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.

Free Parenting Advice!

I thought I would start 2013 off with a bit of parenting advice.

 

"Wait a minute Red Planet," I hear you long-time readers saying. "Step back there Bucko. You've barely posted anything in the past year and then come riding in here on your high horse to give us parenting advice! Where the heck have you been and how do we even know you have the slightest notion how to parent anymore?"

 

Fair questions all. As to where I have been, well, uh, there was a move to a new house, billable hours, and, uh, something good on TV that one night. Anyway, I really don't have time for this. If you want to ignore my advice, do so at your own peril.

 

The advice, learned the hard way, is that when a six-year-old tells you he is feeling queasy at bedtime, don't put him to bed in the top bunk. 

 

Yep. There it is. Or was, pretty much everywhere. Big, nasty, three level mess. I've been through a lot a unpleasant things as a parent, including explosive poops that have blown out onesies and diapers in restaurants, amusement parks and other inconvenient locations, and having a one-year old hurl on my shoulder and down my back as I was holding him. But last night rivaled the worst of them. The oppressive smell, the splatter effect, and the sheer number of pillows (3), blankets/sheets (4), sleeping brothers (1), walls (2), floor (1), baseball cards (3), stuffed animals (1) and other miscellaneous objects that were collateral damage in this single incident was record-breaking.

 

I can hear you again, readers: "See, you don't know what the hell you're doing; you should have had a barf bucket up there!"

 

Ah, but we did. But despite that, and our late-arriving and urgently expressed parental encouragement to "Use the Bucket!!!," it was all white noise to a disoriented and half-asleep kid in the middle of a monumental hurl.

 

The one blessing to be found in this season of sick is that the kids seem to hew more towards my wife's family's "one and done" style of dealing with a stomach-emptying virus, as opposed to my family's "repeat retch" style. More representative of my family's style is a diary entry made in 1976 by my 9-year-old self where I dutifully recorded down to the minute the 8 times that I threw up in an 11-hour overnight period (you can see that "write what you know" has always been my driving philosophy as an author).  

 

And so it goes. And while there is no denying parenthood is pretty awesome and full of wonderful, rewarding experiences, I can safely say, having now been there, that scrubbing puke off of walls and sleeping children in the middle of the night is not one of them. Keep those sick kids at floor level!

Clean Sweep for Obama on CloudEight!

The presidential election is upon us! It has been interesting to have such a close race, and with Deanna and I both having a background in politics, we have been interested in finding ways to engage the boys in the goings on.

My first memories of politics are from election night 1976, when my dorky 10-year-old self kept close track of the electoral count on a portable chalkboard (paper apparently hadn't been invented yet). I remember a general air of excitement, not so much at a particular outcome, but just because it was happening, with the news reports and crowds on tv and my parents letting me stay up late. Mostly I remember though how cool it was to hear the results coming in as States were called one way or the other until the race was determined. Since my three guys are very into both math and competition, I decided one way to get them interested and involved was to check out an electoral map. They took to it right away, asking a bunch of questions about why some states have so few votes (yo, Wyoming), how many electoral votes are needed to win, red states and blue states, which ones were undecided, etc. That led to wanting to see maps from previous races, and I found a cool site that had electoral maps with results going all the way back to George Washington's election. We spent awhile flashing through time, watching states get added to the union. Races that qualified as "creams" particularly caught their eye. Reagan wiping the North American tectonic plate with Mondale in 1984 was a particular source of laugh out loud amusement (whoa, that guy only won one State!!!), as was Nixon's trouncing of McGovern (who also managed to eke out victory in just one state).  

We also watched the second presidential debate together as a family (don't be jealous kids, it may sound awesomely fun to be a kid in our house, but it is not all non-stop crazy fun!). Owen in particular paid close attention, astutely summing up on the apparent dislike between the candidates by noting that it seemed like "which ever one of these guys wins would like to put the other guy in jail." He was paying even closer attention than we thought, because when it came time for the mock election at school, Owen informed us that he had persuaded several classmates to vote for Obama by explaining that Romney wants to use up all of our gas and coal before he builds any windmills. When I asked where he had heard that, he told me he had learned that from watching the debate.

