Loyal readers might recall that I implemented a reward system two years ago where kids would earn one-on-one minutes with me for good behavior and lose them for bad behavior. Well, if there is one consistent hallmark of my parenting, it’s inconsistency, so I recently re-implemented this system, but forgot that it was about one-on-one minutes and instead made it about dessert. Basically, each kid starts the day with 3 points; they can earn or lose points based on their behavior, but if you end up with 0 points, no dessert for you. This doesn’t make any sense for several reasons, one being that we don’t even always have dessert, but the important thing is…points. If you’re questioning this system, you just lost a point.

After our crazy boat adventure with friends where the worst, thankfully, did not happen, we spent a day and half at Oma and Opa’s. My parents’ baking/cooking game was stronger than ever, with Oma making such good homemade whipped cream that the kids decided she should open a homemade whipped cream store, and my dad making a combination of Hazy and George’s favorite foods by making the bun from char siu bao with the filling of a wonton. They were a huge success, even if we couldn’t agree whether to call them wonbaos or baotons.

 

Oma & Opa are up to about a bajillion points by my system.

On Friday, Opa was golfing so we had “Oma eggs,” which were almost as good as Opa eggs. Then, Oma let the kids play her Math for Candy game which, as the name suggests, rewards them with candy for solving math problems. (The Lam ladies clearly need to work on their reward systems.)

 

Then it was onto the pool, where the kids did some synchronized swimming and Hazy discovered the Jedi mind trick of letting your goggles float up into your hand.

At one point, the kids were super cute cuddling with each other. Then they turded it up by asking if they could “get points for being cute.” Of course not! What is this, some completely cockamamie reward system?

Oma was awesome enough to bring us lunch to the pool, which was a total treat.

After completely exhausting Oma and Opa and eating all their fruit, we headed home so we could meet Matty, back from his business trip to Chicago. On our way home, we passed my Kryptonite, TJ Maxx (or as George calls it, TJ Mask, sung to the tune of PJ Masks).

George to a TJ Maxx employee stocking the shelves: Can we help?

TJ Maxx Employee: No.

We did a quick episode of Who Wore It Best, and George won, which is totally unfair considering they were ladies’ shoes. The gruff TJ Maxx employee looked on in disapproval. I *almost* whipped out my TJ Maxx card and Pretty Woman’ed her, but I’m pretty sure they don’t work on commission and also I’m unemployed.

I think their final point tallies were 6 (Hazy) and 3 (George), but it was irrelevant because we didn’t end up having dessert. Hazy gained a bunch of points for helping me clean up and George lost a bunch for whining (whining is George’s Kryptonite/TJ Maxx).

I’ll probably redesign the points system this week. What do you think the reward should be?

This is my friend Lesley and I’s motto. As in, “Would it be insane for us to take our kids on a boat ride on the open ocean to a small island for a self-guided walking tour?”

“Yes. But sounds like something we would/should do.”

“I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”

And so began our boat trip to Star Island.

The boat ride was lovely, interrupted only by the constant cries of, “I’m hungry!” by our poor, starving waif children. Luckily, Lesley had a hiking backpack full of cereal bars to hold them over.

We only had one hour shore leave and the kids spotted a playground right away, so they were as singled-minded as sailors during fleet week, except substitute playground for floozies. We told the kids we’d spend the last 10 minutes at the playground, which left us just 50 minutes to test out this antique revolving door, desecrate this graveyard, interrupt this duet, and run in and out of four little cabins without breaking various antiques.

We also felt it was worth taking the time for Lesley to make this epic lay up on the Pelicans’ practice court.

At long last, we reached the Promised Land.

Raise your hands if you love Star Island!

On the way back, we were the last ones on the boat, just like we were on the way there. But unlike on the way there, it was socially acceptable to have a beer.

And also, something about our one-step-away-from-complete-anarchy charm won over the crew, because they let each of our small children steer the boat, even though they literally couldn’t see over the steering wheel.

Angling for Favorite People Ever, the crew guys then said yes to Hazy’s preposterous request that she get to work the cash register in the store, but sadly, no one bought anything for the rest of the trip.

Due to a slight snafu (cough, cough, Lesley telling me we were spending the day on the island), my car ended up blocked in by all the cars of the people on the all-day island plan. But when life hands us lemons, Lesley and I use those lemons to garnish our lobster rolls at the Beach Plum, voted the best lobster roll in New England. That’s right; we loaded up the car seats into Lesley’s car and took ourselves out for lobster rolls, mac & cheese, and ice cream.

