Denver Broncos Training Camp?

for those who live by the janky setup

The Many Talents of our Boys, Part 1

They are, after all, here to replace us

I sat down with Quin the other night and told him, "You're a great guy, and I love you, but you're making me want to check myself into prison."

We were told by many parents that the 'Terrible Twos" thing was overrated. It was three that was lurking to destroy us.

About 90 percent of the day Quin is a very good kid. It's that other ten percent where you're wondering what's so wrong about kennel training. Just a little cage where they can be safe, yet wrapped in soundproofing and somewhere under the house. People say he's "pushing boundaries." If he needs more room the Alaskan Wilderness is very big.

I try to ignore most of the outbursts, but our reaction ranges from wanting to toss the child out the window, to laughing. It's hard not to burst into giggles when this little human you've let into your home insists that he doesn't need help, and then loses his mind when you don't help him. Or maybe it's vice versa. I don't know, it's so insane that if an animal acted that way you'd have it put down.

Tonight Quin refused to eat, and then threw and broke a dinner plate. I grabbed he and his chair and set him at the end of a dark hall. Sarah was certain I was going to shotput the whole package. And, to be honest, I wasn't quiet conscious until I found myself with nowhere to go holding a child on a dining room chair.

I'm not experienced enough to be doling out advice, but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't kill a child. Aside from that, I have two rules I try to stick to: say as little as possible and don't give them options. I'm always breaking my own rules and kicking myself as each self-inflicted infraction spirals the tantrum into something from Silence of the Lambs.

Limiting the verbiage is huge. When Q loses his nut, I just walk away and avoid him. Or I try, but often I get this inkling that it could be a learning moment, and that talking over the screams of a little person wearing nothing but Spiderman shoes is going to make an impression. It never does, and I always lose.

Choices. Screw them. Kids should not have them. Don't ask them what they want for lunch or what they want to wear or if they'd like to breathe. They love an opportunity to say "NO" and shove that parental authority up the chimney. But, of course, I get giddy thinking that I'm giving my child a chance to exercise his cognition. He does--not to make an educated decision about PBJ over roast beef, but to become one of the seven princes of Hell.

What really scares me is that right now he doesn't know how to storm out of the house and steal the car. I mean sometimes I feel so helpless that I want to fake a heart attack. What happens when they're big and pulling the same tricks? No, really, what happens?

And one other question: Is a Toddler Taser a bad idea?

Growing up I wasn't the bad kid, at least as far as my parents knew. My brother paved the road to poor decisions and back. I learned from his mistakes and found how to conduct most of my badness without inconveniencing the family with knowledge of it. Over Quin's yelling I've been able to shout at Otto, "Learn from this buddy and your life will be a breeze." I haven't made any mention about running carefree through school before starving on a meager diet of charm and deception on the cold climb up the insurmountable mountain of opportunity. But, you know, fewer words.

The thing is that after smashing an heirloom and igniting their father, both the boys bounce back pretty well. Although it's hard to take their hugs and "I love you daddies" seriously when it's clear they're preying on your weakness.  Tonight, after his mother coaxed him from his dark exile, Quin came out to the kitchen and apologized. That's when you can't help but hug the bejesus out of them...while trying to squeeze in some important tips on saving everybody's sanity. "Quin, you know that eating two more bites is a lot easier and faster than twenty minutes of screaming?"

Of course he does.  That's why he does it.

The Children, so fresh from God, have control of the Universe.

Today I woke up at 5am. I couldn't get back to sleep. I was hungover.  I didn't get in bed until 2am and, with the emotional strength of a Dr. Phil patient, lay in bed and thought of horrific scenarios. One was being in the car with the boys. A semi truck pulls ahead of everybody and blocks the lanes. I'm trapped in the middle lane with cars all around me when from the truck guys with guns start unloading on the trapped traffic. I ran the scene over and over trying to figure out how I could keep the boys safe while subduing one of the gunmen and shooting the others. After the ordeal was over I refused to speak to the media. "I'm no hero," I'd say to one cameraman before walking away.

Right as I was drifting back to sleep, Allie cat meowed. When Allie meows it isn't a pleasant feline chime. It's a noise that makes me hate cats. It's an indignant shout so shrill they could use it to save people from fires. This morning she was yelling at me to get her out of Quin's room. I was fast to assist her because I didn't want Quin to wake up. Sure enough, Quin was up and ready for breakfast.

Never get confident that you will get to take a nap. Forgo all excitement and expectations thereof. Your life will be long, tired and poor, and if you ever think otherwise, your child will reach his tiny hand into the universe and smack your carefully balanced mobile of life.

