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- © 2013 - Gregory Keer. All rights reserved.
Brothers Try to Take a Mother’s Day Photo
My three sons can barely do anything together at home without it involving a headlock. While they have been surprisingly good about creating Mother’s Day cards and artwork, this year, I can imagine them creating a video greeting like this, if they had to collaborate on it.
Mother’s Day – watch more funny videos
Noteworthy
By Gregory Keer
Following is a re-post of a column I wrote when my now 11 year old was in kindergarten. Truth be told, his writing skills still put me to shame.
Valentine’s Day is coming up and I’m already sweating over what my middle child will write on the little cards he’ll pass out to his kindergarten classmates. Most six-year-olds stick to filling out the basic TO: and FROM: blanks that accompany the cuddly bear or fluffy duck illustrations. Not my little Romeo. I figure he’ll write special sentiments to the handful of girls he fancies. I’m picturing lines such as, “I like your soft, silky hair, Jessica” and “I had a wonderful time on our playdate, Anna. Let’s do it again sometime.”
People think I’m exaggerating about Jacob’s love note writing, but he also flecks his daily speech with gold-plated words like “silky” and “wonderful” as if he’s a 45-year-old Casanova. He rarely misses paying a compliment toward females of all ages, from his peers to his teacher. He’s twice written about Mrs. Harris for the “Character Counts” descriptions he is assigned each week. These are, thankfully, sweet rather than sassy as he calls her “the nicest and best teacher in the whole world.” Then, there are the bold comments he makes to the moms he sees at the afternoon pick-up (pun intended). To one of the mothers, I heard him say, “That sweater makes your figure look good,” with an earnest smile that renders more innocent a sentence that sounds like a singles bar come-on.
While I have concerns that he’s a bit more romantically precocious than I’d like, my bigger issues rests in the fact that the little turd is showing me up. Not only does he say things to women that I wish I had thought of when I was an unattached adult, he writes the most charming notes to my wife. At least once a week, sometimes more, he draws colorful designs on index cards and any other paper he can find to go with “Thank you for being such a good Mommy” sentences. He even leaves these notes in clever locations, including Wendy’s laptop bag and under her pillow. I don’t know where he gets this emotive skill, but the bottom line is that I can’t compete with him — and that pisses me off.
Now I’ve got Wendy asking me, “Why don’t you write love notes like you used to?” I could reply with, “I don’t know, honey, why don’t you leave steamy messages on my cell phone anymore?” but her question makes me a little wistful. In our early years, I wrote Wendy all kinds of messages on post-its, stationery, and expensive artsy cards. I scribbled poems, proclamations of my undying love, and occasional ribald jokes. I planted them on the bathroom mirror, in her suitcases, and, yes, under her pillow.
Sure I hack out an occasional adoring e-mail, but these days, she’s lucky if she gets a prewritten card on her birthday. So I wonder, where did my Cyrano-like habit go? Is it there, somewhere buried beneath all the words I have to write on checks to the bank and college letters of recommendations for my students? That’s part of the reason, but another cause for the more shallow word well is that I often feel the pressure to say something new and creative, more indicative of the stage our relationship is in. Yet, I just can’t bring myself to write, “My darling, I long to ravish you amid the laundry piles and sandbox granules in our sheets” or “Our love is like a school backpack — filled with all the homework questions I’m thrilled to be answering with you.”
As rusty as I am with the practice of love note writing, I am actually more appreciative of my son’s suave skills than I am envious of them. He is unafraid of pouring out his feelings and observations into words, not yet aware of the world’s cynicism toward sentimentality. So I encourage him and help him spell “I appreciate you” and “I love you as deep as the ocean.” In turn, he spurs me on to jot a few more notes to my wife than I had been writing. They aren’t all that original or clever, but the mere presence of the letters on the paper makes them real and true.
Family Man Recommends: Quick Picks for February 2013
Reviewed by Gregory Keer
The Grammys just wrapped and, I must say, I enjoyed the primetime show immensely. I particularly loved the performance of the Black Keys with Dr. John and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band blasting through “Lonely Boy.” For the Best Children’s Recording, one of my favorite duos, the Okee Dokee Brothers, won for Can You Canoe? against a field chock full of stellar nominees.
