Sunday Mornings

I have so much electronic and dance music on around the kids, that every once in a while, I feel the need to balance it out with a quality tune from my youth:

Edwin seemed to enjoy the Nirvana, so I tried to push my luck with some White Stripes. But after the second minimalist production-quality, guitar riff-heavy track, Edwin complained it was too loud, and it was back to Ke$ha for us.

How dealing with a two-and-half-year-old kid is sometimes like dealing with North Korea

So North Korea is at it again. For the the second time this year, the rogue state committed an unprovoked act of violence on its democratic neighbors to the south, this time killing four.

Time to to put the them in their place, right? Not so fast says The Economist:

The starting-point for answering the North’s aggression has to be that, in the most basic sense, the Kims will almost certainly get away with only a symbolic return of fire. It is entirely wrong for North Korea to act as it does. But punitive military reprisals against the North risk a spiral of escalation and catastrophic war. Deterrence works badly against a dictator who blithely imposes famine and gulags on his people during peacetime. Even if there are doubts about the efficacy of its tiny nuclear arsenal, North Korea has enough men under arms, and enough conventional ammunition within range of Seoul—just 35 miles (60km) from the frontier—to make war seem very much a last resort.

I moderately agree with this sentiment. As much as the people that control North Korea deserve—for lack of a more eloquent phrase (hey, I don’t get paid to write this stuff)—what’s coming to them. But as satisfying to some sense of naive justice as that would be, the downstream impacts of a forceful response would simply make things worse. The known costs of the “escalation” would be too severe, and the unknown costs may be even worse.

So what do we do?

If you’re sifting through posts filled with pictures of my kids (& pictures of my nieces, & pictures of my friends’ kids) on this blog searching for an answer to that question, then you’ve come to the wrong place. But if you want to see me imply my son has a lot in common with Kim Jong Il, stick around.

A well-rested toddler is like Canada. Canada’s probably our staunchest ally. They’re pretty much just like us, only 1/10 our size. Yeah, I know there are some substantial ideological differences between the United States and Canada, but that’s all relative. When compared to, say Yemen, the countries look pretty much the same.

(Sort of reminds me college. When I left Northeast Ohio for college in Southwest Ohio, I became acutely aware of the differences between the regions. Like their takes on pasta for instance. In Cincinnati they think spaghetti should be topped with chili sauce—which they refer to as chili—and shredded cheddar. In Youngstown if three or more individuals gather for any period of time longer than 20 minutes, it is mandated that rigatoni with meatballs be served from a disposable aluminum rectangular serving tray. But when studying abroad in France, the answer to the question of where I was from simply became Ohio. Compared to France, the differences didn’t seem much like differences anymore.)

So yes, Canada and the United States may not always see eye to eye on the corn trade, but when it comes to the serious issues, we usually agree. Like when the United States called for the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan. It may have not been what they really felt like doing, but they realized it was the right thing to do at the time (hindsight, ah well, let’s not delve there in this space) and reluctantly joined America’s mission.

When Edwin’s running on full sleep (11+ hours overnight, 2+ during nap time), he plays Canada to Mindy's and my United States. He may not feel like putting on a coat before going outside in the cold or walking himself to 60-seconds of timeout after throwing his toy hammer in the vicinity of baby sister. But he intellectualizes our directives and complies with minimal incident.

A sleep-deprived Edwin, wow, that’s a whole ‘nother story.

29 days in, Edwin’s got potty training down. In fact, he pretty much had it down in the first week. Problem is, he gets up early to pee. Not so early that he can be talked into going back to bed. Like an hour and 15 minutes early. And again at bed time, he stalls as long as possible with repeated potty requests, which against our best efforts, has been pushing bed time back about 45 minutes.  All in all that means he’s been operating with 2 hours less sleep than normal for the better part of a month. I bring this up not to beg for ideas or help (he’s gone through his phases in the past…we will get through this), but just to level set where we’re at the present with this little sleep-deprived little monster handsome devil.

So when Edwin violates a widely-recognized household policy (like the aforementioned hammer toss), especially when Lyla is sleeping (which when occurring spontaneously in her bouncy chair in the living room, we go into full monastery mode), the first thought that goes through Mindy and my head is the concept of escalation.

