the stupids – Page 3 – SIMCHA FISHER

10 rules while I’m in Wichita

Far from this opera for evermore. Actually just for the weekend, for the Midwest Catholic Family Conference!

My kids have been extra, extra squirrelly the last few days, and I’ve had to make a few new rules, which I can only hope they will abide by while I am gone:

No spreading peanut butter on balloons.
No snapping while saying the rosary.
No sucking on the dog’s tail.
No more calling Donald Trump.
No propping ladders against the house to spy on your brothers while they do . . . whatever it is they do in their room.
No more saying, “Or IS it?!?” every time I say something is something.
No putting the gerbil in the Cheerios box while you’re cleaning out his cage. At least not until everyone’s done with breakfast.
No taunting, harassing, or otherwise impeding the progress of people learning how to use nasal spray.
Seriously, no more calling Donald Trump, you guys.

And the greatest of these is:

No singing Mulan songs in the voice of William Shatner.

These are, of course, rules for my kids, but you might want to consider adopting them for yourself. Also, no opening an email to me with “Attached you will find a copy of Heaven and Hell by Swedenborg (original text in Latin, translated to English)” in lieu of the customary: “Howdy! Attached you will find a copy of Heaven and Hell by Swedenborg (original text in Latin, translated to English).”

Manners, manners!

Hope to see some of you in Wichita! And I would be so grateful for prayers for easy travel, and for an easy time for my husband back home, who will have all ten kids, and their snapping, and their peanut butter balloons.

7 video games, reviewed by my kids

Hey, who wants to talk about SOMETHING ELSE?

How about vidya games? My kids play games on the Wii, PS2, and occasionally the iPad and PC. We have tons of the Lego Wii games, and they were all the rage at our house for a few years. These are cute, clever, and not too noisy or violent (people just turn back into separate pieces when they get killed). Have’t found a bad one yet.

Here are some of my kids’ other current favorite games. I asked them to give a quick description, plus their favorite and least favorite aspects of the game. Then I added my take, as someone who doesn’t especially like video games, who worries about bad influences on the kids, but who isn’t especially restrictive. We don’t have any particular interest in very violent, scary, or gross games like Resident Evil or Call of Duty. Bracketed comments are mine.

1. Õkami

17-year-old girl says:
It’s a Zelda-type action adventure, but everything looks like a Japanese sumi-e painting. You are Amaterasu, the sun goddess, incarnated as a white wolf, and you use celestial brush techniques to paint symbols. You draw symbols in the air to manipulate the world around you — like, you draw a swirly thing to summon a gust of wind. You can fill in gaps in bridges, trail fire from a torch to a pile of brushwood, stuff like that. The goal is to save Japan from evil spirits, which, you know. [I don’t actually know.]

Best part: The best part is that it’s a serious, hard-core adventure game that also rewards you for feeding animals and caring for plants. You collect praise points for helping to restore nature, or helping people, or just being nice, like feeding a kitten. That’s not the main point of the game, but I like that it’s this elaborate adventure, and you get points for being nice to kitties.

Worst part: I hate the sidekick. I want to kill him and I want him to shut up.

My take: Looks weird and gorgeous. I don’t mind having this one in the house at all.

2. Sly Cooper series for Playstation

11-year-old boy says:
It’s about a raccoon thief who beats people up and steals stuff, but he’s a good guy. Sort of. In the first one, he’s trying to steal back his family’s guide for how to be a sneaky thief.

Best thing about it: The graphics are great. The characters are very well thought out, and there is good voice acting, except for when they’re supposed to be surprised.

Something I don’t like: it’s kind of annoying that Sly always smiles, even when he falls off a cliff and dies.

My take: The voices are really obnoxious, and the few female characters strike me as unnecessarily sultry. I would just as soon see these games go away, but both boys (the other one is 13) love these three game to pieces, so there must be something there. The fighting isn’t too graphic. It’s fairly flashy and the sound effects are kind of grating.

