Harry Potter and Princess Jessica

Finally, Michael's mop of a hairdo has paid off. He made a stellar Harry Potter and everyone recognized him. He loved every minute of it and was convinced that he would have won "the costume contest" (wherever that was being contested).

Up until two days ago, Megan planned on being Merliah Summers, the Malibu Barbie that is actually half mermaid (gasp!). She suddenly changed course in the middle of Walmart when her eye caught on a fabulous pink confection, complete with tulle peeking out from the bottom and a cute little black velvet bolero. She was suddenly Princess Jessica. And who, pray tell, is that? Megan made her up. Umm, okay.

Dad Entry #80

I am reading the autobiography of Craig Ferguson. He's Scottish. I love the Scottish, their humor, their ridiculous accent. And their teeth aren't that bad. The weather sucks though; it's rainy and miserable in Scotland almost always. I had some great times in Edinburgh for work. In between F-bombs and jokes and spotty recollections of spectacular benders, Craig said some things about parenthood that are, well, worth plagiarizing here, except I already blew it and gave him credit. He wrote, “My son came into the world a sticky, angry, and slightly confused mess…. Anyone who has been present at a birth knows how weirdly adrenal the whole event is. Up to that moment my child had been an abstraction, then suddenly he was real and the world had changed beyond recognition. Now there was someone I would unthinkingly lay down my life for, and I felt a massive, uncontrollable, powerful, feral love.”

He also said – and this is coming from a celebrity, an actor, a Hollywood personality! – “When you become a parent, you go from being a star in the movie of your own life to becoming a supporting player in the movie of someone else's.”

My words now, sorry. There are lots of things I enjoy in life, but I’m not sure any match the moments when I walk into Michael’s or Megan’s room at night, and, thanks to their nightlights, I can see their faces, and I can lean in super close and listen to them breathe. I can kiss them. But mostly I stare, and just sort of admire them. They are asleep and in peaceful repose, of course, although they might stretch or turn, sigh loudly or smack their lips, and Megan is never the way you should be in bed, which is to say head on a pillow and feet pointing downward; she is usually lying across the bed, or awkwardly on a pile of stuffed animals, or contorted in some horrifying manner. I fix her. But I’m there just to admire; it’s the one time they aren’t playing with or watching something that I’d be interfering with by being all up in their grill, staring at them. Craig described parental love pretty well. The one thing I’d add is the gratitude I felt, and enormity of responsibility – two things – which were also massive and maybe sudden, the way I felt their impact, when I first met my two sticky, angry and confused messes.

Dad Entry #79

Michael scored very high on his standardized tests for reading comprehension. Mostly because he greedily hoards Pokemon cards and then deciphers and memorizes every oddball detail printed on them. We’re talking about character skills like “Elemental Blast”, “Psychic Pulse” and “Malevolent Meteor”. He seizes and visualizes the meaning of these big words in spectacular mental scenes, I’m sure, vivid and permanent. Paragraphs in some test about Dick, Jane, and Spot must bore him to tears, but he understands them perfectly. Michael has never had a skinny vocabulary. I remember years ago when he memorized the Lightning McQueen book. It was not a 5-words-per-page affair either; it took at least 10 minutes to get through. Pretty much everyone who witnessed a ‘reading’ was very impressed. And Michael performed quite a few with enthusiasm and perfect pace and inflection. Michael was closer to average for math (the other half of the two-part standardized testing), but Sara and I were pleased and proud. His lowest marks (still around average) were for measurement usage and recognition, or something like that, in the math portion. We chalked that up to poor teaching. They should use Pokemon as a teaching tool for measurement awareness, also, like, “At what distance can Aerodactyl vaporize his enemy?” That sorta thing. But we figured reading comprehension is more important than anything else for someone Michael’s age – and perhaps always – so we’re very happy for him.

I was trading parenting stories with some co-workers. We were joking about the merits of unpredictability over consistency. Some dads are unpredictable when it comes to discipline (and visceral reaction). My dad was unpredictable to some extent and I think it worked perfectly when combined with my mother's unwavering consistency. Note: the following is hypothetical; in no way am I hinting at true events that took place during the mid-80’s in the kitchen of the Cox family home in Shenandoah Estates in Crystal Lake, Illinois. So what, exactly, is unpredictability? It’s when a dad only grunts at the news of a bad test grade but then has a Bobby-Knight-arranging-chairs moment the next time a chore is neglected. We're talking about crimes that are different but of comparable severity; there's a chance Dad might only frown, but sometimes.... I don't know if it's mood-driven or whim-based or reflexive discipline, good cop / bad cop, or textbook parenting of a bygone era. Although I'm not capable of ruling this way - and psychologists might classify it as confusing, misdirected, inappropriate, or harmful - I, for one, think it's enormously effective. I think it's genius.

Feeling sick and sore, I took a bath last night. Before I filled the big tub I moved the toy basket that now holds four Barbies. Three have mermaid tails and the other is, of course, Merliah Summers, the famous Barbie surfer and star of the box office smash "Barbie in a Mermaid Tale". Merliah has legs, but in the movie I think she wears a tail. We love mermaids. I enjoyed my first episode of Hannah Montana the other day. And I recommend the film “Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue”.

