Quick Hits from a Nutty Homefront: Midnight Hound, Orthodontist X 2, 'Hunger Games,' Room of One's Own, B'Day Mania

Midnight Hound

Max the dog has developed a very bad habit of getting up in the middle of the night and demanding to go outside. I don’t know what he does when he's out there under the moonlight -- and neither does The Spouse who, to be fair, is doing the most of the letting the dog out – but Max stays out there for up to 15 minutes while we yawn and rub our eyes waiting for him.

Now we are fortunate enough to have AC in the house, so it’s not as though Max is overheated at night. And he hasn’t been ill, so we don’t know what to make of these middle-of-the-night rousings. But I do know that we don’t like it. Not one bit.

Paging the Orthodontist, Times TWO

Yes, I realized that when I had twins I’d be buying twice as many diapers, twice as much baby food, twice as many clothes (as the twins are comprised of one boy and one girl), pay two pre-school tuitions and later, two college tuitions simultaneously. What I temporarily blotted out of my mind was the possibility of paying for two kids to get braces at the same time, something I’d been putting off.

But after our recent family trip to the dentist, I realized I can put it off no longer. The Spouse and I were told that both The Eldest Boy and The Girl need to see the orthodontist. Oh goody. Let the braces games begin.

Hunger Games, Here I Come

So as to keep current with all that’s beast (i.e. – cool) with the young adult set, I’m planning on reading The Hunger Games three-book series by Suzanne Collins. While its premise is a dreary one – teens have to participate in a kill-or-be-killed televised competition – I’ve been told by The Girl and The Eldest Boy that I’ll really like it. We shall see . . . I'm still busy mourning the loss of new installments in the Harry Potter series.

A Room of One’s Own

When my parents took my brother and me to summer vacations on Cape Cod when we were kids, they rented a tiny cottage within a five minute walk to the ocean. It was a very rustic cottage, meaning there was one bathroom, no dishwasher, no cable TV (there was a TV with a VCR that didn’t get any channels), no AC and two bedrooms, one for my parents and one for the kids. Sharing a bedroom with my younger brother – who I nicknamed “Scum’s Rash” because he didn't like to bathe – wasn’t exactly fun, but hey, we were at the beach on vacation. We got to swim, build sandcastles, go mini-golfing, eat ice cream and maybe go to the drive-in movie theater depending on what was playing. It was all good.

Flash-forward 30 years and you can understand why I have a hard time sympathizing with The Youngest Boy when he squawks about the fact that when the Picket Fence Post family goes on vacation to Cape Cod -- to a rented house with AC, cable TV, wireless internet and three bedrooms – he’ll have to share a room with his brother while his sister gets her own room. Cry me a river kid.

Birthday Coma

In the days leading up to The Youngest Boy’s 10th birthday, the kid worked himself up into such a frenzy that he could no longer take the anticipation. And, frankly, he’d become supremely over-excited. So he said he wanted to be placed in a coma until his birthday . . . not that the child was building up his birthday to such heights that anything short of a parade, a fireworks display and the arrival of the Stanley Cup accompanied by the entire Boston Bruins team would be a disappointment . . .

Image credits: Meredith O'Brien, Amazon.

Notes on a Family Vacation, from New England to Orlando

A random collection of observations from last week's trip where two 12-year-olds, a 9-year-old, a mom and a dad jumped on a plane in Providence, Rhode Island bound for Orlando, stayed for a week and visited all manner of amusement parks and a space center just to mix things up a little:

“Feeding our family is difficult.”

That was the astute observation of The Girl. It was also a gross understatement.

Take one mom with a dairy allergy, one 9-year-old insanely picky eater who pitches a nutty if he doesn’t eat something every two hours or so (preferably something with carbs), one 12-year-old boy who gets very distinct notions in his head about what he does and doesn’t want and toss in a trying-too-hard-to-please-everyone-dad and you have the recipe for angst and drama during lunch and dinner times. (We had breakfast at our room each day, so breakfast didn't stress anyone out and I could eat without fearing that I was being poisoned.)

When your eating choices are limited to the crap at amusement parks for most of the week, by Day 6 figuring out what to do for lunch for people with disparate needs becomes a tense proposition. Add to that the fact that I wound up going on an involuntary diet comprised of mostly salads --because they were safer choices for me because they didn't contain dairy -- that yielded one hungry, cranky mom. Made me long for being back at home where I could control the ingredients in my own food.