3. Just Dance 2

9-year-old girl says:
It’s a game where you pick a song to dance to, and you can earn points by dancing like they are dancing on the screen

Best thing about it: I’m not too good at games where you have to fix up a problem, and I’m pretty good at games where you just follow the moves of what is on the screen. It’s a good, easy game for all ages.

Something I don’t like: It doesn’t have Taylor Swift. Some of the dance moves areinapwo-pwo, and we have to skip some of the songs, like “Toxic,” “That’s Not My Name,” and a few others, because they’re sassy and weird and dumb, and sometimes the dances are just inappropriate.

My take: Silly, active fun, except for that one kid who discovered that you can get a perfect score while sitting in a chair and moving your wrist around. Great for an ice breaker at parties, because it gets you moving but everyone is looking at the screen, not at you. Most of the songs are just goofy; a few are too sexy (lyrics and dance moves), so we just skip those. (I actually prefer having the kids get used to the idea that you have to pick and choose and say “no” to some things and “yes” to others, rather than just flat-out forbidding anything that might be, well, inapwopwo, because eventually they’re going to have to tell themselves how to spend their time.)

4. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (link is for the WiiU version)

15-year-old girl says:
It’s made for Gamecube, so if you’re using the Wii, you have to use a Gamecube controller instead of a Wii remote. You also need a memory stick for the Wii. There is also an HD version for the Wii U.

It’s an adventure game and a puzzle game, and you have to defeat puzzles and dungeons and bosses, to get different items. The point of the game is to defeat Gannandorf, the evil bad guy, and save Hyrule and your sister, and make your grandma proud of you.

Best part: It’s an exciting game, but the graphics are absolutely adorable, and the characters are all really funny. I like the Snot Kid, and the way all the characters look.

Something I don’t like: It’s set in a sea, and it takes a while to get from island to island, and you get lost really easily.

My take: I honestly don’t get what the big deal is about all this Zelda stuff, but it doesn’t bother me. A few of the videos are quite pretty. The music isn’t too loud or annoying, and it’s not one of those awful frenetic games. Just a lot of running and hopping, as far as I can see.

5. Epic Mickey

15-year-old girl says:
It’s a sort of dark twist on forgotten old Disney cartoons, but in a cool way – not a stupid emo hipster kind of thing. [You know. Stupid emo hipster.] You play as Mickey, and get sucked into a world called “Wasteland,” where all forgotten cartoon characters live, and you have to defeat the Mad Doctor and the Blot Creature. You have the power of ink and thinner so you can paint and erase things to your advantage.

Best part: It’s kind of dark and scary at times. It’s got this great morality thing, and sometimes you have a choice of helping a gremlin or getting money, and if you help, you get even more money, or a reward, and you also get the gremlin’s reward later in the game, so it’s got that going for it. It’s not a serious gamer game, but it’s still fun.

Don’t like: It encourages you to use paint more than thinner when defeating bosses, but it’s really difficult. It’s just frustrating.

My take: She’s not kidding about dark twist! Some parts of this game scare the three-year-old. I hear a lot of frustration when they are playing this game, so it’s best for kids who are persistent. Graphics are super detailed and imaginative and have a lot of depth, and it’s fun for the kids to spot obscure cartoon characters.

6. Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb

14-year-old girl says:
It’s an action adventure game in the style of the Tomb Raider series, but it’s Indiana Jones. The goal is to get an artifact from the tomb of an emperor, but it’s really convoluted. (We have the PS2 and Windows versions. Apparently this game is “backwards compatible, which means that if you have a PS3 or 4, you can play this PS2 on it.)

What I like: Nice detailed graphics, and the combat is a lot of fun except for when you blow yourself right after Indy says, “Hope I don’t blow myself up.” It has good voice overs. You have to solve puzzles and beat up Nazis.

Don’t like: This is pretty much the only game I’ve played besides all the Lego games. I would make a setting for people who have never played video games before so it’s for them. [There is an easy mode. She may not be aware of this.]

My take: Meh, I’m not crazy about this one, but they’ve been playing it for years now, and no one has turned into a felon yet. My husband likes it.There is so, so much punching, but it’s not bloody or anything, and it seems like it takes a long time to beat all the levels, so that’s a plus. We have picked up a lot of family catch phrases from this game. The voice really does sound like Harrison Ford, and I get to wow the kids by putting my high school German to use (“The American! Kill him!”).

7. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

17-year-old girl says:
It’s my all time favorite game. It’s my first ever Zelda game, and you always think the first Zelda game you play is the best one. But objectively, I firmly believe it is the best one in the series. The main plot is that you’re trying to rescue Hyrule from this evil, alternate dimension that is trying to turn everyone into ghosts. It’s a very Japanese game.

Best part: It creates such an elaborate world, you can really get lost with everything you can interact with. It has a great plot and great characters. There’s one scene where one of the characters is dying and you have to bring her to the castle, and it’s the most concerned I’ve ever felt about a character. You get really emotionally involved. Also, it’s just gorgeous and the game play is crazy. It really feels like you’re doing these things. It makes me feel cool. Link does things I could never do. He has all these crazy abilities. That sounds lame, but that’s what they’re trying to do: get you immersed in rhe game.

Don’t like: Uh, I thought I mentioned that this has no flaws whatsoever? Probably the best cel shaded game I’ve ever seen, kind of crazy gorgeous, and so creepy sometimes. It sets you up, introduces you to this world to make you feel secure, and then changes the world suddenly. It really throws you off your balance. It has this innocent fairy tale vibe, and then really strange, creepy things happen.It has some really dark elements to it. The creepiest thing is when it kind of changes the rules on you, and shows you things that don’t belong. Unsettling in the best way.

My take: Take it easy, weirdo.

The Rubberbandians

Or, Why You Should Have a Bunch of Weird Kids and a Giant Dog.

I had to run to the pharmacy, and when I got home, this is what met me in the driveway.

The little one shouted, “WE ARE RUBBERBANDIANS, AND HAVE SPEARS!”

Note that they all have rubber bands on their foreheads (or, as the three-year-old calls them, “our brains.”

Also note the progress of the dog. We sometimes sing the Little Mermaid song in Boomer’s voice, and it goes, “ME WANT TO BE WHERE THE PEOPLE BE.”

The dog did not have a rubber band on his brain, but he totally would have gone along with it, if that’s what his girls wanted.

Even if it would have left a mark. Which it did.

Kids. Dogs. Sticks. I rest my case.

Yes, I want to see your scary toe.

My son goes, “Want to see my scary toe?”

Oh man, what now? I think. One kid has weird shovel toenails, one has warts, one got stung on the foot by a bee, and one has some kind of horrible scar (and I’m such a good mother, I can’t even remember why). Of course I want to see your scary toe!

Behold, the scariest toe you will see all day:

This and that, baby pics, and a baptism!

Today, I hope to get caught up on emails. I’m sorry to say I pretty much gave up responding to anyone sometime in the third trimester, and Corrie is now 9 weeks old, so that’s . . . a lot of emails. So if you wrote to me, thanks for being patient!

Who’s a patient email correspondent?

You are! Oh yes, you are!

We’re right in the middle of “something every weekend” season — confirmation, baptism, birthday parties galore, graduations, concerts, and a bunch of things I’m forgetting.

and other important pursuits

Thank goodness we have no athletic ability in this family. We did a few months of T-ball one year, and now we’re all fine, thanks.

We told everyone the baptism was after the 11:15 Mass, so our families left early and rushed around to get there in time (some are several hours away). So 12:15 comes and goes, the church empties out, and I’m sitting there with the baby in her gown, thinking, “If I got the day wrong, I’m going to sink into the ground.” My sister-in-law already took an extra day off a few weeks ago because we told her the wrong date, and the week after that, we told my mother-in-law the wrong location for our daughter’s confirmation!

So I grab the pastor, and he doesn’t know, but he says he thinks there’s first communion practice, but baptisms are usually at 1:00. He texts the deacon, then leaves on an emergency call. The kids go out to the the playground, the first communion class wanders in, I get even more nervous, not least because there is about forty pounds of lasagna slowly drying out at home, and who will eat it if there’s no baptism? Then the deacon rushes up and I grab him, and he says yes, there is are four baptisms, today, but who are all these other people? I tell him about the first communion class. He works out an arrangement with the DRE, and I marvel that they are able to coordinate everything.

