It's like a HEAT WAVE...oh yeah!

Have I mentioned lately that I'm ready for autumn weather? Well I am. Here's why:

It's the middle of August, which according to "averages" should be a wee-bit cooler than July here in Atlanta. Not so though! We are well above average AND in the middle of a drought. I enjoy summer, that is, until it turns perpetually 90 degrees-plus for weeks on end and then I'm just over it and ready to move on. But I love early summer when the plants I planted the year before burst out of the ground and we finally get some color. I love the first few trips to the pool, or the first (and usually only) trip to the beach. All very well and good, but all also very temporary.

About halfway through summer my mood always turns pessimistic. It's not like I'm not getting enough Vitamin E, because I certainly am. So I started thinking about this mid-summer crisis and I came up with a few possible reasons for why I feel like I do:

• It's too hot to get out and DO anything. This means that I'm inevitably stuck inside the house, or other similarly A/C'd place and I can't work off my energy.


• Same for the kids. Even though they are at daycare all day, if they don't get outside and exercise, they are little hurricanes when they come home at night. And this only leads to more "No, stop that!" and "Would you please stop talking for 5 minutes?" Generally things that make you feel like a bad parent later when you stop and think about it.


• Summer makes you do things you wouldn't normally have to do, which takes time away from things you want to do. For instance, watering outdoor plants. When I have to do it, it takes me almost an hour and a half to do it. An hour and a half when you have children, is like an eternity of free time just down the tubes. And sure, watering is easy and it's quiet, but you still sweat just standing there, so it's not fun.


• I also enjoy a nice walk after dinner to work off my compulsive eating disorder (it's all in my head) and you can't do that when it's so hot.


• It's too hot to play golf or even hit balls...my one hobby


• I'm tired of my summer wardrobe

And I think the weatherpeople around here are co-conspirators in that they keep tweaking the long range forecast. See, they start off by showing that it's gonna be really hot for three days, then they show a cooling trend. But then if you look at it the next day, it shows the same thing, just advanced one day. And the same happens the next day and the next day. It's like they know that people are looking to their long range forecast for just a little ray of hope--something to look forward to--and they don't want to ruin it by bald-faced admitting, "Yeah it's gonna be 98 degrees for the forseeable future. Sorry."

Anyway, I'm taking off this Friday despite it still being 94 degrees, but that just forces me to stay home and start pulling off that wallpaper rather than going and playing golf :( But you watch, one of the children will probably end up getting sick and instead of having a productive day off, it'll be Daddy Daycare with yours truly as the teacher, teacher's assistant, cleaning crew and chef.

Really...I don't ask for much...just some cool nights outside on my back porch listening to Audio Visions with a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon in my hand. Is that too much to ask? Is that so wrong?

I've got an ice cream...and you can't have one...

From the very same institution (or at least a branch of it) that brought us taxes and war, has come the longer school year. For the kids here in Georgia--and the metro Atlanta area to be more precise--this means that next week marks the beginning of yet another year of substandard education at the hands of underpaid mother-in-laws. It also, unfortunately, means that my commute to work next week may very well signal the end of time--Carmageddon if you will. Because this is when all those teachers, who are use to sleeping late and arising well past the "safe to gas up your car due to smog" time has passed, will once again grab their half-caf-espresso with a twist of lime and head out the door clogging up the already busy lanes.

Which brings me (finally) to today's conversational topic-school. Georgia has never ranked very high in the national school rankings. In fact, in a recent 2007 ranking of public high schools in Newsweek magazine, good ol' Georgia only had one entry in the top 300 in the nation. Now some will say "It's just a southern thang," but even that's not accurate. In comparison, our border neighbors stacked up thusly in the top 300:

• Alabama came up with 4 top 300 high schools


• Florida came up with 40


• Even daggum Tennessee (nothing sucks like a big ol' orange!) got a bigger nod than we did with an astounding 3!

But statistics notwhithstanding, yuppy-snobs here like to brag about how smart their little whipper-snapper is compared to his or her peers. And it doesn't just start in middle school or high school when the young Democrat starts taking liberal arts classes either. Nossir it starts much earlier.

