One of the biggest gripes among parents is that babies (and therefore, kids) do not come with a set of instructions. Heck, I've even joked about it.
Can you imagine if kids did come with instructions? My goodness this would end up being a 10 volume, 3000 page set (sold to you for the low introductory price of $179.85 payable in 3 low monthly payments of $59.95 plus $19.95 shipping and handling). And that's just for one child, because each kid has it's own set of instructions. Kids are not one size fits all.
The encyclopedia set for child would have recordings of each cry, scream, laugh, and hiccup. And if you have a good database manager, each one will be filed under specific keywords.
Miles laugh #2: Play laugh that resembles crying. You often hear Mama state, "Oh that's how he sounds when he's playing and having fun. Nothing is wrong."
Caitlynn cry #3: Fake cry to get Mama's attention. Tred carefully here. Caitlynn can be sensitive in this state.
Miles Growl/Scream #4: Indicates fighting over TV remote with big sister, Caitlynn. May have to remove Miles from situation. Watch out, he tends to kick and bite over the remote.
Caitlynn Scream #10: Response to Miles Growl/Scream #4. Fighting over the TV remote has gone to a whole new level. Expect bloodshed.
Even if the kids did have a set of instructions, you still need to know how to deal with their specific issues and you will spend hours cross referencing between each set of books for each child.
Why are they fighting? Is it over iCarly? The cat? Books? Movies? Games on the computer?
Why is Miles crying? Does his tummy hurt? Did the cat scratch him? Did Caitlynn take his bouncy ball?
Quite frankly, when the kids are going nuts and their heads start spinning, you don't have time to flip through an instruction book (let alone a 10 volume set). You have to act quickly before the neighbors start noticing and you end up with hearing loss.
And then again, how many of us read the entire set of instructions anyway? I know everyone here has purchased ready-to-assemble piece of furniture from Ikea or Target or Walmart. How many actually sit down to read the instructions? Most of us have the mentality, "Oh I know how this goes together and the instructions are tossed aside and used at the very end when you notice that your bookshelf is now a 3 legged table. What good are instructions, anyway?
Maybe that's why Ikea started drawing their instructions. They know we don't want to read "slat A gets screwed into slat B with bolt J." Ikea knows we're in a hurry to get the new futon built and ready to use. That's why at the end of the instructions you should see (not always the case, btw) the happy unisex individual sitting contently (and sipping a beer) on his newly assembled futon.
And we all know that at the end of our children's instruction booklet there would be a picture of each parent sitting peacefully with their child reading Dr. Seuss.
Because an instruction booklet written about our children will make things that much easier.
If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been away. My original plan was to keep the issue private, but since my husband, Joe, told all my friends on Facebook what was going on, I figured I might was well let y’all know too.
I had open heart surgery on January 8 to replace my aortic valve. That’s it. As Joe says, they popped open my hood and gave me a valve job. Pretty much it. So, I’ve been recovering, attending classes, working, and laying around watching You Tube videos. Fun stuff.
The kids have known all along what was going on. We are honest with them about these things. Joe has MS, so they know he has limitations. When it came down to the surgery, we told them right away. Miles likes to listen to my heart by placing his ear to my chest. Now, he’s determined to hear the clicking sound the new mechanical valve, even if he is a bit afraid of the big scar on my chest.
Caitlynn still looks at me funny but she’s getting better about it. I can’t imagine what the ordeal was like for them. They didn’t see me for 2 days and when they did see me, I was laying in a hospital bed looking, well, not that great. At least they didn’t see me in ICU. ICU is a scary place for anyone, even adults.
After David Letterman came back to work after his quintuple bypass surgery (geez, Dave – quintuple?), he brought out the team of doctors and nurses and thanked them on his show. I hear he’s even invited them to his ranch in northern Montana. Since my doctors and nurses already live in Montana, I don’t need to invite them to my tiny three-bedroom apartment, but I would like to take a minute to thank them for their hard work.
