Big Ugly Man Doll

It was very nice to see you at the “dancing with the SOL tests” event this evening. I’m sure my son and the rest of your class will do great on the exams, even if you’re not there to see them.

Good luck with the baby – looks like you’re due any day! While we were driving home from the event, I asked my son if he understood that you were going to be leaving the classroom soon.

“Oh, sure Daddy,” he said. “She’s pregnant – she’s going to have a baby. I’m pretty sure she’s having routine sonograms every day.”

“Oh, really? Why would she have one every day?”

“Well, you know, just to check on the fetal heart rate and stuff.”

So, I’d like to apologize in advance if he starts quizzing you in class about what kind of birth you’re planning. He has an unhealthy fixation with the Discovery Health channel and retains far more of it than might be good for a nine year old. That said, if you do have any questions, feel free to consider him a short, unlicensed obstetrician.

And good luck.

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Of all the myriad ways in which siblings will give each other shit, perhaps none is as timeworn and tested as the bid to de-legitimize one another by telling you that you’re adopted.  My sense is that the ‘stigma’ of adoption, if there still is one, is a holdover from the days of primogenitor, when the adopted child stood to inherit less (if anything) than their siblings.  In this more advanced age, adoption seems to have become so commonplace that the idea of any negative connotations seems laughable.  Just my opinion, I have no data.  (I would state that I have no experience, but I was raised by two wonderful and loving parents who to this day tell me I was not adopted.  In my heart, though, I am certain that I was the bastard love child of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe – what else could explain my charisma, talent, and good looks?)

Before we get to the rest of the story, a little background is required. 

• None of our children were adopted.  (By us.  We’re accepting bids, though.)
• Number One Son looks so much like me that it’s scary.
• The Reigning Queen of Pink was born with a rare genetic disorder called Incontinentia Pigmenti.  It’s a random genetic whoopsie, not life threatening, but making her nevertheless complicated; at 7 yrs old, her medical chart is twice the size of mine at 40, and she’s had more “procedures” than I’ve had.  She’s been diagnosed as “interesting” in our pediatrician’s office.  When they close the shop and sit around and talk, they talk about her.  (We know this.  They’ve called.)

Back to our story.  The Reigning Queen of Pink, who has the innate sense of primogenitor and privilege so common to the aristocracy, decided she should convince Number One Son that he’s adopted.  This does not actually take much effort, since she’s the youngest – he knows where she came from, but he can’t really remember where he came from.  At 9 yrs old, he’s not gullible so much as suggestible. 

“You were adopted!”

“No, YOU were adopted.” 

“No, I was the only one to come out of Mommy’s belly, you and (the Human Tape Recorder) were adopted!”

Mind you, this is all at top volume (any point worth making is worth making really loud), and right in front of me and SOBUMD.  Deciding I didn’t really want to (A) deal with Number One Son getting all spun up, nor (B) go into a lengthy explanation of adoption and/or their birth stories, I stole a classic line from Calvin and Hobbes, and announced that none of them were adopted. 

“Your brother was NOT adopted, we bought him from Sears.”

“Hey!”

(SOBUMD choked on her wine at this point.)  The Reigning Queen of Pink thought that this was the most wonderful thing she could think of, and laughed marvelously while repeating it. 

Not wanting to let her get too full of her pink self, I told her not to laugh, since we’d purchased HER at K-Mart as a Blue-light special.  Now they’re all laughing, and I hear the Human Tape Recorder muttering something in the next room.  “What was that, Nordstrom-Girl?” I yelled, thinking this would have been a logical progression:  Full price for the first one, Sears for the value discount once we saw what we’d gotten for the money, and finally the bargain hunting. 

Number One Daughter gives me The Look, as only an 11-yr-old can:  “I said I’ll bet you’re wishing you’d paid more for her now.” 

Oh, snap!  I mean, just… Damn.

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So about 3 years ago, the Greater DC Metro area received more than an inch of snow. One. Inch. Of snow. And schools throughout Northern Virginia closed for the emergency, for one day.

