Picket Fence Post

Okay, so I get dragged to see dreck like The Squeakquel and other such fare on occasion with the Picket Fence Post children. But when the movies aimed at my kids seem like they’ll be decent, well, I’m simply thrilled.

I recently came across the preview for the third installment of the Toy Story series, which has been forever in the works. My eldest two kids fell in love with Toy Story years ago. The Eldest Boy (now 11) and The Youngest Boy dressed as Buzz Lightyear for several Halloweens, while The Girl went as Jessie the Cowgirl one year. We owned a couple of Buzz Lightyears, two Woodys, two Jessies and one Bullseye the horse.

And while my 11 year olds may protest that they’re too old to see Toy Story 3, there’s a chance that my 8-year-old will want to see this with me. (And I’d actually like to see it too.) In the preview, we learn that Andy is *sniff* going to college and has to figure out what to do with all his toys. It looks like most of the crew is being donated to some sort of pre-school.

Then there’s the live action movie that’s based on the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid book. The preview for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the movie made my kids laugh and I have feeling that, after this movie comes out, we’re going to be hearing a lot more about “The Cheese Touch.”

As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to take the lead of some New England media folk and chronicle a day in the life of a Massachusetts suburban work-from-home mom of three by snapping photos throughout the day. That mom, of course, was me.

And wouldn’t you know that today happened to be the day when The Youngest Boy stayed home from school complaining of a constellation of vague symptoms. However because The Spouse was working from home, it wasn’t solely my duty to serve at the kid’s beck and call, fetching him beverages, snacks, lunch, blankets, etc.

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This is, in a word, insane. Watch the Fox & Friends segment below where a 10-year-old girl and her father were interviewed about their recent lemonade stand escapade where New York City authorities not only shut down her lemonade stand in the park, but ticketed her for failing to have a permit.

Yeah, let’s use precious public resources — even more precious in a recession rife with cutbacks and dwindling tax revenues — and waste time going after those hardened pediatric lemonade stand operators. I’m sure there are NO other illegal street vendors to crack down on in New York City, people selling unpermitted stuff like, oh, I don’t know, knock-off purses or illegally obtained DVDs of recently released movies. Much easier to pick on a kid. Kids run slower.

At least the girl wasn’t wearing one of the nipple-tasseled T-shirts when she was selling her lemonade. Who knows would’ve happened to her then.

What, you haven’t heard about these shirts getting so much buzz on the internet? They’re “ironic” shirts for babies and toddlers designed to make a statement about the over-sexualization of young girls’ clothing. Here, let me share with you what the designer told the web site Parent Dish:

“The Nipple Tassel t-shirt was designed as a response to my own distaste at seeing mini versions of sexy clothes on young children . . . There is nothing very sexy about a baggy, lap neck, long sleeved t-shirt for a 6-month-old. So by embellishing this style of garment with printed nipple tassels, the result is not that the baby becomes sexualized by the tassels, but the tassels are made benign and silly by the baby.”

Certain to become a baby shower favorite, right?

Image credit: Twisted Twee via Parent Dish.

Item #1: The Max Factor

I cannot shake the feeling that I’ve time traveled back to 2002, when my youngest child was still a baby and wouldn’t allow The Spouse and I to sleep through the night. For three years this went on, unless we let him sleep in bed with us. Those sleepless years — with the pint-sized bed hog nestled in between us, randomly flailing about – made an impact on The Spouse and I. That was a dark, sleepless period of time.

So when our 3-month-old puppy Max decided that for all but one night since he’s been in the Picket Fence Post home that he’d be bound and determined to howl and bark after we went to bed, it’s as if we’ve zoomed back to those sleep deprived years when The Spouse and I would crankily argue at 3 in the morning over the best plan of action.

With Max, after five nights of The Spouse or I sleeping on the sofa next to his crate, we finally decided to leave him in his crate in our family room (not in our bedroom as I suggested, with the sole goal of getting some shut-eye) and the canine’s been none too happy about it. Two nights ago, The Spouse and Max had a stand off that went on from 2-3 a.m. The Spouse took him outside twice during that time only to have little, fluffy, extremely cute Max bark the minute The Spouse returned to our bedroom.

Juan Valdez is so psyched that our life is currently being run by a nocturnal six-pound loud mouth. It’s good for business.

