Cooper is a Fetching Name, Don't You Think?

So the name Cooper for boy babies seems to peaked in popularity for boys names several years ago at #75, and is now starting a slow descent. That is fine with us here at RedPlanet where we named Owen when that name was at about the same rank, only to see it skyrocket in popularity, to the point where you can't spit in a crowded schoolyard these days without hitting half a dozen little Owens.

Interestingly though, Cooper always has been, and remains, a top 10 dog name. And, much to our amusement, that fact could not be more fitting, as our very own 8 1/2 year old human boy Cooper has a personality that closely resembles that of a Labrador Retriever. And I'm not just talking predictable stuff like being sweet and smart and loyal, which he is all of in spades. In addition, to those things he really does seem to be part dog. He likes to hang his head out the window when we drive, letting his hair blow in the wind. He has been fascinated by balls since he was a puppy, er, I mean baby, and when he can't get someone to throw one to him, throws them to himself endlessly, before school, after school, in the yard, in the house. He has been very tactile since he was a baby, and loves nothing more than to have his back rubbed. And, he doesn't actually ask to have his back rubbed, but instead just sort of thrusts it at us - presenting it for rubbing. You know .... like a dog. He needs to be run outside every day. When he is not moving, he is draped in a chair or on a couch, in a state of boneless relaxation. Unlike the other two boys, when he is tired, he doesn't fight to stay up, but simply goes to sleep - it doesn't matter where - at a party, on a couch, floor, chair or bed; Hell, he even fell asleep at Blue Man Group! 

I guess my dog comparison is really a way of saying that Cooper is uncomplicated. People will often tell us, when they hear we have three boys, how lucky we are that we don't have girls; that boys are so easy. I've heard this enough to have internalized an image of the parents of girls sitting in front of a giant mixing board, tweaking this switch or another, as they try to manage the delicate and complicated and unpredictable psyches of their daughters. The parents of boys, on the other hand, I picture holding the type of control that comes with a basic remote control car from Radio Shack: up, down, left or right. Thankfully, that has been our experience to date. The other two boys are somewhat more nuanced perhaps, although, through happy accident, and not stellar parenting to be sure, they seem fairly well adjusted. Cooper is not nuanced, and in fact may just have up and down controls. He admitted last night that he didn't want to continue with TaeKwonDo lessons on Monday nights because it interfered with his watching Monday Night Football. When he pulled the turkey wishbone with Hayden the other night and won, he admitted that his wish had been ... to win the wishbone pull (and it came true, unlike those of us who might make more ambitious wishes only to be let down when they don't come true).

There is something very comforting about Cooper and his uncomplicatedness. He does his homework as soon as he gets home, and can't fathom why his brothers procrastinate. He loves baseball and when he plays, the simple joy he takes in playing it is evident to everyone who watches. He likes what he likes with a passion, and doesn't like what he doesn't like. He is literal. He is strong, athletic and popular, yet generally kind. He is happy. And he makes us happy. Every day.

And, best of all, he is house trained!

Not So Gifted At Giving

While most things appear to suck about getting older, at least one theoretical good thing that comes with age is awareness of your shortcomings. Case in point: while I used to think I was an awesome gift-giver, I am coming to realize I may actually be pretty bad at it.

 

Clue #1: When I was younger and living in Lakeview, I would pretty much do all of my gift-shopping at an import boutique in Lincoln Park, showering family members with rain sticks, giant-clocks, mother-of-pearl boxes and other knick-knacks they generally did not want. Looking back, I am a bit more cognizant of the fact that seeing those gifts regularly show up at family garage sales, or be offered back to me after a year or two sitting on some one's shelf, meant they were probably not the awesome hits I imagined at the time.

 

Clue #2 When Deanna had our first child Owen, she was preparing to return to work after maternity leave just as we celebrated her first Mother's Day. For her first Mother's Day, I chose the "reaffirm that I still see her as a professional and not just a Mom" route, and got her a then-cutting edge Sony Clei (remember those!) with an attachable keyboard. Totally cool! Totally not. I somehow missed that she was struggling hard with the guilt of going back to work at all, and my gift failing to acknowledge her as a mother opened a floodgate of unpleasantness that I have yet to live down. Epic fail!

 

Clue #3: I have a bit of company in the occasional gift miss-step in Santa. While Santa has brought some pretty awesome gifts over the years, he also has brought some very pedestrian and downright bad gifts. When Owen was 7, he remarked one Christmas morning that it was the first year he could remember that Santa hadn't given him hand sanitizer in his stocking. Who knew Santa was being keenly monitored from year to year for cheap and easy filler! Other memorable Santa stocking clunkers include foot powder for Deanna, and organic deodorant for Deanna. While such gifts might be downright insulting from a spouse, we can hopefully write-off Santa as simply being somewhat insensitive and perhaps stretched too thin in the stocking stuffer department.