While it appears between real voting and the school's mock election that there was a clean sweep for the President in our household this year, I am less concerned about who anyone voted for than building a bit of passion and interest in voting for the future - something I think we were somewhat successful in this year. And I certainly wouldn't view the sweep as a predictor of the election's outcome - my record of voting for winners has not always been stellar, dating back to my very first vote, for the ill-fated Gary Hart in the 1984 Illinois Democratic primary.  At any rate, whoever you support, Democrat, Republican, Green or Libertarian, be passionate in your support, and, assuming you are old enough, get out there and vote!

Hep To The Jiv

Hayden is, without a doubt, the house clown. Just past his sixth birthday, he just gets funnier, cracking the rest of us up on a regular basis. While he most frequently works blue, preferring fart, butt and poop jokes, he has recently been expanding his reportoire to include imitations and some characters. Funniest, but vaguely troubling, is his "Cool Guy" character. "Cool Guy" is frequently seen puffing on his "smokin' sticks" - a straw or lollipop stick. Cool Guy uses an imaginary lighter to fire up his smokin' sticks and then dramatically takes drags and exhales. Cool Guy has also been "drinkin' rum", which leaves him staggering around in a five-year old's imitation of a drunk. Most recently, "Cool Guy" leaned back in his chair, an arm thrown casually over the chair back, and announced that he was "Hep to the Jiv" (pronounced to rhyme with "give"). Deanna and I both looked at him as asked "What??" He repeated that he was Hep to the Jiv. Turns out our little cool guy was mispronouncing Hep to the Jive which he had read in one of the Captain Underpants books he has taken to borrowing from his older brother. Setting aside for a moment why a six-year old thinks a cool guy is one who puffs on smokin sticks and gets drunk on rum, the hep to the jiv line was pretty damn funny. I imagine we will be bandying that phrase about the house for years to come.

Hayden also surprised us recently by strolling in from the 90-plus degree heat to announce to us that "It is freaking hot out there."

Finally, I leave you with this conversational gem:

Cooper: "Dad, do you know how old the oldest person was?"

Me: "Ummm, 114??"

Cooper: "No, over 900 years old!"

Me: "Who told you that?"

Hayden: "Tia Suzy (our Bible-totin' babysitter). It's in the Bible."

Me: "Wow. That's pretty old."

Owen: "That must have been Yoda!"

Calvinists

The boys, and Owen in particular, have all had their passions through the years, as a stroll through the CloudEight archives will attest. Cars, flags, baseball, etc. Rarely have all three had equal passion for something at the same time, however. That has happened here this past month though with their deep love of the old cartoon "Calvin and Hobbes." My Dad and I have been huge Calvin and Hobbes fans for many years, and have given each other pretty much every collection of Calvin cartoons that there is. When Owen was six, we slept in a tent in the back yard and I read him some Calvin and Hobbes. He enjoyed it a lot, and I was surprised how much it stuck with him. About a month ago, the twins picked up my couple of Calvin and Hobbes collections that survived the flood of a couple of summers ago, and were hooked. Soon, all three boys were buried deep in Calvin and Hobbes whenever they had a free moment, guffawing loudly and reading their favorites to each other. Things really kicked into overdrive a couple of weeks ago when my Dad arrived with an armload of additional collections. Now, there are Calvin and Hobbes books on all nightstands, on the dining room table, in the living room, the basement, and, as a recent evening clean-up sweep revealed, on the deck. Dinners, after Calvin books are ripped from unwilling hands so we can have some actual conversation, are dominated by verbatim recitations of each persons favorites, with the others correcting the other if there is the slightest misquote (Sunday eight panel cartoons, as told by Hayden, take a particularly excruciatingly long time to be retold). Things Calvin says are dropped into conversation as their own "clever" comments. Cartoons are acted out. 