Item #2: ‘Outside Ye Maniacs’

I don’t understand. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t.

Why won’t the Picket Fence Post children go outside and play — and do whatever their little minds imagine — without making me threaten them with hours upon hours of brain-deadening housecleaning chores, like scrubbing the kitchen floor? (Kidding. Sort of.)

We’ve had two weeks of fairly good weather and, on the nice days, it’s been a struggle to get the kids to frolic in the out of doors. Much to my chagrin, my oldest children have figured out how to exploit my love of reading to try to get out of going outside by saying, “But I’m reading!” Which, of course, is a good thing, right?

Today I struck a compromise. “Go outside and read under the shade of a tree,” I said.

“Are you gonna MAKE us go outside?” the Youngest Boy asked, after saying he wasn’t interested in reading, inside or outside.

Seeing that he was clutching a Star Wars figure in his hand, I used that to my advantage. “You can get more action figures and bring them OUTSIDE and play with them.”

Item #3: Coveting Your Kid’s Life

Do you covet your kid’s life? A Details Magazine writer, in a piece on Yahoo’s SHINE, thinks that today’s kids have it way easier than their parents did. (Isn’t that what every generation thinks?) An excerpt of the snarky, tongue-in-cheek piece:

“. . . [L]et’s be honest, there’s plenty to begrudge. Not only do your kids have a far sweeter set up than you had growing up — in the days when Atari ruled and easily accessible porn meant your sister’s Judy Blume collection — but they also have it better than you do now . . . Your kids have multi-player online games and time to play them . . . Junior — God bless him — keeps getting smarter and savvier; he’s effortlessly cool and young while you struggle to hang on, wincing from an Achilles tendon strained when playing H-O-R-S-E and fighting the urge to sing along with ‘I Kissed a Girl’ in your Passat wagon.”

Does he have a point or is he just whining (kind of like I am in Item #1)?

Item #4: ‘Mad Men’s’ Award Winning Mommy

Actually, I jest when I use the phrase “award winning mommy,” because there are no mothers of the year on Mad Men.

Betty Draper, surficially the woman who has everything — beautiful home in the suburbs, nice clothing, two kids and a hot husband who makes a good living and buys her jewelry – was last seen at the end of season two, pregnant with her third child. But Betty Draper, my friends, is certainly no role model. She chastises her daughter about the hazards of a girl getting “stout,” urges her husband Don to beat on their youngest son Bobby after he misbehaves, and sometimes gets so loaded that she can’t take care of the kids and leaves it up to the nanny/housekeeper.

The Dyna Moe image above is from the first season when Betty found her daughter Sally playing “spaceman” and wearing the plastic dry cleaning bag over her head. Instead of telling Sally to take it off because she could suffocate, Betty says her dry cleaning better not be found lying all over the floor.

Catch Betty’s latest maternal escapades in the third season Mad Men Sunday nights on AMC.

Image credit: Dyna Moe.

Jon +  Kate Not So-Great

As difficult as she’s been making it, I’m starting to feel badly for Kate Gosselin, from Jon “Hey I’m only 32 and for dates” & Kate Plus 8.

I’ve already written about how disappointing and breathtakingly difficult it must’ve been for Jon and Kate Gosselin to have their marriage crumble in front of national television cameras for a reality show whose producers seek to get the best ratings, not take care of a family in trouble.

Soon after they announced that they were divorcing, my feelings of melancholy for both Kate and Jon started to shift. It had a lot to do with the photos and footage of Jon cavorting with several different twentysomething gals late into the evenings, one of whom is the daughter of the cosmetic surgeon who gave Kate her tummy tuck in the first season of Jon & Kate.

Then Kate decided to provide an exclusive interview to the Today Show, and the program exploited Kate’s pain, seemingly trying to goad her into crying. (Wrote about it here.) Following the interview, anonymous NBC staffers complained to the Chicago Sun-Times about Kate’s behavior following the interview, saying, “We get virtually all of the world’s biggest egos coming through here. But Kate was one of the most unpleasant I’ve seen in working here for many years.”