I hadn't slept but three hours. Sarah was on low because of a recurring head cold and who knows what else our little Magellans of malaria bring home from daycare. Quin and I were just back from a trip to the Cherry Creek Mall, where the denizens are so wealthy and pretty it wears you out thinking of all you should be but aren't, and how big your wife's fake boobs could be. After a big lunch and a streak of perfect behavior from the boys, we retired them to their rooms. Sarah didn't even say anything, she only looked like she was thinking something about how perfect it was that everyone was asleep. Smack goes the mobile.

I did my requisite sans-children suggestions, and Sarah reminded me how tired I was and that I should sleep instead. I was weary enough to take her up on it. With college football muted but still displaying it's comforting beauty, I stretched out on the couch. If I were any less tired I might have wondered if the beautiful Cherry Creek Mall shoppers would nap on a couch, or if that's too Dagwood for their New Yorker single pane. And then I might have forsaken a nap to go for a run at the park. Not today. I was drifting on a cloud within moments of touching down.

In a few minutes Sarah would report she was in her wistful dreamy stage too.

I would get to talk to Sarah so soon because we'd both hear Quin cry out for us. Jumping up, disoriented but determined, we scampered to the source. The source, it turns out, was covered in his own vomit. We slogged through the cleanup, mostly motivated by the thought of getting back to bed.

That would not happen. Horking apparently works like caffeine on a kid. I vomit and I lie on the floor waiting for Jesus to take me. Quin perks up and gets on his tricycle. And then Otto, who was a headbutting madman who couldn't wait to be put in his crib, starting talking and singing

NOOOO! There would be no nap. But there could at least be that sordid compromise that parents call "quiet time". There would be none of that either. Just to demonstrate how children are but our marionette masters, I'll give you a quick rundown of adult expectations and kid results.

Sometime after I found Otto drinking delicate spoonfuls of Paco's water, I was able to sit back down on the couch, and think, "Well this is nice." Otto joined me with a bowl of pomegranate seeds he'd thieved from the kitchen. At first I was proud of his agility and balance. Smack goes the mobile. At that very moment he tripped over a tent pole (you know you have children when there's a tent set up in your living room, for two weeks) and shot the sticky little berries all over the carpet. The boys were kind enough to help their angry father pick them up, and once the bowl was full again, I relaxed and turned back to the TV.  Otto took the opportunity to dump the bowl over his head. Children are cute for a reason.

So we got that cleaned up, and we did some general congratulating on surviving the day. Sarah commented on how tired I must be, and I told her I'm going straight to bed. Bam. Mobile Mayhem. The smoke alarms go off. And these things are loud and you can't stop them. They are hard-wired beyond even the breakers. The first time they went off on one peaceful early morn, I ran outside and turned off the whole house. They kept going because, of course, they have their batteries.  And for some reason they don't just chirp, they go all-out Allie on us. 

We don't know why they went off, but Quin suggested the batteries.  Soon I was at the store and ready to curl up in their winter coat section.

A very, very good chance of showers

Quin has been using is pee as a weapon. I'm not saying he sprays us down while laughing like an evil villain. When he gets mad or sad he accompanies the already traumatic moment by moistening his surroundings. Tonight he went just for the heck of it. We were sitting on the couch and our once master of everything toilet announced he'd peed. And he had. He didn't even flinch. He just let it go and then laughed about it. I nearly flew off the handle which led Sarah to scold me instead of the perpetrator.  By then I was calming myself with a little introspection. You see, I don't have any ground to talk. I wet the bed until I was, well let's just say I was well past Q's age.

I still remember very clearly one of the reasons why getting out of bed seemed like the bad option. We lived in an old house in Allenspark, Colorado. It's actually called the White House, now on White House Drive, because it was owned by Ethel and Graybul White. They bequeathed it to my parents. It was a quaint little place of mostly sentimental value right up until we lost it to the bank. Damn bulldozer. (Let that be a lesson to any of you children who want to grow up to be an environmentalist AND a logger.) Now it's owned by wealthy hippy spawn (my assumption) and like every other piece of gentrified property fifty miles of Boulder is worth more than the Lord.

Anyway, back when we lived there it was still just an old little house in the country. And it also had a shed with a door that in the wind slammed right outside my bedroom window. In my head, though, it wasn't a door. I'd conjured a skeleton banging a drum. That was good for a bed spraying or two. Add to that the mice that ran around in our attic. To me they were batteries rolling down the roof. Batteries rolled by aliens with big heads. Chalk up another tinkle.

