Kung Fu

November 24th, 2011

The boys need discipline.  Kung Fu movies always talk about discipline, so Mommy suggests that the boys learn Kung Fu.  Kung Fu movies constitute all that either Mommy or Daddy know about Kung Fu.  Daddy hesitates.  Kung Fu movies also involve a lot of ass kicking and Daddy is a little concerned about how old the boys would be before they could kick Daddy’s ass.  This could turn the whole discipline thing on its head.

Mommy and Daddy take the boys to a free introductory lesson.  Terrance is the Sifu. “That means teacher”, says Terrance.  Daddy suspects it means master, but master doesn’t translate well into American English.   Sifu Terrance starts the class.  Hands together, Terrance bows to the photographs of the lineage masters, bows to the school founder, and bows to the boys, “the future masters”.  The boys fumble around, distracted.

Terrance shows the boys how to stand.  Stance is important in Kung Fu.  Niko stands, sort of. Devon looks around the room, fascinated by the giant lion dance head.  Xander spins around and pays no attention at all.  Terrance shows the boys how to kick.  Niko sort of raises his leg.  Devon kicks Niko.  Xander starts to wander around the room.  Terrance corrals Xander.  More stances.  More kicking.  More distracted boys.

Terrance decides to teach the boys the ‘stranger danger’ game. He explains that they should not be talking to strangers alone because it could be dangerous.  The boys nod that they understand.  “Ok”, says Terrance optimistically, “I will pretend to be a stranger.  You boys stand there.  Then you walk toward me.  When I start talking to you, you run away and yell loudly ‘stranger danger’.   Ok?”  Xander starts walking toward Terrance.  “No, not yet, stay there; don’t walk until I tell you.”  Xander returns to the line.  Terrance picks up a baseball bat and a ball as stranger props. “Ok, come toward me.”  Nobody moves.  “You boys walk toward me now.”  As the boys approach, Terrance starts his act.  “Hi guys, would you like to play ball with me?” Terrance says evilly.  Niko smiles and grabs Terrance’s hand.  Xander walks right past Terrance to investigate something interesting at the door.  “Hello”, replies Devon brightly.  “Ok”, says Terrance with somewhat diminished optimism, “go back to the line.  Back to the line.”  The boys meander back to their appointed spot.  Sifu Terrance continues.  “When I speak, I want you to yell ‘stranger danger’ really loud and then run away.  Ok?  When I speak, yell and run away.”  Terrance then modifies his act and calls the boys forward again.  “Tranger danger”, says Niko enthusiastically, standing still.  Devon runs away … for a bit … and then immediately returns to examine the orange cone Terrance is using as the next prop.  Xander continues walking.  “Ok”, says Terrance in the even handed tone of someone with plenty of discipline and patience, “wait for me to speak before you yell ‘stranger danger’.  And then all of you should yell it, and then all of you should run away.  Let’s try again.”  Xander is headed out the door.  Devon is over visiting Mommy who is trying to shoo him back into his class.  Niko is on the line. Terrance gathers up Xander.  Devon joins his brothers.  “Ok”, says Terrance without a hint of frustration, “come toward me”.  All three boys walk toward Terrance.  “Hi there.  Would you like some candy?” says Terrance in mock friendliness.  “Yes, please”, says Niko.  “Tranger danger!” yells Devon while Xander sort of runs back, providing an encouraging hint of progress.

Daddy is impressed. Not with the boys so much, but with Terrance.  Sifu Terrance spent an entire hour with a class of three boys, not one of whom did what Terrance asked, and not once did he loose his even demeanor.   Maybe there was something to this Kung Fu thing.  Mommy signs the boys up for their first month of Kung Fu lessons.

Sei Ping Ma … horse stance.  Ding Ji Ma … bow stance. “Kung Fu difficult”, says Devon, struggling not only with the stances but also with the underlying basics such as which leg is right and which one is left.  Sifu demonstrates the stances repeatedly, but repeats them quickly, too quickly for Devon, whose intelligence shines in the quiet solving of complex puzzles. The world of rapid eye-hand coordination … not so much.  In the next class, Mommy is equipped with a video camera and films key teaching vignettes. She then shows Devon at home, picking up his body with one arm and positioning his legs with the other.  One step at a time.  One position at a time. Devon starts to learn.

Xander doesn’t have much commentary on Kung Fu.  He’s also not so interested.  Class time is spent mostly flirting with four year old fellow student Gracie.  All the boys flirt with Gracie, presaging teenage sibling quadrangles in the years to come, but for now Xander does little else.  Xander pokes at Gracie, tugs at Gracie, looks at Gracie, chases Gracie and, when not in class, asks when he will next see Gracie.  Mommy tries to set up a play date with Gracie, but Gracie is half Balinese, and Balinese Mothers apparently don’t mess around with frivolities like play dates for their daughters.  When not in Kung Fu, Gracie is studying ABCs, math and other academics, and when not studying she’s at swimming, when not at swimming … and so on.   Xander must content himself with flirting at Kung Fu.

Niko, the seeming heir apparent to Triplet Leader, works hard.  Niko kicks.  Niko jumps.  Niko stands, turns and listens.  Mommy works with Niko at home and shows off his Sei-Ping-Ma Ding-Ji-Ma Sei-Ping-Ma transitions to Daddy.  Daddy is impressed.  Mommy is pleased.

The other day Daddy showed mommy an article on parental favoritism, the tendency for parents to have a favorite child.  Favoritism is inevitable, the article says, as inevitable as best friends.  It’s also devastating to the children.  The un-favored child risks a lifetime of low self worth.  The favored child risks a lifetime of entitlement and arrogance.  Either way, favoritism’s a killer and few parents are immune to it, truth be told.

Daddy shows the article to Mommy.  Mommy thinks a bit and says, “I don’t have a favorite.”  “The article says every parent says that, but it’s not true”, says Daddy.  Mommy thinks a bit more.  Then she pauses.  It’s one of those long, deep, contemplative pauses, at the conclusion of which Mommy clarifies, “I have different favorites at different times.”  Mommy scores a direct hit on the only hopeful perspective in the article:  favoring different children under different situations.  Mommy has favorites, but the favorites change.  And when it comes to Kung Fu, there is no doubt who the Mommy favorite is:  Niko.

Mommy is pleased with Niko.  A pleased Mommy takes Niko alone to art class.  A pleased Mommy lets Niko go first for solo visit to Auntie Beverly.  A pleased Mommy pulls no punches in showing her pleasure.  Sifu Terrance is pleased with Niko and gives Niko his first stripe.  Niko is pleased with Niko and reminds his brothers at every chance.  “Niko work hard”, explains Niko.  “Devon, Xander, no work hard.”

The rewards get noticed.  Devon and Xander complain.  “Devon go art class?”  “Xander go art class?” “Devon get stripe?”  “Xander get stripe?”  “Not unless you work hard at Kung Fu”, replies Mommy.   Mommy doesn’t budge and rewards continue to rain down on Niko.

Devon turns a corner first.  “Devon work hard”, he explains after a chance to go to Kung Fu alone with Nanny Loann.  Out from under the shadow of his superior sibling, Devon shines.  He kicks.  He jumps.  He listens.  He works hard and pleases both Sifu and Loann.  This pleases Mommy.  Xander follows suit.  Xander, it turns out, has a love of kicking.  Xander kicks hard.  Whack!  Whack! … against the mat.  Xander works hard.  Once again, Mommy is pleased.

Mommy is so pleased, Mommy gets inspired.  Mommy wants to keep helping the boys, but what they are learning is getting too complicated for Mommy to follow just by watching; she wants to make sure she gets the subtleties right.  Mommy signs up for her own Kung Fu.

Mommy stands.  Mommy kicks.  Mommy works hard.  Every weekend Daddy comes home to another demonstration of what Mommy has learned.  “Here … grab my arms like this”, says Mommy.  Daddy grabs Mommy’s arm.  “Grab me hard”, clarifies Mommy.  Daddy squeezes Mommy’s wrists hard.  Schwoop!  Mommy twists and twirls and breaks free of Daddy, no matter how hard he grabs.  Mommy kicks.  Mommy kicks high.  Wow!  Mommy looks just like the movies!  Daddy is impressed.  Mommy looks hot.  Maybe this Kung Fu thing is good for something other than discipline.

Sifu is pleased with Mommy.  Sifu says Mommy has excellent control.  Daddy is a little ashamed … he just thought Mommy was a control freak.

Daddy is ashamed of other things as well.  Daddy looks in the mirror.  It’s one of those full length mirrors that women have installed when they move into houses so they can see everything clearly.  Daddy sees everything clearly.  What Daddy sees isn’t looking so good.  Daddy used to be a hard core mountaineer and that’s how Daddy likes to think of himself, but the mirror tells a different story, an updated story. The mirror tells the same story that the boys tell.

“Why Daddy belly so big?” asks Xander.  “Daddy ate too much hum”, says Daddy sadly.  Xander attempts to understand more fully:  “Daddy need go poo?”  “No”, says Daddy, “a poo won’t make Daddy’s belly go away.  Daddy ate too much hum for many years”.  Xander arches his lean frame backwards and thrusts his muscular abdomen forward with as much distension as he can muster.  “Daddy belly BIG!” pronounces Xander to a responding chorus of brothers laughing.

Kung Fu develops discipline.  In the ways of the body, Daddy has little these days.  Kung Fu develops speed, agility and flexibility.  Daddy has less than little.  Kung Fu teaches the martial art of fighting.  Daddy has never fought a physical fight in his life.  Kung Fu develops mastery of emotion and anger.  Daddy has a volcanic temper.  Kung Fu develops everything that Daddy is terrible at.  There is nothing further from what Daddy imagines himself being able to do than Kung Fu.  To Daddy, Kung Fu is pure unobtainium.

Daddy ponders the mirror.  Daddy talks to Mommy.  Mommy is encouraging.  Mommy is more than encouraging.  Mommy signs Daddy up for Kung Fu and brings home a uniform for Daddy.  It’s a large.  Daddy tries it on, but it’s too small.  Daddy needs an extra large.  Mommy encourages Daddy.  The weeks go by and Daddy still hasn’t made it to class.  “Daddy go Kung Fu?” ask the boys.  Yes, but not yet.  “Daddy go Kung Fu, now?”  No, not now.  More weeks pass.  More encouragement from everyone, and finally Daddy attends class.

Daddy bows to the photographs of the lineage masters, bows to the school founder, and bows to the others in the class.  Daddy stretches; Daddy does push ups; Daddy assumes the Horse Stance, none of it particularly well.  Sifu reminds Daddy to not push himself beyond what he is ready for.  No need to get injured, Sifu says.  Daddy twists and kicks and punches and jumps, flopping down exhausted and sweat drenched at the end of class, but with a smile on his face.  Daddy is happy.

Sifu compliments Daddy on being relaxed.  That’s good, Sifu says.  Relaxed?  Daddy thinks Sifu must have dug deep for something nice to say.

Daddy attends another class.  He’s all excited.  Mommy and the boys are excited.  It’s Kung Fu Family!!  Mommy and Daddy have been watching more Kung Fu movies.  Daddy starts to imagine that maybe, you know, maybe, if Daddy works hard, some of those things that Kung Fu develops could actually be developed in Daddy.  Daddy is hopeful.  Daddy goes to his third class.

After the stretching come the exercises.  In one of the exercises pairs of students kick a tall, vertical kicking bag from opposite sides.  It’s man-on-bag.  The only reason for the pairing is that it helps keep the bag from walking as it gets kicked.  Daddy is paired with a strong young man with colored fringes.  Fringes are a badge of experience, of which Daddy has none.  Every time Mr. Fringe kicks the bag, it wobbles decidedly toward Daddy.  Every time Daddy kicks the bag, Daddy wobbles more than the bag.