To my surgeon and his staff, the nurses in the ICU, the nurses in the hospital, and the therapists – Thank you for all you’ve done. I now have a heart that works properly.
Also, thanks to Tom, Dad, and Janice for making the trek here to Montana to be with Joe and the kids.
And last but not least, thank you to AV, Michael, and Stormy for providing some great content on the blog while I was away. Ok, all in for a group hug.
I’m back now and ready to get going. The kids are still nutty and driving me crazy. That part hasn’t changed.
Hello, it's me, Michael, again. I think this will be my last post on Tales of the Kids, as Marcy is making a speedy recovery, and is already up and about on the blogging scene, and I believe, eager to get back to the two topics she knows best (i.e., Caitlynn and Miles). As my last post for this month, I've decided to talk about kid shows. Everybody loves those, right?
My favorite show during my childhood was Sesame Street. That was quality entertainment. I felt myself grow smarter watching it. I knew all the names of the muppets and the actual people. And I loved all the songs that they did, such as Cookie Monster's C is for Cookie and the twenty-something little segments they did that tried to drill the alphabet and numbers 1-20 into our tiny child heads. Sesame Street is a classic. (well... in my eyes.)
Now generations older than me will say the Looney Tunes gang were the best group of cartoon characters to come into our living rooms. Other shows, like Popeye, Johnny Bravo, Postman Pat, Catdog, Beakman's World, Pokémon, Bob the Builder, The Magic School Bus, Teen Titans, Pinky and the Brain, Scooby Doo, Blue's Clues, Rugrats, The Powerpuff Girls, Flowerpot Men, Animaniacs, The Jetsons and The Flintstones, and Cow and Chicken, also hold a very special place in the hearts of many teenagers and grown-ups around the world, who followed these wacky characters and storylines back when they still had trouble controlling their bladders, eating their vegetables, and learning their seven times table.
There are a couple shows which I do not see the appeal in, though, yet these shows seem to be mightily popular amongst our very-young youth nowadays. The first is Thomas the Tank Engine (or nowadays, called Thomas and Friends).
The whole idea was just really boring to me. If I wanted to nap after school, I would find Thomas on TV and fall asleep on the sofa to the sound of his repetitive and hypnotizing choo-choo-choo-choo. Their voices were just so monotone, even when the trains were excited, even when the Fat Conductor (which by the way, isn't a very nice name) was angry. The citizens were like Lego people, static, uninteresting, unvaried. The faces on the trains were always so sour, their seemingly forcéd smiles made me depressed. Also, in the actual episodes, these trains were overly competitive, and engaged in sly malefactions all with the aim of being the best tank engine in the land, even if it implied it was a dog-eat-dog world. That's not the kind of life lesson you want to send out to kids. Plus, there also seem to lack the presence of many female roles - what is this, 1930s rural England? (Well, yes, on second thought. It's exactly that.) And let's not forget the fundamental peculiarity, in that putting faces on trains is just creepy.*
As for Barney and Friends, I trust I don't have to elaborate much on why he's extremely creepy. After all, he is an overgrown purple lizard that demands hugs and kisses from a different group of multiethnic children every episode, and over the course of his career as some sort of preschool teacher/"friend"/daycare center supervisor, has never shown any desire to alleviate Baby Bop of her unhealthy attachment to that filthy yellow towel she calls her 'blankie', and has never advised BJ, Baby Bop's protoceratops brother, to seek medical help for his severe case of jaundice.*
And speaking of the color yellow, last but not least, there's Spongebob Squarepants. I didn't like this show when it first came out, and the reruns everyday on the kids channels don't make this sponge look any cuter. To start off, nothing make senses in the show. I'm all for creativity, but come on! First, the squirrel breathes in a squirrel-sized astronaut suit - from where she gets the oxygen to last a lifetime, God knows. Second, how does a pineapple actually grow at the bottom of the salty sea, to a size and with such immobility, that actually enables a friggin' sponge to live in it? Third, how is it that the ditsy squirrel, is the same size as the cynical, sadistic squid, and also the same size as the bossy, emotionally unstable sponge, and the intellectually devoid starfish? The squirrel, the sponge, the squid and the starfish are all disproportionate!
