What we did right with each of our kids - Part I - Elissa

(NOTE: Parents are forever lamenting the things they wish they had done differently with their children. "I should have been more strict about this" or "I wish I had let her participate in that." That type of stuff. I see nothing productive there, so instead I choose to celebrate the things that Terry and I appear to have done well with our children. Plus, it's a good way to fill five days of blog posts. So there's that.)

Elissa is my newly minted 23-year-old daughter. I don't mean "newly minted" in the sense of "we just got her." I mean she just turned 23 recently.

Also, you will note that I did not hyphenate "newly minted" in that first sentence. Long ago when I first started at The News-Herald, Robin Palmer taught me not to hyphenate "ly" words. I don't know if that was an AP Style thing, a News-Herald thing, or just a Robin thing. But to this day when I'm editing copy, I will remove the hyphen after a "ly" word.

Anyway, Elissa. When she was little, she was shy. A borderline genius, mind you, but shy and introverted. As she grew, she became a little more extroverted with each passing year. Now, the thing comedian John Mulaney says about Jewish women also applies to Elissa: You do not need to ask how she's feeling. She will tell you.

And this is an exceedingly good thing. Women are often conditioned in this society to believe that "shy and quiet" is more attractive than "opinionated and vocal." I will take the latter any day of the week, and I like to think we encouraged her to be that way.

Here are five other things we did right with Elissa:

(1) We made her play her oboe until she graduated from high school. She was ready to be done with the instrument by her junior year (maybe sooner), but we prodded her to stick it out. I believe studying and performing music is an inherently beneficial thing. As is seeing through something you started. Elissa would disagree with me, but I think we did right by her in this decision.

(2) We let her make her own decision about college when it came to living on campus. She could have saved a ton of money living at home while she attended Cleveland State University, but she wanted the on-campus experience, and it's clear how much less she would have grown over those four years had we made her live at home.

(3) I played Barbies with her when she was little. Whatever you think of Barbie and whether she actually imposes unrealistic standards of beauty on little girls (I happen to think most little girls are smarter than that), we had some of our most fun times together playing with the gigantic stock of Barbie merchandise stored under Elissa's bed. Of course, once I got sick of playing, I would concoct some sort of fiery death for Barbie, Ken, and whomever else joined us in our adventures. But PRE-DEATH, Barbie sessions were fun.

(4) We let her make mistakes. This one is going to come up a few times in these posts about my kids, because I see great value in being allowed to screw up in your life. Protecting your children from every stumble and fall is unrealistic and ultimately counterproductive. To Elissa's credit, she has made relatively few mistakes to this point, but she has learned from the ones she has made. I'm pretty sure, anyway...

(5) We helped develop within her a healthy appreciation of 80s music. Elissa listens to a lot of stuff I like and a lot of stuff I probably don't understand. But in the end, we can always find common ground in "Come On, Eileen."

There was a time...

There was a time when Saturday mornings meant Barbies and board games. I miss it.

There was a time when it wasn't at all uncommon for me to be awake at 3 in the morning changing a diaper. I don't miss it.

There was a time when every trip out of the house meant baby bags, car seats and snacks for little ones.

There was a time when everyone in the family believed fervently in Santa Claus. Including me, I think.

There was a time when helping someone with their homework didn't involve advanced math or Ph.D.-level linguistics.

There was a time - several, in fact - when I wondered how we would ever make ends meet (yet somehow we always did).

There was a time when the kids' high school graduation years seemed laughably far off.

There was a time when Raffi was the soundtrack of our long car trips.

There was a time when everyone was in bed by 9 p.m. and it was quiet. I really miss that.

There was a time when I could walk around the house without finding a single bra or feminine hygiene product on the floor. I think I really, really miss that.

There was a time when tee ball and pee wee soccer were the extent of our family's sporting endeavors. Now, thousands of dollars of athletic fees later, it's a bit more complicated.

There was a time when I was a 24-year-old father who had no idea what he was doing. Now I'm a 43-year-old father who has no idea what he's doing.

There was a time when I didn't have to worry about the top of my head getting sunburned because there was hair to protect it.

