We are airborne…

We are strapped into the plane taxiing out to the runway. (Sela at left waiting for take-off and for her seatbelt to be tighetened.) Overall everything has gone smoothly. We have even negotiated a better seat configuration with other passengers… we are now all in the same row sitting as follows from the left window:

Seb, Dad, Sela, Tess/Carys, Jasper & Lita

The Terrific Trio are wafting in and out of being either incredibly cute or crying… ah… bah bye… going down the runway…

Bowen Road, Hong Kong

I have had a nasty, nasty day. Grrrr… can’t tell you how angry I was today at so many things. Coming home it took every ounce of energy to stop, change, re-start my mood. Sebastian and I drove Tess to a PPA meeting and upon returning played with the Etch ‘N Sketch. We had a fun time. I sat there sipping my Myers Rum ‘n Coke when Sebastian playfully asked, “Daddy, why do you need a drink?” I thought to myself, “buddy, don’t get me started,” but replied verbally with, “I enjoy a nice drink at the end of the day, Sebastian. Is it my run to draw?”

“Naaaawt yeeeet!” he teasingly answered.

Seb is now happily in bed. Sitting here at the computer, it took even more energy to play some praise and worship music to steer this angry ship back in the right direction. I had a wonderful lunch today with a great friend, Dale, who I know from Union Church. After lunch I stopped in at St. John’s Cathedral for a few minutes of prayer and meditation. Wow… obviously did that wrong… KABOOM, BATMAN! Arrived back at work to find bogies all over me… ARGH… shared with one subordinate what was going on and hE jokingly taunted me over and over. More grrrr… shared with another subordinate what was going on and SHE said, “my gosh that’s terrible, horrible, I HATE when that happens, what are you going to do?” (Note to self: give her a raise, delegate more to him.)

Tess phoned in the middle of this whole thing and she had to deal with the fall-out of the wrath of Charles… of course this made cute-little-Sunday a distant memory. However, I promised myself to post pictures of the Sunday walk along Bowen Road.

Yes, yesterday we strapped the Kettler Quad Trike to the roof of the van and went for a family outing. Given my nasty mood, I will provide the abridged version. First, found perfect parking spot at start of Bowen Road, beautiful and popular walk along side of mountain in Hong Kong. Second, loaded trips into Trike. Third, put Sebastian in charge of steering. Fourth, walked about 25 minutes, turned around and walked back. Observations: with the occasional corrections, Sebastian did amazingly well steering the ENTIRE time. Really wonderful… very proud. Carys cried for the last half of the trip, holding her arms up in the air begging to be picked up. We didn’t.  Missed the cue… thought she was Praising God instead. No guilt, though. Back in the car everyone, including Carys, was extremely happy to be sucking from their water bottles as Dad secured said Trike to top of car. Overall, fantastic time with Tantalising Tess, Terrific Trio and Sebastian. Can’t wait to do it again, he says smilingly… Grrrr.

The Kettler Quad Trike

Saturday morning the Terrific Trio and Sebastian woke-up at 5:50 AM. In addition to buying the No Joy Buster surprise, I also bought Sebastian two more Leap Frog videos. He loves these videos and of all the TV he watches, this series is by far the most educational. For example, as a result of Talking Letters, Sebastian learned the alphabet very quickly. Therefore, while in the US I also bought Talking Trigonometry. No, just kidding, I bought Words Capers that teaches kids combined letter sounds (“ch”, “sh,” etc) and Math Circus that teaches counting and basic addition and subtraction. The point is I parked Sebastian in front of the TV while I secretly went off to assemble said surprise. (I had also been a very nasty parent, asking everyone, “What do you think is in this big box?”)

In the assembly area I hid any parts that might give away the surprise too prematurely. I knew that eventually Sebastian would show-up on the scene and figure out what I had bought. But there was something different about this item and I wanted to keep that secret as long as possible.

Sure enough Sebastian’s video finished and he arrived at the assembly area quite curious and wanting to help. Assembly of the German toy took about three hours (stopping to feed The Terrific Trio in the middle for half an hour.) At one point Sebastian asked me, “where is THE seat?” His question assumed there was only one.

“Hmmm, I am sure around here somewhere, Sebastian,” I replied coyly.

A little while later Sebastian asked again, “Daddy, where is the seat?” and I decided to start letting the cat out of the bag.

“Sebastian, how many seats do you think there are for this?”

