TG is still often mistaken for a boy. Which, given her hair situation, is better than the alternative of always being mistaken for Phil Spector:

Or a chia pet:

So we were pretty excited when she finally had enough loose hair to support a ponytail. Not necessarily one on the back of her head where you would expect it, but a few placed at random intervals on her head like she’s been tagged for tracking by a nature program. But still, this is a big deal. At least when you see a kid in a pink jacket with 2 or 3 random ½ inch ponytails  you get the point: girl.

But trying to get your girl to look more like a girl does not come without its perils. Namely, how to explain this to your boy.

Given all the “you look so pretty” and “I love your hair” fuss we were making over TG’s new ponytails — or “tonies” as she calls them — it should have come as no surprise when TB said, “I want a ponytail.”

If there’s one thing kids are great at, it’s making the gender-based societal rules we take for granted seem random.

We were just playing around the house anyway. “Sure,” we said, “why not?”

Then he wanted to wear them to preschool.

We are a fairly progressive couple. Have I mentioned we both drive hybrids? Yeah, we do. We get our slanted, biased news from CNN, not Fox. We like NPR. We subscribe to (though don’t necessarily read) the New Yorker. TW has gone so far as to be left-handed.

But we still were given pause when our 3-year-old son wanted to wear a ponytail to school.

“Well, you know…um….ponytails are usually for girls….kind of…”

“Why?”

It is in moments like these I wish I was a fundamentalist. Fundamentalists have a very easy time raising children. No wonder they can have so many. When your world is black and white, explaining things to kids is easy. “Who is God?” “The creator of all things. When we die we get to spend eternity with Him. Isn’t that great?” “Do boys wear ponytails?” “No.” “Why?” “Because God doesn’t like it.”

But for better or for worse, I have a more relativist, live-and-let-live worldview. I’m finding this is not compatible with raising children.

“Ponytails are for girls. Well, I mean, some boys have ponytails, but not little boys. Though I guess some little boys can have ponytails and that’s OK if their Mommy and Daddy say so. Or their Mommy and Mommy. Or Daddy and Daddy. Hey, want a cookie?”

I wonder if there is an inverse correlation between childhood diabetes and a parent’s moral certitude.

While TB had his cookie and bobbled around with his wonky pontyail, I had to admit he looked pretty cute. “Why can’t we just send him to school like that if he wants?” I thought. Would it ignite a JCrew-style controversy?

Would I likewise be accused by our small, suburban preschool of “blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children?” We’re not in L.A. anymore, after all. I began to wonder what gender roles we should be forcing on our kids in the name of making their lives easier and which we should ignore in the name of letting them discover who they are. Then it hit me: I had to go to work. Huzzah! I could slip out the door and let my wife make the tough decisions. It was the perfect plan: falling back on classic gender roles to solve a crisis of progressive gender roles. Best of both worlds!

In the end, I think the ponytail fell out and he was distracted by a fruit chew he found under the couch. Crisis averted (unless you count your child eating old food from under the couch a crisis). We’re on borrowed time though. How do you explain to a kid why only girls wear skirts? Who the hell knows.

“Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
Sold in a market down in new orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he’s doin alright.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should”

These are hard lyrics to explain to a 1 ½ and 3 year-old. Something perhaps I should have thought of before blurting out over breakfast, “Hey, did you know there’s a *song* about brown sugar?”

“Really?!?”

“Really. Do you want to hear it?”

“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!”

Whooops.

It’s just I’m always looking for an excuse to play some not-horrible music in my house. After years of coveting and whining, I now have the music system of my dreams: Rhapsody combined with Sonos. I am not getting paid to use those brand names; I simply love them. In short, this means I can instantly find almost any song and play it. To me, this is still 100% unbelievably crazy batshit insane awesome. It’s like having a super power.

A power my children squander like Scott Baio in Zapped.

He finds he has the ability to move things without touching them and spends his days lifting up skirts. My children can listen to over 11 million songs on demand and repeatedly choose this:

Note the siren on a loop. That’s really in there. (For me to comment on everything else going on in that video of Yo Gabba Gabba at, apparently, Coachella, will require another post entirely.)

