The Year of the Turtle

From RuddyBits.blogspot.com

Back in the mid 80s, when we used to take the extra fabric around the ankles of our jeans, then fold, wrap and roll it as tight as possible to our ankles -- in a fashion practice known as pegging -- I asked my mom how anyone could ever have thought bell bottoms were cool.  She said, all things come and go.  She even went so far as to predict that, one day, pegging would be seen as odd, and bell bottoms would be back in style.  I thought she was nuts. 

A decade later, she was right.  It was the first time I remember seeing the pendulum swing so clearly, and it proved a powerful lesson.  All things do come and go: even things as odd as excessively loose, or ridiculously tight pant ankles.

But even in her wisdom, I do not think my mother could have predicted a blast from the past that has come back recently to overtake our household.  It’s a trend for sure, though not of the fashion variety, and it has become the singular obsession of my four children.  Anyone who has interacted with my kids in recent months knows the scourge of which I speak:  Turtles.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to be precise.  Though, by my estimation, they are middle-aged mutants at best, by this point.

I remember the first time the series made waves in the late eighties.  After that, I don’t think I heard a thing about them for a decade or two. Though I'm kind of out of it when it comes to trends.  Now they are back, stronger than ever, as a newly animated series has suddenly taken over Nickelodeon’s summer programing. 

How these four mutant martial artists made it back from obscurity, I haven’t a clue.  Heck, I don’t know how the trend caught on in the first place.  This was a television series that jumped the shark in the concept room.   

They're mutants. They're reptiles.
They're ninjas. And they're everywhere.

Still, my kids love it.  They've gone so far as to each adopt the name of a favorite turtle, along with a preference for the color of their chosen turtle's headband and constant repetition of key quotes from that character.

There's Leonardo, the leader (blue); Donatello, the smart one (purple); Raphael, the tough guy (red); and Michelangelo, the dumb, but funny one who likes to surf and party a lot (orange).  I never quite understood why the so-called “heroes on the half shell” were named after four great Italian artists.  They just were.  Again, the idea for this animated foursome passed the exit for absurd long before the names were chosen.

And, of course, each turtle also has its own specific martial arts skill and a ninja weapon or two.  Which makes for hours of family fun, as the kids pretend to fight evil and I scream at them to stop hitting each other with fake ninja moves.  

 

I’m half expecting this year’s Christmas wish lists to include nunchucks and throwing stars, as well as all the TMNT crap our local, neighborhood Target can cram into the aisle that all the retail giants will most certainly devote to the mutants this shopping season.  That is, if this trend last until Christmas.  

 

As the old saying goes, the flame that burns twice as bright, burns half as long.  That's right: I just quoted ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu.  Circa 550 B.C.  That's because the kids have decided that I am Splinter, the giant mutant rat that is their sensei.  I take my pretend dojo lessons vey seriously.   

We’ll have to wait and see just how long this turtle obsession lasts.  But it certainly proves again that all things come and go.  No matter how absurd -- like bell bottoms.  

Though, I’m still waiting for pegged pants to come back.  Or, did that happen already?

Missing When Summer Break Was an Actual Break

From RuddyBits.blogspot.com

Few things can change your opinion about something as efficiently as a change in perspective. 

Take summer break, for example.  When I was a kid, I loved summer break, or summer vacation, or whatever you want to call it.  More than two whole months off from school?  What’s not to like? 

Then I became a parent of school-aged children.  And oh, how my perspective has changed.  Don’t get me wrong, I still love summer.   But from the day school gets out until they go back after Labor Day, my wife and I spend almost every second that we are not working or sleeping, coordinating the full-time entertainment and transportation of our four children.

 

I know, I know. That’s what parents do (when teachers aren’t available).   But it seems things have gotten worse with the recent generation.  



Where I'll be spending most of my
summer.  In our minivan, on the road.
(This is stock image. Our van is much
older, and less sleek looking)

When I was a kid, we’d spend half our summer days in the woods behind our house, and the other half at my grandmother’s house on Lake Ontario.  We were very lucky, I know.  

But the days were ours, free from schedules, camps and swim class.  Sure, I remember going to one summer camp for one summer – a day camp at a local community college.   Other than that, we entertained ourselves.  Okay, maybe an exaggeration.  My parents always did their share to keep us busy with activities.  But still, it was different.

Now, I’m on the road a few hours each day picking up, dropping off, and delivering one or more of our children to the various camps they attend, so that their parents – my wife and I – can continue to earn a living. 

Take just our oldest as an example:  the summer began with a two week theatre camp, full day.  Now she’s in a one week soccer camp, which is only half day.  Next week she goes to a two week session at a real camp, meaning a camp in the woods with a lake.   Her two sisters have their own camps, as well. 

These are all just day camps, not spend-the-nights like in the movies.  That means we are carting their little butts all over town -- twice a day, every day.  And that’s not even counting the swim classes they all take at different times throughout the week.

It beats the alternative, which is them watching television all day long as we work, with them saying how board they are fifty-thousand times before the sun sets.  (For those who don’t know, my wife and I both work full-time jobs from home.  We’re very lucky, I know -- Sort of.  But that’s a whole other blog.) 

I wish we had enough funds to have one of us take the summer off, just to hang with them.  It’d be nice to play in the yard all day, or do outings to the library, and the park, and the zoo. But we have four kids, so money remains tight.

Back when we started this brood, we swore we wouldn’t be the type of parents that over-schedule their kids to the point where we’d end up just a taxi service for familiar little strangers who’d rather be at some random activity with their friends than spending time with their family.  Swim.  Soccer.  Dance … every minute scheduled.  We were against the whole notion.  We weren’t going to be those parents.

It seems to have happened anyway.

So tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day after that, my wife or I can be found most mornings, at lunch and in the evening, cruising the local roads in the minivan, trucking our kids all over creation.

 

It gives me two thoughts. 

First, I have new-found respect for teachers, and bus drivers.  And I'm not just saying that because I'm a Democrat.  

And second, I miss when summer break was actually a break.

Road Trips and Sushi ... a match made in hell

It may go without saying, but I’m saying it anyway:   If you ever embark on a 16-hour all-night car ride with children, and as you leave town you stop by the grocery store to get some snacks for the trip and one last non-fast-food meal, and the person running into the store to buy the food asks, “Do you want sushi, or something else?”   The answer is: something else.  Anything else.

We learned this lesson within the first half-an-hour of our annual overnight pilgrimage to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.   At this point there may be questions.  Let me answer a few.

Yes, we go to Hilton Head almost every year.  My wife’s parents have a timeshare there, which we started visiting when our first-born was little.  It has become something of a summer tradition.

And yes, we drive straight through to get there.  We’ve learned that piling on the miles while the kids are sleeping is the only way to make the trip manageable.  By leaving at night, and filling their little gullets with food on the way out the door, we’re able to get a solid ten hours on the road before one of them wakes up, usually somewhere in North Carolina, complaining about the sleeping arrangements and asking if we’re there yet.    

Sure, it’s a long drive.  But it adds to the mystique for the kids -- at least the younger ones.   On recent trips, Maisie has said, after an hour on the road, “If we flew, we’d be there already.”  My retort, “And if we took the private yacht it would take weeks to get there.”  

Back to the questions:  Yes, our local grocery store sells sushi, as many attempt to these days.   And our local store is a Wegmans.  So it usually passes the smell test.  Literally.

So, as we pulled up to Wegman’s at 7:30 pm on Friday evening, 5 minutes into our summer vacation, and as my wife prepared to run in get some snacks and more substantive food, like chicken fingers, I suggested, “May get me some sushi.  Spicy, crunchy tuna, please.” 

Maisie then said she’d take a California roll.  And Sadie screamed: “Dumplings.”

These little guys are never going with us to Hilton Head, again.

As she departed, my wife asked one more time:  “Who wants sushi, and who wants chicken fingers.”  It was almost unanimous.  Only Drew, who abstained from voting, got chicken fingers – and that was by default.

After my wife returned to the car, with some bags of snacks and a few trays of Wegman’s sushi, we were ready for our all-night, bleary-eyed, we’re-not-stopping-till-the-sun-comes-up drive south.   And off we went.

Not three minutes later, before we even got past the McDonalds in Lafeyette, we were sitting with our individual sushi trays open on our laps when all hell broke loose.  Okay, that may be an overstatement.   But from the back of the car, Chloe asked for help.  Her mother, with the quick reaction time of a supermom, closed her sushi tray by flipping the lid back on.  Unfortunately, she had already used the lid as a soy sauce dipping vessel.   Soy sauce went everywhere, including her lap, her seat and the pillow that was next to her seat ready for the long night’s drive.  Soy sauce splatter patterns were scatter throughout the front of the car.

She immediately called for the paper towels, which were conveniently tucked in the back of the van behind the seat holding two older children.  They scrambled to get the paper towels, and in the process, Chloe’s ginger-infused dipping sauce for her dumplings fell to the floor.  Reports from the back of the van could not confirm whether the container’s lid was still on the ginger-infused dipping sauce when it fell.  And, now, the ginger-infused dipping sauce container itself was missing.  At least, neither properly-seat-belted child could get a visual fix on the sauce container.   I had visions of ginger-infused dipping sauce slowly soaking into our van’s carpet.

So, there we are, screaming down the highway – and I mean screaming, not driving fast – trapped in a van that was smelling increasingly like grocery-store-bought Asian food. 

Luckily, there was a truck inspection pull-off just ahead of us.  That’s where I pulled over, and I calmly (its my blog, so my description) … calmly took care of the spill and missing dipping sauce.  I also collected the remaining sushi containers and pronounced then and there that we would never buy sushi on a car trip ever, ever again. 

Not ten minutes into our annual vacation and we had already learned an important lesson.  When, embarking on a car trip, and asked if you want sushi, or something else.  Always pick something else.

Father's Day Vs. Mother's Day.

Not complaining, but why is it that on Mother's Day, Moms usually get a break from the kids, and go do something relaxing by themselves.  On Father's Day, dads usually take the kids with them and try to do something they usually do when alone and relaxing.

Like I said, not complaining.  I love taking my kids fishing or sailing, or whatever we get to do.  But, next Mother's Day, I'm going to suggest my wife take the kids with her to get her nails done. 

We'll see how that goes over. 

Does the Diaper-Rash Ointment Coupon Come With That?

I get the desire, even the need, to go longer periods of time without changing baby's diaper.  You need to rest, too.

Calling Child Services. Come in.

I also get that some kids sleep for more than 6 hours at a pop.  Again, our kids never did that.  Still don't.  

But I don't get why you would ever need a diaper that can last for 12 hours without being changed.  And frankly, I'm a little worried about the people who will be tempted to use it.  Are they the type who let the oil change go for 8,000 miles rather than 5,000.  Or maybe 10,000.

So the question is, how long is too long?  We always had a rule that we changed our kids' diapers when dirty.  Whether the diaper was on for ten minutes or three hours.  Once dirty, it came off.

With 12 hour diapers, the child's undergarments can go about as long as some contact lenses.  And that cannot be good. At least for the kid.

This is a must read for parents

If you plan to swim with kids this summer, please read this:

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

More dad's focusing on kids, over careers

Not a surprise to anyone paying attention.  Between telecommuting and new work-from-home professions, more dads are realizing the value of helping raise the family.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/30/pf/stay-at-home-dad/index.htm