Pumpkin Town Mishaps

This weekend, my mom and I took the kids to Pumpkin Town, the most brilliant fall-themed marketing ploy this side of the Mississippi. What started as a pumpkin patch a few years ago has turned into a mini carnival, complete with ponies, wagon rides, climbable bales of hay, toddler-sized John Deere tractors with pedals, and - the main attraction, ironically the only one not even remotely related to anything stereotypically "fallish" - an oversized inflatable slide, a la Jupiter Jump.

Last year when John and I took the kids to Pumpkin Town, the slide experience (now, this is going to be a big shock, so brace yourself) was a real fiasco. Tickets for the slide purchased three scrambly, giggly climbs up the huge cloth balloon, and three correspondingly squealy, ecstatic, hair-mussing, whip-lashing trips down. However, the creators of this system made several assumptions when conceptualizing these rules: first, they assumed all kids would be appropriately intimidated by the ticket-taking authority figure; second, they assumed all kids would find three trips down the slide sufficiently thrilling for one fall season; third, they assumed all kids had parents who would be physically capable of catching the ones to whom the first two assumptions may not have applied. They weren't counting on Quinn's uncanny knack for being simultaneously incapable of climbing up the steep ramp without stumbling and yet also somehow capable of eluding the grasp of his teeth-clenchingly humiliated parents every single time he tumbled down three, four, five times more than his ticket had authorized him to do. Driving home after that experience last year, we told ourselves and the kids that we wouldn't be returning to Pumpkin Town in 2005. Quinn responded with as much intense rage and hatred as you would expect if we'd just sentenced him to be de-toenailed. Oh, the shrieks. Oh, the loss of a certain pre-schooler's dinner when a certain pre-schooler chose to stand in the driveway and continue to rage against the Pumpkin Town authority machine rather than come into the house with the rest of us.

Pumpkin Town became something of a disciplinary legend after that -- a point of reference, if you will. For the rest of the season, every time we drove by, Quinn would pipe up from the back seat, "we can't go back this year because I misbehaved?" I'd always matter-of-factly agree, and then he'd say, "but I LIKE the slide! Next time I can only have three turns?" This was the one punishment that the kids seemed to take seriously, and the one John and I actually managed to stick to consistently; we didn't go back last year.

This year the inflatable slide tickets purchased FIVE trips down, and my mom and I started warning the kids about it as soon as we had the tickets in hand. Pumpkin Town's popularity has clearly skyrocketed in the past year, because there was a long line of other slide enthusiasts ahead of us. The kids kept wanting to run off and hijack the toddlers' play areas rather than wait, but other than a few near escapes, we managed to keep things under control, all the while talking about how much fun those FIVE trips down the slide would be, and reminding them that the ticket-taker made the rules, and the rules said everybody could go down the slide FIVE times before they had to - without screaming or physically accosting anyone - GET OFF THE SLIDE. I counted out loud every single time Quinn came down: Four more! Okay, three more! Only two more! This is your last one, Quinn! Then I bolted to the exit opening and prepared to be humiliated and scramble up the apparatus to grab him before he got away from me again. He saw me positioning myself, smiled, and made a move to bolt back up, then heard my mom threaten not to let him ride a pony. Problem solved.

This year, the worst thing that happened in the car on the way home was that after I told the kids not to touch their faces or mouths until we'd had a chance to wash their hands, Quinn, clearly itching for some form of rebellion, held his dirty pony-petting hands up to his wide open mouth, tongue extended as far out as physically possible, index finger placed threateningly above it, looking at me mischievously from his carseat through the rear-view mirror. "No!" I screamed at him, "Quinn, you were petting those animals, there could be manure on your hands, you could get sick!" His still-extended lizard-like tongue s-l-o-w-l-y moved its way closer and closer to the contaminated finger, finally making contact at the base, then disgustingly licking aaalllll the way up to the tip. Bryce couldn't contain his sheer delight at Quinn's never-ending ability to find new ways to explode The System*. The back seat roared with their insane laughter. My mom and I used their distraction as a chance to hide our own silent, teary laughter, and then I pulled myself together and started my lecture on hygiene and obedience, which eventually led to my use of the phrase "poop residue," wherein I discovered that my sons ARE Beavis and Butthead, huh huh she said 'poop.'

*Thank you, Emily. I'm stealing your phrase. It's too good.

Scary Reading

The twenty plus minute drive to Bryce's school each morning carries us through a wide slice of life. Both interesting and dull views of residential, retail, commercial, urban, suburban, rail yards, and oil refineries can all be seen on our route. Our drive begins on city streets then changes to major highways, then back on to city streets to our final destination.

As Bryce's reading skills improve (at an unbelievable pace) he is quick to point out words he recognizes and inquires about those he doesn't on the abundance of signage along our trip each day.

Today, as we were cruising along the highway, a big long haul truck pulls along side, slowly going past us in the next lane. Bryce doesn't like it when cars and truck pass us and is quick to tell me I am driving too slow, the truck will beat us, and he will be late for school (the critique of my driving is something he must have picked up from Kristen). As I explain that I can't go any faster than I am, and that we will not be late for school, he asks "What does that spell on the side of the truck?"

I assumed he was referring to the name of the trucking company that was in big letters across the trailer. "Arrow Trucking" I reply.

"NO! That's not what it spells!" I didn't know he was referring to something that was written on the side of the truck's trailer, written by a finger that wiped away the grime and dirt, spelling out a request by the truck's driver to help him ease his loneliness on his cross country journey.

"Someone wrote on the truck, dad. What does it spell?"

Since the writing on the side of the trailer was directly beside Bryce, and my eyes were correctly positioned looking ahead, I asked him to say the letters out loud.

Bryce: "S - H - O - W"

Me: "Show. S H O W spells show." Looming ahead was what can often be a hectic and dangerous three highway interchange where on ramps, off ramps, and lane merging collide in bizarre helter skelter fashion that takes every ounce of concentration to successfully navigate.

Bryce: "T - I - T - S. What does that spell, dad? T makes the te sound. te .. te .. ti .."

Me: "Uh, hold on buddy, let me slow down so I can see the letters."

I quickly slowed down, letting the truck zip past us. Thinking quickly (but not quickly enough to get into the correct lane that would take us in the right direction of the school meaning that letting the truck beat us did cause us to be late for school) "Oh, T - H - I - S, that spells 'this'. Someone wrote 'show this' on the side of the truck. Isn't that funny? Ha-ha. ha. ha. ahem"

Irresponsibility, Shmirresponsibility

It's been quiet for 20 minutes. Both kids are alive, awake, and in the house. John and I both have complete movement of all of our limbs and bodily functions, so we aren't tied up with kitchen twine or phone cords while they prepare us for sacrifice. Nobody has been threatened or bribed or scared into submission. What has led to this unprecedented event?

Scissors. Really sharp, dangerous scissors. And old magazines. "Here you go, kids! Let us know if there's any blood, okay? Have fun!"

This is unbelievable.

Happy Suckoween!

Today was Bryce's class halloween party, an event which further highlighted the supreme level of suckitude that John and I bring to parenting our children. How did we suck? Let me count the ways:

Suck-havior #1: The party was scheduled from 1:45 to 2:30 p.m., which meant that Quinn, in a pre-school 20 minutes away that also lets out at 2:30 p.m., would have to be picked up early. What would non-sucky parents do? First, they would have a rational conversation about this dilemma, and would come to the conclusion that would yield the least amount of trauma for everyone involved. They would not half-heartedly and while simultaneously answering the phone, glancing over someone's homework, and wondering if The Office was going to be a re-run, come to the realization that a conversation was necessary and proceed to blurt out the first vague solution that came to mind (but this is precisely what John and I did). Next, they would pick up the younger child, intelligently, craftily even - because non-sucky parents are usually crafty, and we are not - after lunch but before class nap time. This way, the non-sucky parents' child would not be forced awake out of a deep sleep before being dragged across town to his brother's class party. That child, the one that belongs to the non-sucky parents - he sure is lucky. Quinn really wants to meet that kid, and trade lives with him.

