The Trick to Having a Happy Halloween...

...is to paint a smile on your face.


But beware! If your wife wears an x-ray shirt, revealing that your baby is proportioned like a monkey...


...it might make you cry. And if you cry, your makeup will run.


I hope you have a non-traumatic Halloween!

A Conversation While Having a Picnic Yesterday

FoxyJ: The bread on these sandwiches got kind of soggy.

S-Boogie: Your mom has soggy bread.



I take no responsibility.

It's Like Ten Thousand Spoons When All You Need is a Knife

Back when I was a faithful churchgoing person, my least favorite day of the year to go to church was Fathers' Day. Among other things, I've always been uncomfortable with the hypercodification of gender stereotypes that tends to go with talks about the importance of fathers.

So of course, now that I don't go to church anymore, one of the few days a year when I do go is Fathers' Day, because I figure if my daughter is singing (with the Primary) for me, I ought to be there to hear it. To be honest, the talks bother me less as I distance myself more from the church and become more comfortable in my own role as a parent and human being, but what really made it worth it today--apart from watching S-Boogie being adorable on stage--was the Snickers bar they gave to all the fathers at the end. If they gave out Snickers every week, I might consider reactivating myself.

(Note to my atheist friends: No doubt some faithful member of the church will now offer me a Snickers a week to attend church, so you should consider it your humanist duty to provide me with a counteroffer of, say, two Snickers a week not to go. Let the bidding begin.)

It's a Girl!*

*Gender based on Chinese gender chart and the personal preferences of the unborn child's parents. And c'mon, that line is definitely pink.

Betraying All That Is Good and Holy

When I was in Spain I looked down on the Americans who refused to speak Spanish with a lisp because it seemed weird to them. I mean, c'mon, it's not even really a lisp--it's just the way the language is spoken. S is pronounced just like it is in English, but the soft c and z are pronounced like an English th. It's no stranger than the fact that in English we put a t and an h together and get en entirely unrelated sound. If you were speaking Russian you wouldn't insist on pronouncing their letters the same as we pronounce them in English.

But some people just couldn't get past the fact that in their minds a soft c and z should sound like an s. It doesn't help that most North Americans' exposure to Spanish is through Latin America, where they've corrupted the language and completely lost the "th" sound.

When I came back to the states I saw other returned missionaries who had served in Spain and pronounced their cs and zs correctly there but since coming home had reverted to what in Spanish is known as seseo, a sort of reverse-lisp. Their excuse? They didn't like being made fun of by the returned missionaries who had served in Latin America. I vowed never to follow that path of weakness. I had learned Spanish in Spain and gosh darn it, that's the Spanish I'd speak until the day I die.

It's been nearly eight years now since I came home from Spain and I've done a pretty good job of retaining my pseudo-Spaniard accent (by which I mean my American accent that tries to be Spaniard). Despite the fact that 95% of my interaction with Spanish speakers has been with Latin Americans who find my accent at best amusing and at worst incomprehensible, I've stuck to my guns.

But now my five-year-old daughter is learning Spanish from a Hispanic teacher in a California school. It would be one thing for me to pronounce words differently than she hears them at school when I'm speaking Spanish or reading a Spanish book, but this afternoon I was helping her with some reading homework and decided to make some flashcards to help her learn the sounds. I was grouping letters together by the sound they make, so for example a single card has ba and va because in Spanish the b and v are identical. I went back and forth on whether to group the soft c and z sounds with the s sounds because in my mind they are entirely distinct and to say otherwise is blasphemy. But S-Boogie has a hard enough time with phonetics as it is, so I decided it would be best to swallow my pride and teach her the same thing she's learning at school.

When I made that first card with sa and za together as if they make the same sound, a little piece of me died inside. The funeral will be held on Saturday.

Dear Prop 8,

Please stop using our children to manipulate people. Not just the children you've literally used in your commercials without their parents consent, but also the children of heterosexual couples everywhere you claim to be defending (from a threat that doesn't exist) and the children of same-sex couples who you conveniently sweep aside, lest their existence ruin your argument that gay couples only want marriage for selfish reasons, unlike those selfless heterosexual couples who do it for the children.

Sincerely,

Mr. Fob

Decisiones graves y abrazos tiernos

Tuesday morning we got a call from the local Spanish immersion elementary school. We'd put S-Boogie's name on a waiting list because we moved here too late to get her registered, but we didn't expect anything to come of that. As it turns out, something did. On Tuesday they offered her a spot available immediately and wanted a response, well, immediately. I was out at the DMV at the time so FoxyJ told them she'd call back in the afternoon after talking to me. Then she asked S-Boogie what she thought of changing schools and S-Boogie burst into tears.

