I Hope This Lasts

Well, we finally did it.

Actually, Diane finally did it. I'm gleefully tagging along for the ride. She finally got sick enough of constantly cleaning the house only to have it completely destroyed mere minutes later that she put together an allowance list. That's right, we've stooped to the realm of bribery and cheap child labor, appealing to the greed of our children in order to keep a clean home. Or, for those who prefer a positive spin on the situation, we're teaching our girls the values of hard work and personal responsibility, as well as the lost art of earning and saving money. Yeah, yeah, yeah...those things will hopefully sink in to their rapidly developing brains, but right now we're more concerned about not breaking our necks after stepping on a strategically placed Happy Meal toy.

Kailey and Kyra each have their own lists for the week. And each list is not limited to the usual daily/weekly chores. They also contain duties concerning personal hygeine, personal development, and the attitudes in which the duties are completed. We're going to experiment and see how far we can stretch this sucker. For instance, will the promise of monetary compensation be enough of a motivator for the girls to "be nice to one another"? Probably not. But we're going to try it anyway, though we haven't worked out the finer details of how much we'll dock the girls for being turds to each other. Now that I mention it, we haven't really decided how much we'll reward them either. No matter. That'll come.

So far our dastardly plan is coming along swimmingly. The house has been clutter-free, the girls' rooms no longer resemble obstacle courses, and the fresh scent of Pine-Sol permeates the air. One of Kailey's weekly assignments has been to mop the tile floor in the kitchen. She's so desperate for cash (not really...she's loaded) that she opted to mop DAILY. I started to tell her that she only had to do it once per week before Diane shushed me. "Don't discourage her," she chided. "If she wants to mop every day, let her." Okie-dokie!

The real question will be how long we can keep up this ruse. How long will the weekly promise of cold, hard, petty cash motivate them to become domestic goddesses? That remains to be seen, but so far, so good.

Just Another Entry in the Journal of Bad Parenting

Kyra woke me up yesterday morning, which is not unusual since she wakes me up EVERY morning, usually by rushing into our bathroom and slamming and locking the bathroom door. Why she needs to lock the door is a mystery. I guess she likes her privacy. Yesterday was different though as she shook me awake bristling with excitement. "Daddy, I'm going to pull another tooth!"

I wasn't sure she had any teeth left in her head to pull. It seems like every other day one of the girls is walking around sporting a bloody Kleenex and a fresh gap in her teeth. It's a little maddening. I asked Kyra if she even had a loose tooth. "Yes! Look!" she said, thrusting her opened mouth within an inch of my face and wiggling her remaining top front tooth. And with a maniacal cackle, she fled the room. I turned over, flipped my pillow to the cool side, and made a vain attempt to return to sleep. Two minutes later Kyra returned, head down, lower lip puffed out, tail between legs. Kyra is susceptible to severe mood swings. It makes me kind of concerned for her future. "It won't come out," she pouted. I consoled her and gave her the old "keep wiggling it" pep talk then sent her on her way.

We didn't hear anything more about the loose tooth until lunchtime when, out of the blue, Kyra punctured the silence: "WHERE IS IT!!" She darted around the room screaming, looking under couch pillows, and scanning the floor.

"Where is what?" we asked, thoroughly confused.

"MY TOOTH!!" she bellowed as she pointed to the newly acquired hole in her head. "I WENT TO WIGGLE IT, AND IT WASN'T THERE!!" Surely enough, the loose tooth gave up without a struggle, and not an ounce of blood was shed. I also noticed a pronounced lisp as she explained her situation. Without missing a beat, the rest of us began combing the family room for the missing tooth. Diane and Kailey pulled the bottom cushion off of the love seat and investigated the long lost kernels of popcorn and other miscellaneous pieces of crap that congregate under the cushion to see if the missing tooth was hiding among them. Kyra did the same with the couch. I scoured the floor for a moment before making my way over to the kitchen sink to inspect Kyra's lunch plate. Sure enough, mixed in with the remaining crumbs of Kyra's lunch and garnished with just a touch of tomato sauce (or was that ketchup?), sat Kyra's tooth.