For this short month, my recommendations begin with one of the other 2012 Grammy nominees, Bill Harley, who has concocted yet another album of kid-friendly mirth and mayhem. This time, Bill is paired with Keith Munslow, who shares Harley’s hybrid status as a singer-songwriter-storyteller. The recording is called It’s Not Fair to Me and employs everything from ’60s-style rock (including surfer rock) to folk sounds in accompanying humor-drenched songs about fairness, whining, dogs, unflattering imitation, and stylistically offensive sweaters.
The Not-Its have one of the kindie-rock world’s best band names, so it makes sense for them to have one of the best recordings of this young year. KidQuake! rocks forth with a title song about the power kids generate, then speaks the truth about a “Temper Tantrum,” and recalls The Who’s pinball wizard themes with “Full Tilt.” The guitar-heavy quintet balances things nicely with vocal harmonies that vividly illustrate elements of modern families.
Rounding out the recs is Francie Kelley’s Where Do You Want to Go Today? A multi-award winner for her previous CD, Wake Up and Go to Sleep, the sweet-singing Kelley offers a globe-circling journey through songs that travel to “African Skies”, an “Irish Dream”, and the Argentine-inflected “Tarantula Tango” – a cleverly worded tune about an arachnid disrupting a backyard camp-out.
Dads Croon Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas”
Following their cover of the Little Mermaid’s “Part of Your World,” the gents at LifeOfDad.com recorded this version of Mariah Carey’s holiday chestnut, “All I Want for Christmas.” Everyone from Marines to a pop in footsie PJs unabashedly warble along in this video.
Free to Laugh Along with “It’s OK…To Do Stuff”
With its songs and stories of individual expression and diversity, Free to Be…You and Me made a strong impact on my childhood in the ’70s. Marlo Thomas’s star-studded music and video production (which included the talents of Mel Brooks, Diana Ross, and Alan Alda, to name a few) continues to speak to kids, today. Its impact goes beyond making all kids feel included in a sometimes fractured world — it has inspired a bunch of talented contemporary comic writers to produce It’s OK…to Do Stuff. As a huge Free to Be… fan I am equally offended and entertained by this parody. This is what happens when we grow up in the “land that I see where the children run free” and end up fans of things like Avenue Q. Produced by Rob Kutner and the Levinson Brothers, and aimed at parents — and their snarky adolescent kids — it features Steven Page (formerly of the Barenaked Ladies) on ”Be Yourself…Unless” and Kimmy Gatewood and Colin Hanks (“Divorce Makes a Family Twice as Big”), among other notable contributors.
Tom Riles Asks Kids – What Are You Thankful For?
Tom Riles, dad, comic, filmmaker, and founder of LifeOfDad.com, asks kindergartners what they are thankful for. This Thanksgiving, try turning the video camera (or iPhone) on your kids and ask them they’re thoughts. Hopefully the words, “I am thankful for my amazing, selfless parents” will come up.
Night of the Shrinking Bed
By Gregory Keer
It was a cold, eerie night, eight years ago, an evening that still sends chills up and down my spine. My wife and I had endured a fifth straight evening of multiple wake-ups from our newborn. After two feedings, three walks around the house, and four false-alarm cries, Wendy and I trembled with exhaustion. This was compounded by the stress of having just moved to a new home, my starting a teaching gig, and our older sons kicking off a new school year.
Finally, sleep came and, when it did, I went down hard.
That was until I felt a “presence” hovering over me. Dog-tired, I kept snoring. Then I heard a faint wheezing. The wheezing turned to heavy breathing, which got louder and louder. High-pitched moaning pierced my eardrums and my eyes snapped open.
A dark shape stood next to me, holding what looked like an axe!
I screamed. “Ahhhhhh!!!!.”
My wife jumped up and shrieked, “Where’s the baby?”
The figure screamed back. “Dadddeee!!!”
Bolting upright, I recognized the shape as my son, Benjamin. The axe I imagined was his tattered blanket.
My son burst into tears and fell across me in the aftermath of what had been a twisted recreation of the movie scene in which Drew Barrymore sees E.T. for the first time. In this case, I was Drew Barrymore.
