It’s almost that time.  My last child is getting too old for naps and that special time I had with him, snuggling up in the afternoon is finally going to be gone.  My favorite part of parenting has always been that feeling of a child curling up on my chest or snuggling next to me and then going to sleep.  I don’t know how else to explain it except that it feels  like a perpetual hug.  At the risk of losing my “Man” card, I wish they could stay little for a lot longer.

My kids are growing so fast. The triplets will be seven in January.

Rose is already wearing some of my wife’s old clothes. She wears Shannon’s t-shirts as jammies and some of her old blouses with a belt or something around the waist. She’s starting to look long and beautiful, a real little lady.

Joseph is no longer the Thomas the Tank Engine loving kid he used to be. Now  he’s all about jet airplanes and robotics. I build electronic circuit projects with him and he actually understands what’s going on.

Michael is our little book worm. He reads very well and takes after his mother as far as smarts go. He will be the brainiac of the three.

All of this is cool. It’s amazing to watch them grow and mature. When I first saw it happening in them I comforted myself with, “Well, I still have Matthew for a while longer.”

Now that’s going away too.

He wants to be like his older siblings so badly that he tries to do everything they do. Sometimes he succeeds but mostly it just ends in frustration.  It’s very cute to watch, we comfort him and it all works out. He throws the most tantrums but I understand where it comes from.  And I see in his eyes the understanding he is acquiring about everything around him and he doesn’t want to be little anymore. At four and a half he’s done with baby toys, tricycles, training wheels and will start t-ball sooner than I can imagine.

Regularly, someone I’m talking to will say, “Hey, pretty soon your  littlest one will be going off to Kindergarten and you’ll have all of them in school full time. Wow, you’ll enjoy that!”

I just wish they’d shut up.

It never ceases to amaze me how totally a child can believe in magic and the “wonders”  in everyday life. Things as simple as clouds and lightning bugs can send their minds into hours of imaginary play and adventure.

Recently my triplets turned six and had a birthday party. Their grandparents have a custom of bringing a huge bunch of helium balloons to the party and we let them go inside the house to make a jungle of multicolored strings and balloons for the kids to play in. When they leave they all get to take one home.

There are always lots of leftovers for our kids.

The following day the triplets were in school and Matthew, the three year old, was home with me. It wasn’t one of his preschool days. He was in the room with the balloons, having fun, and I got an idea.

“Matthew,” I said. “Let’s play a game.”

“OK!,” he enthusiastically replied.

I told him we were going to play the “Up!” game.

If you haven’t seen the film “Up!” from Pixar/Disney, I would strongly suggest you do. It’s really a great film. The central idea of the film is that an old man, who doesn’t want to go to an old folks home, ties tens of thousands of balloons to his house and floats away on a great adventure.

So, I gathered up all of the balloons from the living room ceiling and bunched them up in a big bouquet, holding them close to where the string tied on to the balloon.

“Now hold onto them real tight,” I told my wide eyed son. “I’ll hold you so that you don’t float away.”

I put my hands around his waist and slowly, but gently, lifted him off the floor, playing around with him to try and mimic the sensation that the balloons were doing it.

As he got higher and closer to our ten foot ceiling he abruptly started screaming, “DON’T LET GO! DON’T LET GO! GET ME DOWN!”

“Matthew! Let go of the balloons! Quick! I’ll catch you!”, I said.

He did and I dropped him a bit and caught him. He clutched me hard as we watched the balloons float to the ceiling and spread out across the room.

As I put him down on the floor he looked up at me and said,” Woh…that was close. Good thing we weren’t outside.”

I recently drove home with the family in our minivan and the following conversation took place.

Son Joseph in the back, “Rose farted!”

Son Michael sitting toward the front, “I smell French Fries”.

Daughter Rose sitting in the back next to Joseph, “Hey dad! Mom and I went to lunch today after shopping, guess what I had?”

“Oh, ummmmmm …..French Fries?!, ” I asked.

“HEY!…How did you know?”

“Oh…Just a guess.” As my wife and I rolled down our windows.

WHAT NOT TO SAY

Last Tuesday I was sitting at my computer, working, my three year old son Matthew was playing games on his computer, when I got a phone call. It was the triplet’s school nurse and they told me that Rose was in the office complaining that her shoulder hurt.

