by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Husband and I used to be in a band. Well, we technically still are. We just don’t ever play the songs we’re still writing, because we have six kids. But before those six kids, we played all over Texas and took a few tours through Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. We wrote our own songs and practiced every day and stayed up way too late playing gigs.
When the first son was born, we continued our pursuit, because we enjoyed doing it and wanted, secretly, to be rockstars. And Son #1 was super easy to pack up and take along with us, because he loved music and enjoyed meeting new people who fawned all over him and was amazingly tolerant of long trips.
Son #2 came along two years later, and it was still relatively easy. We just packed for two kids instead of one. We just brought a friend along who could watch the kids while we did our hour-long set on stage, and then I’d rescue the friend while Husband and the other band members went to talk to people at the merch table.
Then came son #3. I won’t say he meant to change everything. It’s just the logistics of it. When parents go from two to three kids, everything gets real. You’ve suddenly run out of hands. And eyes. And ability to focus.
Two weeks after he was born, we boarded a plane to fly to Arizona and record our third album, and we took them all with us so I could worry the whole time about what if the oldest wandered off when one of us wasn’t looking because the baby needed to be fed and he was still so tiny and cute and wonderful and I just couldn’t take my eyes off him but I also couldn’t take my eyes off the older walking ones. We made it, with 12 new gray hairs.
But when it came time to promote our album, here’s where the “we can still do this” really fell through. Because there aren’t a whole lot of people who enjoy watching a 3-year-old, a 16-month-old and a one-month-old. We tried to limp along for a while, and then the twins came along and life was completely over. Because twins.
Ever since I was a little kid I’ve wanted to be two things: a writer and a rock star. I get to be one of them, writing every single day of my life, and it’s bliss. And, for the other, well, this is all I got.
Being a rockstar used to mean fame.
I know it sounds shallow to put it like that, but doesn’t any performer who’s good at what they do dream of this? Packed crowds chanting the band’s name and singing along to songs with their camera phones as “lighters?” Fans wanting to meet us just to shake our hand or say a few words to us? People dancing in their places or moshing or whatever kids do these days, even if they can’t hear a note of the music because they’re screaming too loudly?
Actually, this sounds exactly like my house. There’s a packed crowd chanting my name when it’s time for dinner and I don’t even have anything started. There’s a line of kids wanting just a minute of our attention because they have to tell us their brother took the toy they were playing with and they’re really sad about that and they need help getting it back. And there are little boys dancing or moshing (mostly unintentionally, but this is what happens when you’re eight people in a small living room and Imagine Dragons is playing on Pandora) and screaming so loudly you can’t hear a note of the music because we’re playing one of the songs we wrote for them and they just want “If You’re Happy and You Know It” or the Kidz Bop version of anything Taylor Swift.
Being a rockstar used to mean wealth.
Another shallow one, I know. But we had dreams, you see. We would make the big bucks with just our music. Who gets to make the big bucks doing what they love? And we would use those big bucks to build schools for orphaned children and dig wells for the people who don’t have access to clean water, and after all that, we’d use the leftover funds for dinners out when we didn’t feel like cooking and a house with as many rooms as we needed and expensive parties.
I guess this one looks like my life today, too, because when I don’t feel like cooking there’s always a picnic dinner out at the park that we’ll pack ourselves (but it’s still not cooking!) and a house with…enough rooms and birthday parties at home with twenty 6-year-olds running wild on cake and cookies and lavender tea that’s supposed to balance those effects but doesn’t (expensive parties in terms of energy. They cost days.).
Being a rockstar used to mean writing original songs.
We dreamed of writing a new song every week and sharing it with the world. We dreamed of changing lives with our melodies. We dreamed of hearing those songs on the radio and imagining others singing along.
We still write original songs. It’s just that they’re mostly about farts and poop and cleaning too much earwax out of an ear. Everything a boy thinks is hilarious, but at least we’ve got our adoring (or laughing) fans. You won’t hear them on the radio, but you will hear them in stereo sound when you come for a visit.
Being a rockstar used to mean practicing a whole song without a kid interruption.
We used to be able to practice for two hours, uninterrupted, song after song after song, and this made us really, really good. We could take our time and run the parts that gave us trouble last week and perfect every song before we shared it with the world.
And I guess if you’re getting all technical we can still practice a song, or thirty seconds of it, give or take a few, without a kid interruption, and you do get really good at accommodating this sort of thing when you have kids. Husband and I can keep a conversation going for an entire day, even with ten thousand five-minute interruptions. We can even maintain it when the interruptions are things like “Why is my poop lime green” and “What happens when a bird crashes into the window, because one just did” and “I just answered the door and one of the twins ran out with a man I don’t know.” It’s quite a skill. So thanks, kids, for that valuable gift.
Being a rockstar used to mean a whole crew of roadies.
Roadies are people who carry all the heavy stuff and help set up the equipment and wait around until the show is over just so they can help some more. They’re pretty handy people.
