Thanks for Giving

The holidays have officially arrived.  It all starts with Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays.  It is a great holiday because it revolves around the 3 "F's": Family, Food, and Football.  Really, in my opinion, it is the perfect holiday.  A holiday so perfect that it is almost immune to the ruining power of children.  Almost.  You know what I am talking about.  Kids have this insane ability to find a way to ruin everything, whether it's furniture, your meal that you're cooking, or just a night out.  Somehow, some way, they will ruin it for you.  Most of the time, well, some of the time, they don't even mean to do it.  For example, when my wife and I planned a night out one time, which for us takes some planning, and my youngest woke up the morning of the date and threw up.  Not her fault, she didn't do it on purpose, but the night out was ruined.  It is such a strong power that kids don't even have to try, they just do it.

Holidays are not normally immune.  Let me give you some examples:

• 4th of July: Normally ruined by the youngest child who has been up all day, in the sun, running around eating all the junk food they can find, and they now refuse to go to sleep because there is too much going on.  They need to sleep, however, because they are exhibiting behaviors that would make Oscar the Grouch look like a happy guy.  All of this, of course, is just in time for the fireworks show you have been waiting to see all day.
• Halloween:  You spend all day on Halloween doing things that revolve around your kids.  You go to their school to see their parade and help out in their classroom for their party and then after school, you help them get their costumes back on and take them from door to door to get candy, and all of this is great until they come crashing down from that sugar high and it's time for bed.  They stay up late, and then punish you the next day by finding their candy at 5 am, eating it and begin bouncing off the walls after they kept you up late.
• Christmas: Early Morning + Lots of new Presents+ Tons of candy in the stockings + over stimulation all day long + more candy and sweets from Grandpa who just can't say no to his grandkids = Nightmare by 6 pm.

Somehow, Thanksgiving seems to be the one exception, or at least I foolishly think each year.  This year, however, it really was.  Somehow, my kids made it through the meal behaving pretty well.  They even sat at the table with us and ate, which never happens the rest of the year.  My oldest even got excited about the football, for the first time ever on Thanksgiving.  It was a strange experience.  Most of the time in these settings my wife and I spend most of the time chasing the kids around, trying to round them up.  It usually looks like a circus to everyone else, but it feels like trying to wrangle cats to us.  Usually the kids are fighting about some dumb thing or another.  Sometimes, and I really believe this, they are fighting just to fight.  

But, somehow, this year was different.  We all sat down together and ate our meal, almost like civilized people.  As we sat there, and I looked around at each of them, it was a sweet moment as a parent.  I mean, this wasn't a Norman Rockwell painting or anything.  My oldest had his plate piled with his Thanksgiving feast: 2 rolls, my daughter had all the varieties of Jell-O salad on her plate and one small piece of turkey, my son Jak only had turkey and was going on about some PokeMon something, my second youngest was making multiple trips to the food for more of whatever she could reach, and my youngest was wearing more of the sweet potatoes than she had in her mouth, but we were all together, and happy.  For me, it was the perfect picture.  I felt something new this Thanksgiving: Gratitude.  I was grateful for my young little family and for how much they had each grown this year and just how great each one is.  I wasn't worried about the football game, or having seconds on the food.  The only "F" that mattered was family, and I felt blessed to have mine.  If only we had a holiday somewhere where there were no distractions, it was just an opportunity to be grateful for what we have.  That would be awesome.  We should do it June.  June only has Flag Day.  It could use a big holiday like this.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, from my family to yours!

You're a Geek, and You're Having a Girl: Now What?

Just over a week ago, my brother had a party.  A party to announce the gender of their unborn child.  This is a new thing, started by the Pinterest generation.  When we were having kids, we were part of the Facebook generation, so the most our friends and family got was a post on Facebook with a hard to see ultrasound pic and something like "It's a boy!" as a caption.  Now you have to bring all your family and friends together and have a themed get together and have everyone guess.  Yeah, it's cute, but I am way to lazy to pull something like this off, so I try to belittle it. I'm sorry, I am a horrible person.

The real point here is that my brother is having a girl.  I just want to say, I totally nailed it.  When I heard they were pregnant, I knew they were having a girl.  I don't know, why, but the truth is my brother is going to be the kind of dad that every girl should have, and his wife is going to be a great mom, and I am genuinely excited for them.  When I heard the good news, it made me think back to when we found out we were having a girl for the first time.  I was terrified.  Boys seem easy for whatever reason.  I get boys, I think, because I used to be one.  Girls are, always have been, and always will be a huge mystery to me.  The idea of trying to raise one in a world that seems to be against her, just seemed overwhelming.  So, I did what any self respecting geek would do, I turned to the world of geekdom to find some inspiration for the type of girl I wanted to raise. Unfortunately, you still have to be careful.  Sex still sells in the geek world.  Long story short, we avoided comics in general.  Here are my top three female characters in geekdom.

