Oct 31 2008
Virginia Linn / Oct. 31, 2008
I live in a great neighborhood for trick-or-treating, especially on mild evenings. It's like a giant block party with all the neighbors out on their front porches (sometimes handing Rolling Rocks or glasses of wine to the grown-ups) or getting involved with some of the more elaborate house decorations that need some human assistance for their moving parts.
This has always been a fall highlight, but I won't be wandering about tonight. My kids are too old. The 17-year-old is hanging out with friends, the 15-year-old is helping to host a party elsewhere and my 13-year-old is trick-or-treating with his buddies sans mom.
Sigh. Last year was the first time we weren't involved in going door to door and it left an empty feeling.
I'm half tempted to get in full costume with mask and trick-or-treat without them. (Heck, some of the "kids" coming to my door tower over me) Who would know?
Oh, how pathetic is that?
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/10/31/hollow-halloween.aspx
Oct 28 2008
My wife was lying against the side of the bed, covering her face and giggling like mad. I was spooning her from behind, with my arm braced to protect her from above.
My 14-year-old son was lying on the edge of the bed above us. Little Sam, almost two now, was behind him, pushing.
"Harder!" he said as he pushed, making his voice sound like he was straining mightily. "Harder! Harder!"
Then my great gangly long boy rolled off the bed, across my arm, over my shoulder and onto the padding behind me. My wife howled and shook with laughter, which got only worse as Sam appeared, in his full naked glory, standing on the edge of the bed.
"Step-It Down!" he called out, and jumped from the bed onto the pile.
"What does that even mean?" my older son said as Sam clambered back onto the bed and we all started untangled.
Who knows? In fact, we're not even sure "Step-It Down" is even the right name. That's what it sounds like to me, but others argue for "Steppin' Down," which would make more sense, though still not all that much.
Only Sam knows for sure, and he's not sharing.
It's a game that started a few months ago, growing from the expediency that holds sway in our bedroom.
The room has a sloping ceiling because it's up under the eaves of the house. To maximize space, we simply put the box springs on the floor so we could have our heads under the slope and still sit up.
Then, during a bout of back troubles in January, I abandoned the bed in favor of a slab of foam robber on the hard floor. It works so well that I'll never go back. I have my foam "mattress" pushed up against the edge of the bed so my wife and I can be in the same ZIP code, but there it is.
The creates, for Sam, a perfect playground.
"Step-It Down!" he'll say as we head upstairs at the end of the evening.
"Yes, Darling, we can Step-It Down."
This involves climbing on Mommy's bed, throwing all the pillows onto Daddy's bed, jumping off Mommy's bed onto Daddy's bed, doing somersaults on Mommy's bed, getting Daddy to lie down on Mommy's bed so he can be pushed off onto his own bad (accompanied by a strained-sounding "harder! Harder!"), then jumping on Daddy for some wrestling and tickling, then doing to the same to Mommy, to whatever siblings are on hand, even to the occasional friend of a sibling.
After a few minutes of that, he goes in the bath - then gets out, brushes his teeth, and does it again naked!
Now, I miss being in bed with my wife. And she says she misses me. We've talked about getting a bed with a hard half and a soft half ("I feel like I'm sleeping on a cloud!" she always says of her marshmallow-pouf mattress), but who has money for that? I have vague mental carpentry plans for a platform what would raise my foam slab up to bed level, so we could at least sleep on the same vertical plane.
But you know what? I could never sleep on that platform, knowing that never again would my naked little boy come dive-bombing off Mommy's bed. And what's he going to do, roll me "harder! Harder!" onto the floor?
"Step-It Down" will end on its own, and all too soon. They all do, the silly fun little games that spice up childhood. A couple of blinks and he'll be 14 like the other one, looking me straight in the eye and singing bass.
Then I can build my platform. There's no hurry now.
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/burghdad/archive/2008/10/28/step-it-down-or-is-it-steppin-down.aspx
Oct 23 2008
Virginia Linn/ Oct. 23, 2008
Waiting in the grocery line yesterday, I scanned the tell-all interview in People Magazine about the grown-up Maureen McCormick, aka Marcia Brady, who did some very naughty grown-up things while playing the wholesome teen on TV.
Now 52 - with all the sordid times behind her of swapping sex for cocaine, partying with Hugh Hefner, having two abortions and bedding TV sibling Greg Brady- she's living a very Brady Bunch existence in California.
She's in the news because she's just come out with a memoir revealing her troubled life. Before it was published, she realized that she had to break the news to her 19-year-old daughter Natalie. She said her daughter's jaw dropped when she heard what mom was really like in her younger years.
That got me to thinking of the questions our teens ask us that are far more dreaded than "Where do babies come from?"
It's more like, "Hey Mom, did you do drugs in college?" "Did you smoke?" "Did you have premarital sex?"
An old classmate of mine recently recalled how her husband, who had done LSD and other drugs as a soldier in Vietnam, had told her college-age son all about his youthful antics. (This was after the couple had vowed not to talk about such stuff with their children so as not to encourage similar behavior).
Well, her husband spilled the beans and her son entered his freshman year at college trying to outdo dear old dad and nearly crashed and burned. He's pulled himself together for his sophomore year and things seem to be back on track.