And I suppose, in a way, I still have roadies, because when we go to the local museum, the 8-year-old does do the heavy lifting with those books he likes to bring anywhere, even though we didn’t ask him to bring them. And the 5-year-old will load up that backpack with a thousand stuffed animals he wanted to bring along so they could see the lions at the zoo, and he’ll carry it the whole time. And one of the 3-year-olds will always try to get the picnic lunch out of the car and accidentally dump it out on the sidewalk so the birds come swooping. I know. He’s just trying to help, like roadies do.
Being a rockstar used to mean a whole closet of cool clothes.
I thought long and hard about what I wanted to look like on stage. I was the only female in a band of males, and I needed to stand out. Be noticed. That meant bold colors and dramatic makeup and shoes that were comfortable but still said “Woman.”
And it’s true that I do wear a bright orange workout shirt about once a week with my uniform workout pants and I have gone way dramatic with the makeup and adopted the “naked face” look, and my shoes do say “Woman” because they’re fluorescent pink running shoes that allow me to chase after my 3-year-olds when they get a wild hair every other minute and decide they’re going to sprint in two different directions and see who Mama catches first. My cool clothes have just become be-prepared-to-run-at-all-times clothes.
Being a rockstar used to mean a glamorous life.
Of course we would meet all the famous people, like Simon Cowell or Ed Sheeran or maybe just Adam Sandler. We’d sit down to fancy dinners and wipe our mouths with silky napkins and engage in stimulating conversation. We would get in the car and cruise to a party at any hour of any day.
Okay, so, yes, I get to meet famous people like the 8-year-old’s principal or the 5-year-old’s best friend (he talks about her ALL THE TIME) and I get to sit down to a dinner of sun-roasted tomato parmesan pasta with the cloth napkins we made ourselves and engage in stimulating conversation like how we could do a sugar experiment with ice cream and root beer, because that’s what they did in class today and they DRANK IT ALL AND IT WAS SO YUMMY and now they can’t stay at the table because they have too much energy and they need to ruuuuuuunnnn. And even though it takes us three hours just to leave the house, we still get to go to the occasional party when the kids are invited, (because sitters for six kids are hard to find). What kind of person would want to party at all hours of the day, anyway? My kids are up all hours of the day. Midnight and I have become intimately familiar, and let me just tell you, he’s pretty exhausting.
I used to want to be a rockstar. And this is all I got.
But you know what? I don’t think this parenting gig was the short end of the stick at all. Mostly because I get to feel like a rockstar every single day. I feel like a rockstar when my kid is whining and I just can’t take it anymore and I miraculously don’t yell but calmly say that his whining makes me feel like the tea kettle that’s going off on the stove. I feel like a rockstar when I finally get dinner on the table without losing my mind from all the “I’m hungrys” following me around and not one of them complains about what we’re having for once. I feel like a rockstar every time I get out the door in the morning with all six kids dressed and wearing mostly matching shoes.
I feel like a rockstar when I climb out of bed after a night cleaning up puke. I feel like a rockstar when I remember my toothbrush on a trip, because I usually pack for the kids first. I feel like a rockstar when they smile at me after a long day like I’m the most important person in the world to them.
Every parent who is raising a human being to be a decent person is a rockstar, because we have legions of adoring fans (okay, a handful at the most), even if we’re the ones who chose them in the first place; and we have a glamorous life, even if it looks like eating dinner at the same table every night and parties at home and conversation about what they did in school today; and we have songs, every day, in all the spaces of life, because those songs are the voices of our children, chanting their demands and complaining about their problems and murmuring their “I love yous” when we most need them.
So what if I used to want to be a rockstar and this is all I got?
What I got is love and fun and adventure and life. So much more than I ever dared to dream.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Whether or not you want to become a parent is relatively easy to decide. Those tiny little babies. So cute. So cuddly. So snuggly and soft and warm. Smelling of…
Well, everything nice, of course.
So when it came time for Husband and me to decide we were ready to start a family, it wasn’t such a hard decision. I wanted one of those tiny cute cuddly babies. It was time.
What you don’t consider before you decide to have a baby is that one day they will be a willful 3-year-old. And then they’ll be a spirited 8-year-old. And then they’ll be, God help you, 13.
It’s not just the emotional and physical expenditure that will change as your tiny little baby who only wants to eat and sleep and poop and stays put wherever you lay him grows up. Your entire lifestyle will change. We weren’t ready for this. I don’t know if any parent is, because these are the things you don’t think about when all you can see is a cute little sweater vest that would be perfect for the first family portraits.
I think about them now. Every time I get a utility bill in the mail or shop for groceries or just try to leave the house.
