Category: family

Archer 1, parental authority 0

Archer was home from preschool all last week with a fever. Andrea and I took turns missing work to care for him. Happily, his fever broke on Friday night and he was fine all weekend.

Having lots to catch up on at work, Andrea and I were eager to get the kids off to preschool this morning. But Archer had gotten used to lots of one-on-one parent-child time and was determined to stay home again. He refused to allow me to dress him. I coaxed him gently for a while and promised some fun family activities after school and work, but to no avail. Then I ratcheted up the sternness and started to tell him that certain privileges would be unavailable later if he continued to resist me now. When that didn’t result in improved cooperation, I resorted to, “Do we do this the easy way or the hard way?” The kids know that the hard way is no fun, so this threat almost always works — but not this time.

So, the hard way. I confiscated the items that Archer had been carrying around and pinned him to the changing table while wrestling his pajama top off and then his shirt on over his head. After lots of struggle, and plenty of crying from Archer, I managed to get his clothes on.

My victory was short-lived. Archer still held the trump card — the one sure way to make me remove the clothes I had just forcibly caused him to wear. With an assist from his convulsive crying and a belly full of Malt-O-Meal, he barfed all over them.

A cautionary tale for all who believe their authority is absolute.

Alone again, finally

Last night was the iPost Christmas party at the four-star Hotel Monaco in San Francisco. Our friend Laura brought her niece Amelia to our place for a sleepover with Jonah and Archer. (She’s right between them in age. We joke that Jonah and Archer will fight over her when it’s time to choose a date for the prom.) This freed up me and Andrea to go to the party (in formal dress!), drink more than usual, hang out with folks until all hours, then retire to our room upstairs (on iPost’s dime) and spend the night completely alone. For the first time in over four and a half years!

Naturally we worried about how the kids would handle their first night with neither parent. We needn’t have — they both did great.

We knew it would be wonderful to spend a completely grown-up night, but it exceeded even our high expectations — as did Laura and her magic touch. (It’s Laura we adore-a. It’s Laura the world needs more o’.) And you can do a lot worse than spend an elegant evening being treated like royalty in the gorgeous Hotel Monaco (another eye-popping Kimpton hotel — we’ve stayed at their Argonaut and their Triton too and have loved them all).

Now the question is: Is this the shape of things to come? Or will last night have to tide us over for a few more years?

Eww.

Last week we discovered that our aged dog Alex had tapeworms! The vet gave her a dose of praziquantel, which cures the infestation in a single dose by dissolving the buggers.

Tapeworms are pretty interesting once you get past the ick factor. You get them by ingesting them or their eggs. They attach to the lining of your gut and absorb nutrients from the food you’ve eaten. Since they reside in a stream of predigested food, they need no mouth or digestive system of their own! Apart from robbing you of some of the nutrients you should be getting, you can have a tapeworm and never know it. But in worse infestations you can become seriously malnourished or suffer intestinal blockages. Tapeworms can grow to dozens of feet in length.

We have no way of knowing how bad Alex’s infestation was or how long she had it. However, days after she took the medicine, she is noticeably sturdier on her old legs. She has been just skin and bones for many months, but we put it down to her advanced age and decreased appetite. Could it have actually been due to tapeworms? It’s too soon to know whether she will recover noticeable amounts of muscle mass, but when I walked her yesterday we went to the fourth house down, then crossed the street and returned on the other side. We haven’t taken that route for months! And it’s about twice as long as the longest of her more recent walks.

Old before his time?

Jonah and I woke up only moments ago wanting pancakes for breakfast. I told him I would make some for him but that I needed a few minutes first to drink my wake-up coffee, check my e-mail, etc. He said, “That’s OK, because I have to do some paperwork.”

(By which he means he needs to draw and cut out some new piece of artwork along the lines of this awesome “train.”)

Dr. Harris is happy

In August I wrote of the impending closure of our pediatrician’s office. That has now come to pass. The private practice has been converted into an office of the HMO Kaiser Permanente, with two of the practice’s five pediatricians being brought into the fold, including ours, Dr. Harris.

In these times of widespread health-coverage horror stories it is a relief, and also a little embarrassing, that we were able to get Kaiser Permanente coverage for the kids at little added expense and without affecting the coverage we already had. So today Archer paid his first visit to Dr. Harris in his new, improved office to get a flu shot.

Andrea reports they were each excited to see one another, Dr. Harris showing off his new office while taking Archer for a tour, and Archer showing off his “monster shirt” for Dr. Harris. Archer was brave as usual getting his shot. As for lamenting the old practice: I assumed its demise would be cause for some sorrow on Dr. Harris’s part, but the staff told Andrea they’d never seen him so happy.

So once again, what looked in August like a crisis has revealed itself as an opportunity. Crisitunity!

Call your brother!