Now, with nearly 40 inches of snow, the schools have been closed for the entire week. Should they not – and I put this to you – close for at least the 36 days – one per inch – that they usually do? I’m leaning on this to be a good reason to move to year-round school. In fact, I’m going to start sending mine away to school when the locals won’t have them, just to get them out of my hair for a while. Because I love them. 

The togetherness is growing on all of us, and it turns out that’s not the only thing growing.  Since I haven’t shaved in a week, Number One Son walked up to me and said, “Daddy, you’re starting to look like William Shakespeare.  Do you want to look like William Shakespeare?”

“No,” I told him, “I just want to write like William Shakespeare.”  This answer seemed to satisfy him, and he wandered off.  While sharpening my razor on the strop, I realized the only “William Shakespeare” he’d ever seen was on a Dr. Who episode.   I could do worse, I guess.

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The kids have wonderfully different reactions to massive amounts of snowfall. The oldest daughter (the Human Tape Recorder) tends to view school closings with the same outlook Hermione Granger had in the Harry Potter series – “Oh no! Well, at least I’ll have more time to study.”

Needless to say, SOBUMD and I give each other “well it’s not from MY side of the family” looks. But we do it very quietly, so as not to break the magic. After all, the HTR will probably be the one supporting us in our old age, assuming we live long enough to be burden to our kids – which is, of course, my goal.

Number One Son, on the other hand, is enthralled by the idea that snow has closed the schools. This will allow him more time to play with his Bionicles, legos, and video flip camera thingy. The fact that this time away will be made up on what would have been holidays is irrelevant. He’s getting better about the concept of the future – I’m pretty sure he understands things like “tomorrow” at this point – but we’re still really dealing with two senses of time: Things that will affect him this week, and “huh?” He’s got a very firm grip on the past, though; he’s been telling us all morning about how many records this snowfall has broken. All. Morning. Long. Since he woke up at something early.

You’ll have noticed by now that neither of the above examples included anything like “going outside in the snow.” Inside studying, inside playing, and (in the case of their parents) inside finding the perfect ratio of Bailey’s Irish Cream to coffee (which, for the record, is about 1 shot per 6-oz cup). I can’t blame them at all; we have at least 22 inches already, maybe more, and we’re expecting another 6 to 10 before it stops. The branches of the tree in the front yard are touching the ground. (Mind you, the ground has been doing its best to rush up and meet them – some are already buried.) I don’t want to go out there either – drifts of snow in excess of three feet are why god invented booze.

Enter the Reigning Queen of Pink, Grand Duchess of Fluff, Lord High Protector of Barbies, and Baroness of the Hummingbirds. “I can’t wait to go outside in the SNOOOOOOOOOOW!” Oh god. The RQoP is not someone who can be let out to play in this snow on her own. What she’s making up for in attitude is what she’s lacking in altitude – we’re talking about 36 inches of snow and 47 inches of little girl. Not a lot of mobility there. We’ve considered the Pam trick – just put her in her snow outfit (yes, it’s pink; yes, it’s fabulous), hose her down with non-stick cooking spray, and toss her out to see how far she slides. She herself has suggested that we try this with a rope so that we can simply haul her back in when she stops. I’m at least certain that we’d be able to see the pink patches among the white. Perhaps we’ll go out in the morning, if it’s fine. Yeah, and we’ll go to the lighthouse, too.

So, today will be spent studying, playing, drinking, baking, bitching, and in one notable case, practicing our moves for rolling over and being found again in the hope of getting outside. Bring on the snow!  And the corkscrew.

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New from the Lego Bionicle Line – Toa Mata Hari! One of the rare female Bionicles, she’s had most of the others, and they’re all in love with her. You can play with her as she plays the guys off against one another! Isn’t she FABULOUS!
American Girl Doll – Sybil! With completely different outfits for Vicky, Peggy Lou, Mary Lucinda, Marcia Lynn, Vanessa Gail, Mike, Nancy Lou Ann, Ruthie, Clara, Helen, Marjorie, and The Blonde. They’d make a ton of money on this one, and it’s the LAST doll you have to buy!
Wii Screw! Put the kids to bed and enjoy the safest sex you’ll EVER have. Remember the plastic sheath you’re supposed to put over the remote? Right. Think Sin City SIMS and you’re close.	[Picture removed in the interest of taste and decency.]
Merrily We Pull Along Duck and Egg Scrambler! Little Johnny can finally help in the kitchen – just put a fresh egg on the duck’s wheels and let him “walk” it for an hour. When the music stops, the egg is ready for cooking – if you haven’t started drinking by then.
Build a Bear. No, yeah, a real goddamn bear. Run!
Shots and Ladders! Get drunk and naked with this new twist on the classic board game. Penalty Shot!
Pre-School Musical! Step into the past with Troysie, Gabby, and the gang as they cry, whine, repeat themselves over and over, and pull each other’s hair… Oh, wait, that’s the real one. Never mind.

