Picket Fence Post

Item #1: The Chew Monster (Otherwise Known as the Puppy)

Max, our mini-Wheat puppy, is smack dab in the middle of a rather nasty chewing phase and has been grabbing at anything within his reach and shredding it. Anything. Lego pieces. Pencils. Trash. Tissue boxes. Magazines. Soda cans. Shoes. You get the picture. Combine Max’s propensity for gnawing with the Picket Fence Post kids’ tendency to leave items lying haphazardly around the house and you’ve got the ingredients for my latest GateHouse News Service column.

Item #2: Co-Ed Sleepovers . . . Are They Nuts?

When I saw a Tweet this week from a Boston-based Fox TV journalist promoting her segment about teen co-ed slumber parties, she asked people thought about the notion. My immediate response was decidedly thumbs down. Putting hormonal kids together, with soft bedding, in the dark where parents will be absent for long stretches of time including in the middle of the night and a developmental lack of impulse control (plus teens’ brains aren’t fully developed) is patently crazy. Then I watched Sara Underwood’s piece on local TV and it only confirmed my initial thoughts. Please, tell me what you think about this trend.

Item #3: Pajama Diaries

So. Very. True.

Item #4: Modern ‘Like’ Family

Freshman ABC comedy Modern Family was unbelievably fabulous this week. It provided me with ample laughs just when I needed them. (You can watch the latest episode “Fears” for free at the ABC web site.) But the part that really had me rolling — aside from seeing the adorable Manny in his classic fisherman’s cap (I just want to hug that little guy) – was the scene where Claire Dunphy was driving her teenaged Haley and her friend around and could not, not for one more second, tolerate listening to her daughter continually and nonsensically invoke the word “like.”

Here’s what Haley said to her friend: “And then I’m like, ‘There’s no way I’m wearing that.’ And she was like, ‘Well if you don’t wear it then you can’t play.’ And then I was like, ‘Well, that’s fine by me.’ And then she was like . . .”

By this time, Claire, who’d been rolling her eyes as she listened to this, snarkily said the word “like” over her daughter’s conversation four times until her daughter objected. “Stop saying, ‘like!’” Claire shouted.

“Don’t embarass me!” the daughter shouted back.

“Ahhhhhh!” Claire shrieked as she gripped the steering wheel and violently shook her head.

This exact scenario – with slightly different wording and sans the guttural yell – occurred between my mother and me while she was driving me and a friend around when I was but a teenaged gal. I have a vivid memory of having what I saw as a perfectly pleasant conversation with my friend only to have my mother, seemingly out of nowhere, shout, “Meredith! Stop saying, ‘like!’”

I’m busily trying to stomp that tendency out of my own children before they become teens. I’m tryin’.

Image credit: Pajama Diaries via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

I felt a bit like the faux-cool dad, Phil Dunphy from Modern Family yesterday when I attempted to invoke the slang term “beast” when talking with my 11-year-old son and describing something as being cool. (”Beast” is — or was – the kids’ hip way of saying, “cool.” That’s why my eldest two kids told me last year anyway.)

“Mooom!” The Eldest Boy said, “It’s not ‘beast’ anymore!”

“When did that happen?” I asked, chagrined. “What do you mean?”

“It’s ‘tank.’”

“‘Tank?’”

“Yeah, that’s the new word,” he said.

It’s so new, this using “tank” as a synonym for “cool,” that when I looked in the Urban Dictionary of slang words, I couldn’t find a definition of “tank” that matched my son’s.

Combine my verbal miscue with the fact that last week when The Girl and I started dancing in the kitchen after dinner and The Youngest Boy (8) told me I danced “like an old lady,” you can understand why I’m not feeling too hip these days.

Hence my earlier statement that I’m worried that my kids are going to start to think I’ve become a Phil Dunphy. Who the heck is Phil Dunphy? He’s a fictional character from an ABC comedy. Watch the video below and you’ll understand my concern:

Do your kids make you feel woefully out of touch?

Okay, so I write about ABC’s Modern Family so much that people might wonder if I’m getting some kind of payment for mentioning it this often. And I do, with laughs.

The promo for next week’s Valentine’s Day themed episode features Claire and Phil, married parents of three,  doing a little risque role playing to spice things up . . . with unexpected consequences. Enjoy.

When you had a baby in the house, did any of you have disagreements with your significant other over employing the Ferber method, like whether to do it, how to do it? All who did, raise your hands. (Mine’s up.)

For those of you who don’t know what the verb “Ferberize” means, you must’ve been living under a rock to have missed this particular term: It’s a strategy for teaching your baby to soothe him or herself back to sleep by, essentially, letting the kid cry it out. It’s controversial, particularly among the attachment parenting set.

The awesome ABC comedy Modern Family took on Ferberizing this week by having new dad Mitchell insist that his baby Lily needed to be allowed to cry herself back to sleep, while his partner Cameron protests, calling the technique cruel and heartless. Mayhem ensues.

