It’s been a long, long time since we’ve updated. What can I say? We’ve been busy. On top of that, we’ve also been sick. All of us. Not for the five months since I last updated, but for the past week or two. It started with Son #4 coming home sick from preschool…

In the beginning

At the time, we though that he just had a nasty virus, but we now suspect that he was a walking bug bomb. His “virus” eventually led to impetigo due to crusty, cracked nostrils. As unfortuante as that sounds, it may have turned out to be a blessing in disguise for him, as we think that the antibiotics took care of something else… Strep.

Anatomy of an outbreak

Last Friday, I came home from work early feeling like crap. Sore throat, achy, and exhausted, I crawled into bed and tried to recover. I felt better when flying high on my ibuprofen/acetaminophen cocktail, but otherwise I suffered through the weekend.

Meanwhile, Son #1 started feeling crappy on Saturday, a situation that deteriorated as time wore on. By Monday he puking and my throat still hurt. On Tuesday morning we went to the doctor. I was diagnosed with strep, whereas Son #1 was diagnosed with sinusitis (the resulting drainage was irritating his throat and upsetting his stomach). I got Omnicef, and he got a Z-Pac.

Puking in triplicate

Around that same time, my wife picked up Son #3 from school with a fever. Son #2 was still fine, so he stayed for the remainder of the day. By evening, they both hurled (after eating some pizza and drinking some red fruit punch). Lovely. Counting Son #1’s pre-dawn hurl, that meant that three of our four kids threw up that day. Son #4 was blissfully ignorant of the havoc that he had created, as he had long since recovered.

Recovery? Not so fast

On Wednesday, I was staring to feel better, but my lovely and talented wife was starting to feel like crap. On top of that, Son #1 was developing a bad cough reminiscent of an earlier bout with pneumonia. And Son #2 was still in pretty rough shape with a fever all day long, dizziness, and a sore throat. So…

This morning my wife, Son #1, and Son #2 all headed back to the doctor. She just called. The good news is that Son #1 doesn’t have pneumonia. Another bit of good news is that nobody else has strep (lucky me!). The bad news is that they’re now all on antibiotics combatting a sinus infection.

And so it goes. At least it’s not H. pylori, and nobody got hurt.

How do you teach your kids to deal with a bully? Our oldest son, who is currently ten (nearly eleven) years old and in 5th grade, told us last night that one of the kids in his class has been picking on him and calling him names.

A bit of background

While the name-calling has been pretty run-of-the-mill stuff so far, we don’t want it growing into something larger. Moreover, the kid in question apparently told our son that he’d “get him” during recess if he told a teacher. Given this, we’ve decided that it would best to nip it in the bud right now.

It seems that the protagonist is an equal opportunity bully, in that he’s been picking on and threatening a number of kids in the class, including a number of our son’s friend. From the sound of things, he’s a bit of a loner, and I suspect he’s lashing out because he feels left out.

Anyway, enough pop psychology…

Standing up to a bully

Rather than inserting ourselves into the situation, we’ve decided that it would be best for our son to try and work this out on his own, at least at first. To that end, we had a chat with him last night before bed and suggested some possible responses the next time this happens.

We certainly don’t want him to escalate things, so we’ve advised him to steer clear of this kid as much as possible. However, if confronted, we would like to see him stand up for himself, so…

First and foremost, we suggested that he respond to any further name-calling by simply making eye contact and telling the other kid (firmly and confidently) to:

“Stop calling me names.”

If asked what he’s going to do about it, we suggested that he respond matter-of-factly with:

“Tell the teacher.”

If he’s then greeted with a playground threat, we advised him to respond with:

“Stop threatening me. I’m not afraid of you.”

It doesn’t hurt that the kid is actually considerably smaller than our son, and he’s not actually afraid of him — he’s more annoyed than anything else. And to close with:

“If you don’t stop, I will tell the teacher.”

And then make good on his promise by telling the teacher.

The goal here is to be firm, confident, and non-provocative. In my experience, the vast majority of incidents like this happen because the protagonist enjoys getting a rise out of their mark, and they are further emboldened when their victim shies away from the confrontation, so… Say it like you mean it, and then act on it.

This is all new territory for use, so we’ll see how it goes.

Long time, no write… Our three oldest went back to school a week ago yesterday, and our youngest goes back to preschool on Monday. This year, he’ll be in for five days per week. That means that my lovely and talented wife gets some much needed downtime on weekday mornings.

On the topic of going back to school… When I was a kid, we always got out in early June and went back after Labor Day. Same deal in college. That schedule is now so engrained into my psyche that I have a really hard time adjusting to the idea that summer vacation starts in early May. By the time my mind and body accept the idea that it’s summer, there’s only two months left.

No matter, we had a great summer. Our three oldest had a great swim season early in the summer, and we also took a couple of nice trips. This includes a mid-summer week lakeside with family and a long end of summer weekend at the ocean.

