It's just a couch

While patiently sitting in the waiting room for Eva's eight-year-old pediatrician visit last week, Eva angled to get her little hands on my precious iPhone.  Now, there was a brief period of insanity when I first got my phone (the little darling is coming up on her one year birthday, bless her heart), I reveled in the opportunity it afforded me to completely ignore my children while they played Angry Birds. Soon enough, however, I wised up and realized that, as with any toy, fighting ensues over "turns," glazed-over expressions and selective deafness quickly rear their ugly heads and so, much to my children's collective chagrin, I no longer allow them to play on iPhone.

This day, at the doctor's office, I was lucky to have recently discovered a batch of super fun Chabad videos on YouTube to show Eva. And not only that, I got an email of the latest kiruv video from Aish, AS I WAS SITTING THERE IN THE WAITING ROOM.  How lucky is that? So after we were ushered in to the room to wait for the doctor, I said, "Eva, you are so lucky today, do you know why? I am going to let you watch the Chabad video AND the Aish video. Cool, right?"  The poor girl is so deprived of feeling that iPhone in her hand that she jumped at the chance to watch the videos. Genius, right?

And just then, as we were enjoying our excellent viewing, Dr F walked in.
"Excuse me," he said, "sorry to interrupt your game."
"Oh, no, Doctor," I said gravely, "I don't believe in video games, we were just catching up on our Chabad and Aish videos."

Bam! Am I the most responsible parent or what? (Yes M family, Gorby does spend hours playing Wii at your house and yes, E family, ditto for Pes, but I didn't have to tell Dr F that, now did I?)

Then Dr F asked Eva, "So Eva, how are you doing in school?"
"OK," she replied, "but I recently got an "S" on a reading paper." S is for Satisfactory, like a B in real life.
"What does "S" stand for?" asked the doctor.
"Superbad," said Eva. He looked at me, disapprovingly.
"Well, in our house, that is kind of what it stands for," I said, defensively.
He opened his eyes wide, told me Eva is short, and we went on our merry way.

Now, I am relaying this tale for a specific purpose: that is, Eva has clearly absorbed some of my neurotic perfectionistic tendencies. And that evening, the unthinkable happened.

I cheerfully told Eva to practice her violin, ("Practice your violin RIGHT NOW!") while I helped the other children get dressed for bed upstairs. A few minutes later, as I was fighting with Gorby to get out of the bath, I heard a loud sobbing coming from the girls' room. "What is that?" I asked.

"Eva's crying," Zsa Zsa said, "in her bed."

At this point, I immediately knew that something had happened that involved breakage/spillage/general household destruction. I sauntered in to her room and found poor Eva under the covers sobbing hysterically, face red and puffy.

"So, Eva," I said, "Sweetie, what is it?"
"I can't tell you, I can't tell you. You are going to scream at me."
"Me? Scream?" I asked (HAHAHAHAHAHA!)
"It's OK, honey, it can't be that bad, just tell Mommy, I promise I won't yell, OK?"
"No I CAN'T I CAN'T I CAN'T TELLYOU!" sob sob sob

At this point, I was SURE that she had dropped her violin. This did not upset me too much because a) it's insured; and b) she has a 500 hour long recital on Sunday and I was not too distressed at the prospect of sitting that one out. So I kept on gently prodding with my calm demeanor waiting for her to confess to breaking her violin. I was SO SURE that was the cause of the hysteria that when she finally said, "I wrote on your new couch," I felt faint and almost fell on the floor.

You see, after my super-intense remodeling project involving my family room over the summer, I finally have a beautiful room with a beautiful wheat-covered microsuede couch, which I bought in a moment of insanity when I forgot I own four children. However, thus far, because of fear of death/dismemberment/disownment, the kids have been excellent at following the "No food in my new room" rule, but sometimes forget about the "No ink anywhere NEAR my new room" rule.

I ran downstairs and saw a HUGE LINE OF INK right across the center cushion of my couch. I ran for my special couch cushion cleaner and, ignoring the cancer/stroke/bleeding warnings on the bottle, got to work. You see, my Daddy has taught me to always have supplies at the ready for any emergency involving carpet/fabrics/furniture. And, phew, after some tense minutes, the ink came out.

And by the time I went back upstairs to check on Eva's mental state, she seemed to have forgotten about the whole thing. Which, to be honest, ticked me off a little bit. I mean, there was no groveling apology, no promises to never do it again. And yes, Mother, you would say, "It's just a couch. Everyone's happy and healthy (never mind the unknown organ damage I caused myself with the fabric cleaner), you are lucky you have a couch, etc etc." However, it really isn't "just a couch," it's my gorgeous wheat-colored microsuede couch in my brand new gorgeous family room, so if anyone gets any kind of ink anywhere near it ever again, I will send them directly to you and let them write on your couch. And, yes, next time, I will buy a darker couch.