I had read somewhere or possibly had been advised by someone - I can't remember which - to never talk with my own children about my youthful extracurricular activities. You still need to be a parent (not a best friend). You might think that telling all can serve as a life lesson to your children "I did this, this and this, and Thank God nothing really bad happened to me, but don't you do it because it's dangerous and reckless and stupid."
But the bottom line: it's none of their business and you shouldn't feel obligated to tell all just because they asked.
So when those questions came last summer from Kid No. 1, I quickly shut down the conversation and said I would not talk about such things. She's never brought it up since. I hope I'm being a good role model with how I act now, not with what I might have done.
But I'm sure other parents don't agree with this approach. How do you handle these questions? Do you tell all or stay mum?
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/10/23/tell-all-or-stay-mum.aspx
Oct 16 2008
Sam weathered it OK when his mother left, just a droopy lip and a pathetic little "Mommy?"
"She's just going to football," I said. "We'll see her soon."
She was taking my stepson to a rival school district for a scrimmage. I was going to feed Sam, pick up my other stepson from his cross-country practice, then go meet up with her.
It was a lot to do in a short time, and I had just finished work and felt a little harried. I started some water for noodles, plopped him in his high chair, cut up an apple and filled his cup with milk.
Then, just as the noodles were almost done, my stepson called from cross-country practice. So I turned the water down, pulled Sam from his chair and headed to the car.
Now, Sam was hungry, and wasn't thrilled to leave - and this was on top of Mommy leaving. But he was quiet on to 1.8-mile ride to the school and happy when his brother got in.
Then we headed home.
"Foo'ball!" Sam yelled. "Foo'ball! Foo'ball!" And he started crying.
I sighed. "He thought were going up to football practice," I told my stepson.
Sam is the prince of football practice. The other moms and dads there dote on him. A couple of teenagers with brothers on the team play with him. And there are several other younger kids too. He loves it.
He cried the whole way down the hill. He cried when I put him in his high chair. He cried while I got noodles and peas into a bowl for him.
Then he stuck his fingers in the bowl. "Hot! Hot!" he said.
I was hungry myself. I was already late for the scrimmage. The crying was driving me around the bend. But I took a breath, picked up the bowl, blew on the contents, mixed them around with a fork.
"There!" I said. "It'not too hot now."
In went the fingers. "Hot! Hot!"
I took another deep breath, swallowed my temper. I blew on the noodles again, and again gave them back.
In went the fingers. "Hot! Hot!"
I snatched him out of the high chair. "Fine, then! Don't eat it! Just don't cry about it anymore!" I said, plopping him on the kitchen floor.
That, of course, just made him cry harder. He walked out of the kitchen sobbing, "Hot! Hot!" His steps and sobs receded beyond the wall.
Guilt washed over me as the mayhem eased. I picked up the bowl, drained off a little more water. I put on a little more margarine, stirred it around, blew on it some more.
Then the little footsteps returned to the kitchen.
"Baby cry," Sam said, looking at me with red-rimmed eyes.
"Yes, the baby was crying quite a bit."
"Baby cry," he said again. I lifted him back into the high chair.
"It's hard when you cry so much," I said.
"Baby cry," he said a third time.
"Yes, Darling," I said. "Do you think you could eat your dinner without crying anymore?"
He looked up at me with a solemn little face - a look I'd never seen from him before.
"OK," he said in a sad, small voice.
I gave him his food. I kissed him. I hugged his little head. I got a little misty, it was so sweet.
It was such a non-baby moment, such a mature experience for him. He realized that I was upset, and that he had done it. He was sorry, genuinely sorry in a way that is not part of baby-hood. And he came back to make it all right.
It's a moment I hope to remember - a real step in his long journey to adulthood.
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/burghdad/archive/2008/10/16/quot-baby-cry-quot-he-said.aspx
Oct 06 2008
Virginia Linn / Oct. 6, 2008
I started "my" car yesterday and nearly lost my hearing.
That's because my 17-year-old daughter, who got her driver's license six months ago, has been driving my car around.
I've warned her that I'm going to take back my car if she doesn't turn down the volume of the radio, which is more than a safety hazard.
Fortunately, this won't be a problem next year under new features being rolled out by Ford on its 2010 models. Soon, through some programming magic, parents will be able to limit the car's audio system's volume and its speed limit to 80 mph. And the car can be programmed to sound continuous (and annoying) alerts if the teens don't put on their seat belts. What a great idea!
"Our message to parents is, hey, we are providing you some conditions to give your new drivers that may allow you to feel a little more comfortable in giving them the car more often," Jim Buczkowski, Ford's director of electronic and electrical systems engineering, told the Associated Press.
The feature, called "MyKey" will be standard on an unspecified number of Ford models that will come out late next summer, and will spread to the entire Ford, Lincoln and Mercury lineup as models are updated. Parents also will have the option of having the car sound a chime (much like what is heard when you don't put on your seat belt) if the teen exceeds 45, 55 or 65 mph.
I'm hoping other automakers will follow suit. While these are sure to be a hit with parents, already teens are weighing in against the new features.
But the message will be simple: No "MyKey", no car.
Read the complete post at http://pittsburghmom.com/blogs/teenangst/archive/2008/10/06/setting-driving-limits-on-teens.aspx