by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
It’s the fourteenth time he’s come to our room tonight, and we still have to get up at 5 in the morning to get anything done, so his daddy leads him out and says, “It’s time for you to go to bed, for the last time.”
“But I don’t have school,” he says, as if we didn’t just have this conversation fifteen minutes ago. “It’s my summer break.”
Oh, well, in that case, why don’t you stay up all night, and, while you’re at it, go ahead and disregard all the rules, because IT’S SUMMER VACATION!
When I tilt my head and squint my eyes just so, I can almost understand why they would equate summer vacation with do-whatever-I-want time, because summer means they are no longer trapped at school for seven whole hours, listening to someone else giving instructions. They don’t have to write their name on fifty math or reading or science worksheets, and they don’t have a half-hour time limit on lunch and they don’t have to finish all their work before they get to do the fun stuff like reading and drawing and playing.
But what’s getting old in my house is that every day there’s another fight—not because we’re coming up against new territory. No. We’re coming up against the same old territory that the boys have forgotten because apparently summertime is synonymous with short-term memory loss.
Dang summertime.
Sometimes I wish summertime meant exactly what they think it means—relaxation of the rules. I really do.
But last time I relaxed the rules and let them have a little more freedom, they pulled out the economy-sized glitter I didn’t even know we had for some horrifying glitter projects we’re still cleaning up, a year later. Also, the 8-year-old somehow climbed to the top of the bathroom door, where he positioned a cup of water so it would fall on someone’s head when they opened the door. And someone else put thumbtacks in the twins’ booster seats.
So no. Rules still intact.
I wrote a note for my boys, reminding them of the most-frequently-forgotten rules. Feel free to use this letter as many times as you need. I’ve already read it to them twenty-six times today, because that’s how often they’ve forgotten.
Dear kids,
It’s summertime. Not I’m-a-grownup-now time.
Unfortunately, that means there are still rules in our house. Here are some you seem to have forgotten.
1. No, you may not snack all day.
We just had breakfast, and you ate twelve pancakes and five eggs. How in the world are you still hungry fifteen minutes later? That’s called boredom, son. Boredom is not a good excuse to eat. Get thee outside. Thou shalt dig in some dirt. Or do art (without glitter). Or read one of your books. Or chew on your fingers. Whatever keeps you out of the refrigerator. Because, good Lord. The grocery store only has so much food.
2. Close the door behind you.
This rule has been in place since you were old enough to walk, but you’ve conveniently picked now, when it’s so hot it’s painful to wear clothes, to forget? That’s called irony, kids. It’s ironic that you’ve forgotten how to close a door in the middle of summer.
Here. I’ll help you out. Closing is the opposite of opening. So, if you pull the door to open it, you’ll push the door away from you to close it. Push it away from you. Away from you. Away from you. There. Hear that sound? That’s the sound of a door closing. Amazing, isn’t it?
Now that we’ve had this nice little refresher, next time you leave the door open, I’ll take a portion of the electricity bill out of your college fund. You won’t be laughing when you’re 18 and you don’t have enough money to pay for your first semester of books (because, by the time college rolls around, that’s about what the money we’ve saved will be worth. If you keep forgetting the close the door, it’ll pay for your first dinner out.).
3. No, you may not stay up all night.
Believe it or not, even though you’re not going to school for the time being, we are still concerned that you get enough sleep. Because we love you, and we know sleep is important for you to grow and function well. Also (mostly) because you turn into a horrid monster when you haven’t had enough sleep. So turn out the light. Put away the book.
And for God’s sake, stop coming to our room when we’re almost asleep, asking if we remember where you left your special pencil with the blue eraser. Some people want to get some sleep around here.
4. Things that were not allowed before are also not allowed now.
This would be things like walking across the table with dirty, dirty feet; getting five games out that, all together, have a total of forty-thousand pieces; sneaking onto the computer to play your Cool Math game when a parent is not present and before you’ve earned your technology time.
Nope. Still not allowed in summer.