While Calvin is not the greatest role model, there are redeeming qualities to this obsession. I love the unconditional nature of Calvin and Hobbes friendship. Also, as Owen has pointed out, Calvin is "only six but has an extraordinary vocabulary" (the line between cartoon and cartoonist appears to be a little fuzzy to everyone still). While the twins are great readers for (freshly minted) kindergarten graduates, the vocabulary of the characters has resulted in some serious reading challenges for them. A quick survey of just a couple of pages just now included the following words: diagnoses, propelling, shards, mange, homicidal, vessels and lobotomy. Their attempts to read various cartoons out loud or recite them from memory has resulted in many great mispronunciations. They have certainly learned a lot of words from the books, some good, some less good (Hayden was recently yelling at Cooper that he was a tapioca head, except he was pronouncing it ta-poke-a head, much to our amusement). The character's musing on life and philosophy in some strips, while mostly going over their heads, have to give at least Owen food for thought. Calvin's fabulous imagination as expressed through the cartoons has, I think, helped inspire creativity in our own little Calvins.

I have also had a chance to revive my appreciation for this brilliant cartoon. Bill Watterson retired from the grind of a daily comic while he was still at the top of his game (take note writers of sad, tired old comics like Broom Hilda). His fight against his syndicate over licensing, and his ultimate victory and refusal to license Calvin, so as not to dilute his creation, is inspiring, as was his fight against the syndicates in general and his attempts to stop the shrinking of the spaces allotted to each cartoon, especially in the Sunday paper.

Finally, knowing the guys can revisit and still enjoy this particular passion forty years from now, finding totally different things in it than they do now is pretty cool too. That's it for now; see you in the funny papers.

Fortunate Sighting

Cooper and His Bowl Full of Cash

For the past couple of years, our family has been keeping track of license plates on cars that we see from the various states as we are out and about. To keep it fun and interesting, we start a new list each month. Over time, some rules have evolved, the main one being that a find must be verified by another family member - no solo plate-sighting counts, even for the adults. Another is that the twins can't verify each others sightings. While they are not fond of this rule, it has been made necessary by the fact that even the most casual drive around the block with them will elicit shouted and insistent claims that they have found the likes of Idaho, North Carolina and Texas. Owen, however, has developed a keen eye and can identify the plates of all 50 states at distances that would make an eagle jealous.

The holy grails of plates have always been Hawaii and Alaska. There was much excitement when we finally found an Alaskan plate on a weather-beaten pick-up truck upon walking out of a roadside diner in Georgia of all places a couple of years ago (Alaska to Georgia is some drive!). Then, on a trip to San Diego last year, we bagged our first two Hawaiian plates in what remains a record-setting trip and month. Sightings of Canadian Province plates and Baja California, Mexico are always exciting as well.

Prior to our recent trip to Hawaii, we were talking as a family about what license plates we might see there. The general assumption seemed to be that they would be exclusively Hawaii license plates, since there is no way to drive in or out. I, however, suspected there would be some others, since transferees and military personnel might, in some cases, be shipping their cars there on freighters. Deanna, quite sure I was wrong, boldly proclaimed at dinner one night that if any of the kids found a Connecticut plate in Hawaii, she would give them $100. I thought that was a foolish bet to make, and in the days leading up to the trip, I gave the boys a choice - either 1) we would give them $100 if they found Connecticut, but if they did not, they would have to each give us $10 of their money; or, option 2) we would give them each $10 if they found Connecticut, but if they did not, they would not owe us anything. After wrapping their little minds around that proposal, they all took the safe bet of $10.