Many years ago when there were babies in the Picket Fence Post house, I played the overly emotional role of Cameron even though I agreed that it needed to be done. (I’d be lying in bed in the middle of the night fretting as my stomach lurched while listening to the baby cry on the baby monitor.) The Spouse played the role of Mitchell, the hard-nosed Ferberizer . . . and, with The Youngest Boy.

Item #1: Big Sunday for Big Love

Whenever I start to fret about how insane and overcaffeinated my life seems at times – I never have enough time to get my work done from my home office (hence the caffeine) amid the demands of the three young narcissists I’m raising (for whom I serve as an unpaid administrative assistant/chauffeur/cook/cleaner/home health aide), my husband with his broken wrist (which’ll likely require surgical repair in the next week or so), and our wildly teething nutty puppy who can now leap onto all of the furniture with ease — I like to flip on the TV and observe the hell that fictional TV families (or non-fictional in the case of the Gosselins) endure on a daily basis and realize that these folks — fictional or not — have stress levels way higher than mine.

A prime example of TV families with more on their plate than me comes in the form of the three wives of HBO’s Big Love.  Not only do they share one husband — I cannot even imagine — but they have to worry all the time that they’ll get arrested for practicing polygamy and that the creepy folks and relatives from the nearby polygamist compound (which looks like real life ones I’ve seen on the news) will draw them into all manner of mayhem. Plus they have a good number of little kids and babies running around, in addition to two teenagers, one who wants to get married to a guy in his late 20s. At least one wife is trying to get her career off the ground and another is going back to school.

The fourth season of the polygamist drama premieres Sunday night and promises to be as controversial as ever. My bustling suburban home with three kids, one husband, one wife and one dog seems downright tame and manageable by comparison.

Item #2: High Hopes for Parenthood

Remember that old film Parenthood, the one from 1989 which starred Steve Martin along with a great ensemble cast? It dramatized how parenthood is complicated and messy and heart-rending no matter how old your kids are. Well NBC is hoping that, despite the fact that the film is decades old, that there’s still magic in its formula. NBC is taking the film’s premise and turning it into a TV show, kind of like they did with the phenomenal Friday Night Lights, which was a non-fiction book, then a movie, then a fictional TV drama.  (If shows like the Bionic Woman and Knight Rider can be resurrected, why not a 21-year-old movie?) 

Parenthood, the TV show, will feature Gilmore Girls’ Lauren Graham, Six Feet Under’s Peter Krause and Coach’s Craig T. Nelson. I’ve seen a handful of promos and I’m hopeful that this show will work, though the bar for family comedies has been set mighty high by the fabulous freshman ABC comedy Modern Family which literally makes me laugh out loud each week.

How will Parenthood, the TV show stack up? Check out the trailer for the 1989 film:

(more…)

“We’re gonna pass into legend, the parents who canceled Christmas,” Claire, mom of three, in Modern Family.

I’ve loving Modern Family, a freshman ABC comedy, more and more with each new episode.

In the recent Christmas installment (available free on the ABC web site) Claire and Phil, parents of a teenager and two tweens, find a burn mark on the arm of their sofa on Christmas Eve and demand that one of their three kids admit wrong-doing. If someone doesn’t step up and cop to the charge, Phil spontaneously decides that they’re going to cancel Christmas, something with which Claire is not entirely on board but silently supports her husband nonetheless.

The entire episode is definitely worth watching, particularly the “Inocente!” part.

It’s been several weeks since the fall TV season commenced and the new half-hour ABC comedy Modern Family – about a multi-generational, messed up, loving American family — has not only lived up to its pre-season buzz, but it’s exceeded it.

Paired with another family half-hour comedy, The Middle (starring Patricia Heaton), these two have made Wednesday nights the big comedy night of the week. And when you factor in The New Adventures of Old Christine (starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus) on CBS on Wednesdays as well, it’s family dysfunction at its finest. (You can view previous episodes of The Middle and Modern Family on the ABC web site, and Old Christine eps on the CBS web site.)

For your Friday funny viewing, here’s a segment from a recent episode of Modern Family where new adoptive dads, Cameron and Mitchell were taking their baby home from the hospital after accidentally hitting her head against a door jam and discussing whether they are good parents:

It’s 9/11 and therefore a very solemn day. (Over on my pop culture and politics blog I wrote about happening upon 9/11/01 footage being re-broadcast on MSNBC this morning and was unable to turn it off.) I had a long talk with my children over dinner last night about what happened eight years ago today and the significance of this day.

Given the sadness that has accompanied September 11 for the past eight years, it’s definitely a day that calls for the Friday Funnies.

This week I’ve found a sneak peek of a new ABC comedy called Modern Family which will premiere on Wednesday Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. It stars Ed O’Neill from Married with Children and Julie Bowen from a bunch of shows including Ed, Boston Legal and Lost. O’Neil is the patriarch of the family — he has two grown children who also have children of their own — and has remarried to a significantly younger woman (who some mistake for his daughter), who has an 11-year-old child. (Trailers on the ABC web site remind me a bit of Arrested Development.)

The video below — which contains the “b” word, fair warning — features Bowen’s character dealing with a family discliplinary issue.