Suck-havior #2: After half-consciously forming our completely off the cuff, non-thought-through decision that John would simply - it would be so simple! - pick Quinn up early and come straight to Bryce's school, there was The Question Of The Costume: should we try to pack the bulky bendy plastic turtle shell and crackly thin mask and stretchy pants and fake muscles into Bryce's tiny little school backpack? Because we sure as hell couldn't, I don't know, SEND THE COSTUME WITH HIM IN A DIFFERENT BAG, could we? No, that is what non-sucky parents would do. What WE did was say, hey, John could just bring the costume with him, along with the groggy and volatile three-year-old! PERFECT. When I got to Bryce's school from work, I couldn't find him. Another mom approached me: "Bryce was crying because he didn't have his costume, so one of the teachers took him up to the library to use one of the school costumes." This paragraph is over, because the point has been made. Thank you, other mom. Thank you, teacher. Thank you, most of all, Bryce's tears over being the only one without a costume and with stupid, late parents. You completed my paragraph for me. Which really, in and of itself, proves some profound level of suckitude, doesn't it? That's great.

Suck-havior #3: Did we bring a costume for Quinn? No we did not. In this case I'm not sure it would have mattered, though, since he was pretty focused on being blatantly miserable and defiant, what with being torn violently from the arms of heavenly, blissful sleep and all. Still, all of the other parents there with younger siblings of Bryce's classmates had had the foresight to bring costumes for the younger ones. Boring old un-costumed Quinn was walking around with a scowl on his face, and a plastic sword in his hand - I would have been worried about that part if he hadn't been half-asleep at the time.

Suck-havior #4: Once Bryce donned his real costume and asked 72 times why we'd been so late (with wide, hurt eyes, since all the other guilt-inducing factors weren't enough), I tried to help him with some of the halloween-centered crafts and activities that the class parents had painstakingly created. I also tried to make up for our suck-haviors by involving Quinn.

Me: Bryce, do you want to add gum drops or M&Ms to your cupcake?

Bryce: Yeah! Both!

Quinn: I DON'T LIKE CANDY.

Me: I know, Quinn. You don't have to eat it, but if you want to decorate a cupcake, you can.

Quinn: I WANT TO SIT DOWN.

Me: Here's a chair. Let me help you.

Quinn: I'M HUNGRY.

Me: Okay, let's go find a snack.

Bryce: Speaking about being hungry, I really need a drink.

Me: There's some water over there--

Quinn: I WANT TO SIT DOWN!

Me: Okay! Come on, let's go get a snack and find a chair next to the food. Here are some chips. You like chips! Do you want some?

Quinn: ARE THERE BEANS TOO?

Me: Sigh. No. There aren't any beans. There are chips and there is dip. There are graham crackers and cookies and candy. I know you don't like the sugary stuff. Would you like some chips?

Bryce (from across room): I'm thirsty!! I need a drink! MOM? Mom! I'm thirsty! Remember?

Me: Quinn, hold on. Bryce, here. I'm physically handing you this water even though it was right where you could see it. Are you good now?

Bryce: Can't talk. I'm making my cupcake.

Me: Sigh.

Quinn: IWANTTOSITDOWN!

Me: Here's a chair for you, right next to the chips.

Quinn: I WANT SOME BEANS NOW!

Me: Quinn, there aren't. any. beans.

Quinn (throwing chips): NOOOOOOOOO! I WANT SOME BEANS! RRRIIIGGHTT NNOOWW!!

I will wail and gnash my teeth, for I am fatigued and beanless.

Me: Hey, John?

John (snapping pictures of the class, pretending not to know us): Yeah?

Me (holding two plates and Quinn, precariously perched to keep him from swatting any more food off of said plates): I. Need. Some. Help. Here.

John: Quinn, what is it?

Quinn: I WANT SOME BEANS!

John (confused): Wha...?

Me: He's throwing a fit about everything. He's obsessed with beans. There are no damned beans. But he won't eat the chips without beans, apparently. Oh, and he's hungry and he wants to sit down. Except that he's not. Sitting down. He's standing and screaming about beans.

John (backing away slowly, hoping I won't notice): I think I hear someone calling my name. Yep. Yeah, I do. It's one of the teachers, uh, wanting a picture of something... I'll be back. Sometime. Maybe.

Who signed me up for the suck parents? Thank God I have this chocolate.

Brew Ha Ha

One of these always looks mighty good near the end of a day of chasing the white dress around.



MGD would not be my first choice (actually it's not even on the list, but if was the only thing available, hell yes) but rather something with a little more character. In fact, I think I'm going to make a stop later today and see what autumn flavored brews are out there. Help me out, do you have a favorite fall beer?

Warp Speed

During the drive to Oktoberfest the other day, Quinn started kicking John's seat and demanding something between crunches of whatever crackers or chips he had probably stored in his carseat for just such occasions. This is completely normal behavior for him, and so John and I continued our conversation , raising our own volume to drown out his, you know, like healthy families around the world do. Always on his quest to perfect the art of Breaking Our Spirits, though, Quinn pulled out the big guns and started pressing every button and pulling every lever he could reach, because he'd be damned if we were going to ignore him and not go careening off the road to our deaths as a result. (I can only assume he believes the door and window locks are parental eject buttons or remote backseat automotive explosive devices.) Luckily, for once, we had anticipated this move and had activated the child locks on all the doors and windows rendering his furious pressing and banging beautifully obsolete - but this only served to feed his (now humorous) rage, and so despite our best efforts to pretend we were on a leisurely drive to a book club meeting or some other placid gathering, we were forced to find out what he wanted.

He was yelling, "I want you to get my picture!" and pointing at the floor board of the car, the area behind my seat, located in the exact spot that would require the person sitting in the passenger front seat to be double jointed if they'd have any chance of reaching it. I'm not double jointed, but I am highly motivated to STOP THE MADNESS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, so I performed a minor miracle involving the use of the surrounding debris in the floor of the car as primitive scraping tools, and I retrieved the picture Quinn wanted so desperately. It was a piece of purple construction paper with his name written in a teacher's handwriting across the bottom. It appeared to be an attempt at a collage made out of magazine clippings. There were four images: George Clooney, Amanda Peet, a random six- to nine-month-old Caucasian baby boy, and another movie / TV actress that looked a lot like Amanda Peet, but wasn't.

"What the HELL is this?! This is Quinn's? Did you see this? This is what they're doing in school? Cutting out celebrity photos? This is a church pre-school! This is what we're paying them to do? 'Oh, no, let's not talk about numbers or letters because that's TOO HARD! Let's cut out pictures of these PRETTY FAMOUS PEOPLE! We all want to look just like them. Quinn, you've never seen these people before because your ugly mom doesn't want you to know what the REST of the world looks like!'" I sputtered as I shoved the "art work" in John's face, thus eliminating his view of the road and endangering all of our lives in the process. John did what anyone would do in a similar situation and after he re-gained control of the car, said, "now. What?" in a real ix-nay on the eaction-ray so the id-kay doesn't ink-thay that he id-day something ong-wray tone. I held the collage up, this time out to his side to increase the chance that we would all make it to our destination with our blood and bones still on the correct sides of our muscular tissue, and he glanced over at it. "Well," he said, loudly enough for Quinn to hear and begin to offset the My Mom Is Warping Me effect with that of At Least My Dad Is Still Sane, "Quinn has been talking about FAMILIES at school. Right, Quinn? Is this supposed to be a collage about FAMILIES?"

