combined influences may be hazardous to your health

Last Sunday, the pink one came home from church with a Noah’s Ark associated craft and various flashcards with different animals on them. Earlier this week, she could be found curled up against her father watching the closing few minutes of Rocky Balboa. On the surface, these two things might not be related, but be warned. Your five year old, when exposed to these influences may begin asking multitudinous questions about death and cemeteries. She also might be inclined to make up interesting flashcard games. What begins as a simple flashcard memory game might turn into the following musical:

Setting: The pig card stands before the assembled animal council near the entrance to the ark.

Pig: I came back because you missed me, missed me.

Other animals (chanting): Missed me, missed me, missed me….

Pig: I was sad because my mommy died.

Other animals: She died, she died.

Pig: But now I have a new mom, and she’s cool, and she’s a robot…a robot.

Other animals: Robot pig, robot pig…

I am sorry to say I missed the closing scenes as it was at this point that I had to quickly excuse myself from the room.

eighteen days

Just eighteen days…

You came out kicking. It was the strangest sensation to feel you pushing your way out of me so fiercely after taking your sweet time working your way down the birth canal. You let me push for two hours before you got frustrated with me and took matters into your own hands (or feet as the case may be). You have always had that fiery independent streak (and the habit of ‘humoring’ me).

I have watched you grow – have been astounded by the beauty of your greatest strengths – have been saddened by the lingering nature of some of your greatest weaknesses. You certainly inherited the best and worst of both your father and me. I can’t decide which frustrates me more. But overall, I am so very proud of you.

In a moment, the gift God gave through His Son was made more tangible to me – the very moment of your arrival in the world.

Some of the subsequent days took eons to elapse - perhaps most notably those days filled with colic, temper tantrums, and natural investigative curiosity. But suddenly, I look back and you are no longer behind me or looking up to me as you hold my hand. You still hold my hand from time to time, but I look up to you as I struggle to keep up with your rapid pace. Suddenly you have a driver’s license, business cards, a college I.D., and a voter’s identification card. Suddenly you are about to be…

Eighteen.

refrigerator humor

Upon the plastic baggy which encases the instigator's left-over french fries are written the following words:

S's: Touch this and you will be mauled by 3,000 poodles, 3 spotless giraffes, and a farting leopard!

Need I say more?

short talk

A few quick quotes for the week (short a few since I am down two kids for the week):

The Pink One (during prayers): And God, help us get big and strong, and get a gun (after her oldest brothers came home with Nerf guns).

Spongebob(age 6): When I get older I am going to build a rocket and go to sleep while it flies to Jupiter. And I'll see Benjamin (cat who died over a year ago). Pause. That's where all of the dead cats live.

The Instigator (age 14): Me like meat.

The N boy (16): I had to do something with myself; playing computer games gives me a headache when I'm sick (after basket weaving a coaster and a placemat from the disposable tape measures they have at IKEA).

The Dad: I'm out of Iced Tea.

The Mom: I wish one of us had possessed a neatness gene to pass on to at least some of our kids.

Bonus:
A silly song the girl likes at bedtime:
Pink likes chocolate milk, chocolate milk, chocolate milk
Pink likes chocolate milk, yes she does.

This then has to be repeated for every member of the family.

In order to save time last night, I tried to get out of it by singing, "Everybody likes chocolate milk..." but as I was leaving the room, Spongebob called after me:

"Mom, you forgot about the part that says 'Everybody likes chocolate milk except for the lactose intolerant people. But if they try to drink it anyway, they die'."

the retrospective – a.k.a. how to put a positive spin on procrastination

I’ve been running abysmally late on everything for the past year, so it should come as no surprise to me (or anyone else for that matter) that I am just getting around to writing The Great Mother’s Day Post. Mother’s Day has never been a big ordeal for me as a mom. Usually it is spent honoring my own mother and my mother-in-law. This year, my mother-in-law’s back surgery and my mother’s work schedule provided an opportunity for the entire first half of the day to be spent with just my husband and children (and a few hundred other church goers for a few hours - if anyone is keeping track of statistics). Should you be one of the aforementioned statisticians, take note. You must subtract one of my children from your log books as he couldn’t be bothered to get dressed in time to leave the house (or even come down the stairs).

After church, the children decided to take me out to lunch (on their father’s dime, of course) to the only local non-fast-food restaurant with no waiting time, where we feasted to our hearts’ content on mediocre fare. After the meal, I was sent off to the seclusion of the automobile while the brood descended (with force) upon the nearby discount store. My eyes were duly averted until the homeward journey was accomplished whereupon I was gifted with multiple blessings.





Things started out on a traditional path. The abandoned sixteen year old had ridden his razor a mile and a half to the grocery store where he purchased a single rose (somewhat wilted from the return journey through un-seasonal heat). The girlchild proudly handed over a flower of a different sort.