He says darkly, “Sometimes, it doesn’t get coordinated.” So the upshot is, pray for our deacons and priests and catechists! Even if they had an easy job spiritually, which they don’t, the sheer logistics of getting everybody sacramented up is going to kill them.

Here are a few pics of the baptism and one of Uncle Joey and the cousin jubilee on the trampoline afterward. Sorry they’re stuck together! I’m gonna leave them like this, rather than fight with the computer for another forty minutes. Happy rebirth day, dear baby!

We would have been a loving family . . .

. . . if there had been somebody there to take pictures of us every minute of our lives.

No, but seriously. Several months ago, before the baby was born, we had a photographer at our house for three days, documenting What It’s Like to Live In a Family of Twelve. The photo essay came out last week in New Hampshire Magazine, and we are delighted (EXCEPT DAMMMIT I TOLD THOSE BOYS TO PUT SHEETS ON THEIR BEDS).

Here is just one photo, one of my favorites out of the nearly thirty that made it into the online story:

It’s such an honest but positive story. I have so much to say about the experience of having our family life documented! But things keep turning up. In the meantime, check out the story and the rest of the pictures here, and find more wonderful photography by the very gifted Matthew Lomanno at his website. Especially take a look at the documentary collections.

Let’s play “What Didn’t I Notice Sticking to My Ass Today?”

In yesterday’s thrilling installment, a desperate woman stopped on the way home from school, left the kids in the car, and dashed into Walmart to buy a pair of jeans without even trying them on, because they couldn’t possibly fit worse than what she had on already.

She drove home, dropped off the kids, threw on the jeans, ripped off the tags, and went back out to pick up the other kids from catechism, pausing only to wonder why that one dad in the church basement suddenly seemed kind of interested. Hey hey, these jeans must fit pretty well after all! Looks like this postpartum mama’s still got it!

But no. What this mama had got was what the fashion industry calls A Sticker On the Butt.

A nice big sticker, too. “Holds its shape” indeed.

Not as bad as the time I went to Mass with the family and discovered much, much later that the folks in the pew behind us had something amazing to ponder. Some child had decorated my behind with a sticker from the WIC office. It was a bug-eyed, grinning strawberry (like this), framed with the words “RIPE AND READY!”

And they’re thinking, “Okay, you’re open to life, we get it . . . ”

I know my audience, and I know you guys have stories. What did you not realize was on your ass?

I refuse to worry about what my kids eat for dinner.

If you were a better mom, this would be your kid eating this beet.

Today, I’m making Zuppa Toscana. When I share recipes I’m trying, people often ask, “Will your kids really eat that?” The answer is: some of them, yeah. Some of them, no way. A few of them, maybe. And I am fine with that. I have two goals when I serve a meal: at least half the family should eat it, and mealtimes should be reasonably pleasant.

My policy is: I decide what to cook, and they decide whether or not to eat it.

We don’t have food battles (or food cold wars). We don’t save plates of untasted food and keep serving them, meal after meal, until the child consents to take just one bite. I know that other parents have done some variation of this, in hopes that a child will eventually begin to develop a taste for some nutritious or delicious food. But I’ve found that learning to eat new foods is a lot like learning to read or learning to use the toilet: you can either teach the kid when he’s ready, or you can teach and teach and teach and teach a kid until he’s ready — but either way, it ain’t gonna happen if he’s not ready.

I guess it’s possible that an especially serene parent would be able to patiently, consistently insist that a child try some despised food ten thousand times; but I do not possess that serenity, and things would get ugly fast. I’m already warping my kids enough over other issues. I don’t need to add “But WHY don’t you like kale?” to the list. The table is no place for guilt trips or power struggles.