“What were you doing standing over me like that?” I said breathlessly.
“I – just – wanted – to – cuddle,” Benjamin blurted between sobs.
And there it was. The dramatic comeuppance for two parents who had long struggled with the issue of a family bed.
Before my wife and I had children, we swore we’d never let our kids sleep with us. We judged others who let their kids in the bed, thinking that kind of arrangement could only create intimacy problems for the couple and therapy sessions for the children.
Sometime later, we found ourselves changing our tune. It began when Benjamin, then almost three and new to a “big boy” bed without rails, started sneaking into our room in the middle of the night. Due to fatigue and the sheer joy of cuddling, we let him snuggle with us for a few hours each night. This went on for a couple of years until Jacob got old enough to leave the crib and want his own time in Mommy and Daddy’s bed.
So we started a campaign to keep the kids on their own mattresses. We told them that they could crawl in with us in the morning, when it was light outside. Jacob, always a deeper sleeper, was easier to keep to the new rule. But we had to experiment with all kinds of tricks to keep Benjamin in his room. Over time, we tried clocks, a sleeping bag on our bedroom floor, extra stuffed animals, a special pillow, and just plain begging with intermittent success.
Then, there was the previously mentioned night of all that wheezing and screaming.
After we all calmed down, I escorted Benjamin to his bed, reminding him of the house rules. A little later, he returned. I got crankier and he went away wailing again. This back-and-forth occurred every 10 minutes, as he tried to gain our sympathy and we used every tactic from yelling to listing all the playdates he was going to lose.
Then, my son Jacob joined the fray, shouting out like a lost child that his pull-up needed to be changed. Jacob fell back asleep but he was replaced by the dog that scratched at the door to go outside and the cat that upchucked a fur ball on the bed. All the while, my wife and I bickered about how to handle the whole mess.
I pleaded with our first-born. I even cried when he cried, asking for mercy on his exhausted father who had to wake up to teach cranky high-school sophomores in the morning.
Finally, with Benjamin as worn out as I was, I found clarity – kind of like a Bugs Bunny horror spoof in which the rabbit realizes the way to stop the monster is by complimenting him (“Gee, Doc, you got really big muscles.”) So, I appealed to Benjamin’s desire to feel like the big boy he was.
“You graduated from kindergarten and now you’re a first grader,” I explained. “It’s time to graduate to sleeping the whole night on your own. You can do this.” I then promised him a reward chart that would track how many nights he could stay in his bed.
Things got a lot better after that. For a while thereafter, Benjamin still crawled into bed with us at 6am or so, but he was proud of himself for becoming more “sleep independent.” Eventually, he stayed in his bed all night and my wife and I got our bed back…That is until kid number two started haunting us.
Dads Sing “A Little Mermaid” Classic
This LifeOfDad.com video shows the transformative power of being a dad. Firefighters, Marines, cops, construction workers, scientists and other fathers belt out “Part of Your World” from the decidedly not-macho film A Little Mermaid. Technical difficulties left my multi-octave operatic part in this on the cutting-room floor, but these guys bring it home just fine.
“Dad Jam” Marks Family Man’s Video-Writing Debut
In my ever-evolving partnership LifeOfDad.com, I now present “Dad Jam,” a tale of dad ego gone wrong on the basketball court. Director/editor David Guest, producer Tom Riles, and photographer Louis De Barraicua worked with my script and a bunch of talented actors to produce this short video diversion for your entertainment. I even convinced my middle son to act the part of an alternatingly embarrassed-supportive son. It’s my video writing debut so please watch, comment, “Like” it, and share it with friends.
Announcing Partnership Between Family Man & Life of Dad
After a dozen years of writing for print and online, it’s time for Family Man to be set in motion with video! Announcing a partnership with LifeOfDad.com, the Social Network for Dads. We’re going to collaborate on short films and other Web content. The work being done by Tom Riles, David Guest, and their talented crew is what results from being great human beings, dedicated parents, and really funny guys. I am excited at the possibilities of the partnership. See “The International Dadcathlon” and look for more in the months ahead. Please tell your friends via social networks!