We also killed some time at this killer beach. I’m very grateful to Lesley’s family friends, who have a beautiful home on this private beach, about two hundred yards away from the public beach, which was packed about 10 umbrellas deep. We had this one all to ourselves, and it was absolutely perfect.

You know when you get really tired and all you want to do is put on an avant-garde play and charge people for admission into an imaginary dance club? Yeah, me neither.

After much rosé was consumed,the imaginary nightclub got shut down due to zoning restrictions, and someone peed in the bathtub (I won’t name names), we finally got the kids to bed.

The next morning, I slept in while the kids (and Lesley) answered the siren call of Elena of Avalor.

Then we spent a little while enjoying the adorableness that is Newfields, NH. Lesley and her husband Paul live in a Charles Wysocki puzzle where Lesley brings her mug over to the General Store next door and fills it up with coffee, while her awesome dog Ollie goes behind the counter for a treat.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a visit to Newfields without seeing our old pal, Slowpoke. Slowy was as magical and slow as ever.

After dutifully jotting down the series of highways that Lesley told me made more sense than Waze’s directions, I promptly took one in the wrong direction and ended up following Waze the rest of the way. But first, we stopped for the kids’ 12th (!) ice cream of the summer, with make your own sundaes at Friendly’s.

Thank you for an action-packed day and night, Lesley. There’s no one with whom I’d rather be woefully unprepared for the worst that could happen.

Where should we go next? And relatedly, where’s the best ice cream in New England?

 

At long last, here are the underwater photos we took at Oma and Opa’s! To be honest, I thought they’d all come out like this:

But my photographers were actually pretty awesome. Here are their portraits of each other.

We got cool mermaid and merman portraits of each other, including one of George in mid-somersault.

I sort of captured this dual somersault:

And George took this pretty skilled photo:

I’d say he’s a better underwater photog than I am:

It was a pretty cool experiment overall. Maybe we’ll do it again at the end of the summer and see how we’ve progressed. We’ll take your photo requests in the comments.

p.s. We tried (and failed at) a group selfie and Oma got cropped out of our one picture of her.

It’s been two weeks since we packed our bags for the homeless, and believe it or not, we haven’t had a free day since when it wasn’t pouring rain. But today was the day!

But first, breakfast dessert. I woke up to the sounds of bowls clattering and raced down in a panic. I love that my kids are into making their/my own breakfast, but I still get nervous about solo oven or stove usage. Turned out Hazy had decided to make Timon and Pumbaa’s Chocolate Mud Pie, as one does on a Tuesday morning.

(Notice George got dissed on the matching BE FRI shirt again.)

We had our doubts about the pre-baked product (see below), but the finished product actually looked quite a bit like the recipe.

We had no choice but to have our mud pie with ice cream, as that was Timon and Pumbaa’s serving suggestion. (Don’t judge me, Margie!)

 Next, we went grocery shopping. Now I swear to you, we eat plenty of healthy things, including cucumbers and well, cucumbers, but the greatest moment of the grocery store trip the week the summer was finding these pudding pops. Now they’re not Jell-O, but they look exactly the same and they don’t have any Cosby baggage.

Hazy and George weren’t alive when Jell-O pudding pops existed and were the best thing on earth, so I’m glad they’ll get to experience their greatness.

Before the main event (which remember, is bags for the homeless), I attempted (and failed) to make George take a nap. The good news is that I wrote a blog post during that time and Hazy wrote a short story, after which we had this conversation.

“I’m finished!”

“I can’t wait to re…”

“Also, you have to buy it to read it.”

A signed copy cost me $77.24. Luckily, she accepts play credit cards.

Finally, it was time to head to Harvard Square. We packed up all 8 of our bags in the Mac Wagon and set sail for do-gooding.

I explained to the kids that we were gonna make a big loop, down one street and up another, in order to pass all the usual locations where we see homeless people. George asked if we could go to the little circle. I explained that we were in Harvard Square. He clarified that he’d heard “big loop” and would prefer a little circle.

We ended up giving out five of our bags and then running out of people, which is a good problem to have. The kids were really excited to hand them out, the recipients were exceptionally sweet, and George wished every single person a great day. We saved the remaining three bags to give to some familiar homeless people in JP. I’d call Year 3 a success.

To celebrate, we picked up “Mr. Phil,” the CEO of PJA, and went out for ice cream with him, even though we got ice cream-shamed by my friend Margie as we were walking out the door.

It was fun to see the kids through Phil’s eyes. His kids are older and no longer do things like invent new ice cream eating techniques, at least, not to my knowledge.

