We Took 'Em Out To The Ball Game

It kinda felt like a Mastercard commercial -- you know, the ones that always end in "Priceless." Though you could easily substitute "Pricey." Much money was spent bewteen the tickets, the hot dogs, the lemonade, the peanuts (well, they didn't go for the peanuts, which required too much work and then didn't taste sufficiently like peanut butter), the frozen treats. But there we were at Dodger Stadium with our four-year-olds attending their very first major league baseball game, seated between home plate and first base, not exactly in a field box, but close enough for a pretty good view. The kids clutched Webkinz koala bears: the first 15,000 kids were handed the stuffed koalas upon entrance to the stadium, because it just happened to be Kid Appreciation Day. The National Anthem was sung by the crowd, hats on hearts, as an elementary school string ensemble sawed it out on violin (another nod to Kid Appreciation Day), the line-ups were announced, the players took the field, and baseball began. The kids were enthralled.

Though truth be told, it was the snacks, more than the baseball, that held them in thrall.

But for the first time, they heard the crack of bat against ball, unfiltered by the TV. They heard the crowd's boisterous reactions to home runs and stolen bases, some reactions too loud for my son, who held his hands on his ears. They witnessed the wave, if not exactly participating in it. They heard the organ and the chants of "Charge!" that reminded them of Yosemite Sam. And pretty soon, my daughter, her face smeared in syrup from cherry Italian ices, declared that we must come back here again.

The first couple of innings, I earnestly tried to explain the game, in preschool terms, to my boy (Thing 1); my girl (Thing 2) was too focused on eating the requisite three bites of hot dog so she could move on to sweets. He asked about "the gray guys," the Seattle Mariners, who happened to be the visiting team. I told him the Dodgers were going to try to stop the gray guys from getting a run, by catching the balls they hit, and throwing the balls to the players on the bases. Thing 1 had a question: "Is that mean?" I tried to explain that no, trying to keep the other team from scoring isn't mean; it's just how the game is played. But he was dubious.

The Diamondvision (giant screen) was fascinating for awhile too, though they wanted desperately to be on it, and the cameras never quite made it our way. My favorite moment was when a guy proposed to his girl on the screen, clearly pre-arranged with the Dodgers. Someone in his party was ready because after the big kiss, a sign behind them was held up that read, "She said yes." I was gushing. The romance, however, was lost on the kids, who by then were just hot.

It was then I learned my big lesson of the day. Never buy seats for a summer day game that aren't under the overhang. Dad soon offered to bring the kids up into the shade to buy refreshments, and it was at least two innings before they all returned. Not long after, the heat was wilting them again, so this time, I took them for bathroom breaks and lemonade, and in search of a spot with an actual breeze.

Still, this managed to kill enough time that by the time we returned to Late Blooming Dad, it was nearly the seventh inning stretch, and that had been our goal all along: we knew we could get them to stay through then because we promised them everyone would sing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame," a song we taught them early on. The song sung, we headed out, and two very wilted kids suddenly sprang to life, play-acting with their koalas, singing nonsense songs, behaving in a positively giddy manner. As we headed up the stadium steps, the guy who'd sat behind us in his Brooklyn jersey said, "Your children are delightful." And at that moment, I had to agree.

Best of all, though, was how happy it made Late Blooming Dad. It wasn't quite perfect, perhaps: for him, that would have meant a Yankee game. But for me, whose dad grew up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and who visited this very stadium once with that same dad, it was pretty sweet to see my kids introduced to the great American pastime. For a few hours on a summer Sunday afternoon, it wasn't about steroids or player salaries or even the five-dollar hot dogs. It was just about my family watching the ballgame.

Summer Vacation Blues: The Kids Have More Time Off Than I Do

I have to work this week.

So the kids are attending mini-camp every day at their preschool, a sort of stop-gap measure the school offers between the end of school and the start of summer camp. But when I dropped them off the first day, I noticed there were maybe ten kids attending mini-camp, and it's been pretty much that size, give or take a few kids, since then.

I'm wondering where everyone else is. Did everyone else take vacation? Or is it that so many moms (or dads) aren't working, or aren't working full-time, and are just hanging with their kids at home? Because me, I'd be scrambling without mini-camp. As it was, after school closed last Wednesday at noon, I had to line up babysitting for two and a half days, just to get to this week.