What you don’t think about is that when your baby becomes a kid, there’s
1. The much higher utility bills.
You won’t notice this one right away. This will actually happen when your kid gets really good at turning on lights but doesn’t as quickly figure out how to turn them off. Or ever figure it out, which is more likely the case. Someday, when the baby is no longer a baby, he will also enjoy plugging up a toilet with toilet paper so he has to flush five times in a row and the toilet never fills up and it runs for half an hour before you notice. He’ll forget to completely turn off the bathroom faucet after he’s finally, finally, finally brushed his teeth after your thirtieth time asking, and it will run all night, because you were just too worn out to stumble out of your bed, again, to check. He’ll one day be 3 and think it’s funny to see your face turn purple when he sneaks into the backyard and turns on the hose, and the only way you know is when you’re going out to put the trash in the bin and you slip in a gigantic mud puddle and call Husband because a sprinkler has busted (Nope. It’s just the 3-year-old, watering the grass. For five hours).
Higher utility bills. There’s not much you can do about them, unless you just turn them all off and Little House on the Prairie it.
2. The grocery bill that will make you weep.
It doesn’t matter if you’re breastfeeding or bottle feeding, you are in for a treat. You won’t even recognize your grocery budget in a few years. Kids are always, always, always hungry, always, and you certainly don’t want them bumming food off their friends at school, because you know what happens when they get sugar in their system. (What happens? Read on.)
3. The fact that bouncing off the walls is a real thing.
You will watch them do it after attending their friends’ birthday parties. You’ll see the evidence in wall nicks and holes their hands accidentally made when they ran into it too hard, and you’ll make a mental note to fix it, but it will never happen. Because kids. And then you will vow never, ever to let them go to another birthday party. And then another invitation will come three days later, because they’re in kindergarten and all 25 students have birthdays, and they have to invite everyone in their class. And you will let him go, again.
4. The gross, gross and grosser.
You will do grosser things than you ever thought you’d do. Ever. Because sometimes there will be a little boy who took his favorite Lightning McQueen car to the potty with him, because Lightning “wanted to watch,” and now he’s sitting in the toilet your boy just went #2 in, and you will have to reach your hand into that stank and pull Lightning back out. Getting a new one just won’t do. Plus, remember the higher utility bills? Yeah, that goes for clogged pipes, too. Just close your eyes and fish it out. There’s soap for that. Lots and lots of soap.
You may also be sitting enjoying a lovely dinner with friends when your 18-month-old starts upchucking something that looks like a cross between a cauliflower smoothie and no-butter mashed potatoes, and, rather than let it fall on the floor and make someone else clean it up with their handy mop and bucket, your reflexes will make you catch it. In your hands. Your bare hands. Your bare hands that just stuck a fry in your mouth.
And you may quite possibly open a door to a poop explosion every other day if you have twins who think it’s funny to take their diapers off and time their bowel movements for the exact moment they’re supposed to be sleeping for naps, and you will have to scrub it off all the cracks they’ve made in their cribs. Don’t worry. There’s soap for that, too.
5. The energy it takes to keep a house tidy.
It’s not even worth it. They’ll just undo all your work anyway. Hang up their winter jacket on the peg where it goes? In five minutes they’ll just decide they want to wear it in the “fallish” weather that just blew in, bringing temperatures from 125 to 115 degrees. Get their school papers all organized and nice? They’ll just want to show you something they made in school today, and it’ll all end up on the floor anyway. Have a place for their shoes? Doesn’t matter. They won’t end up there. Just save your energy for other things. Like putting them back in bed four hundred times after lights out.
6. The paradoxical emotions.
There is the one minute where you feel angry enough to strangle your 3-year-old because he just, for the four billionth time, marked in a library book while you were watching, just to do it, and then there’s the moment (after 10 minutes of cool down and maybe a bottle glass of wine) when he brings you the library book and asks you to read to him, and his eyes are just so dang beautiful, and yes, of course you’ll do this for your precious little baby. There’s the second where you want to lock them out of your room forever and ever and ever because they keep coming in to ask questions like “Do penguins have knees” and “Why can’t we have four dogs” and “How did I get out of your body when I was a baby,” and all you know is you want to go to sleep, and then there is that other second where he comes in one more time and you take a deep breath and all he wants is another kiss and hug you don’t often get anymore because he’s getting too big too fast.
There’s the moment when you can’t stand the sight of him because he just ate his brother’s vitamins he knows he’s not supposed to touch because you’ve done this dance half a million times, and then there’s the other moment when you just can’t stand how much you love him.
You’ll get used to these moments as a parent.
7. The torturous road trips.
Soon, going anywhere outside a 10-mile radius of your home will feel like torture. This is mostly because of the question, “Are we almost there?” which will come out of their mouths exactly five minutes after packing in the car. And since you haven’t even left the driveway, you’ll know it’s going to be a really long trip. This question will be asked every other minute for as long as it takes to get you anywhere. So just keep it short, if you know what’s best for you. And if this question doesn’t bother you so much, there will be other things. I Spy, for example. And Disney songs. And farts in an enclosed space.