Thank you, Phil, for treating us, and for reminding me how lucky I am to spend the summer with these “angels” (your words).

This post sponsored by VOGUE Jr. Check out the latest issues on newsstands everywhere.

One Summer At Home went black while I had a girls’ (old ladies’?) weekend with my friends from college. Nine of us went to my friend Jess’s gorgeous house in Kennebunkport and spoiled ourselves with wine, lobster, and reminiscing. I definitely missed the turds, but I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to not hear anyone whine about anything for three days straight.

I got back Sunday night, and was delighted to hear that the kids had been excellent Thursday through Saturday, and not great on Sunday, which had led to a full day of house cleaning. Win-win, am I right? So yesterday, I was back on duty, and assuming that the kids would have learned their lesson about whining/fighting from a day of hard labor. Well, I’m sorry that I made an ass out of u and me, guys.

The day started off okay. (It always does, guys; that’s how they fool you.) After breakfast, the kids were psyched that it was raining, because that meant they go to play their new Wii game, Star Wars the Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duel. I don’t know if you remember playing Wii tennis or bowling back in 2002 or whenever people actually played Wii, but I remember sweating a lot. And that was just bowling. So imagine a light saber duel against a Jedi master. They got really sweaty and angry.

When I sent Matty a video of them playing the game, he said, “looks violent.” What did you expect from a game with the word “Wars” in the title twice, Matty? Hazy realized that the closer you get to the other player, the better chance you have at hitting them with your virtual light saber. George learned the hard way that there’s also a better chance at getting hit with a real-life Wii controller. George ended up getting pissed because he was 1) sweaty, 2) losing most of the duels, and 3) repeatedly getting whacked with a Wii console. That led to a bunch of fighting/whining.

I decided we needed to get out of the house. I had them suit up in their rain jackets, with big plans to walk to the subway (1/2 mile) to go to Chinatown to get our underwater photos from a few weeks ago. We made it about three blocks of George jumping in every puddle (which, admittedly, was pretty awesome) and then both kids complaining they were cold and wet. So we turned around and walked back. They changed into dry clothes and we hopped into the car.

And by “hopped”, I mean Hazy and I waited for about 10 minutes in the car while George put on long pants. That led to George whining about how it was hard to put on pants all by himself. It’s a charmed life when your biggest challenge is putting on pants.

In Chinatown, I remembered why I didn’t want to drive, as we circled around the worst driving neighborhood in the worst driving city in America for about 15 minutes. As we were exhausted from the not-walking and the whining, we stopped for lunch before picking up the photos. Once again, my kids crushed an impressive amount of Chinese food. I think if we just ate every meal in Chinatown, they might be in the normal range of the weight percentile chart.

After lunch, we walked the three blocks to CVS in the pouring rain. I believe it took approximately three hours to walk those three blocks, two hours of which I spent yelling, “Come on, George! Stay with Mama!”There was definitely whining about how it was too far to walk.

At one point, George did a puddle jump right beside two innocent bystanders. We did finally make it and secured our underwater photo masterpieces. Stay tuned for that post.

While I was gone, Matty instituted a policy where if George whines, he takes a nap. I dialed it up to 11 and decided we should all nap. Of course, what actually happened was I was the only one who napped, woken up frequently by George whining and calling out from his room, “Can I get up now?” Hazy read in her room, which is cool with me.

After “naps,” I buried my rage deep down inside my Secret Rage Place, and I whipped out the piece de resistance, this 1977 Star Wars game I bought at a flea market in Maine. You won’t be surprised to hear that I won or that George got mad that he lost. The kids fought about handing off the spinner (George wouldn’t), reaching over each other (Hazy kept doing it to get the spinner from George), and perceived injustice (“Why did you have to send my Luke and Leia home?!”), but still shockingly asked if we could play again. No, no we can’t. Secret Rage Place is running out of space.

After a quick dinner of leftovers, I read a graphic novel about Star Wars Academy to the kids and put them to bed early. But first, Hazy insisted on leading us through a guided meditation (my 8-year old is 80), which I have to admit was pretty awesome. We imagined putting our “busiest thoughts” into leaves that floated down a river.  I didn’t get any photos because I’m pretty sure snapping photos on your phone is the opposite of Buddhist meditation.

After the kids were in bed, I went to finish up some laundry before relaxing with some wine and GoT, and promptly fell down the basement stairs. It’s good to be home, guys.