A while back Megan colored on, with markers, the arm of the couch and shortly after that the carpet in her bedroom. She knows these are serious infractions. Sara and I aren't sure what triggered the vandalism. And Megan isn't forthcoming with answers or explanations when admonished; she just cries. Which is tough since she's cuter than a thousand puppies. But we punished her and my sweet little Crip hasn’t tagged anything since.

A Little Suburban Haute Couture

My darling girl, for her birthday, decided that she wanted to have a "fashion party." My children have a knack for relatively nebulous birthday party ideas and this one was no different. Gretchen and I discussed the many options of what a model-y party would look like, replete with laxatives and champagne, sucking up pixie stick lines through 100 dollar bills. Since I don't know the extent of some of the moms' senses of humor, I decided to keep those ideas on the backburner for another year (you know, for when we know them all just a little better).

Megan went to spend the morning with Grandma while I spent hours prepping the house. I rearranged nearly the entire first floor to accommodate the most dress up clothing, accessories, items of makeup and bowls of skittles possible. I then also set up a "photo studio" for the girls to model their ridiculous get-ups. Megan nearly flipped out when she got home and saw my handiwork. They all had a great time and I got some fantastic pictures of Meg and her girls. They are all so CUTE!

I should also note Megan's strange tight-lipped smile. That's all I can do...note it.

Dad Entry #78

Yesterday, Megan told me there's a show she wants to watch at thirty-o'clock. "It's on Monday at thirty-o'clock," she said. She got the day right.

"Will you get your broccoli breath out of my face, it's devastating." Michael said that to Megan after dinner last night. They were looking at something together at the table, almost cheek-to-cheek. It wasn't a nice thing to say, but it seemed like a big word coming out of a seven-year-old mouth. And I agree you can't understate the awfulness of bad breath.

Megan wants to read 'body books' so often at bedtime I find myself missing Cinderella. "Can't we read Fancy Nancy instead, or a princess book?" I plead, cringing, as she pulls another anatomy encyclopedia off her bookshelf. "We haven't read Double Pink in a while," I add, but I've already lost; Megan is climbing into bed with her favorite pop-up human body book. Super. Mostly I'm tired of the inundation I'm getting in gross anatomy, but I also get uncomfortable when Megan asks, "What does this part say, Daddy," while pointing at paragraphs titled "Female Puberty" or "The Male Reproductive System". Then I have to improvise or dance around those parts, which I do poorly, and my audience is perceptive; it only heightens her interest.

That reminds me, Megan gave me a speech about the birds and the bees the other day. "Daddy, did you know girls have a special pipe?" It was one of those abrupt, 'out of nowhere' comments and I was confused. "Pipe?" I asked. She said, "Yes, girls have a pipe in their tummy, it's a special pipe for babies. Mommy has one, and I have a little one. And when babies come out they are covered in a super bunch of blood." Pipe? Super bunch of blood? True, about the blood; I've seen it twice. And I remember, with Michael, the doctor tossing aside the placenta, literally, tossing it into some waste container, and I thought, umm, are you sure you don't need that, it looks pretty big and important, like, maybe, Sara's liver or something. I remember a popular Farside comic depicting an operating room, and a piece of stringy organ or tissue gets flung out of the patient and flies across the room and the surgeon says, "Somebody remember where that thing lands."

For fun, I googled 'the birds and the bees'. Paraphrasing Wikipedia: "The birds and the bees is an idiomatic expression referring to courtship and sexual intercourse. The phrase is a metaphor often used to avoid speaking openly and technically about sex and pregnancy. The birds and the bees is a story sometimes told to children in an attempt to explain the mechanics and consequence of sexual intercourse through reference to easily observed natural events. Bees carry and deposit pollen into flowers, a visible and easy-to-explain metaphor of male fertilization, and birds lay eggs, a version of female ovulation." Gee, how wonderful. Flowers blooming, birds singing. And natural. And simple, it sounds so simple too, but I'm pretty sure it's always the same regardless of time, place, mood, strategy; when this talk occurs between parent and child, awkwardness and confusion reign. And attempts to sanitize the moment with terms like 'intercourse' and 'courtship' make it worse. Now I keep thinking of the line, "Let's talk about sex, bayyy-beee!" courtesy of Salt-N-Pepa, 1990. What's even crazier than me even thinking of that song is the fact it'll be over 25 years old when I have 'the talk' with M & M.

I walked while Megan pedaled a lap around the neighborhood yesterday. She looks impossibly cute in her big purple helmet and purple elbow or knee pads - they will work as either, you can mix and match, woo-hoo! The helmet is nonnegotiable. The extra pads, however, are optional but she likes to wear them. Hey, whenever possible, accessorize! Sometimes Megan can't generate the momentum or power to get up a slope, so I give her a little help, a little push. She's doing great though and I excitedly told her, "If you keep riding your bike like this Sweetie, your legs will get even stronger and you'll be a super bike-rider!" She told me, "I already am, Daddy." Oh, sorry. We'll send you to the X-games. You can win the gold medal in the BMX with training wheels event. I was happy to hear that kind of self-assurance, or confidence, or pride, or whatever it is, though. Self-esteem is so important. I don't see a shortage in Megan at the moment and I am very happy about that.