8. The impossible: Leaving the house.
You’re all dressed and put together and ready to go? All of you at the same time? Well, congratulations, because someone’s about to puke all over himself. You made it out to the car and everyone’s strapped? Someone will say his shoes aren’t actually in the van like he thought, and could you help him find a pair, and you’ll spend the next forty-five minutes looking for the matches to five lone shoes. You’re about to walk out the door on time for once? Someone will discover how to open their Thermos of milk and dump it all over their brother’s backside.
Late just comes with being a parent. Don’t let anyone tell you any different, and don’t let anyone make you feel guilty about it, either. They have no idea what it’s like to leave with your neanderthals in tow.
9. That feeling you get.
No, I’m not talking about the anger or the frustration or the fear that maybe we shouldn’t have done what we did. I mean the overwhelming emotion that hits us every time they’re doing something amazing or wonderful or they say something brilliant or funny or they’re just sitting there doing nothing. It’s that feeling of love that launches us through all these unforeseen challenges.
So I guess if I’m weighing the options, I’d have to say that The Feeling outweighs all the rest.
But ask me again in a few years, when my grocery bill is like a second mortgage.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
We’ve been working on manners in our house. This might seem like a losing battle with a bunch of boys who think it’s hilarious to arm-fart while they’re covering their mouth coughing, but nobody ever said I wasn’t up for a challenge. I am the only female in a household of seven males, after all. Challenge accepted.
By far the rudest people in my house are my 3-year-old twins.
They make demands, no matter how many times we tell them we’re not demand-givers. They brutally tell the truth (“Are you having another baby, Mama?” No, little devil sweet boy, that’s just the after-pregnancy pooch. Seven months later.). They pick up words from their older brothers and try to use them in sentences that don’t make sense (“I need very literally to the potty.” What does that even mean, son?). They love the word NO, in all caps. They have their own opinions about what they think should happen, and it’s not ever what you think should happen. Never.
If you have the great privilege of living with or caring for a 3-year-old on a daily basis, you’re probably very familiar with the following:
Me: Please put your shoes on. We need to take your brothers to school.
3-year-old: NO!
Me: Yes.
3-year-old: But I too tired.
Me: Okay. You can stay here and go to bed.
3-year-old: Actually I hungry.
Me: You just ate three eggs and a two pancakes. There’s nothing left.
3-year-old: But I firsty.
Me: You can get a drink at the water fountain after we drop your brothers off.
3-year-old: But there are crayons on the floor.
Me: I’m getting tired of your buts.
3-year-old: Mama! You said butt!
Me: Just get your shoes on.
3-year-old: NO!
On and on and on it goes, until I’m carrying a screaming child out of the house at 7:15 in the morning (sorry again, neighbors) because he wanted to put on his shoes himself and I had to do it.
It’s like talking to a completely incompetent human being. Oh, wait. Silly me. It’s not like. It is. BECAUSE 3-YEAR-OLDS ARE COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT HUMAN BEINGS.
You see, 3-year-olds aren’t all that great at remembering that there are other people in the world. They don’t really want to know how else anything is done besides the way they want to do it.
Me: You have to pull the tongue of the shoe out, you see? Your shoe magically fits now.
3-year-old (starting over): No! That’s not how you do it!
They can’t really compute that not everything in the world is going to go their way.
3-year-old: I want the purple plate. (Gets the blue plate, because a purple plate doesn’t even exist. Cries for the next half hour because of a plate that doesn’t exist).
They don’t know how to learn from their mistakes.
Me: Sit down. I don’t want you to fall.
(3-year-old stays standing and falls out of his chair, out of his brother’s chair and face first onto the hard tile floor. Console him and make sure he isn’t really hurt.)
Me: See. That wouldn’t have happened if you had been sitting down. Now get back in your seat and sit down on your bottom.
(Turn around to cut the last strawberries. Turn back around to see 3-year-old still standing in almost the exact position he was before, except this time he’s dancing on one foot).
I’ve discovered that finding humor in the speech mess-ups my 3-year-olds make is one of the only things that keeps me from walking out on them when they’re fighting for 45 minutes about whether the exact same Lightning McQueen cars are the dark red Lightning McQueen or the light red Lightning McQueen. (The answer is neither. They’re the EXACT SAME CAR.)
So I’ve made this handy little list so I can remember and laugh and find my way back into thanks for these two 3-year-olds who fill my house with mayhem laughter.
1. Demands.
These can sound calm, like a simple, “Get me some milk” or “I need my shoes” or “I want a peach.” Or they can come from a belligerent 3-year-old who’s been taught the correct way to ask but just won’t, because 3-year-olds.
3-year-old: Get me some milk.
Me: …
3-year-old: I firsty.
Me: Nice to meet you, firsty.
3-year-old: Get me some milk, Mama. (A little louder this time)
Me: I don’t do anything for boys who demand.
3-year-old: I NEED MILK!
Me: Not when you ask like that.
3-year-old: GET ME MILK, MAMA!
I can play this game all day, because it usually happens at dinner and I’ve got my wine.
2. Buts.
I have some strong-willed 3-year-olds, and I hear a whole lot of buts.
Me: It’s time to brush your teeth.