Daddy tries to hold his own.  Daddy tries to kick the bag at the same time as Mr. Fringe.  Daddy tries to kick the bag hard.  Daddy kicks the bag.  Kick!  Kick!  A sudden shooting pain and images of calf muscles recoiling up the leg in tight little knots of agony flash through Daddy’s mind as he instinctively finds himself hopping around the room on his remaining functional leg.  Sifu Terrance comes over to Daddy. Sifu suspects a cramp, probably underestimating Daddy’s inflexibility and overestimating his strength.  Terrance suggests a stretch to work out the cramp.  Daddy recoils in a flash of pain.  Sifu Terrance, in the barely detectable way of compassion tempered by a disciplined demeanor, flinches sympathetically.  Daddy bows to the room and departs early, calling for Mommy to meet him at class and locate a pair of crutches.

That night Mommy and Daddy watch a Kung Fu movie.  Kung Fu movies are always full of second chances.  The hero always gets his ass kicked and then returns to save the day.  Mommy and Daddy watch Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.  It’s disproportionate to the point of arrogance for Daddy to compare himself to Bruce Lee, but in the middle of the movie Bruce Lee gets his ass kicked, a broken back, and returns to make his mark on the world.  Daddy just got his ass kicked.  Inspired by his three Kung Fu boys, his hot Kung Fu wife with excellent control, and legendary Sifu Bruce Lee, Daddy hopes that he, too, will be able to return to develop the Kung Fu unobtanium that for a brief few lessons seemed to be obtainable.

Provided that Daddy works hard.

Too Old For This Shit

September 20th, 2011

Before triplets, Daddy listened to other parents who loved to wax poetic about the fresh eyes with which children see the world. “Everything is new!”, they said, “Everything is exciting to children!”. Mystical traditions world-wide speak of seeing the world through these same fresh eyes, the eyes of a child. But Daddy is learning that this may not be the whole story. The truth may not be so simple.

Years ago Daddy used to do mountain search and rescue. Daddy’s team belonged to the Mountain Rescue Association (MRA), whose unofficial motto was “we will go anywhere to help anyone at any time for no charge.” MRA teams trained for steep cliffs, raging waters, high altitude, rock, ice, snow and all of the baddest of the bad rescue situations. The call would come in at 2am … lost climber in the Sierra Nevada. Daddy would grab his pack, drive all night, sleep for an hour and spend the next day or the next week traversing cliffs and rivers in search of clues and climbers. It was challenging! It was exciting! It was real-life life-and-death drama!

One of the greatest things about mountain search and rescue is getting helicopter rides. Helicopters sometimes ferry rescuers into the mountains for urgent placement in areas of high probability of success. Helicopters are cool! Helicopters accentuate the drama, the excitement, the beauty and everything that made search and rescue special for Daddy, including the danger. Although they present the image of hovering stability, flying a helicopter is akin to balancing a cue ball on top of a pencil. They constantly want to roll over and crash, and it is only the skilled reflexes of the pilot that keep the cue ball off the ground and in the air. As with most flying things, landing a helicopter is more dangerous than cruising in level flight. A dead vertical landing is more dangerous than an airplane-style landing. Landing in the wind is more dangerous than landing in calm air. Landing in a grove of trees is more dangerous than landing in an open field, the smaller the grove, the bigger the danger. And landing at high altitude is more dangerous than landing at sea level because the air is thinner and the blades have less to push against. So a high altitude, dead vertical landing in a small grove of tall trees with a wickedly high wind blowing is an exceedingly dangerous maneuver for a helicopter to perform.

And this is exactly the ride that Daddy was getting for a particular operation in Yosemite. The pilot was an ex-Vietnam veteran. He had seen it all, done it all, trained for it all. Only the most skilled and experienced of pilots would even attempt the kind of landing that he was performing. The engine was roaring at near full power to deal with the altitude. The mountain wind, gusting harshly from this direction and that, rocked the helicopter violently. The pilot, eyes scanning 360 degrees simultaneously, kept his wary attention on the towering caldera of trees that seemed just inches from the whirring blades. As the rocky, uneven ground slowly approached from below, the pilot abruptly spoke:

“I’m too old for this shit!”

You see, although the pilot had done it all and seen it all, he saw it a long time ago and had been doing it a long time. Although in that moment Daddy was enthralled with a sense of adventure, the pilot was jaded. This was not fun to him, it was just dangerous and stressful. Daddy was horrified. “No! No!”, thought Daddy to himself, “You are not too old for this shit. You are young! You can do this, at least one more time. Please don’t cash in your chips now! I’m not too old for this. It’s too early for me to go. I want to live. Hang in there!”

But Daddy has come to realize that it is not just craggy old pilots that encrust with the jade.

One of the first adult chores that the boys helped with was taking out the diapers, garbage and recycling. Every morning Daddy would change three diapers and throw them in the flip-top garbage can. Daddy would remove the liner full of diapers, tie it off, and put a new liner in the can. Then Daddy would take the little bag of diapers upstairs, grab the grocery bag of garbage from under the sink, add to it the grocery bag of recycling, and take the whole lot of it outside. Diapers and garbage go in the black garbage can. Recycling goes into the brown recycling can. On his way back to the kitchen, Daddy swings by the carport refrigerator, picks up a bottle of milk and brings it back to the kitchen. That was the highly routine morning routine.

The boys wanted to help. They wanted to help a lot. At first, mostly the help wasn’t helpful. Niko would toss a diaper into the can and miss. Xander loved to replace the new liner and tear it up in the process. Devon would haul the diapers upstairs and then drop them downstairs. Garbage got spilled. Bottles got broken and tops got tossed. Gates got slammed and Daddy got frustrated. But the boys wanted to help and worked hard, focused hard, practiced, prodded and bungled their way into an ever increasing proficiency with the morning routine. Diapers slowly started making it all the way to the big can without a miss.  Milk started making its way all the way back to the kitchen without a delay.

As they became more proficient, they even started to fight for the opportunity to help. No, Niko want to take out the garbage. Xander want the recycling. Devon want the recycling. Every morning Daddy had to divvy up the tasks … OK, Niko, you get the garbage. Who wants the milk and who wants the recycling? The worst days were the ones where there was no garbage or recycling to take out. Tasks needed to be subdivided into ever smaller jobs … OK, Niko, you open the door. Devon, you bring the milk back to the kitchen. Xander, you get to open the milk box.

Gradually, the routine of help became routine. The boys became proficient at dividing up the tasks, choosing their favorite, mastered opening the latch just within reach, and coordinating with Daddy on the final lift up to the can. “Hey, this isn’t so bad”, thought Daddy. “This could work. They are actually being helpful.” Daddy starts to allow himself to dream of the days ahead when three enthusiastic young teenagers pick up the skill saw and paint brush to help Daddy with the Daddy-Do projects. Things were looking up.

Until … the boys became too old for that shit. Overnight. First having clamored for the opportunity just beyond their ability, then struggling and working to master that opportunity, and finally having achieved a harmonious rhythm of productive effort, it all came to a screeching halt. They became jaded. There was nothing new to learn. The routine became work. Became boring. The boys moved on to greener pastures of experience. Nobody wanted to help with diapers. That was so last month. Nobody but Daddy took out the morning garbage or brought in the morning milk. Jaded.

There’s a baby gate at the top of the stairs. In the early days it would stop toddlers cold. “Grunt! Grunt!”, point! … meaning, “Daddy, open gate, please”. Then master of engineering Devon figured out the latch and, viola, he could open the gate with some effort. Niko learned from Devon and, being a little beefier than Devon, routinely opened the gate with ease. Xander tended to just bang on the gate in frustration and ask for help, “Niko, help!”. Infinitely proud of his newly acquired skill, Niko would scamper up the stairs and, viola, open the gate for Xander. After Xander learned to open the gate the borders were open … gate open, gate closed, gate open, gate closes … a free flowing stream of capable boys moving between floors. All was well.

Until they became jaded.

Gate opening has become no longer interesting, no longer a challenge, no longer evidence of developing manhood. It’s boring. It’s a hassle. It’s annoying. Now all three boys will gather by the gate like three fat old men sitting in their lazy-boys bugging the wife to bring them the TV remote. “Daddy, open gate, please”. If they had the vocabulary, Daddy is pretty sure they would add, “We’re too old for this shit!” It takes decades for hot-shot helicopter pilots to traverse from young warriors to jaded old volunteers ferrying rescuers into the mountains. It only takes a year or so for young toddlers to grow old, too old for their previous frontier of development.

Today’s exciting kid frontier is the morning bath and bed routine. The boys get up, make their bed,  remove pajamas,  take a shower, hang their towel, dress themselves and brush their teeth like troupers. Applying toothpaste to the brush without eating the paste, dropping the brush or smudging their clothes is just beyond the frontier. So is turning on the shower. But otherwise, they have become self-sufficient, proficient and productive. They love that they get to do all this stuff. It’s interesting. It’s challenging. The jade hasn’t set in. Daddy beams with pleasure watching three little monkeys hop up onto the bed dragging their three layers of blankets each, flipping them through the air just like Mommy does to lay them out, skittering around to the corners to neatly flatten the blankets down, negotiating with each other every morning about who gets the sailboat blanket and who gets trains. Voila … three boys make three neat beds.

But for how long?

When will bed-making go the way of gate-opening? Or taking out the garbage? Hell, the only reason Daddy makes the bed is that Mommy insists on it. “A tidy bed sets the tone for an orderly day and welcomes me back to the bed each night”, says Mommy. “OK, whatever”, thinks Daddy, who tends to launch himself into the day and not look back at the rumpled mess.  But Daddy knows that a rumpled bed will bring undesired commentary from Mommy, so Daddy makes the bed. Daddy is jaded, but his jade gets polished by Mommy. Which leads to one of the ways in which Mommy deals with jaded boys:

Rules.

The boys get rules. The boys must make their bed, hang their towels and brush their teeth. Non-compliance is not an option. They have learned how to buckle their own car seat. Now it’s exciting. Tomorrow it will be a rule. Mommy and Daddy polish the boys’ jade. What was once exciting becomes obligatory. It’s good polish. It’s good training. But … still … it’s still compensating for the process of becoming jaded to an ever more familiar world. Obedience to rules might mask the outer behavior of jade, but that doesn’t mean there’s no jade.

What’s a parent to do? It is true that children see with fresh eyes, but apparently only because children haven’t had the opportunity to jade up. But jade up they do, and they do it quickly. Daddy’s watching the jade crust up their perception of the world right quick. From what Daddy can see, the boys are using the same jade-prone eyes that Daddy has, they just haven’t seen as much. Same eyes. Just less experienced. What would really help is the ability to stay fresh, to not jade up in the first place. To be as excited about opening that gate for the 10,000th time as the first time. To be as committed to a tidy bed at age 40 as age 4, and not get jaded about beds at age 5. Daddy isn’t like this. The boys are not like this. Fortunately, there is someone who is like this.

Mommy.

When Mommy and Daddy got married, Daddy put in a skylight for Mommy just above the dining room table. Oh, Mommy loved the skylight. Mommy is a daughter of the sun and loves light. She loved how much brighter the room was. She loved how much more cheerful she felt during meals. She even loved how the moonlight would beam through in the evenings. And Mommy would tell Daddy this. Mommy would sit around the table at dinner and tell Daddy how much she loved the light, the brightness, the cheerfulness, the skylight, and how much she loved Daddy for having it installed. And Mommy would tell Daddy this each night. Each and every night, with the exact same enthusiasm, in the exact same level of detail and specificity, with pretty much the exact same wording, Mommy would regal to Daddy her love of the skylight. Every night. Night after night. Pure happiness. About that one skylight.