In Hawaii, it was largely as Deanna expected, with pretty much every plate being a Hawaiian one, with the exception of the occasional military or government plate. Then, halfway through the trip, while driving through downtown Honolulu, we saw, amazingly and within the space of 20 seconds, South Carolina, Texas, and, incredibly, Connecticut. There was much chaos and jubilant shouting in the car, as the boys had all, of course, conveniently forgotten that they had opted out of the $100 bet. Reminded, the mood turned ugly, with much arguing and shouts of "that's not fair!" Eventually, they all opted for taking the $10 rather than contacting their attorneys, although they later tried to double up when they saw, astoundingly, another Connecticut plate.

For any of you who think the boys got a raw deal, you should know that they had already been given some money to spend on the trip as a special treat. That money, along with their $10 from the Connecticut bet, was spent only in tiny dribs and drabs with agonizing deliberation over each $2 purchase. A typical transaction for the twins went as follows: they would spy some treasure in a shop - say a small glass jar filled with sand and shells with a cheap sticker on the outside that says "Aloha from Hawaii." A brow would furrow, as the potential purchaser considered the price tag and mulled over the dent this wonderful object would put in their accumulated fortune. The boy would almost always then place the object reluctantly back on the shelf, only to decide 20 minutes later, when we had all long since moved on to other stores or activities, that their little life will forever be empty and incomplete unless THEY OWNED THAT JAR RIGHT NOW. One of us would then make our way back with them, and the boy would then proudly tender the chosen item to an amused store clerk who would bag it up and give it and any change to the smiling and proud new owner.   

As all three boys seem to prefer knowing they have money to spend to actually spending it (not a bad trait to have), their money remained largely intact at the end of the trip. So, the $10 they each received in the Connecticut bet therefore lies unspent along with their other trip money in a running account at our house from which each boy dreams of spending his small boy fortune.

   

Hawaii

Me: "I'm back!"

Valued and Patient CloudEight Reader/Subscriber/Follower: "About time slacker, there hasn't been a dispatch from CloudEight since December; where the Hell have you been?"

Me: "Hawaii! Well, not the whole time, but 10 fantastic days. My in-laws took us to that fancy new Aulani resort owned by Disney, because they are totally awesome (and I am not just saying that because they are Valued and Patient CloudEight subscribers!)."

Valued and Patient CloudEight Subscriber: "Wow, they do sound awesome, got any picture evidence of how great your trip was? Those boys of yours are darn cute, and I have a sudden hankerin to see them in some matching Hawaiian shirts."  

Me: "Wish granted!"

 Here is Hayden during our loooooooong day of travel. Chicago to Dallas-Fort Worth for a 2-hour layover, followed by some more hours of flying before an emergency turn back over the Pacific back to Los Angeles for an exciting emergency landing, a two-hour wait, a new plane, and 6 more hours in the air to Honolulu.

There are those shirts! In order to prepare for the trip, the family watched Elvis' Blue Hawaii, "Aloha Scooby Doo" and the Brady Bunch Hawaii episode so that we would have a totally accurate view of what Hawaii would be like. Although we all oddly enjoyed  Blue Hawaii, Owen here is striking the same "leaning against the tree" pose as a sultry young thing being sung to by Elvis during a beach scene - an unnatural and awkward pose that we couldn't help but mock everytime we ran across a leaning coconut tree during the trip.

 
The RedPlanet Ohana, hanging loose.

 Me and Sunny D.!

 The extended Ohana, including Deanna's brother Rob, his wife Alana, and the afore-mentioned awesome in-laws, Bob and Linda.

 Owen lets loose a mean javelin throw at a luau.

 7:30 a.m. fish feeding in the lagoon - big bone fish would come within a few feet of shore.

 Hayden underwater

 Searching for crabs in tidepools by the shore.

 The twins chilling in the lagoon.

 The atmosphere at the resort changed when Kelly Ripa and her show rolled in for taping during the last few days of our stay. While it was fun to have celebrities hanging around (Carson Kressly by the pool, Jon Cryer in the elevator!), they also brought with them squadrons of frowny-faced, high-heeled NY staff girls, strutting around talking to each other about Kelly this and Kelly that. They also kept taking over parts of the resort for filiming pieces, including our favorite hot tub, causing Owen to declare "that Kelly woman is ruining my vacation." 

