With the mountains of Sochi filled with abandoned 1/2 pipes, ski jumps whooshing now only as the crosswinds blow, and luge runs empty of athletes hurling themselves down icy tracks in toddler-tested methods (head first, feet first, really expensive sled first), you might think that the winter games are over.
But you would be wrong. The torch has been passed. There is an elite group of competitors packed away in an athlete's village called New York City. And we're all staring at a weather forecast that promises to dump another 8 or 10,000 inches of snow to be plowed and shoveled oh-so conveniently right in front of the place where you are supposed to cross the street. Also we can count on crusty mounds of blackened plow-snow to be blocking pedestrian access to our bus and subway stops. Stops that take us to family-friendly venues that will save our apartments from cabin-fever induced disaster management.
Why does my 19-month-old son Peter delight in taking every single book off the shelf and hurling it across the room with both the skill and deadly accuracy of a Norwegian Biathlete?
We are the stay-at-home parents of the 2014 Polar Vortex Games! And while I'm not a podium contender yet, I do have some top-tips to make sure you are wearing gold at the end of these winter games (which I predict to be sometime around Father's Day).
Get a membership. While the upfront investment of a few hundred dollars is significant, do a little math and you'll realize that being
Not everyone minds the snow in NYC.
able to drop into the Children's Museum of Manhattan or the Bronx Zoo at a moment's notice throughout the next year without worrying if you've got enough time to make the daily entry fee "worth it," is a gold-medal-winning move. Plus, romping around children's museums? Educational and fun! And being able to recite, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?" while staring at two actual brown bears wrestling? Kind of Double awesome.
Get a backpack. No, not that kind. I'm talking the kind that you will carry your toddler to the zoo, the museum, the store, through subway turnstiles without a second thought at record pace. It turns every trip into a ride and your kid will love it. Plenty of parents embrace front-of-the-body
packs like the Ergo or Baby Bjorn, but at some point they get shoved in
the back of a closet and the omnipresent umbrella stroller comes out.
And for an island that currently boasts snowy ridges blocking
crosswalks, the stroller is just the wrong tool for the job. Strollers
are for STROLLING. And in New York, we don't usually stroll. We walk (more quickly than rickety small plastic wheels can handle), we climb (up and down subway stairs), we run (for the bus), we do
("Ninja-quick" shopping trips at bodegas that pack more items in the
same footprint that a suburban grocery store fits their Redbox and
Coinstar vending machines.) My dad says he used to get looks carrying me
around in a backpack...and that was in the 1970s. 40 years later, I get
looks of surprise, followed by realization, a smile, then the comment.
"Looks like he's got the best seat in the house." Yes, yes he does.
Get a snowsuit. In the world of Olympic and athletic competition, speed is of the essence. And let's face it; with the jackets, the mittens, the hats, the shoes (all of which routinely get torn off the second you get them on), it probably takes you 1/2 the day just to get crew ready to leave the house. But a good lined snowsuit with a long zipper will not only cut down on your prep time (pants optional!), but keep him warm as can be. Also snowsuits make your super adorable kid even more so:
This past Father’s
Day Sunday, Sarah and I spent the day with instructor Michele (one “L”)
and five other "expecting" couples at Mount Sinai Hospital getting an intensive crash course on what to expect in
the next few weeks leading up to our son’s birth day.
Our mothers
took Lamaze courses in the 1970s, today our friends have recommended The Bradley Method and our chillaxed OB/GYN
said that simply taking “a hospital course” would be good. The decision on
which route to take was not guilt-free (oh, goody, it starts already).
Were we somehow depriving our boy of his opportunity to become president, Nobel prize-winner
and/or an astronaut because we were only taking a hospital course? (Or is his fate already sealed because I have yet failed to serenade him in utero with a Rachmaninoff etude?)
Most folks seem to think Sarah and I will be at least fair parents because
1) I am an ER nurse and generally know when it is best to take your child to the emergency room (almost never) and 2) Sarah has been editing
articles about families and children for her entire professional career.Of course, our
collective experiences have not prevented us from still being mostly terrified
about our next big adventure. And just in case us future-tense parents ever
start feeling too confident, we’ve got plenty of present-time parents to sigh, shake their head slowly and remind us that we can’t possibly know
anything. Awesome.
Our class, for
me, did not start out well. I was fully prepared to give my name and rank
(husband, 2nd class), but I was not
prepared for the question that came next.
“What kind of
reading have you done leading up to this class?”
HuhWHAT? No one
told me there was homework due! Does watching back to back episodes of MTV's "16 and Pregnant" count? Sarah’s father, a super big time labor lawyer,
used to teach at Cornell University and he always had an assignment
due for the first day of class. Catching mere mortals with their academic fancy-pants
down. I can’t believe I’ve been “Arthur B. Smith Jr-ed” on Father’s Day!