I know some people must've gone out of town, and believe me, if I coulda, I woulda. But here's the rub: there are two weeks from when camp ends to when school starts up in the fall. And there were two weeks earlier this year for spring break. Plus there were those various and sundry days when the school was closed for teacher training, or one of the Jewish holidays I don't observe. If I total all the days the school was closed since January, and will be closed until school starts up in September, leaving out camp and mini-camp, it's nearly five weeks. And if you add in all the days it'll be closed this fall, leaving out legal holidays like Thanksgiving and such, well, it's pretty much close to seven weeks.

But I'm a working parent entitled to a mere ten paid vacation days and two personal days a year. That means I've gotta find places to park my kids all those days -- and pay for it. Sure I'll manage a week's vacation with them before school resumes in the fall. But it doesn't feel like much.

I hate how this makes me feel. I want to be off more time when my kids are off, and can't be. I have to pay to get them attended to the many days I can't be around to do it. And I feel guilty -- way guilty -- when they walk into mini-camp and there are so few kids around.

On the other hand, when I pick them up from mini-camp, they seem happy. Why not? With less than a dozen kids around, they've got the run of the play yard, and just enough playmates to keep them occupied. They get plenty of attention from their favorite teachers. And they show no signs of feeling upset that they're not with me or at home.

Still, I am sad.

I recall long summer days spent at a no-frills vacation beach cabin on Fire Island, biking, swimming, playing on the beach, with mom around all day, hanging with the other moms, and dad commuting out from the city on the weekends to join us, or staying longer for vacation. I marvel now that my parents could afford this luxury on one salary, or one plus my mom's part-time elementary school substitute teaching when she went back to work.

As a Late Blooming Mom, I find it especially frustrating that I, who waited so long to have kids, am still not in a position to be with them more. They go to school for many more hours than I did at their age, putting in a full day while I'm working. This is what they know, and what feels normal to them. But because I had a different childhood, I feel as if I'm depriving them of something.

The other side of this coin is that my mom felt unfulfilled professionally, and had jobs, but never really a career. She was overly attached in some ways, or overly involved, in her children's lives, living too much through my brother and I, and then was pretty devastated when her nest emptied. She eventually found her footing, going into business with my dad, who was then a consultant. But she gave up something all those years she was around for her kids. I don't think she ever articulated that, nor did she ever really know for sure what career she would have pursued if given the option. Yet there was something she missed out on.

I wish mom could've had a more fulfilling professional life. But I'm also grateful for that childhood time, especially those early summers when I wasn't at school or camp, but just spent the days playing. Of course it was a different world: she could let me and my friends roam from house to house on Fire Island, go out biking by ourselves, and never worry: there were no cars allowed on the island, the nearest store was the next town over, and it seemed like we knew someone on every block. And mom did sign us up for swimming lessons, or trade kid-watching with other moms. You didn't have to cart your kid from place to place in a car, nor be on top of them all the time to ensure their safety.

Unlike my mom, I can't enjoy a seemingly endless summer vacation with the kids. I need the money for us all to live, and I simply gotta work. I know my kids are going to turn out just fine. But in summertime, especially, I chafe at the limits my worklife places on my homelife ... and wish I could give my kids even a little bit of the summers I had.

Everybody Needs A Recharge

First thing my dearest friend and working mom of two said to me when I called her up Saturday afternoon, long-distance: "I'm so tired I could sleep for a week." Followed by, "Of course that's not gonna happen." But oh, how I can relate.

Forty-something, we're starting to realize we don't quite have the get-up-and-go, 24-7, that we've had for most of our lives up to now. And we're both juggling working, kids, pets, and husbands, who thank goodness, see the need to give us some relief sometimes, and take at least some of these creatures off our hands for a few hours.

Mine is doing me the honor of letting me get away for an entire weekend, about a month from now. It'll be my first time away from the children for more than one night at a time, since they were born. And it'll be my very first time away from husband AND kids at the same time. I suppose I have to thank my husband's college buddies indirectly for this, because last weekend, he flew off to New England to be with them for three nights, and had a grand old time. So grand, in fact, that while sitting on the beach on Cape Cod, he thought, "My wife would really like this. In fact, she should have this." So he starting calling around my various Boston-area buddies to find out when they'd be around for a visit, and surreptitiously began to make my get-away happen.

I've been so tired this past week, though, that he realized something was needed before then. He sent me out to the movies with a girlfriend last night, and today, carted the kids off to their Saturday gym class, followed by lunch and a visit to the car museum. It's just me and the cat in the otherwise empty house. I've cranked up the early 1970s hits (yes, every once in a while it's actually fun to listen to Tony Orlando and Dawn), and after reading the newspaper, having a very long shower, puttering around, and making myself a really good lunch, I'm sitting down to blog and marveling at just how good it is to recharge my batteries for a few hours.