I have often marveled at the offbeat style my children possess. They are not normal by any stretch of the imagination (though enough ordinariness adorns them in day to day life to present a somewhat convincing portrayal of sanity).





Spongebob puffed up his six year old chest with great pride and anticipation as he handed me the gift he had chosen.









The freckled one grinned as he surrendered his personal selection, chosen with great care and the whole of his eleven year old heart.







My little leprechaun practically leapt from his eight year old skin as he produced his offering.




The sly, almost hidden grin of The Instigator – age 14 – caught my periphery briefly before his token was revealed.







And alas, the pink one had yet another gracious honorarium.













It is, therefore, with great pride that I present to you
The Face of a Mother:











Of particular interest to me are the words upon the pink one’s final gift - not clearly visible in these blurry excuses for photography: "Catapults babies up to 15 feet! Note: Real babies should never be catapulted or thrown."

four

fade to pink

wasn’t it yesterday
that I enveloped you -
my blood-pulsing breath
enfolding you in a cocoon
of protection?

my soul holds you, still,
tenaciously,
but I can no longer contain you

you break free
in hair flung
butterfly ballet abandonment.


wasn’t it yesterday
that I marveled
as a second x chromosome
made you silence
the ranks
with your femininity?


you set up your throne
and proceeded to charm
your royal subjects
into willful servitude.

wasn’t it yesterday
that you teetered uncertainly
on upright legs
with Columbus-like spirit?


discovery voyages
launched you forward
into the era of
independence.

wasn’t it yesterday
that you were
merely
my baby girl?

-tle 2007

Happy birthday forever-baby. I love you.

another round of pink

me: C'mon kids! Get your shoes, socks, and jackets on. We have to leave for piano in TWO MINUTES!!!

pink: Here my shoesocks.

as we are attempting to put them on

pink: T wear shoesock?

me: Yes.

pink: And J, and M, and S?

me: Yes.

pink: How bout dad?

me: I assume he wore socks to work today.

pink: And underwear?

I guess you had to be there.

conversationally speaking

The hubster and I try very hard to instill in our children a sense of the absurd. This is to ensure that therapists will have certain employment many years into the future. Here is a snippet of conversation I overheard last evening as the hub-man was putting Happy Feet into the DVD player.

Pink(excitedly): Dad, dat Happy Feet?

Dad: No, this is Sad Feet. They take the penguins' little feet and chop them all off right about there (indicating ankle height).

Pink (still in good humor): Oh, den dey go like dis.

Here she exhibited a rather comical rendition of a crippled Happy Feet tap dance - I wish the video camera had been near at hand.

On a side note, I have been pondering the idea of giving super secret screen names to each member of the brat household (in the somewhat overly optimistic view that it might aid people outside of the family circle in actually keeping track of them all. But who am I kidding? I can't even remember their real names! Yes, I am kidding - pretty much). Any suggestions will be considered (or at least enjoyed for their amusemesnt factor).

the tangential nature of the brat

I am rejoicing because I have just placed each of the kidlets into their own bed for a night which will, with any luck, be consumed by sleeping. This means, dear reader, I may actually get to sleep in a bed tonight myself – the first time in almost a week.

As I made my way down the stairs, containing my jubilance to prevent the accompanying sounds of leapage from rousing the newly bedded beasties, I allowed my brain to consider the possibility of attempting school tomorrow. I think I have given myself permission to take the day off even if they are all back to form. At least two of them really need an additional day to just recover from the exhaustive nature of ailing. Besides, it is Friday, and what is the sense of having a one day school week when all would be much more pleasantly served by having a brief respite before the complete immersion of Monday morning? But then, no matter which decision I make, it will leave me with guilt. I am good at second-guessing my decisions, so I should be used to the resulting guilt by now, but acclimation to the discomforts of the psyche is not my strong suit.

Strangely, this very topic of guilt (and my ability to peruse a few blogs I only get to visit occasionally due to increased sit-down time this evening) led me on another tangent. As a teacher, I am alternately amused and frustrated by my children’s inability to write about any subject for more than the minimum number of words. The amusement comes from their tendency to cover the integral point of the assignment in such short order. The frustration comes from knowing that this brevity will not serve them well on SATs and in a college setting.

Pursuing this thought, I pondered the beautifully written and lengthy blog entries I admire from so many. Part of me envies that ability. Me? I am prone to long-windedness or silence in conversation (virtual or otherwise), but when I write - be it poetry, blog entries, or little thoughts to myself - I tend toward minimalism. I say what I say using few words. Granted, I regularly use more words than I actually need, because it is often fun to do so, but I tend to skip the connective thought tissue. Part of me recognizes this as a potential strength. Anyway, the point here is that the very habit which frustrates me in my children’s writing is the defining particle of my own.

