The 4th of July is the grandest holiday in the summer season at our town’s swimming pool.

First, there’s a small parade of old cars, old politicians, young Scouts, a rag-tag band of musicians, and a huge flotilla of kids on anything with wheels.  The kids and bikes, scooters, and strollers are all gussied up in red, white, and blue, of course.  One year, a woman who lived on the parade route dipped and distributed mini ice cream cones to the passing crowd.

The parade ends at the pool.  There are games on water and on land, and the whole shebang ends with a giant picnic.  The day at the pool was, for our boys, Christmas in July.  Today’s photo shows Hugh flipping on the 4th, a few years ago.  He loves this picture because of the implied vapor trail. 

Now?  Our boys couldn’t care less about the town celebration.  Ian was the only person from our family who even went to the pool yesterday, and that was only because he was working as a lifeguard.

More globally, our boys couldn’t care less about the pool.  There is definitely a bell curve for kids and pools.

First, they can’t swim and may be scared of the water.  You have to be with them every minute.  As toddlers, they fall frequently on the wet pool decks.  You have to dry their tears.  They are still in diapers, which become saturated and bloated with water after a few minutes in the baby pool. 

God forbid the dreaded Diaper Burst occurs, which dooms you to picking up the bits of wet cotton and those weird absorbent gel pills for the next 15 minutes.   This ecological disaster bears some similarities to the BP oil spill, complete with the apologies to disgusted pool users.  “We deeply regret the flaws in our diaper management system and are doing all we can to restore the pool and playground area to its original condition so that all may enjoy it again.” 

Once toilet trained, the kids advance to the shallow end of the large pool.  You still must watch them like a hawk, or play with them every minute.  I for one should have perfectly toned arms from those hours of playing Motorboat, Motorboat with my boys.  They wanted constant  interaction with us, back in those days. 

Then they learned to swim, and took the big pool test, earning the honor of going off the diving board and allowing them to be under the watchful eye of only the lifeguards. 

When Ian passed this test, I created a tour de force of a celebratory dessert.  It was a sheet cake, with blue tinted icing and Twizzler lap lanes.  The diving board was made from a Lik-M-Aid dipper and frosting.  The swimmers were Teddy Grahams.  The piece de resistance was a Teddy Graham doing the sidestroke in the laplane, which everyone at the pool instantly recognized as the lady who does only that stroke, keeping her head bobbing above the water, and who yells at the kids for splashing her when she’s near the diving board.  They never understand why she’s upset about getting wet while she’s in the pool, and frankly, neither does anyone else.

At the age of 10, the kids are allowed to go to the pool alone, with no parent or babysitter acting as chaperone.  This was a godsend for our family, because our house is located just a short hike through backyards and woods away from the pool.  For the next couple of years, the boys are completely digging their independence, and so are we.

By the middle of middle school, though, it’s all over.  The pool has lost its luster.  They stop going.

We can only get Hugh and Malcolm to go if that’s where the family dinner will be served.  Chris uses the pool, and does his 1000 laps every summer.  Ian works there.  I go once in a blue moon.  It’s a wasting asset – sadly.

And the bell curve ends, as flat as it began.

Upon learning I was pregnant with Ian, the first thing I bought was What to Expect When You’re Expecting.  It helped pass the time during those interminable 9-and-a-half months.  When he was a few months old, we borrowed Dr. Ferber’s sleep book to “Ferberiz” him and he dutifully learned to sleep through the night.   The same techniques with Hugh failed miserably, night after screaming, tear-drenched night.  (and yes, that was just me.)

My cousin Jane, who was done having her three boys before my first was born, sent me Penelope Leach’s common-sense book on childraising, to which I turned for episodic advice.

When the boys were older, I once bought a book on raising boys, but sent it to Goodwill after only a few chapters.  I hated the gender generalizations, the silly social-work speak,  and the faux philosophizing. 

Parenting as a verb was not something I wanted to learn from a book.  More helpful was advice from friends and family, and bitter/sweet experience gleaned from trial and error.

But I am currently loving the book Nurture Shock, which is reminiscent of a Malcolm Gladwell tome…but focused exclusively on child development.  This is a highly readable, fascinating look at how children develop, backed up by social science.  

The authors, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, look at modern “truisms” of parenting with a gimlet eye.   Take our society’s habit of heaping praise on kids.  Turns out to be a bad idea.  Telling kids they’re so smart, they’re so athletic, they’re so gifted actually undermines their motivation.  Better to say “You really worked hard at that.”  E for effort, people, not E for existing.

 The chapter is called “The Inverse Power of Praise.”  Subtitle:  “Sure, he’s special.  But new research suggests if you tell him that, you’ll ruin him.  It’s a neurobiological fact.”    As my brother Tom says about the little trophies given to every single kid on a team, “When everybody’s special, nobody is.”

