When Good Grandmas Go Bad

We took a road trip recently, and brought my mother-in-law along. Actually, I should probably say, “she came with us.” She’s not really old enough yet to be “brought along.” I think that phrasing changes as soon as the person stops being able to help drive. Or when they start to drool on themselves. Anyway, she piled into the Ford Expedition with my wife and me and the three boys, and we headed north for Portland, OR, a mere ten hours away. We left early, and had our first stop for gas two hours into the drive, at 8:00 A.M.

It was at this stop, inside the Shell station's convenience store, that I realized she is going crazy.

When the gas pump had finished draining my checking account balance into the tank, I went inside the store to buy a drink with my leftover change. There stood my seven-year-old, holding a king-sized Kit Kat bar the size of his head, asking if he could have it.

"Of course not.”

“Well, if he can't have that, can he have a donut?" inquired his grandma, on his behalf.

 "Absolutely not." I replied, slightly bewildered that I was having this conversation with either of them, but especially with the adult.

"Well, why not?" she asked.

 "Yeah, why not?" my son chimed in.

"BECAUSE IT'S EIGHT O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING!”

"Well, what does that matter?" she asked. "It's a road trip."

She had obviously gone completely off her rocker. Why does it matter? Well, for starters, we don’t normally feed the children 18,000 mg of processed sugar for breakfast. We usually shoot for actual food. On top of that, we try to avoid feeding them enough sugar to power a small city when we are going to be cooped up in the same car with them for EIGHT MORE HOURS!!!

I jokingly say she had gone crazy, but that was obviously not the case. She was able to carry on a perfectly coherent conversation, despite the fact that she wanted to feed the children hyperactive fit-inducing amounts of sugar. Since she was lucid in all other areas, I pondered why an otherwise sane woman would want to lock herself in a confined space with three sugar-crazed Tasmanian Devils.

Only one answer makes any sense. She’s trying to earn points with them. You see, us parents usually have no concerns over being the favorite. The kids get one mom and one dad, and that’s it. You're stuck with us kid. Too bad. Grandmas, on the other hand, usually have some competition. Now, our boys’ two grandmas get along great. They love each other to death, but I am now sure that they are secretly at war for favorite grandma status. And sugar, in one form or another, seems to be the main weapon in their arsenals.

When my mother-in-law comes to visit at our house, she gets up early each morning to walk to the nearby gas station to get the newspaper because my wife and I don't subscribe. I would like to sound hip and say that’s because we get all our news electronically, but the real reason is that the paper is expensive and always filled with depressing news. Why would I want to pay to be depressed?

Anyway, she always comes back with the morning paper, and some form of Hostess brand sugar for the kids. She does this so often that our kids refer to Chevron stations as “the donut store.”

The first morning we were in Portland, she took the boys and walked from the hotel down to the grocery store a few blocks away and came back with the morning edition of the Oregonian, a gallon of milk, and two boxes of cereal.

Cocoa Puffs and Trix.

Really, grandma? Was there no cereal with a higher sugar content?

Our kids have never even seen or tasted those cereals in real life, but they have apparently been waiting for the right time to try and get their hands on some after seeing them on commercials. They are smart enough to know who to ask, because grandma’s explanation for the purchase was the ever-popular, “They asked me if we could buy them.”

Oh, well, then I understand. There’s no getting out of that trap once they ask nicely and all.

She followed that up with, “Don’t worry, we decided they only get one bowl per day.”

Oh, good. I was afraid it would take less than a week for them to develop diabetes.

I was raised on healthy food with no traces of processed sugar. I would almost go so far as to say my mom was a health food nut before it was cool. She put wheat germ on our cereal and yeast in our orange juice. It was special. Today, as a grandma, she still can’t seem to bring herself to give junk food to a child, so she has taken a different route. She vies for favorite grandma status by providing them with their favorite fruits. Since she is competing with pure, refined sugar, she has to go out of her way to find exotic fruits that my wife and I would never think of buying. It started with simple pears and pineapples, but it has ratcheted up as the years have progressed.

“Nana is here, and she brought us kiwis, papayas, mangos, passion fruit, and something called a cape gooseberry!”

I guess the sugar from the fruit is a little better for them than the junk food, but the “healthy” treats are not without side effects. I’m not sure which I like less: Dealing with the emotionally un-wound child who ate too many Ho Hos, or the digestively un-bound child who ate too much pineapple. Can I see what’s behind door number three, please?

