A Nice Lady

I do not enjoy taking my children shopping. There. I said it out loud. It's the truth, I avoid it as much as possible, strategically planning my errands so that I can go with as few offspring as possible. It keeps me a little more sane. There are those times that it cannot be avoided and I am always a little bit intimidated by the unpredictableness of toddler and preschooler behavior. Often they surprise me and behave as angels complete with shining halos. Often they do not. On occasion I have left a store and sat in my car and tried unsuccessfully to hold back tears of humiliation. Just keeping it real, Yo. There are probably those of you out there who have your troops marching in perfect order behind you with smiles on their little faces as you browse the aisles. God Bless you. Are they robots? Where can I order some?

Today I was pleasantly surprised. Not because the under five set behaved themselves but because of the kindness of a stranger. I needed to run a quick errand in a not so child friendly store. I thought I had all my bases covered: Toby in the wrap, Gemma in the umbrella stroller, Jack......well, he was roaming free but I had given him the pep talk. There is a little pep talk I give before entering a store. It goes something like this: "We are going to be good in the store today aren't we? Let's listen to our Mommy and this will be FUN!" Inside I am mentally crossing all of my fingers and toes, hoping the trip doesn't take a turn for the worse.

We made our selections and all was going well. I was proud of the crew for behaving themselves so I offered a treat. (keep your bribery opinions to yourselves please, desperate times call for desperate measures. I like to think of it as "rewarding positive behavior") The choices were: a Laffy Taffy or a Sugar Daddy. Two perfectly acceptable options. But not in Jack's mind. He was going for the mother load. He eyed the candy display and saw many, many more appealing choices. The tantrum began. I was paying at the time and there he was, throwing a fit on the floor at my feet. He is the king of ultimatums and he was dishing them out left and right. I stayed calm and I stuck to my guns (although I was thinking some of my own ultimatums inside my pretty little head). At one point I was handing over my debit card to the cashier while trying to wrangle the little mustang in my arms. He went all wet noodle on me.

Many times in the past these kinds of scenes have gone down and I have just cringed on the inside. I look around and start to worry about what everyone around me is thinking. "Just give him the candy so he will shut up." or "Get your kid under control lady." or who knows what. This morning the cashier made my day. "You are doing great." she said. Just four little words that gave me the energy to go round two with my little munchkin. I mumbled something about winning the battle, finished my purchase, and herded Mr. Meltdown out the door to the car. It was at that point that I realized that Gemma was holding two little stuffed animals that we didn't pay for. We turned around and went back in, returning them to the display. The ladies behind the counter chuckled. It took me a few minutes to get the kiddos buckled into their respective carseats. As I started to pull out of my parking spot, the lady who had checked me out came running out of the store. I had left my debit card on the counter. I laughed and made a comment about it being "One of those days" and she said the sweetest thing. She told me that she had been so distracted by the beautiful way that I handled my sugar-hungry hooligan (not her exact words) that she hadn't noticed my card sitting on the counter. It made my day. I pulled out of that parking lot with a renewed confidence in my parenting skills and not one single tear in my eye.

I don't tell you this story to brag myself up. I am completely aware that there have been plenty of times that I have caved and given into my preschooler's demands so that we could just get out of the store without causing a scene. There have been other times that I have held my ground only to fall apart in the car. I tell this story to show the power of an encouraging word. That lady behind the counter spoke just the right thing to me at just the right time. We have all seen a kid melting down in public before, sometimes we look away and other times we stare. How about a kind word to the mother? It just might make her day.

A Fashion No-no

Gemma,

I know you are only two and that you haven't fully developed your own sense of style yet. (although your hot pink cowboy boots are fab) I just wanted to give you a heads up. Fluorescent yellow is not one of the hot new colors for fall. Especially as a lip gloss. So you can stop smearing it all over your mouth every time you find a highlighter pen laying around. Just trying to help you out hun.

Mom

Bikes

I had to document the moment.
For once they weren't strewn all over the driveway and front lawn.

Barf

Disclaimer: this post is not for the faint of heart. If you have a weak stomach, click away right now.

Mother's have a sixth sense. They can be standing in the kitchen, hear a noise coming from upstairs, and within a split second they can recognize it as a child vomiting from the top bunk. It is a very distinct sound.

This evening, after all the kids were in bed, Nate and I heard that very sound. We sprinted upstairs to find a top bunk dweller losing their supper right over the edge of the bed, directly onto the mattress that we pull out from under the bunk beds. Thankfully the mattress was uninhabited. The little one who usually sleeps on that mattress had decided to climb in bed with the person who sleeps in the bottom bunk. Good decision. Very, very good decision. That situation had the potential to be life scarring. Therapy could have been needed. Can you imagine?

I set to work on the grand cleanup and tried to look for the silver lining. Here is what I came up with.

1. The mattress that the barf landed on was empty of all sleeping humans. *phew*
2. The mattress is a crib mattress and is covered in plastic. YAY!
3. Halleluia for steam cleaners.
4. Halleluia for clorox wipes.

It is in these moments that big questions must be answered. One being, "Did these sheets just become disposable?" Yes. I believe they did.

*As soon as I finished typing the last word, middle bunk kid barfed all over the bedroom floor. I am not even kidding. Forget everything I just said about silver lining. There is nothing good about barf. This is going to be an awesome night, I can tell.*

Warning:

This baby exceeds the daily recommended allowance of cuteness.

Preschool Television- Stimulating The Minds of Mothers

So I was just doing dishes in the kitchen and from the next room I overheard Barney singing with the little children "If you're happy and you know it..." That's when the thought crossed my mind, "Can you be happy and NOT know it?" Seriously people, I need to get out of the house.

Puzzles

Being a mother requires the ability to put together unusual puzzles.

You start off simple, poring over and analyzing every word on the directions to the pregnancy test. What does one line mean? What do two mean? Did I do it right? Is that a faint pink I see or am I just imagining it.

Then you jump to a super advanced puzzle. The re-assembly of a newly washed car seat. Difficulty level: 10. Heaven forbid your little precious should spill ketchup while eating french fries in the van, or that they should barf. It's inevitable, you will eventually have to take that thing apart and wash it and then pull out your hair putting it back together.

There are the obvious puzzles involved in parenting. Little wooden ones with pictures of animals and numbers, then later 250, 500, and 1,000 piece puzzles. The kind you set up the card table for. The kind that toddlers love to ruin.

But yesterday I attempted a new kind of puzzle in my mothering journey. The challenge? Inserting football pads into football pants. The seventh grade football season has begun and after two weeks of practice, the pants finally left their home in the locker to be de-grass stained for the first game. I'm sure once they left the locker room, they breathed deeply of the fresh air, no longer surrounded by the stench of pubescent seventh grade boy sweat. I hit them hard with the Oxy-Clean and once they were clean I realized that they needed to be reassembled. A belt and seven interestingly shaped pads were involved and I won! Another puzzle conquered.

Someone is Six

Happy Birthday to the Tadpole Hunter.

Update. Boring.

So it turns out that when they said "washes out in 28 shampoos", they really meant 3 shampoos. The red is mostly gone. I can never hold red. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. *sniffle* You would think I would have figured that out after this many attempts at being a redhead. If only my grandma's red hair gene could have been dominant. Darn it.

(See how I'm ignoring all requests for photos? I'm doing a great job aren't I? Besides, who wants to see a photo of some one's hair that was kind of reddish for 3 days or so and now is just boring old brown again.)

Soooo, anyway. What else? Oh, I'm scarce around these parts because I'm deeply entrenched in what I like to call the Organizational Blitz of 2007. It has been a long time coming. It seems that over the summer, little naughty elves invaded my home and wreaked all kinds of havoc. Oh wait, those elves are my children. The clutter! It was suffocating me. And you know that I can tolerate a whole lot of unorganization, so it must have been pretty bad. Yes it was. I attacked it head on. Wait, no I didn't. I avoided it for days and ended up just jumping from task to task to task like a pinball machine, never completing a single thing I started. That actually is a really great description of most of my days, a pinball machine. Obviously I'm the ball, just bouncing around making annoying dinging noises. Finally something clicked and the stars aligned, and I got it together, at least a little bit. I'm pretty happy with some of the progress I have made. I've still got a lot to do but I am encouraged in my efforts.

Example:

One day last week on an impulse I decided that the green couch just had to go so I drug it out the front door by myself. Oh, and Jack helped. (he's 4) Just about the time I had it stuck on it's side halfway in and halfway out, and right after I had just climbed literally on my hands and knees out the door, under the couch, my neighbor showed up and asked if I needed any help. Um yes. Yes I do. This is a neighbor I have never met before. I introduced myself in all my sweaty, stinky, glory, because I had just spent a good ten minutes in a full contact wrestling match with a large piece of furniture. He helped me haul that couch out to the garage where it still sits, minus the cushions, the kids are using those for a fort. We are a little bit ghetto.

Who am I kidding, we are a lot ghetto.