Brothers Try to Take a Mother’s Day Photo
My three sons can barely do anything together at home without it involving a headlock. While they have been surprisingly good about creating Mother’s Day cards and artwork, this year, I can imagine them creating a video greeting like this, if they had to collaborate on it.
Mother’s Day – watch more funny videos
Noteworthy
By Gregory Keer
Following is a re-post of a column I wrote when my now 11 year old was in kindergarten. Truth be told, his writing skills still put me to shame.
Valentine’s Day is coming up and I’m already sweating over what my middle child will write on the little cards he’ll pass out to his kindergarten classmates. Most six-year-olds stick to filling out the basic TO: and FROM: blanks that accompany the cuddly bear or fluffy duck illustrations. Not my little Romeo. I figure he’ll write special sentiments to the handful of girls he fancies. I’m picturing lines such as, “I like your soft, silky hair, Jessica” and “I had a wonderful time on our playdate, Anna. Let’s do it again sometime.”
People think I’m exaggerating about Jacob’s love note writing, but he also flecks his daily speech with gold-plated words like “silky” and “wonderful” as if he’s a 45-year-old Casanova. He rarely misses paying a compliment toward females of all ages, from his peers to his teacher. He’s twice written about Mrs. Harris for the “Character Counts” descriptions he is assigned each week. These are, thankfully, sweet rather than sassy as he calls her “the nicest and best teacher in the whole world.” Then, there are the bold comments he makes to the moms he sees at the afternoon pick-up (pun intended). To one of the mothers, I heard him say, “That sweater makes your figure look good,” with an earnest smile that renders more innocent a sentence that sounds like a singles bar come-on.
While I have concerns that he’s a bit more romantically precocious than I’d like, my bigger issues rests in the fact that the little turd is showing me up. Not only does he say things to women that I wish I had thought of when I was an unattached adult, he writes the most charming notes to my wife. At least once a week, sometimes more, he draws colorful designs on index cards and any other paper he can find to go with “Thank you for being such a good Mommy” sentences. He even leaves these notes in clever locations, including Wendy’s laptop bag and under her pillow. I don’t know where he gets this emotive skill, but the bottom line is that I can’t compete with him — and that pisses me off.
Now I’ve got Wendy asking me, “Why don’t you write love notes like you used to?” I could reply with, “I don’t know, honey, why don’t you leave steamy messages on my cell phone anymore?” but her question makes me a little wistful. In our early years, I wrote Wendy all kinds of messages on post-its, stationery, and expensive artsy cards. I scribbled poems, proclamations of my undying love, and occasional ribald jokes. I planted them on the bathroom mirror, in her suitcases, and, yes, under her pillow.
Sure I hack out an occasional adoring e-mail, but these days, she’s lucky if she gets a prewritten card on her birthday. So I wonder, where did my Cyrano-like habit go? Is it there, somewhere buried beneath all the words I have to write on checks to the bank and college letters of recommendations for my students? That’s part of the reason, but another cause for the more shallow word well is that I often feel the pressure to say something new and creative, more indicative of the stage our relationship is in. Yet, I just can’t bring myself to write, “My darling, I long to ravish you amid the laundry piles and sandbox granules in our sheets” or “Our love is like a school backpack — filled with all the homework questions I’m thrilled to be answering with you.”
As rusty as I am with the practice of love note writing, I am actually more appreciative of my son’s suave skills than I am envious of them. He is unafraid of pouring out his feelings and observations into words, not yet aware of the world’s cynicism toward sentimentality. So I encourage him and help him spell “I appreciate you” and “I love you as deep as the ocean.” In turn, he spurs me on to jot a few more notes to my wife than I had been writing. They aren’t all that original or clever, but the mere presence of the letters on the paper makes them real and true.
Family Man Recommends: Quick Picks for February 2013
Reviewed by Gregory Keer
The Grammys just wrapped and, I must say, I enjoyed the primetime show immensely. I particularly loved the performance of the Black Keys with Dr. John and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band blasting through “Lonely Boy.” For the Best Children’s Recording, one of my favorite duos, the Okee Dokee Brothers, won for Can You Canoe? against a field chock full of stellar nominees.