 

Latest Fail: My most recent gift fail came last night as we bestowed gifts on the twins for their landmark 8th birthday (why landmark? Isn't every birthday landmark until you stop wanting to have them???). While generally uninterested in looking good and even less interested in smelling good, Cooper had gone through a phase several months ago where he would show up post-shower smelling strongly of one or another of my manly-smelling body washes (I have several, in an effort to generally smell decent, with bad marketing-to-guys names like "Elixir Black," "Twilight Woods" and the way over-the-top, "Wolfthorn"). So I get the kid his own, awesomely-named "Aqua Reef." "Are you sure?" Deanna inquired as I wrapped it up. Of course, he'll love it, I assured her, wrapping a pleasantly scented arm around her shoulder, which of course caused her to immediately swoon and suggest something inappropriate for this family blog.

 

Later, the gift opening is upon us. The twins first open book lights. Nice gift for our dedicated little readers, right? Apparently not for Cooper, as he would later let us know he "already had one." Then, he unwraps the body wash. Tears. Lots of them. Enough to fill a shower or bath in fact. As he sobbed in the other room after we sent him away to calm down, Deanna consoled him: "Dad thought you would really like it" she explained. "Why? I'm eight!" I heard him sob in reply. "I don't like to smell good. That is a gift you give someone who is twenty!" Ouch. While well-intentioned, I had apparently mis-judged the likes and dislikes of 8 year olds by quite a large margin. So, while all ended well, as the remainder of our gifts to him hit the mark, I have added another chapter to my "starting-to-get-a-bit-lengthy" book of gift fails. Oh, well. At least I smell like an Aqua Reef.     

Culture Club

The local grade school, led by a cadre of cultural arts ambassadors from the parent-teacher association, held a "Cultural Heritage Festival" at the school on Thursday night. The Festival consisted of a number of classrooms being transformed into "countries." Participants were given passports which were stamped with a flag sticker from each country as they entered the various rooms. Awesome idea and much fun.

 

Most of the "countries" featured some food and drink item samples free for the taking. Kudos to whichever parent figured out that the way to cultural education of 2nd graders was through their stomachs, as this created a palpable buzz among that crowd for several of the countries ("Dude, the food in Mexico is awesome!"). Hungary suffered by comparison (I did not overhear any of the kids saying, for example, "mmmmm, paprika!"), as did, predictably, Ireland, although the latter made up some serious ground with an actual keg of root beer. 

 

The Barbados/Puerto Rico room had a fun, island-party vibe to it, with a limbo contest going on during my brief stopover there. Ireland had a sweet display of musical instruments as well as Irish dancers. Bagpiper on the front steps of the school, Latin-American percussionists in the gym, etc. The whole thing was a whirlwind visual and audio-feast for our budding little international citizens.   

 

Owen, who is about to wrap up 5th grade, was somewhat less interested in food and music, and more interested in learning obscure facts about the various countries. The rooms that were adorned with cardboard displays listing various facts about each country were a hit with him in this regard, although I am suspicious that some of the "facts" may have been taken from less than reliable sources:

 

Dubious fact learned #1: Most people who live in the south of France know how to surf. Now I have watched my share of international surfing competitions on TV in my life (my share being 1 1/2) and I must say I don't recall any French names. Perhaps the French merely surf for fun during their 11 months of vacation per year and don't really pursue competitive surfing.

 

Dubious fact learned #2: The French love rugby as much as they love soccer. Hmmmm.... I'll say maybe on this one, although I must confess I have no idea where soccer ranks on the list of things loved by the French. Presumably somewhere higher than their love of fighting Germans and lower than their love of cheese, whining, Jerry Lewis and strikes by civil servants. 

 

All in all though, the Festival was a hit with Family (a/k/a Famille, Pamilya (yep, I now speak Tagalog as of last night!), 家庭, Clan) RedPlanet, and we all left culturally enriched, and perhaps a pound or two heavier!

Beasts of Unburden

Deanna and (especially) I are notorious vacation over packers. This is especially true when we hit the road in our supercool 10-year old Honda Odyssey. Why bring 4 pairs of shoes when you can bring 5 - we're driving, right? Sure the condo we are renting for vacation has a washer and dryer, but what if its broken - better bring the big suitcase. Swimsuits and winter coats - no problem, after all, who really knows what the weather will be.

