Parenting

Bill is a soccer dad, and of late, he's been a drenched soccer dad:

... I love my boys. I love soccer. I love watching my boys play soccer. Is it too much to ask for OK weather for a game once in a while? ...

For the second week in a row, the West Roxbury Transcript leads with the shocking story of the local gangbangers:

It's not a gang
Mom defends Fruits and Veggies son

Now, as a long-time member of the Fourth Estate, I applaud people who talk to reporters. But even if you do believe your teen-age son is "a lover, not a fighter," if you can't remember how many times he's been arrested for one thing or another, well, you might not want to return that call from a reporter. But give mom props for maintaining her Westie pride through it all:

... In my opinion, these detectives are trying to keep this area from becoming like Dorchester. ...

Earlier: Never dis the produce guy.

Once again, impossibly cute kids in duck outfits (with a few Officer Mikes thrown in) waddled up and down Beacon Hill in search of the lagoon in the Public Garden. A cold drizzle wasn't going to stop these ducks, nuh-uh!

More photos below.

Umi checks in three weeks after her daughter's birth:

... i'm so tired i'm starting to hallucinate. it's been 3 weeks to the day that Lucy was born and i've probably gotten about 4 hours total of sleep since. Everything has been falling to the wayside, dog walks, bills, responding to email, dirty dishes. i haven't changed my underwear in god knows how long, but why bother, i haven't showered in that period of time anyway. ...

Umi, meet Eric.

Ned wondered what to do when his seven-year-old actually wanted to wear a tie to a Passover seder. Inspiration struck:

... I pulled out a roll of stiff wrapping paper, cut a tie-shaped piece, notched a button-hole in the top, and buttoned it onto the top button.

At a quick glance, people asked, "Where'd you get the tie?" He wore it for the whole meal, then as a bonus, got to crumple it up in disgust when we let him change back into a T-shirt. ...

Complete with photo of the paper tie.

Makes Paul a tad grumpy.

So what do you do if you and your babysitter keep missing each other on the phone but you can't wait until she gets home from school to find out if you can go out? You text-message her, of course.

As a follow-up to my bad bus driver story, there's another listed in the local paper about a Fitchburg kid who got dropped off a mile from his house.

http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/local/ci_2618712

Oy.

I had to go to New York on business today. When you have a kid - especially one who's been sick for the past few days - you just have to come back with a souvenir. So I stopped into a souvenir place and DID NOT get her a pink Yankees hat (and while I was there, some guy with a Sox hat came in; of course I complemented him on his taste) - came back with a jigsaw puzzle showing the New York skyline instead.

The absolute best thing I saw in New York:

Yesterday, I linked to Eric's account of his son's admission to Children's Hospital. You just have to read today's conclusion - what they went through after the full-body X-rays will just take your breath away (fortunately, the story does have a happy ending).

This is apparently a Watertown tradition in which every single student converges for a concert:

I've come to an uneasy piece with BANDORAMA(!). Outside of hearing the fourth and fifth graders play the same pieces for the past three years ("D major scale in a round" and "Hot Cross Buns - in 2 parts etc) it's really the epitome of bittersweet. I watched my oldest daughter giggle next to her friend in the gymnasium as the "little kids" sawed away on their various instruments. "But, you know, Dad," she told me later, "That...ummm...used to be me."

The good news is that the swelling at the back of Eric's son's head probably isn't serious. The bad news is what the family had to go through when he was admitted to Children's yesterday - a battery of X-rays to prove he was not abused:

... The full body xray was not one xray, as we had assumed, but almost 20 of Hayes' various parts. Hayes screamed, puked (the spinning head exorcist type puke) and I cried. It was awful. I have never felt less self worth in my life. Jen and I were pissed. No, that's not quite right. We were fuming. Why did Hayes need to be subjected to all this excess harmful radiation in his fomative months? To prove we had not abused him. So instead of us abusing him, the hospital did a bit of abusement. Fucking ridiculous. ...

Fondofelves discusses the challenge of getting her mother out of the hospital and into a rehab center.

Eric discusses the challenge of getting his newborn into the hospital for an MRI to figure out the cause of a mysterious swelling in the back of his head before the end of the month:

... Jen held her ground with the coordinator, let her speak her piece, then asked if she had spoken with our docs this morning. No, she said, but was going to call them after speaking with Jen, and the neurologist was making his diagnosis from the paper he had in front of him. Jen asked her to please call them, because they seemed to think that this required more urgent attention. She agreed. ...

What is it with school bus drivers who run early? Jody reports that her son's driver drove right by them as they were heading down their driveway this morning:

... I screamed at him to run, and we took off up the street, where she was stopping to pick up this other little girl. I screamed "Hold the bus!" to this little girl, who was staring at us, and as we neared the back of the bus, with me staring into the side rear-view mirror, the bus driver drove away from us. Now at least a dozen kids on the bus saw us running, either down the driveway (as I waved my arms) or as we trailed the bus. Did none of them say anything? Or did the she-devil bus driver ignore them all? ...

Note: My bus-driver horror story

Only click "read more" if you really have a newborn (or have had one in the past). Trust me.

After dinner tonight, I got this e-mail:

I WANT SOME ICE CREM YOU KNOW WHAT KIND

Yes, the first grader now has e-mail - and she knows how to use it!

Dave says that, of late, his daughter has been requesting "Gerald McBoing Boing" as her bedtime story - and asking that he read it twice:

...When the second reading is over, she pulls the blankies up tight, and I turn out the light, and hum a lullabye to her a few times until her breathing gets heavy and she falls asleep. Or I do.

Sleep tight, my princess.

Deb writes:

I hate Caillou with the fury of 1000 overtired babies.

No, come on, Deb, is that cartoon about the whiny bald kid really that bad?

Hell, I'd turn Barney on before Caillou.

Eliot, a psychiatrist, reads a New York Times article by a California man with a son addicted to speed. He discusses how the article makes him feel:

... As someone who treats detoxing substance users on my psychiatric hospital unit, it is useful for me to have a window into the experience at least some of their loved ones might have. When my ability to be compassionate to one of my patients is frayed, one of the mantras I use to get back to where I want to be in caring for them is to remind myself that this is someone's son or daughter, that this patient was once a babe in arms cuddled and loved by some mother or father. But it also makes me desperate to go and hug my sleeping children, still too young to have been exposed to drugs, and never let go.

Eric and Jen discover why their newborn had turned so cranky:

... Turns out it was the formula. Not the brand, which was perfectly fine, it was the powdered form. For some reason it gave him gas - lots of it - and he was very unhappy about it. We bought the powder because it was about 30% cheaper than the premixed stuff so the savings we realized of about $10 for each can seemed pretty great. ...

Eric is the proud father of a newborn. A newborn who just isn't going to sleep:

...The phone rang. It was a doctor or nurse or nurse practitioner or doctor nurse or something returning Jen's call. Jen explained the situation to the whoever. Hayes hadn't been sleeping, was incolsolable, wouldn't eat, etc.. The nurse-whatever said Jen sounded tired and the best thing to do was to - GET THIS - involve her husband so Jen could get some rest. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I guess she was going to have to get me off the couch with my Bud Light and nachos and tear me away from the Celtics to make me help her. Yup. Right. I can't possibly be the only man in the Boston area that this woman has heard of who is taking an active part in his child's life. ...