Still looking at me wide-eyed and suspicious, and maybe wondering if he was about to be in trouble for something, Quinn nodded slowly, then started to smile, though still cautiously: "Yeah, it's a family. There's the mom, the dad, the baby, and the sister."

Shut up. Just shut up, all of you. And yeah, I know "where the kids get it," so nobody needs to bring it up. Just be grateful John is the primary caregiver. And that our insurance covers therapy.

In November I won't be able to get away with this weekend summary nonsense.*

Sparky meets his match.
At Bryce's soccer game on Saturday, I watched him finally "get" the game. After weeks of somewhat half-hearted and mildly confused participation on the outskirts of the group, he confidently ran for the ball and made purposeful kicks toward - and this is amazing - the right goal. During a break, his coach asked the team if anyone would be willing to play for the opposing team, whose membership had dwindled down to three players. Bryce immediately raised his hand to volunteer. I was concerned, thinking he'd be really confused on the field: "Bryce, do you know what that means? You'll be trying to get the ball in the OTHER goal this time. " He nodded his head profusely, with a subtle undercurrent of DUH, MAN in his little eyebrow-arching expression and said, "yeah, mom. I know." The coach for the other team apparently spent the morning in a competition with himself over how much coffee he could consume, because the amount of near-psychotic energy he exuded caused Bryce to step back and look concerned. Bryce. Encountered too much energy. (Let's all pause and ponder the near impossibility of that scenario.)

Energetic Coach: HEY BUDDY HIGH FIVE! HIGH! FIVE! THANKS FOR HELPINGUSOUT! WOOOOOO!!! HIGH FIVE!

Bryce (meek, for the first time ever): Yeah.

Energetic Coach: YOU NEED A NICKNAME DO YOU HAVE A NICKNAME? EVERYONE GETS A NICKNAME, WHAT IS YOUR NICKNAME? DO YOU HAVE ONE? WOOOOOOOOO!! HIGH FIVE!

Bryce (concerned, looking around for me): Um. My dad? Used to call me. Sparky? When I was a baby.

Energetic Coach: SPARKY!? ALRRRIIIIGGGHHTTT!! SPARKY! HIGH FIVE, SPARKY! HIGH! FIVE!! SSPPAARRKKAAYY!!

I think Energetic Coach understands high needs kids, though, because Bryce ran faster and was more focused on actually running in the right direction than I've ever seen him on the soccer field. Energetic Coach kept screaming GGOOO! SPARKKKY! at the top of his insane lungs, so maybe that's the key to Bryce's cooperation: not just volume, but vein-bulging, eye-popping, vocal chord-shredding, make-everyone-think-you're-losing-it V-O-L-U-M-E.

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God help us if he goes into politics.
Time is a big problem for us these days. This weekend I had to multi-task by talking to my dad on the phone while driving the kids around on various errands. During one such mobile conversation, I handed the phone to Bryce and he proceeded to talk about the most important thing in his life: his most recently acquired Happy Meal toy from McDonald's, a Hot Wheels car. After we hung up, I decided to take hold of this "teaching moment" (note to self: when these thoughts enter your head, just shove them out, you idiot): "Bryce, do you know why McDonald's gives happy meal toys with their food?"

"Yeah, because they want kids to have toys!"

"No. They give the toys away to make the kids interested, so their parents will BUY THE FOOD and spend their money."

"That's not true."

"Yes it is. McDonald's has to make money. Parents have money. Parents want to make their kids happy. McDonald's shows commercials on TV that make kids think they'll be happy if they have a new toy. The parents agree to take their kids to get a happy meal toy, and then they pay money for the food, so McDonald's gets their money, and the kids get their toys."

"Why do they do that? Why do they just want money? Are they just SELFISH?"

"Hmm. Yeah. I mean, no. Yeah. I mean, not technically. Blah blah capitalism blah blah Western civilization blah blah why did I bring this up?"

"So every single place we go WANTS MONEY?"

"Uh. Yes."

"GREAT! The DONUT STORE too?!"

"Yes, the donut store, too."

"Well, wait. I have an idea, mom. I think McDonald's wants to make money so that they can put more into their McDonald's stores! So they can buy more happy meal toys and food."

"Well, no that's not what I -- uh. Hm. Actually. You're... sort of. Right. Crap!"

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Oktoberfest 2006: "Whinefest" would be more accurate.
Sunday morning started like this: I woke at 6:15 a.m. to Quinn in my face saying, "I have a surprise in my blanket for you. It's pumpkin bread!" With this kid, I never know, so I bolted out of bed to check for stray food chunks in my bedroom. When I didn't find any, I put in a movie and poured some cereal, and performed an experiment - leaving him unattended while I went back to bed (after explaining that he needed to be very quiet and still, and basically not at all like himself). Twenty minutes later, after forcing myself to doze through what I suspected were sounds of the refrigerator door opening, I heard Bryce's tattletale sing-songy tone of voice at the bedroom door: "MO-OM! Quinn got out the LEFT-overs!!" I bolted up again, and found the refrigerator door open, a trail of cold noodles leading to the breakfast table, where Quinn had dumped a styrofoam box of restaurant food upside down in an effort to get to the delectable finger food he really wanted for breakfast: congealed macaroni and cheese.

Sunday continued like this: We complicated our lives by taking both kids grocery shopping, then to the gym, and finally, running on no naps or even attempts at naps, to Oktoberfest. But, but, but! Where was the chicken? Where was the beermeister? When would the kids be able to ride the rides? When would Kristen's ears bleed from the whining? Why were they out of potato pancakes when that's the ONE FOOD ITEM of which all family members are willing to partake? And why wouldn't Kristen do the chicken dance, what is wrong with her, does she have pride or something, and if so, does she not realize she forfeited that when she a.) got braces, b.) walked out in public with the shriekers, c.) came to Oktoberfest? And again, WHAT ABOUT THE RIDES ALREADY? WHEN CAN WE RIDE THE RIDES? WE HATE THIS BORING ART! IT IS BORING! WHY DO ADULTS HAVE TO LOOK AT BORING, BORING ART ANYWAY? RIDES! RIIIIIDDESSSS!!! WE HATE OKTOBERFEST, AAAA AAAA AAA!

Quinn stages a protest about the lack of seating, but can't convince Bryce to sit on the beer- and bratwurst-encrusted concrete.



First, no potato pancakes. Now, no dancing chicken. Why are we here? I hate this place.


See any above reference to rides, whining, or hatred of Oktoberfest.

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*We're going to try to post daily during the month of November for National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo. If we fail, we figure it's just one tiny addition to a huge, huge list. This means the following:

1.) Since I can barely manage to post three times a week these days, John will be forced to tell you about what he does all day long. Haven't you been wondering? I know I have.
2.) My posts may be a lot shorter. And full of tripe and filler, of course. (More than usual.)
3.) If such a thing is possible, my/our publishing standards are about to be lowered significantly.
4.) I might not be sleeping much.
5.) We've officially taken on too many commitments. We are very, very stupid.

