Adventures in Shoplifting

Yesterday was the worst day of the week. I don't mean that in the literal sense--it wasn't really a bad day overall--but I mean it in an official sense. Yesterday was grocery-shopping day, which officially makes it the worse day of the week from a parenting standpoint, regardless of how the week actually pans out.

For those who don't have kids, or have not had kids recently, or somehow manage to shop alone, let me make this simple:

1-year-old + rows and rows of food = spontaneous hunger-induced, stare-provoking meltdown

Looking so innocent, right?

It doesn't matter how many snacks I feed Drew in the car on the way to the store, he always sees something that he wants to eat. Immediately. In the cart. Usually I distract him by talking in an excessively chipper voice about the thing he's interested in: "Are you hungry? Does that look yummy? Should we bring that home? Okay, just a few more things and then we'll open it, okay? We have to wait."

Yesterday, however, while I was looking for the napkins in the paper goods aisle, Drew solved the problem of spontaneous hunger himself by reaching into the cart, plucking an apple from the bag, and chomping into it. Which pretty much amounts to shoplifting when it comes to groceries.

Today My Son Ate a Pancake Out of the Trashcan (and other parenting fails)

Sometimes there are a few leftover pancakes from the batch. It's hard to make the right amount, isn't it? I used to put them in a ziplock bag on the counter for the next day. Nobody wanted to eat them the next day. I tried freezing them. They gathered frostbite and took up valuable space in our smallish freezer for a few months. Until I would discover them one day in a rare moment of deep cleaning and decide it was time for them to go.

I mean really, what can you do about leftover pancakes? They're sort of like the problem of overdue library books. You secretly hope they'll go away on their own, but the problem just becomes bigger.
(Okay, I totally know that overdue library books don't go away on their own... but one can wish, right?)

I don't like to waste food. But this time I decided to just throw them away and be done.

Well, my youngest, Drew, is in the middle of the Loving-to-Throw-Away-Trash stage, a milestone I neglected to mention in my post on stages they don't tell you about last week. While throwing away some random speck of something he found on the floor in some random part of the house, he discovered a pancake. I know what he was thinking: "Hurray! A pancake snack! How serendipitous!"

What The Ant Farm Makers Don't Want You To Know

Here's the thing about an ant farm. When your 4-year-old son expresses an interest in having one, it seems like a great educational opportunity. It seems like a chance to learn about insects and see them in action while providing hours of entertainment. Plus, as far as caged pets go, it seems easier than fish, less scary than a snake, less gross than a bird, and less emotionally traumatizing when they die than a hamster. So as you're standing there in Hobby Lobby looking at the ant farms, you think there really isn't a downside to this scenario, right?

Well, you would be wrong.

Here is what the box said:

But, let's be honest... while there is some truth in the claim, "FUN for the whole FAMILY!", it's far from comprehensive. In case anyone out there is thinking about buying an ant farm for your 4-year-old son, here is what should have been on the box:

Bring Stinging Ants Into Your Home!

So apparently, the kind of ants that work best in ant farms are called harvester ants. They're big, fat juicy ants that dig really great tunnels in the sand. Oh, and they also sting.

Since the ants don't come in the box with the farm, you submit an order form and then patiently wait for your tube of thirty, giant stinging ants to arrive. Happy mailbox opening.

Teach and Learn New Torture Techniques!

Once you get your mail order ants, there's the challenge of getting them in the ant farm. The slot you're supposed to dump them in is pretty tiny. So here you have a tube of thirty giant stinging ants (who will be hungry from their travels through the mail, the pamphlet informs me), and a clearly insufficient slot to transport them through.

Fortunately, however, the ant farm instructions have this problem covered. Just put your tube of famished, stinging ants into the fridge for ten minutes or so. Chill them to the point that they stop moving but haven't died yet. Then slide the little buggers in. Moral of the story for your 4-year-old: when you're having trouble getting someone to do what you want them to do, just chill them in the fridge until they relent. Problem solved.

Watch Them Bury Their Dead!

Ants apparently bury their dead. Which is just awesome when you have an ant farm because not only do you get to see a cross-section of an ant habitat... you also get a cross-section of an ant graveyard. A two-for-one!

Here's the thing about the dead ants, though. To us non-ants, it's pretty much impossible to tell the difference between a dead ant and a sleeping ant. When they sleep, they curl up in a ball and lie very still somewhere along one of the tunnels--sometimes on their backs with their legs up in the air. So, sometimes you think half your ants are dead, only to find out later that they were just sleeping. Which turns out to be pretty disappointing.

Dream About Eating Them!

After you've made it through the ominous mailbox-checking stage, the refrigerator torture techniques, and the undead ants phenomena, the creepy factor really starts to set in. You've been living with these ants for a while now and had a number of strange experiences with them. That's when you start having dreams about them. Dreams like... baking the ants into cookies, for example. Because when you've got a clear container full of sand, a bunch of ants inside (many of which are not moving) it can look a bit like, well, a twisted version of chocolate chip cookie dough. Just try enjoying a chocolate chip cookie after that.