Justice would dictate that a timeout is in order, but remember, this ain’t 14-hours-of sleep Canada we’re dealing with here (who would take his penance in stride). We know once the timeout sentenced has been handed down, a complete meltdown is inevitable, “waaah, but I don’t want to go in the kitchen….waaah, I want to say with Mama, waaah!” (our timeout spot is a rug in the kitchen so it can be timed via microwave).

Next thing we know, Lyla wakes up, Mindy’s got a headache, and what should’ve been a 1-minute process ends up with me spending 10-minutes attempting to reason with a hysterical 2.5-year-old on the kitchen floor.

So what do we do? We play it like the United States does with North Korea. A feeble attempt at diplomacy with the hope that when Kim Jong Il passes on, things will be better. We threaten timeout, but when his lip starts to quiver, we back down and say next time (knowing full well we’ll back down next time too), all the while hoping this sleep-deprived phase passes sooner rather than later.

How optimistic for the future should we all be? Uh, I dunno. King Jong Un, Kim Jong Il’s son, has been tapped as the next Dear Leader, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see how far that apple falls. As for the Ross house, Lyla will be a 2.5-yr-old soon enough…

Anyway, here’s the little guy on one of his early mornings:

Potty Bootcamp

WEEK IN REVIEW

Did everyone get their Toys R Us toy book for Christmas? Oh the girls were soooo excited to see a book just stuffed with toy ideas! I am disappointed, because I remember when we would get the Sears catalog full of toys . Wow was that exciting! This little "pamphlet" just doesn't seem like much to me. But they both enjoyed circling what they want (after I repeatedly explained that just b/c they circled it doesn't mean they are getting it). After we were done , Madeline requested taking the book and giving it directly to Santa so that he knows EXACTLY what I want. OH my!

In the spirit of Halloween, we were having a scene from the movie THE BIRDS play out in our backyard. It was soooo loud. I was afraid to even step foot outside, but of course I did to get this much needed video. HAHA.

The girls both had their Halloween parties and parades at school this week. Madeline wants to know when Halloween is going to happen again , b/c she enjoyed herself so much. After going over the loot they received, we decided that they didn't have to go trick or treating. YEAH RIGHT! One boy gave each kid a book and a bag of treats!

Saturday we finally got around to carving our pumpkins. The girls each drew on their face and I cut them out. Madeline was upset that I cut the eyes unevenly, but I told her that I cut them how they were drawn. She dropped the subject then. :) At first , Meredith was crying b/c she didn't want to touch the pumpkin guts. She luckily got over it, b/c Daddy won't do it either.

Finally , we made our Halloween cupcakes and pumpkin seeds on Sunday. They both turned out well. Papa came over for dinner and dessert and trick or treating. It was chilly! We went around with Zorro and Peter Pan (Tinkerbell's buddy). One loop of the neighborhood and we were done! Meredith was PETRIFIED of the 2 people dressed like a werewolf. She cried, she kept one eye on them at all times, and she even avoided some houses altogether. Wussy. Where did she get that from? (Click HERE for all of October's photos)

Facebook Profile Pic Analysis

OK, so I’m up way later on a school night than I wanna be. But I’m on wait-until-Lyla-wakes-up-from-her-evening-doze-off-session-then-feed-her-a-bottle-and-put-her-to-bed duty. She was due to eat at 10-10:30. Since it’s well past midnight as I type, I obviously got a little more than I bargained for tonight. Anyway, I only provide this intro as a warning that what I’m about to write only interests me (if even that).

It has finally arrived! After much laboring, a great milestone, my 15th ever Facebook profile pic has been selected.

Why is 15 a milestone, you ask? Well, it ends in a 0 or 5 for starters…that’s something, no? My dad’s birthday was the 15th, so there’s that. And don’t sleep on the fact that 15 is the atomic number of phosphorous. Oh, and the Andy Warhol quote, right? And maybe most important, during my arguably most productive season in organized baseball (when I anchored a slightly-above-average collection of 13- and 14-year-olds by batting clean-up and playing 1B, plus earned a much-deserved benchwarming spot on my league’s travelling All-Star team) I wore the uniform number 15.

Without further ado, here’s the pic:

Photo by: Mindy Ross for The Ross Experience

As you can see that’s Edwin and me. And because of civil society and its arbitrary laws against keeping gorillas as pets, it should be obvious that this photo was taken at the zoo.