I first heard Bronson on NPR back in the fall, talking about why kids lie.  The chapter’s teaser is:  “We may treasure honesty, but the research is clear.  Most classic strategies to promote truthfulness just encourage kids to be better liars. ”  It was a fascinating interview.

Then there’s Why Siblings Fight.  Very relevant reading.  Freud’s family psychodrama theory is gonged by the authors.  Sigmund’s contention that siblings fight because each kid never gets over being dethroned by the next?  Wrong.  Kids too close together?  Not a factor.  Kids too far apart?  Not a factor. 

This was not what I wanted to hear.  The boys ranged from tiny to kindergarten, and they were still cherubic and, for the most part, charming.  I didn’t want my friend fast-forwarding time away to the day when there would be three giant teenager boys in our kitchen, like age progressions on a milk carton.

Time waits for no man or mom, however.  And lo, it has come to pass. 

Malcolm turned 13 yesterday. 

Hugh is 15.  Ian is 18 . And yes, they do all swarm in the kitchen, often all at once, yanking open pantry, fridge and freezer in search of calories to pour into their gaping maws. 

Even  Hugh, who spent his first 12 years as an air plant, existing on only tiny portions of beige foods and water, has now taken a great interest in mealtimes.  As soon as he walks in the door at 3 PM, he asks ”What’s for dinner?”

Fortunately, the boys are all skilled at foraging for themselves.  They can manage their own snacks and occasional meals.  Hugh has taught us all that the perfect amount of time to defrost a bagel in the microwave is 23 seconds, and that pierogies are best when plunged into a bowl of warm water before sauteeing begins.  The other night he prepared pasta for a visiting friend, because Chris and I were nowhere near ready to eat – so he took matters into his own hands. 

Ian makes his own pizzas from scratch, and Malcolm makes his own tuna melts.

As the opposite of a foodie, I am personally thrilled that our boys can fend for themselves in the kitchen. 

For the birthday celebration, however, we let someone else do the cooking. 

Before children, Chris and I would sleep late on weekends. (Is “sleep in” an East Coast expression?  I don’t remember anyone saying that in the Midwest).  We might get up at 9, 10 or even 11, depending on which parties or concerts had taken place the night before.

Then we had a baby.  And babies arise at the crack of dawn.  As soon as he could, Ian would stand up in his crib, clinging to the top bar, a huge toothless grin on his face.  Later, he’d climb out of his crib and toddle into our room to wake us up.  That awakening was way too early, but at least the awakener was adorable.

Repeat above scenario with Hugh, then Malcolm.

During elementary school, the guys would still get up early, but eventually at least we didn’t have to get up with them.  They were fully capable of pouring their own bowls of Chocolate Coated Sugar Bombs and watching unfunny cartoons on Nickelodeon, while we slept for another hour or so.

At a certain point, early in the middle school years, the sleeping habits of our children changed.  They continued sawing logs until late in the morning.  Ian and Hugh can easily sleep until 11:30 or noon.  The circadian rhythms of teenagers are in full effect.  Their bodies are changing and growing, and they need rest.

This syndrome was described in the new book “Happens Every Day” by Isabelle Gillies.  “My father believes that because teenagers are growing at such a fast pace, they should be allowed to sleep as much as they want…my little brother and I would encounter our big brothers making their breakfast at two in the afternoon…they would bring their mountains of food to the Adirondack chairs outside to eat.”

That’s where we are now.  Two Rip Van Winkles making breakfast in the early afternoon.  It’s hard to believe our children ever woke us up at sunrise.  Or wore matching PJs.  Those are also a thing of the past.

Like the time I bought them all black turtlenecks and asked our dear friend, talented photographer Paul Crane, if he would use a black backdrop.  Paul very kindly went out and bought one just for our shoot, he later admitted.  I love how the boys’ faces, hair and hands became the focal points. 

On the actual card (which I can’t find right now) we put the words “We three” on the front, a little play on Melchiorre, Balthazare, and Beelezub, or whatever the kings’ actual names were.  inside the greeting continued, with “wish you a lovely Christmas.”  Ian is still getting grief from his friends about this photo, one of whom called it “the most creepy-ass card I’ve ever seen.”  Ah, the blunt honesty of teenagers.  You have to love/hate it.

This year, inspiration has not struck, and probably won’t.  So as a little warning to any readers who are normally on the Reynolds Christmas card list, the absence of an envelope in the mail this year doesn’t mean your name has been crossed off.  It just means we didn’t get our act together.  Because:

1.  All the boys have veto power over the photo, and if two out of three like it, you can bet the third will not.

2.  The one picture they all approved turns out to have been taken in autumn of 2007

3.  We missed the deadline for ShutterandSnapfishandfly

4.  No clever idea has yet occured to any of us.

5,  College application deadlines trump Christmas card mailings.

5.  All my best photos and thoughts about family life are diverted into this blog.  

So, think of these posts as a little Reynolds update every other day.  They are, after all, far more informative than any annual greeting.  And you get to know Emily’s family at the same time!