So it was under this mental duress I suggested my kids listen to a song about either slave rape or heroin, depending on which section of Wikipedia you believe. Regardless, Brown Sugar is most definitely not about brushing your teeth after eating French Toast. But they seemed to buy that explanation enough.

They also quickly lost interest and returned to their standard rotation of Yo Gabba Gabba and The Fresh Beat Band. Seriously, the list of songs I’m forced to listen to with them is so dreadful that I’m actually thankful when they pick the Swedish Chef singing 70’s hit Popcorn:

That’s a nice, peaceful three and a half minutes in my life.

To answer your question, of course I’ve tried Yellow Submarine. Do you think I’m an idiot? Everyone tries Yellow Submarine. And, sure, it held their interest for a few days. But they’re not really wanting any deeper cuts. Which is probably for the best. First off, I’m not ready to explain:

Rocky Raccoon checked into his room
Only to find Gideon’s bible
Rocky had come equipped with a gun
To shoot off the legs of his rival

Secondly, if my kids got into the Beatles it’d probably just be the crappy George Harrison sitar stuff. Frankly, I’ll take the Swedish Chef over that.

I had my first parent/teacher conference the other day. I was the parent, which, if you had to choose, is probably the side of the equation you’d want me on. Though I’ll admit it’s something of a Sophie’s choice.

Anyway, it was with TB’s preschool teachers. To start it off they handed us an actual report card with comments. I’m not sure what I expected, but the formality of a report card took me a bit by surprise. Especially given we were sitting in undersized chairs at a tiny table; how seriously I can take a meeting is inversely proportional to how close everybody’s knees are to their faces.

The report card was really just a checklist of skills like “recognizes body parts” accompanied by a two-option grading scale: “working on skill’ and“attained skill.” A very optimistic, though not particularly informative scale. A kid who sometimes confuses his knees and elbows gets the same grade as a kid who, when asked “Where’s your nose?” spins around in circles screaming, “I’m MC Poopy Pants!”

Still, I appreciated the effort. To be honest, TW and I were fretting this evaluation a bit. It’s the first time an informed third party was going to weigh in with an opinion about our child’s behavior. Sure, we’d been to doctors, but a doctor only tells you your kid has croup, not that he’s a jerk. It seems to me parent/teacher conferences tell parents exactly what they are most afraid to hear: the truth about their children. They are like being graded on a long, mucousy science fair project. “You did make a little boy. But it cries more than you would expect and is significantly louder. Plus, technically, it should not still be in a diaper. Overall, C+.”

I like to think I avoided a lot of milestone comparing when our kids were infants, but it is hard to escape that need to judge; to see if your kid is “normal.” Even though, really, who wants their kid to be described as normal? You know who always gets described as “normal?” Psychopaths. “He always seemed like such a nice, normal man. Besides the ten oversize freezers he kept in his backyard. Though now those make sense.”

So walking into the meeting I didn’t know what to hope for. A sensitive kid whose odd quirks might make childhood tough but would serve him well later in life? Or a color-in-the-lines normal kid who will be killing small animals behind a shed in the space of a year?

Then I sat down in the little chair, got the report card and remembered; oh yeah, this is preschool. He’s fine.

“What are we going to do today?” My son asks this question almost every day now. I’m not sure why a 3 year-old is so concerned with his social calendar, but I guess I can’t blame him. I often ask TW the same thing. He is just trying to exert some control over his existence. After all, his life must seem like an arbitrary series of random events ranging from the very urgent: “come on, get your shoes on it’s time to go!” To the insufferably long: “just wait patiently, everyone else is still eating.”

I would find this kind of existence terrifying; some omniscient being grabbing me each day, “Guess what we’re going to do?” and then sometimes getting ice cream and sometimes getting stripped naked and having a thermometer shoved up my ass. No wonder some days he just wakes up pissed off. “Ahhh, what a great nap…oh, sweet Jesus, what are these people going to do me now?”

