Tony Hawk is the Bestest Skateboarder

We went shopping for spring/summer clothes yesterday. Mostly for my big guy, since the littles, Seth and Jesse, have more hand-me-downs than they can handle.
Somehow, Seth, happened upon a line of clothing from Tony Hawk, skateboarder extraordinaire.
Seth has never talked about skateboarding or been on a skateboard.
Yet he was drawn to the skater-boy styles like moth to the proverbial flame.
"Tony Hawk," he whispered in awe. He picked up a black T-shirt awash with red swirls (20 bucks before the 30 percent off) and hugged it to his chest. "I love, love, love this, Mama," Seth crooned.
My skinny little non-skater was beside himself with joy. He grabbed a pair of brown baggy knee-length shorts, pulled a bright crimson T shirt laden with skateboard graphics off the rack and held tightly them both, along with his original choice."Please, please can I?" he begged.
Given the 30 percent off, I plopped them all in the shopping cart. It was, however, a little mystifying, this sudden turn toward clothing consumerism.
Seth happily modeled his cool new duds for us at home this morning, then informed me of his future shopping plans. "Mom, can we go back to the Tony Hawk store today? I want Tony Hawk hats and shoes, and definitely Tony Hawk underwear (marketers, are you listening?)"
"So Seth," I asked. "Who is Tony Hawk?"
"Oh, Mama," he replied dreamily. "He is the bestest skateboarder ever. I love him."

Happy Passeaster

We're a two-religion family: I'm Jewish and my hub, Mick, was raised Catholic.
That said, neither of us is particularly religious. Mick likes to refer to himself as a Secular Humanist, which essentially means that you treat other people the way you'd like to be treated yourself.
Sounds good to me.
But with three kids the questions and answers quickly get difficult.
They start simple (ahem, that's an ironic simple): "Mom, who is God?" (That was Kyle in preschool)
"Mom, do we believe in God?" (Jesse in Kindergarten.)
"Mom, Henry says that if we don't believe in God we'll go to a place called hill. What's hill?" (Kyle in first grade)
We've actually had some good conversations around these issues, explaining that everyone has different beliefs and no one person's or group's beliefs are better than anyone else's, and that we need to be kind and respectful to everyone and everyone's ideas. And we enjoy the holidays for their traditions: the food, the song, the togetherness with loved ones.
Well, bully for us, right?
Because come the big holidays (Christmas, Hanukkah, Passover, Easter), it all falls apart. Christmas is more fun and more renumerative than Hanukkah. Passover, with its endless gloom and doom tale, is little competition for Easter's egg hunts and candy-filled baskets. And my mini-materialists are willing to use any tradition for what they can get out of it.
"Mom, why do we eat Matzoh on Easter?" Jesse asked recently.
"Because we have a few boxes left over from Passover," I reply--a bit testily, I might add.
"Where are our Easter presents?" asked Seth. "Can we go to Target for Legos?"
"Absolutely not. We don't get Easter presents," I answer, teeth gritted. "We get Easter baskets with candy and a couple of little toys. That's it."
"But we got money on Passover," he said, with a bit too much innocence for my liking.
"That's part of the tradition," I say. Switching to patient mom mode, I explain the tradition of hiding some of the matzoh and allowing the kids to find it, then rewarding said finders with a bit of money or a small gift. "Because without that special piece of matzoh, the afikomen, we can't finish the seder."
It's a strange and wonderful story and my children listen, open-eyed and open-mouthed.
There is, I think smugly, a place for fables in this life.
I smile at my kiddos.
Perhaps we're giving them the best of both worlds.
"So Mom," says Jesse. "Next year, can we put the money from the seder and your money from Easter together? And buy a toy at Target?"

Seth the Songwriter

Seth has fancied himself a mini-rocker for about a year now. He came home from one playdate last spring singing Green Day's "American Idiot" and hasn't stopped singing it since. He wears his "Heavy Metal Rock" T-shirt at least once a week and swaggers around the living room, yelling "I'm a rock star! I'm a rock star!"

He even came up with a stanza that may have some rock-anthem potential, at least for the under ten set: "You can't tell me what to do! I do what's right for living."

He singsongs that at least half a dozen times a day.

So, we gave the wannabe musician his very own little guitar for the holidays. Seth likes to strap it on, sneer like Billy Idol and strum away. He even wrote a song (well, we actually wrote it together). I'm not sure it has any commercial potential, or whether it displays an abnormal interest in gore, but here goes....

