So here’s something new I learned today: if you need to have a lipstick stain you want to remove — like, let’s say you have a dog, and maybe he isn’t very bright, and he likes to chew things, and maybe there’s a tween girl living in your home who has a tendency to leave things about, and maybe she’s getting into make-up a little and has a lipstick, and maybe the dog gets a hold of the lipstick, and maybe he chews it up and leaves red smears all over your living room carpet, just hypothetically speaking of course — take a rag or paper towel or sponge and put a little drop of dish soap on the stain and rub it in real good. The lipstick lifts right off! Lipstick is oil-based, and dish soap is specially formulated to dissolve oils, so that’s how it works. You don’t need water to life the stain, though you might want to use a wet rag to lift the dish soap.

Readers of StepDadding might be interested in a post I wrote for lifehack.org as a kind of remedy for the rampant consumerism of “Black Friday”: Teaching Kids Charity and Clarity with Pre-Christmas Cleaning. The idea is one I got from my brother and sister-in-law (and they got it from who-knows-where) — go through your kids’ rooms with them in the lead-up to Christmas and pick out toys to give to charity.  We’ll be doing this this weekend, teaching a sense of charity while hopefully clearing up enough space for the influx of new toys and videos that’s sure to come from relatives far and wide as the Christmas season heats up.

Lisa Hendey of Productivity @ Home suggests several ways to encourage thankfulness in children. At the top of the list is “pray together”, and we’re not a praying family at all, but the rest of the tips are good, especialy the fourth, “Remember to thank your children”:

Next time your child brings home a test that falls short of your expectations, why not try genuinely thanking him for his efforts in school prior to launching into an interrogation? Thank the child who helps with chores, lovingly helps a sibling, or is kind to a friend. Take the time to say you appreciate the person they are becoming.

To be honest, it took me a little while to figure out how to be thankful and express thankfulness when I moved in with my partner and her kids. In fact, it was one of the early challenges we faced. She is always careful to thank me or the kids when one of us does something, like setting the table or finishing the laundry or cleaning the kitchen counter. I considered these acts part of the regular running of the home and did not see them as anything special to remark on. So, I would cook dinner one night and she would thank me, nad the next night she would cook and I would… not say anything.

The tension built and built until we finally got into a row over the laundry, but it wasn’t really over the laundry, it was over me taking all the stuff she did or me for granted, while she too nothing I did for her for granted. And you know what? She was right. We do things in the home because they need doing, and because it’s our turn, and because we happen to be there at the time, and for every other reason — but we also do them for each other and for he kids out of love, and that really is something to be thankful about and to offer thanks for.

So, now I’m a big thanker, and the kids are growing into big thankers too. And you know what? I’m thankful for that, too.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Parent Hacks describes a situation perilously close to what we deal with here:

Both my kids are notoriously tight-lipped about what happens at school. The general answer to “what did you do?” is nothing, and “what was your favorite activity today?” is I don’t remember.

A few weeks ago, I turned to my step-daughter at the dinner table and said “What’s new and exciting? Go!” Then I asked each of my step-sons the same, and then my step-daughter asked my partner, and then me. And now we do that every night we are together: someone picks someone to ask, the chosen person answers, and then they pick the next person.

I think it’s the “go!” which makes it feel more like a game and gives everyone more energy; whatever the case, it seems to be working, and we’re learning a lot more about what the kids are up to at school.

I’ve been on a bit of a Neil Gaiman kick lately, since Stardust came out and I read and enjoyed Coraline. Although I’ve been way too busy to read much more (I picked up M is for Magic and another Gaiman book about a month ago) I did have a chance to listen to this single-CD reading of four of Gaiman’s works for children, and was overall pretty impressed.

The Neil Gaiman Audio Collection is read by Gaiman himself, and includes three short stories and a poem, as well as a short interview conducted by his little daughter. Two of the stories, “The Wolves in the Walls” and “The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish” are available as beautifully illustrated children’s books. The other, “Cinnamon”, was only available on Gaiman’s website. I’m not sure what the origin of the poem, “Crazy Hair”, is.