The boys are now settling back into their school routine and we’re gearing up for fall soccer. While we coached three teams last fall and two in the spring, we’re scaling back to one this fall (though we might end up helping with a second).

As a followup to my earlier post about free summer movies, I just wanted to point out that Fandango and Discover are offering a buy-one-get-one-free promotion on movie tickets.

This offer is good through September 30, 2008. To participate, simply click go here, enter your zip code, select the theater and showtime for the movie you want to see, select the number of tickets (at least TWO, and one will be free), then use your Discover Card to pay. The price of one of the tickets will automatically be deducted from your order.

Terms and Conditions:

This offer is only valid for Discover® Cardmembers who purchase at least one movie ticket on Fandango.com. The one free movie ticket must be used at the same time as the first movie ticket purchased on Fandango.com. This offer is valid from a limited time from 07/01/08-09/30/08, while supplies last. The one free ticket is up to a $12.50 value, including a convenience charge. Limit one free ticket per customer.

We’ve been meaning to have “the talk” with Son #1 for quite awhile now, but just haven’t gotten around to it. He’s ten years old, in between 4th and 5th grade, and quite curious about the birds and the bees.

Beyond sitting down and talking things through with him, we also wanted to get him some books to help satisfy his curiosity. Unfortunately, the pickings are pretty slim at our local library, so…

Now that we’re back from vacation and things are settling down, my lovely and talented wife and I spent some time last night perusing Amazon.com for suitable titles. As it turns out, there are a ton of books available on the subject, and it’s pretty hard to tell what’s good and what isn’t without being able to look through them. We picked through the reviews as best we could, wound up picking three that sounded pretty good and were targeted to kids his age.

» It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health

» What’s Going on Down There? Answers to Questions Boys Find Hard to Ask

» The American Medical Association Boy’s Guide to Becoming a Teen

If anyone out there has already been through this, we’d love to hear your recommendations. And, of course, we’ll be sure to post our thoughts on the books listed above after we’ve had a chance to pick through them.

Back when I was a kid, I remember regularly biking over to our local two-screen theater and catching the latest and greatest movies on hot summer days. Then when my lovely and talented wife was pregnant with Son #1, we spent almost every summer Saturday catching a matinee to stay out of the heat. Since then, we’ve fallen out of the habit of seeing movies in the theater.

Part of this has been due to the high cost of movies, but mainly it’s been due to the continual presence of young kids running around our house. Now that our youngest has reached an age where he can sit still a bit more than in the past, we’ve started going to movies again. What follows is a ranked* list of movies that we’ve seen this summer. These rankings reflect my own not-so-humble opinion, whereas the star ratings are taken from IMDB.

1. Iron Man (8.2 stars)
2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (7.1 stars)
3. Kung Fu Panda (8.1 stars)
4. Speed Racer (6.6 stars)
5. WALL-E (9.2 stars)

A few notes: Son #1 largely agrees with these rankings, though he puts Indiana Jones ahead of Iron Man. Kung Fu Panda was very fun, and loved by all. Speed Racer was particularly well-loved by Son #2 (eight years old) and Son #3 (six years old). Pretty much all of us found WALL-E to be a bit, well… Boring. It was interesting to a point and I wanted to love it, but it ended up being little more than one of those Pixar shorts that they run before the main attraction, except that it seemed to run on forever.

Next up… We’re looking forward to seeing both Get Smart and Hancock in the near future.

This is just a quick note to wish all of the Dads out there a Happy Father’s Day. I’m squeezing this in with 10 minutes to spare after a busy Father’s Day weekend that involved a night away (with the entire family) in a hotel, lots of swimming, a trip to the zoo, a museum visit, and lots of good food. I hope everyone had as good a weekend as we did.

If your kids are as messy as ours, you might want to check out this tip for getting rid of ants that I recently published over at FiveCentNickel. It’s cheap, easy, and relatively safe — it uses boric acid (available at most drugstores, and traditionally used as an eye rinse) mixed with sugar. And guess what? It’s really effective.

This evening my wife and I were joking around with son #1 (currently 10 years old). He was asking about whether or not we were planning on having another baby, and we responded with an emphatic “no.”

His response?

“Well, if you don’t want to have any more babies, you should get Mirena. It’s 99.9% effective, and it’s also reversible in case you change your mind.”

Hmmm… I think somebody has been watching too much TV!

It’s that time of year again! Time to start thinking about cheap summer entertainment for you and your kids. With that in mind, I pulled together a list of free (or really cheap) summer movie theater promos. In case you’re not aware, theaters often have special summer promos where they show G or PG films on weekday mornings for free, or nearly so.

While we’re very happy with our Blockbuster Total Access subscription, nothing beats an occasional trip to an actual movie theater. What follows is my best attempt at compiling a list of these offers.

If your favorite theater isn’t listed, you might want to call them and ask if they offer anything like this. I tried to catch most of the major chains, but I’m sure I missed some – if so, feel free to let me know and I’ll update it. Also, some chains might not have posted details of their promotions yet, as it’s still a bit early. With that said, here we go… [more]