The tangent continues. Isn’t it often the case that the very trait which draws us to someone else is also the source of our greatest irritation in them? My oldest son is very inventive of spirit. This is a wonderful thing. And yet, when my husband brought home the MBTI description of his “work personality,” it contained a line that brought this son’s image to mind so clearly. To paraphrase: When asking a child of this temperament type to take out the garbage, he is likely to spend hours designing a new and better way of getting garbage to the curb that does not involve human intervention, but never actually doing the chore. Yeah, the irritant bares its fangs – same trait, different angle.

This then leads me to a memory of that very child’s 3rd or 4th birthday on which my mother gifted him with pulleys and levers per my request (after he had used an enormous ball of yarn, a tricycle, and several dining room chairs to create a complex alarm system for the lower level of our house). Have I created the monster or merely given him room to realize his potential? When did I stop allowing that kind of latitude? Was it when the population density increased, thus decreasing the square footage available for abstract thought? Was it when my body started getting older and less able to avoid the unexpected chaos? Have I truly stopped allowing it at all?

This then leads into thoughts of crackers; after all, cracker crumbs do get everywhere. Crackers bring the thoughts neatly back to the stomach bug, and I don’t even remember seeing Kevin Bacon anywhere along the way.

ego strokes

So, the pink one is still ill, but she started acting human again around four this afternoon. Sitting on my lap this evening, the following conversation took place:

Pink: Mom, you girl wike me?

Me: Yes, I'm a girl like you.

Pink: You buttercup like me too!

You see, her father calls her buttercup from time to time.

Time passed, and I was off doing laundry. The hubster called me into the room to update me on the continuation of this conversation.

Dad: Are you my little buttercup?

Pink: No!

Dad: You're not my little buttercup?

Pink: No! Mom's you buttercup first, then me buttercup!

The man says, "See she's got the pecking order straight." We will here let our ego inflate ignoring the fact that he did follow up with, "Even if it doesn't seem that way most of the time."

sing a new song

My mother gave us a bag of bunny shaped marshmallows. We all know the importance of doing your research, and this is integral background information.




Mr. T (a.k.a. SpongeBob):

Three little bunnies jumping on the bed
One fell off and landed in my mouth.

Two little bunnies jumping on the bed
One flew off and bounced off my nose
So I ate him.

Lots of little bunnies jumped in the pool
And then they had to go wee-wee.

growing up

The N boy got his license. I think I talked so much about its impending arrival that I forgot to mention when it actually happened. Today, I let him drive himself (and three of his brothers) to piano lessons for the first time while I stayed home.

Somehow a pro and con table just doesn't do this situation justice.

Goodness gracious, I guess I have to grow up sometime soon.

ingenuity

egads! This was written yesterday, but I have been unable to sign in. In fact, I only managed to sign in today when leaving a comment to someone else.

Ice is no fun to walk on, drive on, or shovel. If it is ice from freezing rain, it does make the world even more beautiful – encasing it in shining crystal. Ice from sleet is crunchy, white, and looks like snow – you just don’t sink when you walk on it. It also offers the eye something to focus upon while buried in spackle, primer, paint, and exhaustion.

Last night, five of the kids seized upon the opportunity to use their snow saucers in the hour before bedtime. Off they rambled to what they term OG hill (It is in the yard of an “old guy” who lets them use it). Shortly after leaving, N reappeared with the pink one. She had pronounced the outside world “too cold” for her tastes. In her place, he departed with a raft which has somehow remained inflated since summer.

I thought perhaps the raft was going to be used in some sort of tandem-sliding exercise, and thought no more of it. As I looked out the window soon after, the real use of the misplaced floatation device became clear. The hill was so slippery that one child was stationed at the bottom with the raft which they would use to smash into their descending sibling to facilitate stoppage. Now that’s what I call ingenuity.

Today, the freckled one (M) could be seen using the same raft to teach our neighbor’s 18 month old not to fear sledding. He pulled her around her yard, down small hills, around in circles – both of them giggling every step of the way. Now that’s what Valentine’s Day is all about!

P.S. Trim painting tomorrow and flooring Friday. We MAY just be back in our room by the weekend.

P.P.S. So sorry I missed bread this week.

P.P.P.S. I am attaching a group of poems written about 22 years ago because they are seasonably appropriate (though somewhat depressing).

Reflections on Snow

a.
Starting with
unique white flakes
blanketing
dirt & ugliness.
The dirt seeps through
and white
turns gray.
Man’s efforts -
blackness from the core.
Away on a mountain,
untouched,
the white remains.
That’s what you do
for us, Lord.

b.
Ice, snow, more ice -
rock salt, sand, cat litter,
shovel sounds,
tires skid,
sirens - a fall, a crash -
another day.
Will winter never end?

c.
Snow -
delicate, soft, white -
harmless from picture windows,
chills, freezes, kills
outside.

the years of living dangerously

As N drove the Daddy’s car home from the local wholesale club, the following conversation could be overheard in my vehicle.