We also set a bad precedent when TB was young. Every time we took him out we said it was an “adventure.” Going to the Gap? “Come on, we’re going on an adventure!” It wasn’t like we put a lot of thought into this strategy, I think we were just trying get him excited. Or, more likely, we were just psyching ourselves up. Because going to the mall with a baby *is* an adventure. One that should probably be preceded with a round of vaccinations. A money belt wouldn’t hurt either.

But years of this phrasing has added up and now he thinks everyday he’s going on an adventure. I think this is mostly what’s driving his “what are we going to do today?” Luckily, the bar for “adventure” is set very low. I don’t know how much longer “We’re going to get gas!” is going to cut it for an answer, but so far, so good. I just hope when he does figure it out he doesn’t spoil it for TG. It’ll be like Santa Claus. “Yes, we both know going to pick up the dry cleaning isn’t an adventure, but don’t tell your sister. She still believes.”

It probably started with my mom – a woman whose idea of a good time is curling up on the couch with a Stephen King book.

When I was 11, she took me to see An American Werewolf in London. When I was 12, she suggested I read The Exorcist. That same year, she gave me her copy of The Keep – a book about Nazis being killed by a vampire in the remote hills of Transylvania, where it left their “bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims.” more »

I will be honest, I am concerned about the stink bugs.   Stink bugs fall into the category of “things no one told me before I decided to move to Pittsburgh.”  The first time they came up I was driving with my mother-in-law while  visiting Pittsburgh *after* having sold my house and quit my job.    Good one.   For those who don’t know, stink bugs are exactly what they sound like.  Plus they fly.
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This past morning was the kind I always imagined when idealizing parenthood: my wife and I curled up on the couch sipping coffee, my daughter napping peacefully in her crib and my son playing quietly by himself on the floor next to us. It was something out of Norman Rockwell painting. Except for the fact that when my son plays quietly by himself  it means he is playing with himself;  lying on his stomach clutching his “Blankie”

and, for lack of a better word, grinding on it. At two and a half this is the only activity that will hold his attention for more than five minutes. And for that I am forever thankful. Blankie, I’m sure, feels differently. If he were a character in Toy Story he’d have PTSD and a Valium addiction. But that is not my problem. Blankie is on his own.

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When some men have a mid-life crisis they buy a motorcycle or go sky diving. That is amateur hour. When I have a mid-life crisis I quit my job, sell my house in Los Angeles, take my wife and two children and move to Pittsburgh to live with my in-laws. That, my friends, is a fucking mid-life crisis. Buying a motorcycle is just really poor judgment. Those things are dangerous. Haven’t you seen Red Asphalt?

When you tell people from L.A. that you are moving to Pittsburgh the most common response is, “Why do you want to live in Ohio?” This is usually followed by an iPhone map, rumblings about “what’s the difference?” and eventually some kind of tofu dish.

The fact is, conversations in L.A. rarely start with “I’m moving to…” People don’t leave L.A. They are drawn to it like a Roach Motel with dry heat and a velvet rope. Which I say with great affection. I am, after all, a native. And my relationship with the city has always been love/hate. Love the beach/hate the traffic. Love seeing celebrities at the mall/hate that I am somehow always at a mall. My parents, even though they have been very supportive of our move, can’t imagine wanting to live anywhere else. They’ve loved L.A. ever since first arriving after fleeing a giant, evil snowman who terrorized Detroit and parts of New York in the late 40’s snatching children from their homes and forcing them to spend days living in his frozen bellywith nothing to eat but urine-stained ice. At least I can only assume that is what happened to them given their reaction to any place where
it snows.

As for me, I actually don’t mind the occasional scarf. Pittsburgh –located in Western Pennsylvania for those without an iPhone map — just feels better. L.A. may be one of the hippest cities in the world but, seriously, what do I care? Yesterday I had my daughter’s dried diarrhea on my shirt. I don’t need hipsters, I need babysitters. And a good cleaner.

So why Pittsburgh? TW is from here and has pretty much wanted to move back since the day I met her. For the first 8 or 9 years I just treated her yearning for home as a charming little quirk not unlike a slight lisp or nervous tick (which she wants me to clarify she does not have). “Sure, we’ll think about leaving all our friends and family in L.A. to live in Pittsburgh. That makes sense, honey.” But we kept flying out to visit her family and the city kept growing on me. In the end TW had pretty much given up on the idea when I came around and made the final push.

