when andy and i were pining away for children (in between jumbo margaritas at el porton or after the seventh consecutive episode of 24), we looked forward to things like playing outside with them, showing them our favorite mountains, and generally introducing them to all that is enjoyable and beautiful. even then, i knew that disciplining children would be my weakness. i looked upon the prospect of setting rules and enforcing time-outs as a dreadful necessity. and now that i am four years into parenthood, i would like to congratulate my twenty-something self for her accurate foresight. setting rules and enforcing time-outs is, in fact, a dreadful necessity.

the child experts say that children thrive under the presence of two equally present conditions: high nurture and high structure. the former is something that comes easily to me, and especially to andy. we try to mirror and help the kids name their feelings. we plan ahead for shared experiences that are enjoyable and beautiful. but when it comes to the latter, there is much less planning ahead. though the kids rely on a pretty steady routine and schedule, the discipline piece is often spur of the moment (and ineffective). in the grand game of parenting, i make up the rules as i go and announce them to the younger players, who return my half-hearted efforts with half-hearted compliance.

enter the wii.

after the second week of house arrest due to sub-arctic temperatures, andy and the kids braved the icy roads and returned home with a wii. it was fun for a while. there were family bowling tournaments and ridiculous collective attempts at nailing m.c. hammer’s dance moves. and then, without warning, the monkey stumbled into a deep, black, techy hole, and nobody has heard from his former self since. as recently as last week, he could be heard uttering heartbreaking phrases such as,

 “i don’t want to play outside in the warm sunshine. i want to play wii.” 

the wiihas brought the need for discipline and limit-setting in our home to a level that is far beyond the reaches of spur-of-moment-rule-making. so in a reluctant act of planning and plotting, andy and i discussed and created this chart to regulate wii time and create incentives for the monkey to act like a civilized human being.

though this is not the hand-held chart that the tech-crazed monkey requested, (he wanted one “like a smart phone”), it is actually becoming the key to pleasant life around here. the monkey earns stickers for being sweet and cooperative, and each sticker translates into ten minutes of wii time. he can earn up to an hour per day, and a strategically-placed timer above the wii lets him know when his time is up. i am utterly shocked that the monkey loves this new system. he loves rules. he loves structure. he now gets himself dressed, takes bottles to the recycling bin, makes his own breakfast, and quits playing the wii when asked, all for precious stickers and minutes spent clutching the white plastic control.

it turns out that my twenty-something self was only half right.  setting rules and enforcing time-outs is, in fact, a dreadful necessity. but the absence of structure and discipline is fifty times more dreadful. rules simply make life easier. and we can’t have all that is enjoyable and beautiful without them.

today is the first in a month of mornings that i’ll be waking up in the mountains of western north carolina. i’ll post more soon about our trip and the requisite en route adventure. but for now, let’s catch up on another amusing little episode, shall we?

a couple of weeks ago, andy and i, along with our raucous progeny, were speed-eating our way through dinner at el porton mexican restaurant. then, just as i was taking my first sip of my second margarita, a couple of high school girls, who were participating in some sort of a scavenger hunt, approached us with sombreros and a camera and explained that they needed a picture of a “normal american family.”

as you can see, not even the prospect of high school scavenger hunt fame can distract me from the lure of tequila. the next day, the picture appeared on facebook, and because the world is small, a mutual friend recognized us and tagged me.

but the point is, god help us all if our family is the picture of normalcy!

the monkey has a semi permanent “ear plug dread lock” in his hair thanks to his waxy blue plugs and embarrassingly infrequent showers (hello… doesn’t swimming count?). i still cut my hamburgers into quarters because my mom used to do this for me when i was little. in preparation for our current vacation, i couldn’t find one single toy to bring that was still in tact and had all of its pieces. for distraction purposes, i have given my infants tampons to play with at restaurants and my toddlers duct tape to play with on airplanes. my husband prefers to jog during the hottest part of the day, in what is arguably one of the hottest cities on the planet. our children were conceived through the miracles of science and are raised on a hodge-podge of common sense, superstition, tradition, book knowledge, and exhaustion-induced parenting moves.

but it is not just that our nuclear family is abnormal. we are the apples that have not fallen far from our eccentric family trees. my aunt, for example, is convinced that my deceased grandparents send us messages through blinking lights and other electrical anomalies. i wholeheartedly agree with her. andy’s dad has been known to buy enough plastic wrap at once to last for decades. we are aware of the longevity of such products because he proudly writes the purchase date on them with a sharpie and revels in this sacred “history” every time he is called to cover something up and put it in the fridge.

i would venture to say that i don’t even really LIKE people who seem to be living out the imaginary standard of “normal” living. i am much more drawn to the bizarre particulars that make people who they are.

i hope those high school girls won their scavenger hunt. but mostly, i hope that someday (and the sooner the better), they come to know that “normal” doesn’t really exist. there are many other standards one can employ to measure the quality of one’s life. take the amount of years that one uses the same roll of plastic wrap, for example!