We didn't have TV, and my brother and I had to walk up the road to my grandma's house to see our favorite shows. Well I didn't have favorite shows, my big brother Pete did, so I adopted his. This meant I had to watch Star Trek, and I don't know if you remember this or not, but over the ending credits there's that awful howling chorus and a picture of a creepy alien with a big head. That freaked me out. And once something gets in my head it stays. This can be a positive thing, as in the case of Spiderman in Electric Company. My brother and I happened to catch an episode one day and I was blown away that the real--not a cartoon--Spiderman made a cameo. So then I kind of became obsessed with seeing him again.  I would escape to grandma's at all hours to watch TV. One night Pete was into some awful movie about some creepy doctor in a cave (Pete, help me out here). There was death and, as I would recall over and over, skeletons. I was terrified, but kept watching certain that Spiderman was going to show up. He didn't, and the movie never gained the lightness and levity of Electric Company, so I was left to wander around my grandma's house awake and terrified until I collapsed in the den. And wet my pants.

I was surrounded by scary things.

There is one other thing that's kind of strange about my bedwetting. It also provides perspective as to how much work Quin is as compared to what I must have been for my parents. To help calm my fear of, well, pretty much everything, I made sure I was as close as possible to all my stuffed animals. I felt it was for their best interest to be tucked into my underwear. So my mom had sheets and pajamas to wash, as well as Pyzer the puppet dog, and Mole, and Lion and a few other animals probably much happier rotting at the bottom of a landfill.

What hit me with Quin's incident tonight were two very clear memories of my feral pees. The first is positive. I remember waking up to my mom clapping and cheering because I'd made it through the night without waterboarding my woodland creatures. That's a positive that I'd rather remember, and that's how I'd like to deal with Quin: make it positive before he has some major negatives to deal with. That brings me to my second memory.

I think I was in the fifth grade.  My bedwetting was mostly limited to how badly I could scare myself sleeping next to a basement level window in the woods twenty-five miles from civilization. So it was pretty common, but I was certain I would be able to contain it during a sleepover at Brent Osborne's house.

And then Gould, a GHOST town.

Brent lived in town.  Of the twenty-four kids in the class of '92, Brent was certainly in the top half of cool. He wore thick glasses to see, but he'd proven himself fastest in the class, and he had a motorcycle. He was very much someone with whom you wanted to make a good impression. So when I woke up, and in our shared queen-sized bed realized my pajamas were soaked with urine, apparently mine, I went to work on what could be one of the greatest cover ups of all time.

I quietly got out of bed, removed my PJs, and put on my clothes. I then went about removing the sheets.  I had to pull Brent out of the bed, where he'd stand in his underwear, groping for his glasses and wondering what was going on. I explained to him that my parents were strict in making sure I helped clean up after my stay. I ripped off the sheets and helped him back under the covers.

Later, his mom would find me standing on a kitchen chair trying to work her washing machine. Tying her robe and rubbing her eyes she'd ask what I was doing. I explained my parent's mandate. She said something about four in the morning being a little early, and I just stared at her, and then at the perplexing washing device, hoping to somehow bring the two together. She obliged and wandered back to her room before stopping and inquiring as to where and in what condition her son was sleeping.

Soon Brent was standing in his underwear again and, in his blurry darkness, asking why I was making the bed. I don't remember if I had an answer, and I know I didn't when hours later he woke me up and asked why I was sleeping in my clothes. At the time I thought I'd completely bamboozled Brent and his mother. Now I think it must have been pretty obvious, my mother showing up and getting my pajamas washed, dried and folded. At least I didn't stuff anything of Brent's in my underwear.

Despite the save, I don't want Quin to go through any late-night bedding exercises to keep his cool in school. Peeing on your friend's bed is about as close to social genocide as you can get.  Hopefully he can make it to college, where that kind of thing is hilarious.

Sunbeams captured, used to weaken parents

How is it that school portraits make you feel like it's the first time you've ever seen your child? I picked the pictures up at school on my way to work. They had such a profound effect on me that I had to call in late, and I was calling from the work parking lot. I sat in the car, on cold and rainy October day, and stared at Quin and Otto, brothers, sitting together for their picture. I was amazed that I knew them. They're so young and carefree and cool.

I knew that if the pictures were that devastating to me, I could not call Sarah at work and let her know I had them. For one thing it just seems wrong that I got to see them first. There should be a house rule: Anyone who passes anything through their vagina gets dibs on that thing's most sentimental moments. I felt like I was stealing something precious from her: a first glance at God or something. And secondly, she'd carjack somebody to see them. 

When I did show her, I was not apprised of the fact that I was supposed to prepare her. She walked in from work and I said "here" like I was Mel handing Alice an order of cheesecake. She was punched to a stop. At first she put her fist to her lips like either she was going to yell at me or regurgitate rainbows. Then she turned as sweet and soppy as rainy Jell-O and told me what I'm telling all of you: prepare her.

She didn't so much need consoled as to be suspended somewhere in space in silence so she could comprehend what she was looking at. It's just weird. They're the same creatures whose bums we wipe and noses we blow, but here they are.  Sunshine in a jar.

OK, now I get it. They can't yell at you on paper. Maybe. No. Too easy. They're remarkable.  One more time.