I felt pretty horrible when Foxy told me. Here we've already moved the poor girl to a different state and made her leave all her friends behind, and then a month into kindergarten when she's just starting to feel comfortable with her new friends, we yank her out and throw her in with another bunch of strangers, where the teacher won't even be speaking English. On top of that, the new kindergarten is a morning class and we really really liked the afternoon schedule we've had. At the same time, though, we've been saying for years that we'd like to get her in a Spanish immersion program and as bad as it is to transfer after a month of kindergarten, it would only be worse to transfer after a year.

So we decided to do it. Today was S-Boogie's last day at her old school and Monday will be the first at the new one. She's spent the past few days alternating between excitement and anxiety about the change. This morning she was particularly stressed and grumpy, no doubt because she knew it would be her last day, and I was no help at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. I know this may come as a shock, but apparently getting stressed because your child is stressed and then yelling at her to stop crying isn't actually a good parenting technique.

The thing that's been bothering me all week is that I remember kindergarten. We are no longer in the realm of parenting mistakes like letting a toddler watch too much TV, which we all know will have negative effects, but really who's to say it's my fault Junior has an IQ of 64? No, we're at the point now where forcing our daughter to switch schools a month into the school year could potentially ruin her life and she will resent us forever because of it. Her earliest experiences and memories of school--those that will shape the course of the next twenty years of her life for better or worse--hinge on a single phone call. (And boy am I glad it wasn't me who made that phone call and told the secretary "yes.") The power in our hands to positively or negatively affect the life of this little person we love so much, coupled with the ignorance of what will ultimately have positive effects and what will have negative effects, is rather terrifying.

Later today, after Foxy helped S-Boogie calm down and she had a nice last day at the old school and I spent several hours hating myself for being so utterly incompetent as a parent and reassuring S-Boogie several times that it's okay to cry when you're sad and that I'm sorry she feels sad, she somewhat randomly hugged me and told me, "I like it when you give me hugs because that's how I know you love me." I hope to... Whoever that somehow that will be enough.

A Question for Parents of Multiple Children Who Share a Bedroom

How do you teach them to stop playing/fighting and go to sleep? Our kids were fine when Little Dude was in a crib--sometimes they'd make noise for up to an hour after bedtime, but they'd always fall asleep eventually. This summer he started climbing out of the crib, though, so we switched him to a toddler bed to prevent injury. Since then it's impossible to get them to go to sleep unless we put one down and then wait until he or she is asleep before putting the other down. Otherwise LD just gets out of his bed and into S-Boogie's--no matter how many times we go in there to put him back where he belongs--and they scream at each other for hours on end. Seriously, I know there are other children, even toddlers, who share bedrooms with their siblings. What is the deal with ours?

Date with a Bike

At FoxyJ's suggestion, we've begun what we hope will become a monthly tradition of having one-on-one dates with our kids. This afternoon while she and S-Boogie went to an open gymnastics afternoon at the rec center, I loaded Little Dude in the bike trailer and took him on a bike ride across town. We did about half of the Davis Bike Loop, which would make the trip 6 miles each way. I was feeling pretty groovy as I explored the intricate network of bike trails going through campus, past an arboretum, under the freeway, around too many parks to count, and in and out of suburbs. Davis is an amazing place to bike.

Lest you think I perfectly fit the granola-fortified stereotype I try so hard to emulate, I must admit that the end destination of this trip was no farmer's market or liberal political rally or hemp t-shirt store. The honest truth is that I took my son to the other side of town so that we could buy cheap ice cream cones and play at the McDonald's Playplace.

But I'm still cool. Really, I am.

Awkward Question of the Day

"Daddy, do you like boys more or girls more?"

$50 OBO - Two children, less than five years old

This morning at 5:30 after Little Dude climbed out of his playpen for the twenty-fourth time of the night, I got back in bed and mentally composed a bitterly humorous (if not very original) post about how I wanted to sell my children.

At 7:30 I gave up on the idea of going back to sleep and sat down at my computer to work. One of the first web pages I came across in the course of my work was a news article about a woman who was being tried for the murder of her daughter. Among the evidence against her were journal entries she'd written complaining about how parenting is stressful and sometimes she wished she could be free of her children. Now granted in this case there was also DNA evidence pinning her to the horrible crime, but I decided not to write that post I'd been planning anyway.