Daddy, like the boys, became jaded. “Ok, ok, I get it, yes, yes, you love the skylight, enough about the fucking skylight, already!” thought Daddy. It is Daddy’s great fortune that by the time those words made it to Daddy’s mouth, there had been some editing and softening. “Have you noticed, perhaps, my love, that you tell me every night, and don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy that the skylight gives you such pleasure and I do want to hear about it, however, it’s interesting to me, that you tend to, just a bit, tell me the same thing every, ok, well not exactly every, but many nights. You know. You tell me how much you love the skylight. Have you noticed that?” Daddy expected Mommy to have some grand realization about completely blanking out, being inattentive to the point of bizarre, and validating Daddy’s obviously objective observation of the facts of the matter: Mommy was repeating herself ad-nauseum, clearly a result of not listening to herself. Alzheimer’s came to mind.

“But I’m just in the moment, expressing my feeling right now how much I love the skylight”, replied Mommy with a mild surprise.

Oh. Feeling. Love. Daddy uses words to communicate information. Mommy uses words to communicate feeling. Daddy’s mistake was listening too much to the content of the message and not enough to the feeling behind the message. Daddy became jaded to the message, but Mommy stayed true to the feeling underneath the message, a feeling of love. Daddy’s subsequent thought was, “Well, if it’s just about the feeling, why do you need to talk so much? It’s distracting as hell.” What Daddy actually said was something like, “Oh. I understand.”, which worked a lot better.

But this is how Mommy avoids the jade. She stays with the feeling. Daddy tends to focus on the task and ignores feeling. That’s a helpful thing if you are standing in front of a Mastodon and throwing a spear, but less so in general. Which brings us back to those fresh eyes that children are supposed to have.

It’s not the eyes, it’s the heart. Their eyes cloud up with jade faster than a grey-haired veteran. It’s easy to miss this fact because they have so much ground to cover, so much new stuff to jade over. Children appear fresh because the environment is fresh to children. But deeper down, what’s happing with their heart? What’s happening inside? What’s happening with their feelings? Honestly, Daddy’s not sure. Mostly the boys don’t talk about their feelings. You know, guys. Or maybe they don’t know how, beyond “like” and “no like”. Or maybe they don’t know themselves how they feel.

But it occurs to Daddy that the progression of the boys’ internal feelings will be as important or maybe even more important than their simple, child-like fascination. Fascination fades and jades. It consumes an endless stream of fresh externalities … new things, new experiences, new challenges, new gadgets, new features on those gadgets never-ending. Feelings hold the possibility of love lasting, steady, unwavering, self nourishing, self replenishing. And although this may be a hypothetical problem for the boys 50 years from now, it’s a present moment problem for Daddy. Daddy used to defy death in adrenaline pumping dangerous helicopter landings while rushing to save the life of lost climbers. Now Daddy changes light bulbs and diapers with all the enthusiasm of the fat old man in a lazy-boy yelling for the remote. Daddy is most severely jaded. Daddy has not solved this problem and is thus incapable of resolving it for the boys.

It is utterly beyond Daddy’s ken what develops the Mommy-style feeling state inside the boys or himself. It is Daddy’s great desire that by some miracle this might occur.

Suggest a Topic!!

July 28th, 2011

Does anyone still read this blog?  I’m not sure.  But if you do, I’d love to get a few suggestions for topics.

Specifically, what are the key topics that any book about kids would be incomplete if it didn’t at least touch on the topic?

Potty training … check, got that covered.  Eating … check.   Fighting … check.  Destroying stuff … check.  Mommy … check.  Vacation … check.  Mostly I’ve been writing about whatever topic the boys seem to present.  But we are actually making progress toward turning this into a book.  And while a blog is neverending, a book has an end.  I don’t want the book to end and have readers go, “Oh, my, I can’t believe he never talked about … “.  What?

Thanks and warm regards,

Daddy

Conflict and Resolve

July 20th, 2011

Mommy is a woman of uncompromisingly high standards.  Daddy keeps expecting that any day now the grindstone of motherhood will soften Mommy’s limits and lower the bar.  But Mommy grew up in former Czechoslovakia under a totalitarian regime.  The Communists never broke her, they only strengthened her resolve.  Mommy’s father was held as political prisoner for over ten years and sent to forced labor.  The Communists never broke him, either, they only strengthened his resolve.  It is only just starting to dawn on Daddy … the boys may not break her, either.

The boys spent their first two years in an orphanage without toys or stimulation. They slept on bare, wooden cribs, and their entire world consisted of a few empty rooms with tile floors and bars on the windows. The boys look you straight in the eye.  As four year olds, they may still wear two year old pants, but their bodies are lean, ripped even, with a strength to weight ratio a rock climber could envy.  These boys will not go down easily.

The most powerful force in any conflict is not the one with the most strength or the biggest brain, but the one with nothing to lose.  Once you have given everything up, there’s no place to move but forward and no price is too high.  On this field of life, Daddy is a relative amateur among a household of titans.

The family was on vacation staying in a hotel.  If possible, Daddy books a configuration that has a separate bedroom behind a closable door.  The boys get the master bedroom.  Mommy and Daddy’s reward for taking the sofa bed is a night of relative peace and some sleep.  But this room was just a room.  And the boys love hotels.  Hotels make them excited, which keeps them curious, which keeps them awake.  With Mommy and Daddy trapped in the same room, perhaps a dim light or low volume TV to help Daddy unwind, sleep is impossible.  Daddy’s been driving all day.  Daddy’s tired and agitated.  The heater is making noise.  The boys refuse to sleep.  Food, water, promises, threats, timeouts, bribes, begging, wrapping, darkness, lightness … no prescription for sleep brings anything but more ramping up of the action.  The night drags on past midnight.  A long day of driving the next day wears on Daddy’s mind.  Something must be done.

From out of the frantic, sleep deprived chaos, Mommy concocts the ultimate timeout.  Her threat is clear and specific.  “If you don’t go to sleep now, you will sleep in the minivan.”

The minivan is outside.  It’s freezing outside. It’s dark and windy outside.  The minivan is parked far, far away.  This threat has an impact.  Eyes widen.  The action subdues.  They understand the threat.  The question is … does Mommy have what it takes to back it up?  Silence … for a moment.

No way can Mommy back up this threat.  It’s over the top.  It was probably not the best card to play in the game of parenting, but the words have been spoken.  Desperation prevailed.  And the boys are not stupid.  After sufficient intuitive reflection, they resume the night’s banned activities.  Sleep is not on the horizon.

Now it’s Daddy’s move.  His eyes are sullen and his mood is worse.  He thinks about the next day’s drive.  He thinks about the loss of parental integrity caused by vacuous consequence.  But he’s so tired, he’s not really thinking clearly at all.  Daddy stands up.

“OK, boys, you heard what your mother said.  Let’s get our shoes on.  We’re headed for the van.”  Daddy puts his jacket on.  The boys are stunned.  “Noooo!”.  “Come on, boys, let’s go.  You’re sleeping in the van tonight.”  Daddy puts his shoes on.  “Get your shoes on, boys.”  “Nooooo!!!!”.  Daddy grabs a boy’s hand and ushers him over to the pile of shoes next to the door.

The crying begins.  Real crying.  After two years Daddy has heard a lot of different cries, different tones and different timbres, but this one was new.  This was the deep, pitiful cry of the damned, lamenting the horrific fate that awaits them.  Mommy hides her face … she can’t bear it.  Daddy’s insides are being ripped to shreds.  Daddy’s mind is struggling with how far to run with this charade … how far does he have to walk down this path before he can back down.  If there was anyone in an adjacent room, Daddy assumes they’ll be on the phone with the management within minutes.  These are not the kind of cries that anyone with an ear and a heart can ignore.

And in the midst of it all, the most impressively frightening thing was yet to be noticed by Daddy.

It turns out that only two boys were crying.  Xander was silent.  While Daddy was struggling to get Niko and Devon over to the pile of shoes, Daddy failed to notice that Xander quietly walked over to the end of the room and put his shoes on.  Daddy only noticed when Xander started making noise about not being able to open the door.  Xander was on his way to the van.  No complaint.  No problem.

That … was power.

This boy is four years old.  Scale up that level of willingness to take whatever comes and you have a man who might do what you say, but only as long as he decides to.  Daddy worries a bit.  Daddy worries about the days ahead when uncompromisingly high standards meets steely eyed, orphanage hardened teenagers.

Upon seeing that Xander was headed to the van, Daddy knew that his bluff had been called.  Was Daddy ready to drag screeching-of-the-damned triplets down the hall, past the front desk and into the freezing, windy night?  No.  Not a chance.  With Xander standing there in his shoes futzing with the lock and two boys gripped in fear, it was time to offer an armistice, a last chance for detente.  Go to bed now and we forgo the van.

The boys took the deal.  Xander, still nonplussed, pulls his shoes off and returns to bed.  Niko and Devon follow.  The crying subsides.  Probably more from exhaustion than any real change in attitude, the boys finally slip off to sleep.  Mommy and Daddy, having achieved no moral, parental or educational victory, settle for the simple reward of sleep as well.

Children, Paradox and the Mirror

July 12th, 2011

In the time Before Triplets, every father Daddy ever spoke with about his children said some version of the following:  “Oh, god, they are a pain the ass, but don’t get me wrong, I love them and wouldn’t change a thing”.  Or “My kids make me soooo angry.  It’s really difficult.  And they’re great. From the highest highs to the lowest lows”.  One father went so far as to describe his children as “parasites that suck the life out of me” followed by, as is typical, “and I love them dearly”.

Back then Daddy-to-be figured they were telling the truth about the first part and lying about the second.  Fathers spoke about the difficulty with passion.  Fathers spoke about the love with timidity bordering on political correctness, as if they knew it wasn’t ok to just plain hate being a father, or as if they couldn’t admit to themselves their regret at having signed a lifelong contract.  Why couldn’t fathers just say straight up how they felt?   The closest thing Daddy-to-be ever heard that sounded straightforward and honest was, “I think children are cute so that their fathers don’t eat them.”  Daddy-to-be knew some guys who would enthusiastically say, “Oh, man, I love kids.  They’re so funny and un-self conscious.”, but those guys were single Uncles.  It’s not the same.  Otherwise, it was always “this but that”.   Why was there always a “but” in the sentence?

Daddy is reading a book called Reality.  The book is an analysis of the esoteric poems by Parmenides (Greek, ca. 550BC).  Parmenides’ poems are often quoted by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and are generally credited by historians as the seed of our western values for logic and reason (in ancient Greek, logos).  You can draw a straight line from Parmenides to western civilization.  The author, Peter Kingsley, builds the case that, starting with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Parmenides’ poetry has been completely misunderstood, mistranslated and distorted.  Logos in ancient Greek did not mean logic; it meant ‘word’, as in the word of god.  Parmenides was not advocating for the use of thought and reason; just the opposite, Parmenides’ paradoxical poetry presents the message that we of humanity are lost and confused in a house of mirrors, that the more we reason and think our way our way out of it the more lost we become, and that the only hope is to surrender to the direct guidance (logos) of divinity.

So … what does this have to do with children?

Parmenides’ poetry is highly paradoxical.  It constantly contradicts itself.  Previous interpretations were that Parmenides liked to be flowery and often didn’t mean what he said.  Kingsley takes the point of view that Parmenides was an accomplished mystic, that his work was a direct channel of his shamanic journeys to the underworld.  His poetry was logos.  And, like the world itself, it presented an illusory mirror in which we can see what we want.  We can see ourselves.  When Socrates, Plato and Aristotle looked into that mirror, they saw reason and logic, and Western thought was born.  But the real message is that his poetry, and the world in general, presents nothing more than a mirror in which we see ourselves.

