You Don't Need to Go to Class!

This morning, my college daughter called (sounding miserable I might add) to say she was sick, had slept through her first class, was about to miss her second class, and so... Dad... what should she do? Hmmm. Parent... Friend... Parent... Friend... Parent... Friend: "Go back to bed, Elizabeth! You don't have to go to class!"

I wonder if this parent-as-a-friend stuff ever backfires.

Lisa?!

So the snake’s name is Lisa. I’m not sure how this came about. It doesn’t sound very “snakey”. My wife insists it is short for “Mona Lisa”. I’m not sure how that relates either. When I hear anyone say something about Lisa, I start thinking that the doll-turned-into-a-woman from Weird Science is now living in my house. Now that would be a whole different level of birthday present.

Naming aside, we did feed “Lisa” her first meal under our roof this weekend. Ummmm! Rat! Now for the uneducated, let me explain. First you buy a frozen rat from Petsmart. Then you thaw it (it seems like forever) in warm water – in the garage of course – in biodegradable containers designed to never be seen again because who wants to fathom touching something that a rat spend all day in, trying to return to some form of life-like flexibility. Girls! Hello! We own a snake now!

Anyway, Lisa is FAST. So fast in fact, that I threw the rat into her feeding aquarium with her and before I could say, “Bon Appetit!”, BAM! The scene looked like this:

Snake 1. Rat 0.

Lisa spent 3 hours working on this rat. Yes, three. She eats like Europeans. One hour to constrict dinner until it was good and dead (Shhh! She doesn’t know it was already dead). Then, another 2 hours to swallow the rat, tail first. I missed a photo of the final scene (we’ll get it next time), but it was quite hilarious to see this snake with white whiskers hanging out of the side of its mouth and a big lump behind her head.

Now, don’t be surprised here, but everyone in the family took ringside seats for this feeding. Yes, even the soft feminine side of the house was up for a little Faces of Death action. However, at the end of the 3 hour event, Elizabeth summed it up for that side of the house when she said, “Well, I don’t need to watch that again.”

Boyz Rock!

One great thing about raising boys is that their stuff is also your stuff. Toys, games, gear, you name it. For example, as a nearly 40-year-old adult, I can’t justify buying or even owning a skateboard. But as a Dad of a 10-year-old boy, it is perfectly normal for me to turn his skateboard into a luge and fly down the hill in front of our house at excessive speed. If I’m lucky, I can even stand in line behind him and get my bloody arm cleaned by Mommy too.

Now this makes birthdays for our boys extra special. You know why, right? Because it is also my birthday. Yes! I can buy anything I want… as long as I convince my wife that it is THE thing our boys want for their birthdays. So imagine my surprise this year when my wife suggested first (I didn’t even have to work it into the conversation!) that we buy George… a SNAKE!

Sweeeeeeeet! Sign me up! So after a bit of research (did you know red-tailed boa constrictors can grow to 10 feet long?) and some selective searching (did you know you could buy a rat as a pet?), I settled on a 3-foot ball python that someone had listed on Craig’s List.

Here’s George in a state of shock after opening this present box and finding a snake inside:




Here’s George in an extreme state of excitement after realizing that he did indeed just get a 3-foot long snake for his birthday:



Here’s his sister, Carrie, reacting to the thought of a snake living in the same house as her:



And finally, here’s George and his bro, Gabey, proving that all boys love snakes. “Hey, Sisters! My snake is going to eat your Barbies!”



(Not pictured: Dad’s well-hidden level of excitement because, hey, this is George’s birthday… not mine.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GEORGE!

It's all about the wife

Every once in awhile, I run into someone who reminds of, well, me - in some previous time in my life, of course. Most of the time, I think, "Yeah. I used to value that stuff too", or, "Boy. I used to make stupid (perhaps "ill-conceived" is better) comments like that too. Then I feel sorry for the person and blessed for myself all at the same time.

In some ways, raising a family is like going back to college. The classes are hard. The parties are wild. The people in the dorm next door keep pounding on the wall (oh, wait - that's my teenagers in the room next door). The same drunk girl keeps showing up in your bed.

But one thing every father eventually learns is staying at home raising children is not the easiest job in the world. In fact, it is down right hard. And I don't mean watching the kids for a few hours while your wife ties one on with the neighborhood wives. I mean total responsibility for more than two kids with no relatives or babysitters of any kind for an a longer period of time then it takes for a football game to end or a six-pack to disappear.

I get it. The job sucks. And I have to hand it to my wife for agreeing to take the job. Here's to you, baby! You're the best VP of Ops I ever met.

Inflation

In our house, there is always something missing. I believe this is the natural evolution of the sock fairy who stole all my socks in the college laundromat. Now, random items disappear for no apparent reason, like there is big black hole residing just underneath the carpet pad, two inches to the left of the fireplace... until it moves to somewhere else in the house to wreak havoc on another part of our stuff.

Last night, after a day of heavy toddler play from visiting children, our toddler's block puzzle was missing a picture from one side of one block. Why only one side of one block was missing from a total of 12 or so blocks with six sides each I have no idea. At any rate, my wife offered up a bountiful reward for the missing picture: 500 kisses. It was a Leave It to Beaver moment. I could imagine one of the kids finding the picture and receiving those 500 sweet kisses from Mom. But no. The boy demanded $500 before he would even begin the search.

$500! Are you kidding me? Is this demand adjusted for inflation or something? Would it have been $200 yesterday before the Fed raised interest rates?! How is it that we are raising our children to be extortionists? Last month, after having six baby teeth pulled in one day (they wouldn't fall out on their own), this same boy wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy saying he thought he deserved $200 for "pain and suffering".

Needless to say, the Tooth Fairy didn't think it was funny. And although our son did receive a nice gift in exchange for his six newly departed teeth, it was far from $200. As for the missing block picture, we never could get anyone to find it.

Hotties?

Being a gadget guy, I was really excited a while back when I bought two VTech cordless phones that could intercom to each other. One base went upstairs in our bedroom and the other I put in the basement in the girls' room. Of course, the phones had all the latest display features that we Americans have come to expect from our phones, like caller ID, names, phonebook, ringtones, etc. Using the features, I appropriately named the upstairs phone, "Upstairs", and the girls' phone, "Downstairs". What could be more functional than that?

Last night my tween daughter handed me one of the phones while I was in the bathroom, doing well, you know, catching up on my reading (there is no privacy in a large family, not even in sacred places). After taking the call, I checked the display to see which phone she had given me. Imagine my surprise, when the display read, "Hotties". Hotties? I imagined myself meeting new neighbors and saying, "Have you met my Hotties?" There's a DFACS call.

What happened to such simpler (and innocent!) monikers, like "Princesses" or "Sweet Young Ladies" - SYLs for the cool crowd? I think I'll change the name on the phone to "Grounded" and see if they notice.

Raising 5?

Raising 5. Kids. Aged 13 to 4 months. That's a Full House (girls over boys).

"You have 5 children!" many ask in astonishment after watching person after person climb out of our minivan or gather at the cash register after we single-handedly enable the store clerk to meet his/her sales quota.

"Yes" is the simple answer, because to me, it doesn't seem that astonishing. We are just a family. Or an entire basketball team. God has blessed us with both the joy and the responsibility of a large family and set us on an incredible journey. Read along and join us...