3. Captain Kathryn Janeway

I'll start with one of my favorite Sci-Fi franchises.  Star Trek is known for its commanding officers, but it took four series before they had a female in the captain's chair.  Janeway had to be good.  And she was better than good.  She was great.  She had quite the challenge.  Somehow, she had to find a way to get two crews who hate each other to work together,  while they were in millions of lightyears away trying to find a way home.  Janeway was a great captain, a great leader.  She was fair, she was strong and everything I would love my daughters to grow up to be.  Often times, when women characters are written, they are either too sexed up, or they are written as cruel, witchy villains.  Janeway was neither.  And it worked. Imagine that.

2. Donna Noble/River Song

I love Doctor Who.  I'll be honest, I have only gotten into Doctor Who recently, so I am only super familiar with the reboot that started in 2005.  To be honest, the new series has a major problem. The companions.  They are all young girls who follow the Doctor around like doe-eyed little puppy dogs and fall all over him.  Except for these two: Donna Noble and River Song.  I am going to say this, and it is going to make some people angry, but Donna was the best companion the show has had in the modern era.  In my opinion, it's not even close.  Why?  Because while she was on the show it was about adventure and exploring and not about how much she had a crush on the Doctor and wondering if he felt the same way.  She was the only companion that did not have any kind of romantic interaction with the Doctor at any point (Amy had the whole series where Rory was missing).  Donna and the Doctor were friends, that's it.  And they respected each other.  

River Song, in my opinion, is the only woman in the universe who could win over the Doctor.  Why? Because she was his equal.  There was really nothing the Doctor could do that she couldn't.  She wasn't some stupid little girl having a big crush on some older man.  She was a woman,his equal in every way. She didn't need the Doctor to save her.  In fact, she often saved him.  She was fun, independent and strong.  When my girls start watching Doctor Who, it will be these episodes.  We are going to skip Rose entirely.

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Chosen one? Check.  Killer moves with a wooden stake? Check.  Save the world?  Check, check,and double check.  Buffy is about as tough as they come.  She was the character that earned Joss Whedon a reputation for writing strong female characters.  It was a bold move for the 90's to have a female in the lead role of a vampire slasher series.  It was an even bigger move to market it to a mass audience. The gamble paid off, and Buffy was a huge hit.  She didn't wait around for some prince to come save her.  In fact most of her princes had to end up with a stake in their hearts.  Buffy is the classic hero's journey, except she's a she.  Tell you what, if I had to pick her or Luke Skywalker to save me, I'd pick her.  I think I'd have a better shot.

Well, there's my list.  Who would make yours?  I'm sure not everyone will agree with mine.  I think the real point is that there are some characters, role models, out there, you just have to look for them.  

JAK-isms: Just Be Yourself

I Love my kids.  Little kids just have a different way of looking at life than we do as adults.  It's refreshing to every once in a while take a look at the world through their eyes.  Our little boy Jak (short for Jakob, pronounced Jack) seems to see the world in an even more different light.  He has his quirks and we love him for them, most of the time.  Sometimes, he says things that really make me think, enough that I want to write them down from time to time and share them with the world.  He doesn't know it, but Jak is about to enlighten the Internet.  His stuff is typically pretty inspirational, so I would recommend sharing this post with everyone you know, because someone you know might need it.

The other day, Jak and I were talking.  Jak doesn't always do well with pretending.  He doesn't like to pretend that he is someone or something else.  he is always just Jak.  He might be Jak in a Captain America costume or Jak in a Wolverine costume or a Ninja Turtle costume, but always still Jak.  So we were talking and I told him that he was pretty great, and that we were like Batman and Robin.  I could be like Batman and he would be like Robin.  He didn't like that one, so I said I could be Superman and he could be Superboy.  Still no good.  So I asked him, "Jak, which heroes do you want to be, then?"  He looked at me and gave the first JAK-ism that I really wanted to write down. He said:

"Daddy, you don't have to be a super hero to do good stuff.  You just have to be yourself  to do good stuff."

Wow.  I couldn't help but smile when he said that.  I gave him a big hug and told him, "You're right, buddy, what was I thinking."