And since I promised this one week ago via Facebook status update…

need a new profile pic. but considering it'll be my milestone 15th ever profile pic, I can't choose lightly. oh, and I'm planning a statistical analysis all 15...but you already knew that.

…here it goes.

As misnomer-ous as it may be, I’ve not been in all of my profile pics:

The individuals featured in the 3 pics I wasn’t in:

1. Nick Swardson – There was a Facebook trend that lasted a few days a while back where people picked their celebrity doppelganger. Google him, we look somewhat alike from certain angles.
2. Steely McBeam – During the Steelers’ 2009 5-game losing streak, I changed my profile pic to Steely until the Steelers finally won a game. Sort of a hunger strike-lite. I asked others to join in support. There were no takers.
3. Dick LeBeau – From is Hall of Fame induction last month. Changed my pic on a whim, but the change lasted over a month.

So for the twelve I was in, here the location by state and whether the pic was taken indoors our outdoors:

So you noticed my most recent pic included Edwin and myself, right? Well, it turns out I was solo for only 3 of my profile pics, which were my 1st 3 overall. (Un)interestingly enough, no more than 2 people total have ever been in one of my profile pics. It’s either just me, or me + one other person. Here’s the breakdown:

So Edwin’s the big winner. But in Lyla’s defense, she’s only been alive 9 short (read: long) weeks, so Edwin had a 2-year head start. But what’s the deal with Mindy’s presence...lacking, huh? I chalk this up to the fact that we may be together in the occasional staged family photo, our best stuff comes when one of us is chasing the kids around while the other is snapping away. We got to get ourselves into some more pics together.

Unless something really unique pops up, I’m hoping we can kill 2 birds with one stone with the next profile pic (get Mindy’s and Lyla’s figures up + break through the 2-person limit glass ceiling) and get the whole 4-member Ross clan into the next profile pic.

The Camaraderie Exemption for Sports Fans

In response to my cousin DJ’s Facebook status from earlier today, I’ve been inspired to weigh-in with my theories on rooting on a team that’s not your own (or sports bigamy as Bill Simmons calls it). Here’s DJ’s question:

Question for my friends who are Penguins faithful:
Is it wrong for me to wear the jersey of another team? They are not a direct rival....although they are in the same conference.

A little background: my cousin was born and raised in Pennsylvania, spending the better part of his first 18-years of life in the Pittsburgh suburbs. So the Penguins to which he refers are the of the hockey variety, the 3-time Stanley Cup-winning NHL champion Pittsburgh Penguins. (This clarity provided for my Youngstown peeps who might be thinking of the NCAA FCS version or any Clark College or Dominican University readers I may have.)

DJ—er, maybe I should start calling him Don since he hasn’t been DJ since we were, like 11-years-old…ahhh screw it, he always be DJ to me (sorry, Cuz)—now lives in Indianapolis with his lovely wife and two wonderful children. As a sports fan whose fave team is 289-miles to the Northeast, I can feel his pain.

It’s fun to root for the local team. Anyone who’s spent a full weekend day at a sports bar, straining his neck to watch his team on a muted, 32-inch standard def TV, while fans of the local team cheer on every TD in unison, turning their heads in any direction to find the game on a pristine 72-inch screen knows what I’m talking about. So I have devised the Camaraderie Exemption for sports fandom. Since I’m only a wannabe Penguin fan, who just can’t get into hockey (we’re supposed to dislike the Flyers and Caps, right?), I’ll have to use examples from the NFL.

So here are the 5 simple tenets of being granted the Camaraderie Exemption:

1. You live in another city more than 250-miles from the city of your team.
2. The city you live has another team right there in town (in the ‘burbs at least), e.g. Milwaukee doesn't get you a pass for the Packers, Tucson doesn’t get you an exemption for the Cardinals (and why anyone would to use their exemption on the Arizona Cardinals is a mystery to me).
3. The local team is not in the same conference of your team. I repeat, conference, not division.
4. The local team does not have some sort of historic rivalry with your team. So if we were talking NBA, a native Bostonian who moved to LA couldn’t adopt the Lakers, but that should go without saying.
5. Every 4 years you must temporarily renounce the bigamy, when Steelers play the respective NFC division in the schedule rotation. It should also go without saying that this rule applies to Super Bowl match-ups against an exempted team.

