Luca Cheese

This week, Diana traveled up to the Mayo Clinic to get some world class experts to tell her stuff she already knew about her disease. I’ve been a little busier than usual lately, so Diana enlisted the help of her Dad to watch Elijah and Luca (with a little Schuyler thrown in for good measure).

Di’s Dad is great and obviously knows how to handle two kids, but the boys’ schedule is complicated and you gotta drop them off at different doors than the ones you pick them up and there is play practice and play dates and 400 other things to keep track of. Plus Grover duties.

Luckily for everyone involved, Diana constructed a massive “Guide to Keeping Our Children Alive.” She typed up hour by hour instructions about who needs to be where and when. Plus a crescendo list of emergency phone numbers. The Guide is deep, intricate, and exhaustive.

Or so I thought.

Last night, I got home a little later than usual and wolfed down some leftover pizza and spaghetti (mental note: refill blood pressure medicine). Di’s Dad and I watched a little MSNBC with the volume all the way up and then I went upstairs for some Be-Withs with Luca.

His lights were turned off and he was all tucked in his bed. I crawled in beside him and noticed it smelled like cheese. I asked if he had been eating in his room because that’s against the rules, mister man.

“I haven’t eaten anything.”

Really? Man, it smelled like cheese. Was Luca hiding Gouda in the radiator? Eli popped his head in to request sleeping in my bed. He said, “It smells like cheese in here.”

Eventually, I went into my room where Eli and Grover had taken over the bed. I found my 2 square feet and tried to nod off.

A few minutes later, Luca came in asking if he could join our bed party. After allowing it, I realized it wasn’t Luca’s room that smelled like cheese. It was Luca. Luca’s body had turned into cheese.

I then realized Diana’s exhaustive Guide To Keeping Our Children Alive was missing one key section on bathing. Our children had not bathed in 4 days. Hence, the cheese.

I told Luca he needed to de-cheese after school and I added “Wash Stink Off” to the Guide.

What Do You Do?

“What do you do if a bad guy comes to your school with a gun?”

Welcome to the worst question I’ve ever had to ask Elijah and Luca. A sick and lost kid opened fire in Florida and killed 17 of his classmates and teachers. This, coming out of the deadliest year for mass shootings in America.

Oh, it could never happen in Evanston. We’re too liberal. We’ve got good parents. We’re an anti-gun community. Our kids are smart and healthy and have good support.

And yet, I had to ask.

I knew their school runs “Code Red” drills, which is so sad I can barely keep from barfing. But I wondered if the boys gave the subject any more thought than putting a book on their head during a tornado drill.

“I would run,” Luca said, “We have a door to the outside in our room.” I explained that running wasn’t always the best answer. He should listen to his teacher and do whatever he said. Sometimes hiding is better. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be debating active shooter strategies with my 8 year old.

Luca nodded with eyes that said, “I am going to run.”

Eli said they have a whole plan. Lock the door, hide, get in the closet if you can.

Luca said, “I am going to run.”

Eli looked genuinely hurt. “I’m on the third floor. You would just leave me and run?” And my heart broke again for the umpteenth time.

The night of the shooting, I sat in shock like most of America, unable to turn off the cable news. Eli came in and sat with me. We watched in silence as pundits tried to find blame, as the same clips of children racing on the sidewalk with their hands raised played over and over.

I wondered if this was bad parenting. Shouldn’t I be protecting my little boy from this kind of reality? Should I be building a Disney Star Wars utopia for him to live in? Shielded from the horror of, well, life?

Eli simply said, “This is sad.”

I said, “Yep. Let’s go read books.”

And then we read comics and talked about zits.

Underwear and Pigs

A few weeks ago, Diana went to New York to see a man about her blindness. Long story short, the trip was super successful, and she learned her good eye will most likely stay good for the next ten years or so, as long as she keeps getting injections.

Diana brought along our neighbor Lexa to act as seeing eye friend in case they needed to take her eyes out to wash them or something. It ended up being a mini NYC vacation for the ladies, which was just as good.

That left neighbor Chris and I to kid duty for a few days. It felt like a plot for a bad 90’s movie, but it mostly ended up being a series scheduling mishaps and near abandonment.

Chris had to work late one of the nights, so I took charge of all four kids. Whenever Callie and Lydie come over, I continue my efforts to make up for that time I yelled at everyone when they were six.

We ate pizza and played board games and generally made a mess of the house. An hour or so before bedtime, I suggested we play “Pig.” Pig is a card game taught by my step mom that involves a lot of yelling and the crowing of a loser each round.

In order to keep interest in the activity, I suggested a series of punishments for the loser. This involved a teaspoon of hot sauce, standing in the snow for 5 seconds, and a teaspoon of vinegar. Come to think of it, most of the punishments involved a teaspoon.

The grand punishment, devised by me, was the loser of said round had to spend the rest of the game wearing one article of Diana’s wardrobe. This was gleefully accepted by the kids. After the round, the loser was crowned: Lydie.

