Picket Fence Post

The Eldest Boy wanted me to buy him a $45 LaDainian Tomlinson jersey so he could dress up as the San Diego Chargers star for Halloween over his football gear.

Initially, I said, “No.” (Actually, in my head I thought of a more colorful response.)

Then I gave the request more thought. The Eldest Boy hadn’t been thrilled with the birthday present he received from The Spouse and I back in August. (In fact, it’s still sitting in the box in our garage. We haven’t returned it because The Spouse and I can’t agree on whether it should be returned . . . long story.) So I suggested that I return his birthday gift and instead buy him the jersey for his birthday present, enabling him to dress up as Tomlinson for Halloween.

Only he didn’t like this idea. “But I don’t want to wear it after Halloween,” he said.

“You mean you only want to wear it for the two hours you’re trick-or-treating?” I asked.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t wear it after that.”

“No. (*pause, breathe*) Absolutely not. No way. I’m not spending $45 for you to wear something for two hours.”

While his birthday gift remains in the garage, I was finally successful in convincing him to dress up as another football player: Tom Brady. He could wear the jersey he already owns, over his own pads, and — best part – carry a crutch.

The Eldest Boy remains lukewarm to this costume. I think it’s funny, plus it didn’t cost us a dime, my favorite kind of get-up.

Now if I can just figure out how to put my own hair up into an early 1960s beehive for a Mad Men-style costume party for tomorrow night, it’ll all be good. (I’ve already bought nuclear bomb-proof hair spray.) I’m going for the look of one of the gals in the Sterling Cooper secretarial pool. The Spouse is aiming for Paul Kinsey, as The Spouse sports a goatee, a goatee which prevented him from dressing as the hunky Don Draper.

Image credit: Sport Station.

Item #1: Kids Pick the President

We adults cast our votes for the next commander in chief on Tuesday, that is if you haven’t already voted in those states that allow early voting.

But last week, 2.2 million Nickelodeon viewers made their choice: Senator Barack Obama, who won with 51 percent of the vote to Senator John McCain’s 49 percent.

According to United Press International: “Nickelodeon said it has held a kids’ vote every presidential election year since 1988, and children have correctly predicted the winner of four out of the last five U.S. presidential campaigns.”

The last time the kids picked incorrectly? Four years ago, when they selected Senator John Kerry.

Item #2: Bad Sports Mom

My November Parents & Kids column isn’t going to win me any popularity contests with folks on the sidelines of my kids’ sports and after-school activities. Why? Because it’s about what a bad sports mom I am because I don’t like how much of my family’s time the children’s activities consume. And I’m a tad bitter about it.

Item #3: Christmas Lists. In October.

My mother (*waving “Hi” to her as she reads this blog*) called me last night to request a list of Christmas gift recommendations for the Picket Fence Post-lings. As an organized person is wont to do, she would like to get her Christmas shopping done early so she can thoroughly enjoy the Yuletide season without the stress of racing around to stores.

However I wasn’t feeling particularly organized at the moment of her call, as I was still wrangling with The Eldest Boy over his Halloween costume. In fact, the subject of children and gift giving/receiving is a sore one in my household right now as The Spouse and I continue to debate The Eldest Boy’s birthday present. My 10-year-old Alex P. Keaton seems to think he can just return the gift he’d previously said he wanted and take the cash instead. This issue will be the focus of my December Parents & Kids column. (FYI — If you have any good Christmas list/gift anecdotes or suggestions, please post them in the comments section below.)

Therefore, when my unsuspecting mother brought up the topic of Christmas lists last night, my head exploded. Luckily she was on the phone and not at my house. Was a tad messy.

Sorry Mom. The list is going to take a while, unless, of course, you just want to get them clothes, which they really need. Pajamas would be good.

Image credit: Obama/Biden campaign.

Plato has been with The Spouse since graduate school.

She accompanied The Spouse and I when we moved to all our various apartments and houses in Massachusetts and the D.C. area.

And now she’s in really bad shape. I found her yesterday looking confused, standing in the corner of the bathroom behind the toilet. Over the past two weeks, she’s started to trip when she’s walking down the two steps from the kitchen to our family room and can no longer jump up to her favorite spot on the sofa.

The Spouse and I know there isn’t a whole lot of time left. I really don’t want to deal with what I know is coming – talking to the kids about her passing — but I know I’m going to have to. I’m definitely not looking forward to that conversation.

