Equilibrium

New Year's Resolutions?

I'm a self-help author's prize. I'm constantly making lofty lists of goals, re-drafting the mission statement of my life and other corny crap like that.

You might then imagine that New Year's Eve is a list-making, goal-setting, life-changing extravaganza over here. But it's not. Somehow I can never seem to get excited about self-improvement when I'm also downing champagne and eating everything in sight.

Since I have a hard time getting excited about making New Year's resolutions for myself, I thought maybe I'd try to get my kids on board this year. Making resolutions, I thought, would help them feel that same sense of fulfillment and optimism that I feel each time I make a to-do list. Also, I figured, I could use it as a way to guilt them into helping out more around the house and to maybe even stop fighting with each other.

I tried to slip it casually into the conversation: "So, guys, do you know what New Year's resolutions are?" I asked one day last week. "They're kind of like a promise you make to yourself, that you'll do something in the new year that makes your life better."

"Like what?" asked Jacob, showing mild interest.

"Oh, you know. Like eating more vegetables, or exercising more, or, um, cleaning your room every day..."

Jacob wrinkled his nose. "Cleaning my room wouldn't make my life better."

"Well, sometimes a resolution can be something you decide to do that will make you a better person."

He considered this. "Hmmm. I'd rather not. Can I resolve to just be happier?"

"I guess so, but how are you going to do it? Like, maybe a cleaner bedroom would make you happier. Or maybe if you chose not to fight with your brother - that might make you happier."

"Well, I could resolve for Isaac to be nicer to me," Jacob said.

"But what are YOU going to do to help make that happen?" I pressed.

"I don't know ... this is all starting to sound like a lot of work, Mom." I'd lost him.

So I hit Isaac up: "So how about it, Isaac? Wanna make some resolutions?"

He paused. "What do I get?"

"How about a sense of satisfaction? How about the knowledge that you're making the world a better place?" I ranted.

"I was thinking more like a pack of Yu-Gi-Oh cards," he said.

I gave up on getting them on board. But a few minutes later, I found myself sitting in front of a clean sheet of paper at the dining room table. I hadn't made a list of New Year's resolutions in years, but I decided to listen to that quote by Mahatma Ghandi and be the change I want to see in the world. If my kids couldn't summon up any enthusiasm about whipping the household into better shape, I'd do it for myself and hope some of my zeal would rub off on them.

Just then my 3-year-old wandered into the room. "What you doing, Mom?" he asked.

"Making my New Year's resolutions," I answered. "Want to do some with me?"

"Sure!" he agreed.

"Great!" I finally had a willing subject. "Well, how about if you resolve to pick up your toys every day all by yourself?"

"OK!" he said, with gusto.

"And eat all your veggies at dinner time?"

"Yep!" he said agreeably.

"And," I decided to push it a bit further, "will you resolve to start using the big-boy potty every time?"

"Sure!" he said. I felt a deep sense of satisfaction as I handed him his list, which he personalized with a few scribbles.

Later, I found the list of William's resolutions crumpled up in the trash can, apparently the victim of a spilled bowl of SpaghettiOs. Of course, it's not like I'd actually thought a 3-year-old would keep his New Year's resolutions. I knew very well that on Jan. 1 he'd leave his toys all over the floor, reject half his peas, and load up his diaper several times, just like always.

Still, I felt better just having made the resolutions, even if there was no way they'd actually be kept. For one shining moment, I'd been able to imagine a cleaner, healthier, less smelly life-even if it would never become reality.

Isn't that what New Year's resolutions are all about, anyway?

Happy Holidays, However You Do Them

While standing in line at the store today with a cart full of last-minute holiday necessities - batteries in a variety of shapes, sizes and wattage; Scotch tape and curling ribbon, tissue paper and name tags and holiday-themed candies - I found myself reaching instinctively for the holiday issue of Martha Stewart Living.

I flipped through the pages and found page after page of directions for simple-looking (but in reality, probably pretty complicated) recipes, decorations and crafts that I would never, ever, ever, actually make.

That's not always enough to make me put an issue of the magazine down. Sometimes - like at Halloween, when it's far less emotionally charged and busy - it's enough just to flip through the magazine, oohing and aahing over the pictures and thinking of ways to re-create the ideas in my own, slightly less creative, artistic and expensive way.

High-end designer magazines can be a kind of brain candy. Sure, you can't afford the stuff in the ads, and you lack the skill, time or desire to follow through on the activities. But you can pretend you'll actually hand-paint that vintage picture frame you picked up at a flea market. Sometimes, that makes the magazine worth the $5 price tag.