Daddy thinks children are a little bit like Peter Kingsley’s view of Parmenides’ poetry.  They are closer to logos than we are, closer to the divine source.  But whereas our imaginations want to believe that closer to divine implies closer to bliss, Parmenides reminds us that this is not the case.  Logos makes them paradoxical mirrors for all who gaze upon them.  We see in them everything, everything we love and everything we hate, everything we accept and everything we reject.  Fathers speak of their children in sentences with polarized extremes not because they lack the courage to tell the simple truth, but rather because the truth is not so simple.  They are a pain in the ass, and we do love them.

As a personality, Daddy has a reasonably conceptual relationship with humanity.  Daddy is a nice person but you wouldn’t call him a warm person.  Daddy treats people well because he thinks people should be treated well, not because he genuinely opens up with warmth in his heart.  Daddy can probably count on his fingers and toes the number of people who over the course of his life have truly tugged at his heart, tugged in that way that you think about them when you are away from them; you smile at the thought of seeing them again.  Luckily, one of those fingers counts as his wife.  But, oddly, three of those fingers go to the boys, these little beings who simultaneously count among the bucketfulls of people whom Daddy has, in a rash moment of uncontrolled frustration, thought the worst of thoughts about.  Before triplets, if there was something in Daddy’s life so completely annoying, he would simply have removed it from his life or removed himself from it.  Loving it was unthinkable.

No earthly experience prior to children could have created such a paradox inside of Daddy.  Children are indeed the ultimate manifest paradox, the ultimate mirror, an earthly gateway back to the source from which they recently arrived.

Fathers used to tell Daddy that as well.  “Boy, you really see yourself in your kids”.  Daddy thought that was simply genetics at work.  Daddy didn’t understand.

The Daddy Report: Mommy

June 11th, 2011

Daddy’s lucky.  Daddy gets to “go to work”.  Daddy helps with the triplets, but he also does Daddy work.  Before Triplets, Daddy’s work felt like work.  Daddy thought work was hard.  After Triplets, work feels like relief.  Sometimes Daddy wonders if children were the reason corporations were created … places for Daddies to create something they could control.

Mommy takes care of the triplets.  Mommy is with the triplets all day.  Every day.  Mommy is going a little crazy.  Would you like to know what Mommy’s life is like?  That’s impossible, of course, unless you adopt triplets.  But let’s listen in on Mommy’s brain.  These are what Mommy’s thoughts sound like:

… gotta get more bread Xander stop hitting me Devon don’t touch that bing! dryer is done turn down stove this could use some broccoli Xander! I told you to stop hitting me open gate close gate Devon give the toy back to Niko I’ll be right back hey where did this spot come from where is the spot remover what’s that sound need to tell Daddy to fix the doorbell open gate close gate Devon! that’s a timeout mister where did Daddy put that pillow now you stay there until the timer rings where is the third boy oh the stove is the quinoa burning? where is that broccoli! this fridge is too full need a second fridge Niko don’t climb that No!  that’s a no-no bing! yes you can come out now put pillow back house is a mess I really must clean my desk boys! boys! no no no no no get down off that …

Mommy calls this multitasking.  Daddy calls it insanity.  Mommy can track a hundred things at once.  Daddy can hit a nail with a hammer, but only one nail at a time. Before Triplets, Mommy devoted a lot of attention to Daddy, although he wasn’t called Daddy then.  Did Husband take his herbs?  Did Husband get a spot on his shirt?  Did Husband fix the broken widget?  Did Husband exercise today?  Daddy thought that with Triplets, all that would change.  Daddy thought that with triplets, Mommy wouldn’t have time to worry about Daddy.  Daddy thought that After Triplets he would be off the hook.

Daddy was wrong.  It’s amazing what Mommy can keep track of.  It’s amazing what Mommy bothers to keep track of.  Mommy still tracks Daddy … Daddy herbs, Daddy spots, and Daddy-do’s.  Mommy also tracks three boys … Boy herbs, Boy spots, Boy-don’t-do’s. Mommy tracks the house and garden, converting them to new Daddy-do’s.  Above all, Mommy tracks two refrigerators worth of food.

Daddy got a frantic call from Mommy the other day.  Mommy was out of goat milk.  Mommy tells Daddy excitedly, “They didn’t have any goat milk. I went to the small Whole Foods and they said maybe Friday, and I came back Friday and it wasn’t there and the guy said tonight, so I came back tonight and no goat milk.  Where’s the goat milk? The lady said that they are actually never supposed to say when something is going to arrive because they really don’t know. So he lied.  How can they do that?  How can they call themselves a health food store and not carry goat milk?  I went to the big Whole Foods and they said they don’t carry it.  But this is a health food store, I said. And the woman said haughtily ‘we’re a grocery store’ – well then, if you’re just a Safeway, there is no need for me to spend a Whole Paycheck here.  I’m not shopping here any more.”

Daddy tries to add a little perspective.  “You know, it’s just milk we’re talking about. We could get them cow’s milk.”

“Oh, no, they are sensitive to lactose.”  Daddy might as well have said, ‘we could give them vodka’. “They miss their goat milk.  Last night all the boys were crying, ‘No goat milk?  Where goat milk?  Milk please.’  You don’t know because you’re not there but the boys count on their goat milk.  Not having goat milk is a problem.  They love their goat milk. “

But Daddy does understand.  Daddy understands that he’s going to have to look for goat milk.  Fresh goat milk.  Just fresh goat milk.  Organic or very close to it, of course.

Daddy goes to the Whole Foods across the street from work.  No goat milk.  On his way home he stops at the Whole Foods in Cupertino.  No goat milk.  In Palo Alto?  Sixty minute’s worth of detour added to a ninety minute commute and still no goat milk.  When Daddy gets home, Mommy is gone.  Where?   Mommy drives ninety minutes round trip to the Shangri-La of grocery stores, Good Earth, in Fairfax from which, finally, Mommy returns with goat milk.   Mommy is victorious.  The boys are elated.

Mommy plans, schedules, and chauffeurs swim lessons, gymnastics, soccer class, music class, doctor visits, play dates, hikes, bikes,  parks, food cooking, food shopping, internet shopping, nanny help, neighbor visits, poops, pees, and runny noses.  She keeps an annotated spreadsheet of every piece of clothing she’s ever purchased for the boys, with images, to insure that every shirt, pants and pajamas thematically match without being identical.  Mommy snaps photos by the thousands, downloads and organizes them by date, activity and ‘best-of’.  Mommy insists that the boys eat their meals European style … fork in the left hand, knife in the right, and never touch the food with their hands.  The boys eat with more style than Daddy.  Mommy is consistent and persistent.

Sometimes Mommy yells when boys don’t listen.  Mommy doesn’t understand how boys cannot listen at such high volume.  “What’s wrong with his ears?” Mommy exclaims.  Mommy doesn’t fully appreciate the male species’ ability to tune out all distraction, and focus with laser-like intensity on whatever silliness grips their current fascination.  But simply tuning out Mommy, as bad as that is, doesn’t compare to what happens in the worst case.  The worst thing that a boy (any of the four of them) can do with Mommy is get defiant.  Boy defiance meets only Mommy defiance.  A defiant Mommy recedes into secret places from which there is no light and no progress.  Without some change in strategy, a cross-armed, foot-stomping, angry-faced boy will find himself in maternal darkness for all eternity.

This is where Daddy comes in.

Daddy mediates on behalf of the boys to train them in the ways of Mommy.  Daddy is a well trained husband whose extremes have been rounded on the grindstone of a thousand failed relationships.  Daddy knows how to coax light out of the deepest black.

“Niko!  Come here.  This is what you have to do.”  Niko is petulant.  He doesn’t want to cooperate.  He doesn’t want to change.  He wants Mommy to soften and he wants it now.

“Mommy no listen!  Mommy need listen!” says Niko.

“That’s not going to happen”, says Daddy matter-of-factly.  “Either you do as I suggest, or you’re in for a long spell without Mommy” Niko hesitates.  But the boys have learned.  Just as Daddy has been trained, the boys have been trained as well.  Remember, Mommy is nothing if not consistent.  Niko knows that Daddy is right about Mommy.

Daddy coaches Niko.  For just as steadfastly unreachable as Mommy is in the face of defiance, she is impossibly available, open and loving in the face of apology, love, and tenderness.  “I’m sorry.”  “I love you.”  “Submissive bear.”  The combination to unlock Mommy’s heart is not a complicated one, but it must be applied with absolute sincerity, good intention and forgiveness.  Niko starts to repeat the words, but he says them defiantly.  “I’m sorry!”.  “No, no, no, Niko, you have to mean it.  You have to actually be sorry, not just say it.”  Niko practices.  Daddy coaches.  Devon and Xander join in with suggestions of their own.

The most powerful conflict resolution technique among the Manns is “submissive bear”.  It’s a family tradition.  Years ago on Mommy & Daddy’s honeymoon, then Bride and Groom were traveling in Yosemite.  Mommy was asking about bears.  Daddy had learned much about bears during his years as a backpacker and mountain climber, especially in the wild Alaskan bush.  For Black Bears, such as you find in Yosemite, the general advice in the event of a confrontation is to make a lot of racket and scare it away.  For Grizzly or Brown Bears, such as you find in Alaska, the advice is the opposite.  You do not want to take a confrontational stance with a Grizzly.  You will lose.  If confronted by a Grizzly, one turns to the side, looks down, hunches over gently, and presents a posture that in bear language communicates submission.  Mommy took that explanation to heart.

A few years after that, Daddy was really angry with Mommy about something or other.  Mommy was in the wrong about whatever it was and Daddy was right and nothing gets Daddy into a lather quicker than being both angry and right.  Daddy, red in the face, was starting to raise his voice.  Mommy turns to one side, looks down, hunches over gently, holds her hands close to her chest with paws folded down and says, “Submissive bear!”.  Instantly, Daddy was defused and the conflict ended, and ended in laughter.

Niko, now prepped, heads over to Mommy.  Mommy, highly suspicious, begins to lean away.  Daddy assists with a door opening introduction.  “Mommy, Niko has something he wants to say to you.”  Mommy relaxes.  Niko approaches.  “Torry Mommy.  I luv you.  Sut-missus bear.”  Mommy melts.  Mommy hugs.  Mommy and Niko tear up.  Mommy radiates healing love that washes away whatever it was that set off the now long past defiance.  And after a little educational conversation, all is well.

Daddy is grateful beyond measure to have met and married Mommy.  Daddy still doesn’t fully understand how Mommy picked Daddy.  Daddy thinks he married out of his league.  Daddy thinks Mommy is an awesome mommy.  Daddy doesn’t understand Mommy most of the time, gets driven absolutely crazy by her some of the time, but deeply loves her all of the time.

Perception and the Red Clip

April 18th, 2011

When the boys were little (having now all growed up) pain was decidedly relative.  A boy could run full tilt down the trail, trip on a root, face plant hard into the harder clay … and then look quizzically in Daddy’s direction for clues as to the appropriate reaction.  “You’re OK!  Brush, brush!”  The little toddler-mind would register “OK” and think nothing more of it.  The mind would think it not a problem so it wasn’t.  Hands would brush away the dirt and the boy would be off running again.  Not a tear.  Not a cry.  Not a whimper.  It was a marvel of perception shaping experience.

Two years later perception still shapes experience.  It’s just become a lot tougher to shape the perception.

Daddy’s making breakfast.  The boys are playing.  Xander comes to Daddy with a little bag full of cars.  “May I have a clip, please?”  Daddy gives Xander a clip.  It was a red clip.  A little red clip that Mommy and Daddy once used to anchor helium balloons to chairs with.  It was a weak clip, an annoyingly weak clip as it didn’t grasp that which was to be grasped firmly enough for Daddy.  Xander plays with the clip.  He turns it into a handle for a car kite, at other end of which is a car.