I've never cheered for a more disgusting sight in all my life.

Fast-forward to this morning. Kyra woke both of us up, head down, lower lip puffed out, tail between legs. "The tooth fairy didn't come last night."

CRRRRRRRRAP!

"Well did you write her a note?" Diane asked groggily. I've got to hand it to my wife, she's quick on her feet and able to pull BS out of her nether regions even while half asleep. I fell in love with her all over again, morning breath and all.

"Noooo," Kyra whined.

"Well, we'll have to work on that today. She'll come. Don't worry."

Kyra seemed somewhat satisfied with Diane's response, so she continued with her morning routine by slamming and locking our bathroom door for her morning pee pee.

OK, we suck. I get that. But in our defense, we had a very busy night last night entertaining Diane's family and throwing a birthday party for our sister-in-law. We baked five pizzas...from scratch! And did I mention that we decorated for a birthday party? We were busy, busy, busy. Cooking, cleaning, decorating, eating, cleaning, partying. After the family left, we bathed the girls and didn't get them to bed until 9:30. We were tired.

And we were a little traumatized, too. At around 10:00, Diane decided to put together a batch of margaritas, but discovered shortly after mixing the necessary ingredients that we had no ice. NO ICE!! We used it all at the birthday party! All of our ice was gone! Gone, I tell you! So Diane and I stood at the opened freezer door and stared at the ice maker willing it to produce some ice. It didn't work. So we nursed ice-less margaritas until Diane heard the water turn on about a half-hour later. I rushed to the freezer, collected the ten or so precious cubes of frozen H20, and deposited them into our warm drinks.

We finished our drinks and went to bed, and never gave Kyra's tooth fairy pillow a second thought. We were tired and traumatized, and maybe a little toasted, so I guess when it comes right down to it, yes, we're bad parents. We'll pay though. Literally. I'm sure that when the tooth fairy comes tonight, she'll be leaving Kyra a fresh, crisp Ben Franklin to make up for all her troubles. I think I need another margarita, warm or otherwise.

Camping In

The girls have recently discovered the joys of "camping out"...inside the house. They've always enjoyed building tents out of blankets and pillows, then their aunt Debbie bought them real pup tents a couple of years ago which led to a period of indoor camping. It's amazing how much space a couple of pup tents occupy when set up in the family room.

Well aunt Debbie struck again a few weeks back when the girls made the trip up to the Northwest with Grammy and Papa to visit her in her new condo. Since space and sleeping arrangements was an issue, she bought the girls these Disney Princess air mattress/sleeping bag combos. They're actually pretty cool. You inflate the air mattress then slip the sleeping bag over the top. The sleeping bag stays in place and you don't have to worry about sliding off of the air mattress. I've got to hand it to aunt Debbie: she is the giver of cool gifts.

The girls brought the mattresses home after their trip, and they weren't much of an issue until this week when Diane's brother and his family came to town. He has two boys roughly the girls' age and at some point someone came up the idea of doing sleepovers. One of the girls would spend the night at Grammy and Papa's house and one of the boys would come home with us, then the next night we'd switch. Great plan.

Out came the air mattress/sleeping bag combos, and they worked great. My youngest nephew, who's four, made a little macho fuss over sleeping in a "girls bed", but that didn't last long. Both sleepover nights were huge successes. But now we can't get the girls to sleep in their own beds! They've taken turns sleeping in each others' rooms and have been putting up a fuss about sleeping in their perfectly good beds. So we've decided to put the kibosh on this recent trend before it gets out of hand.

And believe me, I know from personal experience how out of hand it can get. When I was about 11, my brother and I saw the movie Alien. It was a Sunday night and we were at my Dad's place. He let us stay a little later before dropping us off at home so we could watch the Sunday night premiere of Alien on HBO. So we "watched" the movie (mostly through our fingertips), it scared the mother-junkies out of us, and my Dad took us home in time for us to get into bed because Monday, as it turned out, was a school day. I slept not a frickin' wink. My brother slept not a frickin' wink either. We spent the better part of three months taking turns sleeping in a sleeping bag, sans air mattress, on the hard floor of each others' room, well aware of the fact that monsters materialize UNDERNEATH the bed, making the unfortunate floor-dweller of that particular evening easy fodder. But I guess we figured that getting eaten together was better than getting eaten alone. And unlike the poor fools in Alien, we weren't in space where no one can hear you scream, so we persisted in our nightly ritual. And I wonder where the girls get some of their nervous, paranoid tendencies. Mystery solved.