Sebastian replied, “I don’t know, let’s see.” The little rascal then opened the cupboard behind me and pulled out THREE seats. “Daddy,” he exclaimed, “There are three seats!”

“Not quite, little buddy. You better go back and watch that video again,” I thought to myself but said aloud, “Wow, how did you know the seats were in there?”

Sebastian’s patience grew thinner and thinner. Eventually we lured him away from the assembly area with a promise of playing in the Blue Car. Sebastian LOVES our 7-seater Renault family van so he and De disappeared for 45 minutes. Their timing was perfect… I came around the last bend of assembly and snapped the final pieces in place just a few minutes before Sebastian returned home.

Sebastian walked in, took one look at what lay on the floor and exclaimed, “WOW!” It was a four-seater, German-made Kettler Trike. Sebastian tested the trike (left) as we adjusted the length for his legs and then we all headed down to the playground for the maiden voyage.

Sebastian takes a much deserved rest. Pulling the entire team is hard work but Jasper is ready for more! My apologies to those who searched mytoybox.com for this item. You would never have found in it’s entirety. The Kettler Trike becomes a multi-kid bike with the Tandem inserts.

“No Joy” Buster

My first entry on this blog was entitled "No Joy." I described how the first year of The Terrific Trio’s life had been so turbulent and stressful that The Joy of their arrival and miracle success was overshadowed by something else… grief, fear, sadness, fatigue. The very fact I am able to distinguish this, of course, is half the battle. In the last two months more and more flashes of Joy have crept in.

On February 23rd, their 1st birthday, we were steeped in No Joy. Both still exhausted and recovering from the past year’s events, I was about to embark on my 9th trip to India in ten months. A party was just too much for us at that point so we passed on the idea, quietly marking the day with a chocolate cake that delighted Sebastian. The cake decor was simple – one Chinese character: Miracle.

Well, Tess and I agreed a few weeks ago that the time has come to celebrate the Terrific Trio in a big way. The triplets passing their "one year out of hospital" anniversary and "one year developmental milestone" partly precipitated this event, too.

Next weekend we’ll have a belated birthday party for the triplets inviting all the Hong Kong friends who’ve supported us in the last 16 to 21 months. (The latter being when Tess became ill with OHSS and pregnant with the trips.) We’ve also labelled this a party celebrating Sebastian completing his first year of school.

In honour of this party I bought something online for The Kids from Hong Kong that was delivered to my hotel on Monday morning. A toy made in Germany but purchased in the US. When the package arrived I was so excited I squealed, forgetting the bell captain was still there, and did a decent job embarrassing myself. I had little time to investigate the goods and left for work.

Unfortunately, I had a sleepless week. Normally I am unaffected by jet lag but this week was terrible. Tuesday night I woke-up after sleeping for less than an hour. After a few hours answering incoming e-mails from Asia, I finally decided to crack open the birthday boxes to inspect the contents.

I promised my US colleagues I would not attempt to assemble anything. Doing so would mean I’d be awake the entire week – if not from the consumption of time, certainly from the resulting excitement. As it turned out, I ended up being awake anyway. But as far as assembly went I managed to avoid that short of lining up a few parts on the floor. The ridiculous present loosely took shape before my eyes. Visions of its life ahead with our family danced in and out of my imagination. The significance and impact of the past 16 months freshly formed in my mind’s eye.

I still grapple with the reality that we are a family of six but my new German friend made it very clear: you have FOUR children and I PROMISE that with me THEY WILL HAVE FUN and so will you! "I am here to unlock the Joy. My job is to pry it out of you." The fog of the past 16 months cleared a little more. What I saw was Tess’ and my love and commitment to Sebastian and The Terrific Trio, in itself breathtaking, unfathomable and not easy for any parent to look straight in the eye. I saw life ahead of us with family dinners, holidays, graduations, championships and awards.

"My gosh," I thought, "this is not just a birthday present… this is a ‘No Joy’ Buster. This thing is amazing. It is going to break the dam of Joy. Soon it will all come gushing out."

And amazing this item is. First, it is a novelty. I doubt there are many like it on the planet. Second, it is a gorgeous, stunning piece of German engineering with forethought and precision put into every aspect of the machinery. "German! All the parts will be here and only the exact number required. No more, no less. Some of Germany’s neighbours might have missed a few parts or even put in too many," I contemplated sarcastically.