Key Cards are Cool and Coveted, Apparently

The Picket Fence Post kids still argue over who gets to push the button to call the elevator, press the button for the floor number and who gets to use the hotel key card. Somehow, these things never get old and they never seemed to work it out between the three of them.

Image credit: IMDB.com

Princess Fiona as a Human Princess, Not an Ogre

While we were visiting Universal Studios, The Spouse made his own interesting observation: In nearly all the images of Princess Fiona on the products for sale in the gift shop at the end of the Shrek ride, she was shown in her human form, not as Shrek’s ogre wife. Why?

Red Sox Nation Really is a Nation

The Picket Fence Post family wore Boston Red Sox caps a lot while we were in Florida, a fact that tended to elicit a lot of responses from people, ranging from thumbs up and knowing nods to sarcastic digs:

The wise-cracking Donkey from Shrek, who was posing with the other characters from the film and amusement park-goers, broke out into Boston's “More Than a Feeling” upon hearing that we were from the Boston area and noticing our hats.

A guy running an amusement park game in the Amity section of Universal Studios kept yelling out, “Hey! Boston Red Sox!” every time I saw him. It was cool the first time. After that, it was just awkward.

The manager of a nice hotel restaurant, upon learning that we were from the Boston (as we weren’t wearing our hats in the restaurant), talked our ears off about the Sox and the time he said he used to work for the team. Afterward, we couldn't decide if he'd really worked for them or whether he was just trying to chat up gullible tourists. You never can tell.

One cute-as-button senior citizen employee manning the Men in Black ride at Universal saw our hats and eagerly pulled out his wallet and extracted a laminated photo of himself and his grown daughter standing in front of the baseball diamond at Fenway Park. He wanted to let us know he was a "real fan."

That was a stark contrast to the snarky hotel employee who gave The Youngest Boy’s Miami Heat hat his approval while telling the rest of us he’d have to overlook our Sox caps.

Once our waiter at the NBA City restaurant learned we were Sox fans from the Hub, he told us he was a Yankee fan but would still give us good service nonetheless.

We ran into another Yankee fan at the car rental return next to the airport who joked that he was going to charge us at a higher rate for being members of Red Sox Nation.

And there must’ve been at least one other female Red Sox fan in the women’s bathroom in the Jurassic Park section of Universal Studios because when The Girl accidentally left her Sox cap there, it never turned up again, despite the fact that we checked the bathroom and Lost & Found three times over the course of three days.

Jaws & Reliving the 70s

The Spouse got to relive part of his 70s childhood by venturing onto the Jaws ride at Universal Studios. Twice. I, the Picket Fence Post family's ride wimp, accompanied him during his second time through while the three kids, who had absolutely zero interest in the ride, sulked on a bench and played with my cell phone. As the cheesy plastic shark first emerged from the water, The Spouse and I realized that this was the only time during the daylight hours that we'd alone the whole week.

Space Shuttle: The Last Mission

It poured, absolutely poured to the point where you couldn’t see the road in front of you, as we were driving from Orlando to the Kennedy Space Center and The Youngest Boy was thoroughly ticked that we’d taken a day off from patronizing amusement/theme parks and opted to visit a NASA institution. And boy, did he let us know it, during that awful car ride in torrential downpours.

After spending a half hour sitting in the parking lot and waiting for the rain to let up, then another half hour standing in line to buy tickets to get into the Space Center, we finally boarded a bus to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis that's currently sitting on the launch pad. By the time we scaled the observation deck, luckily The Youngest Boy’s skepticism, and whining, was on the wane. When we left, he was thoroughly impressed, mostly because he "touched the moon," meaning a moon rock that was available for people to touch.

Image credits: Meredith O'Brien, IMDB.com.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Left Us Wanting More

The Picket Fence Post family just returned from a week of Orlando amusement park madness, highlighted by many hours spent at Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure in a life-sized replica of Hogsmeade, and replicas of Hogwarts, Ollivanders Wand Shop, Zonko’s and Honeydukes. We also had a rather disappointing lunch at the Three Broomsticks, all places right out of J.K. Rowling’s beloved classic books and the subsequent film series.

