Little Kids, Big City: Tales from a Real House in New York City (With Lessons on Life and Love for Your Own Concrete Jungle) (8 page)

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Authors: Alex McCord,Simon van Kempen

BOOK: Little Kids, Big City: Tales from a Real House in New York City (With Lessons on Life and Love for Your Own Concrete Jungle)
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By the way, at the time of writing the ER score is François 5, Johan 0!
 
Alex
Sometimes the incident isn’t an injury, but it’s no less traumatic. One afternoon two years ago I was in the kitchen prepping Chicken Tikka Masala, a family favorite. For years this was a must-order dish on our takeout menu, but after our first gut-renovation in 2002, I decided to learn how to make it. It’s not that difficult, and I realized when going through our year-end expenses that we’d spent nearly $5,000 on Indian takeout. Not a good use of money when we both cook! At the time our kitchen was on the ground floor and had two large windows facing into the garden where the boys were outside playing together. I had an eye on them mostly, but was also concentrating on measuring spices and marinating chicken. Suddenly, François came running in the garden door shouting, “Mommy, Johan’s gone!” It’s not a cliché to say that a lump rose into my throat and I had to catch my breath as I felt sick to my stomach. “I think he evaporated,” François said. I ran outside and surveyed the backyard. It’s not a large area (about 22 feet by 40 feet), it’s completely fenced in and there are only so many places a one and a half-year-old boy can hide. I called to him; no answer. I checked under the Japanese willows at the back fence; no Johan. I checked the kitchen again just to be 100 percent sure he hadn’t slithered past me and gone into the house… no. I went back outside, and thought, even though we are surrounded on all sides by high fences, is there any possible way out of this garden? Just then I heard a noise, which sounded very much like a frustrated toddler. The property next door to us had recently been renovated and there was a retaining wall blocked only by boards. Sure enough, there was a space of a few inches where the boards had settled. I shimmied through it myself, tightrope-walked across the retaining wall to find, at the end, Johan shouting in righteous indignation while trying to lower himself into the garden of the next house, two houses away from us. I grabbed him in an emotional rush, darted back across the retaining wall with him in my arms (perhaps not the smartest thing to do in heels) and carried him to safety. Shortly thereafter the boards were secured and we all moved on, but I have had aftershocks of fear when I remember François’ worried little voice asking, “Mommy, where did he go?”
 