Third, this thing oozes German quality. I am ashamed to say – because as a father of four I should know all these things – but I’d never seen this level of quality in a child’s toy. "Wow," I thought, "THIS is the pinnacle of German quality. If German quality were ever put on show… here it is now." Like all fine German products, this one sat there maturely, in no unnecessary hurry. Complete with high self confidence and high self esteem, it waited patiently to effortlessly make it’s mark on the world. "Typical," I said to my new friend lazily strewn across the floor, "just like a Porshce or a Mercedes, you just KNOW you’re good, don’t you?"

Mesmerized, I carefully repacked the items to travel size, sharing the heavier pieces between my suitcase and a large brown box. I imagined assembling this German show piece in Hong Kong and unveiling it to Sebastian and the Terrific Trio. Not something that can happen the day of the party. When Sebastian sees this thing, he’ll need to be peeled off the ceiling from excitement. Jasper, too, for that matter. Certainly the two of them will need a few days to calm down. Yes, the unveiling will take place this weekend to give everyone a chance to get to know this thing. That’s my unbiased, patient opinion. (At left, The Terrific Trio bang on the box while saying in their own language, "Open the box, Daddy!")

———————————————————————————

Readers might be interested to know that I purchased this item through www.mytoybox.com and had an extremely positive experience. When the US centric website would not accept my Hong Kong credit card, I e-mailed customer service who manually processed my order in under an hour and immediately confirmed via e-mail. They promised the item would arrive by Tuesday. It got there a day early. Finally, I did discover – and good thing I checked the parts – that the Germans forgot the instruction booklet. Probably because they assumed other Germans would be the assemblers and would automatically know what to do. That, or perhaps (and I wouldn’t doubt it) this product is self assembling. Either way, I immediately e-mailed CS who sent me the instruction booklet in a PDF file within ten minutes… very impressive!  The bottomline: www.mytoybox.com is a great place to buy toys and very responsive, too.

Planes, Kids & Uncomfortables

I have left on my business trip to the US. I will be away from Hong Kong for a total of four days and fifteen hours.  As I write this we are about one hour from landing in San Francisco. I am sitting in the same seats that we’ll be taking when we head back to Canada the end of June. I guess you could say I am test-driving the seats. The flight to SFO is about 14 hours and pretty much everyone – both adults and kids – feel yucky by the time we all step off at the end of the flight.

There have been numerous kids in the vicinity of my seat, all of them very young, ranging from maybe one to three years old. At one point one of the three year olds went crazy in the middle of the night. He was obviously tired, disoriented, confused AND hungry. He was also extremely, extremely LOUD.

After a few minutes of pure screaming in the aisle, and standing less than two feet from me, I was pretty much un-phased. This was NOTHING compared to what I’ve heard in the last year. His parents were clearly scrambling to remedy the situation and I was pretty confident this lil’ guy would be quiet very soon. But the passenger next to me, about ten years my junior, had a different opinion.

"OH MY GAWD!" He said condescendingly. "That is HORRIBLE. His parents obviously don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve got his schedule completely mixed-up!"

"I am sure he’ll be quiet soon. Airplanes are tough for little kids," I said but as I did, picture the following thought cloud hovering above my head: "something tells me you don’t have kids."

The fact is: airplanes, especially long flights, are very tough for babies and toddlers. First, there is the constant noise of the plane. Second, they are way outside their comfort zone in an unfamiliar place. Third, there is no place to run around or stretch or play properly. As the flight goes on and on, things get messier and messier and more disorienting.  Fourth, dehydration and fatigue eventually settles in. This is a recipe for creating unhappy little campers.

Fortunately, though, Tess and I have had quite a bit of luck with airplanes and Sebastian. Sebastian has turned out to be a very good traveller who is generally low maintenance on planes. Here are some tricks we follow and I am interested in any other ideas people would like to contribute:

1. Timing: Pick a flight late in the day, therefore, probability of child sleeping is high.
2. Eating: Don’t feed immediately before the flight because eating is a great time consumer and pacifier. Therefore, feed shortly after take-off. If your kid is old enough, request a child meal through your travel agent – the meals often come with toys or other treats.
3. Fluid Intake: We encourage Sebastian to consume lots of fluids for two reasons… first to avoid dehydration that canmake a child irritable and second… trips to the bathroom, while repetitive they can be annoying, are still a great time consumer.
4. Sleeping: If Sebastian falls asleep on a plane, we watch him for two things… first, being comfortable to avoid him waking up and second, avoiding noise and light that could wake him up. We’ve even been known for building little tents, with blankets overtop of seats, to decrease the chance he’ll be woken up. Pillows strategically placed next to ears can also help dullen the roar of the plane.
5. Chunk Theory: Break the flight up into 20 – 30 minute activity slots. Each activity can be repeated once. If the flight is six hours long, that’s six to eight activities. You may not use them all but it is beter to have the variety of activities.
6. Less is more: Choose activities with minimal pieces in case they drop off the seat. (Dropped toys often take a while to recover as they roll all over the plane!) Suggestions: books, colouring books, blank books for drawing, stickers, etch-n-sketch toys, small cars (if you’re like Seb).
7. Toys – small is beautiful: Toys need to be small so that the relative play area is large. I.e. large car won’t drive far, but a small one can drive around a tray table hundreds of times… this is a good thing.
8. Favourite Toys: Take along favourite toys that have mysteriously been hidden away for a few days before the trip. When you pull out the toy on the plane your child will be that much more delighted to see it.
9. Keep track of toys… it’s easy to leave behind a toy that can be a real heartbreaker later. I always try to keep track of them by keeping a bag nearby that a toy can be thrown into instead of stuffed into a seat back pocket where it may be pater forgotten.
10. Walking & Exploring: Walk up and down the aisles whenever possible. If your child becomes fascinated with some ridiculous thing, let them investigate. This will help pass the time.
11. Windows: if possible, snag a window seat and keep track of what it flying by. You might find some interesting mountains to watch, or even find funny formations in clouds. Sebastian loves seeing cars driving on roads thousands of feet beneath the plane.
12. TV & Movies: The ultimate time consumer is TV. Find out if your plane will have personal TVs. If yes, consider buying a headset for your child that will provide better sound than airplane headsets. (Some airlines are now using an earplug-type headset that is uncomfortable for kids to use.) If no, an alternative is a portable DVD player – either bought or borrowed. (Don’t forget to charge the battery!)
13. Comfort Items: We do our best to insure Sebastian eats and sleeps properly on the plane, but we are also realistic… a long plane ride is no fun. Therefore, we make sure we have plenty of comfort items for distraction and consumption. (Okay, it’s pure bribery, call me a bad parent!) If that’s TV or watching a movie so be it. If it is letting Sebastian eat more Goldfish or Chocolate Bear cookies that normal, we will let him. These items are usually introduced late in the game when an unhappy camper needs to be settled down… keep your cards close to your chest and save these tasty items for when they are really needed. All of these fifteen items are a series of carefully planned distractions to help Sebastian (and soon The Terrific Trio) be better travellers when they are young.
14. Manage expectations: Tess & I not only build up the excitement of going on a plane with Sebastian, we also make him aware – or remind him – of what he’ll do on the plane… such as going to the bathroom, sleeping, eating, and even getting tired. Before going on the 17 hour flight to Torontoin March we drilled into him over and over that the flight was long and he would need to be patient… we even practised "eating on the plane!"
15. Backpacks: I also find backpacks extremely useful for airports. A backpack allows both hands to be free to care for kids… hold hands… restrain… chase, you name it… if you are carrying bags it is all harder to do.

Those are some of our ideas for now… if you have your own that you would like to contribute please fee free to do so!

Busted!

We have just had one of those weekends when no matter what diet one is following; you end up putting on weight. Only because the adults in this mad house were both in desperate need of comfort food. First, the relentless pace at work continued last week with the average conference call finishing at midnight. Thursday night a colleague and I were still exchanging e-mails at 1 AM while completing a report for the US. The frenzy should alleviate in a few weeks as we put second half planning to bed. Regardless, I went into the weekend quite tired. Second, we are down one helper. Lita is home in the Philippines on a much-deserved holiday. She will be back in Canada with Tess and the kids for nine weeks during the summer where she will have downtime, of course, but no friends to spend it with. Therefore, the least we could do was give her some time off prior to The Big Canadian Adventure.

Third, the kids were just nuts this weekend. Friday night was relatively easy once Sebastian got to bed a bit late. Tess and I also watched an episode of Super Nanny thus our philosophy on discipline tightened up considerably while The Kids slept. Olivia must have forewarned them because they spent the rest of the weekend rebelling in some form or another. Can you imagine a tubby tabby sitting on the bedroom floor with paws crossed, tapping the dark varnished wood tiles with her claws as Sela awoke?