My long-distance dear friend, whom I'll see on this New England trek, assured me that time away is a good thing for all concerned. She said she had to get over the fact that when she left her husband with the kids, sometimes they wouldn't brush their hair or their teeth, or take a shower, or eat quite the way she might've liked. (This brings to mind the old Bill Cosby routine, in which he gives his kids chocolate cake for breakfast because hey, it contains milk and eggs, doesn't it?) The kids needed to know they'd be fine with dad, and she needed to know it too ... especially if she would ever get any time to herself.

I think back to when my dad used to take business trips. My mom had him call her when he landed, and of course they spoke every night, if not several times a day. Yet she told me she liked those trips, just as she was glad when he returned.

It's funny to me how I longed for a husband and family for years, and now I need a respite from them ... but only a brief one, to be sure. Because they're my home. They are my terra firma. And I can't imagine my life without them, nor do I want to.

I wonder why it's so hard to recharge when the kids finally get to sleep, or on the date nights we try to schedule once every couple of weeks. The breaks are nice, but still, after four years of pretty much day in, day out parenting twins, I need something a little more extended. Still, I feel guilty somehow. Good thing I called back east, because every friend I spoke to today whom I plan to see on my 3-day escape all say it's a very, very good thing I'll be doing.

It'll be hard to miss my man next to me in bed (not to mention the cat curled up in my legs), and the soft cheeks and little arms of my kids hugging me close. I'll probably still feel a little guilty knowing Late Blooming Dad will be dealing with all those meals, bathtimes and bedtimes without me. But given how good he's felt since he returned from his break -- who is this happy guy? -- I think I'll be feeling pretty good too when I return.

He Likes To Wear The PowerPuff Girl PJs

My son adores playing with all manner of cars, trains, and planes. He makes up sound effects for all of them. When the girls in the preschool class get busy painting, drawing, creating books, he's with the guys playing with the toy vehicles instead.

But he likes to wear his sister's PowerPuff Girls PJs.

The other day, coming out of the bath, he asked me why daddy shaves (his face, that is) but I don't. After I put his hand on my smooth cheeks to show I didn't need to, he asked if he would get to shave when he's older. I said yes. He did a little enthusiastic jump and said, "I'm so excited!"

But he likes to wear his sister's zebra and froggie and sometimes even Dora underwear.

He has an endless fascination for all things mechanical. He can concentrate intently on putting plastic or wooden train tracks together, and enjoys crashing his toy vehicles, again with appropriate sound effects. He goes crazy for a toy airport, garage or barn that has an elevator or ramp. He knows the names of all the trains in THOMAS AND FRIENDS.

But awhile back, he said he was going to be a woman when he grows up, because that's what his sister said she was going to be, and when she said "no, you're going to be a man," he was intent on contradicting her.

He loves using urinals and much prefers them over sitting down to pee. He loves his khakis with many pockets, he adores baseball hats, and back when it was Halloween, he had to be in a Lightning McQueen Pit Crew costume.

Yet his preschool teachers told us that earlier this year, he got into a dress in the dress-up area, put on the princess slippers, and cracked them all up.

Psychologists will tell you this is all normal experimentation and doesn't mean anything. Happily, the other kids don't tease him about his choices, so it's all fun with no down side.

But sometimes I do have a stray thought, as any parent might when witnessing such experimentation, what if my son turns out to be gay? Whatever happens will make no difference in my love for him, but even though things have come farther along in this society when it comes to acceptance of homosexuality, there's still a lot of attitude adjustment I'm afraid will take generations to fix. So I find myself hoping he turns out straight, because his path in life may be easier because of it. Not easy, of course -- relationships and dating are fraught with perils. Whatever the boy turns out to be, traveling the road to love is going to involve bumps along the way.

Yet I also wonder if my worry for him reveals I'm prejudiced underneath it all ... despite always having had dear, close gay friends of both genders, and priding myself on being a good old fashioned Liberal to whom such things as sexual orientation just plain don't matter.

In the meantime, I watch as he has fun in his sister's PJs -- he does look awfully cute in them -- and figure at the very least, I've got a story to tell at his wedding ... whatever kind of wedding it turns out to be.

Gearing Up For the Solo Parenting Weekend

As I write this, Late Blooming Dad is winging his way to Cape Cod for a reunion with some college buddies and their families.

It was too costly and too much of a production to head east for a three-day weekend with all four of us, so I'm here holding down the fort as Chief Parent, and hoping the Gods of Parental Patience are with me.