Try Daycare! Oh yeah, daycare is all the rage too. Well first, you have to find the proper audience. Utter the sentence "My wife and I both work and we have our children in daycare," in the wrong setting and at best you'll get condescending looks, and at worst, people will go "Sixth Sense" (can you believe that movie is 8 years old?) on you and pretend like you don't exist. But, in the right audience (i.e. dual income families with kids), if you utter the aforementioned death-cry, the ensuing "My daycare is better than your daycare" posturing can reach epic proportions.

And daycare is an interesting concept really, because unlike schools where children from generally one socio-economic area gather together and can revel in their similarities, daycare in a relative 10-square mile radius all cost the same and so the driving factor for what kinds of kids attend there is largely based on how convenient the facility is to one or both of the parent's offices. So, you can, and often do, get kids of all economic levels, ethnicities, etc.

So it is at my kids' daycare. My oldest son's two best friends include a little girl a bit older than he, whose mom recently got divorced and now has to move away for a job she hates. His other best friend is a boy his age whose parents are very similar to us. We knew that he would soon be moving on to the next class in daycare because they've moved a bunch of new kids in his class and him and his buds are nearly the oldest ones there now. But what we found out yesterday is that instead of moving him to the next class, they are moving him and his friends to the next-next class. Hippity hoppity ho!

My three year old is already skipping "grades." Well, not really but that's how part of me wants to spin it to all my friends. In truth, the reason probably has less to do with intelligence and more to do with economics--the daycare needs to make some room in his current class and in the next class because they moved a bunch of other kids a couple of weeks ago, and since him and his two friends are well potty trained and probably the three best behaved, it makes sense that if you need to move some kids to a different, older class, then moving their little group makes sense.

Don't get me wrong; my boy is smart, but I don't think he's a Mozart or an Einstein. And who wants their kid to be that smart, but socially inept anyway? Certainly not me. So, I'll go on being proud of him for all the other reasons; he generally listens, he's potty trained, he has a really gentle spirit, he loves his little brother and because in his eyes, daddy knows how to do just about anything.

Even if they wanted to put him in high school tomorrow and started calling him "Doogie Howser" I wouldn't be any more proud of him than I already am.

Billions of government PSA $$...down the drain.

"Just say no."
"This is your brain on drugs"
"The more you know"
"Give a hoot, don't pollute"

Those good ol' Public Service Announcements. Billions and Billions spent trying to persuade the public towards a viewpoint that someone in the government decided is the right one. And here we are, decades of PSAs later and as a 34 year old adult, I'm still falling prey to peer pressure!

Oh, I'm not taking drugs or setting forest fires or anything like that, but my wife and I have bowed to parental peer pressure and it's just as insidious as anything you might find peddled on the streetcorners of today's inner-cities.

At my children's daycare, in addition to the activities that they provide in-house, they apparently also allow outside vendors to come in. One such vendor is a company called "Playball."

For a paltry $80, your child can enjoy 8 weeks of 30 minutes playtime sessions (1 per week) with their friends. Do you see the genius here? If you don't "let" your children take advantage of this wonderful program, then they must endure 30 minutes of exile while their friends have fun. Who wants to be that kid? What parent wants their child to endure such horror?

But let's do the math. If even 8 kids per class of 14 does it, and they can do 4 classes each day, that's a cool $360 a day for 2 hours of work. Not a bad racket.
And really, how much does each child get to do in an "instructed" play class in 30 minutes when there are several other children also involved? So really, for each parent that pays for their child to take the class, they aren't paying so that their child can actually improve their ball skills; what they are really paying for is "inclusion."

Peer pressure. Criminey! I never smoked pot and I never set a forest fire, but by golly, my children have caused my fall! But it doesn't have to be so with you.

Remember, "You could learn a lot from a dummy!"