 Competitive even on vacation, the boys had to build a sand volcano that was bigger than the other three being constructed by beachgoers nearby. We eventually triumphed. Here Cooper uses water to cause an eruption.

 Here I am paddleboarding, which was fun, but a bit harder than it looks. Owen took a turn and was almost swept out to sea in a current that would have required us to pick him up a couple of days later in Kauai. He was, thankfully, rescued by his Uncle Rob before things got that far.

Hayden at sunset.

Shaved Ice at Matsuamoto's on the North Shore, in the surfing town of Haleiwa.

Lunch at the bar!



Hayden and Grandma Linda in the infinity hot tub, our favorite hangout.



 At the top of Diamond Head after a nice hike up.

The boys hug Deanna farewell as we prepare to enter the world's 2nd largest maze at the Dole pineapple plantation. While I did stage the photo somewhat by telling them they may never see her again, we did have reason to be concerned. Deanna is notoriously bad at mazes - so bad in fact that she once had to be rescued from a maze in Niagara Falls by staff.

Deanna survived the maze, and the family, reunited, enjoys some Dole Whips at the plantation.

Cooper and I at lunch. I deny all responsibility for dressing him on this day.

Me and the boys never cut off our daily pool access bracelets for each day. By the last morning, pictured here, we had quite a collection.

 

              The best place we have ever stayed.



Slow Boat to New Mexico

Snippets from recent conversations with 5-year olds.

Conversation No. 1:

FYI, we live in Illinois.

Deanna: "If you could go anywhere in the world for vacation, where would you go."

Cooper: "I would take a plane to Mexico."

Hayden: "It's Mexico; you should take a boat."

Cooper, in his most dismissive, know-it-all 5-year old voice: "I said Mexico, not New Mexico." 

Conversation No. 2:

Me: "What do you think potato chips are made out of?"

Hayden: "Rice?"

Me: "Po-tat-o chips"

Hayden: "Potatoes!"

Me: "Good, now what do you think french fries are made out of?"

Cooper: "French people?"

Coop-Dee-Do

Cooper is "Star of the Week" this week in kindergarten, which entails daily sharing with the class of stuff special to you - showing off your favorite stuffed animal, telling everyone about yourself, display of a you-centric poster full of pictures of yourself and details on things that you are into. You know, sort of like a 3-D Facebook.  

At any rate, I was Wednesday's main event. Having been alloted a 15-minute time slot by the teacher, I dropped by promptly at my odd 10:55 a.m. start time. With Cooper seated by my side, I engaged the class in a dramatic reading of "I Stink", a book narrated by a New York City garbage truck. While the kids have always liked this book more than me at home, Cooper's instincts in picking this to bring with us proved to be dead on, as its alphabetical recital of gross out garbage items like dirty diapers, moldy meatballs and puppy poo really got the audience going.

Having sufficiently warmed them up, I then proceeded to give them instruction in juggling. I had brought some juggling beanbags from home and started by showing them one bag (tossed up and down in a single hand), then two, and finally three. I finished with a flourish with some tosses under my leg and behind my back and with Cooper tossing me a ball to start me out. I must say, the audible ooohing and aahhhhing were fairly satisfying, as was a little girl telling Cooper "your Dad is awesome!!" If only the rest of the world were so easily impressed. On the negative side, the teacher was visibly not impressed when I told the kids that really good jugglers could do harder stuff like chainsaws, prompting an admonishment by her that I probably would not have been let in the school if I had brought chain saws. Killjoy. Another kid asked me if I could juggle cookies and take bites while I juggled. That one I promised to develop for next year  (you will know I have been training hard if you notice a 20 lb. weight gain by me during the year). All in all, though, quite a fun time. Hope I made Cooper proud!

For a trip into the CloudEight archives to revisit my swing by Owen's class when he was star of the week three years ago, click here.