I really struggled with #3 and thought about making intra-division border crossing the only no-no. But the more I thought about it, intra-conference inter-division rivalries are too flexible. Teams play those games much more frequently than inter-conferences games, so when both teams get good at the same time for a stretch, big regular season showdowns for playoff position, and worse, recurring playoff match-ups will naturally occur. A Steeler fan in Massachusetts would be fine in the early ‘90s cheering on the Pats. But things would’ve gotten difficult in the mid-to-late ‘90s, and downright brutal for the entirety of the ‘00s.

I guess an argument against me here is cheering for a team that perpetually stinks. But first off, even terrible franchises have good runs every once in a while (for NFC fans, see Rams ‘99-‘01). And even if a team was perpetually awful, why waste the Camaraderie Exemption being miserable by supporting the Buffalo Bills?

So in the interest in providing excruciating detail that no one but me cares about, here’s my rundown of the Camaraderie Exemption for the Steelers:

• The rest of the AFC – all 15 teams, out.
• NFC East – Cowboys and Eagles are obviously out. Close call, but I sense the Redskins are clear. They’re just barely outside my completely arbitrary 250-mile rule, and plus I just don’t feel any sense of ‘Burgh/DC tension (outside of hockey). Same for the Giants, they’re clear too. Granted, I haven’t lived in Pittsburgh since 1984, so if any lifelong yinzers wanna weigh-in on any DC or NYC vitriol, be my guest.
• The entire NFC North (Lions/Bears/Packers/Vikings) is clear. Like my DC/NYC comment, if there’s any leftover feelings from Super Bowl IX that would rule out the Vikes, please fill me in (we won handedly, right, so who cares?). Also, if you feel the need to relocate to Detroit, you may have bigger things to worry about besides NFL rooting interests.
• The entire NFC South (Atlanta/Charlotte/Tampa Bay/New Orleans) is clear as well. Although those two brutal match-ups last decade—blowing a 17-pt 4th quarter lead to end up tying in ‘02 and the Santonio Holmes rookie turnoverfest causing a undeserved loss in that put us well on our way to a 2-6 start in ‘06—still weighed heavily on me, I’m giving the Falcons a pass. Important note, the NFC South is NOT clear for the ‘10 season, as the Steelers face off against that division this year in the rotation.
• Ahhh, the NFC West. I may be contradicting myself here because the flexibility of intra-conference rivalries that negates exemptions in that category comes into play heavily here. First off, Rams are fine (again, similar to the Vikings in SB IX, if you harbor residual Super Bowl XIV resentment, and again, the good guys won, why?). This may be controversial, but I say the Cardinals are fine too. Super Bowl XVIII was great. It’s over. Let’s move on. The 49ers and Seahawks are out though. The Niners because they’re one of the few threats to the record number of Lombardi trophies. In fact, they had the lead for 11-years from ‘95-‘06. The Seahawks are out due to their fans incessant whining from Super Bowl XL. Yes, there were a bunch of questionable and ticky-tack calls. Most went Pittsburgh’s way. You still lost by 11. Get over it.

So to summarize the Camaraderie Exemption for Steeler fans. Exemptions will be granted for residents of the following cities:

1. Washington, DC (temporary ban in 2012)
2. New York, NY (temporary ban in 2012)
3. Detroit, MI (temporary ban in 2013)
4. Chicago, IL (temporary ban in 2013)
5. Green Bay, WI (temporary ban in 2013)
6. Twin Cities, MN (temporary ban in 2013)
7. Charlotte, NC (temporary ban in 2010)
8. Atlanta, GA (temporary ban in 2010)
9. Tampa Bay Area, FL (temporary ban in 2010)
10. New Orleans, LA (temporary ban in 2010)
11. St. Louis, MO (temporary ban in 2011)
12. Phoenix, AZ (temporary ban in 2011)

So those are the overriding principals of Camaraderie Exemption in terms of determining bigamy-fandom is acceptable. Feel free to do this analysis for your fave team in any sport.

But there is also the Camaraderie Exemption sub-rule 12E-L22 that applies to team paraphernalia in such circumstances: get a hat, a tee-shirt if you must, but cool it on the jersey.