I now wish that this family would simply cease providing interviews to anyone and just pull up the draw bridge to protect those eight young kids and, frankly, themselves. I wish they’d stop providing fodder for anyone to write about, live their lives as quietly as possible. Aside from doing the TLC show — payment for which is likely providing the family with the funds to put those eight kids through college — I wish Jon and Kate would just stop talking about their impending divorce and love lives and just focus on providing TLC with footage of raising eight kids, not on tabloid sideshow trash.

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(An alternative title to this post could be the All-New York Times Edition, as all the stories referenced are from this week’s Times.)

Item #1:  Texting

News flash: It’s not good for teens to text all the time. 

Now you might not think that’s news, but ever since the New York Times ran a story entitled, “Texting May Be Taking a Toll” on Tuesday, people have been pretty worked up all across the internet. After citing some brain-numbing statistics depicting teen texting run amok (saying the average teen sent and received 2,272 text messages/month), the Times warned: “The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.” . . . and global warming, the impending GM bankruptcy and the Susan Boyle profanity incident as well.

People need a serious reality check.

What the story about teens abusing texting tells me is that they’ve yet to learn that there’s truth to the adage: Moderation is key. Sure moderation is boring, but if you can no longer move your thumbs because you’ve been texting for 10 hours/day and you can’t sleep because you’re anxious that you might miss Sally’s insipid text about Jon’s new, sick T-shirt, moderation might seem downright novel, even sexy. (Swollen, non-working thumbs and huge bags under your eyes aren’t sexy).

If a kid texts reasonably, there shouldn’t be a problem. (If your thumb starts to hurt, stop. Maybe go old school and call someone on the actual phone, or, even more edgy, see the person face-to-face.) If a kid’s texting spirals out of control, of course other things’ll fall by the wayside, other than the thumbs and the sleep deprivation. When the kid stops paying attention to his or her responsibilities (chiefly schoolwork) and accrues massive cell phone/texting bills, then an adult has to step in and do something.

We don’t need a scientific study to tell us that too much texting isn’t a good thing.

Item #2: More Texting

So while the physicians and psychologists are up late fretting about what texting is doing to today’s youth, the Emily Posts of the world are aghast at what rampant, wild, uncontrolled texting is doing to teens’ table manners because, instead of partaking of riveting, sparkling conversation at the family dinner table, they’re now likely to be surreptitiously, like, texting.

In fact, a Times writer tracked down Emily Post’s great granddaughter, Cindy Post Senning, who told the paper, “People are texting everywhere.” The article, “Play With Your Food, Just Don’t Text,” continued:

“Husbands, wives, children and dinner guests who would never be so rude as to talk on a phone at the family table seem to think it’s perfectly fine to text (or e-mail, or Twitter) while eating.

Dr. Post Senning is here to tell you that it is not perfectly fine. Not at all. So new is the problem that her latest book, Emily Post’s Table Manners for Kids . . . written by Peggy Post, covered it only generally in a blanket ruling: ‘Do NOT use your cell phone or any other electronic devices at the table.’”

To me, that should be the end of the story. Make some House Rules, with a capital “H” and a capital “R,” which also apply to BlackBerry abusers. (. . . not that I have anyone of THOSE who bring the BlackBerry to the table . . .) No texting during meals. (Our meals are done in less than a half-hour so I can’t imagine 30 minutes incommunicado is a supreme sacrifice. Yes, I mean you too Mr. Spouse.) Then when the teens venture forth into the world, parents can only hope that they take the lessons of the House Rules with them when they’re at other people’s tables.

Item #3: Hugging

(This is the low-tech, almost anti-tech entry in today’s Three for Thursday.)

Teens. Hugging. It’s so the new black. This “issue” made page one of the New York Times today, in an article entitled, “For Teenagers, Hello Means ‘How About a Hug.’”

Good grief, is it really PAGE ONE news that today’s teens seem to hug each other more than teens of yesteryear did? Maybe if schools were banning hugging in significant numbers — as a few moronic districts have, and it’s briefly noted in the piece  – THEN I could see justifying the placement of a story about teens hugging on the front page. But the fact that kids hug a lot these days . . . not exactly breaking news.

“Girls embracing girls, girls embracing boys, boys embracing each other — the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days,” the paper said. “Teachers joke about ‘one hour’ and ’six hour’ hugs, saying that students hug one another all day as if they were separated for an entire summer.”

When they’re not hugging, apparently, they’re texting.

Image credit: Fred Conrad/New York Times.