What? Every other kid gets to do what you can’t? Well, it’s too bad those aren’t your parents. You got stuck with us. It’s a hard knock life.
5. Any mess you make, you still clean it up.
What’s that? You dumped out all the glitter on accident? Well, it’s a good thing you know how to wipe off a table and sweep a floor, so get to it.
Wait, you want to play outside with your friend, but you were playing throw-them-in-the-air-and-see-where-they-fall with the markers? Welp. You know the rules. Clean it up first.
You don’t like this game and want to play a different one? CLEAN IT UP.
6. You may not wear your swimsuit for more than 20 days in a row.
It’s time for a dress code, kids. I know your swimsuits are comfortable and you’re hoping that, by wearing them every hour of every day, we’ll say that, oh, look, it’s time to go to the pool, but no. A swimsuit is not an appropriate choice for 20 consecutive days. I’ll give you five. Maybe even six.
It’s been longer than that, so let me have them. Let me have them. LET ME HAVE THEM. I just need to wash them, and then you can have them for another six days. Now. Go get your underwear on. Remember the other unspoken rule: No skivvies, no service.
7. Pool time is not bath time.
I know, I know. Chlorine, soap, what’s the difference? It’s so fun to play in the pool and pretend it’s a bath, and it’s no fun to come home and get wet again in a tiny little bath tub. But the thing is, chlorine. And kids peeing. And all those other bodies.
A dip in the pool does not qualify for a bath. Get on out. Come home. And wash those smelly armpits (you too, kids.).
8. If you know the rules and break them, there will (still) be consequences.
I know it’s hard to believe that your parents are still enforcing these stupid rules even though it’s summertime and you should really only be experiencing great freedom and wonderful fun, but you see kids? Consistency is important, too. Without consistency, you would feel like you were just trying to navigate life without an anchor tethering you to reality. Living life without an anchor isn’t as much fun as you think. Just ask any kid without a parent.
I know these rules seem ridiculous and arbitrary, but we enforce them because we want you to have the best possible family life experience you can. We have them because, more than anything, we love you.
Now. Go play outside so I can have a little quiet time and try to remember why these rules are so important.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
I was done with school long before the year ended.
The early-morning schedule gets old by week #2, because boys like to sleep until at least 8 (unless it’s the weekend, and then they’re up at 5:30), and school starts at 7:45 a.m., and that tardy bell rings strong and fierce, and even though it’s only three who must be there on time, all the others have to get up, too, because the three make enough tornado noise trying to find a backpack he’s sitting on (if you’re the 5-year-old), complaining about what’s for breakfast (if you’re the 7-year-old), and bemoaning the fact that he has no more sweat pants that are clean (if you’re the 9-year-old) that everybody wakes right along with them.
The homework gets old by week #4, because what 7-year-old remembers that he has some math worksheets he has to do when there are LEGOs in the house, and who can even concentrate on reading a passage and answering some silly questions about it when your brothers keep running through the kitchen screeching like spider monkeys dressed in Robin Hood costumes or when they keep exclaiming over the cool fort they constructed from a box or they are, heaven forbid, reading aloud from a book?
Homework at 7 is like adding another line on a parent’s to-do list: Keep boy on task even though he’s used up his on-task capabilities in the seven hours he was at school today.
Believe me, my to-do list was massive enough already without this extra line. I mean, someone has to sit on the couch and read a book every now and then, and it might as well be me.
We were done with all the on-grade reader books by about week #12. All my boys are fantastic readers who read whatever they want all the time here at home. They read Pokemon graphic novels and Bill Watterson comics and the newest Elephant & Piggie books. Which is why we stopped signing those log-their-reading folders right around the beginning of December. It looks like none of them have picked up a book since Dec. 3. They have. I promise. I just can’t always find a pen. Or remember which one read what. Or find the actual folders, because boys are so good at putting things where they belong. The chances of all three of those happening at the same time are very, very rare.
AND THEN THE PAPERS.
So many papers.