Mommy shows up.  Niko asks for another clip.  Daddy gives Niko the clip.  Mommy starts talking to Niko. “Niko … you need to be careful.  You see this, here, if you get your finger in it there could be an owie.”  Mommy starts talking to Niko as if Daddy had just handed Niko a running chain saw.  “Mommy”, says Daddy, “it’s not that strong”.  “Well, even if it’s not, another boy might press on it”.  Mommy continues talking to Niko.  “Niko, this clip (i.e., chain saw) could cause you an owie (i.e., lead to death) if the pinching end (i.e., whirring blades) were to grab your fingers (i.e., slice them clean off).  Mommy’s perception is that red clips kill.  Daddy’s perception is that red clips don’t kill, but wild boys kill with red clips … or anything else.  Mommy is into clip control.  Daddy is thinking about founding the National Red-Clip Association  (NRcA) … no clip control.  Mommy thinks Daddy is not anticipating enough.  Daddy thinks Mommy is paranoid.

Daddy, being a scientist, has a solution. It’s a scientific solution.  And like males everywhere, Daddy acts quickly and decisively.  “Niko!  Come here.  Watch.”  Daddy clips the clip to Niko’s finger.  “See!  It doesn’t cause an owie”, Daddy says proudly.  And like bad scientists anywhere, Daddy published his conclusion without adequate observation of his result.  Niko starts to cry.  What?

Niko runs over to Mommy to give and get a big hug and looks sadly back at Daddy.  “Daddy owie Niko!”  What?  But … but … it’s doesn’t hurt!  “Daddy owie Niko.  Daddy get big timeout!”  Niko continues to look plaintively at Daddy.  Damn.  This is bad.  Daddy forgot that the power of perception cuts both ways.  Mommy has now successfully convinced Niko that the clip hurts.  So the clip hurts.  What’s worse, Daddy is now the perpetrator of willfully injuring his own son.  Damn.  This is bad.

Mommy tries to help Daddy save face.  “Niko, Daddy was just trying to show you how you could hurt yourself with the clip.”  Uh oh.  Mommy’s trying to give Daddy a way out, but it’s not a door that Daddy wants to walk through.  Six months earlier Daddy actually used this technique with the boys and it didn’t work out so well.  The boys’ room used to have a three-bulb, halogen light fixture in it, way up high on the wall, above the dresser.  The boys would scale the dresser and mess with the fixture.  First they ripped the entire fixture out of the wall.  Daddy fixed the fixture.  Boys, that’s a no no.  Then they wrenched the sockets every which way.  Mommy responded by turning off power to the room for a night. The boys countered by removing all the bulbs.  Daddy sealed the dresser in slippery, un-climbable tarp.  The boys learned to climb the tarp.  Mommy yelled.  The boys draped the bulbs with their blankies, burning the blankies, charring blankie-fabric onto the bulbs and scarring the daylights out of Mommy.  Daddy responded by replacing the fixture with one of those outdoor, steel-bar encased security fixtures you see glowing outside of large buildings in industrial neighborhoods.

In the middle of this tête-à-tête, Daddy performed his one and only I-will-demonstrate-the-potentially-painful-consequence-of-your-actions maneuver.  Halogen bulbs are hot.  Mommy and Daddy were very concerned about finger burns.  Logically, Daddy thought, a teensy, weensy little taste of heat could drive the point home.  Daddy took a boy.  He took a boy’s little hand.  Daddy rapidly touched the little hand to the hot bulb, and then proceeded to explain at length how, if the touch is not so quick or so light, the little hand could get burned.  The boy stopped listening right about the moment the hand touched the bulb.  As with the Red Clip, pain was not the actual issue.  It didn’t actually hurt.  The only thing the toddler mind registered was that evil, torturous Daddy grabbed an innocent boy hand and put it to the flame.  The boy cried.  “Daddy owie me!!!  Daddy big timeout!!!  OWWWIEEE!!!!”  Sob.  Sob.  It was as if Daddy had forced the boy to carry the red-hot pot of burning coals like David Caradine at the end of Kung Fu.  Lessons about hot bulbs got swamped by perceptions of evil Daddy.  This was a bad method.

And this was the picture that Mommy was painting to cover Niko’s perception of just plain, ordinary hurtful Daddy.

Something had to be done.  Daddy’s in a tight spot.  His reputation’s on the line.  Daddy decides to take a risk.  No pain, no gain.  “Xander, come here.”  Mommy’s eyes grow wide.  She sees what’s coming.  She’s trying to cover for Daddy once, but twice is out of reach.  But Xander is our jump-first-think-later team member.  He’s not going to think about it so much.  Daddy figures Xander will just react to the experience.  Daddy puts the second clip … very gently … on Xander’s finger.  Xander ponders.  Daddy holds his breath.  Mommy’s in shock.  Niko and Devon glue their eyes on Xander.  It’s all coming down to this moment …

A big smile comes across Xander’s face.  He starts waving his obviously-clipped thumb around in the air proclaiming, “It no hurt!  It no owie!”.  Daddy gives thanks for redemption.  Niko experiences cognitive dissonance.  Only Mommy is now concerned.  “Little traitor”, she thinks to herself.  “You know”, Mommy says to Daddy, “you could have just clipped it to my thumb first and let me know.  I worry about them squeezing and pinching each other.  You know how strong they are!”  Mommy and Daddy are back to the clip control debate.  Do Red Clips kill or do boys kill with Red Clips.  Daddy doesn’t care.  He’s off the hook with Niko, whose little mind is starting to come around to Daddy’s … and thankfully Xander’s perception … that red clips don’t hurt.  Daddy is elated.  In Daddy’s mind he won!  Daddy ignores Mommy’s pondering.  Daddy also ignores the fresh onslaught of Red Clip’ing that rapidly ensues, it now having been established that the chain saw is not dangerous.  Xander clips Niko.  Niko clips Devon.  Devon grabs the clip and clips the furniture.

Mommy … Mommies don’t shift so quickly.  She tries on the clip.  “Ow!  That hurts!”  Princess and the pea, Daddy thinks to himself. A boy grabs the clip and squeezes it even harder on Mommy.  “Ow! See!” says Mommy, vindicated.  Yes, Daddy thinks to himself, boys kill, vindicated in his own mind.  Mommy proceeds to institute strict policies of household clip control.  There’s a world of danger out there and Mommy protects boys from danger.  And that’s that.  Daddy … he slips into the office, locks the door, and works.  There’s a world of danger out there, and Daddy can’t have his boys all mushy-brained if they are going to excel.  And that’s that.

The Daddy Report: Family Vacation

February 9th, 2011

One morning as Daddy heads out the gate for work Mommy calls after him, “The boys need a vacation.”  An image flashes through Daddy’s mind of the boys’ routine … eating, playing, artwork, napping, biking, hiking, trampoline, music, gymnastics … consolidating in the thought ‘vacation from what?’ and followed without further contemplation by Daddy’s reply.  “They don’t need a vacation!” rendered with indignation for emphasis.

Daddy found out he was wrong.  He found out he was wrong that very evening in the way that cryptically disagreeing with Mommy with less than a breath’s worth of consideration is pretty much always wrong.  And eventually, after sufficient distillation in the burning fires that are Family Vacation, Daddy found out he was actually wrong in the facts of the matter.  But not without a fight.  Daddy did not go down easily on this one.

First Daddy stalls, proffering vague promises of summer beaches with Grandma and Grandpa in Florida, an idea soiled and spoiled by the BP spill, resulting in ever more complicated, expensive and questionable sunny beach alternatives until Summer becomes Fall and puts a practical chill on the whole concept.  Mommy is not pleased.  Daddy responds with new bait for a ski week in the mountains.  Mommy takes the bait and Daddy’s off the hook for a couple of months.  But Mommy presses.  Mommy researches.  Mommy picks out some possible dates.  Mommy pushes for commitment.  Eventually, Daddy signs up for 5 days and 4 nights as a family of 5 in a Tahoe cabin.

Mommy’s excited.  Mommy talks to the boys.  The boys get excited.  They read stories about snowmen and snowballs.  They read about skiing and sledding and snow angels.  Mommy buys helmets and bibs and neck warmers that the boys get for Christmas.  “Ski helmet!” yells Niko with infectious enthusiasm concealing a presumably limited grasp of what that is.  Ski trip!  Ski trip!  The concept begins to pick up steam.  Cabin reservations are made.  Mommy talks incessantly about the fireplace.  The cabin has a fireplace!  Mommy researches resorts and lessons and rentals.  The ski area is chosen … Homewood.  Packing weekend arrives.  The Family Vacation becomes a roiling, unceasing, unstoppable, high-balling Freight Train of planning, purchasing, and packing.

Stuff gets stuffed into the minivan.  Daddy clothes go into the minivan.  Mommy clothes go into the minivan.  Boy clothes.  Extra boy clothes because they might get wet in the snow.  Night diapers because they still wet.  Plastic painters’ cloth because sometimes they wet a lot.  Coolers of food.  Two coolers of food … Tahoe is a culinary question mark to Mommy and the minivan packs an organic, low sugar lifeline as if this were a voyage to the moon.  The minivan is huge.  Daddy never dreamed that a Family Vacation could possibly fill it.  But Mommy dreams big and dreams of family fun days and romantic nights.  Mommy dreams of recovering dreams lost to a busy workaday schedule and those dreams get packed into the van. Snow shovels to dig the snow cave that no one ever digs.  Snow saws to build the igloo that never gets built.  CD’s we never listen to, movies we never watch, wines we never drink,  more clothes we never wear, games we never play and books we never read.  Daddy begs Mommy to trust that Tahoe will have the firewood for the fires we build. Stuff stuffs the minivan.  Boy number three in the third row has to crawl over a mountain of duffle bags to seat himself in a private cocoon with no view to the front, back or right.  That’s the favorite seat.

Daddy drives.  The Mann Family arrives.  The cabin door opens.  Quick!  Boys pour into virgin terrain.  “What that?”  “That’s a heater.”  “What that?”   “That’s another heater.”  Daddy moves 3 mirrors and 2 paintings to safety.  “What that?” “That’s a bell.”  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  “What that?”  “Don’t touch that.”  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Mommy surveys the kitchen.  Stainless!  “What that?”  “Don’t touch the knife.  Boys, leave the phone alone.”  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  “OW!”  The water’s hot.  Scalding hot.  They keep it that way so that 20 teenagers can rent these places and never run out of hot water.  “What that?”  “That’s a faucet.  Don’t touch the faucet!!!!”  “OW!”  Sob.  Niko burns his hand on the electric heater.  Where’s the ice?  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Daddy unloads the minivan.  Mommy runs interference.  “Pee pee!  Pee pee!”  “Where’re the wipeys?”  “What that?”  “That’s soap.”  The boys have never seen bar soap.  “Don’t touch the faucet!!!!”  “Coad.  Coad.”  When not scalding, the water is freezing.  “Fire Pwace!”  Clank. Bang.  “Don’t touch that.”  “What that?”  “Fire implements.”  “Fire impamint”.  “Don’t touch those.”  Clank.  Bang.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  “Let’s go outside.  Let’s go build a snow cave.  Let’s go play.  Get your boots.  Get your boots on.  Boys.”  Ring.  Ring.  “Boys!  Stop playing with the phone.”  Fleece jackets go on.  Bibs go on.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  “Come on boys.”  “What that?”  “Don’t touch that.”  Boys!!!  Rain jackets go on.  No time for mittens.  “Get your boots.  Get your boots.”  Shovels.  Sleds.  The cabin door opens.  Boys pour out onto new virgin terrain.

Up onto the snow piled up behind the cabin.  The boys sled about 5 feet.  Twice.  The boys dig about 1 foot.  Once.  Daddy proceeds to dig a big, pointless pit that never gets occupied again.  Mommy takes pictures.  “Coad!  Coad!”.  Vietnam is a tropical country.  The boys have cold hands which they warm on Daddy’s tummy, an old mountaineering trick.  Not good enough.  All go inside.