Growing Pains

A few days ago, my girls, Zsa Zsa (age 9) and Eva (age 8) experienced something new and exciting. It is called: instead of watching Arthur or Wordgirl on PBS kids for a good time, they were allowed to watch a sitcom!! Now, this form of television was entirely novel to them. Here's how it happened:

Picture Motzei Shabbos in the Cake household. All is quiet, mostly because Gorby (age 6 and completely insane) now accompanies Pes (age 11) and Big Shot Husband to Father-Son Learning at our local yeshiva.  All I can say about that is, YAY!!! I have been waiting for the glorious day when Gorby became old enough to go to FSL (as we call it) and join the other male Cakes so I could have peace and quiet with my girls.

Zsa Zsa, "Mommy, can we do something special since the boys are out with Abba?"
Me, "Yes, girls, let's try to recite 50 perakim of tehillim (psalms) for all the cholim (sick people) we know before the boys return!"
HAHAHAHA. I totally didn't say that. Instead, I said, "Sure, do you guys want to watch ONE show?"
Girls, "Yes, yes thank you Mommy!! What should we watch?"

And this is where things took a dark turn. You see, even I am sick of Arthur and Wordgirl, especially since I recently put a kibosh on Cartoon Network shows due to my extreme hatred of slapsticky cartoons. And though I watched plenty of television as a young lass, and Big Shot Husband will tell you that he watched way too much TV as a youth, we both feel that our children are better off reading, with the occasional TV viewing as a special treat. The end.

However, on this night, I said, "So what do you want to watch? I'm not really sure what is good for kids these days aside from what you already watch." And then at that moment, Zsa Zsa said, "Some of my friends like the show 'Good Luck Charlie'."

Of course at this point I went straight to commensensemedia.org to determine if there is anything inappropriate in the show and, though commensensemedia assured me it is a-ok, I still felt guilty as I plopped on the couch, found it On Demand, and pushed play. Duh duh duh dum.

And guess what? It was actually cute. And funny. And harmless. And the girls LOVED it! And, I noticed, it was very similar to that old television classic we all know and love called Growing Pains (1985-1992).  This show, which was significant in my life from age 11 until I went to college, was about the Seaver family. The first thing I noticed about the house on Good Luck Charlie is that that layout is EXACTLY THE SAME as the Seaver house.

I felt a warm glow descend on me as I cuddled up to the Gabor sisters and watched them and the TV at the same time.  The looks on their beautiful little faces were priceless. It's as if they have been in a TV desert for their whole lives and they suddenly came upon a chocolate fountain.

I thought back on my childhood-how I loved that Seaver family all those years. Maggie, the sweet patient working mother, Jason, the work-at-home psychiatrist (so Maggie could further her career--very 90's PC), Mike, the (hot) Kirk Cameron, nerdy ever-misunderstood Carol, and precocious little brother Ben. (Surprise baby Chrissie came along toward the end of the series).

I realized how I had been depriving my children the pleasure of a good sitcom. I mean, Pes is 11 now and the girls are not too far behind (again, Gorby is an outlier in many ways so I throw up my hands in any dealings with him). Why shouldn't they be watching a good clean American sitcom?  Really, it's practically unpatriotic. Yes, Katie Drohn, I realize you watched Sesame Street until you were 12, but come on, you're Canadian.

Then I realized that maybe I am suffering from Growing Pains of my own. I know my babies aren't really babies so much anymore. They understand a lot more than I want to believe. The day a sophisticated teenage relative of Pes's said, "That guy is flamingly gay," I almost stroked out and insisted Pes had NO IDEA what that means. But what if he does? (PS, my Chabad rebbetzin friend, upon hearing my sordid tale, said, "Honeycake, of course he knows what gay is.")  I mean, I hope the days when my kids don't know anything "inappropriate" aren't entirely over, but I may have to face facts soon.

I know when my kids were little and completely driving me crazy in every conceivable way, I would get really irked when someone with older kids would say, "You have it easy now. Just wait until your kids are older. Small kids, small problems; Big kids, big problems."

I found this to be entirely irritating and condescending, but, alas, maybe they were correct. How do you know how to tell your kids about stuff you don't really want them to know about? How do you find out what they already know? I mean, if I say, "Oh, hi, Pes, do you know what _____ means?" If he says no, then I've really made a mess of things, right?

However, the moment I knew that I have really crossed the threshold into the "no more babies" stage is when our family friends asked if we want to go on a trip with them. They have three kids under 5 and I said words I thought I'd never say, "Big Shot Husband, I don't know if they should come. I mean, their kids are so little and I'm sure they wouldn't have a good time. I mean, the hotel experience alone is enough to make anyone want to jump out a window."

And so I flashed back to all the times my family members with older kids would say, "Oh, you don't want to take a trip like THAT, your kids are too little," or, "We never traveled anywhere until our youngest was 6."  And I would, again, get really ticked off. But maybe there is wisdom with experience. And I am now super wise apparently. Until I have teenagers. Then I am running away.