So we packed the air mattresses away. It's only a matter of time until I do something stupid like let them watch a movie that they're too young to see and that scares the mother-junkies out of them. Then history will repeat itself. At least they'll have comfy air mattresses to sleep on.

You Know It's GOT To Be a Good Day

I'm a creature of habit. Every day before work, I stop at Starbuck's for a little caffeinated pick-me-up. As a cost-saving measure, I'll usually go for a straight coffee, which is still $2.00 for a venti. It's been way too hot to be drinking coffee in the afternoon, so I've been splurging on iced lattes. This afternoon I dropped the girls off at my in-laws, then pulled in to the nearest Starbuck's to get my fix. There was one gentleman in line in front of me. I call him "gentleman" because he was wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt and tie. That puts him in "gentleman" status in my book. If he's wearing a t-shirt and shorts, then he's a "dude". Why I'm trying to explain all this, I don't know.

Anywho, this "gentleman" was purchasing a butt-load of gift cards, only I didn't realize it at the time. The barista asked me what I wanted and proceeded to create my tasty beverage. In the meantime, I waited behind the gentleman. And waited. After about a minute I wondered what was going on. Admittedly, I was a little slow on the draw, but give me a break, I hadn't yet enjoyed my caffeinated beverage! The gentleman was just standing there while the cashier was running transactions. I peeked around him and noticed a hefty stack of gift cards piling up on the counter. This was going to take a while.

The barista finished preparing my drink and brought it over to the registers and slid it across the counter in my direction. He analyzed the situation, studying the mound of gift cards and the ratio of cards processed to total cards. He then looked over at the unused register and I could see the wheels of his mind churning as he weighed the time/energy aspect of logging into the register and ringing up my transaction. This took mere seconds, and after reaching a conclusion, he grabbed my drink and slid it further in my direction as he declared, "Here you go, it's on the house."

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

I thanked him profusely, grabbed my FREE drink and skipped out the door like a school girl (as a father of two school girls, I'm an expert on this). I LOVE Starbuck's, and I LOVE FREE STUFF! How could today NOT be a good day?

Wait...don't answer that.

Tourney Time: The Bad & The Ugly

Well it's too bad that even a tournament for 8 year-olds has to have ugly moments. It's sad when the kids are more mature than the adults, and this weekend reminded me once again of how easily children's sporting events can turn to fisticuffs amongst the parents. On to the review of the Bad and the Ugly of All-Star Tournament weekend.


The Bad

I've alluded to it in previous posts, but the weather sucked. It was too freakin' hot, and I'm amazed that none of the players succumbed to heat exhaustion. Kudos to the coaches who kept the girls hydrated and sprayed down. Temperatures averaged around 105 and topped out at 108.

And it was ridiculous what the parents had to drag around to keep from dying. You couldn't sit on the metal bleachers unless you wanted your ass served sunny-side up. So the area surrounding the ball fields turned into tent city with families hauling and erecting 10' and 12' portable canopies to provide shelter from the sun. In between games there was a steady flow of tournament refugees toting canopies, chairs, and coolers between the fields and the parking lot. It was quite the sight to see. By the time we actually got our canopy and chairs set up, we were drenched with sweat and spent the rest of the game sucking down as much water as possible to replace the liquid draining from our sweat glands.

So I'm thinking that next year All-Star weekend should take place around April.