3-year-old: But I not finished playing.
Me: I know it’s hard to quit playing. Right now it’s time to brush your teeth.
3-year-old: But we dinnent eat durnner.
Me: Yes we did. You had five pieces of pizza.
3-year-old: But we dinnent get to play.
Me: What are you doing right now?
3-year-old:
Me:
3-year-old: But I need a drink.
Me: Go brush your teeth.
Other 3-year-old (eats half the toothpaste while I’m occupied with his twin brother.)
There are also the buts that don’t make sense.
Me: It’s time to go upstairs, where you’re supposed to be.
3-year-old: But my cup is itchy.
Something tells me I don’t want to know what that means.
Me: Please don’t leave the door open.
3-year-old: But my eyes are tired.
Me: Don’t chew on your shoes. It’s really gross.
3-year-old: But my legs are itchy.
I wonder why. *Shudder*
3. Completely wrong words.
My twins have great vocabularies. The problem is, they haven’t really paid attention to the context in which those words are used. So their tries sound something like this:
3-year-old: I dinnent do my hisand today.
Me: You didn’t what?
3-year-old: I dinnent do my hisand today.
Me: I have no idea what you’re saying. Do we have an interpreter available?
3-year-old: I DINNENT DO MY HISAND TODAY.
8-year-old: He’s saying he didn’t do his highs and lows today.
Good thing there are older brothers.
3-year-old: I sweatering really bad.
Me: You’re what?
3-year-old: I sweatering really bad.
Me: You mean you’re sweating?
3-year-old: Yeah. I sweatering.
So close.
3-year-old: I have to very poo poo.
Me: …
4. Consonants are hard.
Consonants are not the friends of 3-year-olds in certain instances. Those certain instances would be words like “costume,” which will become “cossayume;” “actually,” which will become “ashaley;” and “shirt,” which will become “shit” (You’ll want to have a video camera trained on the kid who does this. You may even want to make a Christmas video with the kid saying, “Oh, shirt! Merry Christmas!” and send it to all your friends and family, which we definitely did not do. I’m just throwing out ideas here.)
For all their arguing and mispronouncing and demanding, 3-year-olds can be a-holes truly delightful little people. I’m really glad I have two of them, and I’m not looking forward to their fourth birthday at all, because, dang, I just want them to stay 3 forever and ever and ever.
I’ll just say what all the other parents of 3-year-olds are thinking: Sometimes it’s a good thing time marches on.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Not too long ago, one of our neighbors was selling his house. We saw the sign but didn’t think much of it. It didn’t involve us. At least that’s what we thought.
And then one night, when we were out running wild in the cul-de-sac with our children, he followed his daughter out the door, presumably to watch her play. Except he headed straight for Husband and said, “Hey man, we need to do something about your bush.”
No preamble, no how are you, no small talk. Just straight to the point. I guess I kind of like that. I’m not much for small talk, either.
Husband and I both knew what bush he was talking about.
This bush is not really a bush at all. It’s just a plant. Every spring it blooms with beautiful orange flowers that brighten up the yard, and it keeps growing and growing and growing until it dies off in winter. Then it leaves its dried-out stems (that, by this time, look like trunks) in our little flower garden unless someone makes the effort to trim them. Every spring it grows back with a vengeance, offering its green and orange around all the dead parts that someone still hasn’t trimmed.
The problem isn’t that all those dead parts make this beautiful plant look ugly. It’s that when the neighbors’ trash blows out of their over-filled trash cans when they’re sitting out for trash pickup, this massive plant likes to eat it. And whoever is supposed to be trimming the dead stems also isn’t picking out of its clutches all the nasty pieces of other people’s trash.
Oh, wait. That’s supposed to be me.
There are some things you just give up on when you have as many kids as we do (Okay, many things. Lots of things. A whole life of things.). Like the yard. And a clean house. And spontaneously eating out for dinner. But that’s beside the point.
At any rate, this neighbor needed us to do something about that plant, because he was selling his house, and this plant was making his home value plummet.
I totally understand. I know we can’t control who our neighbors are, and our poor neighbors just happened to move next to the family with six boys and two parents who are drowning doing just fine.
We planted this flower garden back when we only had one child and one more on the way and life seemed so easy. We thought (such innocent kids we were) that we’d be able to manage. We’d be able to keep up with weeding and trimming back and watering. We would keep our yard pretty.
Turns out six kids 8 years and younger keep you really, really, really busy, and one of the things that falls from the idealistic we-can-handle-this list is, unfortunately, yard work.
It isn’t even because we’re lazy. It’s mostly because boys make it impossible to have a nice yard.
Case in point: The other day, my 5-year-old came to me with a digging spade. “I’m just going to dig a hole in the front yard so I can bury something,” he said, already walking out the door.
I caught his arm. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re what?”
“I’m going to dig a hole and bury something,” he said, as if this was the perfectly natural thing to do.
“What are you going to bury?” I said, because I wasn’t at all surprised by the first part.