Johan Amusing Himself
 
Johan has proven to be a slippery little fellow. He is very independent and plays extremely well by himself, but when he’s had enough, he sometimes decides to leave in search of the next adventure. In all other respects he’s very careful, and never runs out into the street or copies some of the daredevil moves of his older brother, however, he’s been known to simply walk away when he’s bored. During filming for season one of
The Real Housewives
, we shot a scene with the midwives who delivered both our boys. We were in Prospect Park, the Brooklyn equivalent of Central Park, at a picnic with lots of other parents. There came a time when the crew wanted to get a conversation between the adults, and the kids were allowed to play with the other children attending the picnic under the eye of a production assistant. The lesson learned that day was to never let someone who isn’t a parent watch children if they are also doing something else. It’s a lot to ask a non-parent who doesn’t normally babysit and is also on the job to continue doing their job while keeping an eye on a mobile child. After we’d filmed the 10-minute scene, we grabbed François and looked for Johan in order to pack up and move to the next location, as we had multiple setups to shoot that day. He was nowhere to be seen. Panic ensued, not only among us, but the crew, the midwives and the other parents. Somehow our 20-month-old had managed to evade everyone and take off. After a minute or two, we found him under a nearby tree counting leaves, completely happy and curious as to why we all seemed so upset. If François needs to be encased in bubble wrap, Johan needs a GPS tracking device embedded into his sneakers.
We’ll knock on wood that nothing bad has ever happened in a place where we don’t speak the language and are completely stranded. We’ve been going to St. Barths, an island in the French West Indies section of the Caribbean, for six years running now, and absolutely love it for a number of reasons. One plus we hadn’t thought about much is that it has become a home away from home. Take last summer for example. On the second day there, we were having lunch and checking e-mail at our favorite outdoor restaurant, now called Caviar Island (though to me it will always be Le Square) in Gustavia, the capital. The boys had finished their bird-like lunches and were playing at and around the table in the Cour Vendôme, just off the Carre d’Or. The shops surrounding the square were all closed for lunch, and most of the store managers were eating outside as well and chatting with the boys in a mixture of French, English and Franglais as they searched for buried treasure in the outdoor couch cushions. François fell and hit his chin, splitting it wide open and chipping a tooth. The elapsed time from the moment of impact to the time he was stitched up in the ER was 19 minutes, a record we couldn’t have beat at home in NYC. We knew that on a Saturday afternoon in St. Barths during a music festival our best bet was the ER at the local hospital, and knew where it was and with whom to talk once we arrived. Why did we know all this? Because of François, of course! Two years earlier, we’d wound up in ER when a bizarre staph infection developed on his legs and the little man had a very large blister on his toe that had needed lancing. On the day of the exploding chin incident, François got laughing gas, three stitches and the only thing that required any sort of delay was getting through to our pediatrician in NYC to confirm, as we’d thought, that he’d already had his first tetanus shot. While Simon was in the operating room with François, I took Johan to the hospital playroom we’d discovered during our previous visit. We were back in the restaurant to finish lunch within the hour, with pretty much everyone we’d seen earlier still there to congratulate François on his newest war wound and to show him the underside of their own chins. I’m beginning to think everyone in the world except Simon has a scar under their chin. I know I do.
Sometimes there’s drama even when the incident isn’t hospital-worthy. I had to decide whether to lose my mind or laugh when Johan got a 24-hour bug. It was nothing as far as illnesses go, just a high-ish fever and a sleepy, lethargic kid. Johan didn’t want to take the Tylenol I wanted to give him, either in chewable or syrup form. François turned into a big brother cheerleader and coaxed Johan through the process, proclaiming that the chewables tasted like lollipops, pouring the syrup and showing him the gummy vitamin he could have if he took the medicine. Success, and Johan was completely willing to take the second dose later that night. Fast-forward to the next day. François woke up dizzy and got worse as the day progressed. When I brought out the medicine, Johan reached for François’ hand and said, “It’s your turn!” Seems like a great case of brothers helping brothers, right? Well, no. Uh-uh. François wanted no part of that medicine, and kicked, screamed, had to be held down by me and our nanny, spat the medicine across the room and had a big, long timeout. Never mind that he’d spent the previous day gently coaxing Johan to do it, François would rather be closed up in his room for half an hour than take the same medicine. The chewables that the day before had tasted “like lollipops” were now “horrible, nasty things that taste like poo.” Ah, the logic of a five-year-old. In the end, I had to threaten to tell Daddy, a card I hate playing because I don’t like the good cop/bad cop routine, but it worked. During the drama, Johan cocked his head at François and asked, “Why don’t you make sense?” Very good question, kid!
 
Simon
After becoming parents we realized that we not only worried about keeping the kids safe, but that we had a responsibility to them if something happened to us as well. When François was born we still hadn’t got around to writing a will. And prior to that it really wasn’t that necessary in that in New York State, a childless spouse, unless a will states otherwise, inherits the deceased spouse’s estate. After his birth, and while we should have written wills, the main thing we did was to ask my younger brother, Adam, and his wife, Vanessa, to adopt François in the event of our simultaneous death, which was amended to include Johan after he came along. Adam and Vanessa have a son, Ties, who is just 16 days older than François. Also to that end, when we took François to Australia at three months old, I took Alex on a tour of the school I’d attended in Brisbane, Queensland with a view to let her see the fantastic academic record and facilities and to enroll François for entry in 2016. Private school registration in Australia is very different than in NYC in that it is basically necessary to enroll your children at birth to guarantee entry, and we registered the names of first François, then Johan once he came along, in case we both died and they went to live in Australia.
 