Little Victories

We recently were "blessed" with a little screaming, grunting, rooting, writhing "bundle of joy" in the form of a baby boy. My wife took approximately 2.5 months off to be with him, using a combination of disability leave and vacation. As all moms do, she fretted over having to put him in the nursery at our older son's daycare. There's nothing wrong with it really; it's small and it seems that anytime you go in there, there are 4-5 screaming youngin's. It's just not the calm, nurturing environment you want your children put in.

But, that's life.

But then, as mentioned in an earlier post, we found out how much the ladies at daycare are paid and we thought, "Hey, let's get a nanny." Great idea! (at first)

We embarked on a search for a nanny through various channels and here's what we found:

• friends don't wanna give up their sitter or nannies, so don't bother asking them for a good name
• online, so-called "Nanny reference services" run the gamut of everything from "fresh off the plane" foreign nannies, for which you pay a premium up front, but who are generally cheaper on the back-end because they live with you, to simple classified listings that are free for the nannies to post to, but for families looking for nannies, cost anywhere from $19.95 per month, to $200 per month.
• free classified ads like those found on Craigslist

The problem with paying for one of these online listings is that you're never really sure if the ads you can "preview for free" are real or not. So you may see some great listing, pay your money to access her contact information, only to find out (via e-mail) that "Oh shoot, I just accepted a position this past week."

Therefore, we went the Craigslist route and received many responses, most of which were college-age girls with horrid MySpace sites that intimated everything from drug and alcohol abuse, to an abhorrence to children. It was truly mind-boggling.

After I screened and contacted several potential nannies (yes, that's right "I", as in "Me and not my wife"), I showed them to my wife who just kindof hmm'd and haaa'd over a few, without showing much interest. See, apparently my wife's first reason for wanting a nanny was to make it easier for her to get out the door in the morning, but since she started getting up earlier, rather than at the last minute like she used to do, she's been able to get herself and the boys ready (with my help I might add) with a minimum of fuss. So, Reason #1 for a nanny...GONE!

Reason #2 for a Nanny became the whole daycare thing, and how it's just not a healthy environment for a newborn.

So, all this time that my wife has been back at work, we've had two different "nannies" helping us with the newborn during the day because we can't get him in daycare till June anyway. Both are very nice girls, but all they want to do is lounge around and watch TV. Our son, who is now 3 months old, gets almost no stimulation until we come home and take over (I work from home sometimes so I see what goes on during the day). As time has gone on, I've run this whole nanny business over and over in my head and come up with the following reasons why a nanny may not be ideal:

• while cost-effective now that we have two boys in daycare, when our oldest son starts pre-K and then kindergarten, and will NOT be in full-time daycare, it will not be cost-effective to have just one being cared for by a nanny
• given the complete laziness exhibited by both nannies thus far, I fear how little exercise and artistic activities our children will be given. Currently, our eldest son plays on the playground for almost 2 hours a day, and does at least two different craft activities, on top of learning Spanish (at 3 years old). I don't see a nanny doing all that
• external social interaction will be much less with a nanny

After nearly two weeks of almost no nanny searching by my wife, I recognized that it was time to bring up my points. I did it subtely one evening while watching TV, "So, what do you want to do about a nanny?"

Subtle huh?

Her reaction was much the same as it had been for the last two weeks at which point I finally laid out my reasons why I was now against it. She agreed, but still wouldn't commit to ending the search.

Another week went by and I've got three nannies awaiting a callback and finally I say, "So, are we done with the nanny idea?" Put on the spot she finally says, "Yes."

YES, YES! OH YEAH BABY, RIGHT THERE! JUST LIKE THAT!

GAME, SET, MATCH!

I'm done. No more postings on the Internet, no more searching Myspace and Google for e-mail addresses and names to see what inane postings by these women I can find. I'm done! Fini!

In retrospect, as a friend pointed out, I should have realized by her lack of desire to be the one looking for a nanny, that it had become a non-issue. A momma-bear who isn't taking the search for a surrogate caregiver firsthand, probably isn't really into the search anyway.

Had I let her do it, I could have saved myself a lot of time and hassle. Sometimes I'm really dense.