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Music, they say, can soothe the savage beast, and nowhere is this more evident than in the crib and nursery.  The fussiest babies – and here I can speak with complete authority – can often be quieted through the calming magic of music.  Whether it’s an adult singing to them, a CD played softly, or a lullaby mobile gently spinning a tinkling, twinkling star, music is a nearly universal panacea for the pandemonium of parenthood. 

And if that shit doesn’t work, you can turn it up loud enough that you can’t hear the screaming monsters in the back seat.  As part of my ongoing public service announcements (which are part of my parole), I offer some advice on choosing music that (A) will keep your kids occupied for more than fifteen seconds and (B) won’t have you reaching for the black-market valium you picked up last week. 

The Wiggles.  The best part of any kids’ song is that the tune can be adapted in your head to mean something totally different, and the BEST kids’ music is written with the parent’s needs in mind.  The Wiggles, an entirely too wholesome act from Down Under, does this pretty well.  Such songs as Crunchy Munchy Honey Cakes and Hot Potato remind us that cooking is fun; Dingo Tango and Here Comes A Bear remind us that life can be very, very scary.  Then there are the ones that are obviously for grownups:  

• Let’s Have A Barbie On The Beach – Why yes, let’s! 
• The Captain’s Wavy Walk  (“The Captain, he’s been a-drinkin’, oh!”)
• We’re Playing A Trick On The Captain (While He’s Passed Out Drunk)
• We’re Dancing With Wags The Dog (‘nuff said)
• Wake Up Jeff (The Police Are Here!)

 And last but never least in any Wiggles countdown:  Hey There, Shaky Shaky!   (“Hey there! I wanna shake with you!”)  Let’s face it, this is a kid’s song based on a bad pickup line in a bar. 

 There are some more traditional songs that can be adapted to learning lessons as well.  Wheels on the Bus is a favorite:

 The Baby on the Bus says,
“Waa waa waa,”
“Waa waa waa,”
“Waa waa waa!,”
The Baby on the Bus says,
“Waa waa waa!”
And all the other parents on the Bus give its mommy dirty looks.

 And…

 The Driver on the Bus says,
“Move to the back,”
“Move to the back,”
“Move to the back!”
The Driver on the Bus says,
“Move to the back!”
And Rosa Parks says, “No.”

But one of the all-time best set of songs for kids and their parents came from a Disney show called Bear in the Big Blue House.  The songs have a kind of demented brilliance that’s hard to resist, even long after all my kids have quit watching the show and requesting the music in the car.  From the back seat, over the dulcet tones of the Sex Pistols or Barenaked Ladies, we’d hear the imperious request: “Excuse me, Boo Yang please!”  I’m still not sure if the Boo was for Bear or Big or Blue, but Yang meant songs, and Boo Yang it was. 

Songs like Take Time to Smell the Cheese (“Life is so much betta / when you smell the Feta”) and What’s That Smell? could get us miles without hearing them whine.  (Although “Smells like breakfast – hey, it’s you!” seemed pretty scary; did that 7-foot-tall bear just tell me I smelled like his breakfast?  Run!)  Then there are the Welcome to the Blue House, Good Morning, and Goodbye Songs, all delivered in an operatic boom that we still shout at the kids (GOOD MORNING, GOOD MORNING, GOOD MORNING TO EVERYONE!) even though they’re long past wanting to hear it.  The song Clean Up the House is great for reminding everyone to help clean (“Let’s take it upstairs!”  “Oh, geez, Dad, let’s not…”) and I still remind them to “Brush Brush Bree, Brush Brush Broo!” when going to bed.  Mostly out of sheer bloodyminded spite on my part.  I had to listen to those songs for hours.  They should suffer in turn.