But this time, I put it back. At this time of year, it's just too easy to look at the tasteful photo spreads featuring angelic children dressed in matching designer pajamas and happy, rested-looking moms and dads in plush bathrobes and feel like your own family celebration somehow doesn't measure up. Who needs the stress of wondering whether they're really providing their families with just the right balance of restraint and festivity?

Our own holiday season kicked off with a much-less-than-perfect start. First, there was the Christmas tree, which looked puny strapped on the car, but wound up taking up so much space we had to remove half the living room furniture and cut a foot off the top.

Still, things seemed optimistic when we went to trim the tree. But, on his way to hang a ball of clay that is supposed to represent a snowman, Jacob hiccupped, which we mistook for a burp.

"Don't burp in public, Jacob," Jon said.

"I didn't!" he protested.

"Sounded like it."

"I DIDN'T! You're just a big JERK!" Jacob cried dramatically, flailing his arms as he ran from the room.

"Isaac, don't put the ornaments too low, they might fall," I said, moving a few glass balls out of Owen's potentially destructive reach. Isaac, offended by my criticism, fled the room as well.

Owen, who's not so steady on his feet yet, ran into William, who was running circles around the room, and fell down. The holiday CD playing in the background started to skip: "jingle be-, jingle be-, jingle be-, jingle be-"

Jacob refused to come out of his room. Isaac sniffled in the corner. Owen wailed. William kept running like a dog chasing its tail. Jon and I just looked at each other in disgust. Christmas was totally ruined ... for the moment.

But five minutes later, we were all back in the living room, joking and laughing and enjoying a new CD as we finished the tree, which seemed to have 80 percent of its ornaments concentrated on one side and was definitely lacking that designer polish. Later, there would be hot chocolate and cookie-making, but it involved store-bought cocoa instead of real cocoa beans, and at some point, we'd get tired of cutting out cookies and just eat the leftover dough raw.

When people send me a holiday photo of a perfect-looking, smiling family in matching clean red sweaters, I like to imagine what everybody looked like just before and just after the camera clicked the picture. I imagine it may have involved tears and exasperation, stains and crumbs. And if they're anything like my family, laughter and hugs, too. When it's real, it all gets jumbled together like that.

In our family, things don't always look like a magazine spread: reality is messier, louder, tackier and usually, cheaper. But it's also warm, funny and alive in the way only real life can be. So I wish you a happy imperfect holiday.

And a tacky New Year.

Surviving Sleepovers

my latest column:

At this very moment, there are 10 little boys in my house. OK, so four of them are mine. But the rest are guests.

My four sons were born in four consecutive months. So, our family has birthdays in September, October, November and December. And when there are that many birthdays in a row, it's not always easy to give each child's special day the attention it deserves.

Last year, I was hugely pregnant at this time of year and not in any mood to plan a party. So I told my boys that this year, they could have a big joint birthday party - whatever they wanted. Themes. Decorations. A huge guest list.

The boys enthusiastically agreed, with one hitch: they couldn't come up with a realistic venue.

Jacob, ever the big dreamer, had some impressive plans. His birthday party had to be creative, inventive, innovative: it had to be the party of the year, in a place nobody had ever had a party before. He wanted the whole nine yards, with laser tag and swimming and treats and prizes and a guy on stilts and live animals. Basically he wanted a party extravaganza the likes of which would shoot him up the charts to No. 1 Coolest Kid In Third Grade.

But when I did the math: 18 students from Jacob's class plus 17 from Isaac's, multiplied by food, site rental, entertainment, party favors and 5,000 paper napkins for their grubby faces, my checking account gave an almost-audible groan. It was time for Plan B.

Yet I'd promised a spectacular party. I couldn't let the boys down. What could I offer them as a substitute?

"Hey, guys," I suggested, "What if we skip the big party and have a smaller sleepover instead?"

Sold.

So the planning began. Little did I know, however, that planning a sleepover is a far more complicated affair than planning a party for the whole class.

Sure, the big party will get you in the pocketbook, but the small overnight party deprives you of sleep and throws in the guilt of having to exclude most of the kids in the class. Unless you're certifiably insane and invite them all, I suppose.

I should have learned a lesson from the party I had on my 11th birthday. My mom had limited my guest list to six girls, meaning I was able to invite all of my best friends but only about half of my second-tier friends.

For weeks the phone lines were abuzz with discussions of which girls had been invited, which ones hadn't, and why some of the girls who hadn't been invited would no longer be my friend.

The party itself, I recall, went on late into the night. I had invited two very talkative, very ... spirited little girls, who kept us all in hysterical laughter for hours.

From midnight on, my mother appeared at 15-minute intervals in her bathrobe and shushed us. "For the love of God, would you shut UP?" she finally begged at 3 a.m. We wouldn't, but she didn't come down again before we passed out around 4. Maybe she slept with her head under the mattress.