I just shared some of the web site Babble’s “50 Funniest Kid Videos” with my very own kiddos and they insisted that THE most amusing one featured the baby who could give the meanest stink eye look you’ve ever seen at the drop of a hat.

Here it is, per the request of the Picket Fence Post family players:

Friday Funnies . . . because parents need to laugh. At least once a week.

Item #1: Old School Tooth Extraction

The tooth is hanging there. I mean JUST hanging there. The kid’s whining, refusing to eat, or is eating with her head cocked to one side so that food and liquids dribble out of that one side of her mouth and all over the kitchen table. And you, the kid’s parent, want the drama to end already. You just want that tooth out.

When one of my kids has a loose tooth, the little enamel beauty’ll be wiggly for weeks upon weeks. And our close relatives will be well aware that their niece/nephew/grandson/granddaughter has a loose tooth because the child will regularly provide them with breaking news updates by phone which usually consist of four words, “My tooth’s still loose.” Inevitably, one of the relatives — likely a wise guy grandfather or uncle – will suggest that the kid tie one end of a piece of string around the tooth, tie the other end to a door knob and slam the door shut. The loose-toothed kid usually responds with a lively, “No way!” as though it had been suggested that the child eat a well rounded meal or clean one’s room without complaint.

But they may change their minds about that technique after seeing my editor Heather Kempskie’s video of her son’s tooth extraction via a string and door knob. Or maybe not.

Item #2: Rude Kids

Are Gen X parents – the ones who are endlessly worried about their kids’ self esteem, who were warned by parenting experts never to criticize their charges and to avoid saying, “No,” who practice attachment parenting and are fiercely protective of their offspring — raising a bunch of ill-mannered miscreants? Yes, in fact, they are, according to MSNBC’s Susan Gregory Thomas’s piece entitled, “Today’s tykes: Secure kids or rudest in history?” An excerpt:

“. . . [B]y many accounts, Generation X may be the most devoted parents in American history . . . Yet their kids are, well, rude. It may be that today’s parents are so fixated on their children’s emotional well-being that they’re teaching them that the well being of others is comparably unimportant, says Dr. Philippa Gordon, a long-time pediatrician in Park Slope, Brooklyn.”

What do you think? ARE kids ruder these days than they used to be? More self-centered? If so, on whom do you pin the blame?

Item #3: Ankle Woes Cont’d

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with the saga of my 10-year-old daughter’s ankle woes. Since January 2008 when The Girl suffered a minor ankle sprain during basketball practice, she’s been dogged by ankle problems. She’s only played half-seasons of fall and spring soccer and winter basketball since sustaining the injury. Following periods of pain, she’d rest, sit out of organized sports, get better, start playing during the next season (or join a season already in progress), then experience pain again. (It’d also hurt intermittently during regular activity but not as much as during team sports.)

She has visited an orthopaedist and a physical therapist. She’s had X-rays and an MRI. And she’s still not better. So The Spouse and I pulled her off her spring soccer team before the season began and said we needed to try to get to the bottom of all of this.

This morning we took her to see a youth sports medicine specialist in Boston for his input. He ordered another MRI and has raised the possibility of acupuncture and other therapies to help treat her, depending on what information the new MRI provides. Upon learning that acupuncture involved needles, The Girl’s eyes bulged and she began shaking her head, “No.” I told her that if we actually get to that point and we decide to take her an acupuncturist, she can use it to boost her tough-gal street cred. “Yeah, so I get my skin covered with needles, no biggie, doesn’t hurt at all,” I said, pretending like I was a 10-year-old trying to be cool. Didn’t really convince her though, so I dropped the subject.

To be continued . . .

Item #1: Sad About Rem-Dawg

Fans of the Boston Red Sox had been curious as to the whereabouts of Rem-Dawg (Jerry Remy for the uninitiated). A Massachusetts native and former Sox player, Rem-Dawg has been doing color commentary for NESN Red Sox broadcasts for years with Don Orsillo. My kids watched their first Red Sox games with the down-to-earth Remy behind the mike.

Now we hear that Jerry Remy, a former smoker, is recovering from pneumonia and an infection that set in following lung cancer surgery late last year. He’s on an indefinite leave from NESN while he recuperates. In a statement on his blog, Remy said, “I hope that by stating all this publicly, it will emphasize the dangers of smoking to everyone, especially children.”