Alex
It’s funny how giving life can make you think of death. Prior to becoming a parent I never gave it the slightest thought, beyond a random daydream of what my funeral might look like, complete with lots of big black hats and chanting.
It took a weekend trip to Israel for a Bar Mitzvah (where the boys weren’t coming) for us to finally work out our wills and contingency plans for exactly what would happen should either or both of us die (i.e., a plane crash or car accident involving both of us coming home to the boys, etc.). As we have no family in New York, it was particularly important to us to specify exactly whom should be notified if the worst happened, down to specifics such as who stays with the children while family flies in. We’ve only left the boys in New York twice, but thought it down to the last detail, such as airlines calling our nanny, our nanny calling my mother, etc. None of this is fun to think about, but having it done and copies sent to our executors made us breathe a bit easier. It only took us three years after having kids. Ahem.
 
Simon
The great strides in medical science in the last 100 plus years have meant that an awful lot of illnesses never happen, and so vaccinations, while not preventing accidents (this chapter’s sub-heading), do prevent illness and worse. However the advent of the Internet has added to the information about vaccinations and for every site out there stating how important these preventative measures are, there will always be another stating that having a vaccination for disease A may, or worse, will cause condition B.
Which brings me to the dreaded swine flu, or correctly named H1N1, strain that arrived in early 2009 followed by a huge media frenzy that only succeeded in whipping up unnecessary panic. In April 2009, when the disease first struck NYC, the panic was palpable. My mum called us from Australia (which at that stage was H1N1-free) wanting to know what emergency precautions we were taking. When I said none, other than normal good hygiene practices, she sounded a little scared. Summer came and the panic subsided, but warnings came that when winter approached H1N1 would be a real threat.
Six months later with both boys in school, we received a letter home from their school stating that all children were eligible to receive the H1N1 vaccination at school providing we authorized it. Neither Alex nor I were keen for them to have it, but I found myself scared that if we stopped them from having the vaccination that we’d never forgive ourselves if they did develop the flu. There seemed little recorded negative harm from getting the vaccination, but still we debated them getting it though eventually gave the authorization. When winter came, the hysteria died away. Many people have gotten the swine flu and not died or at least if they have died, the media isn’t screaming it from the rooftops like they once were.
We will probably never know whether they would have been better off being exposed to the virus and building their own antibodies or having the vaccination. Honestly deciding something like this is very much a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. But as long as you’ve thought long and hard about the decision, then no one can fault you for deciding either way.
TOP 10 THINGS WE DO IN A CRISIS:
 
10. Become a superhero and put a force field around anyone under four feet tall Seriously we canʹt insulate our kids forever They will fall get punched by a bully or spike a ridiculous fever someday We remind ourselves of this often
9. Surf the web for advances in technology—as soon as they make shoes with a tracking system in them Iʹm buying pairs!
8. Eventually (other parents please be faster than us!) we got all our contingency plans in order
7. Know what calms the kids down such as mak ing silly faces or reciting Shel Silverstein poetry backwards
6. We concentrate. Even if five minutes before hand weʹd been having a petty argument about what to order for lunch if an accident happens everyone has to drop what they are doing and help solve the problem
5. We trust our kids They are often rambunc tious but percent of the time when there’s a crisis they see our focus and snap into line
4. Since we have two kids we get one to help us with the other If we suddenly can’t see Johan the first person we ask is François. With two kids we have built in witnesses
3. We breathe We’re no good to the boys if we’ve passed out If there are two parents present at least one needs to remain calm
2 We listen to each other. If we donʹt, we get in each otherʹs way and lose valuable minutes/ seconds
1. We use the experience as a teaching tool after the fact Over a year later François is still careful running down hills and says “I don’t want to split my chin open again!”
 

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