It's a true statement.  Within each of us is the capacity to do good.  We don't need to wear tights (thankfully), or a cape to help others and do good stuff.  I didn't press, but I wonder what Jak thinks of as good stuff that I do or that he does, but chances are it's probably everyday kind of stuff like playing with him or helping with dinner or taking him out for ice cream.  It made me really stop and think.  To our kids, we are already super heroes.  And if we're not parents yet, we can still do good stuff.  We don't have to wait to get some cosmic power ring or get struck by lightning while standing in some chemicals or anything like that.  We can start today.  How?  That was Jak's real wisdom.  Just being ourselves.  Nothing "extraordinary," except I think on some level, we could say that each of us extraordinary and special and have something to add to our communities, our families, our workplace, our school or wherever we are.  Jak realized that each of us is special and that being ourselves is enough to do good stuff.

Halloween 2 or the Morning After

So, you survived the night with your little ones, or you survived a night of handing out candy or going to parties.  Congratulations, and welcome to the other side.  Last night and yesterday we had a lot of fun.  We trick-or-treated until our kids literally began to drop.  For us, that meant doing one side of a street and then the other, and we had 3 that were done.  The other 2 could have gone on for a little while longer, but after coming to my work, they had plenty of candy, so I didn't feel too bad calling it a night.  The kids looked great in their costumes and even our youngest got the whole get free candy idea.   It was a productive, seemingly long night and day.  On the car ride home, the long day finally caught up to each of the kids as they picked and bugged each other all the way.  Listening to your kids fight in the back seat  while you're sitting in the front is just so much fun.  I believe they use this as a form of torture in some countries.  Needless to say, when we finally got home and won the battle that is bed time,  we just crashed and went to sleep.

That brings us to this morning.  The morning after. Our two boys were up early, as always.  Every few minutes, one of them was coming in and asking us to open up some candy, and we weren't really keeping track.  Our children have learned that the best time to ask us for stuff is in the early morning when we are still trying to sleep and we just want them to go away.  The only problem is that our plan never works.  We have 5 kids, so that combined with the fact that they each of my kids needs something every two minutes, it ends up being a constant stream of neediness in the morning until we finally decide to pull our lazy bottoms out of bed.  At 5:30.  6, if we're lucky.  Today, we made it to 7:00, so it's almost like we got to sleep in, except that there was still that constant stream of neediness for about an hour before we got up.

I got up and walked out into our front room and was amazed at what I saw.  We had 2 buckets of candy from the trick or treating and from the candy we were giving out.  Not small bowls, BUCKETS.  This wasn't even all the candy.  Some of it was still out in the car, we were just too lazy to bring it in last night.  This was also in addition to the giant bowls of candy we had up on our dresser in our bedroom.  The 2 buckets were dumped all on the floor.  It was like a sea of candy in out living room. Well, not all candy.  There were some wrappers mixed in with the candy.  Who am I kidding?  It was mostly wrapper with a few pieces of candy mixed in.  The candy that was left was the kinds that nobody really likes, like the vanilla tootsie rolls.  Our 2 boys were sitting on the couches across from each other, each surrounded by a pile of their own wrappers in a sugar coma.  Our littlest girl was standing there, big  smile on her face, a tootsie pop in each hand, while our next youngest was picking up every vanilla tootsie roll she could find.  She's not picky, she just wanted sugar.

My wife and I just stood there and stared.  We realized that the kids were not to blame for this. They just wanted candy, and what kid doesn't?  It was our fault for leaving it where they could easily find and access it.  We should have known better.  Obviously, with 5 kids, this isn't our first rodeo, and it seems like this same scene plays out every year.  We know this is going to happen, yet every year it still does.  Why?  Because we are so exhausted for the actual night of Halloween, that we don't think ahead to the next day.  We only think about getting in bed.  So this same story plays out each year, followed by the next thing.  My wife takes away all the candy.  She scoops it all up and takes it to her secret hiding place.  And it is secret too.  Sometimes, even I can't find it.  Now, the rest of the day will be filled with kids asking for candy, us saying no, them finding stragglers that we didn't see and eating them.  Plus, they are all overtired and cranky, so they are all fighting with each other all day.  If they do find candy, they eat it, run around crazy from the sugar rush, then fight and crash once it wears off.  Kids love and look forward to October 31, parents hate November 1.

Maybe next year will be better.  I doubt it.  I am sure it will play out exactly the same as this year and last year and the year before that.  I guess it is one of our Halloween traditions.