Based on this memory, I knew two things about a slumber party: to keep my sanity and to keep from hurting feelings, I'd have to limit the guest list to no more than three kids each. That way there would be far more kids left out than included.

It turns out it's a good thing I set limits on the guest list.

For the first hour after the kids all arrived, they bolted around the house like a pack of wild animals running from a predator.

At dinner time, they wolfed down pizza and cupcakes. One excitable boy sucked up an entire juice box in one five-second slurp, his eyes bugging out of his head as he squeezed the box dry. Then they went ballistic again.

Finally we managed to "settle" them into two separate rooms with videos and Xbox games and shut the door on the whole messy, noisy affair. Dazed, I made my way to my bedroom where I now lie, listening to a bunch of boys cracking bathroom jokes and making fart noises.

It's going to be a long, long night. Good thing I brought the chocolate ... but too bad I forgot the ear muffs

Gender Letdown

As the mom of four sons--who always thought she'd end up with a daughter some day--it bugs me when people brush off the desire for one gender with "well, you have a healthy baby, that's all that matters." What I don't think they get is that my happiness over the four healthy sons I actually have didn't have anything to do with the desire for the girl I probably won't. In other words, it's not that I want to trade one of my boys for a girl; it's just that I figured, somewhere along the line, there'd be a girl in there too--and I think it's totally normal to mourn that loss. It's like having lots of kids--sure, logically it might seem like you can't love them all as much as you can love only one, but you can, and do. And similar to that you can mourn not getting one gender or the other, even if you would never, never trade the child you actually have. It's not logical--it's parenthood!

Anyway, here's an article I wrote on the topic of gender and letdown for Fit Pregnancy magazine. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Infant Car Seats Could Pose Breathing Risk....

A new study in the British Medical Journal has shown that leaving babies sleeping in car seats for too long could potentially lead to breathing problems. In almost all cases the infants had been lbrought into the house still sleeping in their car seats and left there for some period of time. The researchers are quick to point out that infant car seats are life-saving devices when used the way they were meant to--that is, inside the car. But according to this HealthDay article by Ed Edelson, "Car seats should only be used for transportation purposes," said Linda White, injury prevention coordinator at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. "

I've often looked at one of my sleeping infants in a car seat, with his head cocked off to the side and all scrunched up, and thought "That just doesn't look healthy." But my personal car-seat-stays-in-the-car policy is more due to my realization, after carrying baby #1 around in his car seat for months, that this fad is inconvenient and injurious to the carseat-carrier's upper thighs. With babies #2, #3, and #4, I kept the car seat in the car and used a sling or my good old-fashioned arms to carry them around, and gasp--it was actually easier, lighter, and less likely to bruise me. In fact, I wrote my very first column, almost 3 years ago, about my car-seat-stays-in-car policy. I'll share it now.

When I became a parent six years ago I noticed a puzzling trend.

I won’t say that, at first, I didn’t participate in it. Hey, everybody else was doing it, and just who was I to go against the grain?

So, unable to resist peer pressure, I joined the ranks of the bruised-thigh brigade: I hefted my baby around in his automobile safety seat.

Considering that I bore two 8-plus pound babies and one nearly ten-pounder, all of whom packed on weight at a steady rate of a pound a week for the first six weeks after birth, I already have heavy enough children. Surely I didn’t need to add on another two pounds of fabric and shock-absorbing foam inside an additional seven of unforgivingly rigid plastic?

But I lugged that baby-filled carseat all over town—into stores, through the mall, to doctor’s appointments, sometimes even in and out of the house. I was a chiropractor’s nightmare—one arm rigid, bent at the elbow with the seat’s handle hanging on my inner arm, the other shoulder hiked up to my ear.

And with each step, the seat would bang into my leg. Step-THUMP. Step-THUMP. By the time my baby was six weeks old, my legs were so beat up that I looked like I’d been caught in the middle of a paintball battle between Samwise and Frodo.

I’m not exactly sure why it never occurred to me to reach into the carseat and remove the baby. It would have made my legs happy, for one thing. It also would have been a lot more pleasant to hold a soft, warm baby in the crook of my arm than a hard plastic handle. And oh, yeah, the baby would have liked it too. Funny things, those babies, always wanting to be held.

With children numbers 2 and 3, I broke out of the mold: I refused to carry them anywhere in their safety seats. “Car seats stay in the car,” was my rule.