As I reflect a little more on my own childhood, I realize the grandma/sugar conundrum is nothing new. My sisters and I only had one grandma, so she wasn’t even competing, and she still gave us “syrup in every square” on our Eggo waffles at her house. My mom would cringe when we told her, and we thought that was endlessly funny, just like my boys do today.

All the same, I wish the grandmas would compete with each other by buying the boys shoes or underwear instead. Those we can use!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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Mother's Day, Part III

I think my wife is still mad about my handling of Mother’s Day two years ago. She exacted some amount of physical revenge last year by tricking me into a dangerous kids’ craft project, but I get the feeling she’s still not over it. Mostly because this year she said, “I’m going to Las Vegas for Mother’s Day. You’re in charge of the kids for three days.”

Hmm. Either she’s still upset, or she has absolutely no faith in my ability to provide a satisfactory and appropriate Mother’s Day celebration. Either way, I can’t blame her. But if she was going to leave me alone with all three boys, I would definitely be taking the opportunity to lock in my status as the cool parent. Unfortunately for them, I am far too lazy to actually take them anyplace awesome like the waterslides or the wild animal park by myself, so I did the next best thing to win their eternal love. I let them eat whatever they wanted.

My wife left for Sin City on Saturday morning. As soon as she was out the door I toasted Eggo waffles and doused them with whipped cream, syrup and chocolate chips. Yum! A few hours later we were off to the little league fields for Son Number One’s baseball game, so we ate lunch at the snack bar. Icees, nachos, hot dogs, and Drumstick ice cream cones for everybody! What’s for dinner? Pizza and donuts, of course. The next morning we had more Eggos, this time with extra chocolate chips, and Hershey’s chocolate syrup, just for good measure. Our lunch consisted of bacon. Just bacon. Sunday’s dinner was a little weird. Son Number Two had a can of black olives and half a gallon of chocolate milk. Son Number Three had two bananas and the other half-gallon of chocolate milk, and Number One had leftover pizza and a non-alcoholic beer.

I’m pretty sure I locked in my position as the cool dad with the older two, but I must say, their behavior, and their pooping schedule has been a little off. Probably just a coincidence.

To really seal the deal with One and Two, I announced on Monday morning that they would be getting hot lunch at school that day. That is a rare treat at our house, and I played it off like I was doing it out of the kindness of my heart. Truth be told, I was just far too lazy to pack their lunches in the morning.

Now, although I did a great job of winning the love of his older brothers, my efforts had the opposite effect on Son Number Three. He was upset with me for the entire weekend. Now, it wasn’t because of the menu, but because I wasn’t paying the usual amount of attention to him. My wife has always accused me of coddling him, even going so far as to say, “You’ve never told that boy ‘No’ in his whole life.” That is of course patently false, but she sees it differently than I do. That’s because I have never been totally honest with her about my handling of Number Three. It’s not that I am looking to give him special treatment, it’s just that I’m lazy. I think we’ve established that.

When you have the third child, you suddenly go from man-to-man defense to the zone. Zone defense, from a parenting standpoint, is a lot more work. Because of my inherent laziness, I have been “graciously” looking after the youngest since he was born.

It’s because he’s the lightest.

Invariably, my children want to be held in some fashion or another whenever we go somewhere. Hip, piggyback, up on the shoulders, you name it. I don’t really want to carry any of them, because they’re all pretty heavy, but if I cut my losses and volunteer to carry the littlest one, I’m instantly back to man-to-man defense, and relieved of looking after the other two. “I’ve got Number Three, babe. You’re welcome!” Like I said, I’m lazy.

My wife apparently never saw through my laziness, and assumed I was coddling our youngest. I guess Number Three never saw through my charade either, because apparently he was used to quite a high level of attention.

As soon as my wife left, I was playing zone defense big time. I was fielding eight to ten questions, requests for help, and emergency spill response calls every minute of every waking hour. By the end of the first day, I was ready to sell all three kids to the first person who offered me more than two dollars. I don’t know how my wife does it!

Anyway, when I kept telling Son Number Three that I couldn’t hold him right now, or that he would have to wait a minute until I was done helping his brother, he took it very personally. He kept getting progressively more and more upset with me, ultimately ending each evening in fits of crying and wailing at the slightest transgression by his mean old dad.

Either that, or his strange diet and lack of naps was affecting his mood. Who can say?

On Sunday night he had had enough. Shortly after lights out, he protested my rule of law and declared his never-ending love for his mother by peeing all over the bathroom floor, not six inches away from the toilet. Sure, he cried and claimed to be just as upset about it as I was (the man who was in charge of cleaning it up), but I know he was just putting on a show to avoid any trouble.

