Even in our astonishingly limited social circles—whatever happened to friends, anyway? Didn’t we once have them?—my wife and I know families where the husband goes to work all day and the wife (or, this being Hollywood, other husband) stays home with the kids seemingly without protest. More rare, though still noticeable, are the families where the wife pimps for Disney or busts balls for Paramount while the “artsy” husband captains the SS Domesticity, only occasionally taking a week or two for a freelance job. Also, there are families for whom domestic life is an appendage to both partners’ ten-hour workdays, whose lives are an insane mishmash of sitter cancellations and exhausted evening dashes to Costco to buy that five-point harness car seat.

We are none of those families.

My wife, Regina, and I are always home, and by always, I mean always. Yes, we work. Paying to live in this sinkhole of a town doesn’t allow for much slackitude. But we work at home, I in the dim-lit tiled basement, she right above me, in the only room in the house that’s air-conditioned, a sunny spot with a slanted roof and parquet floors. A couple times a month, she goes to my brother-in-law’s cousin’s house in the Valley to make movie-themed gift baskets for corporate hotshots. I go out of town about four weeks a year, never more than a few days consecutively. About once a month, I drive to a meeting that I’m certain will lead to the biggest career break of my life. Otherwise, I rarely leave the basement.

I’m not a househusband and Regina isn’t a housewife. Neither of us particularly like to upkeep. Though we’re happy most of the time, Regina and I often say that if we could afford a cleaning service, or any kind of service, once a week or even once a month, it would help our marriage enormously. But we can’t, so instead we wade through our unspecific roles, doing the best we can, trying to keep the living room free of spiderwebs. This creates mild tension, which manifests itself in conversations, usually when the kid isn’t home, like:

“Why don’t you do the fucking dishes?”

“Why don’t you do the fucking dishes?”

“Because I don’t fucking want to, that’s why. So can you tell me why the kitchen floor is such a mess?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you fucking clean it?” (more…)

Our daughter was verbally precocious in some of the predictable ways of first children: early cognition, early speech and communication skills, sign language, early letter recognition and so forth.  But she wasn’t especially academically inclined, nor did she read early, nor show any other precocious behavior. But she was quick-witted and razor-sharp in a way that prompted my sister to shake her head in pity: “You’re in trouble, Lisa. Big trouble.”  Of course, my sister, who has two older children, was dead right.

By the time she was two, Ella had started to curse. Not any curses that you or I would recognize, but she spewed forth syntactically appropriate strings of gobbledygook whenever she was enraged or frustrated or just downright pissed off:  “But I don’t I like that kind of dinkalinkalocka bread!” she’d shout.  Or, “I’m so shrieking mad!” she’d roar, writhing on the ground.  Other choice onomatopoetic phrases spewed from her mouth with such force and emphasis that her father and I would look on in paralyzed shock, not quite sure what do about the situation. She wasn’t using curse words exactly, but she did seem to be cursing in some mad-genius language that was in intent and syntax identical to our own grown-up obscenities. Convinced that if we ignored these outbursts, they would go away, we mostly stayed as silent as we could while trying not to laugh.

I’d like to say I don’t know where my daughter’s grand capacity for expletives came from. But that would not be exactly true.  My husband, an artist, is capable  of bursts language that approach drill-sergeant intensity.  (And yes, I married him anyway.) And if I’m mad, I’ve also been known to haul off with some cussing.

But after I had my kids, I toned it down. My husband did, too.  We were vigilant about not swearing in front of our daughter. Or so we thought, because one day, Ella, not quite three, gave up the invented swear words in favor of the real thing.  (more…)

A wistful tale of a little boy who refuses to take off his Halloween costume after the holiday is over. The song by The Sippy Cups, the world’s greatest psychedelic rock band for kids, is featured on their latest iTunes EP “One Day Soon”, which includes five new tracks. Video directed by Danny Plotnick.

To that end, I highly recommend the movie “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl,” which will be coming out on DVD on October 29th. This is a surprisingly nuanced movie. In keeping with the mission of the American Girl dolls, it goes to great lengths to be historically informative in an accurate and sensitive way. We get terrific glimpses of everyday life during the Depression: how people shopped and dressed and made dinner. Most importantly, for kids, are the complex portrayals of what it felt like to be a kid back then, with the fear of losing everything hanging over your head. The kids whose families have slid from respectability are mocked by some of their better-off classmates, and those with no family at all live their lives in the shadows, at the mercy of the kindness of strangers.
(more…)

Anyone else excited?

Recently I was at a relative’s eightieth birthday party, seated with family of some sort whose names and relationship to me I was somewhat unsure of. We were eating our dinners and chatting when I realized I was talking to someone I think was a cousin about The Wiggles. For those not in the know, The Wiggles is comprised of four men, each with their own trademark color (red, blue, yellow, and pur-ple) and their own signature hobby (music, eating, magic, and sleeping, respectively). They sing songs with titles like “Fruit Salad” and lyrics like “gulp, gulp, drink some water.” They make silly gestures and faces when they sing, and they ham up the acting to early William Shatner levels—back in the days when he amused us so often by taking himself far too seriously.

When you watch The Wiggles, you’re inclined to laugh at them until you come to understand that children  worldwide absolutely adore them to the tune of somewhere around $40 million a year. Then you realize that these four prancing, jiggly men are making more money than you thought humanly possible, and their work requirement? Being goofy. What had started as mockery turns into envy. Possibly hatred. You fantasize that they have deep, dark secrets to offset the seeming unfairness of it all. (more…)

Hooray! Finally another Greasy Kid Stuff archive! This one has some songs sweet, some songs Scooby, and some songs about dinosaurs, all for you, from a Spring Greasy Kid Stuff, original airdate 5-24-08.

Greasy Kid Stuff with Belinda & Hova, Episode # 3 (original airdate: 5/10/08)
This Land is Your Land, Mama! Do we need to say that it’s an archive so it’s too late to enter the contests? Is that too frustrating? Sorry. Hey! We’ll give you something for listening now! If you are one of the first ten people who email us and can tell us what products we shill during the break, we’ll send you a Greasy Kid Stuff sticker, by the fabulous, famous Rodney Alan Greenblat!

Greasy Kid Stuff with Belinda & Hova, Episode # 2 (original airdate: 4/5/08)
The show is hijacked by a member of the Captain Bogg and Salty Crew!

Greasy Kid Stuff with Belinda & Hova, Episode # 1 (original airdate: 3/29/08)
Rainy days, mahna-mahna, and a new Ranger — sounds like old times!

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When my wife and I moved to Pittsburgh with three-week-old twin boys in 2005, we (meaning I) quickly decided that the Steel City was a land of no-nonsense, blue-collar Super Parents. This was a welcome relief from the frou-frou nancy-pants parents we knew in Washington, DC, who spent more on organic bubble-bath than we did on rent. Sure, most of the steel mills have disappeared from Pittsburgh, and the leading employers are now universities, banks and hospitals. But what does reality have to do with parenting?

A quick drive through some of Pittsburgh’s better neighborhoods confirmed my suspicions. “Look at that yard over there,” I said to my wife. “You see that? I bet that’s the tenth one I’ve seen today.”

“What?”

“That kid,” I said. “That kid is mowing his own grass.”

“So?” she said.

“So? Are you kidding me? This is one of the richest neighborhoods in the city. The Scaifes live here. The Mellons. Old money. REAL MONEY. And these people put their kids to work. Screw French Camp. To hell with summering on the Riviera. Trim the hedge, Junior! That’s Pittsburgh, baby! That’s Pittsburgh!” (more…)