“Nothing,” he said, but I saw what was in his hands. His brother’s favorite Hot Wheels car.
And then, when I was helping Husband save the grass from the gasoline my 3-year-olds dumped all over the backyard, my 8-year-old came out to the back deck and said, “I just planted some cucumbers and carrots out front. So we’ll have a vegetable garden.”
Um.
I now have renegade plants that are clearly not flowers growing in the flower garden I haven’t weeded in two years.
Another part of the problem is that every time we plan on having a yard work day, something else comes up. Something else like two 3-year-olds deciding they’re going to pull down all the clothes in their closet, even though they’d have to be Spider-Man to reach them now with all the creative safeguards we’ve put in their room (I don’t even know.). Something else like the 6-year-old deciding he’s going to get into the art cabinet during Quiet Time to cut up some tiny little squares of paper he’ll later put in a container and dump out on someone’s head in the front yard because he thinks it’s funny (So not). Something else like the 8-year-old deciding he wants to find out if a pumpkin will grow in the old tree graveyard beside the house.
This is how we got to be the terrible neighbors whose house looks like an orphanage. (“How many kids live there?” I imagine the people who walk their dogs in our cul-de-sac say. “We’re not really sure,” their walking partner answers.) Scooters crop up in the clearly dying grass; the herb garden off to the side is courting a weed tree, because I cannot even; and the boys ask to go gather wildflowers in our yard because it’s a whole wildflower field (“I brought some flowers for you, Mama,” the 3-year-olds say. “Thank you for weeding the yard,” I say.).
I know what you’re thinking. Why not just hire a lawn crew and take care of it the easy way? Well, my question to you is, have you ever tried to feed six boys who are always, always hungry? There’s your answer.
Also, one of these days we’re going to have a yard-working force, with six boys weeding and mowing and tidying up and trimming bushes and gathering herbs, and then our yard is going to be the envy of the block. But for now it most definitely looks like six children live here. Maybe more (because twins).
The thing is, when you’re a parent, some things have to slide until you can get your head above water (which is probably never. We’re all just lying to ourselves.). Our head hasn’t been above water for quite a while now, because there are six of them and only two of us, and they’re still young. That’s okay. It’s what we signed up for. I’m not complaining. I don’t really care about our yard, truth be told.
If you accidentally bought a house next to us, I’m just warning you now, even though it’s too late, that we’re not going to be winning “best block in the neighborhood” anytime soon, and it’s mostly our fault. Sorry if we’re ruining hopes and dreams by being the weakest link. We just have better things to do. Like setting our kids free out front on a summer evening and playing with them an epic game of chase on scooters and roller blades, which your kids will want to join (you’re welcome).
Chances are, next time you stop by my door, you’ll have to step over a scooter obstacle course just to make it to the doorbell, because boys are really bad about putting them away where they belong. So just watch your step (and maybe take a couple to teach them a lesson in natural consequences).
We’re really awesome people once you get past the trash cans that are perpetually left between our vehicle and our garage (lifting the garage door is just too much work when you’ve been wrestling six kids into bed) and the grass that’s always just a little bit (or maybe a lot) higher than the two inches it’s supposed to be and the bushes that look like bears might live inside.
If you’re judging us by the state of our front yard, you’ll never get to know that.
Thanks for cutting us some slack. You’ll be glad you did.
by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test featured, Crash Test Parents, General Blog
A few weeks ago I got a text from my sister, who had her third baby in February. The text said, “Tell me you have days when you just can’t handle it. When walking out of the house is all you can do to survive. I just need to hear it from another human.”
I laughed out loud, even though I knew she was dead serious. And in my head were responses like “every damn day” and “just this morning” and “on a minute-by-minute basis.”
Parenting is hard. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I used to run six miles every morning in 10,000-pound humidity before commuting an hour to downtown’s Houston Chronicle office. I used to marathon-train on 10 miles of hills pushing a double baby stroller that carried a 4-year-old and a 3-year-old. I used to work for a narcissist.
Parenting is still the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
There are so many hours of my day that I just feel like giving up and hitch-hiking to downtown San Antonio’s Riverwalk, where Husband and I had a life before children—a life that didn’t include a panic attack every time a kid steps too close to the edge of the path and I imagine having to jump into that dirty black water to save him.
Like the morning last week, when the 3-year-old twins went outside into our very safe (normally) backyard while I transferred a load of laundry from the washing machine to the dryer. Two minutes, tops. That’s all it took. By the time I finished, one of the twins had come back inside, and the whole house smelled like gasoline.
“Why does the house smell like gasoline?” I said, to no one in particular. The twin looked at me. I looked at him. He had his guilty eyes on.
“What were you doing out there?” I said.
“Nuffing,” he said.
I knew it was definitely something, because of those guilty eyes. A mom always knows, after all.