Gaiman reads the stories with a deadpan voice, ably distinguishing between the different characters without actually “doing” their voices (with a couple of exceptions). There is a great deal of humor in the way he relates the absurdities his stories revolve around as if they were absolutely normal, everyday events. “There are wolves,” he says in the character of the little girl Lucy, “in the walls”. “No”, says her mother, her father, her brother, who all have an explanation for the noises she hears in the walls of their big old house. To which Lucy responds, matter-of-factly, “Wolves.”

“Wolves in the Walls” is my least favorite of the stories, although kids will love the silly premise and the girl Lucy’s frustrations at convincing her parents that, indeed, wolves are living in the walls of their house. “Cinnamon”, the next track, I liked somewhat more; the story tells of a faraway princess who does not talk and the tiger who awakens her to the world and gives her something to talk about. “The Day I Swapped…” is my favorite (and Gaiman’s daughter’s favorite, too), detailing the journeys of a boy who foolishly swapped his dad away and must follow the trail of ensuing swaps to recover his poor, absent-minded old dad. The poem, “Crazy Hair”, is also loads of fun, a very Shel Silverstein-like poem about the wild things that roam the jungles of a boy’s crazy hair.

What Gaiman’s work — both the stuff intended for adults and the children’s work — has in common, aside from a keen eye for the absurd and hilarious, is a dark anxiety about the relationship between kids and their parents. Lucy’s parents are distracted and pay her little attention, like the parents in Coraline; the dad swapped for two goldfish doesn’t even seem to notice, he’s so wrapped up in reading his paper! So it’s surprising and touching to see Gaiman’s easy candor with his daughter in the interview that closes out the collection, in which the young girl asks whether he prefers writing children’s books or adult ones, how he decided he wanted to be a writer, and which of his works are his favorites (among other things).

The Neil Gaiman Audio Collection is a great thing to have on hand for even short car trips, since the longest story is only 15 minutes or so. Kids will love hearing some of the stories over and over, and on a CD that’s easy — just hit a button. I can’t imagine most kids being all that interested in the interview more than once (if that) but again, it’s easy to skip. Gaiman’s stories are generally deeply complex and will reward repeated listenings, even for adults. (Christmas note: it would also make a great gift!)

You can find out more about Neil Gaiman and this collection at The Neil Gaiman Audio Collection page on his website; you can also liten to a short snippet ot Gaiman reading “The Wolves in the Walls”.

Well, not yet, but on the table. Here’s the story:

My partner works for the division of the health department that monitors and reports infectious outbreaks. Last month, she was sent our to gather samples from several neighboring families of Ethiopian refugees, some of whom had mumps. Since this kind of exposure is part of her job, she receives regular inoculation boosters, and had a mumps booster just a year ago. No problem, right?

So the samples go to CDC (Center for Disease Control) and, lo and behold, it’s a strain nobody’s seen before! And they’re not sure if the inoculation currently in use covers it. So she’s been on “symptom watch” for the last few weeks, to see if she develops any symptoms.

Guess what? Monday night the oldest boy says “Mom, your face looks swollen.” Sure enough, one side of her jaw is a little puffy. She calls the lab, they tell her to see a doctor and have the symptoms confirmed (as it happens, there’s no quick and easy test for mumps), the doctor confirms the symptoms but won’t say mumps, and she’s put on paid leave while samples are collected and analyzed.

Mumps isn’t an awful disease — aside from the swelling of the salivary glands (which only happens in some 30% of cases, believe it or not) the symptoms are basically flu-like: fever, headache, muscle ache, tiredness. You don’t die from it, and there’s no long-term complications. It just… sucks.

And it’s the health department’s mission to stop the spread of suckiness. So she’s off work, everyone in her lab is on symptom watch, the kids and I are all having blood drawn in the morning. (My partner is a trained phlebotomist and promises she’ll be gentle — that’s right, I’m going to let my partner stick me!) And swabs stuck in our mouths.

(Random aside: Firefox’s spell-check doesn’t have “phlebotomist” in its dictionary; it suggests “lobotomist”. Hopefully my partner knows the difference!)

CDC is thrilled. They can barely contain their excitement. Her and I are now a case study, and apparently some biologist at CDC is looking to score major points by discovering “type H” or whatever they end up calling the new strain.