Yes, I miss the LA people, the LA weather and being “stuck” in traffic while TW gives the kids dinner and baths. But for us Pittsburgh is a better choice. And it is invigorating to have made a conscious choice about where and how we want to live our lives instead of just making the best with where we happened to land. I can live with the fact that some of my L.A. friends will always think I joined the witness relocation program, or worse, live in Ohio.

Which is all a long way of saying I realize it’s been almost 10 months since I updated my blog, but I’ve been a bit busy. Now I can finally get back to complaining about my children.

I spent this past Saturday morning watching my son play with balls. Not his balls, someone else’s balls. Which I realize is a very immature way to phrase it, but I wasn’t the one who chose to name the most common childhood toy in the world the same thing as my scrotum. I’m already barely equipped to be a father; I don’t really need etymological handicaps, as well. True, it could have been worse. I don’t think I’d get through parenthood at all if I had to go outside and toss the “furburger” around. But still.
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The Girl arrived May 4th officially making us a family of four. Two kids under two; that’s us. It’s nice when your family planning coincides with a pithy phrase.

When people originally found out we were having another baby so quickly they said things like, “that’s crazy!”, “what were you thinking?” and “why did you do this to me?” People besides my wife were also a bit taken aback.
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Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

As you may or may not know, there is now a brand new human being in this world depending on me for her very survival; we had a daughter on May 4th. (“May the 4th be with you,” for those who like a good mnemonic device.) This new arrival has, among other things, seriously cut into my writing time. Which is lucky for you; otherwise you’d be subjected to posts about how surprisingly difficult it is to wipe poop from around a vagina. And who needs to read about that? I hope to be up and writing again soon, but until then please enjoy my story from the April edition of, WordPlay.

Remember in the Olde Tyme days when you had to actually write letters or talk in order to maintain relationships with other people? Isn’t it great that you can now keep up the same meaningless and unrewarding friendships with the simple click of a button? Which is my way of saying you should subscribe to my blog. Right over there on the right where it says “SUBSCRIBE TO POSTS.” By email or RSS. Easy schmeazy.

Thanks. OK, now on with it.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but when we go out together, TW drives 90% of the time. This is because she gets carsick, a condition which is magnified when she is pregnant. Which, it turns out, is basically all the time. Now I know in most relationships, when the couple is together, the man drives. This is the manly thing to do. Drive your family around town, take the bull by the horns, be in control; even if the bull in question is a lime green minivan with an automatic transmission. Maybe especially then. If we ever throw in the towel on life and buy a minivan, perhaps then I’ll be more compelled to drive as a way to cling to the last vestiges of my manhood. But probably not. Because those things have DVD players and really good cup holders and swivel chairs up front with, like, a gazillion comfort settings. So who has time to drive? There are buttons to play with.
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Like most families with a small child, our lives are all about routine. One of ours is the morning negotiation. Once TB wakes up, one of us has to start showering and getting ready while the other gets TB and starts his breakfast; when the showerer is done, we swap.

As any married couple knows, the big question here is which is the worse option. It’s important to know this so the marriage points are distributed properly. Personally, I’ve been saving points for an electronic drum set or a threesome. (*Editor’s note: TW wants me to be clear that the marriage point concept is completely in my head and that her actions are motivated solely by what’s best for our family. She’d also like to point out I couldn’t handle a threesome.)
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We have been doing a bit of room shuffling to prepare for the pending baby. Instead of going with my idea of converting the detached garage into a nursery “we” decided to put the baby in TB’s room and move TB into my office. Which for legal reasons I’m supposed to refer to as “our” office. Though day-to-day it is better known as the answer to the question, “where should I put this crap?”

It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you really don’t put your mind to it. In less than three years, neglect and decisions-by-default have transformed what was supposed to be our dream, mid-century modern office into a look that can best be described as “indecision with accents of denial.” An uncomfortable futon, a rickety bookshelf (maybe they’ll come in handy later), a mandolin, a keyboard (I’ll start practicing again and we’ll play together on Sunday nights while our children dance around us).
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So things have gotten pretty exciting in our bedroom these past few weeks. I don’t mean to brag, but we have gone back to doing something I thought we might never do again after “the birth;” setting the alarm. It is – and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here – the single most amazing feeling in the world.