For this short month, my recommendations begin with one of the other 2012 Grammy nominees, Bill Harley, who has concocted yet another album of kid-friendly mirth and mayhem. This time, Bill is paired with Keith Munslow, who shares Harley’s hybrid status as a singer-songwriter-storyteller. The recording is called It’s Not Fair to Me and employs everything from ’60s-style rock (including surfer rock) to folk sounds in accompanying humor-drenched songs about fairness, whining, dogs, unflattering imitation, and stylistically offensive sweaters.
The Not-Its have one of the kindie-rock world’s best band names, so it makes sense for them to have one of the best recordings of this young year. KidQuake! rocks forth with a title song about the power kids generate, then speaks the truth about a “Temper Tantrum,” and recalls The Who’s pinball wizard themes with “Full Tilt.” The guitar-heavy quintet balances things nicely with vocal harmonies that vividly illustrate elements of modern families.
Rounding out the recs is Francie Kelley’s Where Do You Want to Go Today? A multi-award winner for her previous CD, Wake Up and Go to Sleep, the sweet-singing Kelley offers a globe-circling journey through songs that travel to “African Skies”, an “Irish Dream”, and the Argentine-inflected “Tarantula Tango” – a cleverly worded tune about an arachnid disrupting a backyard camp-out.
Dads Croon Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas”
Following their cover of the Little Mermaid’s “Part of Your World,” the gents at LifeOfDad.com recorded this version of Mariah Carey’s holiday chestnut, “All I Want for Christmas.” Everyone from Marines to a pop in footsie PJs unabashedly warble along in this video.
Free to Laugh Along with “It’s OK…To Do Stuff”
With its songs and stories of individual expression and diversity, Free to Be…You and Me made a strong impact on my childhood in the ’70s. Marlo Thomas’s star-studded music and video production (which included the talents of Mel Brooks, Diana Ross, and Alan Alda, to name a few) continues to speak to kids, today. Its impact goes beyond making all kids feel included in a sometimes fractured world — it has inspired a bunch of talented contemporary comic writers to produce It’s OK…to Do Stuff. As a huge Free to Be… fan I am equally offended and entertained by this parody. This is what happens when we grow up in the “land that I see where the children run free” and end up fans of things like Avenue Q. Produced by Rob Kutner and the Levinson Brothers, and aimed at parents — and their snarky adolescent kids — it features Steven Page (formerly of the Barenaked Ladies) on ”Be Yourself…Unless” and Kimmy Gatewood and Colin Hanks (“Divorce Makes a Family Twice as Big”), among other notable contributors.
Tom Riles Asks Kids – What Are You Thankful For?
Tom Riles, dad, comic, filmmaker, and founder of LifeOfDad.com, asks kindergartners what they are thankful for. This Thanksgiving, try turning the video camera (or iPhone) on your kids and ask them they’re thoughts. Hopefully the words, “I am thankful for my amazing, selfless parents” will come up.
Night of the Shrinking Bed
By Gregory Keer
It was a cold, eerie night, eight years ago, an evening that still sends chills up and down my spine. My wife and I had endured a fifth straight evening of multiple wake-ups from our newborn. After two feedings, three walks around the house, and four false-alarm cries, Wendy and I trembled with exhaustion. This was compounded by the stress of having just moved to a new home, my starting a teaching gig, and our older sons kicking off a new school year.
Finally, sleep came and, when it did, I went down hard.
That was until I felt a “presence” hovering over me. Dog-tired, I kept snoring. Then I heard a faint wheezing. The wheezing turned to heavy breathing, which got louder and louder. High-pitched moaning pierced my eardrums and my eyes snapped open.
A dark shape stood next to me, holding what looked like an axe!
I screamed. “Ahhhhhh!!!!.”
My wife jumped up and shrieked, “Where’s the baby?”
The figure screamed back. “Dadddeee!!!”
Bolting upright, I recognized the shape as my son, Benjamin. The axe I imagined was his tattered blanket.
My son burst into tears and fell across me in the aftermath of what had been a twisted recreation of the movie scene in which Drew Barrymore sees E.T. for the first time. In this case, I was Drew Barrymore.