The Ugly

I think if there's anything worse than a sore loser, it's a sore winner. I mean, seriously, you're winning. What in the world do you have to complain about? We played the tournament #1 seed twice and got stomped 9-0 and 6-0, even though we gave them a tough fight through half of the second game. In both of those games, their coaches and/or parents complained about some activity surrounding our team. In the first game, the teenage brother of one of the girls on Kailey's team brought a small cow bell. He attached it to his chair and rang it when one of our girls got a hit or made a good play. He wasn't being overly raucous or obnoxious with it, but at the end of the second inning, when we were losing 6-0, the umpire came up to the backstop and said, "Ummm, I'm sorry, didn't realize this but cow bells aren't allowed." They were routing us and complaining about a cow bell. Pretty pathetic.

It gets worse. We were playing for our tournament lives in our Sunday afternoon rematch, and our girls were stoked. We held the #1 seed scoreless for the first two innings and the heat was on. Our girls came up to bat in the top of the third inning and everyone in the dugout was doing cheers and getting into the game. We had them up against the ropes and we knew it.

At some point in the inning one of the opposing team's coaches called time and came out to speak with the ump (the same ump who banned our cow bell). They spoke in hushed tones for a minute, then the ump walked over to our coach at third base and spoke to him for a minute. A smirk crept across our coach's face as he and the ump walked across the field to our dugout on the first base side. There they addressed our team for a few moments before the ump took his position behind the plate and our coach returned to third base. The whole time the crowd buzzed wondering what the hell was going on.

Our questions were answered moments later. And it didn't help the situation that most of the parents from both teams were lumped together behind home plate under the canopies of the tent city erected there. One of the moms from the other team delivered the news to everyone within earshot in a manner reminiscent of a prissy schoolgirl ratting out a spitball-wielding classmate. "It's in the RULES. They are not supposed to cheer while the pitcher is in the act of pitching. It's in the RULES."

A collective groan arose from the cluster of Southeast parents. Are you even f-ing kidding me? Here we are, the first team in the tournament to give them a real game, and they're nitpicking on when and how the girls can cheer? If our girls were screaming at the point of the pitcher's release and trying to razz her, then I think their complaint would be legitimate. But they weren't. They were getting into the spirit of the game, and to us, the complaint was totally petty.

The atmosphere behind home plate was tense after that, to say the least, and a few words were exchanged between parents. Fortunately, after a brief period of grumbling, everyone exercised restraint and tried their best to enjoy the game. Their girls scored three runs in the bottom of the third, effectively ending the game. We came so close to rubbing it in their fat faces...is that bad?

In a way, yes, it is. These are 8 year-old girls we're talking about here (although they had twelve of the biggest 8 year-olds I'VE ever seen). They probably still play Barbie's, and dress up, and do all the things that 8 year-old girls do. It's what the adults do that taint the kids and teach them that it's OK to do whatever it takes to win or that winning is the only thing. So, in essence, I guess I really wanted to rub it in the coaches' "fat faces".

Oh, I forgot another vital piece of information concerning those coaches. Diane and her mom were sitting by the opposing team's bench during their first drubbing when they overheard their head coach talking about our team. "This is what we used to look like before I took over this program," he bragged. What an ass. Sure, he's built a winning program, but at what cost? A program that produces a bunch of cry babies when they're winning? I'd hate to see how ugly it gets when they lose. And what does it teach these little girls?

OK, at this point I realize that I'm probably the one who sounds like a sore loser. It's not that at all. It didn't bother me in the least that we lost to the #2 seed on Saturday night. It was a close game, and, more importantly, their team was good and they handled themselves with class. They didn't bitch and moan that girls were being girls. Their coaches weren't these raging type-A personalities with testosterone gushing out of every pore of their bodies. They were competitive and they played hard, but they kept it all in perspective.

So while it was disappointing as the underdog to come up short against the #1 seed, I was still proud of our girls. They worked hard after losing a couple of games when they could have just given up. Now Kailey's coaches are talking about starting a Fall Ball team, so we'll see what Kailey wants to do. She's definitely a talented softball player and we want to encourage her and support her in any REASONABLE way we can. If she wants to play, we'll sign her up. I just want to make sure that I don't become one of those ultra-competitive softball fanatics, which I could probably slip into rather easily.

But for now, we'll just take a little breather from softball, until next week that is. Monday morning at 6:00 am, Kailey AND Kyra will be joining me in the backyard for drills and BP, 'cause next year we're gonna win it all!