Over-training

I just watched the Huggies commercial with the adorable happy baby wearing one red sock and giggling, crawling over to her mother, her clean, slender, smiling mother sitting on a vacuumed carpet in a well-lit, nicely furnished room. Commercials like this just make me feel like a frustrated and depressed failure. This wasn't the case when Bryce was a baby. When Bryce was a baby, all I ever thought about was what a miracle his every molecule, breath, movement was. I had genuine appreciation for every stage, every phase, every hair on his sweet-smelling head; as a result, I felt a subtle but compelling connection to parents of babies and children (even fake ones on Huggies commercials). Bryce was not an easy baby, don't get me wrong. Still, I never ceased to be amazed by his presence. Quinn's babyhood was a little different. There was more guilt, more fatigue, more frustration. Most of this was, ironically, related to issues stemming from Bryce's toddler behaviors and, well, Bryce being Bryce - but it affected, much to my never-ending maternal guilt, my experience of Quinn's babyhood.

I remember a fear I had after Bryce was born, that some day I might reach a point where I couldn't easily grasp the feeling I had throughout his early days, that subtle presence of some new connection I felt with the universe, the essence all around that told me daily about the mystery and deep miracle that is life. I was determined not to lose hold of this, but I have, slowly but surely, since we've moved from having one baby-toddler-kid to having two. I've lost it, maybe not completely, but I lose it for hours, days, sometimes weeks at a time. The peaceful quiet murmurs of awe have turned into chaotic, distracting screams, and I've been too weak to stay focused. The kinship I felt with other families or parents has given way to tempations to size myself up against them, or to point to them as more evidence for my sorry lot, for the immense challenges those early peaceful murmurs of mystery never warned me about. A 30-second diaper spot depicting a baby crawling across a clean carpet to a calm, happy mother just reminds me of all the times I haven't sat on the floor with my kids to laugh with them - for many reasons, one of which is that the floors in our house are covered with ground-up goldfish, abandoned toaster waffles, mismatched shoes, sharp toy pieces, I could go on; another of which is that any time that would be appropriate "floor play time" is typically spent addressing some or other major issue around here, including the fact that these days, Quinn is happy for 10 minutes out of each hour and spends the remaining 50 minutes whining, yelling, crying, maybe hitting, and also including the fact that we're currently in the process of re-evaluating Hannah's entire school and living situation in the recognition that neither we nor her current school are meeting her immense and enigmatic needs.

I realize it's just a commercial, and that the Huggies marketing department created it to be an idealistic scene, one that probably doesn't exist in any home anywhere. But the point is, at one time I could watch something like that without wanting to throw a heavy object across the room and shatter the TV screen. And that seems, well, a little off.

There are so many areas in my life where I feel like I put forth unusual amounts of effort and energy, in some assumed attempt to "succeed" or "improve" something about myself or my surroundings, only to find out that my efforts were all wrong, they weren't good enough somehow because HAHA! you're still failing! I was complaining about one minor example of this to the personal trainer at the gym this week. (To recap: I pay him a lot of money, and in turn he tortures me, and then I get to ask his advice on how to do a better job at being tortured.) As usual, my progress, while obvious and evident in areas of strength and balance, is not good enough for my perfectionist self, and I wondered aloud what it would take to get the results I want, results that I know are realistic and not at all out of the question. "I'm in this gym every single day! When I'm not working with you, I'm on a treadmill for 45 minutes to an hour. I write down everything I eat. I've increased my protein, I've increased my water, I've virtually eliminated caffeine, I make sure I'm getting the right number of calories, that I eat enough of the various foods I'm 'supposed' to eat. I've been doing this for several weeks."

"Wait. You're here every day?"

"Yes!"

"You're over-training! You can't tear down your muscles and not give them a chance to repair before coming back in here and tearing them down again. Your body just won't make any progress at all. You'll get stronger - slowly, and you'll lose fat - slowly, but you'll have less energy, you'll be sore, and you won't lose much more fat or much weight at all because you're not allowing yourself any recovery time."

"Uh. Hm. Heh. So, basically you're telling me I've been working too hard."

"Yes."

Working too hard. Working TOO hard! What is this craziness? Working too hard? I've been mulling it over ever since. (And today, in lieu of the gym, I'm writing this post.) This is the problem I see in our household right now. We're constantly torn down with something - Bryce's quirks, Quinn's challenges, Hannah's setbacks, our conflicting family schedules, ridiculous demands on our time and energy - and there's never any recovery time around here. I can't remember the last time we just relaxed or "hung out" - with or without the kids. We just don't do that. There is always something to do, always some big list of things we're behind on, always another interruption. I think I've lost my grasp on the ability to watch a diaper commercial without vomiting in disgust and resentment because I'm holding onto so many other things now, and I feel like there's not enough of my grasp to go around. We're only holding steady, rather than progressing. We survive, but we aren't doing much more than that. To get to a point where there's more than just survival or status quo here, we need recovery.

The problem is, it's a lot more complicated than just cutting out a few trips to the gym. And so, I determine once again that there's no place I can loosen my grip, and I guarantee continued dissatisfaction. Yeah, like I said: it's a problem.

You find the connection.

My Headache Philosophy Biting Me Back
My head has been killing me lately. I never used to get headaches. Every time someone would say they had a headache and would simultaneously grip /massage their forehead gingerly, I would secretly roll my eyes because I was convinced most people were hypochondriacs about this headache epidemic: how could so many people's heads hurt so often? Wouldn't that defy logic? Aren't our bodies designed to operate efficiently even in times of dire physical challenge? If so, how could head pain be so common, especially head pain caused by something innocuous, like mild mental stress or slight fatigue? It just didn't make sense to me. I was convinced that societal conditioning was to blame: we've been told that as adults, we'll be prone to headaches, that life's pressures will be too much for our flimsy bodies to process sufficiently, and the result will be a chronically throbbing skull. On the rare occasion that I did have a headache, it accompanied an illness or more extreme physical challenge like sleep deprivation or emotional turmoil, and those instances, I almost always refused to take any "headache medicine" citing reasons such as, "it never helps" and "it's just a marketing ploy" and "adding a drug to the mix is counter-productive."

Yeah, I'm one of those people.

(Aside: I actually still fall back on a large portion of this argument, and not just for headaches. Flip through the network channels at prime time and you'll see advertisements for prescription and over-the-counter medications designed to remove any symptom you could imagine, symptoms representing all ailments from short-lived illnesses like the common cold to chronic conditions including ulcers, allergies, irritable bowel syndrome (Really? This is common all of a sudden? Common enough to require mass advertising and medical distribution?!), erectile dysfunction, depression, insomnia, and back pain - just to name a few. I have no doubt that there are thousands of legitimate cases of these conditions. I have no doubt that a large number of people have chronic headaches, back pain, and insomnia. I do doubt that the true need for medication in the population for these conditions is actually reflected by the amount of medication being marketed and sold. The end.)

Several days ago, I had a new wire put in on my braces, but they didn't cut it short enough, and it has been pushing through the very back bracket. Let me clarify: there is a sharp piece of STEEL WIRE cutting a hole into the back of my mouth. I didn't think it was as bad as it is until yesterday, when I made the connection that the headaches I've been in denial about for the past week are suspiciously worse on the left side of my head, and also that my face and glands are swollen from the pain. I've given in to the "marketing ploy" and have been taking the generic advil available in the big white first aid kit at work. When this conspiracy theorist starts taking headache medicine, you know she's desperate.