My favorite Boo Yang, though, may have been Shadow’s Lullaby.  It’s a great song, lilting, lyrical, and haunting, that describes how safe you are sleeping tonight because the “Shadows are watching over this house.”   Yesssssssss, that’s the nice, supernatural stalker image I want running through my head as I try to fall asleep.  Can we sleep with all the lights on again, please, at least until I can get Dancing With Wags The Dog back in my head?

And since that was too creepy, we will close with the cautionary tales of They Might Be Giants, who did a kid’s album a few years ago.  From the people who brought us Triangle Man and Birdhouse In Your Soul, my kids are bopping to the strains of: 

• NO!  (which means, and we repeat a LOT in this house, no.  And that’s final.)
• I Am Not Your Broom (nor your maid, damn it.)
• Violin(ce) - and don’t think we won’t resort to it if you can’t behave! 
• Don’t Cross the Street (into oncoming traffic)

 At least from TMBG, we expect it’s going to be weird.  My favorite from the NO! album is Where Do They Make Balloons, and is it the same factory that makes condoms? 

 Music.  It’s not just for breakfast anymore.

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A new parent asked me the other day what they had to look forward to as their little darling grew up.  They’d heard of the “terrible twos” and all that, but what about the long view?  How are they when they’re 11, like the Human Tape Recorder, or 9, like Number One Son?  (They didn’t ask about the Reigning Queen of Pink, presumably because they can see that from where they’re standing.) 

I presented my answers with the usual caveat, to wit: there’s “9-yr-old boy” and then there’s Number One Son.   Remember, crazy means not having to sweat the details, such as clean underwear, monetary valuations, and most social graces.  That said, I can provide (and am happy to detail here as a public service) some details into what life is like living with kids aged 11, 9, and 7. 

If you don’t have kids but you’re thinking about it, and you’d like to see what it’s like, the Internet now makes it possible to simulate the, um, experience.   Just living with anyone, never mind the ADD types, under the age of 14, is to live in the bottom of a permanent, live-feed twitter well.  They’re walking twitter accounts!

First, sign up for a Twitter feed.  Second, subscribe to the tweets of every single English-speaking person you can find.  Third, for good measure, subscribe to the tweets of at least 5 percent of the non-English speaking world as well.  Trust me on this.

OK, got that all set up?  Now get a text-to-speech application, set it for automatic, and turn up the volume to just past where it’s comfortable.  Now break the knob off the volume control and throw that sucker away – like the lid to bottle of good Scotch, you won’t be needing THAT. 

Ho.  Ly.  Shit.   They talk all the time, about everything, and nothing, at FULL VOLUME.  I don’t know if it’s because they’re so deaf from listening to each other, or because they’re just trying to be heard over the din.   (There’s a reason they learned their ABCs the hard way.)

OK, if you haven’t lost your mind in the first 5 minutes of this exercise, it’s because we haven’t gotten to the hard part yet.  The hard part is that it is absolutely a matter of life and death that you pay attention to about 1.5 percent of everything you hear.  You will never know WHICH 1.5 percent it is, though, and there are very few cues  to tell you when one of the important bits is coming.  You’ll need to develop a mental low-level Twitter Tween filter to make sure you hear the word “bleeding” among the “im going to the bathroom oh my god I need to go the bathroom its my turn to play the wii I want the remote can I have another sandwich its my turn I’ll use the upstairs one shut up no you shut up ow now its my turn hey mom she hit him non I didn’t and hes bleeding no I’m not shut up oh my god I have to go the bathroom” montage of sound that assaults you every minute of every day. 

Catch all that?  Right.   As I typed this, I decided that there must be a more concise word for “mental Twitter Tween filter.”   And so there is.  The word is headache.

And in case you were thinking about being clever – forget it.  I saw you just now, you put the volume control in your pocket instead of throwing it away like I told you.  Do you know what happens these days when we try to remind them of their, um, ABCs?