I, the resident family ride wimp, didn’t go on any of the three Harry Potter rides, though I was able to walk through the Hogwarts castle without having to actually go on the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride. The Girl, who’s fearless, rode on all three Harry Potter rides, including the Dragon Challenge rollercoaster which goes upside-down. (She dragged her super-reluctant father onto the Dragon Challenge with her and he reported later that he kept his eyes closed the whole time, which is a heck of a lot better than I would've done.)

All three of the Picket Fence Post kids, however, rode on the Flight of the Hippogriff rollercoaster multiple times while I bided my time marveling at the very cool Hogsmeade storefronts many of which were simply just for show and had nothing behind them. For example, one storefront had the boastful books written by Professor Lockhart but they and the storefront were for display purposes.

Cool bits:

-- The Girl and The Youngest Boy liked the Butterbeer, which they said tasted like cream soda with a creamy, whipped kind of topping. They each imbibed two of them on the blisteringly hot day we spent in the Wizarding World where the rooftops of Hogsmeade are covered in faux snow.

-- There’s a hallway of talking, moving portraits in the Hogwarts castle. (If you go to the park, after you ride on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey be sure to check out the castle walk-through, where you can linger and look more closely at the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and other Hogwarts rooms.)

-- Pumpkin Fizz. Simply delicious. I sincerely wish that they’ll bottle it up and ship some up here to New England. It would be perfection with an autumn meal.

-- There’s a Hogwarts singing group, complete with oversized "frogs" in their arms, that performed. They were very good but I felt badly for the singers in their robes and Hogwarts-issued sweaters as they sweated profusely in the chest-crushing Orlando humidity.

-- Chocolate frogs. In blue boxes. With trading cards inside.

-- The Harry Potter film soundtracks playing over the loudspeakers.

-- Moaning Myrtle’s voice in the bathrooms.

Not-so-cool bits:

-- When we were at the Three Broomsticks, which didn’t nearly live up to my high expectations, I asked the cashier (as you order at a counter then pick up your food at another counter) if I could have a Butterbeer without the creamy topping because I have a dairy allergy. Alas, me experiencing Butterbeer was not to be as the cashier told me she was forbidden by law from serving up said non-dairy Butterbeer without the creamy topping. (?!) Though I was denied a coveted mug of Butterbeer, I was able to order Pumpkin Fizz instead. The Picket Fence Post family agreed that we wished the Three Broomsticks was a sit-down, full-service restaurant instead of cafeteria style, though they do find a seat for you. It ruined the ambiance of Hogsmeade to walk around with a plastic tray in your hands and packets of ketchup.

-- The line for Ollivanders wand shop – where they’d let a couple dozen people into the tiny shop at a time to witness a bit where the wandmaker selects a person from the crowd and goes through the process of having the wand “choose” that individual – was gigantic. And you couldn’t use an Express Pass (a pass for which you pay extra in order to cut the lines) to skip the line. We decided to wait anyway (or I did, while the family rode on rides multiple times over and I lusted after other people's Butterbeers) and, since we’re all huge Potter fans, we believe it was worth it. But we could’ve easily skipped it and gone straight to the gift shop where there were tons of wands and salespeople, dressed as though they were a part of the wizarding world, waiting to assist us with wand purchases.

-- Several of the storefronts were just that, fronts. I was hopeful that there’d be more stores than there were, but then again, I guess that’s the sign of a good theme park isn’t it, that I was left wanting more, even after spending about five+ hours there?

Notes from a 9-Day Canadian Odyssey

Family vacations can be memory-making and fun, but they're double-edged swords, which can leave you with the distinct feeling that what you really need after the family vacation concludes is a RELAXING one, particularly after traveling 1,100 miles in the car with three kids.

It had been four years since The Spouse and I had taken a long road trip with the Picket Fence Post kids. The last time was when we went to New York City, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. The Spouse thought we were clearly due so he planned a road trip to Montreal and Quebec City with a one-night stop in North Conway, New Hampshire to break up the ride home.

Thus we took off -- armed with a borrowed portable DVD player for the car and a bunch of used DVDs – and headed for the land where more people speak French than English. And let me tell ya, the four years of French The Spouse took in high school . . . totally useless. I'd taken Spanish in high school and, while I brought a couple of English/French books with me and tried to remember some key phrases, every time I was face-to-face with a French speaker, Spanish words started involuntarily popping up in my mind and I had to stop and fumble around in my brain for the right word. Most of the time I wound up just smiling mutely like some kind of idiot.