 

Things only got worse after we bought a car rooftop pod - golf clubs, tennis rackets, balls, bats, baseball gloves, snorkeling equipment, a giant hammock with its surprisingly heavy "portable" collapsible frame - bring it on! Want to bring that surf board we bought on sale at Brookfield Zoo a few summers ago? Why of course we do boys, perhaps this is the year the Lake Michigan surf in Door County peaks above 6 inches! You'll have to sit with it across your laps though, the pod is filled up with sandcastle building equipment, you know, for the times when we are not busy surfing. There have been trips when I have had to actually unpack portions of the interior of the van during rest stops in order to extricate the kids from the third row seats; coolers, and bags spilling out of the side door onto the hot concrete. I have secretly toyed with the idea of buying a small trailer so we can haul even more stuff - why own a van with a trailer hitch if you aren't going to use it! Wouldn't it be awesome to bring all five bikes, I've thought to myself. If we brought them we wouldn't need to rent them, freeing s to actually then take two bike rides instead of one!

 

Things are no better when we fly. We borrow luggage scales and carefully weigh our suitcases, inevitably working our way down by removing luggage items until we are just under the allowed checked bag weights. We stuff oversized "carry" on bags into overhead racks. In fairness to Deanna, I am probably worse than her, as I, left to my own devices, have a penchant for changing clothes for different activities. In that respect I probably would have made a good Downton Abbey resident. The kids seem to have inherited our tendencies, spending their pre-vacation time cooking up elaborate schemes by which to smuggle as many toys and stuffed animals on the trip as they can get by us.

 

Anyway, that all changed last summer when the five of us, accompanied by several Sherpas, boarded a flight to the Pacific Northwest. On board was another family we knew from town, headed, like us, for a week-long trip. Except...not only were they traveling without Sherpas, each member of the family of four was traveling with a single backpack! And not the giant, I'm spending the next six months hiking Europe kind of backpack, but the normal kind of backpack. Confusion, astonishment, disbelief! "How?" we whispered to ourselves after, "were they able to do that?!?" They looked perfectly normal; smelled fine, good even; yet they were travelling with luggage that would barely contain the collection of travel books we were carting on the trip.

 

The sense of awe stuck with us, and during a recent long weekend trip, we aspired to do the same. Three nights in a hotel, five hour Amtrak trip, one backpack per family member, no other bags, no exceptions. And you know what, we pulled it off, despite temptation and the between season weather that was positively screaming for an array of clothing options. And it was, at least for me, freeing, exhilarating even! Showers, minimal sweating, clothing layers, no restaurants demanding much in the way of dressiness from us or the kids (not even the jeans my kids sadly seem to regard as "dress pants"), and we were all set. Turns out I can enjoy a trip even when I haven't brought my own sound machine, cappuccino-maker, monogrammed towels, flat-screen television, badminton set and canoe paddle! Interestingly, I noticed that most of those things were even available in St. Louis, where we visited, had I really decided I needed them.

 

Am I cured? Sadly, the answer is probably no. I'll be fighting the urge to over pack the next trip, and the next twenty after that. I am, however, hiking down the road to recovery, a backpack jauntily slung across my back and my arms swinging free!   

 

 

"Look Mom! No luggage!" Owen, with Hayden, Cooper and Deanna in the background, hits the road luggage-free.

 

What Are the Odds This Winter Will Ever End?

Winter refuses to release its icy grip here, dragging endlessly on towards April, and the boys, now 11, 7 and 7, are definitely stir crazy. The winter has been marked by alternating heavy snows and hovering polar vortexes, leading to what seemed like an endless parade of cancelled school days. Since outdoor fun is decidedly less so at -12 degrees, everyone has had more inside time than anyone wants.

It was against this backdrop on a cold and snowy winter night awhile ago that I broke out a home casino set I got at Restoration Hardware years ago and set about teaching the boys blackjack and roulette. They quickly took to both, and for several days thereafter, the house was a bit like living in a Vegas Hotel. Just like Vegas, morning would find Deanna and I stumbling downstairs bleary-eyed in the morning into a huddle of gamblers, only these gamblers were a bit shorter than your typical Vegas gamblers and with higher voices. Forced to work at home one day during yet another cancelled school day, I found it exceedingly hard to concentrate with the spirited game of roulette going on in the next room. Seriously, it sounded like a drunken band of fraternity brothers on a gaming floor at 3 a.m. Aside from the excited shouts of victory and moans of defeat when Lady Luck turned her back, they were shouting things like "Pay me $100 bro!" and "I'm so rich!" One noticeable difference from Vegas I suppose is that I am frequently fetched by the gamblers here to do the math on how much particular bets have won, and to help them with payouts. I come in handy for shuffling too, something I have found the dealers in Vegas rarely ask my assistance with.

 

Probably not the best thing to teach kids, but the long desperate winter times have called for for desperate measures. Besides, it can be vaguely justified as an educational math tool! Finally, I haven't had to pay an allowance in weeks, as I have promptly been winning them all back. Just kidding on that one, although now that I write it, not a bad idea. Hmmmm, parental lesson: The house always wins boys! Here's hoping winter breaks before I have to resort to teaching them craps.