Fathered Five

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Chez Five packed up and moved to a different house. It’s bigger, newer, has less yard work, and the kids didn’t have to change schools. All in all, a good move.

Boy 5 and Girl 3 have been out exploring the neighborhood, meeting the neighbors by…begging for food!

They were out playing last Saturday, taking advantage of a brief break in the winter weather. After a while, Boy 5 came in and asked Her Hotness, “Can we go ask ouw naybows fo’ a tweat?”

Oh, no, Her Hotness explained after some clarification. “We never, ever go knock on our neighbors’ doors and ask them for food.”

At that moment, Girl 3 walks in with a cookie in her hand, her mouth happily full.

Her Hotness: “Where did you get that cookie?”

Boy 5 piped up. “Fwom da naybows.” The poor little orphans had walked over to our neighbors’ house, who we haven’t met yet, knocked on the door, and asked for something to eat!

Her Hotness was mortified. “You mean you already did it??” (Boy 5 has already learned that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.) “Oh, no,” she admonished. “Never, EVER ask for food at somebody’s house!”

“But Mom,” he said, “we wo hungwy.”

Oh, of course. Well that’s all right, then. Next time, why not just tell them you don’t have any food in your house and your mom and dad are home cooking grass? Come to think of it, Girl 3 probably wasn’t wearing shoes as we can’t get her to keep them on. They probably looked genuinely needy.

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Taking Lilly out for her morning walk in the park, I had to ask myself this question again. She’s getting better, though. She used to escape from the house every chance she got. She’d run down the street to a field and find some nice, fresh horse manure to roll in.

Now she just eats it. And other poop she finds on the ground. Granted, her brain is the size of a walnut, but seriously? My brain, which is considerably bigger, will never understand it. Yes, yes, I know the argument. There must be some nutritional value in it or an instinct-driven animal wouldn’t eat it.

By that logic, Girl 3 wouldn’t eat her boogers, yet here we are.

I had the same feeling of stupefication when I went to check on Boy 5 in the bathtub tonight.

Why do kids drink their own bath water?
I swear we’ve had this conversation with each of them. “Don’t drink your bath water. It’s full of dirt and germs.” (I can’t even believe that needs saying.) The next time, it’s “DON’T drink your bath water.” That devolves into “GROSS! DON’T DRINK YOUR BATH WATER HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO TELL YOU!” And the next time we see it, Her Hotness and I just look at each other and shake our heads. Maybe all that exposure will boost their immune systems.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, they do eventually grow out of the urge to drink that sludge. It evolves into another urge: peeing in the shower. It makes perfect sense, really. You have a drain right there, and lots of soapy water to rinse it down with. Why take time to stop at the toilet after your shower when you could kill two birds with one stone and all? Maybe this is a boy thing. Girl 16, what say you? How is your shower drain smelling these days?

How is it Girl 3 needs to go potty EVERY time we sit down to eat?
I now believe she does it on purpose and just for spite. There’s no other explanation. At home, at a restaurant, or a picnic in the park, as soon as we’re ready to relax with a meal, she’s ready to prevent it.

She always has to announce it, too. She can’t just toddle off and do her business. Oh, no. It’s a full-fledged production. Sometimes she says, “I’m gonna pee!” with all the urgency of a sudden realization. Her bladder doesn’t fill slowly like the rest of ours do, apparently. It sits there flacid and empty until the family sits down to dinner and then, PKWOOOSH! her body dumps pitchers full in and she has to GO RIGHT NOW.

But she won’t just go. She announces it and then waits. For what—permission? Encouragement? Sympathy, maybe? We acknowledge the emergency. “You know what to do,” we say. And she does.

I’m sure there are others. I’ll add to this list as I think of them.

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This is Girl 16 when she was Girl 12. She calls it her awkward stage and laughs about it. Hey, we all have them. Mine has lasted 24 years and counting (see the pic at the end of this post. That’s Joe 16.)

I didn’t see anything laughable about her at the time, though I know what she means now when she says it.

Around that time, during one of her Grandma’s many visits to where we lived in Arizona, said Grandma pulled Her Hotness aside.
“Why don’t you suggest to her that she would look better with contacts?” (or something close to that. Her wording may have been gentler then I remember it.)

Her Hotness was not at all surprised. Her mother is like that. Very image-conscious and very willing to help others be image conscious—for their own good, of course. But if she was not surprised, neither was she cowed.

“No, I won’t,” she said. “I’ll never suggest that says she’s anything but beautiful.”

How awesome is that?? Girl 16, you might forget it sometimes, but your Mom ROCKS!

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If you’ve been following the ongoing saga of Boy 13, I have an update.

In our last episode, Boy 13 sent another boy his age to the hospital after putting him in a choke hold until he passed out. He couldn’t have chosen a worse “victim” because the other boy has had traumatic brain injury in the past, which makes him more susceptible to further injuries. Joe and Her Hotness were beside themselves with concern. Therapists were consulted.

Boy 13’s assessment with the therapist was last week and it went exceptionally well. He talked to the boy for a while alone, then with him and Her Hotness together (I was at work). He assured us that he was a normal 13-year-old, though with exceptionally bad luck and a mild-to-moderate case of ADD.

This was good to hear. I’m not entirely convinced, but am willing to take it on faith that there’s nothing seriously wrong with him. We also got a bit of a lecture. The consequences he’s been carrying since the episode, such as not being allowed to be with his cousins alone, enforce “other-regulation.” When we’re regulating him, he can’t learn to regulate himself. You need to back off, mom and dad, and let the kid screw up.

Fine. But other-regulation beats concussions and broken collar bones in cousins and neighbors. I submit that as indisputable. But the therapist thinks the broken bones and traumatic brain injuries are a result of that blasted luck, not malice on the part of Boy 13. Which I am also willing to take on faith.

I’ll work on the forgiving him part.

On a lighter, more mysterious note, Amy over at Earnest Parenting gave me a HIP award!! HIP stands for Heroes in Parenting. What, you didn’t know that? You obviously have never gotten a HIP award. You had better clean up your parenting act. And look sharp about it! Head on over to Earnest Parenting and see how it works, then spread the love. Nominate folks you admire for HIP awards.

Why is it mysterious? Because nothing about the Boy 13 drama has made me feel very heroic. In fact, very little in my fathering experience has (though I can think of a couple of times I am pretty proud of). The overarching word that describes my experience is be-Fudd-lement. No, no, not that befuddlement. Focus on the Fudd. As in Elmer. He’s certain of two things: that he’s hunting wabbits and that he’s happier’n a dog at butt-sniffin’ convention. “I’m hunting wabbits. Huh-huh-huh-huh.”

He’s intent, but utterly and completely clueless. Even about his cluelessness. Sometimes I wonder about what I don’t know, and don’t know that I don’t know it.

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Remember the post a while back in which I congratulated myself for not rolling my eyes, though I had plenty of opportunity? The one about kids asking each other on dates in “cute,” creative ways?

Well, Girl 16 thew down the gauntlet on her blog, One Extraordinary Machine. Some dufus asked her out face to face, with no balloons, no rhymes, no guesswork, or other nonsense. It’s suspiciously adult behavior, if you ask me. What is he, a poseur? Thinkin’ he’s all that, trying to act all 25 when he’s barely 16?

If he thinks this is going to earn him any brownie points, he’s got a lot to learn, let me tell you somethin’ right now!

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