Today was a big pool day at Oma and Opa’s. In previous summers, George took a nap mid-afternoon, so we’d only go to the pool from about 3-5. But now, we head to the pool right after lunch and stay as long as “we” want.

We got to the pool at about 12:30 and the kids jumped right in and didn’t get out, except for bathroom breaks, for the next two and a half hours. I forgot to get a photo of their little prune toes.

At one point, I drifted asleep and woke up to the sounds of Marco Polo and my mom laughing. I thought my kids had joined in on a pool-wide game of Marco Polo, but later found out that they were just the aceholes yelling, “Polo!” and hanging around Marco even though they weren’t actually playing.

Don’t worry, Oma and I got into the pool some too.

While the kids were forced to get out of the pool during Adult Swim, I performed a water ballet for them, consisting of dolphin dives, somersaults, front handsprings, swimming while waving, and a few Mary Lou Retton-esque finishes where I would stand up straight with my hands in the air. I expected wild applause when I finished, but Hazy told me I needed more practice, and George gave me a score of 100 … out of 200. Thanks for not sugar coating it, guys.

I’d like to conclude with this exchange George and I had this morning:

George: I’ve been waiting for this moment to arrive.

Me: What moment?

George: Three days in a row of good manners.

Me: I’ve been waiting for that moment too.

George: Well, it’s not going to happen today. You want it to, but it’s not.

Sigh.

“You don’t have to do something special with them every day.” – Oma

“If they keep whining, just make them clean the house and then send them to their rooms.” – Matty

“Can we reschedule? I’ll make you sublime nachos and so much extra rosé you may have to stay over…” – Lesley

We were planning on spending the day with my wonderful friend Lesley and her delightful girls, Nora & Eliza. You may remember the time we fed a tortoise and didn’t pick peaches with them. But unfortunately, something came up (tortoise attack – Slowpoke was framed!), so we had to reschedule. Once I’m promised nachos and rosé, you don’t have to tell me twice.

So we went back to basics: toy pit cleaning, fighting, time outs, grocery shopping, library and “arts and crafts.”

But first, breakfast. This photo is actually from the day before (shandong noodles), but on this particular day, Hazy had spaghetti with marinara sauce for breakfast. She asked for it, and who am I to deny young Kate Moss some carbs?

After breakfast, I had them clean the toy pit, which consists of 20% actual cleaning, 50% arguing over cleaning, and 30% dance party. We got down to Pharrell’s Happy, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and New Edition’s Candy Girl.

After the fighting and subsequent time outs,  we hit the library, where we got good news and bad news. The good news is Hazy got a new library card so now both kids can spend an hour playing PBS Kids games on the computers, plus Hazy got two prizes for checking off ten boxes on her summer reading library list.

The bad news is we owe over $14 in library fines, mostly due to just recently finding The Runaway Wok, which we took out for Chinese New Year.

Late fines, $14.

Having your kids know the Skippity Hoppity Ho song the magic wok sings when it Peter Pans the rich family, priceless.

After the party/library, it’s the hotel lobby/grocery store. Because I shun convenience of any kind (too easy!) and also because I read the Omnivore’s Dilemma (don’t!), we went toWhole Foods (for meat) and Wegman’s (for everything else, plus, car carts).

Then it was arts & crafts time. If you know me at all, you know I’m neither artsy nor crafty (except in the Beastie Boys sense of the word), but I found these cool giant oval frames at Boomerangs, and I thought it would be cool if I let each kid draw their own self-portrait.

Hazy kept drawing hers, deciding it wasn’t good enough, and erasing it. George drew his in about a minute and a half, and declared himself finished. Then, on an impulse, he decided to color it in with red marker. This pretty much sums up their personality differences.

I’ll share a photo of the final pieces after Hazy does a self-portrait she’s satisfied with and I’ve spray painted the frames.

Sorry we did pretty much the opposite of cleaning up the house, Matty.

 

Yesterday, we were lucky enough to spend the day with my cousin, Maya, and her son, Hassan. Maya and I grew up together, wearing matching Easter sweaters, eating strange delicacies, and fighting with our respective brothers. It was nice to remedy the fact that we live mere miles away from each other and rarely find time to hang out.

We started the day off at the fantastic Museum of Science and this thrill ride, which replicates a roller coaster in that it locks your children into a small box and then tosses them around like rag dolls while you watch on a monitor. Just like a real roller coaster! George was sooo close to being tall enough.