His twin brother came in smelling like a gas pump, so I looked out on the deck, where they didn’t even have the foresight to hide what they’d been doing. There, on a deck chair, was their daddy’s gas can used to fill up the lawn mower the three times a year he mows. That gas can is stored behind a locked door. A locked and sealed door that somehow, SOMEHOW, these Dennis the Menaces had cracked open in less than two minutes.
They poured gasoline (less than half a gallon, for those who are concerned) all over the back deck, the grass and themselves. It’s a good thing no one in my house smokes, because we all would have been blown to high heaven.
I put them both in the bath (which was not on the schedule for the morning) while the baby stayed downstairs in his jumper seat wailing because he doesn’t like to be alone, and washed them, rinsed them, scrubbed them, rinsed them and washed them again. Husband sprayed off the deck (which also wasn’t on the schedule for the morning) and saturated all the grass, because a Texas summer hits 4,000 degrees, and we were afraid the sun might make the gasoline-drenched grass spontaneously combust and blow us all to high heaven anyway.
That morning was one of those give-up days, because there’s no way to be one step ahead in my house. There’s no way I can fully toddler-proof every room. There’s no way I can keep them out of every single thing they find to amuse themselves. It would take 23 of me.
That morning I wanted to walk out and let them fend for themselves in gasoline scented clothes that spread their stench all over the house in less than two seconds.
I used to feel guilty when feelings like this crept up. I used to beat myself up for sometimes wishing that they just weren’t twins, that there weren’t two of them ALL THE DANG TIME, that they weren’t so insatiably curious and 3 years old and nearly impossible to parent right now.
But there is something important I’ve learned in my years of parenting: Just because there are moments when we want to run away, when we want to flat-out give up, when we want to trade our kids for easier kids for just this little moment in time so we can catch up and learn to appreciate them again, it doesn’t mean that we don’t still love them with a love that is never-ending.
These little, irrational humans can be the best and worst people we know on any given day at any given moment.
There are days when I want to sit down and color next to my 3-year-olds, because they’ve just been playing so well together and the morning’s disasters have been minimal, and, gosh, I just love them so much, and then there are mornings when I want to put them on Craig’s list’s free page (I’d have to lie to really sell the idea, though. Something like “Two well behaved twins, of undetermined age.” Because what kind of crazy person would want two 3-year-olds voluntarily?)
There are hours when I love to comb through those old picture albums that show these two hooked up to machines because they were premature and remember how I fretted and cried and tried my best to help them learn how to eat, and there are days when those first moments feel like entire lifetimes apart from this moment, when they stuck their whole arm in the just-used toilet to see what poop floating in pee feels like (They already know. We’ve done this drill before.).
There are minutes when I pull them into my lap and kiss all over their faces until they’re giggling uncontrollably, because they’re getting so big and so fun, and then there are minutes when I’m half-heartedly holding their big brother away from them so he doesn’t clobber them for marking all over his journal with a giant red permanent marker they found lying around somewhere (who keeps giving us permanent markers? Please stop.).
Parenting is not for the weak. This is the hardest responsibility we will ever have in our lives. Raising another human being to be a decent person is not easy, and there are many times along our journeys when we will feel like giving up and giving in and giving out.
It just comes with the territory.
So I fire off my response to my sweet sister. “Yes,” I say. “Just about every day. Doesn’t mean you’re a bad mother.”
Because it doesn’t.
These moments when we feel the tension between wanting to give up and knowing we can’t make us stronger parents. They make us better people. They drag us into a deeper understanding of love.
Good thing, too. Because my toddler just figured out how to open a can of paint Husband left unguarded and now the pantry wall has a Thermal Spring scribble-masterpiece drying on it.
I’m going to be one amazing person by the time this is all over.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Every year in Texas there’s this wonderful weekend where shoppers get to take advantage of tax-free shopping on school supplies and clothes. Hundreds of thousands of people head out in droves, hitting all the local stores and cleaning out school supplies and every rack of clothes those stores possibly have stocked—all within the first three hours of tax-free weekend.
I just love large crowds with all those excited kids who aren’t mine, weaving in and out of the guarantees-an-anxiety-attack-aisles, so, of course, I’m always one of them. Because, you know, tax-free weekend saves me $5.47. Totally worth it.
This year my mom offered to take my 3-year-old twins for the weekend so I could take the three going-to-school ones out for a few necessities and a handful of new clothes (because their jeans are now capris).
Strangely enough, I always look forward to this day. It’s sort of a tradition in our house now, the squeezing through sweaty crowds to get that perfect Spider-Man backpack, the yelling at my kids because they picked out five lunch boxes and they only need one, the robot-like explanation (because it’s so oft repeated) that their daddy and I have a thing called a budget, and this little personalized pencil with a neon green zipper bag is not in that budget. And every time tax-free weekend starts creeping up on us, I can’t sleep for days I’m so excited, almost as if I’m shopping for me (I’m not. I haven’t shopped for me in eight years).
Let me just tell you what you probably already know: Shopping with kids is like walking through hell with a checkbook.