“Meooow… Good morning, Sela. I think you should know your mom and dad watched Super Nanny while you innocent beings catnapped. Then Sir read The Bible… you know They talk about ‘The Rod’ in The Great Book?”

“He would never discipline me, I am too young,” Sela would reply.

“Meow… maybe so, Sweet Pea, but your day will come, your day will come. They use time outs and revoke privileges. Just wait, Sweet Pea, your day will come.”

“Whatever, Olivia,” Sela would say patronisingly, “come on you guys wake-up, wake-up, CARYS! JASPER! SEBASTIAN! TWINS DOWNSTAIRS! WAKE-UP! EVERYONE WAKE-UP! WAAAAAAH!!!”

It all started Saturday morning when the triplets awoke with a roar, taking Sebastian with them. That meant Seb was trotting into our room at 7 AM asking for “Breakfast on the Balcony” – specifically French toast. Knowing that Mila and De were hard at work looking after the Terrific Trio, I chose to take care of Sebastian. It was a gorgeous, cool morning, so we sat on the balcony eating French toast. We ate slowly upon Sebastian’s request. Since he wasn’t going to school and I wasn’t going to work, Sebastian insisted we have a long leisurely breakfast. He didn’t use those words, but he certainly got the message across that we should eat slowly. Breakfast was easy and fun. The triplets often come to the window to watch Sebastian and I. If I finish early I’ll have one sit on my lap. This Saturday Jasper was distraught and shocked that our food on the other side of the window looked much tastier than his!

Round about the middle of the day the vomiting started. Other than Jasper, who spent the weekend throwing up and crying, I have no recollection of who vomited. I do recall that Carys spent the weekend threatening. As a little kid did you ever stick your tongue out and make a “banana split?” A “banana split” is when you stick your tongue out like a tube. That’s what Carys does right before throwing up. Her tongue extends out of her mouth in a half moon shape, as if the she is about to slide a small bowling ball, or her last meal, down the trough. We have various distraction tricks – clapping hands, loud noises, singing etc – to thwart these rebellious antics.

Sebastian’s rebellion for the weekend was to forget he had ears. In other words, he would not listen and after Mom and Dad watched Super Nanny, this was the wrong weekend for THAT trick. We were handing out time outs to Sebastian like free prizes at a circus. Fortunately by the end of the weekend the timeouts had an effect. But, on Saturday at the Playground poor Sebastian was in quite the foul mood at a friend’s birthday party. We didn’t manage his juice intake and wee wee output adequately. At 1 AM Sunday when Tess finally got sleepy enough to retire, she found three juice boxes worth of wee wee distributed all over Seb’s bed… and another three waiting in his bladder as he sleepily teetered on the toilet pumping the bilge. Tess spent another half an hour cleaning up while I comforted very tired and unhappy Sebastian in our bed.

Jasper was truly forlorn all weekend. At first we thought he had another cold coming on, after his drool output increased tenfold and he started tugging at his ears, we concluded the old racehorse is giving birth to another alien tooth. After Sebastian’s 1 AM racehorse performance, Jasper joined the team at 5 AM, screaming at the top of his lungs. I hauled myself out of bed. First I gave him some medicine to reduce his fever. I then attempted to give him a bottle, which he resisted. By this point, with Jasper wailing non-stop, Mila came into the flat from her room in the back. We tried to give him some cool yoghurt. No joy. Jasper loves water. He reluctantly accepted a taste. Tess appeared and suggested she take Jasper. I said I would hold him a few minutes longer and Tess is probably glad I did that! I stood up with Jasper in my arms, his chin resting on my shoulder, and suggested to Mila some cereal. (Jasper is on the cusp and in the near future will likely give up the bottle altogether.) Mila disappeared into the kitchen but returned as she heard The Sound.

The Sound was the unmistakeable gurgle of the previous night’s half digested dinner, cherry flavoured ibuprofen, a few mouthfuls of soy formula, a taste of soy yoghurt, a few sips of cool water, all on their way up. Mila ran toward me as the first thrust spread itself across my chest. Mila caught the second thrust in a towel she’d grabbed on her way out of the kitchen but the ever practical Tess (and had she not done this I would have told her to) grabbed the back of my already soiled baggy, t-shirt to collect the third, fourth and fifth thrusts.