If there is a new strain. The first lab tests don’t come back until tomorrow, and apparently lab tests aren’t conclusive — it’s an elusive virus. It may be she has the flu, and just coincidentally has an infected gland. There may be no telling for sure.

Aside from feeling bad, she gets 9 days of leave with pay, so it’s not terrible. And the kids and I get to report every minor fluctuation in the way we feel for a month (mumps can incubate for up to a month). And we’re still waiting for a call from the health department’s epedemiology section to say whether she’s quarantined, and whether we’re quarantined with her.

So mumps just sucks even when you don’t have it.

Yet?

Shall I write a post since I’ve been away the last couple of days? OK, here’s a quick one.

Today, my brother and sister-in-law took our kids to the airshow. Every year my sister-in-law’s stepdad, an ex-Navy (I think) flyer and owner of an aerospace company in California comes in to take his grandkids (my nephew and niece) to the airshow. Knowing both my partner and I were busy this weekend, and that the kids love planes (the oldest wants to be a pilot and knows every military plane and their specs by heart), my brother invited the two older kids along (their younger brother, 5, was off to his dad’s today).

At the show, my sis-in-law’s stepdad took my stepkids under his wing, so to speak, buying them t-shirts and hats and talking airplane with them all day. He even got them something to bring home for their little brother. He can afford it, but that’s not the point — the point is he went out of his way to make these kids he hadn’t even met before today feel welcome, like part of the family.

This is something I hadn’t realized I was signing up for when I became a step-parent: other people’s kids. As it happens, you aren’t just a parent to your own kids, but to their friends, to your neighbors’ children, to any kid that needs a parental hand. It changes the way you look at children in general; suddenly, you’re the responsible one, and that extends beyond your own family. We just had to talk our daughter’s friend, who is staying the night, out of a full-blown panic attack when she realized she’d left her bag, with her asthma medication, at my brother’s (we’d taken her over when we went to pick up my step-kids). My older step-son is asthmatic, so we have pretty much the same medication here; there was no reason to panic. But try reasoning with a high-strung hyper-ventilating 11-year old! And what it takes is being “fatherly”, talking to her like your own, being the voice of authority and surety that kids need to feel secure.

There’s so much more to this stepdadding business than meets the eye…

Earlier today the stub of a post I’m writing on Scott O’Dell’s Sing Down the Moon eas accidentally posted to the site.  It’s obviously not done, so I’ve removed the post, but it might have turned up in RSS readers.  My apologies for this error; the post will be up sometime next week.

I’m at Blog World Expo today and tomorrow, so this post has to stand in as my daily post to fulfill my “one post per weekday” commitment (that I realize I made to nobody but myself).  If anyone happens to be at the Expo this weekend, drop me an email — let’s meet up!

About 10 weeks ago now, my two oldest stepkids’ (12-year old boy and 11-year old girl) dad dropped a bomb on them (and us). During their bi-weekly weekend stay-over at his house, he sat them down and told them that him and their stepmother were going to go to a lawyer and file to terminate his relationship with them. The reason: they did not pay him and his wife enough respect.

That’s right — he told them he didn’t want to be their dad anymore and it was their fault.

There was more justification — they were poorly behaved, they squabbled, their mom lets them “run free” too much — but the takeaway is “bad kids, no daddy”. He also decided to let them know him and their mother had divorced because she cheated on him. (She didn’t, but he followed her around for two years, threatening her co-workers, sneaking home through the backdoor so he could catch her, and generally stalking her in an attempt to prove she was — with no success. Eventually he beat her up and held her at gunpoint tying to get a confession; she divorced him while he was in jail. I should add, the kids were 5 and 6 then; she hasn’t felt any need to remind them of why she divorced their dad, because you don’t involve your kids in the reasons for divorce — you love them and let them love both mommy and daddy whatever their parents’ beef with is/was with each other.) Eventually the kids agreed to “be better” and the matter was dropped.

Then he took them to dinner and brought them home. The kids came home furious and upset; the girl went straight to the bathroom and threw up. We didn’t know what had happened at dad’s, so we thought she had food poisoning; a call to dad was unanswered, but he answered when we called from her phone, and we asked him what they’d eaten, etc. That was the last reasonable conversation we’ve had with him.