Bedtime Totally Sucks
The pacifier addiction has transferred to a music addiction. Quinn refuses to stay in his bed and go to sleep unless we play the exact same CD he's been listening to for the past two years. The problem is, he can reach his CD player, and is now on the THIRD CD player in his short life, because he can't resist pushing the buttons until he gets some sort of electronic response from the poorly-manufactured plastic boxes. Eventually they give up in desperation, flashing "Err" at us as we wail and gnash our teeth during Quinn's hysterics over the horror of going to sleep without his music. When the players are still in working condition, he changes CDs during the day and has now scratched every single CD we ever allowed into his room, including the beloved night/sleep CD, which skips and repeats and just generally causes misery and ire around these parts. We haven't been able to find a new copy of it (that's what happens when you use free CDs that were packaged with your newborn's diapers five years ago), so we just bought a few new lullaby CDs to try the other night. Good lord, it was like pacifier de-tox all over again; he was beside himself with despair, and a little denial thrown in for good measure.

Quinn (red face, unable to catch his breath from crying): I-I-I-I w-w-wa-wa-want m-m-my-my m-m-mu-mus-music a-a-a-a-a-a-a!!

Me (for the sixth time): Your CD is broken. If you'd like to listen to the new pretty music, I'll turn it back on for you bu-

Quinn (cutting me off, shrieking like a madman): I DON'T WANT THE NEW MUSIC I DON'TWANTHENEWMUSICAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I WANT MY!! MUSIC.

Me (giving up): Okay. Well, it's time to go to sleep, I've already answered your question. I guess you don't want any music, so I'll see you in the morning. Good night.

Quinn (sheer panic setting in): NO YOU CAN'T GO! I WANT THE MUSIC!

Me (turning around): Okay, you DO want your new music then?

Quinn (possessed by a demon): I WILL MAIM YOU IN YOUR SLEEP YOU EVIL HAG.

So, yeah. Bedtime rocks the house these days. Literally.

Business Tip
Hey, everyone. I learned something really useful yesterday. I was on the receiving end of a GREAT NEW METHOD for diffusing a situation, say, for example, a meeting at work that may or may not involve differing opinions. I thought I'd pass it along for posterity. So here you go: If you want a snazzy new way to handle an ambiguously contrary discussion, tell the person you only mildly disagree with that they're "coming off with a lot of attitude". It's particularly effective if you put your hands up in a defensive stance. Throws the whole meeting room into a socially awkward stare-down, which is exactly what you want in a situation where nobody is actually upset yet.

Yep. Pure genius. It's amazing no one's put it in a book yet.

Mandatory Pizza, actually not as good as Mandatory Art

Saturday I took Bryce to the birthday party from hell. When you click that link, please notice how all of the children in the photo are sitting, almost unnaturally, as if they have been threatened within an inch of their lives to look happy and celebratory in their FUN FUN PIZZA CHAIRS! Because at an Incredible Pizza Birthday Party, we practice "Round The Clock" fun, which means that the Incredible Pizza Employee Handbook dictates our every move, including the moves of the five- and six-year-old children who come into this establishment stupidly expecting to have a PARTY complete with freedom of movement and, say, arcade games, the very same arcade games we keep behind locked doors and threaten to remove if said five- and six-year-olds don't SIT DOWN AND ENJOY THE DAMNED CAKE FIRST, because that - THAT - is what our handbook says they must do, and we do not deviate from the handbook. The handbook tells us, for instance, that we start with the "name game" - a cheesy team-building game created for people aged 10-25 years who presumably have a more impressive attention span than the average five-year-old child - where the 20 party attendees are threatened within an inch of their guaranteed pizza buffet visit if they don't snap to attention, state their name AND the name of something "they like" which - how cute! - starts with the same letter as that of their name! And just to increase the time span of this FUN! experience, the handbook states that we must "do a re-cap" half way through. "Okay, kids, so to re-cap, this is Joshua, and he likes... what? That's right! Jupiter Jumps! And this is Isabelle, and she likes... what? That's right! Ice cream! Come on, kids! Put a little more excitement in your voices! This is Bryce, and he likes...? Bananas? No, Blake already said bananas, let's think of something else, mmmkay? Bryce can't like bananas, because Blake likes bananas!"

Most of the other parents at this party were doing what they typically do: pretending they were in a bar, that their plastic Incredible Pizza sprite-filled cups were actually shot glasses filled with very strong liquor, that the din of screaming, cooped up children was the long unheard melody of a local band playing as they chatted about anything other than the fact that their children were in the care of Incredible Pizza Handbook Minions. I, however, always on the edge of normal adult society, watched in horror as the kindergarten crew looked at the Incredible Pizza "hosts" first in attempted obedience, then in confusion, then in exasperation, and finally in utter, ecstatic rebellion, complete with manic laps around the party room, noise-maker horns dangling, honking between shrieks of insane laughter from their taut mouths. Oh yes, I watched. I watched these kids do what any group of five-year-olds would do under the same circumstances, and I watched the Incredible Pizza Handbook Minions throw their arms up in despair, roll their eyes in disgust, and proceed not to utilize the "name game" that had been created to prevent the very situation they then created by yelling out, over the deafening chaos, "GUYS! YOU GUYS! THE LONGER IT TAKES US TO CUT THIS CAKE, THE LONGER IT WILL BE BEFORE YOU CAN LEAVE THIS ROOM AND PLAY THE GAMES."

Yes, Incredible Pizza. That's a lot of fun. Keep up the good work threatening kids with unrealistic and illegitimate consequences, because, as the handbook tells us, KIDS WILL NOT HAVE UNAUTHORIZED FUN AT A BIRTHDAY PARTY. No they will not.


Sunday, Bryce and I accompanied John on a photo shoot at an art museum while Quinn tortured hung out with the only willing in-town grandparents for a day. Because of John's shooting schedule, we arrived before the museum was even open, and I started scrambling for ways to pass the time since I knew I had about three hours of potential disaster ahead of me. Luckily, the museum had a cafe, so Bryce and I had lunch, he in his fuzzy black hoodie and me in my ripped corduroys and braces, and together we avoided the stares of the artsy people in their Sunday best and their concerns over dropped kleenex (really...I'm not making that up) and their posed, sadly stiff family snapshots in front of the cafe art after brunch and quiet chat. Bryce is getting sick and was hacking and coughing with the bark of an angry seal all day, so we managed to get some looks.

But my kid - the one who I was worried would lose control and run screaming through the fancy art museum at top speed, ultimately crashing into a piece of blown glass that would bankrupt our family and turn him into an orphan -sat there and drank his hot chocolate and ate his lunch and commented sagely about the strange bird with ruffled feathers sitting outside in the rain during our entire meal ("maybe the rain is making him feel sick, and that's why his feathers are ruffled"). After the surrealistically pleasant hour in the cafe, we walked through the open lobby to buy tickets for Bryce to see the "sarcophagus" in the Egyptian art exhibit, and we passed John snapping pictures of his client, a bride. Bryce started hacking and seal-barking again, waving his hand in the air and whispering "hi, dad!" between coughs. After I recovered from the shock of recognition that my no-impulse-control kid managed to stand next to me and NOT clamor up to his dad in the middle of a job, not even so much as raise his voice one decibel level beyond "inside voice" volume, I bought our tickets and let Bryce lead the way.





















What else do we have in this roo-- whoah, what's THIS?!















Do you people SEE this?! Something must be done. Seriously.

















Bryce's take on post modernism. If you don't get it, it's just over your heads. Join the club. Unlike Incredible Pizza, we serve liquor here. (As long as you can name a liquor that starts with the same letter as your first name, that is.)

Home on the Fringe: One Year in the Blogosphere

We started this blog one year ago today. We sat in one of the few wi-fi enhanced restaurant bars in this city, drank margaritas, ate nachos, and John convinced me to start typing. The name of the blog was decided by the time we were seated at our table, a result of our discussion in the car on the way there. I held the laptop in a beige canvas bag resting in my seatbelted lap, still skeptical about the whole "blog" idea, always skeptical, always coming up with objections: "well, we don't even know what we'd call it!" John, knowing me all too well, kept driving in a content, open silence. I kept talking. Kept objecting: "I mean, I don't want it to be something having to do with our geographical location, because, barf."