“What happened?”, I asked.

They said that she fell off of one of the playground equipment setups they have. She landed on her shoulder.

“Was she OK?”

She couldn’t see anything, not even a bruise. The playground is covered with that really squishy kind of rubber so that must’ve absorbed a lot of the impact. They checked for a concussion, she seemed to be OK.

“Send her back to class,” I said.

I didn’t think anything of it. Their days are only till noon so I’d pick her up in an hour anyway. Fifteen minutes later I got another call.

“Rose was lethargic and still complaining about her shoulder,” said the voice on the phone.

“I’ll be right there.”

So, I packed up Matthew and drove to the school. I met Rose’s teacher on the way in and she told me that she insisted on calling me back because she saw Rose take the fall. Rose fell head first and, at the last minute, tucked her head so that her shoulder took the full force of her fall.

“How far did she fall?”, I asked. Up until that point I thought it had been off of something close to the ground. I was wrong. She fell off of one of the high climbing setups that they have.  It wasn’t a slide down a ladder or, trip and fall, type of deal. It was a full blown swan dive onto the playground floor!

I found Rose sitting in the office, with her brothers,  waiting for me. I signed the form for early release and we all immediately went to Urgent Care. Rose couldn’t even hold her shoulder up level. It was very obvious something was wrong.

But she wasn’t complaining about any severe pain. She just said it ached.

We got in to see a pediatrician, he did a couple of tests on her and then sent us off to Radiology.  Rose didn’t even whimper or anything. She just followed orders , droopy left shoulder and all. The clinic has a really hi-tech setup. All the X-Ray equipment is digital and the results are instant, no film anymore.

So the radiologist invited us in to the control room to see the pictures of Rose’s bones, we all huddled around the screen, up came the picture and there it was; a shot of a beautifully clean break in my daughter’s Clavicle.

“Oh my God,” I say without thinking. “She did break it!”

What an idiot I was. As soon as she heard the word break, her face contorted into an expression of shock, fear and pain and she started balling her head off! She was inconsolable! I couldn’t turn off the tap!

By the time we got her home, arm in a sling, she was still blubbering.

What really shocked me was that the Doctor only put her arm in a sling. He said that they don’t do casts for that kind of break anymore. All they do is try and keep it immobilized and the bones would mend very fast.

“For every 6 weeks it takes an adult to heal, a child only needs about two”, he said.

What a miracle the human body is.

Anyway, Rose settled into her role as an “injured Sparrow” very quickly and started receiving cards and gifts from friends and relatives almost immediately.

We got a letter from our school district awhile ago stating that today, “October 6th, 2010″, was National Walk To School Day. They wanted to promote walking to school instead of driving your kids to school. This would be a very “Green” thing to do. It would cut down on car emissions and traffic congestion around the school, the children and I would get exercise, it was considered an all around “No Brainer Good Thing”.

My wife was all for it. This would be great for the kids and me! I said if they want to cut down on emissions and congestion, why don’t they bring back the school bus service that they cancelled without notifying anybody and that we were paying for with our taxes. No one ever talks about that one.

Then she looked at me and asked, “Well, are you going to do it?”

I thought for a minute and my response was, ” I can walk the kids to school any day I want.  On the 6th I’m gonna drive because that will be the only day I can pretty much guarantee I’ll get a good parking space.”



Christmas is just around the corner and my kids are bombarding my wife and I with hints, sometimes subtle sometimes not,  about what they want this year.  If you think it’s too early,  we got our first Christmas catalog this year in the mail July 5th, Kmart has already set up their Christmas tree section in our local store and a local hotel resort is already decorating their property with decorations for their annual “Festival of Lights” holiday show.  Every day when I get the mail the kids ask if there are any new toy catalogs. And when the Sunday paper comes they rifle through the ads for stuff from ToysRUs.

It brings back a lot of memories for me. I remember how excited I got as a kid when the annual Sears and J.C. Penny Christmas catalogs came out. I also remember the expression on the poor Mailman’s face as he lugged around the mailbag full of those catalogs which probably weighed about five pounds each. Our Mailman didn’t drive around in no stinking mail truck like they all do today. He walked a beat.