Mommy and Daddy struggle to preserve the toddler routine.  There’s no gate blocking the kitchen.  “Boys … out of the kitchen.  Out. Out.  Mommy needs to heat up the milk.”  “What that?”  “That’s a stool.  Niko, don’t stand on the stool!”  Bibs all around.  “Don’t spill your milk.  Daddy doesn’t want to have to pay extra for any damage.”  Daddy starts working on the pasta.  Mommy freshens up.  “Spill!  Xander spill!” the brothers cry out.  A lake of milk covers the table.  The lake drains down between the leaves of the table.  Daddy wonders if the owners were smart enough to have spill-proof cloth on those chairs.  The pasta cooks.  The boys are back at the bar.  Fwump!  “Help!  Mommy help!”  A boy dangles precariously from the kitchen bar with a fallen stool behind him.  Mommy’s upset.  Daddy’s laughing.  “Daddy!”  “Help!  Daddy help!”  The brothers watch with amusement.  Daddy is impressed with how strong Niko is, hanging there.  Niko gets rescued.  Food gets fed.  Stories get read. Shower time is uneventful except for the unnerving expectation of death by scalding water with three naked boys flailing around next to an overly sensitive handle.

Three boys.  One bed.  A dozen blankets.  There’s a fateful fight for the center position which Devon wins, pitting his lone wolf temperament against the inevitable encroachment of his more relaxed, splayed-leg brothers.  Xander wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.  Devon has delivered a karate chop blow to mid-throat in retaliation for Xander’s errant leg.  “Devon, you would be more comfortable on the side.”  “No.”  “Why don’t you trade?”  “No.”  Border skirmishes continue all night unabated.  The following night Daddy rotates the boys 90 degrees to create a wider bed, plops Devon on the extreme end and establishes the territory.  “You … you stay at this end.  You … you stay at that end.  And you (boy in the middle) … see that beam on the ceiling … you keep that beam above you.  If you wake up and that beam is to your right, you move right.  If you wake up and that beam is to your left, you move left.  Understand?”  “Undertan”, comes the chorus in return.

Boys wake up.  Boys invade Mommy & Daddy room.  Showers, milk, breakfast, boots, bibs, fleece, helmets and the Mann Family heads for ski lessons.  “Private” small group lessons for triplets are cheaper than ski school for three, creating the illusion of savings.  Daddy fills out three ski rental forms while triplets explore the rental office.  Luckily, both the ATM machine and the ski lockers are built to withstand abuse and they blink, providing excellent diversion.  Daddy also reasons that if the boys hack into either one, that’s a valuable new skill.  How tall are the boys?  How much do they weigh?  Daddy forgets.  Itty bitty skis show up with itty bitty boots to match.  Helmets go on.  Goggles go on.  Click.  Click.  The boys are ready.

Jennifer is the ski instructor.  When booking reservations, Daddy suggested they assign someone who keeps a tight leash.  The disenchanted Argentinean male teaching the other two kids on the slope looks bored to tears.  He’d rather be somewhere else.  Jennifer was a good choice.  She’s got them lined up, falling over, and shuffling their way to the magic carpet, a kiddie-slope escalator, in minutes.  The boys took 5 lessons over the course of 4 days.  Mommy took hundreds of pictures.  Daddy shot hours of video.  But every image fits neatly into one of several categories:  3 terribly cute blueberries in blue jackets bent over with hands on their knees riding up the magic carpet; one or more smiling, waving, sitting or wobbling boys waiting patiently at the top for his turn to follow Jennifer down the hill; Jennifer skiing backwards bent over trying to help the blueberry keep his skis in the snow plow position; the ecstatically happy boy released to zoom straight down the hill with no attempt at a snow plow; or a boy falling over … of which there was a lot.

Mommy and Daddy watch from the side.  The boys zoom.  Devon’s balance and poise achieves legendary status in Mommy and Daddy minds.  Good job, Devon!  Niko falls.  Niko waits.  Niko sits and waits to be hoisted up by the ever patient Jennifer.  Niko’s lack of self sufficiency achieves infamy status in Mommy mind.  Mommy signals furiously to Niko … up!  … up! … get up!  Mommy and Daddy become those kinds of parents.

Jennifer is teaching the snow plow.  “Make a pizza slice with your skis”, says Jennifer.  “Keep your skis like a slice of pizza.”  The boys have never eaten pizza in their life.  Mommy and Daddy coach Jennifer to use the word triangle.  Coaching to “keep their skis like French fries” during sidestepping class was equally lost on our organic daikon radish and quinoa loving crew.  After the lesson, Mommy and Daddy take the boys out for their first pizza at the pizza bar showing videos of the world’s greatest extreme skiers.  “Owiee!” cry the boys when someone takes a terrible spill.

On day 4, having nearly surrendered to the impossibility of having the blueberries master the snow plow our instructor summed up their performance as follows:  “They’ve got the balance thing down.  They just don’t want to stop!”

Mommy and Daddy take the boys sledding.  First we go on the kiddie hill.  “Big fast, Daddy!  Big fast, Daddy!”  They boys clamor for speed.  Daddy keeps moving his starting point further uphill.  Temperatures drop as afternoon turns to evening, the snow turns to ice and the sleds speed up.  The sledding run ends in a nearly vertical wall of snow, topped by a stiff plastic fence, behind which lies a steep drop into a sizable running stream.  The boys hit the wall at high speed, rocket upwards bobsled style until they slam into the orange fence and come plunging back to earth with huge grins and peals of laughter.  It’s extreme sledding, toddler style, and they want more.  But Daddy’s already worried about the fence giving way.  It rocks more dramatically with each toddler ball.  Mommy is outright fearful.  She’s looking at that stream, in her eyes a real river, then looking at Daddy and giving clear signals … slower, Daddy.  The boys are not worried.  “Faster, Daddy!”  There’s only one thing to do … the big boy hill.

The three little boys have been eyeing the big boy hill for a while.  Gangs of teenagers are launching themselves down the headwall of the hill and blasting across the ice in a collision derby of large bodies on small roaring disks, arms and legs flailing.  Wahooooooo!!!  Devon looks pleadingly. Do you want to go up the big boy hill?  Nod.  Nod.  OK … go ask Mommy.  If she says it’s ok, you can go.

Mommy considers the big boy hill … steeper, longer, faster … but well away from the river.  Mommy approves.  Three three-foot-plus tall blueberries carry three-foot wide disks on their heads up the hill.  Niko complains.  The sleds are heavy.  “Daddy, help.”  No way.  This is the big boy hill.  If you are not strong enough to carry your sled, you’re not strong enough for this hill.  Niko digs deep and pushes on.

Devon goes first.  Daddy slides the starting point a bit down the headwall for a test run.  All goes well.  Two more test runs.  Three blueberries half the height and half the age of the next youngest solo slider toddle up the hill and spend the rest of an afternoon careening down the wall and across the vast open spaces, dodging and crashing and screaming with joy.  An obviously concerned and extremely helpful Granlibakken employee routinely runs out to hurry the deliriously distracted blueberry out of the finish area before the next wave of teenagers crashes in.  No injuries.  Pure adrenaline.

Mommy and Daddy are proud.  The boys are beside themselves with happiness.  By the end of the week Mommy and Daddy drink 3 large bottles of Baileys Irish Cream in front of 4 large boxes worth of burning firewood.  Mommy and Daddy also achieve happiness.

The minivan heads home.  Daddy’s puts on el-HADRA, the Mystik Dance, a “rhythmic trance meditation of the Sufis”, also described as the “pulse of the breath and the heartbeat at the same time.”  The boys start to sing.  They chant.  All three of them sing simultaneously and, more or less, in time with the CD.  It is Daddy’s great regret that words are so inadequate to express the improvisational joy that poured forth from three little mouths for a non-stop hour and a half while Mommy and Daddy alternately broke out into hysterics or looked lovingly at each other.  Mommy was right.  The boys needed a vacation.  They didn’t need a vacation to get away from work.  They needed a vacation to further their work.  Their job is to learn and expand and grow and explore, and the stimulation of the Family Vacation launched them forward on their path like nothing Daddy had ever seen.  Good job, boys.

Here, rendered as well as Daddy can, is their chant:

Xander has blue car care-yer. (the boys love their toy car carriers) Devon has red car care-yer.  Niko has white car care-yer.  Xander has blue car care-yer.  Devon has red car care-yer.  Niko has white car care-yer.  Lotta traffic. (heavy oncoming traffic) Lotta traffic.  Lotta traffic.  Lotta traffic.  Lotta traffic.  Big rig.  Big rig.  Big rig.  Big rig.  Big rig.  No more traffic happy car.  No more traffic happy car.  No more traffic happy car.  No more traffic happy car.  Helping people. (an ambulance drives by) Helping people.  Helping people.  Helping people.  Train.  Train.  Train.  Train.  Lotta cars.  Lotta cars.  Lotta cars.  Lotta cars.  Lotta cars.  Daddy.  Daddy.  Daddy.  Daddy.  Daddy.  Mommy.  Mommy.  Mommy.  Mommy.  Daddy.  Mommy.  Daddy.  Mommy.  Daddy.  Mommy. Daddy.  Mommy.

Family Vacation

One morning as Daddy heads out the gate for work Mommy calls after him, “The boys need a vacation.”  An image flashes through Daddy’s mind of the boys’ routine … eating, playing, artwork, napping, biking, hiking, trampoline, music, gymnastics … consolidating in the thought ‘vacation from what?’ and followed without further contemplation by Daddy’s reply.  “They don’t need a vacation!” rendered with indignation for emphasis.

Daddy found out he was wrong.  He found out he was wrong that very evening in the way that cryptically disagreeing with Mommy with less than a breath’s worth of consideration is pretty much always wrong.  And eventually, after sufficient distillation in the burning fires that are Family Vacation, Daddy found out he was actually wrong in the facts of the matter.  But not without a fight.  Daddy did not go down easily on this one.

First Daddy stalls, proffering vague promises of summer beaches with Grandma and Grandpa in Florida, an idea soiled and spoiled by the BP spill, resulting in ever more complicated, expensive and questionable sunny beach alternatives until Summer becomes Fall and puts a practical chill on the whole concept.  Mommy is not pleased.  Daddy responds with new bait for a ski week in the mountains.  Mommy takes the bait and Daddy’s off the hook for a couple of months.  But Mommy presses.  Mommy researches.  Mommy picks out some possible dates.  Mommy pushes for commitment.  Eventually, Daddy signs up for 5 days and 4 nights as a family of 5 in a Tahoe cabin.

Mommy’s excited.  Mommy talks to the boys.  The boys get excited.  They read stories about snowmen and snowballs.  They read about skiing and sledding and snow angels.  Mommy buys helmets and bibs and neck warmers that the boys get for Christmas.  “Ski helmet!” yells Niko with infectious enthusiasm concealing a presumably limited grasp of what that is.  Ski trip!  Ski trip!  The concept begins to pick up steam.  Cabin reservations are made.  Mommy talks incessantly about the fireplace.  The cabin has a fireplace!  Mommy researches resorts and lessons and rentals.  The ski area is chosen … Homewood.  Packing weekend arrives.  The Family Vacation becomes a roiling, unceasing, unstoppable, highballing Freight Train of planning, purchasing, and packing.

