Mad dog

Django

Our dog, Django (pr. jang-o), is a 3 year-old yellow lab/ridgeback (or something) mix. He’s also an asshole. Today, he thought it would be fun to shove his way out the door as the kids were leaving for school and then sprint around the neighborhood for half an hour.

His favorite sport is to wait for me to get within 10 feet and then take off. Over and over and over. Funny stuff. Finally, a neighbor had to bring him home. Plus, he knows he was being a jerk. Look at him. He can’t even make eye contact.

Today’s definition: Stranger

Stranger [streyn-jer],

Anyone you don’t know well enough to share a secret handshake with. Can be assumed to have evil intentions toward your child(ren). May attempt to engage in horrible acts with you or your loved ones, such as smile, talk, make fleeting eye contact, offer assistance, etc. All such actions should be met with suspicion, stiff body language, and icy stares. Strangers must be made to seem monstrous and scary at every opportunity.

Onions are evil

Yesterday, while helping me with dinner, Vince was overcome with tearing in his eyes from the onions I was chopping. He complained briefly about the dreaded vegetable, then moved on to discussing garlic, which he apparently finds much less offensive. This is news to me, since I can count the number of vegetables (or other contaminants, in the form of any non-meat chunks) he will allow to pass his lips on zero hands. After, a thoughtful pause during his contemplation of onions and garlic, he concluded (and almost made me pee my pants):

Onions are like garlic’s mean friend.

Well put, my friend.

Can parenting really be screamfree?

Just finished screamfree Parenting: The Revolutionary Approach to Raising Your Kids by Keeping Your Cool by Hal Edward Runkel. The verdict? I was frustrated by some of the areas that felt a bit like Runkel was revving up to his main points and took a while to get there—a ruthless, er…talented, editor could have done him a great service.

BUT by the time I finished it, I felt like I’d really learned some things that would help with the scream-y, yell-y culture we’ve fallen into around here at Chez Kookamunga (as I write this, three of the kids are yelling at each other. I’m sure they’ll work it out, right?).

What do I know anyway?

I’ve had 21 years to experience and think about parenting, and I’m starting to feel like I’ve learned a few things along the way. I did say “a few.” Cuz it’s hard. But mostly I think it’s intimidating, because kids are little people that we are somehow entrusted to keep and raise and, if we’re overachievers, to nurture and encourage and guide and, you know, feed. And more than ever, it’s like we have someone (many someones) looking over our shoulders to make sure we’re doing it right. Are we doing it right? Who the hell knows. I do a lot of “trust your gut” parenting, which gets me partway there, I think. But just a few short days ago, I completely lost my shit with the kids, which I am not against doing, given the right, er…wrong, conditions. So that in and of itself didn’t send me running to the parenting section of the bookstore. Really it was the look of fear in the eyes of the four children staring at me. And the fact that they all went completely pale. And that I made the 8-year-old cry.  Okay, so I needed to do something differently.