Ironically, I actually had done some reading before class. But true to form my
entire academic career, anytime anything is posed to me in the form of a test
question, I fail. I sheepishly mumbled something meant to be funny about
torturing my wife with pictures and diagrams from one of my nursing school
textbooks. [cue chirping crickets]
Meanwhile, back in a world devoid of brain farts, I just finished a book by humorist and author Joel Stein, called Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity. In addition to making me laugh out loud at least once
per chapter, this book ultimately helped put me at ease as fatherhood rapidly
approaches.
Stein confesses, “I should be lighting a cigar,
high-fiving the doctor, and grabbing my genitals to celebrate that my sperm are
manly, even for sperm. But when I look at the tiny splotch of Doppler weather
pattern on the screen and Cassandra’s obstetrician says it means we’re probably
having a boy, I do not do any of these things. Instead I have my first panic
attack…I am merely picturing having to go camping and fix a car and use a
hammer and throw a football and watch professionals throw footballs and figure
out whether to be sad or happy about the results of said football throwing.”
I'm not exactly a real guys' guy and so, like Stein, I feel somewhat under-prepared to raise a proper boy. In addition to growing up with two sisters, more than half
of my friends growing up were female. The other half were dudes I met while playing Master Charley Bates in my high school musical production of Oliver.
They did not give out letterman jackets for being in 2 separate choirs my
junior and senior years. I was even in the Orchesis dance troupe. And not just one of the
cool guys-only hip-hop dance numbers…I went to practice every day, I caught flying ballet dancers and wore cartoon character
costumes too. This earned me exactly ZERO dates with gorgeous dancers. I guess tap-dancing Snoopy, not so much a sex-symbol with the ladies. Shocking, I know.
Marc in the middle, red suspenders to match the girls' shiny red leotards while singing Billy Joel's "For the Longest Time."
Today, when I
walk past groves of pre-teen boys hanging out in the parks of NYC, I look at
them wondering to what kingdom, phylum and species they belong. How will I
prepare my son to interact with such creatures who do not know what a Jazz
square is? (Heathens)
Stein’s answer
to our dilemma was to set out on a journey of self-discovery, challenging himself to some of the manliest activities known to man. Among other things, there
was camping with Boy Scouts, running with firefighters, shooting with tanks, and
fighting with mixed martial art legend Randy Couture.
Flipping through
my HARDCOVER edition on the subway (take that you iPad, snooky-Nook, Kindle-reading
girly-men), my own confidence grew with every page turn. I was an
actual Cub, Webelos and Boy Scout. Our family vacations almost always began with
us pulling up to a campsite long after dark and trying to erect an
enormous canvas tent supported by roughly 1500 separate sections of indistinguishable aluminum poles. And before I started
making an ass of myself auditioning for musicals, choirs and dance troupes, my
mom made sure I tried the things I was supposed to try.
“Marc, we live
in Chicago now. In Chicago, they play ice hockey. You are going to play ice hockey.”
As an adult, I
was an EMT, and I am currently an ER nurse (the second most manly kind of nurse
there is). And while I won’t be Mr. February on any fund-raising calendars wearing just my
drawstring scrub bottoms, I kind of get what the firefighter life is like.
My son will watch the original Karate Kid, many times. Because there is no such thing as too much awesome.
My
few years of Karate study at the West Side YMCA (oh, yes, Daniel LaRusso, make
no mistake about it, this is a very real Karate dojo), ensured I got hit plenty
of times by men and women who were only referred to as Jun Shihan, Kyoshi and Sensei. Getting hit by people called “sensei” is serious business.
Reading Stein's
book encouraged me to consider the truth and totality of my actual life-experiences, not merely my own viscous, ethereal perceptions of who
I am.
Stein concludes,“You change not by deciding, but by doing. We fetishize epiphanies, but only
experience changes you. Just like the act of smiling makes you happy, climbing
a log tower makes you confident, taking punches makes you tough…I’ve never
understood what people mean when they talk about spending time alone to find
themselves…The idea that we’re each a black box we have to unlock always
baffled me. I’m the sum of my experiences and my reaction to those experiences.”
Yes, when I had
the choice to play JV football in high school, I turned it down because, in a
school that had at least a dozen different plays and musicals every school year, I was still worried that
I would miss an audition. I loved me some musical theater. Still do. But today, I’m also going to be a
father who is going to figure out a way to make sure my boy is a Chicago Bears
and not New York Giants or Jets fan. Right after we act out West Side Story’s “Cool.”
“Boy, boy, crazy
boy…stay cool boy…gotta rocket in my pocket…”