There was a time when I didn't know and honestly didn't care what my cholesterol, BMI and blood pressure were.

There was a time when someone dying at the age of 60 didn't seem to be that much of a tragedy to me.

There was a time when eating 4,000 calories a day meant I would probably lose weight.

There was a time when I was a newly married, 22-year-old recent college graduate with a beautiful bride. Now I'm someone who has been married for nearly half his life and is thinking about returning for a graduate degree who has a beautiful bride.

There was a time. It was a long while ago, but there was a time...

Waxing nostalgic over Barbie dolls

Terry, Chloe and I were reminiscing yesterday morning. We do that a lot these days. I guess when your kids are in high school, you start thinking fondly of the days when they were toddlers and said funny things and never asked for the keys to the car.

We were talking about the times when Elissa and Chloe would play Barbies together. We had one African-American doll, which Elissa very appropriately named Kesha. She did that innocently, aware of the fact that many of the kids she knew with darker skin had names her little white friends didn't. That always made me laugh.

Elissa, being the older sister, had the final say as to which Barbies were hers and which were assigned to Chloe. Kesha always ended up with Chloe. Nice job, racist Elissa! Elissa would claim (this is true) that her dolls had something called "obedience dust," and that when they sprinkled it on Chloe's dolls, they would have to do anything Elissa's dolls told them to do. That made me laugh, too.

Saturday mornings were the time when I would be pulled into playing Barbies. I didn't mind, though I quickly came to realize that "playing Barbies" consisted of 45 minutes of getting the Barbies dressed and maybe 5 minutes of actually playing with them. I was always Ken, of course, and Ken only had like three outfits. So I didn't need the full 45 minutes to get Ken dressed. I needed maybe 4 minutes.

In the remaining 41 minutes while Elissa and Chloe put their army of dolls into several of the 987 sparkly pink outfits we owned, I would usually lay on the floor and fall asleep. This was because I was working as a sports writer at the time, and on Friday nights I would be in the office until 2 a.m. The Barbie games would often start at 8 or 9 a.m. I was tired. The girls didn't like that. "Daddy, wake up!" they would yell as I opened one eye to look at the clock and figure out how much more Dressing Time was left.

Eventually, we would get to Actual Barbie Play Time. As I said, this never lasted very long, and that was for two very good reasons: (1) Dressing Time was a lot more fun for the girls, and (2) Under my influence, Actual Barbie Play Time always always ALWAYS ended quickly and violently.

The scenarios for Actual Barbie Play Time varied widely. Sometimes the dolls would be going to a wedding. Sometimes they would drive to the mall. Sometimes they would just walk around the Barbie Dream House in their mismatched outfits. One way or another, I would ensure that the whole thing resulted in death and gore.

In the mall scenario, for example, I would orchestrate a plane crash with explosions that would blow the Barbie Pink Corvette to smithereens just as they drove into the mall parking lot. Other times, I would start a fight among the Barbies that would escalate quickly and result in multiple fatal injuries. Whatever the situation, I would always steer it toward some terrible accident.

This was not only fun to do, it also sped up Actual Barbie Play Time. Even the all-powerful Barbie master Elissa could not resurrect a Barbie whose head had been sliced off by a rogue buzzsaw. The girls would laugh every time I did this. They would put on the appearance of objecting ("Daddy, noooooo!!!!"), but I knew they loved it. Plus, by this time, they were bored of Barbies, too. Like I said, the fun was in the dress-up.

So after about 5 minutes of death Barbie-style, it would be time to clean up. We would put the Barbies and their accessories into the cool plastic bins that Mommy had bought for them and go our separate ways. The girls would find something else to play and I would go off to tackle some chore or another. Then we'd do it again, sometimes later that same day and sometimes not until the following Saturday.

Looking back on it, as much fun as giving compound fractures to Tea Party Barbie was, I sort of wish I had dragged those games out a little more. The girls are in high school now and obviously not all that interested in Barbies any more. Even little Melanie is 11 years old and has moved on to other things. I'm not even sure where the Barbies are these days. Shoved under someone's bed, I guess, but still in their cool plastic bins.

Seriously, though, what I wouldn't give for one more chance to snap a plastic Barbie leg in half...