BUMD:   “Would you PLEASE stop the incessant noise for one brief, shining, quiet moment?”
Reigning Queen of Pink:   “But Daddy, don’t you want your child laughing?”

OH!  She’s so good with her stiletto, I didn’t even see the blade – until it was stuck in my chest.   They say silence is golden.  Maybe I can convince her that silence is really a bright shade of pink.  In the meantime, where’d I put that aspirin?

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I’d like to take a moment of your time to discuss a brief gender gap. If you have multiple children of both genders, or if you teach kids under the age of, say, 18, you’re probably already aware of this difference between boys and girls. If you teach kids under the age of 8, you’re probably very, very aware.

SOBUMD has noticed and pointed out to me on any number of occasions that, on any given laundry day, she will see 5 pairs of underwear from the Human Tape Recorder, at least 7 from the Reigning Queen of Pink, and 1 from Number One Son. This solitary pair of boys underwear highlights the brief gap between genders – why won’t boys change their shorts more often?

In the interests of science, I’ve done some investigative research.

BUMD: Son, why don’t you change your shorts?
NOS: Heh heh heh. I don’t like to take them off because I’ve farted in them.
BUMD: So, the longer you wear them, the better they get?
NOS: Heh heh heh. Yessssssssssss!

So, one possible answer may lay in the marinade effect. Other reasons include an unwillingness to expose Johnny to the elements – it’s warm in there! – and simple fact that baths are icky when you’re nine, so why take one?

Youth plays a role. Most guys don’t pay much attention to the state of their underwear until that underwear stands a good chance of being noticed by non-family females. This would include the unlikely possibility of having sex with actual women, and the even more unlikely possibility of having sex with that same woman a second time. (Meaning on a different day, not just, you know, staying naked.) Boys with very clean underwear are hoping that someone will ask them to remove said briefs. Trust me on this; after a few beers “You should SEE how clean my shorts are” starts to sound like a decent opening line to most of us. (It’s not, by the way.)

So I understand the frustration, but I’m in no hurry for the Number One Son to be wanting to change his underwear twice daily. If you knowhuddimean.

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So there we were earlier this school year, driving – again – to school.  You wouldn’t think a lot could happen on a drive like this, because it’s not yet 8 in the morning and we’re only driving 5 blocks away.  You would be wrong. 

For those of you scoring at home, “not yet 8 in the morning” translates to “Number One Son has been up for at least two hours playing games and working himself into a really good crazy.  I mean, there’s “just woke up” crazy, which most of us go through to varying degrees, and there’s “ohmygodI’mlate” crazy, and we all know what that’s like.  What you may not be familiar with, however, is the “slam down whatever food I can find or open and play video games until everyone else wakes up” crazy, which really gets him chuffed into a solid gonzo some days.  An hour later, we’re up and giving him his meds.  In the face of a solid windmill-armed dervish, the chances those medications have of kicking in before he goes to school are pretty much the same odds the 3^rd Grade pet hamster has in a volcano – to wit, not much. 

But once in a while, he finds his coping mechanisms and they work.  For a change, it wasn’t Number One Son screaming arterial homicide out the car window for 5 straight blocks – he leveraged his skills in transference and it was the Reigning Queen of Pink doing the shouting.  In her defense, when she does it it’s not called shouting, it’s called “addressing her subjects.” 

It’s summer, the windows are open, and she sees her friends walking to school.  One of these friends is named, believe it or not, Jack.  Can you see this coming yet?

At the top of her royal lungs, head halfway out the open window, “HI JACK!!!  HI JACK!!!”

You know, we live in the shadow of the nation’s capitol.  People really do turn and look when they hear that.  Some of them are armed. 

We got through the school’s tightened security system and the Stop Sign of Death, and I let them out.  She was still talking about having seen Jack walking to school.  Number One Son, having successfully transferred the crazy this morning, looked at her as they were getting out of the car and, in true older brother fashion, said the one thing most calculated to infuriate her. 

“He didn’t hear you, you know.”

But baby, everyone else did!

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The hat that believed in Santa:

 
…and the rest of the collection:

(thanks to docstrange for the title inspiration)

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