I don't know that the kids are asleep yet; but after reading many, many books aloud to them, some in the dark via flashlight, and listening to an entire CD with them, I needed to exit their room and do some household chores. I'm blogging in the hope -- very possibly vain hope -- that when I return to check on them, they'll actually be down for the count.

Then it's time for me to get some seriously deep sleep, because without it, nerves will fray this weekend.

I am looking forward to some sweet moments that I know will happen somehow or other, and hoping the kids will be extra tender toward me because they know I'm flying solo with them. Unless, of course, they take wicked, mischievous advantage of this. My suspicion is, I'll experience the tenderness AND the mischief, though in what measure, I can't say. It may depend on how much -- or how little -- sleep they get, for well-slept children are manageable children, and tired children are the Von Crankensteins.

Every so often I see friends' status updates on Facebook in which they chart their solo parenting courses while their spouse is away. They always survive, and sometimes thrive ... but also seem very, very relieved when it's all over. One friend who has three kids, two of them twins, seems to be a champ at handling these solo flights, so I take heart that she can do it and vow to follow her confident, competent example. I do this knowing she used to take a couple dozen spoiled west side of L.A. high schoolers on wilderness experiences, so she has nerves of steel and the patience of a saint. So it may not be so easy for me to emulate her.

Others to whom I've alerted my plight are sending advice (every meal doesn't have to be perfect; oh, and what you say is the law, there is no appealing to another authority -- 'cause he's outta town!) or messages offering help -- even single friends are coming out of the woodwork to do so.

You wouldn't think the prospect of getting through three days by yourself with a couple of four-year-olds should seem so daunting as to elicit these kind of responses ... or so much trepidation on my part. After all, plenty of moms have more kids than I, or more difficult kids, and they get through it without making a fuss.

Maybe I'm just a whiner, part of the Greatest Complaining Generation. But I put it down to this: I spend much of my time exhausted. I work fulltime, I'm over forty, and I begin and end my days trying to feed, clothe, wash and groom two highly energetic and rarely cooperative little beings who have an entirely different agenda than mine. I think I'm entitled to a little apprehension.

What's that I hear? Nothing! Quiet! Could it be they're finally out?

The weekend is well begun ... and it's still only Thursday night.

Not So Up About "Up"

Took the kids to see "UP," Pixar's latest, with some of their other preschool pals & parents.

Spent half the movie trying to answer Thing 2's incessant, very puzzled questions, in-between reassuring her about parts that were too intense for her. Spent about a quarter of it watching Thing 1's face: he was amazed, mesmerized, amused, among other things, though a good deal of it clearly was going way over his head. Spent the rest of the time alternately entertained and wishing it wasn't so emotionally grown-up.

In case you haven't seen it, I caution that some spoilers are ahead, but here goes: in the first few minutes, in a montage, protagonist Carl Fredrickson goes from being a young boy to an old man, and his entire relationship with Ellie, the girl he marries, is chronicled, including a miscarriage of her pregnancy, and later, her death. Later on in the movie, a vicious pack of dogs repeatedly chases a cute bird trying to get back to its babies, as well as Carl and his boyscout pal Russel; the dogs are repeatedly physically and verbally abusive to the one nice dog, Dug; and aged explorer Muntz puts the bird, Dug, Carl and Russell, who is after all just a kid, presumably much like the kids in the audience, in mortal jeopardy time and time again.

The movie is imaginative, inventive and funny and heartfelt. But I gotta say, I kinda wish I hadn't taken my kids.

One of my kids' schoolmates had to be removed from the theater, and the movie wasn't even half over. She was just that upset. She wasn't the only kid who was taken out part-way through.

After the movie, one of the preschool pals' moms and I wondered together why filmmakers for kids find it so necessary to throw so much death and loss at young children. We don't think it's necessary. It's not that we want to shelter our kids forever, but as the mom said to me, "There'll be plenty of time for that stuff later." She lambasted kids movies for always being about someone with "a dead parent." With Disney in particular, having a lead character who's missing a parent seems like a requirement (think about it: Ariel, Jasmine and Belle only have daddies; Cinderella, just and evil Stepmom; and Simba's father is murdered by Simba's uncle -- it's basically "Hamlet" for the under ten set). But even Pixar sometimes kills somebody off within the first five minutes of a movie (Nemo's mom). This time, the character who died wasn't somebody's mother (the miscarriage scene, which I'm sure went well over my four-year-olds' heads, made sure of that). But she was a lovely, likable character, and she was dead in like four minutes after being introduced.