Speaking of which, Patrick also promotes idiocy, shirtlessness, and a dangerously carefree lifestyle, that verges on subconscious narcissism. Also, Spongebob teaches kids to use words like 'idiot', 'jerk' and 'moron' (except in reference to himself, of course, which I find is probably most appropriate). The lyrics to the theme song don't mean anything, the story lines don't mean anything. The show's a mind-numbing, IQ-lowering, directionless, overly advertised, random-in-a-cheesy-way, noneducational, waste of time.*
*Whether you like a cartoon or not all depends on your personal taste. I hope I have not offended or caused severe mental damage to anyone with my outspokenness in any way. But extensive tirades suffused with intense hatred are sort of my blogging specialty.
Hi! This is just a quick note to say that I'm lurking around blogger while I recovery from my ordeal. I plan to be back in a week or so. Thanks to Michael, Stormy, and AV for providing great content while I'm out.
A word on the kids...
Well... this experience wasn't easy on them but they had a few family members around to take their minds off of me. I'm happy to say that they are back to their normal selves, i.e., driving me batty. Both of them are back in school learning all sorts of things.
For instance, Miles learned today not to pick his boogers.
That's a good thing to learn and it reminds me of the saying:
You can pick your friends. You can pick your nose. But you can't pick your friend's nose.
One of my favourite reads each day is about a crazy family. Well, actually they're not so crazy as normal, which really makes you crazy.
Tales of the Kids is a delightful blog that details the comings and goings of Marcy as she brings up two kids, Caitlynn and Miles, both are hell bent on driving their suffering mother crazy (read again normal).
I joined this family yonks ago, by yonks I mean I don't remember, but it was a long time ago. Yonks is a wonderfully loose time frame. I didn't join them physically, but by proxy - the blogosphere, and I have followed their exploits since. Their move from their comfortable familiar Chicago surroundings a year ago this month clear across the country to Montana to the potty training of Miles and Caitlynn deciding that at seven she needs a blog for herself, which incidently she uses to castigate her younger brother and plot aginst her mother.
The daily musings of Marcy often make light of day to day trials and tribulations and her posts often have titles that have me laughing before I get to open her blog for a read.
This year I shared Christmas with them, Marcy's angst over the truth of Santa Claus in respect of Miles and Caitlynn's accusation that Mommy lied to Miles about the jolly fellow in red. These are all things that I have been through with my own kids and the various stepkids that have passed beneath my roof as I have courted my way across South America. Kids are the same anywhere, culture is not a divider when it comes to raising kids, so the life and times of my kids in New Zealand and the others here in Brazil or Bolivia and Peru have raised many and various other issues. The one thing they all have in common is that in their own way they are all Miles (geez, what's the plural of Miles? - Mileses) and Caitlynns within their own characters. They are all funny and sad, they all have cute and ugly moments and they are all hell bent on sending their mothers, fathers and caregivers to the loony bin.
Marcy has a wonderful family, they are totally crazy (read again normal) and I love being allowed the privilege of my blogosphere window into their lives.
Marcy, good luck during your coming hiatus and the future. I so look forward to your posts on your return.
Hi! Marcy's friend Stormy here, and as a mother of 3 children I have become very familiar with the 4 p's of parenting:
pee poop puke and phlegm
(Ok, so the ph in phlegm sounds like "f" but it starts with a p, so we are going with it.)
These 4 wonderful, and often gross, words come along with having kids. Period. You can not escape them.
My oldest not only managed to get his phlegm on me and while nursing he puked on me (twice), but he peed and pooped on me as well. He's now 5 and much better at keeping his 4 p's to himself (or leaving his pee and sometimes poop in the toilet without flushing!).
But, I do have a 2 year old that likes to pick his nose when it gets plugged up and hand me his diggings. Ewww... Oh, that's another "p" - pick! (and a good topic for a completely different post.)