"Why? We might as well reference it sarcastically, like we do in real life. 'Home on the range' or something."

"I'd rather it accommodate the fact that we're a blended family...but then again, I don't necessarily want it to focus solely on the blended family aspect because there are other things that make up our freak-like identity, like Bryce's intensity, my feistiness, our age difference. We're just freaks. Freaks on the range. Home on the freaky range, midwestern misfits. Something about being on the fringe of society."

"Home on the Fringe!"

"No...."

"......" *driving, waiting*

"Hmm, Home on the Fringe. Actually, that does pretty much sum it up, doesn't it?"

******************************************

Like I'd guess most blogs do, this site has changed significantly over the past 12 months. John and I talked about doing a "best of" post to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Home on the Fringe, but as I perused the archives and tried to pick posts that I felt were most indicative of our year, all I found was - big, huge surprise coming here - a lot of chaos, some of it hilarious, some of it horrifying, some of it maddening, some of it expected. You could basically click any one of the archive links and find examples of what I'm talking about with very little effort. Also, this blog already tends to the navel-gazing side (I guess this makes us real bloggers. As my trainer would say, "hoo-ray, right?"), and linking to our own blogging selves, in a post about our own blogging selves, well... felt a little extreme. Those of you that have been reading since the beginning, or have taken the time (Why? Oh, why?!) to read all the old posts must believe us by now when we say with every day that goes by, we come closer to truly believing we're insane.

Having this blog as a legitimate writing outlet, particularly for me, since I'm the one who comes here the most and drones on and on, has severely lessened the chance of my being committed or arrested. That was something I wasn't expecting a year ago. I don't really know what our expectations were, but I know they didn't include free therapy or, more importantly (prepare for the sappiness), new friends. We didn't know when we started down this windy blogging path that there was such a community in existence; we pictured the blogosphere as much smaller and much more compartmentalized than what we ultimately found. In fact, I think if we had known how much of a community this experience would introduce to us, we probably would have run shrieking away from it, given so many of our past failed attempts at social life.

We've learned that here, in this community, we're no more on the fringe than any of the rest of you. In one year in the blogosphere, we've ("virtually") met and befriended more people than we have in seven years of "real life," including social functions resulting from nine jobs, three schools, four kids, 28 holidays, and a few ill-fated attempts at neighborhood parties. I can't decide if this is a sad statement about middle class U.S. society or just another blatant confirmation that we don't fit in there. For whatever reason, we've been welcomed here, and at times over the past year, times that many of you know have pushed us to our absolute emotional brink, that fact has existed in our minds as the only calming and reaffirming thought in our beaten down collective consciousness.

Random Friday Photo(s)

Gloves at a wedding!











This is my 39th post since we started this blog, and looking back, just about all of my contributions have been picture related. One would think I would have more to say about our fringe life since I stay at home with our kids, get them dressed every day, make their breakfast and lunch every day, take one (or both) to school then pick them up every day, and all the other exciting things that go along with being the (just barely) primary care giver. And I do.

But the thing is, I'm not wordy. The paragraph above took me 10 minutes to write. Now Kristen, she IS wordy. It's easier to relate to her a story and let her word it up. She's good at it, not only because she is just that way, but because she's trained for it. And compared to her, my words suck.

I'll keep posting, and even throw in a few words here and there, but don't make fun, OK?

My psychosis: Good for something.

I want to write something. I'm compelled to type words onto this white screen and address all of you that have continued to suffer through what has surely been a depressing or at least worrisome set of posts to read. I want to say that we're okay, we're going to be okay, things are good, and oh by the way, listen to this hilariously humiliating thing our sons did, those crazy kids!

But, well... I got nothin'. This is our new routine, this ever-present tension that we fight off with forced smiles and deep breaths and reminders to each other not to kill anyone. There are better and calmer days, there are days with lots of tears, and there are days I black out with a thick sharpie on the mental history book: Error. No one needs to know about that. Move to next day. I think this is just where we are right now, this is the place we've come to. We're trying to leave this place, though. We're genuinely trying. I'm looking for the funny, but as Andie pointed out in a recent comment, I more often find myself screaming about the TREES in my way, all of these TREES, I can't see anything but TREES, where on god's green earth is the FOREST already?! So, the funny is kind of blocked out these days; I can't find it as easily as I'd like.

You can imagine how strange it must be, then, for me to learn that Bub and Pie nominated us for a ROFL award. That's right. An award honoring funny posts. Funny. On this site full of rage, exhaustion, and insanity. There is only one explanation here: I must have been unconscious at the time of the funny. The name of the nominated post? Dreamland.

So, okay. I can't FIND the funny, but sometimes it still finds me in my sleep. Thanks for the reminder, B&P.

Also, because I don't want you to leave every day believing our house is a place of pure and utter misery, two brief glimpses of the forest from recent days:

1.) Last night at dinner, Bryce told us there was a new student in his class at school. He rarely volunteers any information, preferring instead to watch his parents stammer all over themselves as they seek the correct combination of questions to elicit details he apparently finds mundane. We perked up immediately: Oh really? A new student? Is it a boy or girl? What's his or her name? Is he or she nice? He said, "Yeah, she's nice. And she's pretty, too." (Is it time for this? She's pretty?) "Oh, she's pretty, well, I'm glad to hear she's nice - did you play with her?" I asked. "Yeah, I did. And she runs fast, too. She's faster than me!" Mmhmm. Now I see the infatuation.

2.) This morning I was home when Quinn woke up. The child is delusional enough to be happy about this despite my constant shrieking and nagging, and he came down the stairs quietly grinning and giggling to see me. I made his breakfast and continued scrambling around the house acquiring the ridiculous amounts of food and water I lug to work with me as if work is an expedition across the Sahara. When I had a second to stop, I plopped an egg in a frying pan and sat down in the dining room to shovel it into my face before leaving for work. Quinn was in the kitchen at the breakfast table and sauntered over, holding his toaster waffle and vegetarian sausage-covered plate at a precarious angle, a determined look on his face. John told him to get back in his seat, not knowing what he was doing and suspecting foul play. "No, it's too awful in the kitchen, I'm too hot in there," Quinn replied absurdly. We looked at each other, confused. He rounded the corner and put his plate on the dining room table right next to mine, and quietly climbed into the chair next to me. Ah, the forest. It's nice in here with all those trees out of the way.

The Non Spy-Speak Explanation

The other night when John and I were discussing one of the six dozen items on the Major Conversations We Can't Go Another Day Without Having list, both of us came to the conclusion that for the ever-loving love of wine and dark chocolate, something has to give. We just can't take it anymore. As soon as we think we have even a slight handle on one of the issues around here, something else pops up on the radar screen, and it is ALWAYS something we can't ignore. Lately the newest issue is John's older daughter, Hannah's school performance, or lack thereof. We went through the same problem last year, and the year before, and the year before. Last year it led us to the fiasco of the counselor from hell, and so we're a little gunshy about how to handle things anymore. Besides, to be honest, we're both only about half-way focused on this. She's almost 17. The behaviors we're dealing with now are the exact same behaviors that she's exhibited for the entire seven years we've been married, despite the dozens of different approaches we've taken, despite the all-out effort we've put forth with each. new. try. We're kind of thinking, gee, nothing WE do seems to change anything, so... uh... what's the point, again? But because her mother is completely out of the picture and her brother has self-extricated from the family, this kid doesn't have anyone else in her life even to act like they care about what happens to her; John and I, while we might feel like we're going through the motions, keep doing what we're "supposed" to do: doling out consequences, discussing ways she can improve her situation, asking what she needs from us, making suggestions, reminding her that the consequence for failure is her own, not ours - you know, all things modern-day "natural consequence" parents are supposed to do and say.