Stuff gets stuffed into the minivan.  Daddy clothes go into the minivan.  Mommy clothes go into the minivan.  Boy clothes.  Extra boy clothes because they might get wet in the snow.  Night diapers because they still wet.  Plastic painters’ cloth because sometimes they wet a lot.  Coolers of food.  Two coolers of food … Tahoe is a culinary question mark to Mommy and the minivan packs an organic, low sugar lifeline as if this were a voyage to the moon.  The minivan is huge.  Daddy never dreamed that a Family Vacation could possibly fill it.  But Mommy dreams big and dreams of family fun days and romantic nights.  Mommy dreams of recovering dreams lost to a busy workaday schedule and those dreams get packed into the van. Snow shovels to dig the snow cave that no one ever digs.  Snow saws to build the igloo that never gets built.  CD’s we never listen to, movies we never watch, wines we never drink,  more clothes we never wear, games we never play and books we never read.  Daddy begs Mommy to trust that Tahoe will have the firewood for the fires we build. Stuff stuffs the minivan.  Boy number three in the third row has to crawl over a mountain of duffle bags to seat himself in a private cocoon with no view to the front, back or right.  That’s the favorite seat.

Daddy drives.  The Mann Family arrives.  The cabin door opens.  Quick!  Boys pour into virgin terrain.  “What that?”  “That’s a heater.”  “What that?”   “That’s another heater.”  Daddy moves 3 mirrors and 2 paintings to safety.  “What that?” “That’s a bell.”  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  “What that?”  “Don’t touch that.”  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Mommy surveys the kitchen.  Stainless!  “What that?”  “Don’t touch the knife.  Boys, leave the phone alone.”  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  “OW!”  The water’s hot.  Scalding hot.  They keep it that way so that 20 teenagers can rent these places and never run out of hot water.  “What that?”  “That’s a faucet.  Don’t touch the faucet!!!!”  “OW!”  Sob.  Niko burns his hand on the electric heater.  Where’s the ice?  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  Daddy unloads the minivan.  Mommy runs interference.  “Pee pee!  Pee pee!”  “Where’re the wipeys?”  “What that?”  “That’s soap.”  The boys have never seen bar soap.  “Don’t touch the faucet!!!!”  “Coad.  Coad.”  When not scalding, the water is freezing.  “Fire Pwace!”  Clank. Bang.  “Don’t touch that.”  “What that?”  “Fire implements.”  “Fire impamint”.  “Don’t touch those.”  Clank.  Bang.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  “Let’s go outside.  Let’s go build a snow cave.  Let’s go play.  Get your boots.  Get your boots on.  Boys.”  Ring.  Ring.  “Boys!  Stop playing with the phone.”  Fleece jackets go on.  Bibs go on.  Ring.  Ring.  Ring.  “Come on boys.”  “What that?”  “Don’t touch that.”  Boys!!!  Rain jackets go on.  No time for mittens.  “Get your boots.  Get your boots.”  Shovels.  Sleds.  The cabin door opens.  Boys pour out onto new virgin terrain.

Up onto the snow piled up behind the cabin.  The boys sled about 5 feet.  Twice.  The boys dig about 1 foot.  Once.  Daddy proceeds to dig a big, pointless pit that never gets occupied again.  Mommy takes pictures.  “Coad!  Coad!”.  Vietnam is a tropical country.  The boys have cold hands which they warm on Daddy’s tummy, an old mountaineering trick.  Not good enough.  All go inside.

Mommy and Daddy struggle to preserve the toddler routine.  There’s no gate blocking the kitchen.  Boys … out of the kitchen.  “Out. Out.  Mommy needs to heat up the milk.”  “What that?”  “That’s a stool.  Niko, don’t stand on the stool!”  Bibs all around.  “Don’t spill your milk.  Daddy doesn’t want to have to pay extra for any damage.”  Daddy starts working on the pasta.  Mommy freshens up.  “Spill!  Xander spill!” the brothers cry out.  A lake of milk covers the table.  The lake drains down between the leaves of the table.  Daddy wonders if the owners were smart enough to have spill-proof cloth on those chairs.  The pasta cooks.  The boys are back at the bar.  Fwump!  “Help!  Mommy help!”  A boy dangles precariously from the kitchen bar with a fallen stool behind him.  Mommy’s upset.  Daddy’s laughing.  “Daddy!”  “Help!  Daddy help!”  The brothers watch with amusement.  Daddy is impressed with how strong Niko is, hanging there.  Niko gets rescued.  Food gets fed.  Stories get read. Shower time is uneventful except for the unnerving expectation of death by scalding water with three naked boys flailing around next to an overly sensitive handle.

Three boys.  One bed.  A dozen blankets.  There’s a fateful fight for the center position which Devon wins, pitting his lone wolf temperament against the inevitable encroachment of his more relaxed, splayed-leg brothers.  Xander wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.  Devon has delivered a karate chop blow to mid-throat in retaliation for Xander’s errant leg.  “Devon, you would be more comfortable on the side.”  “No.”  “Why don’t you trade?”  “No.”  Border skirmishes continue all night unabated.  The following night Daddy rotates the boys 90 degrees to create a wider bed, plops Devon on the extreme end and establishes the territory.  “You … you stay at this end.  You … you stay at that end.  And you (boy in the middle) … see that beam on the ceiling … you keep that beam above you.  If you wake up and that beam is to your right, you move right.  If you wake up and that beam is to your left, you move left.  Understand?”  “Undertan”, comes the chorus in return.

Boys wake up.  Boys invade Mommy & Daddy room.  Showers, milk, breakfast, boots, bibs, fleece, helmets and the Mann Family heads for ski lessons.  “Private” small group lessons for triplets are cheaper than ski school for three, creating the illusion of savings.  Daddy fills out three ski rental forms while triplets explore the rental office.  Luckily, both the ATM machine and the ski lockers are built to withstand abuse and they blink, providing excellent diversion.  Daddy also reasons that if the boys hack into either one, that’s a valuable new skill.  How tall are the boys?  How much do they weigh?  Daddy forgets.  Itty bitty skis show up with itty bitty boots to match.  Helmets go on.  Goggles go on.  Click.  Click.  The boys are ready.

Jennifer is the ski instructor.  When booking reservations, Daddy suggested they assign someone who keeps a tight leash.  The disenchanted Argentinean male teaching the other two kids on the slope looks bored to tears.  He’d rather be somewhere else.  Jennifer was a good choice.  She’s got them lined up, falling over, and shuffling their way to the magic carpet, a kiddie-slope escalator, in minutes.  The boys took 5 lessons over the course of 4 days.  Mommy took hundreds of pictures.  Daddy shot hours of video.  But every image fits neatly into one of several categories:  3 terribly cute blueberries in blue jackets bent over with hands on their knees riding up the magic carpet; one or more smiling, waving, sitting or wobbling boys waiting patiently at the top for his turn to follow Jennifer down the hill; Jennifer skiing backwards bent over trying to help the blueberry keep his skis in the snow plow position; the ecstatically happy boy released to zoom straight down the hill with no attempt at a snow plow; or a boy falling over … of which there was a lot.

Mommy and Daddy watch from the side.  The boys zoom.  Devon’s balance and poise achieves legendary status in Mommy and Daddy minds.  Good job, Devon!  Niko falls.  Niko waits.  Niko sits and waits to be hoisted up by the ever patient Jennifer.  Niko’s lack of self sufficiency achieves infamy status in Mommy mind.  Mommy signals furiously to Niko … up!  … up! … get up!  Mommy and Daddy become those kinds of parents.

Jennifer is teaching the snow plow.  “Make a pizza slice with your skis”, says Jennifer.  “Keep your skis like a slice of pizza.”  The boys have never eaten pizza in their life.  Mommy and Daddy coach Jennifer to use the word triangle.  Coaching to “keep their skis like French fries” during sidestepping class was equally lost on our organic daikon radish and quinoa loving eating crew.  After the lesson, Mommy and Daddy take the boys out for their first pizza at the pizza bar showing videos of the world’s greatest extreme skiers.  “Owiee!” cry the boys when someone takes a terrible spill.

On day 4, having nearly surrendered to the impossibility of having the blueberries master the snow plow our instructor summed up their performance as follows:  “They’ve got the balance thing down.  They just don’t want to stop!”

Mommy and Daddy take the boys sledding.  First we go on the kiddie hill.  “Big fast, Daddy!  Big fast, Daddy!”  They boys clamor for speed.  Daddy keeps moving his starting point further uphill.  Temperatures drop as afternoon turns to evening, the snow turns to ice and the sleds speed up.  The sledding run ends in a nearly vertical wall of snow, topped by a stiff plastic fence, behind which lies a steep drop into a sizeable running stream.  The boys hit the wall at high speed, rocket upwards bobsled style until they slam into the orange fence and come plunging back to earth with huge grins and peals of laughter.  It’s extreme sledding, toddler style, and they want more.  But Daddy’s already worried about the fence giving way.  It rocks more dramatically with each toddler ball.  Mommy is outright fearful.  She’s looking at that stream, in her eyes a real river, then looking at Daddy and giving clear signals … slower, Daddy.  The boys are not worried.  “Faster, Daddy!”  There’s only one thing to do … the big boy hill.

The three little boys have been eyeing the big boy hill for a while.  Gangs of teenagers are launching themselves down the headwall of the hill and blasting across the ice in a collision derby of large bodies on small roaring disks, arms and legs flailing.  Wahooooooo!!!  Devon looks pleadingly. Do you want to go up the big boy hill?  Nod.  Nod.  OK … go ask Mommy.  If she says it’s ok, you can go.

Mommy considers the big boy hill … steeper, longer, faster … but well away from the river.  Mommy approves.  Three three-foot-plus tall blueberries carry three-foot wide disks on their heads up the hill.  Niko complains.  The sleds are heavy.  “Daddy, help.”  No way.  This is the big boy hill.  If you are not strong enough to carry your sled, you’re not strong enough for this hill.  Niko digs deep and pushes on.

Devon goes first.  Daddy slides the starting point a bit down the headwall for a test run.  All goes well.  Two more test runs.  Three blueberries half the height and half the age of the next youngest solo slider toddle up the hill and spend the rest of an afternoon careening down the wall and across the vast open spaces, dodging and crashing and screaming with joy.  An obviously concerned and extremely helpful Granlibakken employee routinely runs out to hurry the deliriously distracted blueberry out of the finish area before the next wave of teenagers crashes in.  No injuries.  Pure adrenaline.

Mommy and Daddy are proud.  The boys are beside themselves with happiness.  By the end of the week Mommy and Daddy drink 3 large bottles of Baileys Irish Cream in front of 4 large boxes worth of burning firewood.  Mommy and Daddy also achieve happiness.

The minivan heads home.  Daddy’s puts on el-HADRA, the Mystik Dance, a “rhythmic trance meditation of the Sufis”, also described as the “pulse of the breath and the heartbeat at the same time.”  The boys start to sing.  They chant.  All three of them sing simultaneously and, more or less, in time with the CD.  It is Daddy’s great regret that words are so inadequate to express the improvisational joy that poured forth from three little mouths for a non-stop hour and a half while Mommy and Daddy alternately broke out into hysterics or looked lovingly at each other.  Mommy was right.  The boys needed a vacation.  They didn’t need a vacation to get away from work.  They needed a vacation to further their work.  Their job is to learn and expand and grow and explore, and the stimulation of the Family Vacation launched them forward on their path like nothing Daddy had ever seen.  Good job, boys.

Here, rendered as well as Daddy can, is their chant:

Xander has blue car care-yer.  (the boys love their toy car carriers) Devon has red car care-yer.  Niko has white car care-yer.  Xander has blue car care-yer.  Devon has red car care-yer.  Niko has white car care-yer.  Lotta traffic.  (heavy oncoming traffic)  Lotta traffic.  Lotta traffic.  Lotta traffic.  Lotta traffic.  Big rig.  Big rig.  Big rig.  Big rig.  Big rig.  No more traffic happy car.  No more traffic happy car.  No more traffic happy car.  No more traffic happy car.  Helping people.  (an ambulance drives by)  Helping people.  Helping people.  Helping people.  Train.  Train.  Train.  Train.  Lotta cars.  Lotta cars.  Lotta cars.  Lotta cars.  Lotta cars.  Daddy.  Daddy.  Daddy.  Daddy.  Daddy.  Mommy.  Mommy.  Mommy.  Mommy.  Daddy.  Mommy.  Daddy.  Mommy.  Daddy.  Mommy. Daddy.  Mommy.