Before becoming parents we were big time snoozers. The last thing we did before going to bed every night was math. “I need to be out the door by 8 so… showering by 7:15; out of bed by 7; we’ll snooze three times…set it for 6:21.” The answer was always 6:21 but we did the calculations every night nonetheless. It was our Goodnight Moon.

Then TB came along and for almost a year now (has it really been that long? Cue music) we have been going to bed confident that the incessant screaming of our hungry and scared child will wake us up in plenty of time for work. Surprisingly, it isn’t significantly more grating than morning radio. But there is no snooze button. Initially I thought pressing down on his fontenelle might work, but TW talked me out of trying.

And so it turns out one of the unintended benefits of having a baby is that we were broken of our snooze habit. Who knew we could actually get out of bed right after waking up? Our baby sleep trained us way before we sleep trained him. And he didn’t have to slog through the forced cockney cuteness of The Baby Whisperer.

Once again, he wins.

I used to own this vest with peace symbols spray painted all over it. It was a pinstriped, six button affair – the kind of vest that used to come with sensible three piece suits – senselessly splattered with colored paint. I bought it on Telegraph Avenue in 1988 while visiting my older sister in Berkeley. It became my prized fashion accessory for years. When I was wearing ripped jeans, a t-shirt and the peace vest, I didn’t even need to check the mirror. How could I not look good? I had wavy, shoulder length brown hair and a penchant for wearing mismatched Converse Hi-Tops. In short, I had style.

In hindsight, it is possible that some people meant “style” as a polite euphemism. But still, I knew exactly what I liked and how I wanted to look. I could walk into a thrift store and spot my shirt on a rack in 5 minutes. My fashion inspiration came from rock stars, movie stars and my own imagination.

Now it comes from a mannequin at Banana Republic. I have been beaten down.

The fall from thrift store chic to showing up at a dinner party in the same striped shirt as four guys and one toddler is, as you’d imagine, a gradual process. more »

Now that the holiday season is over and TW’s vomiting has subsided, we are running out of reasons to postpone planning for the arrival of baby #2. It is coming in early May and, contrary to earlier reports, will not be coming with a penis. Baby #2, as most readers (i.e. my family and friends) know, is a girl. The Girl, to you.

We’ve been in a bit of denial about what the arrival of this kid is going to mean for our lives. Not that we’re not excited. After all, this is exactly what we wanted. And we do truly appreciate how lucky we are. But if you want to read inspirational stories about people thankful for how blessed they are, get a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. Or maybe read some more enlightened blogs. This is my blog. And I am easily rattled.

Ideally, we would have put off TG until TB was old enough to fend for himself for a bit longer, like a few weeks or months. (When is that? Around 2?) But it’s not like we don’t know how these things happen. We knew exactly what we were doing when TW got into that public Jacuzzi at the Ukrainian bath house.
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I began this decade pretty close to rock bottom. Not in an Intervention, selling my semen for grain alcohol and two half-smoked Kool Menthols kind of way. But rock bottom for a nice, upper-middle class Jewish kid from the San Fernando Valley.

I was at a New Year’s Eve party with all my closest friends from high school, sporadically employed and the only single person in the room. Starting the new millennium with a pity kiss on the cheek from my best friend’s wife was not what I had been led to believe partying like it was 1999 was all about.

As some of the wives tried to rally everyone for a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit, I nursed my 13th martini and was bitterly reminded of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

In high school they taught us about relativity through the example of a hypothetical man traveling at the speed of light for 10 years. When he stopped, he hadn’t aged a bit. His friends, on the other hand, were 10 years older.

It turns out this also happens if you move to Chicago.
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When TB was born we got a lot of hand-me-down clothes, one of the many benefits of showing up late to the adulthood party. (Which, by the way, kind of lame party. I thought there’d be more cocktail weenies.) Besides being a great money saver, hand-me-down baby clothes give you interesting insight into your friends and family. Like, for example, I found out my sister finds baby boy tank tops much less skeevy than I do. I can’t put my finger on why; they just give me the willies. I feel they’re a slippery slope to baby mesh crop tops, which pave the road for this. But that is just me.