“What were you doing standing over me like that?” I said breathlessly.
“I – just – wanted – to – cuddle,” Benjamin blurted between sobs.
And there it was. The dramatic comeuppance for two parents who had long struggled with the issue of a family bed.
Before my wife and I had children, we swore we’d never let our kids sleep with us. We judged others who let their kids in the bed, thinking that kind of arrangement could only create intimacy problems for the couple and therapy sessions for the children.
Sometime later, we found ourselves changing our tune. It began when Benjamin, then almost three and new to a “big boy” bed without rails, started sneaking into our room in the middle of the night. Due to fatigue and the sheer joy of cuddling, we let him snuggle with us for a few hours each night. This went on for a couple of years until Jacob got old enough to leave the crib and want his own time in Mommy and Daddy’s bed.
So we started a campaign to keep the kids on their own mattresses. We told them that they could crawl in with us in the morning, when it was light outside. Jacob, always a deeper sleeper, was easier to keep to the new rule. But we had to experiment with all kinds of tricks to keep Benjamin in his room. Over time, we tried clocks, a sleeping bag on our bedroom floor, extra stuffed animals, a special pillow, and just plain begging with intermittent success.
Then, there was the previously mentioned night of all that wheezing and screaming.
After we all calmed down, I escorted Benjamin to his bed, reminding him of the house rules. A little later, he returned. I got crankier and he went away wailing again. This back-and-forth occurred every 10 minutes, as he tried to gain our sympathy and we used every tactic from yelling to listing all the playdates he was going to lose.
Then, my son Jacob joined the fray, shouting out like a lost child that his pull-up needed to be changed. Jacob fell back asleep but he was replaced by the dog that scratched at the door to go outside and the cat that upchucked a fur ball on the bed. All the while, my wife and I bickered about how to handle the whole mess.
I pleaded with our first-born. I even cried when he cried, asking for mercy on his exhausted father who had to wake up to teach cranky high-school sophomores in the morning.
Finally, with Benjamin as worn out as I was, I found clarity – kind of like a Bugs Bunny horror spoof in which the rabbit realizes the way to stop the monster is by complimenting him (“Gee, Doc, you got really big muscles.”) So, I appealed to Benjamin’s desire to feel like the big boy he was.
“You graduated from kindergarten and now you’re a first grader,” I explained. “It’s time to graduate to sleeping the whole night on your own. You can do this.” I then promised him a reward chart that would track how many nights he could stay in his bed.
Things got a lot better after that. For a while thereafter, Benjamin still crawled into bed with us at 6am or so, but he was proud of himself for becoming more “sleep independent.” Eventually, he stayed in his bed all night and my wife and I got our bed back…That is until kid number two started haunting us.
Dads Sing “A Little Mermaid” Classic
This LifeOfDad.com video shows the transformative power of being a dad. Firefighters, Marines, cops, construction workers, scientists and other fathers belt out “Part of Your World” from the decidedly not-macho film A Little Mermaid. Technical difficulties left my multi-octave operatic part in this on the cutting-room floor, but these guys bring it home just fine.
“Dad Jam” Marks Family Man’s Video-Writing Debut
In my ever-evolving partnership LifeOfDad.com, I now present “Dad Jam,” a tale of dad ego gone wrong on the basketball court. Director/editor David Guest, producer Tom Riles, and photographer Louis De Barraicua worked with my script and a bunch of talented actors to produce this short video diversion for your entertainment. I even convinced my middle son to act the part of an alternatingly embarrassed-supportive son. It’s my video writing debut so please watch, comment, “Like” it, and share it with friends.
Announcing Partnership Between Family Man & Life of Dad
After a dozen years of writing for print and online, it’s time for Family Man to be set in motion with video! Announcing a partnership with LifeOfDad.com, the Social Network for Dads. We’re going to collaborate on short films and other Web content. The work being done by Tom Riles, David Guest, and their talented crew is what results from being great human beings, dedicated parents, and really funny guys. I am excited at the possibilities of the partnership. See “The International Dadcathlon” and look for more in the months ahead. Please tell your friends via social networks!