And a sweet 3 month old, you can imagine what that is like.
Truly, it's not bad. Being somewhat phobic in the past about mucus, that was huge to overcome. My first child cured me of my phobia. Now none of the p's bothers me any more. As long as it is my child's. If it is someone else's child, forget it! That is theirs to deal with.
For those of you with kids, you know what I am talking about. Those of you planning to have kids... you are warned. Kids come with a lots of p's. But, they are worth it!
Hello, it's me, Michael again, here to talk some more about some of my childhood-related memories and thoughts while Marcy is taking a short break. Today, I'm going to talk about the phenomenon of naughty kids.
Nobody ever told me that kids were naughty or loud. People always say that children are the spawn of the devil. They do weird, disgusting things like eating snow from the street, leaving their boogers on every possible surface, and taking off their pants in public places, but throughout my entire life, I have never met these kids. I try to think back to when I was in primary school, to try and relate to the terror that parents so woefully describe, but I really cannot relate.
I consider myself to have been a fairly well-disciplined kid, and the same goes for my cousins, and my primary school classmates. Everybody was bound to get a little rowdy at times during P.E. class and at lunchtimes, but there was always a time and a place for these things. I embraced the early English and basic arithmetic classes, and waited for play-time or home-time before having fun. I don't remember ever taking off my pants in the middle of the playground. I don't remember playing with my food at lunch. I only remember reading on the way home, and finishing all that was served to me for dinner. I only remember watching films that were not too old, but not too young for me. I only remember playing games on the computer that taught me vocabulary and problem-solving. The things I did and the way I did things was how my mother did things - safely, logically, healthily, educationally, properly.
And then I came across a few kids in the past few years who were really not like any children I played with when I was that age. I was absolutely shocked and terrified at how all the stereotypical misdemeanors I often perceived as parental exaggerations were actually truth that occurred in reality. All the cussing, the tantrums, the refusal to eat vegetables, the brattiness, the lame jokes, the "You're Wrong, I'm Right" attitude, the addiction to pizza and ice cream and chocolate and chicken nuggets and cartoons, the loud voice, the tendency towards bruises and other injuries, the personal hygiene that is so readily forgotten day by day, the complete disregard for the parents' welfare - all of it - ALL OF IT - is ACTUALLY real!!!
I don't know what to believe now. I think I still believe that most kids are well-behaved.
But am I wrong in thinking this?
Was what I perceived during my childhood just an illusion? Or was I just placed in the right classroom at the right time?
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Michael, and I am an 18-year-old student from Hong Kong. I've agreed to do some posts for our beloved Marcy while she's away on her health-related business, and my aim is to try writing roughly two posts every week, so that her blog is not completely unwritten in during this month. Why I made this deal with her exactly, I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's because being a blogger myself, I understand how it feels to be busy with other things. But it should be easy enough, right? All I've got to do is rant about children.
Whenever Marcy talks about Miles, I am almost always reminded of my own relationship with my mother. The teenager that I am was a child not that long ago, so I can still recollect how I've changed and grown over the course of my childhood. There are a couple of posts by Marcy that humorously describe how her and her children describe each other as "weird". When I read them for the first time, I was instantly reminded of one particular night when I was seven years old.
It was around eleven at night, and I was playing Text Twist with my mother. I would suggest words over her shoulder and she would type in my ideas in between the words she came up with. I got hungry so I said I would go get some ice cream. She said she wanted some too. (I would like to note that I am very proud of the tacit agreement we made to never guilt each other for staying up late or eating junk food that late at night.) She asked me if there was any Coca Cola in the fridge as well, and I told her yes. She asked me to put a scoop of ice cream into a glass of Coke (and to bring a spoon as well).
What?!?!?!?! was my initial reaction. A scoop of ice cream with Coke??? Even at a young age, I always knew my mother to be very logical, so she wasn't asking for the then-incomprehensible-to-me ice cream float for no reason. It must taste very special and good, I thought, that particular and peculiar combination of flavors.