From wake-up to this point Jasper had barely opened his eyes, telling me that maybe he just needed to go back to bed. I thought to myself, “Empty stomach + Ibuprofen = sleep.”

“You know what? Let’s just give him a fresh shot of Ibu and put him down,” I suggested to Tess and Mila. So we did and he did after comfortably settling himself on Tess’ torso. I went back to bed. Tess followed in a few minutes. (We found out much later that Jasper never went to sleep… he merely stopped crying and dozed in and out of sleep in Mila’s loving arms.)

The above pretty much sums up our weekend. Though we did manage to get a few fun moments in (as seen in the attached pictures) when the girls modelled their new swim suits and made themselves available for pictures with Tess and Sebastian. I should also mention that during snack time in our Church creche, The Terrific Trio enjoyed cheerios and were able to keep them down for the first time ever. Sure, they’ll do this for Mila but not for their parents? More fuel for my rebellion theory! Carys threatened to throw-up all weekend. Sela did at breakfast Sunday. Jasper was sick non-stop until we became very strategic about when to administer drugs (20 minutes before food to settle in) and then a slow feed. In all cases we throttled back the amount given to each baby and by Sunday evening just a few hours before starting this blog we were getting back on an even keel. Even Sebastian tried to be as good-natured as possible at Sunday dinner. The poor little guy was so tired halfway through his supper he confessed he wanted to go to bed, allowed me to brush his teeth for him, and then after PTB almost immediately fell asleep.

“Ah, quiet at last,” I thought as I stood up from Sebastian’s bed. Both Jasper and Carys were deep in dreamland. I walked by Sela’s crib. There she sat, quietly chattering to herself and looking up at me as I approached. “Good night, Sela,” I whispered, “time to go to sleep… no more rebelling!” Sela keeled over onto her side, snuggling into her blanket.”

The big news, folks, is that this weekend Sela’s time did come, just as Olivia would have predicted. It was sometime on Saturday afternoon, shortly after Sebastian served several two-minute sentences on the Thinking Chair for a variety of back-to-back misdemeanours. Jasper sat on Mila’s lap crying when Sela and Carys had an altercation.

I was sitting on a sofa next to a table that both Sela and Carys had used to pull themselves to a standing position. Sebastian lurked nearby, seeking approval after his latest time-out. Carys stood staring at wailing Jasper. Suddenly I saw Sela reach over, grab Carys hand, pull it into her mouth and bite. Carys exploded in pain – huge tears welled down her face. Mila put down Jasper to comfort Carys. Meanwhile I pounced on Sela, taking her away from the scene. I sat her on my knee and calmly explained that she needed to learn not to bite. Sela rebutted with a cute, diva-like smile.

Sebastian leaned in toward Sela and I. Then he said with a very innocent and endearing voice, “Daddy, Sela bit Carys’ hand. Is Sela going to get a time-out?” Very quickly it occurred to me the gravity of what Sebastian asked.

The last month we’ve tried to give Sebastian more space around the triplets. The Terrific Trio are moving quickly these days. They are in that zone where everyday they accomplish cuter and cuter things, each one a little developmental milestone unto itself. They are also in that place where it’s hard for them to intentionally do anything wrong – except in Sebastian’s world. Regularly, Sebastian will find the Terrific Trio chewing on a favourite toy or trying to pull apart his Geo Trax train set.  As a household, we have agreed that certain toys are off limits to the triplets and make a point of explaining to them, in front of Sebastian, that they need to leave certain toys alone unless Sebastian agrees to share the toy. All this is to impress upon Sebastian that life in our home is fair and there is no double standard. Meanwhile Sebastian watches, as he was doing when he asked if Sela would get a time-out. So… I made the call…

“You know what Sebastian?” I said quietly, “That is a very good idea.”

With Sela still sitting on my knee, staring at me cutely, I went through the routine. I explained that she was getting a thirty-second timeout for biting. “We’ve had a few other biting incidents this week, Sela, so biting has been previously explained to everyone as inappropriate.” (Jasper bit Carys much harder a few days earlier, but in that incident Carys stuck her hand in Jasper’s mouth to feel his horse teeth. Jasper pleaded self-defense.) “I love you Sela and I know Carys forgives you. My job as your dad is to teach you that there are boundaries and biting is crossing a boundary.” I carried Sela over to the Thinking Chair, where Sela served her first timeout.

Olivia walked by, rubbed herself against the chair and meowed, “Busted!”