So, I bring a dish to the table, and I ask each kid individually if he wants some. They have to say either “yes, please” or “no, thank you” — no retching noises or horrible faces allowed. If they want it, great. If they don’t want it, I just move along. With this approach, and with the passive peer pressure of older kids visibly enjoying different foods, I’ve had kids refuse a dish fifty times, and then gradually develop a taste for it, with no prodding or nagging from me.

If they don’t want what I’m serving, they are allowed to fill up on side dishes or fix themselves toast, eggs, a sandwich, cereal, or leftovers. A child as young as four or five can get himself a simple meal.

Wait, wait! Don’t I want them to be healthy? And don’t I want to avoid wasting time and money on cooking foods that no one will eat? Sure. This is why I aim for meals that at least some of them will eat. But I don’t worry about each kid having a balanced meal three times a day. I don’t even worry about having a balanced diet each day. I take the week-long view: as long as they have a reasonably nourishing, balanced diet over the course of the week, that is good enough.

And sometimes kids will just eat one food for a long, long time. This is common, and it is fine. Just keep offering a variety of foods and not making a big deal out of it. Give your kids daily vitamins to make up whatever deficits are in their diet, and don’t keep a lot of complete crap in the house for them to fill up on. They will survive, and there will be peace in your house. As long as your kids have energy and are growing normally, there is nothing to worry about.

There is (probably) something beyond picky eating called Selective Eating Disorder, where adults not only won’t but can’t get themselves to eat more than a few, bland, nutritionally questionable foods; but I’m 99% sure your kid is not developing this disorder. Keep this in mind: the eating disorder researcher in the article says “Kids are at greater risk of becoming picky adults ‘anytime the food environment is coercive or tense.’” So avoiding that situation should be your first focus if your child is a picky eater.

To sum up: offer variety. Don’t cater to them too much. Don’t make a big stinking deal out of it. Take the nutritional long view. And if they don’t like the tasty soup you made? More for you!

Image: Bill Branson (Photographer), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Happy two weeks, baby Corrie!

Two weeks old!

Here is Corrie having a little snuggle and a big yawn:

A moment of deep thought:

and a little bit of friendly hazing:

Listening very carefully to everything I say:

And a schnoogly woogly woogly nap:

Oh, those baby lips!

Oh, those hairy werewolf ears!

Here we decided to see who could do the best Corrie face. Entry 1 (The Seeker After Truth):

Entry 2 (The Transient Anguish):

Entry 3 (The Renegade Hand)

Entry 4 (Babies Are Dopes):

Entry 5 (Toddlers Don’t Understand This Game But Enjoy Having Their Pictures Taken):

This pretzel is unrelated, but I found it on the wall and I feel like I need to tell someone:

One more look at Corrie’s Neck of Magnificence:

And another baby yawn, not that any of my readers enjoy seeing photos of yawning babies:

Happy two weeks, Corrie, you happy, lovely baby!

O mother, what is it to be a man? Sex ed at the Fishers

On the way home from a Scooby Doo birthday party, my punky little daughter suddenly says, “Mama, how do wimmin get preg-a-nent?”

She is kid #7, and I honestly can’t remember how much she already knows, so I start vague: “Oh, well, when a man and a woman love each other very much [shut up, that’s a fine way to start this conversation!], one way they show each other that they love each other is they can put their bodies together in a very special way, and if the timing is just right, then the man can start to make a baby grow inside the woman.”

She says, “Okay. But how do they come together?”

I said, “Well, you know how [OH GOSH I HOPE YOU KNOW HOW] people have private parts on their bodies? And you know how a man’s private parts are different from a woman’s private parts? Well, they are different because they are made to fit together. Like a lock and a key. Does that make sense?”

Her: “Yyyyyes. . . . ”

Me: “So, it’s a very good thing if they love each other and they are married to each other, and they decide to make their private parts fit together in a nice way. And a thing that is almost like a seed comes out of the man’s body, and finds a spot inside the woman’s body. It’s almost like she’s a garden, and she lets him plant a seed in her garden to grow a baby. Isn’t that nice? Does that answer your question?”

Her: “Yeah. So, basically, a man is, like, a seed bag.”

Sorry, men. I tried. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever heard a man called!

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: