Six Back in the City

Six in the city is back. No, I’m not talking about my blog. That would be kind of dorky. But literally, my six children are finally back in the city. The abnormal existence we had for two months, commuting four children ages 11 and under back and forth from Long Island to Manhattan so we could moderately expand our living space is over.

The days of feeling like I am waking my girls each morning to catch a Caribbean flight, to packing them a to-go bag of breakfast (waters, protein bars, microwave pancakes in a Ziploc, dry cereal, you name it), to having them all downstairs and dressed at 6:30 am, only to wait for their father (read: their driver) who somehow always seemed to be the last one ready, to picking them up at school at 4 or 4:30, racing to the car so we could try to beat the rush hour traffic—which we never did, since it is always rush hour on the Van Wyck—to making sure I had the right after school snacks for each child (all different snacks, of course, sold from four different stores), to getting home at 6:30 pm to say a quick hello and goodnight to my twins,  to then starting dinner, showers, and homework for everyone else, yes all that fun is over.

So we are now back to our physically normal lives—as New Yorkers--where it is easier to see how abnormal our life really is.  My oldest, who I know can read this blog so I will be careful, is on the threshold of full blown adolescence. I find that when she looks at me she often looks like she might have a kidney stone. Pain. Disgust. Repulsion. These are some of the emotions that seem to come to mind. (And remember, I am being careful). I remember those years so clearly myself, which only makes me more fearful of what lies ahead. I went through it, and my three sisters went through it. I know all too well the female adolescent talk, the female adolescent mind, the female adolescent mood swings. My husband does not. It is like she is speaking a foreign language, and he isn’t very good with other languages.  When he tries to talk to her, he might as well be speaking Mandarin.

Each night we get into bed, and surviving another irrational dialogue, we each sit in silence thinking the same thing—four more times. Four more girls who will go down this road too, two of them basically in the on deck circle. High school should be fun with a freshman, sophomore and senior girl all at once. I know already how much patience, calmness, understanding, Klonopin and scotch I will need.

I’m gonna gloss over children 2, 3, and 4 for a minute, since essentially they get glossed over very frequently. I know, sad but true. It’ll get better, I tell them and myself. The twins will get older, and the oldest will be out of the house one day. I’m an oldest child so I can say that.

Besides, the middle children will be better adjusted, I tell myself, so that I can believe my neglect is doing them a service. For example, my five year old now climbs up on the kitchen counter, gets herself a plate and microwaves her own Vitatop for breakfast. Then she fixes herself her morning cocktail of grape juice and seltzer. Independence is her only hope for survival, because at that hour I am also trying to deal with my twins, who are now moving around everywhere. She simply got tired of waiting for me to prepare her bowl of cereal.

Then there is my nine-year-old. “Mommy, I feel like you’re not really listening to me,” she says when she is telling me a 20 minute story about gymnastics or the book she might choose for her reading log (the story is of course only 2 minutes long but it’s the longest two minutes ever). “What did you say?” I say. And she says with an uncertain half-smile, “Are you kidding?” and I just laugh and say, “of course I’m kidding.” Then I ask Rob to find out the story I didn’t hear later that night, so I am all caught up.

“We’re supposed to do our reading out loud to you,” my 8-year-old tells me when I ask if she’s finished all her homework. “I know you know it. “ I tell her. Or on a good night I say, “Read it to me while I shower.”  

Then there are my twins. It’s so nice to actually see them again. During our stint in Long Island I saw them for a half hour in the morning and fifteen minutes before bedtime. Every time they saw me they said “bye,” since I was always leaving.  Or at least Eliana did. She is talking. Barry is not. But he is walking and she is not. I’ve said it before, but it seems to be becoming more and more true every day, they are the textbook definitions of “boy” and “girl.” When I say he walks, what I mean is that he runs, crashes into walls, rubs his head like humpty dumpty, laughs and gets back up to run. When I say she talks, she wakes up every morning and recites the name of every sister. Then asks for her “milk,” then asks to read “books” and at the appropriate time asks for “Cheerios.” He says “uh” for just about everything and “na na” when he knocks on the wall (I think he’s trying to say “knock knock”) which he loves to do either with his hand or more often his head. Most recently, we’ve actually had to remove the plastic crib protectors from his crib, the ones you put on when your child is biting the crib and eating the paint. Her crib doesn’t even have them, but his does, or at least did, until we discovered that he was pulling them off the crib rail and throwing them every morning at Eliana’s head.

But it’s all fun—except maybe for Eliana--and of course going by way too fast. I can’t believe my oldest is already at the point where she hates her parents and our presence anywhere she happens to be is social suicide. I can’t believe that my five year old is wearing a uniform to school and losing teeth (though she actually believes the school librarian is the tooth fairy so she’s not that grown up just yet). And I can’t believe that my twins look like toddlers already and not babies. Barry desperately needs a haircut. Every daughter I’ve had was bald till age three, but of course my only son has long curly locks. I don’t want to cut them, despite the many protests from other family members (and by other family members I of course mean my mother, who says, “you finally have a boy, and now you want him to look like a girl?”)

But I am not ready to take him to Cozy Cuts, have him sit and watch Yo Gabba Gabba, and come out looking like a little boy, (after of course choosing a toy that is double the price of the haircut.) I guess I want to hold on to this double babyhood a little longer, since before I know it, Eliana will be slamming doors in my face and yelling at me that I don’t understand anything, and Barry, well, everyone says boys are easier when they get older. We’ll have to see.

I just hope that in 15 years he’ll be the heartthrob of all of his sister’s friends, and while all of his sisters are complaining about me, he will be comparing all of the young girls he meets to his perfect mother.

One Year Down

My twins are one.  It was one year ago today that I was wheeled out of a delivery room with two babies, one in each arm, one boy and one girl. It was all a whirlwind of novelty—twins, a boy, finding myself as a mother of 6. As with so many experiences in life, in some ways, that momentous birth feels like it was yesterday, and in other ways it feels like a lifetime ago. The year has surely been a long one, a tough one, an exciting one, a trying one, an amazing one, a frustrating one, a scary one, a happy one, an impossible one, a humbling one—it’s been all those things and more. My husband can assure you, over the course of this year, I have pretty much experienced every nuance of the emotional spectrum we women are capable of.

Today, on my twins’ one year birthday, I can't help but look back, thinking about all the important lessons I’ve learned over the past year. And here they are:

1)   Six is a lot. This probably was obvious to most of you, but in case any of you weren’t sure, six children is a lot of frikkin children. You know you have a lot of children when the post office tells you that if you want to get passports for so many children, you need a private appointment. (Who even knew post offices make appointments? Don’t we just stand on line?) Or when the passport photo booth at CVS runs out of film when you come in with all your kids. You also know you have a lot of kids when on the one or two occasions you decide to drive them all someplace together, you realize a few minutes later in the store that you only see five of them and that you actually left one of the kids inside the car.  Which leads to lesson number 2.

2)   Cars don’t work for a family of 8. I struggled with this early on, as you might recall, even debating the Sprinter at one point. We ended up getting an 8-seater Yukon Denali. The XL (duh). The problem is my twins are out of the infant car seats, and the regular sized car seats—you know the ones they convince you to get that go up to like 80 pounds or some ridiculous weight that no child ever reaches who still belongs in a car seat—take up too much room, so that when both car seats are in the middle bench, the only way to get into the third bench is to dive from the middle row or dive from the trunk. That’s fine for my five year old Lily, but my 11-year-old Gabby does not appreciate that form of entering a car. And I can’t say I blame her. I don’t think families of 8 were meant to actually go anywhere together in a car.

But I’m not done with lesson number 2. A car for a family of eight is not an easy car to park. Again, this was probably obvious to most of you. Forget parallel parking this boat—where I use my rear-camera as much as possible and then often roll down my window and stick my head out as far as possible a la Ace Ventura, then stop just short of screaming “in case you’re behind me, please get out of my way, because I actually can’t see anything.” That’s not even what I’m talking about though. I’m talking about parking it in a New York City garage.

When I come into the city, I circle around for a spot on the street for about one minute (my husband circles for an hour), then I give up and head to the nearest lot. The minute they see me entering the parking lot, the crew all start waving their hands, in the motions of no, looking at me like I am trying to land a plane in their garage. Then the manager comes over, and says something like “I have no room for a car like this.” “Please, I will only be an hour or two,” I beg. “OK, but what are you going to give me?” He says. What does he mean? I’m thinking. “How much is it?“ I ask. He names some ridiculous number for which I almost could have taken a plane, and then adds, “but I take care of you, if you take care of me.” This is all sounding obscene, I know, but I’ve realized cars like mine are a whole other side business in parking garages. And I guess when I stop and think about it, I am a garage slut. I will pay anything to park.

3)   Moving is not easy with six kids. I guess my lessons are starting to have a common theme. We always move out of the city for the summer, but this year, our summer is slightly extended, as we’ve begun an apartment renovation, so that hopefully our six in the city can continue to squeeze in the city for many more years to come. So we actually had to move out of our apartment in May. The last time I had moved was eight years ago, or four kids ago. The owner of the first moving company who came to give me an estimate just kept shaking his head and staring at his notes, saying “don’t think I ever moved anyone with six kids before.” Really?” I asked as if six was the most normal number in the world. “That’s weird.” (We didn’t hire him.)

4)   Do not commute four children to school in New York City while based with twins in Long Island. This lesson is obviously not applicable to many people, but it is one we certainly learned the hard way. We thought commuting the girls for 19 days would be no biggie, but leaving at 6:30 am, returning at 6:30 pm, waiting around in various Starbucks and friends apartments until all four girls were done with after school activities during the four rainiest weeks New York City experienced this year was not as easy as I thought it would be. At least that part’s over for now, we’re settled here and school life is on hold till September. I was originally hoping to be back in my apartment for the Jewish holidays, but as this is my first experience with New York City construction, I am now hoping to be back for the Christian holidays.

5)   Boys are very different than girls. I know, obvious, but I grew up in a house of four sisters, no brothers. For the past ten years, I have had only daughters. Of course I have my father and my husband—it’s not like I’ve had no exposure to the male gender, but Barry is an entirely different species from his twin sister, Eliana. Let’s start with size—he looks like her older brother. People always stop me and ask me how many months apart they are. But forget looks.

She is the exact replica of the first four babies we made—sweet, easy, good sleeper, delicate, you put her down in her crib, she lies down, takes her burp cloth (that’s what my babies like to hold), puts her thumb in her mouth and goes to sleep. Barry? I try placing him down, but within seconds, like a jack-in-the-box, he jerks himself up, throws his burp cloths out of the crib and bashes his head against the crib until he tires himself out and then passes out.

She wakes up with a wet diaper, but all is perfectly contained inside her diaper. Barry? He has officially never come down in the morning in his pajama pants. He wakes up with a bigger pile of you know what in his diaper than you find in a horse stable. Most mornings I need to bathe him. I know what you’re thinking, but no, he’s already in size 6 diapers, Huggies, Pampers, Huggies overnights, I’ve tried it all. I’m about to order 7’s and from there we might need to consider Depends.

Eating habits? With her delicate fingers, Eliana places one piece of food in her mouth after the other, at a normal, healthy pace. Barry? Words like guzzle and shove are what come to mind. Problem is his hands are so fat, that so much food gets trapped between his fingers which he can’t even get to. We had a one year birthday party for them on Sunday and I gave them each a cupcake. It was the first time I handed them each a whole piece of food to handle themselves. It was like watching two different animals. She pecked at it like a little bird. He took an initial hesitant bite to check it out then picked it up and shoved the whole thing in his mouth like a lion seizing its prey. At one point he even tried to grab some of hers off her high chair.

Barry and Eliana—or Barriana as one of my friends likes to call them—are the example of nature versus nurture. I can vouch for the fact that they’ve been exposed to the same things in utero and out of utero, but their bodies, mannerisms, interests, strengths and personalities are so stereotypically textbook boy and girl. He is always sweating and itching. Her skin is as smooth as butter. She loves her tea set. He only wants to play with trucks. He is about to walk, she is about to be trampled on. Only difference I wouldn’t mind seeing reversed is that she is bald as a bat, and he has more hair than any of my other girls had at 2. Oh well. Hers will hopefully grow, and his can be cut.

6)   The shock has not worn off. As I think about the last thing I’ve learned this year, it is that at some point every single day I am still struck by the fact that there are two, that these two babies were both somehow conceived, developed, born, and are now celebrating the completion of their first year of life. Every morning when I open their door and look at two cribs, each with a baby sitting and waiting for me to get them, I hear those words flash through my head that I heard at my first sonogram—“I think there are two.” 

There is something indescribable about twins—watching the two of them eat side by side, watching the two of them play together and grab each other’s toys, watching them sit together in the back of my bike, listening to them babbling with each other on the monitor, watching them on the swings together. It was a hard year for sure, and I can only imagine how much strength and patience Rob and I are going to need for the next many years, but as this first birthday of theirs comes to a close, I can't help but feel what Frank Sinatra said so simply in his famous song, “It was a very good year.”

Happy birthday Barry and Ellie! 

Break a Leg

OK, my life has caught up to me. No time for silly jokes, and laughing about how crazy everything is with six kids while somehow finding time to sit down and write a post. Come to think of it, I really don’t sit down much anymore. I kind of fall down at the end of the day. Also, nothing has really seemed that funny to me recently. But I guess that’s what happens when two out of your six children are in leg casts. Yes, one-third of the Schwartz kids are down a leg.

My son Barry—one of the 9 month old twins—fell off a booster seat in Florida and broke his femur. “Welcome to having boys,” the doctor in the ER said to me. He is in a cast that goes from his toes to his diaper line. And Caroline, my 9 year old, is in one of those black Velcro support boots. I don’t really know exactly what she has. She hurt her foot in gymnastics, we think. The bone x-ray was clear, but the MRI showed something that the orthopedist said needed one of these boots. “She has a something something something itis of her cartilage,” was how I heard the orthopedist’s report. “Basically, it’s like a pothole,” he tried to explain to me in a language I would understand. Ok, thanks, that helps a lot.

“What happened to Caroline?” everyone is asking, and the honest answer is I have no clue. But, luckily, the orthopedist seems to feel she’ll be better in two weeks. 

Barry’s injury was scarier naturally since he’s a baby. The worst part though was that when he first flung himself down on the ground in a booster seat attached to a chair, he seemed ok. (Yes, he jerked himself forward and brought the whole chair down with him, while his dainty little sister looked on from her own booster seat with a puzzled expression that seemed to say, “what could possibly have led you to do that?”). Sure, he cried, but he did not have a bruise, he did not pass out, or vomit, or do any of the other things to make me think concussion, injury, get myself to an emergency room. He calmed down, had a bath, and went to sleep.

The next morning he started screaming, squeezing his eyes together like he was in agony. Something is majorly wrong with this child is all that was flashing through my head. My husband was on the beach with my other kids. Without a phone. I was in an apartment complex in Miami, where the onsite doctor was an herbalist who, the secretary told me, would love to help but was “in the middle of a conference” and passed along the message that I “should go right to the emergency room.” It’s great to have an on-site doctor.

I was an anxious wreck. I was convinced he was having some internal bleeding, some major head injury. I proceeded to the emergency room alone. I wanted my husband to come with me, to calm me down, to hold my hand and function for both of us if something was really wrong, but when you have six kids, you can’t take trips to the emergency room together. What are you going to do with the other 5? Especially the other 9 month old? You must divide and conquer.

The trip to the hospital seemed endless—but that might have been because the herbalist sent me to the wrong hospital at first. When I arrived at the right ER, almost an hour and a half later, I was rushed in. “Get a doctor in here fast.” “This child is not right.” “He doesn’t look good.” “Get him on a heart monitor.” These were the things the nurses and administrators said to me as I sat holding my crying son. I am going to pass out is all I was thinking. My heart was beating so fast. Then the doctor came in, started fiddling with Barry’s hands and legs and when he moved his right leg, he cringed and shrieked in pain. “I think he broke his leg,” he said, "let’s get an x-ray.” And the x-ray quickly confirmed it. He broke his femur. I was elated. A leg heals. He was going to be ok.

In the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, an amazing facility if any of you should ever need it, they put a temporary cast on him just to get us back to New York, where I could then go to a Manhattan orthopedist to oversee Barry’s full recovery. The nice thing about Florida is how close it is to New York, right? Wrong. Not this time. We were held on the runway for three hours—with a baby on each of our laps--and in case you weren’t sure, it’s not so easy holding a baby on your lap in an airplane seat when that baby has a broken leg. Oh, and the airline did not have any edible snack they could offer us or our kids—the last bags of pretzels were given to the row in front of us. Ouch. My older girls were so hungry they threw down a few pouches of the babies’ pear and mangos. Rob and I threw down double shots of vodka and Bloody Mary mix. Just to give you a sense of where my head was, I felt nothing. Rob fell asleep.

But eventually we got home. Barry’s now sporting a bright blue cast, in which all of the ladies in his life have signed their names. (His sisters really wanted me to get him a pink or purple one, but I refused.) Yes, it is hard to tolerate the smell of his foot, and every time I change his diaper and see the clearly discolored rim of foam by the diaper line, I want to throw up and rip it off, but I’m trying to be good. The orthopedist told me “it smells much better than most casts” and not to worry, “it’s just pee” that has left a brown residue on the cast. Yeah, right.

On a side note, Barry’s twin sister Eliana has actually blossomed during Barry’s limited activity. Normally the more animated of the two, Barry has been kind of pinned down, and Eliana has enjoyed her time in the spotlight.  I can’t help but notice how she has been showing off her rolling and crawling skills. She’s been bouncing extra high in the ultrasaucer, flailing her legs in excitement whenever anyone comes into the room, and splashing around a little extra in the bath while Barry looks on enviously from the bath rug during his boring sponge bath.

Unfortunately for Elie, Barry’s femur seems to be healing quicker than they thought and the cast should come off this week. As soon as I have finished bathing him four or five times, and then another four or five times, and soaking his unwashed leg and foot for several hours, I will allow him to resume the activity of a normal almost- 10-month old boy.  Judging from the power of his fall, and from the way he is managing to still get around in a cast, I will brace myself for the future. And so should Eliana.

Oh and did I mention that Barry has also made several trips to the allergist during these weeks of immobility? First he had a bad reaction to eggs. Then to mustard. Turns out he’s allergic to those and to cashews and pistachios too. He also has really bad eczema, and most recently he’s had a bad case of pink eye. Calm, quiet and happy Eliana has no known allergies, and not a rough patch of skin on her body.

But, don’t get me wrong, it’s great to finally have a boy.  

Parental Misguidance

Last Saturday night, my 10-year-old Gabby went to a friend’s house for a sleepover. At about 8 pm, I saw an incoming call from the friend’s mother. Uh oh. Is it the puke virus? The flu?

   

“Hey,” the mom asked me, who happens to also be a friend of mine, “the girls want to watch ‘Pitch Perfect.’ The preview doesn’t really look that appropriate, but Gabby said she’s seen it already, so I figure you’ve seen it and that it’s totally fine.”

“Um. Well, yeah,” I started stuttering, “yes, Gabby has seen it, but I actually haven’t.” I didn’t tell her that I didn’t even watch the preview, and that I had just let her watch it since another friend told me she had allowed her kids to see it. I also didn’t tell her that not only had Gabby seen it, but so had Gabby’s younger sisters, ages 8, 7 and 4. The twins have not seen it yet. 

 

The fact is I was busted. Outed as a mom who clearly does not carefully preview the movies and TV selections that her children watch.

I used to be better. When Gabby was 3, even 4, she was watching all the typical preschool programming—“the Wiggles” (are they around still?), “Dora,” “Blue’s Clues,” “Barney,” you name it. Six years later, my now four-year-old Lily would laugh at those shows and say they’re “for babies.” Actually she’d say they’re “faw babies.” She prefers shows like “H2O,” “iCarly,” “Ant Farm,” and even some reality TV programming like “Dance Moms” and “Cake Boss.”

This is what happens between child number 1 and child number 4. We become more lax as parents, and our younger children get exposed sooner to the things we never would have shown our first.  It’s always funny when Lily, our four year old, has a playdate with a child who is an oldest and asks her friend if he or she would like to watch “Victorious” or “True Jackson VP”.  On a recent playdate, I tried to convince Lily and her friend to watch the “Smurfs” movie, but Lily looked at me in shock and said, “hey, this doesn’t have real people.” It’s been two years since she’s seen animation. Even my twins seem to have quickly outgrown Baby Einstein, and are already obsessed with “Yo Gabba Gabba” and “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.” Yes, they’re very advanced.

Obviously, these changes are my fault, or my husband’s fault. Truth is, I could argue he is more to blame, because he seems to enjoy these shows as much as my girls do. Sunday mornings when all my kids sit around in a TV coma, he is sitting right there with them, holding Barron’s but not actually reading it, laughing at Gibby in “iCarly,” or as entranced in an episode of “Good Luck Charlie” “Austin and Ally” or “Big Time Rush” as my kids are. You know the trance—no one seems to hear anything I’m saying and I have to repeat my questions or commands five times before anyone actually responds.

The fact is with TV shows my husband and I tend to scan an episode or two before allowing our kids to watch. And there are a few we have put on an off-limits list. Shows like “Homeland” and “Californication.” No, seriously, we don’t let them watch “House of Anubis” either. I’m sure there are others, I just can’t think of them right now.    

But movies are harder to monitor for some reason. When I was a child and my parents went out on a Saturday night, a movie was something we had to go to a video store to rent. Today, movies are a click away. Between DVR, Netflix, Apple TV, my children are constantly “searching” for movies, spending hours scanning the selections as if they might uncover some unknown masterpiece of tween cinema. 