I will admit, though, that my children have been causing me a lot of stress over the past few days. For several months I've been looking forward to this month-long vacation, but now a week into it I'm ready to be in my own home. I'm enjoying spending the time with family and friends in Utah, and even last week I was thinking about how so long as I have my computer I feel like I'm at home (and I'm taking my computer everywhere I go because I need it for my job), but the problem is that the kids aren't so easily adaptable. They're stressed out by all this moving around and the interruption of their routine, and I don't deal well with stressed out children. I get grumpy and yell at them to stop screaming.

We spent last week with my sister, which was nice except for her Stairs of Death, and now we'll be at my mom's for three weeks. There's not quite as much space here, but I'm hoping we'll be able to get into some kind of routine and some sense of normalcy, before we rip them back out of that routine and take them to Grandma and Grandpa's in Vegas for a week and then our new home in Davis.

I'd like to have happy, calm children, but I'll settle for a good night's sleep and Little Dude staying in his bed.

An hour and ten escapes into tonight, I don't have much hope of that happening.

Heartwarming Teaching Moments with Mr. Fob

The scene: Dinner at the Fobcave.

S-Boogie: Rolls are rolls.

Mr. Fob: Really?

S-Boogie: Yeah. Everything is everything.

Mr. Fob: That's what Lauryn Hill says.

S-Boogie: Who's Lauryn Hill?

Mr. Fob puts The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in the CD player and plays "Everything is Everything," then shows S-Boogie the pictures of Ms. Hill on the CD cover. They share A Moment.



Excuse me while I wipe a tear from my eye.

Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence

Okay, there was no whizzing involved, but it's such a great title (and board game).

As Little Dude approached the barbed wire separating the cows from us outside the petting farm, I told him not to touch it. Ever since burning his hand on the curling iron a couple weeks ago, he's come to associate the concept dangerous with the word "hot" (and its accompanying sign), so I told him the wire was hot. I didn't realize how accurate this was until he grabbed the wire and I simultaneously grabbed him to pull him away, and a shock jolted through my arm and down my leg. We later found a sign that had fallen into the grass, warning us that the wire fence was electric.

I don't remember enough from my high school physics class of how electricity works; is it because I grabbed Little Dude that he didn't seem to be bothered by the shock? Because the current only had to travel through his short arm and then through my body instead of all the way through his? He did say "Mooooo" very sadly as I carried him away from the electric fence, but I think that was regret that he couldn't get closer to the cows, not physical pain. Or, you know, maybe he did feel the shock but just didn't care. He's macho like that.

My Constant Fear

That just as I've gotten comfortable on the toilet and gotten into my book, the four-year-old will bang on the door--or just open it--and say, "I need to go potty."

A Few Quick Thoughts on Parenting

...before I get back to work on my graduate portfolio.

• I wasn't too stressed about FoxyJ going to Davis for two days last week because (a) I was excited for her, (b) being stressed about parenting by myself would show weakness that as a card-carrying member of the Involved Fathers Movement I am not allowed to show, and (c) my future vision is generally too rose-filtered to imagine that any coming situation might be anything less than peachy. Despite all this, Thursday and Friday were the culmination of a very grumpy week for me, parenting-wise, and I noticed the effect Foxy's absence had on my grumpiness when, after talking to her on the phone while the kids took a bath Friday night, I transformed, at least temporarily, from Angry Dad back to the Perfectly Cheerful and Patient Parent I usually am.
  
• Interestingly, Foxy and I have been more consistent about having family home evening (almost) every week since I've left the LDS church than we were when I was a believing member. This is due mostly to the fact that S-Boogie is now old enough to remind us. And because we like treats. I've found that I enjoy taking my turn to prepare a lesson, because without the standard religious topics to fall back on I always have to think hard about what exactly I want to teach my children and how I'm going to do so. Last night I decided to do a lesson on the environment and conservation. I found this Happy Earth Day coloring book and printed one of the activities (on the back of a used sheet of paper, of course), then took the huge stack of paper collected from S-Boogie's daily arts and crafts, together with a large piece of butcher paper I had left over from making a scroll for one of the plays I'm in, and we made this papier mache Earth:
  I think she picked up a vague idea of what it means to "take care of the Earth," but the geography teachers of the world should rest assured that I am doing all I can to ensure their continued job security.
• Cleanliness is next to godliness, and for agnostics that as close as we're going to get. I was babysitting for some friends the other day and I looked around their living room and said, "Hey, they don't have scraps of paper and pieces of tape everywhere. Maybe I don't have to live that way." So yesterday I cleaned up the living room a bit (thus producing the pile of paper that is now part of the Earth), and this afternoon while the kids played I vacuumed. Then tonight when it was time to clean up, rather than rushing through it like I usually do because I'm anxious to get the kids in bed, I actually had S-Boogie find a place for every random thing that was in the living room and then take the floating scraps of paper to the recycling bin. And suddenly the world's a happier place, and Angry Dad is so last week--though that may also have something to do with the fact that the miracle of Daylight Savings gave me an extra hour of sleep this morning.
  

