Chinese butterfly earsheep

Andrew Hicks

Sarah has two new obsessions — rainbows and butterflies. We spent an hour the other day looking at Google Image results for the word “rainbow.” Only saw one tranny the entire time.

Then Sarah got really excited when I found a butterfly documentary on Netflix Instant. She climbed up on my lap to watch with me. Ten minutes in, there was a segment on butterfly sex, with the narrator remarking, “The female butterfly doesn’t want to mate, but the male engages in forced copulation.” Just another Butterfly Rape Wednesday at the Hicks house.

From my studious, regimented daily reading of the Wall Street Journal, I now know a Chinese mom would never let her kids look at rainbows or reverse-cowgirl butterfly sex, thanks to the article “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.” The piece is probably 2,000 words long and never once mentions the obvious answer — the Chinese probably make better moms because they’re only allowed to have one kid. I’ve got two kids and can barely keep up; I know a guy who can’t write his own name and has seven kids. I bet not a one of those seven practices violin for three hours a day.

Of course, I want the best for my own kids. I want to take advantage of opportunities and nurture their abilities. I need some of that Chinawoman mom discipline, applied first to my own life and then passed down to Sarah and Silas. Sarah seems to have natural talent for rhythm and dance, she can throw a ball at a predetermined target most of the time, and she’s becoming more masterful with letters, numbers and words.

Sarah runs words together now, too, which is adorable and entertaining. We had the Baby Mozart DVD on the other day while we were playing in Silas’s room, and Sarah said, “Look! Sheep!” I said, yep, that’s a sheep. And she said, “It’s got ears! Earsheep!” Which was just as clever as anything I could’ve come up with at the time. Two more years, and she’ll be ghostwriting this blog while dad sips Country Time in the backyard.

For those who don’t have very small children babysat by the TV set, Baby Mozart is a half-hour DVD that costs 15 bucks. Its music was all recorded free of copyright royalties by like two guys with synthesizers in a lady’s basement. Its visuals are still shots and action shots of toys and stuffed animals.

Cheap, simple, and Sarah has loved watching it since she was like 2 months old. The husband-wife team that made Baby Mozart sank $18,000 of their life savings to produce it, expanded it into the Baby Einstein franchise (Baby Bach, Baby Beethoven, Baby Hoobastank), then sold out to Disney a few years later and made buckets of money. They were geniuses, and though neither of them is Chinese, I suspect each was raised by a Chinese mother.

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SPAM COMMENT OF THE DAY

“American English is not to be confused with Antartican English which can only be translated by . .It is estimated by the that American English will be replaced by sometime before 1986…”

Mr Mom, meet Mrs Donkey

Andrew Hicks

The babies and I have been back home for a week and a half, and it’s wake-to-sleep childcare, house chores and writing for me, with some lazy patches in the middle. I’m enjoying it, and the days when I wasn’t surrounded by my tiny progeny seem distant already. Silas is a calm, sweet-natured baby with occasional fussy times. Sarah is an adorable, curious little chatterbox who is almost always amused, loving or both.

Lately, Sarah’s been really cracking me up, too. She grabbed one of her favorite books, opened it up and pretended to read, “One time, there was a story. The end,” and closed the book. I’ve since made those eight great words into a catchy Nate Dogg chorus. Ask me to acapella it if you ever run into me at Karaoke by Kris in the bowling alley lounge.

Another hilarious Sarah exchange came just after she’d woken up, bright-eyed from a good night’s sleep, and was lowered into her highchair to eat some breakfast. She stretched out her arms, threw her head back and announced, pseudo-dramatically, “Sooo tired.” I replied as if she was being silly: “You are not,” and she insisted, “Am!” Does Reader’s Digest still pay people like $300 for Very Cute Little Kid jokes? I admit, I used to love all the Reader’s Digest domestic niche-joke columns: “Humor in Uniform,” “Life in These United States,” “My Time in Juvey,” etc.

Fictional armchair philosopher and ADD sufferer Jerry Maguire would insist that we live in a cynical world, but it really doesn’t seem like it when I spend an unseasonably warm fall afternoon hanging out in my big backyard with my little play-buddy. Stuff like that truly is “what it’s all about,” even more so than the Hokey Pokey. My heart melts when Sarah excitedly calls out “Daddy! Daddy!” Although, I admit, sometimes I’ve already heard “Daddy! Daddy!” a hundred times in the last ten minutes, and I start to wonder where Mommy! Mommy! is hiding herself.

More than anything lately, Sarah likes to sit in my lap and have me read her books. Sarah’s current favorite little-kid book is called Mother, Mother, I Want Another. Very basic, intriguing little plot for a toddler. Baby Mouse is put to bed and, as mom’s leaving him to sleep, he asks mom, “Can I have another, mother?” Mrs. Mouse freaks out: “What? You want another mother?! Whatever will I do?”

Mayhem ensues as Mrs. Mouse dashes off to grab, one at a time, Mrs. Duck, Mrs. Frog, Mrs. Pig and Mrs. Donkey, and they all sing lullabies to Baby Mouse. Finally, Baby Mouse explains that their lullabies were great and all, but he really just wanted another kiss from his mother. Ohhhhhh… all the Mrs. Animals say, and they all realized they were yanked away from their families for a completely false emergency. Baby Mouse should’ve spoken his ass up sooner.

Good lessons here: Misunderstandings are a waste of time, clear communication is necessary, and damn, does Mrs. Donkey have some bad breath.  Sarah right now likes MMIWA at least as much as famed film critic Pauline Kael enjoyed Chinatown, “with its beautifully structured script and draggy, overdeliberate direction.”

Sarah subscribes to an activities magazine for preschool kids. It transfixes her even though she has no clue yet how to play the counting games and run her little crayon through the mazes. Her favorite thing to stop, point and shriek at is the tiny cover art of some PBS semi-all-star Christmas DVD they’re shilling in an ad. This particular picture, like an inch tall, is buried among lots of other visual noise, but Sarah is repeatedly drawn straight to it. And she’s always excited to point to the mini-image of each little kid mascot when I ask, “Which one’s Thomas the Train? Which one’s Barney? Which one’s Fireman Sam?”

Sarah’s good at pointing to those little head-and-shoulder shots of popular children’s characters that sometimes appear on the front and back inside covers of kid books. And she’s pretty accurate at identifying the purple horse, black sheep and white dog in the sophisticated children’s masterpiece Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Sarah right now likes BBBBWDYS as much as Roger Ebert hated Mad Dog Time. “Watching it,” declared Rog, “is like waiting for the bus in a city where you’re not sure they have a bus line.”

Single me would bitch-slap married me for spending 800 words on the redemptive beauty of being around my children. I’ve already been accused of selling out, although to me the key component of selling out involves receiving money. Maybe I’m selling out on consignment. I should ask Mrs. Donkey what she thinks… What? Oh, Pauline. Her name is Pauline, not Mrs. Donkey. I always forget.

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BABY PICTURE OF THE DAY

Sarah swings.