I saw through his sob story about how he “just couldn’t make it in time.” He was showing me just how he felt about my handling of the weekend.

I hear ya, buddy. Loud and clear. Mommy will be back tomorrow.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Low Tech, Low Fat Kids

My wife and I recently won two tickets to go see the Sacramento Kings play the visiting Portland Trail Blazers at Power Balance Pavilion. Since real babysitters cost money, and both sets of grandparents were out of town, we decided that I would take our seven-year-old, Son Number One, to the game and she would stay home with the other two. Win for me!

They were really good seats, down close to the court, so I was almost as excited as the seven-year-old, but he beat me out on the excite-o-meter since it was his first professional basketball game, and he got to stay up way past his bed time, on a school night, no less.

Almost immediately after we sat down in our seats, I became skeptical about the appropriateness of our surroundings for my son. The rap music that was blaring during the pre-game show contained some language that was less than desirable, and I had to answer some pretty interesting questions about the Kings' cheerleaders’ dance moves. Then there was all the swearing from the stands once the game started. (Actually, that was me. The Kings couldn't get a rebound to save their lives.)

It ended up being an enjoyable evening all around, but it served to reinforce my belief that I need to keep my children insulated from the hip-hop/sultry dancer/foul-mouthed sports fan side of life for as long as possible. There is a lot of trash out there, and it is just waiting to be a major influence on my kids if I let it.

The way I see it, the main way that the trash is attempting to enter my home is through the television and the internet. Technology, in general, seems to be my enemy in the battle to raise mentally and physically healthy children. Technology and fast food seem to be my top two foes. Anyone who has witnessed the crack addiction-like effects of television and French fries on a five-year-old cannot argue that point.

My kids sometimes think I'm being mean when I tell them they can't have a Wii, or can't eat every meal at McDonald’s and Taco Bell, so in an attempt to explain my position, I offer them this:

An open letter to my children

I love you very much, and I want you to grow up to be strong and smart. That is precisely why I have these rules:

You will be the last kid you know to have a cell phone. You don't need one. There will never be any hypothetical emergency situation that you can dream up that will change my mind. For the rest of your life, you will always be within three feet of eight other people's phones. You may get your own phone when you can afford to buy one and the airtime plan to go with it. It will be a flip-phone with no Internet access of any kind. If those are no longer available ten years from now, you will be out of luck.

You will never have an iPhone, an iPad, and iPod, an iTouch, or an iAnything. Apple products are expensive -- arguably overpriced -- and you don't have any money. My money is not for buying you iPads. My money is for buying you heat and shelter and food.

We will never own a Wii, an X-box, a DS, a PS3, or any other random string of letters and numbers denoting a video game console. The reason for this is two-fold. For starters, you get enough screen time as it is, since your mom and I taught you how to turn on the Disney channel in the morning so we could sleep in every once in a while. We're not proud of that, but when you have kids of your own someday, you will understand. I do not want you becoming pasty-white, fat little drooling slobs. At our house, your Wii is the back yard. Secondly, I do not want to spend my money on video games. I know you will get all the video game time you will ever need at your friends' houses, and that is a much more financially prudent solution for me.

You will be allowed to have a Facebook account when you are 18 years old, and not a minute sooner. You will be allowed to use the Internet under strict parental supervision to research school papers and look up cool videos of lions attacking zebras and such, but other than that, it is off-limits. If you need to talk to your friends, you may ride your bike to their house, or talk to them at school. If you are the only kid at your whole school that doesn't have a Facebook or Twitter account, I will take that as a sign that I am doing my job. If you don't like that answer, you may get your own job, your own house, and your own computer, and go crazy.

You have already eaten at more fast food restaurants in your few short years of life than I did in my first eighteen. As much as your mom and I try to avoid them, they are somewhat a fact of life these days, but the food at almost all of them is bad for you. I know it’s delicious, but it will kill you early. That is an important life lesson in and of itself. This is the reason that you have to eat all of your broccoli at home, and you never get soda. You will notice that whenever you complain about eating your vegetables, I smile. That’s because doing my job makes me happy.

In short, in an effort to make sure you grow up healthy and fit, your mom and I will feed you right, and strive to make sure that the only technology you ever own as a child is the GPS tracking device that we will have surgically implanted under your skin to keep track of you in your early teen years. You’re welcome in advance.

With love,

Dad

P.S. – No, you may not go get a second opinion from your mother.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!