The Boston Globe last month did a big story on Remy in its Sunday Magazine where I learned a great deal about the guy. Good piece. Worth reading, though it didn’t include a peep about lung cancer which, apparently, Remy was keeping under wraps at the time.

Item #2: Disappointed in Manny

When news broke today that former Red Sox star – and a member of the brotherhood of 2004 and 2007 — Manny Ramirez, now a Dodger, has been suspended by Major League Baseball for 50 games for using performance enhancing drugs, I was really ticked.

I tweeted about it on Twitter and how The Girl (10), who’s a big Manny fan, would be disappointed when she learns the news. One of the responses I received was this: “How does your daughter feel about the elderly clubhouse guy Manny beat up last season? Sorry, he’s not a good person.”

Another person chastised me for allowing my daughter to be a Manny fan (though I suspect this person, a Sox fan, wasn’t exactly unhappy when Manny’s hits helped the Sox win games). He said, tongue-firmly-in-cheek: “Don’t you have any control [over] who [your] daughter idolizes? After he quit on the team last season you should have said, ‘Manny is a turd and anyone that mentions him in a positive light won’t watch TV for a week.’ End of story. You can save your daughter from being disappointed by [plural expletive] for a few more years.”

I thought about their visceral reactions to my Twitter lamentation for a bit, as well as the fact that I never shared the tale of the Manny altercation with The Girl when it happened. Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have burst her rose-colored glasses bubble about her favorite player a long time ago. But I didn’t. She was still mourning the departure of her first favorite Sox player, Nomar Garciaparra. (She walked around for at least two years wearing a Nomar/Chicago Cubs T-shirt feeling angry that he was no longer on the team.)  I didn’t want to harp on the ”Manny being Manny,” bird-dogging, childish behavior. Was I trying to protect her? I don’t know. You want to be the one to tell your 9-year-old that her favorite player is acting like a schmuck? Then, when Manny parted ways with the Sox last summer in the middle of our summer vacation, she was heartbroken.

Now that Ramirez has been found by MLB to have been using a banned substance, I’m going to have to tell her that he’s in the same boat as other disgraced baseball players whose names are mud in our house. Like Barry Bonds. It’ll be a tough conversation.

The world of sports fandom sure is a heck of a lot more complicated for her than it was for me when my player of choice was the low-keyed Dwight Evans. The consumption of banned drugs, high profile bad behavior, fights. Sounds more like Hollywood than Major League Baseball. Or at least it used to.

UPDATE: The Girl just came home from school. I told her about Manny, including the altercation from last year. She has since sadly retreated to her room.

Item #3: Mother’s Day Wishes

What do moms want for Mother’s Day? Well isn’t that that million dollar question, particularly on the Thursday before Mother’s Day? In my latest GateHouse News Service column, I assert that we could do all moms a great big Mother’s Day favor by being a whole heck of a lot more supportive of one another and a heap lot less judgmental. Those things don’t cost a cent.

Image credit: AP via ESPN.

The Girl had been invited to a birthday party. Then it was re-scheduled. I wrote down the new date, entered it into my BlackBerry and activated the reminder function on the handheld so I wouldn’t miss it.

But for some reason, regardless of in how many locations I placed reminders about the new party date, it just wouldn’t stick in my brain. So this past Friday evening’s events shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

On Friday afternoon I’d made sure The Girl was all ready for the party. She brushed her hair, put on the shirt she’d planned to wear and made the birthday card. I coordinated logistics with The Spouse so that he could get The Eldest Boy to his re-scheduled 6:30 p.m. soccer game in town. Then The Youngest Boy and The Girl piled into my vehicle and we arrived to the birthday party locale only 10 minutes past the appointed time . When we walked in and I looked around, I realized that the party is THIS coming Friday. We were a week early.

As we left the party site and headed for The Eldest Boy’s soccer game, The Youngest Boy said he was reminded of the time when I completely forgot about his good friend’s birthday party and we missed it, even though the party invitation was right there on the bulletin board in the kitchen that I walked past multiple times a day. In that case, I’d forgotten to input the date into the BlackBerry with the audio reminder.

At least this time I didn’t actually miss the party. I was just a bit celebratorily premature is all.

Image credit: This web site.