I'm pretty sure my kids didn't quite get this, at least not entirely. But Thing 2, who is way more sensitive and attuned to such things compared to her brother, turned to me at one point and asked me point blank, "Where did Ellie [the character who dies] go?" This is not what I bargained for when I spent forty dollars so my family of four could attend a Sunday family matinee.

I haven't let our kids see BAMBI, despite the cuteness of Flower and Thumper. I'm not over the loss of Bambi's mom yet and it's been decades since that first viewing. And you can bet my kids are years away from the hard stuff of HARRY POTTER (both parents murdered, and the guy wants to off Harry too ... if that's not nightmare-inducing, I don't know what is). It's not always death that's the trauma in these movies either. I'm still heartbroken over that separation between Dumbo and his mom.

When my kids were three, they lived on such tame fare as CARS, CURIOUS GEORGE and BEE MOVIE, in which nothing truly scary ever happens, and nobody dies. I know these movies aren't emotionally as rich as those that deal with more serious themes. They're surely more forgettable. And though I do think many of the movies I saw as a child that have stayed with me dealt with some serious subject matter, I've got to admit that I'm equally keen on MARY POPPINS.

In fact, after today's experience, I'm even more keen on it. My kids adore MARY POPPINS. It's overly long, it's lacking in the conflict department, some elements seem totally random (what's with that retired admiral next door shooting fireworks off his ship-shaped roof?). But the only sorts of questions they have prompted are "How does Mary Poppins fly?" and "Is she magic?" And there have been countless car rides with the kids singing "It's A Jolly Holiday With Mary," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," and "Chim-Chim-Chiree."

We all know life can be dark and scary and grim. Aside from its dark parts, UP is, ultimately, an "up" experience, and the lesson the main character learns as he processes his grief and decides to do something life affirming, is a good one. It's just not one I think my kids need to learn just yet.

Ready Or Not, Here Come The Light Sabers

Late Blooming Dad often teases me that I went to a commie-pinko kumbaya touchy feely private school. He's exaggerating, of course, but the Friends school I attended (Friends schools are run by the Society of Friends, otherwise known as Quakers) did emphasize peace, made community service a requirement of graduation, and required everyone from faculty to students sit together in a silent meeting house for twenty minutes every day at the start of the day. They also banned toy guns, decades before the school shootings that plague American society today. If you were caught with so much as a dime store water pistol (remember dime stores? But I digress ...), you were sent home for the day and your parents were taken to task.

Naturally, as a mom, I try to limit my kids' exposure to violence, but there's only so much one can do. Our kids don't watch the news or any adult TV shows, and the only on-screen violence they've been exposed to has been that contained in classic Warner Bros. cartoons. Even those, which I grew up enjoying and whose artistry, humor and inventiveness I admire as an adult, are a bit dicey in my view, but after some initial hesitation, I'm letting the kids watch them uncensored. Thing 1 thinks they're hysterical and generally laughs in all the right places, though Thing 2, being the more sensitve sibling, needs constant reassurance that the coyote is never going to catch the Road Runner. Thing 1, perhaps because he's a boy, readily accepts the coyote chasing that Road Runner and enjoys all the mishaps the coyote gets into. Thing 2, on the other hand, has asked me again and again why the coyote wants to eat the Road Runner. Today she asked me why Porky had a "blue eye" (really a black one) after watching Daffy slap him around a bit, then seemed reassured when, a few frames later, Porky's eye was back to normal. She knows that we in this house don't like guns, and asks a lot about the Warner Bros. cartoons in which somebody uses one. I keep telling her they are cartoon guns, not real guns, and it's real guns that are bad. But pacificist that I am, the only gun I'm really comfortable with is Duck Dodgers' Acme Disintigrating Pistol because when Daffy fires it, it disintegrates.

Last week at school, I was picking the kids up from the play yard when Thing 1 ran up to me with a rolled up piece of construction paper, taped together, that one of the teachers helped him make. He was playing with another boy who had a similar "tube," and who clearly had told my son that these tubes were light sabers. My son has never seen STAR WARS (though he will someday, it's as inevitable as a trip to Disneyland and getting braces). So I know it wasn't my son who named the tubes light sabers. Still, I was saddened, especially when the boy he was playing with came up to me, touched me with his light saber, and said, "You're dead."

But things got measurably better quickly when my daughter, who had witnessed this, leapt to my defense. She got between me and the kid with the "weapon" and loudly declared, "You can't hurt her. She has a hernia!"

It was one of those moments when a parent can hardly keep a straight face.

What made me even happier later was when my son, who'd brought the "light saber" home, showed it to daddy, but declared it "a telescope."

I'm hoping he thinks of it as a telescope for a long time to come.