And yet, every year I forget the horror that was last year, and I convince myself that this year will surely be different, because the boys are older and more mature, and they understand the whole budget thing and, because of all this, they won’t annoy me 12 seconds after we get to the store.
We started out well, a whole 600 seconds of not-annoying. We stopped first at an arts and crafts store, where we picked out a chalkboard and some chalk markers their daddy could use to hand letter their morning routines, personalized and artsy (incentive for getting out of bed on school mornings: they get to see art!). They helped me put the chalkboard and chalk pens carefully in the cart, and we headed for the register and paid with little or no fuss beyond their asking if they could please, please, please look at the Beanie Boos, just real quick. Okay, I said, because they were so good.
And then there was Target.
Now. I love Target. It’s the closest department store to my house, so it’s where I get the majority of things like paper towels and toilet paper and replacement toothbrushes after I caught one of the 3-year-old twins trying to scrub-clean the toilet with the existing ones and then putting them all in his mouth (“Look at my teef!” he said, and I threw up a little in my mouth.).
The first thing they asked when we walked through the sliding doors was whether we could go look at the toys.
Um, no. We’re here for school stuff, I said. We’re on a time budget. And a money budget.
My mom had already bought all the school supplies this year, so all we really needed were a few clothes, some shoes, a backpack and lunch supplies for all of them. We went to the lunch box section first and spied the Thermoses.
Two of them already had Thermoses, so we only needed one.
“But I want this one,” said one of the already-have-a-perfectly-fine Thermos boys.
“No,” I said. “You already have one.”
“But look at this one,” he said. “It’s really cool.”
“Well, too bad it wasn’t here last year,” I said and put it back on the shelf.
Half an hour later, when I finally pulled them away from the Thermos shelf, we wheeled over to the backpacks, where three other mothers were wrestling backpacks from their children’s hands.
“Only one,” they were saying.
Oh, God. Here we go.
I leaned against my cart, trying to empathize with all those poor mothers, while my boys pulled every boy-looking backpack off the racks—Transformers, Darth Vader, Batman, Superman, some dog I’ve never seen before, Super Mario Brothers, Spider-Man, everything you could possibly imagine—one after the other falling at my feet.
“Look at this one, Mama!” they would periodically say. “I want this one!”
They knew they were only getting one backpack, so I didn’t feel the need to repeat what we’d already explicitly talked through on the way here. So I just let them bring their choices and said, “Is this the one you want?” and when they said no, I’d hang it back up.
Fast forward another hour, and they had their backpacks stuffed with their lunch boxes and strapped to their backs, because they wanted to carry them instead of putting them in the cart. That lasted about three minutes, and then they tossed them into the cart. Mostly because, right between the school supplies section and the clothes, is the toys section.
Come on, Target. Give a mom a break.
I lost two of the three boys, but by this time, I was already so annoyed and ready to be done I just left them. They knew where we were going. So it was that only one hung to the side of the basket. Until he realized that his brothers were gone. This one got lost one time and gets really scared when any of his brothers disappear, so of course we had to go back to pry his brothers loose from the toy aisle.
They’d stalled on the LEGO aisle. Of course.
“Let’s go, guys,” I said. “Not what we’re here for.”
“Can we just get one LEGO set, Mama? To celebrate the start of school?” the 8-year-old said.
He’s clever, but we’ve never “just bought” a LEGO set for any occasion, so I said no.
They hopped back on the side of the cart, which collectively weighed 130 pounds. Have you ever tried to push a 130-pound cart with a screwy wheel (because I always pick the screwy-wheeled ones, even if the carts are brand new. It’s just a fact of life.)? People kept passing us giving us dirty looks, because we were, after all, on a shopper’s highway, and I was going well below the speed limit, using every muscle in my arms just to turn the corner.
Finally we reached the clothes. This is where it really fell apart.
I don’t even know what happened. I just remember one boy who wears extra small holding up an extra-large and saying he wanted to buy it, and then the boy who wears medium holding up an extra small and saying he wanted this one and then the one who wears small holding up a large, saying this was the one he most definitely wanted to take home, and I had the luxury of telling them all that they’d picked the wrong sizes.
The clothes had already been so picked over we had to compromise greatly. And when I say compromise greatly, I mean no one got what they wanted. The boy who wanted a minion shirt got a Jurassic Park one instead. The boy who wanted Darth Vader got R2D2 instead. The boy who wanted Spider-Man got a minion shirt the other one wanted.
By the time we made it to the sock and underwear aisle, I was done caring. The 8-year-old got a pack of boxer briefs a whole size too large, the 6-year-old picked out some socks he’ll probably regret choosing the first time he wears shorts and realizes how ridiculous he looks in green and blue stripes that come up to his knees. The 4-year-old picked up a package of socks you needed sunglasses to behold.
Oh, well. Lesson learned. Last time I’ll take my kids school shopping with me.
Although, now that I think of it, next year will surely be different, because the boys will be older and more mature, and they’ll understand the whole budget thing and, because of all that, they won’t annoy me 12 seconds after we get to the store.