S: Mom is really aging ten years for every birthday.

J: So she is really 410 years old.

Me: And I don’t look a day over 399.

S: I thought you were 800, but I wasn’t going to say anything.

M: We should take you to the Antiques Roadshow.

Me: I probably wouldn’t be worth very much.

J: But you’re old. And everything old goes to the Antiques Roadshow.

S: And don’t worry, I wouldn’t sell you (under his breath) for less than $300.

Me: Yeah, I’d like to see you find someone to do all of your laundry and cooking for that, even if I have been slacking lately.

M: Mom’s a slacker.

T: I’d never sell mom. She’s MY mom!

J: But we could get a Wii.

R, respectfully, remained silent during this exchange. After all, we of the double X club need to stick together.

things that make you feel old

N: Hey, mom, you said I couldn't drive your car until after I passed driver's ed, right?

Guess what he did yesterday? I suppose it doesn't help that my birthday hit then too.

My mother brought me a journal she has been writing for me since 1996. My tangents do come naturally. Many pages have scrawled notes up the sides. Other pages are no more than scattered collections of thoughts with no clear beginning or end. Reading it has served as a reminder of just how quickly time passes.

I blinked, and suddenly I have two children who are taller than me. I fell asleep for an hour or so, and my baby turned into an almost 4 year old. I turned my back for just a second...

T drew a picture of us together. I am not quite sure which stick figure is which, but we are holding hands.

T: And guess what, Mommy? (lowering voice to a whisper) We kissed each other!

sometimes you don’t have to look very far

So, I always try to find the humor in a situation lest I lose what little sanity I have left. As the title says, sometimes it doesn’t take that much effort.

oedipal complexes

T, age 5 came into the bathroom. I was sitting down watching R wash her hands. Neither of them is allowed in the bathroom alone while washing because of several recent events (more on that later).

T: I need a kiss.

Me: Hold on just a minute, I am helping your sister wash her hands.

Apparently, this wasn’t good enough. He came over, placed a hand on either side of my head, turned my face toward him, and planted a big old kiss on my lips. He turned around to leave the room, but just before exiting, his voice rang back to me, “And that is how you kiss a woman!”

on why we should be product testers

If anything can last a year in our house, it definitely deserves the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. We are not a gentle family. Through the years, many incidences have revealed to us just how creative our children can be.

Plastic golf clubs and golf balls – please do not ever consider giving them to my family. Within two days of receipt, they will be turned into weapons. After repeated blows to the head and body of any passing sibling, the end falls off of the club, and little jagged bits of plastic stare angrily at knit fabrics, furniture, and delicate skin. Although they are confiscated by loving parents and thrown into the nearest trash receptacle, the sharp edges invariably pierce the plastic, and the prying eyes of children discover their bounty and spirit it away for use in the next surprise attack.

Safely suction-cup-ended arrows make wonderful ceiling tile darts once the suction is removed. K’nex and Lego Technics may be formed into various weapons of mass destruction – the self-loading, quadruple band, rubber-band revolver being but one example.

A metal pot with large wooden spoon is especially dangerous. Not only can the spoon be wielded as a club, it can also be launched. Should the fancy strike, the pot can be placed on the unsuspecting head of a sibling then repeatedly bashed by the spoon and other heavy toys.

Markers, crayons, play-dough, scissors – these are kept under lock and key.

Imagine my joy when they invented the Aqua doodle pad. Here was a toy that was soft. You write on it with markers filled with water. The lids screw on these markers in a counter-clockwise direction to confuse and slow down the average small child. Should the child write on a surface other than the pad, it is only water, and causes a lot less damage than that sharpie I am still trying to remove from the mini-blinds, pocket doors, and radiator covers.

So, before taking five minutes Friday to get an update on one of those doctor’s appointments I was worried about (update posted below), I made sure that the little ones were playing with the aqua doodle. They had recently discovered they could use sponges on them to get a different effect, and had also recently learned to unscrew the marker caps, but I still figured it was safer than, say, a densely packed flying missile (also known in other parts of the world as a book).

Five minutes. That’s all. I was only out of the room for 300 seconds.

Somehow it never occurred to me to lock the bathtub toys in my personal safe. That might be because I don’t have one.

I walked into the room to see R gingerly carrying an overflowing plastic watering can toward the doodle pad. A quick look around the room clued me in to the fact that this was at least the sixth such trip. T, ever the gallant brother, squealed out, “She did it!” before rapidly disappearing from the lower level of the house.

And don’t get me started on what they can do with bubbles.