Category: Kids, kids, kids

. . . and I’m not talking about baby goats.

Well, blow me down!

I am a big whiner.  I have realized how ungrateful I am for the simple niceties I enjoy in my everyday life.  I assume I will have light when I flip a switch, and heat blowing from the vents.  I take hot water for granted.  I believe I deserve a high speed internet connection and a cute pink cell phone that works at all times.

And then, all of that is blown away by a super-duper windstorm and I wonder how people survive without modern technology?  My husband happened to bring home a battery-powered radio yesterday and I’d filled the two flashlights I could find with fresh batteries and placed three tea-light candle-holders with new candles on the counter.  Still.  When the power snapped off at 9:52 p.m., somehow it took me by surprise and I did not take it well.  For one thing, the kids had been up late watching “The Polar Express” on television and they had just turned it off.  Even my daughter was still awake and I had had my fill of children.  In fact, I was full to overflowing with the abundance of children.

I had so been looking forward to stretching out in the recliner with a bowl of fat-free popcorn, watching “Real World Road Rules Challenge” on MTV.  (My husband cannot stop mocking me for watching shows on MTV.  I say, hey, at least I’m not watching city council meetings on television like some people.)  Anyway, instead of watching television, I crawled into bed at a little after ten and listened to some crime show in CBS on the radio.  Then, I listened to the news at 11:00 p.m. on the radio.  Then, I listened to David Letterman on the radio as I half-slept the fitful sleep of the terrified.

Because I was terrified.  I’ve always been a big fan of storms, especially noisy storms.  I once slept my way through a hurricane.  One time, I ignored a tornado watch or warning–I can’t remember which–because I wasn’t the least bit worried.  (And I didn’t want to wake my babies and take them to the basement.)  I love storms.  I used to love storms.  I loved storms until last February when a sudden, frigid, mighty wind blew through my little town and knocked over trees right and left as if they were toothpicks stuck in a sandcastle.  A very big tree hit my neighbor’s house and her neighbor’s house, too and very nearly crushed her van while she and her children sat in it. 

Now, I’m not such a big fan of storms.  And while I listened to the news on the radio and they mentioned trees falling and gusts up to 40, 50, 60, 90 miles an hour, I feared that the enormous bursts of wind rattling my windows would knock over the trees that stand in my neighbor’s backyard. And those trees, naturally, would fall onto my roof, causing extensive damage and–just for fun–kill me.

My husband went downstairs to sleep, but I stubbornly stayed upstairs, near my two youngest children.  And I worried.  I fretted.  I could feel adrenaline coursing through my veins and my heart pumping extra hard.  I tried to do that deep breathing thing to fake myself into calmness, but really, I just knew that for sure, a tree would crash down on my house.  How much does it cost to repair a broken house?  Probably more than it costs to repair broken teeth and frankly, we don’t have the money.

Oh, and speaking of money and repairs . . . before the power went off, I noticed a wet spot on my  bedroom ceiling, a little smaller than my fist.  Yes, just what we need . . . a leaky ceiling!  Which means a leaky roof!  Which means I’m going to go sell my plasma and then my hair and eventually my kidneys.  What next?  Oh, strike that.  I didn’t ask.  I don’t want to know.

So, I hardly slept all night, but somehow I was asleep when morning came.  I was in a dream, apparently in New York and my husband had rented me a hotel room for $499 and I couldn’t get to it and furthermore, FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE DOLLARS?  Are you INSANE? 

The kids I babysit arrived right on time . . . moms and dads have to work, even if the power’s gone off.  So, I leaped from bed, ran my hands through my troubled hair and opened the front door to welcome them.  My phones didn’t work.  The temperature in the house had dipped to a chilly sixty degrees.  I took a fast shower, thankful for the hot water stored in the tank, and dressed warmly.  And so the day began.

My husband went to buy flashlights and Duraflame logs, which provide light but no heat in our worthless glass-front fireplace.  He bought milk and turkey lunch-meat, donuts and bread, crackers and summer sausage.  He rocks.  Even though I was completely crabby to him when he was here and he make a crack about never being able to retire because I am so unpleasant to be around.  Well, it’s true.  PMS happened to coincide with the absence of electricity and my lack of sleep.  I wish I could get away from me, too.

I spent the morning tidying the house . . . because if we were going to be without power for a second night, we needed to be able to walk without stumbling over things.  And because I needed some order around here.  So I cleaned up the boys’ room and piled all the laundry in one place and put away all the toys that have migrated to all corners of the house.  I also made the boys do two lessons of math so we’d be done with the unit before Christmas break next week. 

The boys were outside cleaning up the branches and mess from the storm (orders from their dad, ha ha!) and I even went out there and in a big, dramatic huff, showed them how to do it.  While I was straightening up my daughter’s room (she finds it necessary to empty her toy-box and pull all the videos from their cases at least once every two weeks), the power came back on!  Which was a direct result of my husband returning home with the aforementioned flashlights, batteries and logs and telling me, “We probably won’t have power for a second night.”  If only he’d done all that sooner!  Who knew he had such power? 

Anyway, so the kids let out a great whoop of celebration and came tumbling into the house–including two extra kids–and I started the dishwasher and the clothes washer and dryer and fixed myself a giant glass of Diet Coke and turned the heat up a notch. 

I have never been so happy to have electricity as I was today after being without it for thirteen hours and twenty-two minutes.  And I am extremely grateful that I wasn’t crushed in my sleep by a tall Douglas Fir and that the wet spot on the ceiling only got a tiny bit bigger overnight and that the rain has stopped and the sun is sort of shining through thin clouds today.  Oh, and the fact that tomorrow is Saturday?  I am delirious with joy.

Now, if I could just get all these kids (my four, two babysittees, four neighborhood boys) quiet, how great would that be?  Ha ha.  A girl can dream.

Predicting the Future

I’ll be cooking a complete Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow from the turkey right down to the pecan pie.  My husband will wander into the kitchen with words of cheer and then disappear to watch football again.  My daughter will come in every seven minutes and ask for snacks.  She’ll nibble one bite out of each offering, then discard it on a coffee table somewhere.  The boys will take reluctant turns on computer games and Nintendo and I will holler at them, “CLOSE THE DOOR!” because they will be loud.  One or all of them will offer to help me, but when I offer jobs, they will disappear again except for the one boy who loves green bean casserole who will take great pride in preparing it himself.  

My back will be sore by the time I’m done mashing potatoes and stirring gravy and opening cans of black olives.  My fingers will likely be burnt and possibly cut.  I will have pondered the upcoming work accompanying the next holiday and grown weary just considering it.

We will all sit around the table and then I’ll get up three or seven times to retrieve something I’ve forgotten or didn’t realize we’d need, like ketchup.  My daughter will eat two bites of turkey and thirteen black olives.  The boys will each eat more rolls than I can count.  Rain will fall.  Wind will blow.

And I will be so thankful for this family God gave me, for the reliability of them, for the uniqueness of each kid and for the calmness of the man I married. 

And then I will be thankful that it’s over.  And I will read the newspaper, including all the ads and consider the wisdom or folly of arising before dark to shop with hoards of other sleep-deprived shoppers.

But first, I’ll put the pecan pie and the crustless pumpkin pie away so I can sleep before the Great Day of Cooking begins.

Rambling commentary I blame on cabin fever.

Do people really lay awake and look at the ceiling at night?  I have never done that.  I might be awake, but I always close my eyes at night, whether or not I’m asleep.

Here’s yet another New York Times article about mothers in which I am not quoted.  It’s just another example of what happens when you don’t drink to cope with your children, I guess.  (Not only are you unpopular among the cool mothers and assumed to be judgmental, but when you use donuts to self-medicate instead of booze, you get fat.  Where is the article about mothers who use brownies to get them through another dreary afternoon?) 

For instance:

Happy-hour play dates are here. Between runs to soccer and ballet classes, fund-raisers and homework projects, some stay-at-home mothers are gobbling brownies at afternoon spa parties, nibbling homemade chocolate chip cookies at play groups and toting pints of Ben & Jerry’s premium ice cream and can of Pringles to parks and friends’ decks while their children frolic nearby.

(See?  So not cool to overeat if you’re a mom.  Much better to get tipsy.) 

I was able to sleep in today (until 7:41 a.m., which is kind of funny considering “sleeping in” used to mean something entirely different).  We had a cabin-fever kind of day, stuck inside because of the rain and wind and circumstances.  A child I babysat arrived at 10:30 a.m. and I assumed he’d be with me all day–he left a couple of hours later.  Another set of kids was due to arrive at 1:00 p.m., but they never did . . . to my daughter’s great dismay.  (She didn’t take the news of the cancellation very well.  “When are they coming?” she kept asking, even though I told her they weren’t.)

The afternoon was full of boys.  Four neighborhood boys were in and out, leaving a trail of Douglas fir needles and damp footprints.  One of my boys left at about 4:00 p.m. for a birthday party . . . but still, I had six boys here playing video games and computer games and making so much noise I kept yelling, “CLOSE THE DOOR!  CLOSE THE DOOR!” 

Not that my day was void of accomplishment.  Oh no, not at all.  I cleaned out my laundry room (so that’s where those Judo pants were!) and also the boys’ bathroom.  I know you are impressed . . . and if you’d seen the bathroom before I held my breath and scrubbed, you’d be even more impressed.  (And I have a cold.  Be impressed.  Be very impressed.)

Tomorrow, I’m taking the children out of the house.  The boys don’t know it yet, but we’re going to a big rummage sale.  I may regret this adventure, but at least I will not go insane a la Jack Torrance.

Oh, and I have to ask if anyone else’s kids are ready for Christmas.  My four-year old daughter has a plan.  She intends to give Santa Claus a present (dollies and stuffed animals already stuffed in a festive gift bag), and then ask him if she can go to the North Pole.  “He’ll say yes, Mom.” 

This amuses me because I make a point of never bringing up Santa Claus, never taking my children for pictures with Santa Claus, never leaving any presents under the tree from Santa Claus and never including Santa Claus in any of our celebrations. 

And yet, my daughter follows in the footsteps of her siblings who were all fervent believers in the jolly white-bearded guy.

Finally, this is the stupidest investigation of all time.  Vanessa Minnillo dons a “fat suit”–which transforms her into a *gasp* size 12–and catapults her into the hell of being “Ugly Vanessa” (aka normal life for a great majority of women.)  The fact that they need to do some “investigation” to learn about how people are treated who are not television-beautiful makes me want to slap some producer somewhere who came up with this nonsense.  

And Vanessa certainly didn’t look “ugly” even with the “fat suit” (SIZE 12!  Reality check in aisle seven, please!).  It took her six hours to look like a normal person instead of a thin beauty. 

Get a grip, television-producer people.  Aren’t there some celebrity divorces to cover or something?  Can’t we just hear more about Danny Bonaduce? 

My Four-Year Old

My daughter thought 6:12 a.m. was a fine time to wake up.  I thought not, so I rocked her for two minutes and put her back to bed.  I think she woke up because she was cold.  She was cold because she refused a blanket last night because she is four years old and very silly.

She also plays in the backyard without a jacket, even when it’s less than fifty degrees.  How a child with absolute no body fat can stand the chill is a mystery I have yet to solve, but perhaps it has to do with her constant motion.  She is a child who cannot be still.

My other children were so easy to distract with the magic hynoptist, the television set.  She has no favorite show, though she does watch Spongebob every night before falling asleep.  I can’t depend on any show to catch her attention during the day.  My boys were a different story–turn on the television and they’d go into a trance when they were young.

When my daughter takes off her clothes, she is careful to take remove them without turning them inside out.  Then she lays them out on the floor, smoothing them flat and straight.  She even does this with socks and underpants, which is an endearing quirk.  (I also make sure my clothes are not turned inside out when I remove them.  What?  Doesn’t everybody?)

I love to call her “sweetie pie” and “baby girl” but she always corrects me and says, “I am not a sweetie pie!  I am Grace!”  She has no idea she has a middle name or a last name and refused to believe me tonight when I suggested the possibility.

She stopped napping for four months when she was a year old.  That about killed me.  She was the kind of baby who insisted on being carried all the time.  She did not tolerate bouncy seats or swings.  She did not allow anyone to hold her but me.  She cried when people looked at her too closely. 

The fact that she begs to go visit her friends or her grandma is something of an unexpected development.  I never thought she’d want to leave my side, even for a couple of hours.  Then again, I never thought she’d sleep through the night.

But she does.  And one day she’ll know her middle name and she’ll pierce her ears and go on a date and pick a graduate school and buy a house. 

When that happens, I am going straight over where I will ask for a banana, eat one bite and discard it on the coffee table.  Then I am going to yank all the cushions off the couch and jump onto them as if I am a world-class gymnast.  I will also wake her up at 6:12 a.m. and ask if I can watch television and then sneeze in her face and drink her Diet Coke.

Then, maybe, we’ll be even.

Time to Build an Ark

I live in the Pacific Northwest but this is ridiculous!  We’re on our third straight day of heavy rain–all the rivers are swollen and threatening to spill over their banks, puddles cover roadways.  The meteorologists call it “The Pineapple Express,” which apparently means it’s raining cats and pineapples, or something like that.

No, really, it’s some tropical jet stream bringing rain straight from Hawaii.  Or something.

Personally, I enjoy listening to relentless rain.  I opened the kitchen window to the noisy gusts of wind.  I just don’t want to get wet, so I haven’t been outside all day.

The children came prancing into the room this afternoon, telling me, “Mom, we’re pretending to be someone else!” 

I said, “Oh yeah?  Who are you pretending to be?”

The four-year old boy twirled and said, “I am pretending to be a boy who can ride a skateboard!”

And my four-year old daughter pointed to her head and exclaimed, “And I am pretending to be a girl with a heart in my head!”

The boy said, “And I am a boy with a brain in his head!” 

Well.  Okay, then.

My daughter spent her morning taping things to her giant box.  I love how much peace a roll of Scotch tape can buy a mom. 

 

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And then they all climbed inside to giggle and squirm.  This picture was taken in the middle of the day.  See how gloomy it is here?

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And the rain continues to fall.  (For once, I’m happy I don’t live on a river.)

I already voted. Stop calling me.

P1010006_2.JPGThis picture does not illustrate my post, but aren’t they cute?

*  *  *

I brought home two refrigerator boxes for my kids to play with.  Last night, they built a hut out of a Papasan chair turned upside down and tonight they mentioned that they needed a way to make another room.  I thought of the refrigerator boxes I’d left at church when we didn’t need them for Vacation Bible School last summer.

So I went to church tonight to skulk around the storage room to retrieve the boxes.  They weren’t there, so I tried all the other nooks and crannies in search of them.  I ended up in the church garage and stood in one spot scanning in vain for the boxes.  Then, just as in a horror movie, I looked up and spotted the refrigerator boxes directly above my head, lurking like some monster in the rafters.

I’m a relatively tall girl, so I managed to finagle them down without breaking my neck.

My family room floor is now wall-to-wall cardboard and I can see that the weekend will be filled with flashlights and pillows and hiding spaces, which is a perfect way to spend a rainy weekend if you are a kid.

*  *  *

For the record, if I get another recorded political telephone call I may scream.  Why do politicians think they might influence my vote with a recorded telemarketing call?  I already voted anyway–in my district, we vote with absentee ballots.  So stop calling me!  I am also sick to death of political ads on television.  I can’t wait until the election is over.  At this point, I don’t even care about the outcome.  I just want the ads to stop. 

And with that, this comes to an abrupt end.  I am so happy the weekend is imminent, even though rain is destined to fall endlessly and I will spend two hours at a chlorine-scented birthday party.

Untitled Just Because

Today the half-day of school was canceled because the power was out at the school.  However, we had power here at home.  So, all my boys had the day off and they spent their free time bickering, arguing and annoying one another and thus, annoying me.

I made the 13-year old twins watch “Schoolhouse Rock” on DVD as their “school” for the day.  And later, they chose to watch a Disney movie, “Robin Hood,” for awhile.  My daughter spent most of her time this morning outside, chasing and running and pretending.  Despite the fifty-something degree temperatures, she refused to wear even a jacket.  This child does not get cold.

I spent my day pondering the absence of the word “flang” in the English language.  If you have “sing, sang, sung,” why don’t you have “fling, flang, flung”?  I cannot let this conundrum go.

Stream of Consciousness, Mom-Style

I should say something.  Or answer some of the 151 email in my box.  (Is “email” the plural of “email”?  Or would it be “emails”?  Stuff to ponder.) 

Or I could work on one of the Bible-time costumes I’m in charge of creating for the Saturday night extravaganza.  I came up with something unbelievably creative to wear–you’ll just have to wait so it doesn’t spoil the surprise–and also, my husband will be wearing something spiffy, but I have to create both of them.  (Get to, have to, what’s the difference?)

But not today.

My husband’s making dinner tonight and furthermore, he bought a blender so he could make the boys milkshakes for dessert.  When he slid the box onto the kitchen counter, I flung open (fling?  flang?  flung?) the cupboard door and said, “But we have an awesome blender, right there!”  An Oster, for the record, a shiny silver one.  He said, “The boys said ours doesn’t work and I said, “It does work!  It works perfectly!”  And he said, “Dear, don’t spoil our fun,” and “The kids are only home for a few short years,” and I shut up.