Popping Out of the Graveyard

Popping out of the graveyard
Looking for some monsters
Shooting them all up
Watch them blood to death
Kicking them out of the way

Popping out of the graveyard
Watch out, monsters
We'll do karate on you
Then you'll really be hurt

Popping out of the graveyard
(repeat ad nauseum, until Mommy loses her mind)

Ganging Up

Even numbers of children, I've learned, are easier than odd. So, four kids is simpler than three, in a bizarre way. With three boys, all close in age and emotional maturity (even though my oldest, Kyle, is three years older than his munchkin brothers), the competition is fierce and constant.
And the allegiances shift like, well, the wind.
Lately, it's Kyle and Seth against Jesse.
So, this morning, over breakfast (eggy bread for Jesse, buttered bagel for Seth and cereal for Kyle), Seth said, "Mommy, Jesse called me the F word."
I gasp in feigned horror. Kyle leans into me. "He did, Mom."
"No!" Jesse howls. "They're just trying to get me in trouble."
"They wouldn't do that," I say. "Right, Kyle?" This is accompanied by the piercing, laser-beam, no-nonsense Mom look.
"He did say it, Mom," Kyle insists.
When I demand context, Kyle continues, "I can't say the context. It's too inappropriate (one of the favorite words in my house)."
A moment later, as I'm threatening Jesse with a penalty, Seth giggles: "You fell for my trick!"
He and Kyle fall on each other, howling their victory laugh.
Jesse scowls into his eggy bread. "I told you they were just trying to get me in trouble," he mutter.
I pat his still-tiny hand. "You'll get your chance to get even," I promise.

The Negotiator

So, my husband made a deal with Jesse: Behave for a certain period of time and we WON'T cancel his upcoming birthday party.
"A week, right?" Mick says to Jesse. "No arguing, no whining, no fighting."
Jesse nods his head. "I can do a week," he tells his dad.
Deal done, Mick returns to his magazine.
A few minutes later, Jesse pokes his head back into the living room.
"Dad?"
"What, Jess?"
"I think we'd better make that four days."

It's All About Legos, Except When It's Not

My kids tend to be a bit, oh, obsessive, about their interests. When Kyle, my nine-year-old, was a toddler, he immersed himself wholeheartedly in the world of Thomas the Tank engine. He knew every one of the dozens of trains, their characteristics (cheeky, naughty, fussy, brave, really useful) and gave us all train names.
Mine was Percy.
Every day, he watched Thomas tapes and built elaborate train tracks.
He slept with at least one train and more than a few of the pricey wooden creations made their way into the bathtub.
I had the preternaturally chipper and chirpy "He's a Really Useful Engine" song ringing in my head for years.
Then one day, it was over.
Hurrah! (As they say in Thomas-Land.)
Or maybe it's Huzzah!
A new obsession emerged quickly: Legos. Or, more specifically, a robot cum monster cum alien known as Bionicles.
Kyle embraced the whole complicated back story with joy (good guys, bad guys, interplanetary travel, unintelligable names and language, a wide variety of weapons, masks of power--a real boy-fest).
There followed years of Bionicle birthdays, Bionicle Halloween costumes and thousands of Bionicle pieces strewn about his room, secreted into his school backpack and carpeting his bed.
At least the Bionicles didn't sing chirpy songs.
That Kyle happened to be unusually good at building was a bonus; nothing delighted the little cutie more than a new set with a loooong instruction booklet. We loved peeping into Kyle's room to watch his little fingers hard at work, putting complicated sets together.
It was his happy place, profoundly so.
All kind of other Legos made their way into the mix as well. Even the bigger (and presumably more babyish) Duplos held magic for Kyle, and for his little brothers.
Other items held sway for a while—second grade was the year of the Pokemon—but Kyle always returned to his Legos.
Until early this school year, when it seemed like his Lego lust had finally been sated.
The Legos sat unused for months, as Kyle and his little brothers turned to video games and Bakugan, a rolling monster/card game that held the kids at school in thrall from September onward.
I suggested we donate them all, just to get the thousands and thousands of itty bitty pieces littering our home the heck out of there. (Have you ever stepped on a Lego piece? It's shockingly painful.)
My husband, AKA Pack Rat Man, refused. "What if the boys get back into them?" he asked.
And he was right. Because, for reasons unknown, Legos once again rule in our home. All three boys now beg for Lego sets, build legions Lego armies (the Star Wars Legos are particularly good for combat, they tell me) and create everything from forts to robots to animals from the little bricks.
The floor is once again covered; my feet are dimpled with Lego injuries.
And all is right with our world.

And They Call It...Fluffy Love

I was not a stuffed animal kid. Didn't have a roomful of squishy creatures to snuggle with at night and didn't care.
My kids, however, are passionate about their stuffies, including (shhhh) my 9-year-old.
In fact, he still talks about the two-foot-tall stuffed Pokemon stuffy we tossed a year ago. "I can't figure out where my Charmander went, mom. It's so weird."
Can you say trash bag?
But Seth, one of my first-graders, is particularly attached to Fluffy, a small, cute black stuffed Labrador. Cute it is, but what's most hilarious is that Seth makes clothes for the little creature.
Fluffy has hats, jackets, vests and what I can only describe as canine leg warmers--all created out of construction paper.
Each morning, Seth dresses Fluffy in the seasonally appropriate attire and off he goes in the backpack to school.
Seth's teacher, Ms. M., is fine with Fluffy being a constant visitor. And now all the kids in Seth's class know Fluffy too, and take turns hugging and cuddling him. It's all very cute in a first-grade kind of way.
Recently, Seth decided that Fluffy needed to become a bit more fashion-forward. So he begged my husband, who is rather crafty, to make Fluffy a vest. Mick obliged him and now on his forays to PS 199, Fluffy wears a white vest.
But, get this: The snuggly, cuddly little security object's vest is adorned—at Seth's request—with several black skull and crossbones drawings.
Because while my little guy still needs his stuffed animals, he is growing up.