An hour or so later, the whole story came out, and over the next few days we were in hell. Tried calling dad dozens of times, texted him, and so on. Now, the boy’s had some issues with his dad before, but the girl worships her dad, and so the implication of “you have to earn daddy’s love” hit her pretty hard. She cried a lot over the next couple days, including in class, and started sending him a lot of text messages — proving herself, basically. We called the school and talked to the counselor, who started seeing them when she could; she also got them into a group for children of divorced parents. And we got them into a child therapist’s office, though they’ve only been twice so far.

Two weeks later, things had started to return to normal when dad came to pick up the kids for his weekend. The boy decided he didn’t want to go, which we respected, but the girl did. We asked them to stay inside so we could talk to dad, since he hadn’t returned any calls for two weeks.

It went badly.

He refused to see that he’d done anything wrong, and was upset that my partner was “filling them with psycho-babble BS” and had gotten them into counseling. When I spoke up, he told me to keep my mouth shut; that kind of male “staring-down pissing contest thing” was in the making when my partner stepped into his line of sight and continued. A few minutes later, I said something else; “I told you to keep out of this,” he said, to which I replied “I’m sorry, that’s not going to happen. I’m with them every day and have to deal with this stuff!” (I should add that I’m cleaning the language up again; use your imagination.) “Fine,” he said, and drove off.

Without his daughter. By the time we got upstairs, he had already called her and told her we wouldn’t let him take her, which was a lie and fortunately she knew it. She was crying, and she wanted to go over to her daddy’s, so we drove her over. She called and told him, and he told her she could only come if she came to the door alone. The whole way over she begged her mom not to walk her to the door; she was literally terrified that if she didn’t follow daddy’s directions daddy wouldn’t accept her. When we got there she wanted us to leave her off a half-block away; instead, mom found a place to stand where she could see the door and let her walk up alone.

Bad mojo, right? Let me tell you, I haven’t even got to the bad stuff yet — but this post is already long. I should have been posting about this as it happened, but it’s too hard — and we’re spending most of our free time dealing with the fallout. I’ve tried to keep to my rules; after a couple of weeks of defending him (”no, he still loves you, he’s just confused”) with no response from him, we told the kids that we weren’t going to try to explain his actions any more and they’d have to ask him why he said the things he said, but though I’m not making up good things to say about him anymore, I’ve been careful not to say anything bad about him if I could help it. In the next post on this (Part II, within the next week if I can manage), though, you’ll see that I couldn’t always help it.

The issue, at least at the time, seemed to be his feeling of not having control over the kids. He knows if he hits them (their step-mother beats the hell out of their 11-year old stepsister) mom will come down on him with the full force of the law, so he hasn’t ever hit them (I think he slapped his daughter once right after the divorce, and learned well that this would not happen again). His parenting agreement gives their mom full deciding authority about their school, activities, lifestyle, etc., and I suppose he feel left out (emasculated, even — masculinity means a lot to him, that kind of small-minded, muscle-bound, chest-thumping masculinity that gets upset when mom has any sort of power).  And of course, there’s some sort of control/jealousy/rivalry thing going on with me, which is understandable — in the year I’ve been here I’ve spent more days with the kids than he has in the last five. And of course he blames my partner for his lack of access to good-paying jobs; his use of a gun in a crime precludes him from working with any government agency, and he was pretty badly embarrassed when his wife set up a cakewalk job for him through a contact in the school district that fell apart when they did the background check.

So he’s angry at his ex-wife, after some seven years. But there is absolutely no excuse for taking it out on the kids — adults talk to adults about their problems, not 11-year olds. We’ve struggled in vain to figure out what kind of problems he could have with the kids. Because here’s the truth: the kids are amazing, and I’m not just saying that because I’m close to them. Everywhere we go, complete strangers compliment us on their behavior. Parents in the neighborhood compare their kids to ours and wish their kids were as well-behaved. They are A students, in a competitive science-based magnet school, with a full slate of after-school programs and sports. Their teachers nominate them for awards and trips, like a junior leadership forum in DC next spring. There are 12-year olds in Las Vegas who are out killing people and whose parents are scared to death of them; our12-year old says “pleased to meet you” when he meets a new person, and calls them “sir” or “ma’am”!

There’s more, lots more, but this is long already and I’ve got to get ready for work. Part II coming soon…