I remember one year, my mother was at the door to get the mail. She took the heavy load from the Mailman’s hands, said “Happy Holidays”, to him and got a muttered reply that visibly shocked  her. It probably negatively impacted his Christmas gift that year.

Another thing that I find hilarious about Christmas presents for kids is that, if it comes in a really big box, then the box is played with more than the toy that came in it. I’ve joked with my wife that I’m going to start a toy company that has only one product; really big boxes.  It’s genius if you ask me because I’ll kill two birds with one stone, shipping and the product.

Something that really surprises me this year is how retro my kids choices are. So far on the list is the game “Operation” and the original “Rock’em Sock’em Robots”.  Model trains, books and slot cars made the cut as well. Nowhere on the list are hi-tech, or computer games. At least not yet.

One thing that will never make the list in our house, because of my “touchy feely, save the Earth, Oh My God violence is horrible” wife, are toy guns. I don’t think there is anything wrong with them, and no matter how hard you try, kids will make a stick or a broom handle into a gun. Case in point, we went up to Lake Arrowhead a little while ago on a Saturday to get away from the Riverside heat. They have an old fashioned, Mom and Pop toy store up there. Some of the toys really got the attention of my son Joseph. They were rubber band guns and rifles.

I took one down to show him when he asked, we tried it out and he really liked it. When I told him he couldn’t have one he kept it in his hands for a while, looking it over and over, checking every aspect of it. The next morning, while I was asleep in bed, I was rudely awakened by a smack in the face. When I opened my eyes I saw a big fat rubber band lying right next to my pillow and heard my son Joseph giggling from across the bedroom.

In his hands was a rubber band rifle, complete with trigger mechanism and spare ammo, made entirely out of “Tinker Toys”.

I was a very proud father.

I’ve reached a point where I can trust my kids to a certain extent. They are old enough now, the triplets are five, almost six, that I feel secure enough to  work upstairs for short bursts of time.  I can put them in the family room and let them watch a movie. Like today for instance.

I was in my office completing some work. I was up there for about fifteen minutes. I’d left them downstairs watching “Monsters Inc.”  I turned off my computer and headed downstairs to get them ready for our yearly outing of apple picking. My wife would be returning soon from her Sunday yoga class.

I casually walked into the family room…OH …MY… GOD!!!!

There was a fine cloud of dust in the entire room, floating into the kitchen and making its way throughout the downstairs of the house.  There, in the middle of the room, completely white, were my triplets and the three year old. The three year old was only in his underwear and looked like some Aborigine child from a picture in “National Geographic” magazine.

My sweet, obedient, little angels were having a baby powder fight! I don’t know where they got the baby powder bottles but they were having the time of their lives. Until I walked in on them.

“OH…MY…GOD!!!,” I roared several times at them.

In a split second their childlike joy turned to “Uh Oh, we never heard him sound like that before!”, fear. They scrambled around the room, not knowing what to do or where to go.

“STOP!”,  I screamed.

I tried to compose myself and in a low gutteral, teeth gnashing voice said, “How did this happen?”

Immediately fingers started pointing and voices blabbered, as each one blamed the other for starting the fight and how innocent each one was, and then all three of the triplets turned and pointed at the littlest, Matthew. It was all his fault!

“You are blaming your three year old brother?! It’s all HIS FAULT?!” I yelled.

They nodded in unison.

I looked down at my Aborigine son, Matthew, and asked, “Matthew, who started the fight?”

“Rose”, he replied.

Then my two triplet sons, Joseph and Michael, immediately backed him up. Rose looked like a deer caught in headlights.

“No I didn’t!” she yelled. “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do anything!”

“OK”, I thought to myself, “It’s time to use the old Soviet method of crime solving. Shoot all the suspects, that way you know you got the guilty party.”

“You are all grounded!”, I said.

Moans and complaints erupted, crying started…Pandemonium ! Then my wife walked in.

Whatever peace and tranquility she had obtained in her hour and a half of yoga was instantly shot to hell. Years of training as an educator clashed with primal urges to discipline bratty children.

“EVERYONE INTO THE BATHTUB NOW!”, she yelled. “NOT YOU!”, yelling at me.

She cleaned them up while I cleaned the mess.

I’ve said this before about how I work, I hyper focus. When I’m at my computer, that’s it, that’s all I pay attention to. When you’re a stay at home dad that’s not necessarily a good thing. You always have to know what’s going on with the kids. That’s why when I work in my office I have a play area in there for my youngest. He’s with me at home when the triplets are in kindergarten.