Frighten Small Children!

If you have an intelligent, logical 4-year-old, he has realized at some point during this process that you, in fact, are crazy. He is smarter than you because he decides he does not want to bring the stinging ants into his room. He's not even sure he's comfortable having them in the house at all. Would the garage not be a better place for them?

And you're thinking, there is no good place for them. The house is not a good place, but then neither is the yard where they might crawl around and feast on bare feet. You briefly consider the toilet as a viable option, but what if they can swim back up stream? So you're stuck with a wait-out-the-clock situation.

Now don't get me wrong, the tunnels are admittedly cool, the ants' work ethic is impressive, and watching the ants is mildly entertaining. But, when you're imagining ants escaping and hiding under furniture and dreaming about baking them into cookies, the 90-day lifespan seems too long. To be precise, it seems about... oh... 85 days too long. And that's what the ant farm people really don't want you to know.

Superman: The Tragedy

 

Superman: The Movie

Recently, in a moment of parenting genius, I decided to let Jacob watch "Superman: The Movie." Since he's four years old and I remembered it being a pretty tame movie (rated PG in the 70s), I thought it would be fine. Well, clearly my memory wasn't that great... and fine it was not.

You maybe haven't seen this movie in a while, so let me refresh your memory about what happens. First of all, we spend an awfully long time at the beginning on the planet of Krypton, which is about to blow up. Superman is a baby at this point getting ready to be shipped off to earth. Jacob's commentary:

"I’m afraid about the baby."

The planet blows up (which is quite concerning to Jacob, since Superman's parents are on the planet), and Superman flies away to earth. On earth, Superman gets adopted and becomes Clark Kent. Things seem to be going okay now... for about five minutes. Then Superman's adopted dad kicks the bucket too (heart attack).  Jacob's commentary:

"I’m afraid about Superman’s parents."

Eventually Superman goes up north and takes the green rock with him (the codex that came with him in his space ship). He chucks it across the frozen land, and the fortress of solitude emerges. Jacob's commentary:

"I'm sad that he didn't like the green thing. I'm sad that he littered his dad's gift."

Superman's dad appears in the fortress of solitude in a kind of icy vision. Hurray! But... when he's done talking to Superman, this icy hologram breaks up into a bunch of pieces in a 1970s special effect. Jacob's commentary:

"Man, this is a pretty sad movie. First the red planet exploded. Then Superman’s dad broke into ice. I just want Superman to be a baby again when everyone loved him."

The rest of the movie was not so bad after that, but after the first hour being, well, "pretty sad," it hardly redeems itself.

So, note to self: next time check CommonSenseMedia.org for recommended viewing age before showing "Superman: The Tragedy" to 4-year-old son.

Mail order ants

There are moments as a parent when you think, "What was I thinking?"

My son Jacob has been really interested in ants lately ever since we had a problem with them in our house a few weeks ago. So when we were at Hobby Lobby and saw ant farms there, I let Jacob get one.

When we got home, I began to learn how little Jacob and I actually know about ants...

"Where are the ants?" Jacob asked when we opened the box.

"Oh... I guess we'll have to get some," I said. Clearly I hadn't thought this whole thing through.

We looked at the information that came with the farm and saw that we could order ants, which would arrive in 4-6 weeks. Yep... 4-6 weeks. That wasn't going to work for my 4-year-old, obviously, but I thought, no problem. We'll just catch our own.

"Let's see if we can find any more ants in our house," I said.

"Last time there were some in my room," Jacob said. "Let me go check."

While he checked his room, I checked the kitchen, sun room, and bathrooms. No ants. Apparently, we did quite an effective job at killing them.

"We'll have to get some from outside," I said.

"Let's go check the ant rock!" Jacob suggested, referring to one of the big stones along our garden that ants live underneath.

I followed Jacob out to the ant rock, fully aware of the irony of this situation. Here we had just killed off all the ants in our house, and now we're looking for new ones to bring inside.

It took a little time, but we were finally able to catch one of those quick little buggers and drop him in the ant farm. I think Jacob and I both expected the ant to crawl down into the sand and start tunneling around like the picture on the box.

Well, this ant was only interested in escaping, and after a few seconds, he crawled out one of the ventilation holes.

"I think we need bigger ants," I said to Jacob. "These ants are really tiny, so they fit though the air holes."

"Where can we find bigger ants?" Jacob asked.

"I think there are some that live by the strawberries, but maybe we should just order some," I said, not feeling at all confident about catching one of those big creepy ants.

When Andy got home and I told him about our ant adventures, he gave me the my-wife-is-nuts look and said, "You know why the ant crawled out, right? It's because you didn't have a queen. They don't know what to do without a queen."

Oh yeah. That does sound vaguely familiar.

Well it doesn't matter anyway. We ordered a tube of 30 ants from a site that would ship them in a few days (along with ant food), for a grand total of $6.... which is probably about the price we paid to kill the ones that were living in our house before.

So once again, what was I thinking?