By the end of the trip, the three kids were comfortable saying, “hello,” “please” and “thank you,” as well as saying in French that they didn’t know how to speak French, how to ask someone if they spoke English and how to inquire where the toilet was located.

What they weren’t comfortable with was eating cuisine that didn't resemble American "kid fare." Every night, after a long day of traipsing around Canadian landmarks (La Citadelle, the Quebec parliament building, Old Quebec City, Parc Olympique, the botanical gardens in Montreal), we’d face the evening battle royal over where to go for dinner and what to eat when we got there. The Spouse and I only made them have one “fancy” meal where we all were served soup, salad, steaks and “frites.” Two out of the three Picket Fence Post kids were miserable all the way through the dinner, which, I will admit, we were having at a later hour than the kids were used to, contributing to their ire. On most other evenings, it felt like a Herculean struggle to try to lobby them to eat anything other than pizza, a hamburger/cheeseburger, some version of chicken fingers or pasta with "red sauce." On the side.

Not to mention that there were all these little fights that, by the end of the week, had picked away at my patience until there was nothing at all left. It was the non-stop bickering over the small stuff that really got to me, like who got to push the hotel elevator buttons, who got to open the hotel door with the cool key card, who went first on the escalator, who had to sit in the middle seat in the car, who "crossed the invisible line" in the car, why there weren't better snacks in the car, who got to sit next to The Spouse at meals, who got to sleep on the cot and who had to share the other bed with a sibling, especially The Youngest Boy who was apt to roll all around the bed.

I think the stress had started taking a toll by the time we got to the Citadelle for a tour and to witness the changing of the guard ceremony. The soldiers were all decked out in red uniforms and the black English hats (they're dressed like the guards in front of Buckingham Palace). During the ceremony, they marched around the parade area, submitted to an inspection by a superior, guards in the band played some music and one soldier brought out this ceremonial goat named Batisse, the latest in a long line of regimental goats. As we stood there in the hot sun and kept telling our 9-year-old to chill out and stop bellyaching, I started feeling punchy, so I started making whispered inappropriate jokes including telling the kids that after the guard members who were going off duty were inspected, the least prepared soldier would get shot in the knee as punishment. Terrible, I know, but what can I say, I was tired and cranky. The Spouse, appealled, set the kids straight – “No one’s getting shot!” – nonetheless, the children kept giving me sidelong glances as if they weren’t too sure about how this ceremony was going to conclude. (Fear not, there was no bloodshed.)

On the vacation’s lone rainy day, we went to the aquarium near Quebec City and saw some cool walruses and a whole mess of really ugly fish, then headed in the direction of this insane indoor amusement park at a shopping mall called MegaParc. Only problem was, the directions we’d received from our hotel's concierge didn’t happen to mention that there was a detour along the route. Said detour – the detour signs led us nowhere -- had us lost for quite some time as we kept circling around and around. The directions and crude map drawn by a French-only speaking clerk at a random store we'd passed were moderately helpful, while the offspring kept reminding us that they were hungry (I plied them with Jolly Rancher candies), that they needed to use the toilet and were sick of being in the car. I was with ‘em. On all three counts. Eventually, we found the place and man, was it loud in there what with an indoor Ferris wheel, roller coaster, bumper cars (which I feared would put my back out as the impact of hitting another object was so intense), spinning rides, rock climbing, a carousel, etc.

Amusing moments:

-- The kids telling us after our first historic tour that they were all done with this tour business. When The Spouse told ‘em they might very well learn something from the tours, he was informed that it was summer and summer was no time for learnin’ stuff.

-- Everyone was greatly amused that when you muted the TV in our Quebec it said, “Silence” on the TV screen.

-- When we arrived at one particular hotel we decided to be cheapskates and parked our own vehicle in the parking garage, lugging our stuff from the garage to the front desk. The route took us up and down seven flights of stairs -- the kids' luggage loudly slamming against the stairs -- and to an ancient, potentially killer elevator that nearly closed on The Youngest Boy, clipped his shirt sleeve a bit. Okay, so that’s not funny, exactly, but we joked about it during our hours on the road, that and getting shot in the knee for being ill-prepared the changing of the guard ceremony.

Now we're back and on the precipice of a new school year. Hockey practice starts for The Youngest Boy this week -- all of our first forays into playing on a hockey team (pray for me to locate my patience) -- and we still have to go back-to-school shopping and tackle that supply list. Our Canadian odyssey already seems like it was a long time ago.