Now, we own two blenders.  Too bad we don’t drink Margaritas. 

Um, so, earlier today, just after I finished posting on my other blog, my daughter began banging on the patio door, hysterical and screaming.  I jumped to the door in one giant leap and opened it . . . she was yelling about her friend who had a bee in his shoe and he ambled and sobbed, apparently incoherent with terror. 

“Is it still in there?” I asked.

He shook his head, clutched a rock and drooled as he cried louder.  I sat him on the stair, intending to take off his shoes to check for a sting and found two wasps clinging to the crotch of his pants.  I swept them off and yanked him away from the stairs because another wasp dive-bombed us.  My daughter, meanwhile, is unharmed, yet is shrieking with sympathy terror.  The boy continued to scream.

I shoved my daughter inside, then pulled the boy in and closed the door.  I said again, “Is the bee in your shoe?”  And he said, “No!” but pointed to his waist.  I said, “Did it sting you there?” and he nodded and a bit of drool dripped down.  I pulled the waistband down for a good look and there was a live wasp, crawling out of his pants.

I screamed, my daughter screamed louder, the boy cried out in greater fear.  I opened the door and dragged him out, closing my daughter inside.  I pulled his clothes off, leaving only his Spiderman underpants.  Then back inside the house.

I was examining the place where he was stung and asked him if his mouth itched.  (He’s a very allergic kid and I was afraid he’d have a bad reaction.)  The phone rang, so I answered and with racing heart, began telling my husband what had happened.  We were still all breathless from the excitement.

And then I felt a sting on the top of my foot.  I said, “I just got stung!”  I knew immediately, even though I had never before been stung in my 41 years on this earth.  I was wearing black, wool, plush scuff-type slippers, so I began to smash my right foot on top of my left foot to kill the wasp which had to be inside my slipper.  Then I opened the door, kicked my slippers outside and peeled off my sock.

Ouch!  That hurt!  A wasp must have burrowed into my slipper while I was outside flicking other wasps off the boy.

When I took him to the kitchen to get a band-aid (a cure-all for every sort of injury if you are four years old), I found Solarcaine, so sprayed a little on my foot to see whether it would numb the pain.  It helped a bit, so I prepared to spray the boy’s stung spot and my daughter burst into fresh, loud sobs–“DON’T SPRAY HIM!  DON’T SPRAY HIM!”  She thought it would hurt.

The boy began to cry afresh, too.

But I sprayed him.  He assured her it didn’t hurt.

(I just heard a neighbor say to my boys, “Are you going to come to my birthday party?”  My boy says, “When?” and the neighbor says, “Today!” and something about Chuck-E-Cheese’s.  Uh, hello?  No advanced warning?  No.  I don’t think so.)

My foot still hurts.  Perhaps I ought to start drinking Margaritas.

Brains or Hearts?

Four-year old Grace and her friend, a boy her age, sat at the kitchen table, snacking and chatting.  I stood at the sink, washing dishes.  I heard her say, “I don’t have a brain!”

I looked over and said, “Yes, you do!  Everyone has a brain!”

“No,” she said, matter of fact.  “Girls do not have brains.”

Taken aback, I said, “Girls do not have brains?”

“No,” she continued.  “Girls have hearts.  Boys have brains.”

“Do boys have hearts?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

I chided, “Well, really, everyone has a heart and everyone has a brain.”

“No,” she insisted.  “Girls have hearts.  Boys have brains.”

My girl is working to set back the feminist movement one hundred years.

This startles me because I have always viewed myself as a Smart Girl.  I’ve never ever considered myself beautiful or kooky or adventurous.  I found my niche in life early on, possibly when I wrote and illustrated my own books about seals when I was a first grader.  Or maybe when I won all the classroom spelling bees as a fifth grader.  Or maybe when I was the first girl “to the moon,” when I learned my multiplication tables before everyone else in third grade.

My most-loved joke in college was when I called myself an airhead because I knew I was anything but.  My friend, Lisa, and I wore neon pink sweatshirts that proclaimed, “Airhead Alert!” which never failed to crack me up.  It was the ultimate sarcastic joke.

If I were cast in a movie, I’d be the sidekick, the smart friend in sensible shoes with good ideas.  That’s just who I am.  A smart girl.  The girls with brains.

And now, I have this funny daughter who has proclaimed that girls don’t have brains.  Girls have hearts.  I can’t even imagine how she came up with this bit of whimsy.  I do know better than to argue with her because you can’t argue with someone who has no brain.