High School Musical 3 opened this weekend and raked in $42 million, the highest opening weekend for a musical . . . in case you’ve been living under a rock and weren’t aware of this fact.

Being the parent of a 10-year-old girl, there’s no way I could’ve been out of the HSM 3 info loop even if I wanted to be. So we had a plan of attack as to how to make sure we could get to see the film on opening weekend without waiting in huge lines or getting shut out. On Friday, the day the movie opened, I drove to the theater and bought tickets for the 3:30 showing on Saturday. The theater attendant suggested that we arrive a half-hour early on Saturday to assure that we’d all get seats together because, “I’m sure it’ll sell out.”

I thought we were in good shape. But by the time The Girl went to her 10:30 soccer game on Saturday morning, almost half her team had already seen the flick, and one gal couldn’t contain herself and leaked numerous spoilers on the sidelines, irritating The Girl who was starting to feel as though she was behind the curve for not seeing HSM 3 on opening night. Sadly, HSM 3 was also a topic of conversation among the parents on the soccer sidelines.

How was the movie? It was Disney wholesome, very peppy, like Grease, only without the teen pregnancy and drag racing. The Girl loved it. The two boys pretended not to be thrilled by it – they have cool reps to protect ya know – though I know that they found one of the scenes involving Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) and Chad Danforth (Corbin Bleu) break dancing and play fighting with swords atop rusty old cars in a junk yard “sick” (as in cool).

That scene actually made me sad. The song was about the friendship Troy and Chad had nurtured since they were little boys. As they faced decisions about college, they realized they might not be able to spend as much time together as they had in high school. At one point, the actors disappeared behind a junk car and two little boys, meant to be a little Troy and little Chad, busted out some cute moves. Looking over at my two boys, I didn’t want to let myself imagine them as teenaged boys deciding where to go to college.

Boston Globe writer Joanna Weiss wrote an interesting piece this weekend about whether parents should impose their political views on their kids by having them wear politically-oriented clothing:

. . . [T]he idea of an activist baby is also a little disturbing, given the state of political rhetoric today. This is an arena of name-calling and knee-jerk hatred; comments on blogs can be nastier, and a fair amount more childish, than any spat I’ve seen in a playground sandbox. Even the candidates, some of whom strove to look noble for a while, are starting to act like schoolyard bullies or snotty tattletales. And it turns out you can have hostility printed on a onesie, too.

I did a quick search of CafePress and found that you can indeed get baby and kid political-wear. There were, for example, an ”I Hated Sarah Palin Before It Was Cool” shirts and ”Godless Liberal” bibs. Not cool, using a toddler or baby to promote a parental political position.

In our house — which is filled with all manner of political and current events talk — The Spouse and I emphasize that the kids can and should make up their own minds when it comes to which presidential candidate they support.

It’s kind of like the flirtation The Eldest Boy had with rooting for the Evil Empire, otherwise known as the New York Yankees a few years ago. Even though the fact that we bought The Eldest Boy a Yankees cap made The Spouse nuts, I told him we had to allow our kids root for (and vote for or support) whoever they want to. They’re their own people. We shouldn’t force our views on them, even though, in a house full of Red Sox paraphernalia and vigorous cheering, the Sox are clearly the favorites.

That’s why, I can’t even imagine suiting my kid up, particularly a non-verbal baby, with an “I Hate [Fill in the Blank of a Candidate or Party]” onesie. Feels too creepy.

“A lot of people care passionately about the upcoming election, the future of the nation, the pressing issues of our day,” Weiss wrote. “Here’s the reality check: Your infant isn’t one of them. Even if he’s wearing a onesie that said, ‘Tiny Democrat.’”

Image credit: CafePress.com.

Spooky and Halloween-ish

OR

Just plain lazy?

I can’t decide.

 Given how much I want to cling to autumn and keep winter and The Holidays at bay for the moment (see previous “Three for Thursday” post), I decided to post a few more photos from our family’s apple picking foray last weekend in Berlin, MA.

Still haven’t made that apple pie yet that I promised the kids. Bad Mommy.

Item #1: Not Ready for Leaves to Fall

I’m still appreciating the beauty of this year’s unusually bright autumn leaves, especially the way they look when the sunlight shines upon them. (Like in the photo I took above when we went apple picking last weekend.) I’m definitely not ready for them to fall off the trees, clog the drains on the streets and leave behind barren, depressing limbs.

