The Grinch Who Stole Santa

Why is it that Santa always seems so much better from afar?
Seriously.
In talking about going to see Santa, the child jumps up and down and chatters on with delight. “Let’s go! Let’s go! See Santa!”
And then the reality sets in. Slowly.
Even standing in line, the child still seems excited and restless. “When will it be my turn?!”
When Santa gets up from his throne to take a water break, the child worries. “Where is he going?! Is he coming back?”
And Santa does come back. (The parent wonders: why not keep a bottle of water by your throne? But perhaps water is just a buzz word for potty).
Finally, after a nearly 45 minute wait, it is the child’s turn.
By that time, close up, Santa isn’t looking so hot.
“Go sweetie,” we tell the child. We even push a bit.
“Go tell Santa what you want.”
The child walks up to Santa stunned.
And why shouldn’t he be stunned?!
Santa is a stranger.
Santa is old.

I remember my mother trying to get me to visit Santa in his house at the local shopping center. I was young; maybe three or four, and I remember crying in terror. Yes, terror. I did not want to go in his house. "But he'll give you a candy cane," she'd say. I'd cry some more.
Looking back, I always thought it was because I was Jewish. Maybe Jews are inherently scared of Santa or something.
Then, however, I had children of my own. Children who are only half-Jewish. And they too, seem to be frightened of Santa.

“Now get on Santa’s lap, honey, and smile,” we tell the child.
He approaches cautiously. Skeptically.
He refuses to get on Santa’s lap.
“What do you want for Christmas?” Santa bends down and asks him.
“A computer,” he whispers.
“Now turn around and look at the camera!” we yell at the child.
He turns. He stares at the camera with a blank look on his face. “Smile!” we yell. But he won’t. At least he’s not screaming and crying this year, we think. Progress.

So, I wonder, are these visits to Santa really worth it? Do we risk scarring our children by forcing them to come face to face with an overweight, elderly stranger? Look at me, for instance. I’m over 40 and I still can’t eat a candy cane.
Isn’t it better to just put the cookies out and imagine Santa coming from afar in the dark of night when we won’t have to talk to him or sit on his lap? Sure, I sound like a Grinch, but what do you think??

The Snowy Day - updated and revised

Author Ezra Jack Keats published his classic children's book the Snowy Day in 1962. It begins "One morning Peter work up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see."
This is about the point where Keat's version of events digresses from my own. The following line reads "After breakfast he put on his snowsuit and ran outside."
Did he actually put on his own snow suit? Was it really that simple that he just ran outside?! I don't know who this Peter kid is, but he's nothing like my kids.
Ladies and Gentleman, here is my updated version of A Snowy Day based on the events of this past Sunday:

One almost-winter morning Ethan and Jonas woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as they could see.
"MOMMY! DADDY! Wake up!! It snowed! Let's shovel!!"
It was 6:30am.
Ethan and Jonas cried to go outside. They gathered their snowsuits, boots, hats and gloves from the closet and scattered everything throughout the kitchen, living room and hallway. "We're ready!" Ethan screamed.
Unfortunately, their mommy and daddy were not. They were still in bed. "Come on...!" Ethan screamed. "GET UP!"
Eventually, mommy and daddy did. Eventually, they had some coffee and much to the children's delight, began getting ready to go outside.
Mommy and daddy gathered up the snowsuits, boots, hats and gloves, which were scattered everywhere. Of course, they couldn't find one glove and mommy said "God damn it!"
"What did you say?" Ethan asked.
"Oh..nothing Let's go outside and have some fun!"
"YAY!"
On went the snowsuits. On went the boots. On went the hats and jackets. Off came a jacket.
"I dont' want to wear it," Ethan whined.
"You have to wear your jacket," mommy said.
"But it ruuuuuuuubbbbs...."
"What?"
"It's rubbing...my neck. I don't want to wear it."
"You have to wear it."
"Then I'm just going to wear it like this." He draped it around his shoulders like a shawl.
"Fine," mommy said, annoyed.
The gloves came next. Mommy tried to make them wear the waterproof ones, explaining how the kind they preferred, the regular kind, would make their hands wet and cold. Nobody was having it. Mommy tried to get the nice waterproof Land's End gloves she had purchased for Jonas on his hands but they were too big and simply slid off. "God damn it!" Mommy said again.
"Let's goooooo" Ethan whined.
Mommy gathered several different types of gloves for the boys to take outside, just in case. Daddy grabbed the camera and finally, after 20 minutes of preparing, off they went to the front yard for fun fun fun.
Ethan shoveled briefly with his kid shovel and Jonas found a large stick, which he dragged across the snow and then used to poke his brother in the leg.
"Ouch!" Ethan yelled, then swung his shovel in his brother's direction.
"Let's make a snowman!" Daddy cried, hoping to distract them. He started rolling a snowball. The boys tried to help him, but their hands were cold. Out came the gloves. Ethan was agreeable this time, putting on his waterproof mittens, which thankfully fit. Mommy tried Jonas's again but they fell to the ground and he cried and refused to try any other pairs.
"I'm hungry mommy," he said.
Moments later Ethan said "I'm cold, I want to go inside."
"What?" Mommy and Daddy said. "But we're building a snowman! This is FUN!"
"I want to go inside! Ethan whined again. "Let's goooooooooo."
Ethan cried, then Jonas followed.
"PIck me up mummy," Jonas said.
"I'm cold!" Ethan whined again. "God Damn it."
Mommy and Daddy looked at each other. They hoped the neighbors would not hear all this. Then mommy wondered Is there something wrong with my children that they can't have fun in the snow? She was pleased when she saw another father and his son across the way and the father was saying to his boy in frustration "You said you wanted to go on your scooter! Now ride your scooter or we're going home!" The boy was crying. This made mommy feel better and less alone.
In the end, mommy and daddy quickly finished the snowman as Ethan cried from behind the door to the foyer. Daddy took some pictures and then they all went inside, everyone frazzled, and had some hot cocoa.
"That was fun," Ethan said as he sipped his drink.
Mommy looked at him in wonder, forced a smile and prayed it would not snow again until next December.