Infant fashion preferences aside, it’s amazing to have all these free clothes. We have bins of them, sorted by size, scattered throughout our house. TW is constantly shifting clothes from bins to TB’s drawers and back out to bins to be used for the next round of babies in our family. It’s exhausting to watch. I don’t know how she does it. And yet she still finds the time to remind me I should be helping. What a woman.

So we haven’t consciously picked out too many of the boy’s clothes. Which may be why, when we do buy him an outfit for a special occasion, we get a little too excited.

What with all the screaming and feces involved in a normal dressing session, “outfit” is way too strong a word for what I normally put TB in. I just grab two things in the same general color palette. On a good day one thing will be a shirt and the other, pants. But that doesn’t mean, given the time, I don’t enjoy dressing the kid up for my own amusement.

This weekend we’re flying back East for some general family visiting and a bar mitzvah. And if you don’t think we’ve had TB’s bar mitzvah outfit picked out for weeks, well, you haven’t been reading this post. Which would be odd. Why are you starting in the middle? What’s wrong with you? Commitment problems?

Not only did we buy TB a special outfit weeks ahead of time; we made him model it one afternoon. And as I dressed my 10-month-old son up like Little Lord Fauntleroy, I realized I’m now one step away from being a person who puts a sweater on a dog. And only a half step from that lady who puts a Santa hat on her cat.

The whole baby fashion industry relies on the fact that parents use their kids to amuse themselves. And especially in those first few months when your kid gives you nothing back but blank stares and bodily fluid, maybe that is a great service. Who knows how many baby shakings a well-placed argyle sweater vest has prevented?

“I love you.” The words echo through our house. “I love you.” “Hug me.” “Red nose.” I live in a fucking minefield of talking baby toys. All on hairpin triggers – god forbid the kid breathes and his toy doesn’t shriek some platitude at him. I’m not sure how this benefits a child; the expectation that everything talks to him or giggles or sings when he touches it. Personally I think it’s setting him up for some big disappointments. And possibly prison time. “I wanted to see what sound she’d make” is not the best legal defense.

When my sister had her first baby 7 years ago, I thought it was pretty funny to buy really loud gifts. A monkey that played the bongos; Chicken Dance Elmo. (I was also partial to animals dressed as other animals, but that’s an obsession I’m not ready to explore.) I’m still not sure what was more priceless, the look from my niece or the look from my brother-in-law.

Being one of the last of my friends and family to have kids, I’m just now realizing that I was kind of an asshole.
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The Boy is about to crawl. It’s imminent. There is a buzz in our house. The biggest milestone a baby can reach short of talking. Sure he’s figured out how to roll over and he puts his foot in his mouth, but those are milestones the same way the “Best OP’er” award I won at camp for always wearing OP shorts was an actual award. I feel like they pad the developmental milestones a bit to give new parents something to compete over during playdates. “Does your baby notice his hands? Congratulations! You’re winning!” I mean, if your kid happens to follow the list, great. But checking off “stares at faces” is about as fulfilling as checking off “put on pants” from your to-do list. (Though, I did never get to that one today.)
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Mommy and Me groups: productive outlet for parental support or fear-mongering brainwash

OK, it’s unfair to single out Mommy and Me groups. Really it’s the whole parenting “industry” to blame. Or thank. I can’t quite figure it out. Because I do appreciate some information. What the hell do I know about being a parent? After diving into a few chapters of Taking Charge of Your Fertility back when we were trying to get pregnant, I realized I barely understood where babies come from, let alone how to raise them.
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“Looks like Mommy forgot to turn the TV off again.”

One of the most underrated things about having kids: it opens up a whole new channel through which you can be passive aggressive.
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The Wife was still in her hospital bed as I wheeled her to the post-partum room. It was the first private, quiet moment we’d had since the birth of our son an hour before. And the last we would share for quite some time. There was so much I could have said. So much I wanted to say. So it’s unclear why I went with, “That was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen.”
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