The kids erupted and went upstairs to pick out her punishment. I stayed downstairs and cleaned up a few dishes.

It dawned on me that there were articles of clothing that weren’t appropriate for a 10 year old to be forced to wear. I did not want game night to devolved into an underwear party.

I called upstairs, “Hey! No Diana underwear!”

Luca began chanting, “Underwear! Underwear! Underwear!”

I called again, “No underwear!”

A few minutes later, Lydie came down in a perfect choice for her punishment: a tasteful Diana robe (that was technically my robe).

We got back to the game and I realized Luca was still upstairs. I called upstairs, “Luca! Get Diana’s underwear off!”

“Fine,” he said. And we finished the game with me losing a round and having to run through the Grover poop graveyard.

Super Barf

On Super Bowl Sunday, we cleaned the house top to bottom. We drew Eagles and Patriots logos. We bought every kind of Dorito under the sun and stocked our freezer with organic cheese pizzas.

And then Diana and I got the hell out of the house.

In a convenient scheduling snafu, Diana made reservations at a super fancy restaurant for us and her friends who didn’t seem to care about the most important American sporting event of the year.

But that didn’t stop Luca from having a huge rager with every kid under ten in Evanston. We left the insanity to our unflappable sitter, Schuyler, who has the superpower of extreme calmness. We bid her good luck and walked out the front door with Doritos crunching under our nicest shoes. 

We arrived hours and hours later, our livers taking a beating from the friendly fancy restaurant sommelier, wanting nothing more than to sleep. When we entered the house, we were greeted by a giant pile of bedding.

Elijah popped up from our couch and said, “I barfed.”

Based on the smell of the sheets, the diagnosis was too many Doritos. A million too many Doritos. Eli’s vomit had soaked every inch of his bed, so we allowed him to sleep in our bed so long as he promised there weren’t any other Doritos hiding in the corner of his stomach.

I slept in the guest room because I need to have my foot off the bed at all times. Also, I don’t want to be barfed on.

I woke up hours later to Luca at the side of my bed.

“I barfed.”

“That’s a bummer,” I said and promptly went back to sleep. Luca found a more receptive audience in Diana, who stripped Dorito barf bed #2 and made another pile of bedding at the bottom of our stairs. The next day, She marveled at just how many Doritos one 8 year old could hold inside himself.

Feeling guilty for not helping, I woke up early and did the laundry. Which involved having to scrape several pounds of partially digested Doritos from the folds of the boys’ sheets. I’m not sure if you’ve ever experienced the odor of partially digested Doritos, but I firmly believe it’s what Satan’s jockstrap smells like.

The boys did a nice job of trying to convince us they had the flu the next morning, but I forced the Dorito monsters to go to school.

One quick story about the game. According to Schuyler, all the kids had abandoned the game in the 4^th quarter except Luca and our friend Kitty’s daughter Gigi. They were both enthralled by Patriot comeback.

As the clock ticked down, Luca turned to Gigi and said, “If the Eagles win, I am going to hug you.” And when the game ended, Luca made good on his promise.

Women’s March

In preparation for the Women’s March, Diana joyfully sat at our dining room table making posters. One read, “Hey America. Who wants to lose 239 lbs?” I later learned she “borrowed” line from the internet, but it was still great.

Meanwhile, Luca and Elijah sat on our couch with expressions of children who were being forced to go to a Women’s March.

I sat down with them and said, “Sometimes you have to do stuff you don’t want to do to make the world better.” That, plus a promise of McDonald’s got their spirits up.

We grabbed our pals Patrick, Leah, their amazing kid JB, and drove downtown to the route.

Unfortunately, we made the miscalculation of not bringing any money or water, plus Luca had to urgently pee.

I took him on a little walk and discovered there are no good places to find a pee pee corner. We decided it just didn’t feel right to whip out your wang in a place with half a million women fighting for their rights. So, he held it.

The march itself was great and wonderful and I hope meaningful for the boys. They got to see peaceful protest, strong women, and our friend Leah completely lose her mind on a weird religious counter protester. It was worth the price of admission to see her scare this dude so much a Chicago police officer had to give her a warning.

We didn’t stay for the post march speeches, because Diana had to work and Luca really needed a pee pee corner. Plus, I felt like I deserved a vanilla shake for my efforts.

As we walked out of McDonald’s a giant white SUV pulled up. Whatever kind is four times larger than an Escalade. The windows rolled down and the teen boys inside began shouting, “Trump! Trump! Four more years!”

The teens were exactly what you’d expect: White. Blonde. Tall. Handsome. A-Holes. They shouted at a group of women, “Hey. Go make me a sandwich!”

I prayed a little prayer that my sons would never turn out like them. I then looked down at Luca, who carried a little sign that said, “Make America Kind Again” and breathed a sigh of relief.