THE END.

Bye Bye Sadie

My mother-in-law’s dog died this weekend. It wasn’t a shock, but it was a surprise nonetheless. Sadie was ill for some time, but we had just seen her two weeks ago and she seemed to be doing OK. With her passing occurring just before Thanksgiving, the first thing I thought when I heard she had died was “The boys will be so sad.” Then “What will we tell them?”

But it also dawned on me that I am sad. We always go to my mother-in-law’s house for holidays, and Sadie is always there, waiting for scraps from the table or a good belly rub. She was a part of our family. I can remember when she was just a puppy; back when I was just my husband’s girlfriend. She had spunk then. She’d run around, driven by all that puppy energy, just like a furry toddler. Give her a toy, like the stuffed monkey or mailman dolls we picked up for her, and she’d tear it to shreds in no time at all. Yes, she had mellowed, as most of us do as we age. And then her illness sapped even more energy, but with the help of my mother-in-law, she hung in there.

Some folks say “Well, it’s just a dog.” But typically the attachment goes much deeper than that. No doubt animals, dogs in particular, often make better companions than humans. They’re loyal. They’re goofy without self-consciousness, making us laugh and smile. They’re warm, and like to cuddle.

So this is my little goodbye tribute to Sadie. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, thanks for bringing joy to our lives. You will surely be missed.(and if anyone has tips for what to tell the boys, please let me know!)

Julie and Amy (and poop)

So last weekend I actually went to the movies with a friend. We saw Julie and Julia. Although I really enjoyed the movie, I couldn't shake this negative feeling I was having toward Julie, the main character. At first I wasn't sure why I disliked her so, but then it dawned on me: I was jealous. Julie wanted to be a "real" writer. And so do I. Only thing is is that Julie's dream came true...the book and then, even more astounding, the movie! I couldn't help thinking why her and not me?

Some of the reasons are obvious. For one, I hate cooking. And my timing is off. Julie caught the blogging buzz early while I came to it after everyone and their mother and grandmother started doing it. Finally, Julie had no kids at the time she launched her cooking adventure, while I have two of them. In other words, I'm probably screwed.

Still, I've been thinking about this. Maybe all it takes is a good idea. Maybe that's really all that sets me and miss Julie apart, and holds the key to my book and movie deal.
So, here it is. My good idea (And free to tell me what you think...not that anyone is actually reading this):
I will start a blog about re-potty training my son.
I'll post daily and tell everyone how it's going. Then, after the buzz takes off maybe some NY Times or Wall Street Journal reporter will want to come over and write a story about us. Oh, and I'll parallel my life with the life story of the great Mrs. Fyodor Vassilyev of Shuya, Russia, in the 1700s. Perhaps you've heard of her? She had 69 children ...the most children born to any woman ever. Imagine how much potty training she had to do?! I'm sure it will make for some very juicy narrative. Probably more juicy than watching someone murder innocent lobsters and dissect dead ducks, don't you think?
Anyway, wish me luck!

Poop - the Sequel

It was an act of desperation. Normally, I prefer not to ask for help. I don't like to air my dirty laundry (in this case literal dirty laundry) to others if I can avoid it. But the time had come for getting some advice.
You see, after successfully bribing Ethan to pee and poop on the potty, we were regressing. At first I thought it was a fluke, but as pooping in his underwear became an almost daily, if not twice daily, occurence, I sensed the problem was more serious than I originally thought.
So I posted the following cry for help on the local parent's list: Poop; the sequel PLEASE HELP! Then I described the problem, and waited for the wisdom to come trickling in.

But let me digress for a moment. My relationship with poop wasn't always this bad. In the beginning , I remember poop being more of a wondrous affair. How happy we were when the miconium, the first poop, arrived! How adorable it was when Jonas would grunt in the library or the grocery store to announce that his next poop was coming! But alas, those days are long gone. I have reached poop saturation. I knew this for certain when I had a dream recently in which I stumbled upon a locker room covered in crap. I don't think you have to be Sigmund Freud to diagnose my problem.