And the truth is, it’s hard to know what is appropriate or not. I had encouraged them to watch the movie “Big” but my seven year old told me the next day it really wasn’t appropriate for them. You know you’re doing a great job when your child has to tell you that the movie you selected really wasn’t appropriate for young children. I said, “What do you mean? ‘Big’ is the kind of movie you should be watching.” And then they replayed for me a scene I had forgotten about when Tom Hanks discovers or should I say uncovers the bra of his co-star during a slow dance.

“Don’t worry mom,” my seven-year-old Sophie reassured me. “We covered Lily’s eyes.”

I had a similar experience with the movie “Overboard”—a movie I had loved as a child. I bought it for my kids for a long car trip we had last year, and, you know how it is in the car, our kids are watching what we in the front seats can only hear. Well, I heard one character asking his wife “why she’s not in the mood tonight? Does she have her period?”—“What’s a period mom?” Sophie asked. I heard another character discussing a young boy who likes to look at pornographic magazines in the bathroom. And another scene where a pair of women’s lace underwear are found in the dashboard of a car. That was a good parenting moment.

And one last bust—and perhaps the biggest in recent memory-- was “Look Who’s Talking.” Again, I remembered it as a cute kids movie. In fact, we decided to all watch it together for a family movie night. From the very first scene—which clearly I had forgotten about—when we watch a pool of sperm swim towards and penetrate an egg, Rob and I spent the majority of the movie answering a lot of questions. “What are those fish?” What are they trying to squeeze into?” “Hey I thought you had to be married to have a baby”? and “How can you be married to one person but have a baby with another person?”

All Rob said to me was, “thank God you were the one who suggested that movie. If I had suggested it, you would not be speaking to me right now.” Correct.

Thankfully there are some helpful tips and websites for parents like me—sites like Commonsensemedia.org for those parents without any real common sense for these things. And in fact it came in handy for me a few months ago when one of my daughters coerced me into the most dreaded parenting event of all time, the “sleepover party,” and where in what seemed like a cute idea she wished to watch the move “Sleepover.” (If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry. It was not nominated for any Oscars.) I had said no to the movie “Sleepover” a few times because I really didn’t know anything about it—see, I told you there was a time I was better, maybe, come to think of it, it was right before I had children 5 and 6. And then the begging started. The whining that “So and so has seen it, and this one’s seen it, and this one saw it at this one’s house,” you know the drill. Your child convinces you that every other kid in the world has seen it, and you are the one, and only one outlying villainous mother. What can I say? I caved. I said fine. That, and it was rated PG, so I figured how bad could it be?

Luckily I spoke to my sister that night moments before I was about to begin the movie, and she told me about commonsensemedia.org. Here’s what I read, as a roomful of girls sat in the dark, munching on popcorn and waiting for me to press play.

Parents need to know that this movie is filled with the kind of parental concerns that aren't factored into the MPAA's rating system. The main characters -- young teenage girls -- sneak out of the house after promising not to. They make a date with a man they met on the Internet with the plan of getting him to buy one of them a drink. They then sneak into a club and drink alcohol. One girl secretly watches a boy undress (from the rear, nudity off screen). They vandalize property, imprison a security guard, drive without licenses, make an overweight girl feel bad about herself. Many characters lie, including adults. One of the girls loses a boyfriend by refusing to "hook up" with him but apparently brags to her friends that she did. There is also some bathroom humor and intrusive product placement.

Sounds perfect for an 8 year old. (Don’t worry, I didn’t show it. I had to bribe the hell out of my daughter afterwards, but I did hold my ground. )

The website also gives parents a scale for measuring “positive messages” “positive role models” sexual content, violence, drug abuse, bad language and consumerism. “Sleepover” scored a 0 for positive messages and positive role models, but racked up three stars for sex and drugs and alcohol.

I know that access to media is at my children’s fingertips, and that every day, some new show, or movie, or app, or digital form of communication is popping up. There’s no question, as parents it is hard to stay on top of it all, hard to know what is ok, what is a little advanced but essentially harmless, what is completely out of whack.

The good news is, according to commensensemedia.org, “Pitch Perfect” scores four points (out of 5) for positive messages and three for positive role models. See, I knew what I was doing when I let 4-year-old Lily watch it, even though it’s rated PG-13, and she now runs around calling everyone “Fat Amy.”