Nobody came and took my Mom license away. I was happy, the babies were happy, and my insurance company didn’t have to pay $500 in chiropractic fees every month. Win-win-win. And since Kolcraft, Cosco, Century, Evenflo, and Playskool (among others) have all recalled car seats at one time or another--sometimes multiple times--because because of unsafe carrying handles, I was happy not to risk the list of possible handle-failure consequences that included fractures, lacerations, and concussions. Whee!

So next time I see haggard-looking new parents trying to do a delicate dance over an ice-covered walkway while carting a 35-pound load on one arm, I think I’ll take them aside.

“Guess what?” I’ll say. “You might not believe this, but I swear to all things holy it’s true.”

“What?” they’ll say, all ears.

“Well, it’s revolutionary, but it works for me. You don’t have to carry that thing-” (pointing to the plastic torture device) “-everywhere. You can leave it in the car. And just carry your baby.”

“Ohhhhh,” they’ll say, the glow of enlightenment brightening their weary faces.

The world will be a better place.

Newest Column: 'Tween' Trend is Disturbing

(as always, if you'd like to read some of my past columns please visit THE HUB)

Last week, while doing my usual morning ease-into-the-day routine of reading Yahoo! News, I stumbled across this headline: "Tweens Are The New Teens."

The article suggests that "tweenagers" - kids in the 8-to-12 age group - are increasingly looking and behaving more like the teens of the past, both socially and developmentally.

In the Associated Press article, reporter Martha Irvine writes: "Some of them are going on 'dates' and talking on their cell phones. They listen to sexually charged pop music, play mature-rated video games and spend time gossiping on MySpace." Irvine also points to several studies that have shown that kids are even reaching puberty earlier - increasingly, during elementary school.

Say it ain't so. As a mom with a 9- and 7-year-old in the house, I was sure I had a few years left before I started dealing with slamming doors, squeaky voices and the emergence of facial hair, not to mention peer pressure that includes sex and drugs instead of just sugar cereal.

But I guess I can't say I'm that surprised. You may remember the column I wrote a few months ago, about how easily my oldest son seemed embarrassed by me these days. And guess what my 7-year-old son wants most this Christmas? A cell phone.

Girls seem hardest hit in some ways. Clothing made for a generation of tiny tramps includes thongs and belly shirts with words like "naughty" emblazoned across the front -- in the little girl's department. And the dolls that do sell are those frightening Bratz, heavily made-up fashion dolls who, without their de signer shoes on, HAVE NO FEET.

An article in the Washington Post in 2002 described a phenomenon called "age compression," in which toys and products are appealing to a younger and younger age group. So, while Barbie would once have been an obvious winner for a 9-year-old girl, now it appeals more to the preschool set.

It would seem marketers have compensated by hyping up once decidedly adult items as kid stuff, replacing dolls and balls with expensive electronics, jewelry and flashy, revealing clothing on the 8- to 12-year-old's wish list. But there's more to it than clothing and products. I've detected a certain world-weariness and cynicism in some kids who don't seem old enough to be so put upon.

In short, we're creating a generation of "cool" kids. Which begs the question: Do I want my kids to be cool? Or do I want them to be, well, kids?

If an 8-year-old is already acting like a teenager, what's she got to look forward to when she's actually a teenager? If a 10-year-old's already left childhood behind, will he regret it later?

I think he might, even if he doesn't quite know what he missed out on.

There's no way to completely keep kids from getting caught up in this push toward early adulthood, unless we keep them locked away. But as much as we'd like to blame products, celebrities and pop culture for our kids growing up too soon, the truth is that some of the responsibility lies with us. Most 11-year-old kids aren't holding down full-time jobs. The only way marketers can sell them these products and lifestyles is if we, the parents, crack open our wallets and pay for them. They're taking advantage of a demand that we are helping to create.

But we can make a change. Maybe not across the board, but in our own homes.

We can still be hip parents. We can still listen to the music we love and dress the way we want and read People and watch MTV and chat on MySpace. But where I think this generation of parents sometimes fails is that we don't draw a clear enough distinction between the world we inhabit as adults, and the world we expose our kids to. They shouldn't get to do all the same things we do. That's why we're grown-ups and they're kids.

We are entitled to say "no" to MySpace and sexually charged music videos and expensive gadgets for our 9-year-olds. We have the right to limit the time they spend watching snarky television shows and staring at computer screens. We can't control how they turn out, but we do have the responsibility to at least draw some boundaries for them.

Maybe they'll be less "cool" than some of their peers. But they'll have had the opportunity to be kids during this fleeting, once-in- a-lifetime chance.

I'm willing to make the trade.

Around the Web...

Over at LargerFamilies.com, we're talking about traveling and vacationing with lots of kids.

-and-

At Diapers to Deadlines, I answer the question: How long does it take editors to respond to e-mailed queries?