Fortunately, the good and wise folk of the Arlington parent's list came to my rescue. The responses to my cry for help did not just come trickling in - they came pouring in! It seems Ethan's poopy problem was a common one, and one that people wanted to talk about. Most parents, it seemed, were against punishing for "accidents." Although there were a couple who proposed that I make my son actually wash the shit out of his underwear.
"Just have him wring it out in the toilet," one mom wrote. "I did this with my son and he never pooped in his underwear again!"
At first this seemed like a novel and promising idea. Then I rememberd how much my son likes to clean things; how he begs to wash the dishes, or play with the spray bottle, or pretend to mop the kitchen. With my luck, he'd probably love washing out his underwear so much that he'd poop in them even more.

Some moms asked if Ethan might be constipated. Others wondered if there was something stressful at home that could be causing the problem and I of course deleted those emails immediately. The majority of folks, however, agreed that this was just a normal phase, and one best treated with patience and bribes. The mom who most convinced me that positive reinforcement was the answer was the one who sent her five year old to potty school. She wrote, "The folks there said never, EVER punish your child for not going on the potty."
This was straight from the mouth of a potty school graduate's mom. Who was I to question her?

So, as of this morning, Ethan's potty chart is back on the refrigerator. And I am happy to report that this afternoon Ethan completed the deed on the potty. In return, he got two chocolate kisses, a Bob the Builder sticker and several high fives and hugs from his mom.
Shortly after he said to me, "Mommy, I like going on the potty because it makes you really happy."
Ah...if only that were enough.

Halloween Envy

Listen all you crafty mamas out there...it's time to stop. Stop whipping up these elaborate outfits with your nifty little crafty magic fingers. No more homemade ladybugs, creatures from Finding Nemo (saw this one at Ethan's daycare yesterday...the kid had a light bulb coming off an antannae on his head...his parents are engineers I think), made from scratch dinosaurs or pretty princesses. There's a reason big companies manufacture Halloween costumes - so we will buy them! And right now, with the economy the way it is, we must buy buy buy our costumes! Heed the call, ladies!

OK. Yes, I admit. None of this really has anything to do with the economy. It's just that, well, I could not make a Halloween costume if my life depended on it. Crafty I am not (although i can talk like Yoda).

Every year, as Halloween looms closer, my stress level rises. I don't want to spend money on a costume, but I know that trying to make costumes is just not in the cards due to lack of time and artistic ability. Ethan's first Halloween I ran out and bought a kangaroo costume last minute and even that didn't go so well. Everyone thought he was a bear. Come on people! I thought. Do bears carry their young in pockets on their bellies??
This year, my husband took the lead and tried to save us some money by being crafty. He pulled out some old white sheets, cut them down and attempted to make some eye holes so the children could be ghosts. It was a decent attempt ( and he's quite sensitive about it so I won't go on about the lopsided eyeholes and the way the boys nearly tripped over themselves due to the length of the sheets).
But when it came time to dress up for their school's halloween party yesterday, nobody wanted to be a ghost. What then would we do? I pulled out the old costumes - the fireman, the turtle donated by our neighbors next door, the construction worker. But they refused.
"Mama, Justin's going to be a transformer," Ethan said.
I wasn't sure why he was telling me this. We were running late and I started to lose patience snapping "You have all these great costumes...now pick one out! There are chcildren all over the world who are starving for Halloween costumes!"
Ethan looked at me blankly. Then he started to cry, which made me feel awful. Which made me, during my lunch break, get crafty with my credit card, scooping up a Buzz LightYear costume and a Super Why costume at Toys R Us for Ethan to choose from.

So again, as fate will have it, there will be no homemade costumes for our family this year. And I will rave about your homemade this or that, "How did you do that? WOW"...swallowing my envy along with too many piece of candy.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Excuse me Disney, but my kids ARE genuises

Can you believe the nerve of the Disney company? They want to give me my money back for the Baby Einstein videos I purchased to turn my babies into genuises. Why are they assuming that these videos, such as Classical Baby, Baby MacDonald on the Farm, and my kids favorite,the Baby Wordsworth video "First Words around the House" with the cat puppet and Marlee Matlin doing the words in sign language, failed to turn my babies into genuises?!

Of course they worked! My children, now ages 3 1/2 and 2, are genuises thank you very much. Why just this morning, when I told Ethan, my 3 1/2 year old, that his breath was awful, he was smart enough to blow it in my face off and on for 45 minutes! How would he have known to do that had he not spent his early, most impressionable days plopped in front of the TV watching Baby Einstein videos for hours on end? And what about Jonas? Don't try to tell me that Baby Einstein had nothing to do with his ability to refer to the lines in my forehead as "train tracks?!" Pure genuis, I tell you. I'm a published writer and I could never have come up with such a perfet metaphor! But then again, I was a baby in the late sixties and seventies when there was no Baby Einstein.

For insinuating that my children are not genuises, I think Disney should not just reimburse me for their videos, but also pay my mortgage for six months and send Mickey Mouse to clean my house once a month. Otherwise when my genuises grow up and become high-powered lawyers, look out.