I have a play dough area set up for him to keep him busy while I’m programming.  I also have other stuff for him to do. I let him bang away on my electric piano, he has head phones on. He can pluck away on a couple of beat up old guitars I have and beat on an old Mac G4 that is so screwed up I’ll never get anything useful off of it in a hundred years. Sometimes he’ll tug at the back of my shirt and insist on sitting in my lap while I type. He just wants quality time and he’ll snuggle into my body watching words he can’t understand pop up on the screen.  It’s a wonderful feeling and I do my best to do all of my work one handed while the other cradles him.  It’s a good setup , but every once in a while I’ll  hyper focus on my work and he’ll sneak out undetected.

The other day I was sitting at my computer, totally engrossed, trying to figure out why a certain program wasn’t working the way it was supposed to.  I didn’t notice that the mindless giggling and singsong talking had stopped. I didn’t notice that silence had enveloped my work space because in my head I could only hear me talking to myself about my problems.

Now that I think about it, the sound of the upstairs toilet flushing over and over again did, faintly, register in the very back of my mind. Something about it was being pushed closer and closer to front and center of my consciousness but it never really made itself known until I heard the fateful words, “Uh oh!”,  come out of the mouth of my son.

Instantly my mind snapped to attention.

“Matthew?!,” I called.

“I here Daddy!”, he yelled as he ran into my office with wet clothes.

I ran past him down the hall and into the bathroom to find the floor covered with water and wet shreds of toilet paper from the roll he had jammed into the bowl and tried to flush down.

I stood there trying to decide if I was angry, frustrated, or what!? I didn’t know. Then I heard this little voice come from behind.

“I sorry Daddy. I sorry. I sorry.”

I realized that the person I should be mad at was myself. It could’ve been something much worse.  I knew better, he didn’t. He just wanted to play.

I cleaned up the mess and cleaned up my son. Then we both sat down and played with Play Dough until we had to go get my Kindergarteners.

I have since changed my work routine.

My son came up to me  yesterday and was very excited. He smiled and with his finger began to wiggle one of his lower teeth. It was his first loose tooth.

“Well,” I said, “You’re becoming a big boy!”

He asked if it was going to hurt when the tooth falls out. I told him that I didn’t remember, but I didn’t think it would. Then he said something that really shocked me.

“Eli at our school had a tooth fall out and he got five dollars from the tooth fairy.”

I was shocked at the amount and wasn’t sure if he was just saying stuff or if he even knew how much five dollars was? I told him that our tooth fairy was on a budget and it all depended on whether he was a good boy or not.  He gave me a disappointed look. I guess I use that line a lot about buying things and don’t realize it. Anyway, it got me thinking what the proper amount for a first tooth was.  

I was watching the “Tonight Show” a while back and Heidi Klum was on. She said that she gave her little girl twenty dollars for her tooth and mentioned that she knew other celebrities that gave $100. Toothfairy.org says two dollars is the proper amount. A couple of other sites ranged from 1 to 5 dollars. I think the going price when I was a kid was a quarter.

I went to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics website and used their inflation calculator based on the going rate of a quarter in 1966. That was when I was five years old.

So, the going rate, according to the government, adjusted for inflation, is $1.68 and I think I can live with that. Being the big spender I am, I might even bump it up to a buck seventy five!

My son Michael came up to me today and asked, “Dad, how do you become a Super Hero?”

I thought about it for a moment and said, “Well, you have to go to Super Hero school, study real hard. Then you go to Super Hero high school and then Super Hero college.”

My son, who really likes school smiled. My wife, who didn’t like the idea that I was filling his head with crap, chimed in.

“Michael, you need a super power. To be a Super Hero you have to have a super power.”

My son went from happy to disappointed. I sneered at her.

“No you don’t,” I said. “Iron Man doesn’t have a super power, he’s just really smart. He built a super suit. So if you study real hard, you can build a super suit too.”

He was happy again.

And then I thought to myself, Batman doesn’t have super powers, and I went through all the Super Heroes in my head and compared which ones did and which ones didn’t. Then I realized that I wasted a lot of time growing up reading a lot of comic books.