The Daddy Report: Penes & Potty Training

October 5th, 2010

The Penis.  Males have them.  Penis intrigue really gets going about the time potty training ends and probably ends about the time senior incontinence starts.  In between those two moments, males honor their penis with monuments, rockets, wars and empires.

The boys, of course, are fascinated with theirs.  They pee with them.  They play with them.  The like to watch them in action on others, especially Daddy.  Daddy’s is bigger than theirs (thank god), establishing the penis pecking order in the house and giving rise to the ritual of three boys running to watch the show of “Daddy pee!  Daddy pee!”.

Penises, or alternatively penes, are more difficult to operate than one might imagine.  For some reason, it has fallen to Daddy to render instruction to the boys.  Mommy insists.  Daddy has one, thus it stands to reason, Daddy is better prepared.  Daddy attempted to make the argument that, although he has one, he has absolutely zero experience in handling that belonging to another and, perhaps, that Mommy, you know, … uh … this sentence went unfinished.  It’s Daddy’s job.

Sometimes penises are soft and sometimes they are hard.  Even in three year olds.  Pooping is apparently pretty exciting for a three year old.  Wow, what is that??  Pooping can take a long time, affording ample opportunity to become interested in what’s going on right up front.  “Xander, don’t play with your penis while pooping.”  Daddy was concerned about hygiene because there’s not a lot of clearance in those little potties.  “Xander, you’re not doing anything wrong, but we don’t play with our penis while pooping.”

“Daddy”, corrects Mommy, “just tell him to stop”.

“But”, attempts Daddy, “I don’t want to make him think that it’s a bad thing …”.  Daddy’s concerned about undue self-consciousness that might arise in a dozen years.

“Daddy”, continues Mommy, “that’s too complicated.  Just tell him to stop.”  It’s Daddy’s job to train the boys and Mommy’s job to train the Daddy.

“Xander, don’t play with your penis.”

Then comes peeing.  As long as you don’t care who or what gets peed on, it’s easy.  As soon as you try to aim, there are some complexities, not the least of which is size.  Daddy trying to help a boy aim is a little like trying to aim a Derringer while wearing oven mitts.  The mitts are too big and the gun is too small, aim is erratic and the most common fatality is Daddy’s fingers.  Thus, Daddy resorts to description.  “Don’t pee on your leg.  Aim your peepee. Aim … grab, uh, there, and point …”  Add to this the little known fact  (within the world of Mommies) that a penis, especially a little one, doesn’t  just hang out like a garden hose.  It is, in a word, sticky.  Sweaty.  It’s been stuffed inside the briefs and when a young toddler is about to do his business, the business end of the penis can be pointed just about anywhere … straight down, straight up, left towards the leg or even straight back towards the supportive Daddy.  Thus more words ensue … “See how it’s pointing to the left, you need to straighten it out.  Pull it out.  Grab your peepee and …”  Xander, of course, is completely confused because I just told him yesterday to stop playing with his penis and all of this is starting to sound pretty much like what he was supposed to stop doing yesterday.  The upshot is that the boys peed on their legs, peed on their shoes, peed on their pants and peed on Daddy until they figured out how to grab the peepee and pee on the plants.  Whew.

“Xander water plants!” exclaims Xander happily.

“Yes, Xander, you are watering the plants.”

Peepee is now pretty routine … sit down style, big-boy style, reverse sit-down and Daddy’s favorite, the Nanny Express.  The Nanny Express we use on the road after a declaration of “Niko peepee!  Daddy, stop car!” because when one goes, they all go, and getting three little pairs of shoes off, pants off, underpants off, peepees aligned, business done and all put back together … that can take some real time.  In the Nanny Express, you grab all the pants layers and yank them down to the ankles in step one.  Step two, grab the boy by those same ankles and hoist up above and in front his head everything from the knees down.  With his armpits cradled at your forearms and, optionally, his bum cradled at your knees, the boy has hands and forearms free to aim while you focus on keeping feet, knees and clothes (both yours and his) out of the line of fire.  We can get three boys from car seat to car seat in four minutes flat with nothing but wet plants.

Potty training the poos was a little tougher.  It didn’t really take off until Mommy finally just abandoned daytime diapers and let the inevitable happen.  “Eeeeeyyyyyeeewwwww” rose the cry with attendant waiving of hands in front of noses.  That only needed to happen once for the boys to learn: no pooing in the underwear.

But potty training isn’t just for the boys.  Daddy still had more to learn.  He learned it at Hauke Park.

“Poopoo,” said Devon.

There are no bathrooms at Hauke Park.  There are no diapers in the trunk.  At this point Daddy went into denial.

“Can you hold it?  Can you wait until we get home?” asks Daddy.

“Poopoo home,” says Devon agreeably, and returns to the play structure.

There.  That settles it.  We’ll go home and poopoo.  No worries.  Later Mommy will ask, “What were you thinking?”

“Peepee,” said Niko.  Daddy knew how to handle peepee.  It was off to the bushes and the Nanny Express and we’re ready to go.

“Peepee,” said Devon.  OK, no problem, thinks Daddy, we’ll do a quick Nanny Express and head home to poopoo.  Daddy picks Devon up.  They head for the bushes.  Sniff.  What?  Uh oh.  A tug at the pants confirms the bad news … this was a post-poo peepee.  Daddy’s arm is wet.  Poo River is flowing down Daddy’s arm.  Poo Rain is pouring down Devon’s legs.  This is bad.  This stinks.

Daddy gathers up two more boys.  “Let’s go.  Now.  NOW, boys!”  They head for the car.  Daddy plops Devon in the car seat.  Sh!t!  Bad move.  There’s poo on the car seat.  There’s going to be poo on Mommy’s car.  Mommy’s going to kill Daddy.  Think.  Think.

Devon gets plopped on the ground.  “Boys!  Sit!”  Contain and control.  Wipes!  That sounds good. Wipe.  Wipe.  It’s too little against too much.  No diapers.  Insufficient wipes.  No towel.  No tarp.  “Sit!”  No movement.  Any movement is risky.  “Sit!”  Daddy thinks.  Need a hose.  No water.  Naked?  Bad idea.  I have to drive.  Clean hands.  Wipe.  Wipe.  What to do with pooy wipes?  Found bag.  Wipe again.  Daddy’s hands are clean. Sniff.  Sniff.  Well, clean enough.

OK.  Clean boys in car.  Click.  Click.  Now.  Devon.  Aha!  Daddy takes Devon’s jacket, turns it upside down, puts Devon’s legs through the arms and zips it up.  Good seal at the ankles.  Poo contained.  Devon plus jacket go into car seat and everyone drives home.

“Devon poo,” reminds Niko.

“Yes, Niko, Devon poo’d,” say Daddy gloomily.

Upon arrival, Devon goes straight to the decontamination chambers, a process best left to the readers’ imaginations as the adjectives and imagery necessary to describe it are best left off the page. But this is what it took to teach Daddy about potty training.

A few weeks pass.

“Poopoo, “ says Xander.

We’re biking at the school on Saturday.  There are no bathrooms.  There is no water.  There’s a brand new portable potty in the car. Not just any portable potty, either.   Scarred by experience, the otherwise minimalist Daddy cheerfully paid an exorbitant premium for the very last of the discontinued but highly reviewed, extra-sturdy Fisher-Price Potties On-the-Go that Mommy had been eyeing for a while. Xander, and by proxy Daddy, is now in dire need of that premium potty.  Daddy estimates the distance to the car.  There is no time.  Daddy hauls Xander into the bushes, pants down, shoes off, squat and, immediately, right there by the fence, poo.  Daddy feels a little bad about it as he kicks up a covering of dirt.

But Daddy remembers Hauke Park … so not that bad.

The Daddy Report: Wet Girls

September 30th, 2010

There’s no denying it, the boys are really good looking.  Total strangers routinely exclaim, “Oh, they’re so cute!” or “What handsome boys!”  Young girls stop by the house asking, “Can the triplets play?”  Three years old and they’ve already got hot, seven year old girlfriends.  In several towns.  Daddy’s looking forward to seeing the ones who stop by in about 15 years.

Back in Vietnam at the kiddie pool, one four year old girl couldn’t take her eyes off Devon.  She watched him for minutes.  Followed his every move.  Devon, enthralled with his first experience of water, didn’t know she existed.  Such a guy.  As we were finally getting ready to go, Devon notices her.  He walks over to her, stares, and smiles.  She turns her head dramatically and throws her long locks to the side, staring into space, exuding nonchalant indifference.  Such a girl.

Xander spots a lithe young thing in a frilly purple bikini at the water park. She’s twice his height and twice his age, but Xander doesn’t care. She’s the best looking girl in the park and he’s got good taste. (Mommy agrees).   So Xander turns on his most charming smile and begins to flirt.  He flirts by splashing her with water, pushing her into the sprinklers and grabbing at her frilly bikini.  Such a guy. She is not amused with this primordial communications gap between the sexes.

Skirts fascinate the boys.  Skirts are for looking up.  Mommy gave up wearing skirts as the boys won’t stop playing lift-n-peek and two Mommy hands are insufficient to hold down one skirt simultaneously in six places to stop three boys’ hands.  Our spirited neighbor, Bobbi, arrives to shower the boys with her love and enthusiasm.  “Bobbi!!!!” shout the boys excitedly, running over to her with big hugs and kisses all around.  Immediately Bobbi looks like that famous picture of Marilyn Monroe with her hands pushing down on the skirt lifting up.

“No!  No, we don’t lift up Bobbi’s skirt.  Stop grabbing her skirt.”

More big hugs.  What kind of hug is that?  That’s not a hug, that’s a grab.  Niko’s grabbing Bobbi’s breasts.  The boys love breasts at least as much as they love skirts.  Halter tops are a favorite.  Peek up skirts.  Peek down tops.

“No!  No, we don’t grab Bobbi’s breasts.  Stop grabbing her breasts.”

Daddy’s unsure in the heat of the moment exactly how wise it is to name that which we are not supposed to be grabbing, but is otherwise unclear how to explain this new rule.  “No, stop, uh, putting your hands, uh, there!” didn’t seem any better.  “Niko, we do not grab breasts” wins out for directness and clarity.

Forbidden breast grabbing is not the only new law on the books at the Mann Home.  Mommy and the Nannies have had it with skirt lifting.  Thus, there’s another new law:  Lift a skirt … go to timeout.  Mommy and the Nannies are law enforcement, and law enforcement at the Mann Home makes liberal use of entrapment.  Everyone suddenly starts wearing skirts, but now with shorts underneath.  Just like buying drugs from an undercover cop, it’s all temptation with no reward except doing time in timeout.

The boys also play their own version of toddler dominatrix.  If there is a cute girl on the playground that wants to play big sister, they will happily let themselves be bossed around. Oh, baby, put me in that swing.  Hold my hand.  This seems to be a specialty of girls with younger siblings.

When all else fails in getting a pretty girl’s attention, Xander evolves his amorous expression to sand throwing, which of course results in the girl’s crying and him having to apologize in this primordial battle of the sexes.

The other day Mommy was taking the boys back to the water park.  “Where are we going?” asks Mommy.

“Water park. Fountain!” shout the boys excitedly.

“What do you want to do there?” asks Mommy.

“Play wet girl!”, replies Xander with conviction.  And what do they want to do next week?  “Play wet Caroline!” … another girlfriend.  The boys are obsessed with wet girls.  Such guys.