in the long run, i feel like it’s my job to help her along here. i never force her to love going to hebrew school (though she is very fond of her teachers and especially of the principal, for whom she made a get well card this morning on her own volition); but i always tell her my rule: you have to understand your culture before you have any right to reject it.

(read: if i had to ~~suffer through~~ attend hebrew school, so should she. nyah nyah nyah. but seriously…)

i honestly don’t care if, one day after her bat mitzvah, she decides to become a zen buddhist. or an atheist. or whatever she wishes. but as long as she at least has the beginnings of understanding about her religion and a portion of her culture (she doesn’t just come from me, you know), i will feel a bit more satisfied. of course, i would love her to find some part of judaism to embrace, but once she is of an age where she can decide for herself, i don’t feel like i will be in a position to make her do it my way.

and i won’t.

life and how to live it

Posted on March 6, 2008 by wrekehavoc

today, BC and i watched a Diagnosis X where a healthy young long island guy suddenly experiences gastrointestinal issues and paralysis. finally, a doctor realizes he has guillan-barre which is an autoimmune illness not entirely unlike the ITP i had two years ago. his immunoglobulins were shot, like mine, so they start him on the magical IVIG, and he starts to improve and live a better life, although it takes him a year or two to re-learn how to walk. which he does. thank G-d.

of course, once i saw that the dude had an autoimmune problem, i started to get a little nervous. when they started him on immunotherapy, i started to tear up. sometimes, TV hits a little too close to home, and i feel so terrible watching people go through things like this. i remember all too well how scary it is when you’re body is going through a revolt and you feel helpless to stop it.

it’s like the flashback that never really leaves you.

enter BC, just as they’re hanging the guy’s IV bag. she sees me all teary.

BC: mama, you really shouldn’t watch these shows with me if they make you so sad.

me: honey, i’m ok. (sniff sniff) i just get a little sad watching someone go through that. you know, people die from this sort of thing. and he’s getting treated with the same stuff i get. i just hope he gets better.

BC: is this like what you have?

me: well, sorta. its a different problem, but it’s autoimmune, and its one of those things that just sneaks up on you and makes you sick and you never knew what happened.

BC: (with insistence) but you’re not going to die.

me: no, honey. i’m not.

cartoon network is looking better and better to me these days.