After twenty minutes in the kitchen, I went back to my mother's room and served her her ice cream float. I watched as she took the spoon and made sure to get a good spoonful of Coca Cola and ice cream, and she exclaimed, "MMMMMMMM... Tastes great!"
And then she saw my glass and asked me what I had in mine. With a big, proud grin on my face, I told her that it had Coca Cola, vanilla ice cream, soy sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup, oyster sauce, salt and pepper, sugar, blackcurrant juice, a dash of peanut oil, some bee's nest honey, two ice cubes, and the white stuff (that didn't seem to be dissolving on the surface) was flour.
She frowned as I described its contents, and winced as I took my first sip of it.
Thirty seconds later, I was flushing the rest of it down the toilet.
Although, I told her I had finished it quickly, of course.
Something major is going on in my life and for the sake of privacy, I'm not going to give many details.
To satisfy any curiosity, I will divulge a few clues:
It's health-related.
It is not another baby. Two is enough for us.
It's something that will prevent me from writing meaningful posts for a few weeks.
In the meantime, a few fellow bloggers will be filling in the gaps. They promised to be nice, share their toys, not make a big mess, and put the toilet seat down. Thanks, guys!
Let's give them a warm welcome, shall we?
First up, say hello to Stormy. She's a dear friend of mine who is busy these days raising three kids. More power to her.
Then we have Argentum Vulgaris who has been through the parenting thing for many years.
Last but not least is Michael of Do You Hate It Too? He's young but insightful when it comes to kids.
So, while I'm out, I expect everyone to be on their best behavior. No fighting, biting, kicking, screaming, or hitting. Keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times. If not, I'm turning this car around and going home.
Miles likes watching a few different cartoons each day – Dora, Diego, Max and Ruby, the Backyardigans. All these characters can be found at Nick Jr's site. Go on... waste some of your day playing Dora the Explorer games. I know you want to.
Some times I sit down and watch with him, but most of the time I simply overhear the nonsese of the cartoon. These are pretty innocent cartoons, mind you. They are nowhere near Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry in terms of humor.
My concern for the Nick Jr shows has to do with the lack of parenting. Max and Ruby are a couple of rabbits that seem to live alone. Grandma shows up every once in awhile but it’s usually Ruby (the older sister) taking care of Max (the younger brother). Max is a handful, not surprisingly. Miles and Max share a lot in common.
However, one day when Miles was watching the show he noted, “Max and Ruby don’t have a family.” He was correct to point this out. They don’t have a traditional family and each episode it requires Ruby to act as a mama to Max. Where are the parents? Are they out making more bunnies?
I realize that when it comes to cartoons, parents are portrayed in a few different ways (I guess this is to make kids feel better about themselves):
Parents are selfish and lazy. (Fairly Odd Parents)
Parents are dumb or clueless. (Jimmy Neutron, Fairly Odd Parents)
Parents are nonexistent. (Max and Ruby, Backyardigans)
Parents are perfect. (Caillou)
Parents are sort-of present. (Dora, Diego)
Very rarely are parents seen as being real. The PBS show, Arthur, actually portrays a semi-normal household. The parents are still sort-of perfect but Arthur and his little sister fight.
I’m sure that Max and Ruby have normal fights like most siblings do, but they don’t portray it on screen. Ruby usually has an idea to do something special and she tries to encourage Max to join her in the fun. More often than not, Max makes a bit of trouble and for once I’d like to hear Max reply to his sister’s scheme, “That’s a really crappy idea.”
Maybe then I wouldn’t worry so much about the parents not being around. Then their brother-sister dynamic will seem somewhat normal.
Of course if their Mama was around, you could expect her to chime in with “Max, be nice. ‘Crappy’ is not a word we use. We usually say ‘shitty.’ Get it right next time.” And of course, Ruby would cry because Max didn't like her idea and that Mama said a bad word. Yes, Ruby, the world is against you. Now that's some good TV if you ask me.