These conversations are, in addition to being frustrating (because of the blank stare and silence that comprise Hannah's "interaction") and draining (because of our knowledge that they are, in essence, pointless), very time- and attention-consuming. And I don't know if you've noticed, but we don't have a lot of free time or attention around here. What ends up happening is that John tries to have conversations with her before she leaves for school in the morning, but he never gets anywhere because the kids stand on the breakfast table and scream and knock milk cups over the second his attention is turned elsewhere. She slinks out of the house during the chaos to face another day of effortless sloth and academic facade. We try to pick up with the conversations at the dinner table or during clean-up, but again, because we can't process both "sets" of kids simultaneously, I have to leave the conversation to deal with Bryce and Quinn. John is left to muddle through the situation alone, and since said situation is much like talking to a wall, after his days of deep-breathing and banging his head against the steering wheel while the boys have spit fights in the car to and from school, he usually loses track of the "natural consequence" rules and the conversation goes unintentionally awry, down unproductive paths with phrases like "always do this" and "don't listen" and "every single time" and "get it together." It's an ongoing problem, a never-ending, resolution-less conversation.

The day after the latest round of these conversations, John called me at work and said "I completely. lost it. today. And I'll tell you the details when you get home." I wondered which set of kids had brought him to the brink of his sanity, the same brink on which I'd so recently been teetering myself, and I took a stab: "The boys?" When I got home he told me that after picking the kids up from school, he'd stopped at a convenience store for afternoon snacks. While he was paying, Quinn found a nearby rotating shelf of sunglasses and started spinning it as fast as he could, causing every single pair of sunglasses, and the open bag of chips he was holding, to go flying in all directions. Bryce thought it was hilarious and joined him, but he added his famous maniacal laughter to the mix, which caused John's complete and utter fall from the precipice of reality. "If there had been cameras rolling, it would be one of those scenes the media would play OVER AND OVER, inciting public outcry over my horrible parenting," he told me. I reminded him that mere days before, I had locked our three-year-old son out of our house, and then I said, "I think we just need to recognize that we don't have kids who we can just 'take to the store' like it's no big deal. Everything with them requires major preparation and heightened control."

And then, as we sat across the dining table from each other at 10:45 p.m., the dishwasher only just loaded, the mail still unsorted, the floors still unswept, the absurdity of the situation really hit home. We can't take our kids into a convenience store for five minutes without scheduling a meeting to discuss our strategy. We can't send our 17-year-old to school with expectations that she'll do anything beyond shuffle from classroom to classroom unless we spend hours each evening mentally rehearsing with her and checking her assignments as if she's in third grade, and even THEN, it's a toss-up. We can't focus on anything but one or all of these kids during our every waking hour without some major fiasco. What the hell?! Do you know about piles? We have piles everywhere - piles of bills, piles of laundry, piles of dirty wash cloths, piles of dishes, piles of dust and grime in all the corners. We can't GET to the piles. Any of them. That's not quite right, actually: we CAN get to the piles, but it takes robotic levels of stamina and the willingness to become more like board members of a failing corporation, constantly scheduling strategy meetings and foregoing sleep to address just ONE MORE THING. It's absurd.

My mom, in the midst of building a new house and adjusting to a new job and fighting off a cold and starting a new diet and taking care of my epileptic dog, agreed to take the kids all day Saturday. John was at a wedding for six hours, and in that time, all I managed to get done in all of my scrambling (and believe me, I was scrambling) were trips to the regular grocery store, the "healthy" grocery store, and the gym. Six hours. That's all I got done. And I was running. the whole. time. Without kids. If I'd had the kids with me, I would have accomplished ONE of those three things, and I would have needed a valium halfway through it.

So as it stands, we have groceries, and I worked out. Thanks to my mom, though, John and I got to take a break from strategizing - a long enough break to drink margaritas and see The Departed. The bills are all still sitting on the counter, the laundry continues to multiply like rabbits, we have something disturbing growing in the corner of our bathroom, but for now, I guess, we'll have to forego the pile maintenance, because would you look at the time? We have another meeting to attend. Today's agenda items include Why Our Life Resembles Hell and How To Outrun The Asylum Officials. Check your inbox for the summary.

This message will self-destruct.

John and I are both so tired. We're kind of like operative partners in a botched secret mission, turning on each other as we watch things fall apart. We've followed our orders, both of us faithful to the mission, both of us stoic in our acceptance that there will be some collateral damage, both of us dutifully focused on the task at hand, ready to react with plans B, C, D, and E at a moment's notice. But it turns out we weren't given orders for plans F - Z, and we've had to improvise, and in our dark hide-outs, sweat on our brows, eyes darting outside for potential new lurking dangers, the pressure and fatigue and unexpected negotiations are too much for us. In our disagreements we lose our focus - BLAM! Hannah's flunking school again - an intruder skirts past us and we're forced to stop everything we're doing and start the painful and risky process of eliminating it.

We manage to tie the intruder temporarily and get back to our negotations, newly committed to staying focused and not letting petty disagreements sway us from the mission, but the intruder is sneaky and - wwhhhiiissshhh. Hannah is lying again - starts to drag its binded self across the floor to escape; another unignorable distraction, another delay to the mission, survival. We make an executive decision to re-focus the mission temporarily, this intruder being our main target, but during the interrogation and investigation - BLAM! The kids are literally throwing sunglasses and chips all over the convenience store - another intruder, one that seems merely pesky and annoying, but is actually just a decoy, a minion of its much more sinister and threatening leader. Soon we're back to our original problem, the pressure forcing us into instinctual habits of blame and infighting. All we want to do is complete the mission. Every few hours when we wake up from the tiny amounts of sleep we get between watches, we start again, but our mission is failing. There are too many intruders, there are not enough of us. We are exhausted, we have no back up, we start to think we're doomed.

Safety Patrol: Shoe Tie Rules

As you can see from these images, my brother is a tortured soul who shares his pain and worldly misery with hordes of other tortured souls fans in obscure brick warehouses turned 24-hour diners. When he's not using his existential angst to create screaming commentary on political, philosophical, social, and emotional horrors, he's brainstorming with his associates on the best ways to reach our children.

I received the following e-mail from him today:

Hey, check out this MP3 I sent you. It's a recording project my friend Aaron and I did a few years ago called 'Safety Patrol.' It was our absurdist children's band. We only did this one song, but I wanna do more. This one's called The Shoe Tie Rules, which is pretty self-explanatory (until you hear the song, that is). Our next one is gonna be called Never Take Candy from A Stranger while Not Looking Both Ways before Crossing the Street. Anyhow, I figure at least Bryce is old enough to hear this now. Old enough to HAVE HIS MIND BLOWN!

As well as I know my brother, I was still intrigued and had no idea what to expect. And then I listened to the song and had to suffer through the incredible pain of fizzy diet coke carbonation burning the inside of my nostrils as my laughter and swallowing functions fought for top priority.

Do you want to experience this same joy? When was the last time you listened to the one and only creation of an absurdist children's band? HUH? Click here for the song, and prepare to HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN!