Today’s my anniversary, both of the day that Andrea and I got married (seven years ago) and of the day we started dating (eleven years before that). This morning I got a congratulatory e-mail from my sister Suzanne that read in part:

Subject: Happy anniversary

…of the day you nearly gave me a heart attack.

The story:

Having been together for almost eleven years when we finally decided to get married (in a domino effect beginning with our friends John and Linda and then Scott and Patrice), Andrea and I dreaded planning a big wedding full of guests all of whom would say to us, “What took you so long?” So we eloped to Disneyworld. We were married in a small ceremony (witnessed by those same friends Scott and Patrice) beneath a palm tree on a grassy hill between Disney’s Polynesian Resort and the adjacent lagoon, with views of Cinderella’s Castle and Space Mountain in the distance. It was very memorable.

Coincidentally, Suzanne had a European vacation planned for the same period of time. Our wedding package included a limo ride around Orlando after the ceremony, and one of the things we planned to do during that ride was to call our families and surprise them with our happy news; but I had no way to contact Suzanne, whose European itinerary was fluid at best. However, I did know she’d be checking her Hotmail account from time to time. So before leaving for Florida, I programmed my computer to send her this e-mail message at 3pm on our wedding day:

Subject: Call your brother!

Hi Suze! Please call me ASAP on Andrea’s cell phone.

Poor Suzanne saw the message within two hours but had no way of calling for several hours more, during which time she was sure something terrible had happened! In my excitement before leaving for Florida it never occurred to me that my message could be taken that way. When I did finally speak to her, she tried to be glad about my news but was pretty annoyed at having worried all day for nothing.

Her annoyance was not improved by my laughter at her expense.

Andrea: Happy anniversary, I love you! Suzanne: Sorry again! I love you too.

Happy birthday sis!

I spoke to Suzanne this morning to wish her a happy birthday. She had just woken up, even though it was after noon in New York. I told her I hoped that was because she was hung over from a big bacchanal in her honor, and she assured me it was. Partying until 3am — you go, Suze! Keep the dream alive.

As for me, I want to sit in a comfortable chair, and watch television, and go to sleep at a reasonable hour. Honestly I don’t think I know anyone who could keep up with my sister. But if you take the average of me and Suzanne you probably end up with someone pretty fun. Also androgynous, and living in Kansas.

The Disneyland drumbeat

Andrea has continued beating the drum for planning a family trip to Disneyland soon, and with the kids in the prolonged grip of a combined Pirates of the Caribbean and Peter Pan frenzy I am similarly inclined. There’s just one problem: Disney is the enemy and I will not give them aid or comfort.

They have an excellent chance to redeem themselves by firing the jerk who said that the mainstream media is too liberal and it’s his job to slant news coverage to the right “so conservatives don’t have to be concerned.” That jerk is Mark Halperin, ABC’s political director. (ABC is owned by Disney.)

The major news organizations in this country have forgotten that it’s their job to be adversarial. To promise one group or another that they “don’t have to be concerned” is to abandon the mantle of journalism.

Mark Halperin must go. With that one gesture I would be willing to let bygones be bygones.

Well Disney? The country seems to be getting ready to return from its wandering in the arch-conservative wilderness. Will you get back in touch with the real Main Street U.S.A. or ride the Republican machine over the impending cliff? One family’s vacation plans, and the health of our republic, hang in the balance.

Trip report: Legoland

We took a last-minute trip to San Diego this weekend to spend a day at Legoland. Our hotel in Carlsbad, the Grand Pacific Palisades Resort, was beautiful, the kids had a blast at Legoland, etc., etc. I’m not here to show you slides from my vacation.

No, the blogworthy item from this trip was when we first arrived in our hotel room. Before we’d even made a complete circuit of the spacious suite, Jonah found the TV remote control, figured out how to use it, switched on the TV and planted himself on the couch in front of it.

At home, Andrea and I maintain total control over the TV, so having operational access was a major novelty for Jonah. But even more novel was the experience of watching TV with channels and commercials. Ever since dropping off the pop-culture grid all we’ve seen are carefully selected movies and other child-friendly programming (such as The Electric Company) on DVD. Even before canceling cable, we watched cable shows on TiVo with commercials assiduously skipped.

Thus Jonah’s comment when I explained how to change channels with the remote: “But where is the disc?” And the dumbfounded look on both kids’ faces when, every so often after a few minutes of a coherent story, they would suddenly be assaulted with an unrelated barrage of sights and sounds. As Archer would have said (if he hadn’t been in a mute ecstasy of audiovisual overstimulation at the time), “What’s the heck of that?!”

Another darnedest thing

Yesterday after preschool, Jonah rattled off the list of his female classmates who routinely give him kisses, sometimes after chasing him around. Today we learned that there’s been so much kissing, the teachers have asked for it to stop. I asked him appreciatively, “Are you a ‘lover, not a fighter’?” Without missing a beat he answered, “I’m a lover and a fighter.”