After the thrill ride, we played the piano stairs, went bird watching, conversed with R4D4, played a nerd version of the arcade claw game, explored Mars via Rover, photo acted in front of Predator, touched a pig heart and lungs, snuck up on birds, and listened to a story about Sammy the Gecko (spoiler alert: his home is the desert and the story teller lady may be in the mafia, as she does not like kids who ask too many questions).

We also held the whole world in our hands (we held the whole world, in our hands!) with varying degrees of success, depending on the photographer.

Maya and I got our moose antlers on. (Insert moose sound here, whatever that is.)

Then we built towers taller than ourselves (or at least, Maya’s was taller than her) without using glue unlike some posers (cough, cough, MOS towers behind the glass).

Hazy built stairs leading up to the girls’ tower and George was very jealous. Later, as we were leaving, he wanted to destroy Hazy’s stairs and they got in a fight about it. Hassan is so sweet that while Hazy was in the bathroom, he asked me why George was crying and I told him. He said, “I’ll be right back,” ran back into the room with the towers and came back and told George, “it’s all set.” When I started to say that wasn’t very nice, he repeated himself to George and gave me a big exaggerated wink. George was thrilled, the stairs were intact (I think), and Hazy was none the wiser. Thanks, 8-year old parenting genius Hassan. Can I borrow you for the rest of the summer?

The highlight of the museum for me was the POPnology Exhibit, and the highlight of the POPnology Exhibit was the Delorean, one of the actual ones from Back to the Future.

Before we left the museum, we made a quick stop to get brainwashed by this digital screen.

Being the two amazing planners we are, Maya and I decided to take the kids to the Food Court at Cambridgeside Galleria so that we could stop at as many different booths as possible while two hangry adults dragged three hangry kids around. We also confirmed that Hassan and George are related, despite looking slightly different. They both like sticking their tongues out, running at top speed across the food court to the bathroom, and chicken nuggets. At the end of the day, George told me Hassan was his best friend. (Hazy was still name-dropping Sophie as her BFF.)

The kids decided their table was the “cool table.”

But what’s cooler than eating the same thing you ate before every swim meet in high school – a D’Angelo Italian sub with pickles and hots?

Hangriness abated, we headed to the playground and then attempted (and failed at) a jumping shot.

What’s the best thing to do after a giant Italian sub? Go swimming, of course.

We did not wait 20 minutes before swimming/jumping.

I will museum-food court-pool with you anytime, Maya. I may not get an Italian sub next time though. But for the record, I didn’t barf.

As I’ve mentioned before, it takes a village, and thank God for mine. My village people are, among others, my family: Oma (the construction worker), Grammy (the cowboy), and Opa (the leatherman? I don’t know, this is getting weird. Did you know there was a leatherman in the Village People?). On Friday, Matty and Ryan (our nephew) had a shoot in Plymouth, so we figured we’d all head down to my parents’ Thursday for dinner and the kids and I would hang out with Oma & Opa on Friday. I think I let my mom know on a Tuesday, and my parents rallied the way they always do.

It was kind of rainy and then muggy out, so we did mostly inside stuff, but also raspberry picking in my parents’ backyard and then blueberry picking while taking my “brother”, Teddy, on a walk. George was like his namesake, George Costanza, but with raspberries instead of shrimp (#jerkstore). 

Hazy successfully lived up to her “MAKE TODAY AWESOME” t-shirt.

Our blueberry picking walk was about 1 1/2 – 2 miles round trip, which might as well be 26.2 for my kids. They’re the worst walkers of any city kids I know. After about a mile, George asked if we could take a break. Then, he asked if we could play sports during the break. I’m not sure if he understands what a break is. Then, we played tag. The tree was base, but at one point, Hazy went to tag him, and George slid onto the ground, shrieking, “LAYING DOWN IS BASE!” You’ve got to admire his spirit.

Back at home, we had some lazy rainy day time watching women’s golf (which Opa has decided Hazy should pick up so she can be a millionaire at age 20), reading with Oma (George), and completely dominating Horsopoly (me). I mean seriously, I had like 20 hay bales (houses) and 3 stables (hotels).

At one point, George attempted to give Opa advice on Candy Crush, at which my dad is convinced he’s top-ranked in the world. (He may be right; he’s quite good.)

When the sun finally came out, we went outside to play tennis ball games, namely (Don’t) Catch Then Run Down The Hill After The Ball & Try (And Fail) To Throw The Ball In The Bucket. I hope these are also sports in which they can become millionaires by age 20, because this is where we’ve invested most of our training time (this and pool somersaults).

Thank you, my village people, for giving us a place to stay at that’s even more fun than the YMCA.  (see what I did there?)