A Very Cheesy Post for FoxyJ

(Because I know she loves her dairy products.)

Yesterday morning Foxy flew to Davis to tour the school and be wined and dined by important people. She'll be back tomorrow afternoon.

This morning the very first thing S-Boogie said when she came into my room was "The house isn't pretty without Mommy."

Who's Your Daddy?

This evening Little Dude and I were looking at one of FoxyJ's mission photo albums. He enjoyed pointing out Mama on every page. When we saw group shots of the district Foxy and I were in together, I asked him where Daddy was. He consistently pointed to the missionary Foxy used to have a crush on (i.e. not me).

The 684th Law of Parenting

If your children are playing quietly in their bedroom, enjoy it while it lasts, but know that you will pay a price for your peace when you find out what they've been up to.

When I opened the bedroom door tonight I expected much of the mess that awaited me--clothes, toys, and books strewn across the floor--but what I didn't foresee was the dirty diapers extracted from the diaper pail and spread around the room. I hope I found them all.

(Un)Employment

I have not been employed since September. I quit my reference job at the library in order to volunteer in the cataloging section of the library. We've been able to cover our expenses, more or less, with my Foreign Languages and Area Studies fellowship stipend and Foxy's teaching income. In the next few weeks this may change as I take a job cataloging materials for the Spanish Department's Center for Spanish Studies. I'm making this change not just because this job is offering to pay me money, but because it'll give me a chance to diversify my cataloging experience and to use my Spanish language skills in conjunction with library stuff, which is the whole idea behind my FLAS fellowship.

Meanwhile, Foxy and I are seriously considering the possibility of me returning to unemployment after I graduate. For years now we've been looking forward to the day when I have a real job with a real salary and insurance and all that fun grown-up stuff, but now we're having second thoughts. We're realizing that Foxy's PhD program is likely to require a lot of time and energy on her part and, oh yeah, we have kids. S-Boogie will be starting Kindergarten in the fall but Little Dude will only be two and he generally doesn't seem to enjoy being with people other than his parents as much as his sister always has. So we could go ahead with the plan to get me a full-time job, find a good daycare option for him, and put Foxy in the position of juggling her full-time student responsibilities with the full-time parent responsibilities of making sure kids get to and from daycare and school on time and caring for them herself instead of having time to dedicate to homework and research, OR we could live for another few years as poor students and have one of us--me--available to do the parenting thing. We don't know yet exactly how much Davis is offering her in terms of money to live on and we still haven't heard from the other two schools she applied to, but we know that at least one school really wants her and has said they plan on funding her well. It's likely that I'll still need to get some kind of part-time job--and even if I didn't need to I'd want to do something to keep up my library experience--and Little Dude may still need some daycare, but at least this option means that one of us will be able to dedicate most of our time to parenting and that Foxy will be able to give her studies the attention a PhD program deserves. I've read too many stories recently of mothers who have had to perform scheduling gymnastics in order to get their degrees, and I admire them for accomplishing what they've accomplished while their husbands worked full-time, but I figure why do that if there are other options? We are, after all, quite experienced at the financial gymnastics of living on a student income. What's another few years?

Truthfully, I'm excited by this idea. While I've been excited at the prospect of starting my career, the one thing I've been dreading is the reality of a 40-hour job that would take away from the time I spend with my children. I'm ready to be done with school but I'm not ready to give up the flexible parenting schedule school has given me. Maybe I'll get a real job when the kids go to college.

Happy Valentine's from the Love Monster!

Last week S-Boogie and I made Valentine's decorations (at her request). We spent an hour or two making heart chains and cupids and then made, with the leftover pieces, the Love Monster. It will love you... to death! (I refer to it as it because I'm undecided on whether it's a he or she.)


My proudest creation is my Cupid heart, which I think of as my interpretation of Tolkien Boy's theory that if full-scale human cloning were a reality homosexuality would be much more common. Either that or the difficulty of flying as conjoined twin angels.


Tonight S-Boogie and I spent another two hours making Valentines for her classmates and teachers. After all that I am Valentined out. It's a good thing FoxyJ isn't expecting me to do anything Valentiney for her tomorrow.

Right?

Honey?