Besides, once fall’s over and the leaves are gone, that signals the beginning of The Holidays, otherwise known as the time when I long to go into hibernation. I’m DEFINITELY not ready for them to arrive just yet, despite the catalogs I keep receiving in the mail telling me I’m already behind on my Christmas shopping.

Item #2: ‘Mad Men’ and the 1960s Suburban Mom

Season two of the 1960s drama Mad Men  concludes Sunday night at 10 on AMC and we’ll find out whether slick ad man Don Draper (Jon Hamm) wises up and makes up with his wife Betty (January Jones) – mother of his two children living in a NYC ‘burb – after he repeatedly cheated on her and she finally called him on it.

My money says that the finale will find our man Don back in New York trying to reconcile with his wife, or maybe that’s just the hopeful romantic in me. I also think Betty’s pregnant.

Item #3: ‘Old Christine’ Gets It Right Again

This week’s episode of the Julia Louis-Dreyfus comedy, The New Adventures of Old Christine again made some spot-on observations about parenthood amidst its usual brand of uncomfortable, Larry David-like nuttiness.

The recent episode focused on Christine’s 12-year-old son Ritchie not wanting to say, “I love you” and rebuffing his mom’s hugs. (My 10-year-old son’s already rebuffing my hugs in public.) This turn of events sent Christine over the edge, questioning whether she should have another baby (so someone would willingly hug her for at least a few more years) and wondering whether she should still be sleeping in Ritchie’s bed every night. (Um, no.) Link to the scene that sets up the entire episode here.

When The Eldest Boy said he couldn’t find the iPod Shuffle he got for his birthday, I was convinced it would never be found again. He’d last been seen wearing it in the car when we were on our way to the town library, into which I told him he couldn’t bring it. Why? Because he might lose it.

A few days later, he said he couldn’t find it and insisted that someone in the house must’ve moved, hidden or stolen it. (An in-house tribunal was held. No arrests were made.)

The car was thoroughly searched separately by The Spouse, The Eldest Boy and me, though I’m not convinced either male did a thorough job. (Each has stood in front of the refrigerator and not seen the ketchup bottle that’s right in front of his face.) All three of us scoured our family room, removed the cushions from the sofa, checked beneath all the furniture, checked everywhere we could think of. No iPod was found, a fact driven home each night by The Eldest Boy’s twin sister, The Girl, who’d smirk when she put hers on and retreat to her bedroom at night.

The claims that “Somebody took it!” ended two days ago when The Eldest Boy finally located it. In the pocket of a pair of jeans. That had gone through the washer. And the dryer.

The Spouse and I thought it had certainly been fried by the heat, but were amazed that, once I charged it up, it resumed working. No problems at all. Given that so many of the kids’ toys and electronics break if you breathe on it the wrong way, this was a very welcome turn of events.

Image credit: Apple.

Years ago, I wrote a column that somewhat embarrassed The Spouse. It asked one, central question: How do sleep deprived parents of young children enjoy “private time” together? (And those moments at midnight, when you’re both exhausted and about to fall asleep, didn’t count. The key word here is “enjoy.”)

After taking an informal survey of my friends at the time, I learned that many of them had invested in solid bedroom door locks and took advantage of the fact that their kids would be transfixed by the TV, so they kept a variety of videos and DVDs that their kids liked on hand, hoping that the glow of the TV would maintain their children’s interest and keep them away from Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom for a little while, say, 10 minutes. In addition to those suggestions, friends also offered horror stories of getting caught in the act by their children, every parents’ nightmare scenario.

I’ve never really seen that horrifically awkward moment depicted well on TV. Until this past Sunday night, when Desperate Housewives – in the midst of a major creative comeback – had a storyline about Gabby and Carlos Solis being observed by their daughter Juanita, whom they initially told that they’d been wrestling. It was priceless. And funny.

The other parental intrusion scene I’ve seen recently happened on Mad Men – during an episode called “Three Sundays” — when two grade school-aged offspring barged in on their parents, Don and Betty Draper. When asked what they were doing, their father shouted, “Sleeping!”

The link to the Desperate Housewives’ video is here, but DO NOT WATCH it with kids around or when they’re within earshot. Trust me on this.