Fair Game

First of all, as Popeye would say, Well, blow me down! All a girl has to do is go a little nuts and lock her kid outside and wave her arms frantically in the air to make people come out of the wood work (and maybe secretly consider calling the Department of Human Services). I mean, wow! So many of you have contacted me privately or commented on my last post that I'm now convinced a big portion of parents and caregivers with maybe even only "slightly challenging" kids (which unfortunately mine are not, and I'll get into that in a minute) don't talk or write about it. Some of you don't bring it up because your coping mechanisms require that you push the issues under the surface to survive. Others of you don't talk about it because you really believe you're alone, and more tragically, that you're alone because of some drastic mistake you've made as parents - or maybe just as people. Still others of you want to avoid what we so lovingly refer to as "trolls" (Kara and Arwen, I think you know what I'm talking about) who will pounce on any weakness you highlight about yourself, especially parenting weakness, and so you vow not to publish anything questionable, like say, the fact that you locked your kid in the back yard to keep from exploding. When I published a post quite literally while looking over the cliffs of insanity and heard from many of you back on the steady ground of reality calling to me, I learned that, while quirky and more challenging than "average," my kids certainly aren't unique. Quinn's torture methods are effective and commendable, especially if you happen to be recruiting for Al Quaeda, but he's not alone; there are other kids like him, with parents whose eyes are bulged in fear, rage, and desperation more hours than they readily admit. If you're one of them, don't ever think you're in a boat by yourself again. I certainly won't.

As for us, we're all still alive and no one has been beaten to a bloody pulp or even threatened with such. In fact, we took the kids to the fair on Sunday. The fair, people! The event Quinn has spent the past year asking about every night at bedtime, the event I underhandedly bribed him with in one of my attempts to convince him that he didn't need his paci. That fair. THE fair.

Despite the fact that Quinn woke up at 5:30 a.m. as he's been doing since we confiscated all the pacis last week, John was determined for the day to go well. After all, he'd been the one at a photo shoot on the receiving end of my desperate call from the soccer field the day before, powerless to do anything but tell me something I already knew: that the only option I had was to physically retrieve Quinn and confine him for Bryce's entire game; I had no one else with me, and I couldn't leave either child unattended. He'd also witnessed the carnage when he'd arrived home and found me handing out snacks and stepping over toys and laundry piles like a zombie, stopping every few steps to rock myself back and forth in the corner, then going back to doing whatever the kids demanded in an attempt to stop the madness, stop the madness, stop the madness. Sunday was a new day, he thought, and what better way to establish some healthy family relationships than to immerse ourselves in the deep fried kitsch of a state fair? Why, there are long lines to stand in! There is sub-par, over-priced, unhealthy food to buy! There are uninspected ferris wheels operated by hungover, jaded people to ride!

The kids did enjoy it, even though Bryce filed a complaint with the Department of Decent Parents because we didn't buy him a blow-up alien. The cotton candy, ice cream, pizza, and carnival rides meant nothing: WHAT ABOUT THAT ALIEN, YOU SELFISH PRICKS? Quinn was tall enough to ride the rides with Bryce this year, and he proved to me once again that he has no concept of either balance or fear. (I'm thinking that combination is going to be pretty dangerous. Also, it somewhat explains his penchant for parental torture.) We stayed long enough that by the time we rolled the double stroller up to the car to head home, we looked down and saw that Quinn had fallen asleep. The last time that happened, he wasn't yet eating solid foods. They both slept in the car all the way home. The last time THAT happened, the world didn't exist.

Yesterday John tried something wacky with Quinn: he praised every remotely correct or decent thing he did.

"Great job walking down the stairs and breathing at the same time, Quinn!"

"Wow, I'm so impressed by your manners. When you said, 'I want milk,' you didn't whine or throw any power tools at me!"

"Thanks for not ripping my hair out of my head when you woke up this morning, Quinn. WOW!"

John had told me he was going to try this, but I'd been skeptical, since Quinn is much smarter than any parenting technique we've ever tried. But when I got home from work last night, the kids were upstairs cleaning up their toys. At dinner, they ate what was on their plates and actually didn't demand something different. Quinn talked about his friends at school and Bryce told us about Columbus and how he asked the King and Queen of Spain for money to sail to the new world to find gold and spices. (Aside: During this conversation, I may or may not have rolled my eyes and made reference to the fact that we all know the names of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, but what the history books don't highlight is the slaughter of the Native Americans and the disease and pestilence that killed off most of the ones that weren't murdered outright. Bryce was too busy talking about gold and spices to hear me, which is probably good for a five-year-old, I'm thinking.) After dinner, Quinn asked to be excused, then created a game called "all of the kisses" which he pronounced "Ahvvalakisses" which involved him pretending to leave the room and then John telling him to come back for one more kiss, Quinn giggling uncontrollably and running back. I gave him a bath and he didn't scream at me about shampoo or water or toys. I put him to bed and he didn't protest or get up and run under his bed after yelling to get my attention.

Wha...?? That worked?

The hardest part about the last year has been the resistance John and I have given with all our might to admitting that Quinn is not "the easy one". We don't HAVE an easy one. We have two challenging kids. And they're not challenging in the same ways; Bryce has very specific needs that we spent three years deciphering, and in that time we became accustomed to the fact that he actually helps us decipher them because he's extremely articulate. Quinn has spent the past three years confounding us with what at first appeared to be an easy-going, content nature, but turned out to be more like a sleeping tasmanian devil. Had we been expecting it, I think we would have reacted more appropriately, and more quickly. But because it woke up in a lightning blaze of fury and swirls, we misunderstood. We grabbed the flying papers and made a mad dash for something solid to hold onto, we thought it was a passing storm and waited for the return of the familiar. As the wind picked up and our muscles started to shake with weakness and fatigue, we saw the mounting chaos and the debris flying around, but we couldn't let go, because what would happen? We'd be giving in to the madness of this unpredictable being, accepting that this is the new reality, the new familiar, adapting to a life of swimming through the twirling unpredictabilities and searching always for the eye and the calm of the storm, this storm, Quinn.

What has happened now, and what was clinched for me in the astounding aftermath of my last post, when many of you told me that we weren't alone or insane or unfit parents, is that we've made the transition from Waiting For The Storm To Pass to Letting Go. What it translates to is finally starting to see the blurry outlines of Quinn's Needs. It translates to a recognition that Quinn's Needs are different from Bryce's Needs, and I don't mean he likes different foods or will take longer to potty train, even though both of those things are true. I mean he needs US in different ways than Bryce ever did. This slapped us both in the face yesterday, when we met our son, the one who thrives on lots of praise and physical touch and emotional reinforcement. Our other son responds to all of this too, of course, like any kid does to some extent - but this new guy, Quinn - he lives and breathes it.

This morning at the gym, the trainer held a bar behind my back while I did lunges. If my front knee went too far forward, my back wouldn't be straight and even with the bar, which would tell me, much to my dismay, that I was doing it wrong. It would also cause searing jolts of red hot pain to emanate from my back knee. "OW! My knee!" My trainer knows my left knee gives me trouble and I think I was hoping he'd release me from the lunge prison, but he didn't say anything other than to tell me to keep my back against the bar. When I finally came close to approximating the correct posture and movement, he removed the bar and I finished my lunges. "How's your knee?" he asked me as I finished. "Wow, you know? When I do the lunges THE RIGHT WAY, it doesn't hurt my knee." I could tell it took all his strength not to roll his eyes as he said, "Imagine that."

I wonder if that's how our tasmanian devil feels as John and I slap our foreheads and scream DUH! after one single day of not holding so staunchly to the furniture and screaming as the debris swirls around us, maybe smoothing his fur as he whirls by us, always getting closer: Yeah, see how things work when you do them the right way? Imagine that.