There are advertisements for sports camps and karate programs and dance lessons all throughout the year. There are all the worksheets a first-grader and kindergartener and third grader do. There are amazing works of art they paint and draw and color that come home from his art class. There are essays and teacher notes and lunch charge reminders that we owe the school some money.
We did fairly well with all those papers for about the first twenty-four weeks of school. I was actually pretty proud we lasted that long. We had a system: sort them, store them or toss them in the recycling. “Store them” ended up breaking down a bit, because I’d start putting the whole stack of papers in the “store them” pile so I could “look at them later,” except later never really came back around.
And when February swept in, we just stopped caring.
I don’t even know if it was a gradual not-caring or an all-at-once not-caring, but now those papers sit on the bottom shelf of our coffee table or on the library shelves covering up the spines of books or between the beds in the twins’ room (they thought paper might work for insulation and smuggled some in their room without our noticing. The papers are now tiny, tiny little pieces that will have to be hand-picked from the carpet because our vacuum cleaner sucks but doesn’t really. Thanks for the gift guys. I now feel like setting the house on fire.).
The paper hills have become paper mountains. Soon, we’ll be able to repair all the things that are wrong about our house with paper. Hole in the wall? Cover it with paper. Fan is missing a blade? Construct one out of paper. No more toilet paper? WE HAVE PLENTY OF PAPER!
The end of the school year is a bittersweet time, because it holds the sadness of a school year ending and a child getting older, or at least seeming to get older, and the (mostly unspoken) fear of having said child home ALL HOURS OF ALL THE DAYS ALL SUMMER.
But when I weigh the sad and the afraid and the glad, I think I am mostly glad, because the be-an-involved-school-parent pressure and the papers will stay far, far away. Mostly I’m glad because my sons are brilliant and funny and delightful, and I’m going to enjoy their around-all-day presence for all of 2.3 hours on the first day.
Today is the last day of school, the last day we get up early, the day books will no longer come home and homework will stay in a classroom for next year. Which means tomorrow boys will sleep late and they will play together well, because they missed each other so much, and they will spend quiet time in their alone places so I don’t even have to remind them to get “back where you’re supposed to be.”
Well, you know, a mom can always hope.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
“Oh. You must be a stay-at-home mom.”
There we sat, in a doctor’s office for an annual exam, the nurse tapping in all my background information. We’d just established the six kids piece when she said it.
“No,” I said. “Actually, I work full time.”
It came out almost like an apology, like I was ashamed to say I, a mother of six boys, work the equivalent of a full-time job, and I followed it up with a disclaimer about how I work from home in the afternoons and sometimes late at night so I can spend mornings and evenings with my children and work when they’re being cared for by their daddy or asleep.
“Oh. Oh, wow,” she said. “OK.” She turned to put this latest bit of information into the computer with nothing more said.
It’s not the first time I have encountered this assumption or felt the need to apologize for correcting it. It’s usually women who make those comments, “So, obviously, you stay home with them all,” “Wow, you must be way too busy to work a job,” “Isn’t it wonderful to stay home with them while they’re little?” and it baffles me a little, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my seven years of parenting, it’s that we are all different.
Which means that what we think we might do if we had six children doesn’t mean that’s what she chooses to do.
There are moms of one child who choose to stay home with their child, and there are moms of six children who choose to work.
Every afternoon, I hole away in my home office and write essays and chapters of the latest book and a few poems in all the margins, and I thoroughly enjoy what I do. I always have. It’s what I was made to do. Having children did not change that.
I work for myself, but I still choose to work. Because I am passionate about words and language and crafting beauty and truth to release out into the world. Because I believe in what I’m doing. Because I want my boys to know that women have as much to offer the world as they do.
But mostly because I am a better mother for my separate pursuit, for my writing, for the ways I can process through mistakes and circumstances and potential solutions outside of the constant demands of my children, but that is just me.
I have friends who are stay-at-home moms, and I love them dearly. I have friends who are working moms, and I love them dearly, too.
There is no one right way. There is only our right way.
[Tweet “There is no one right way to be a mother. There is only our right way.”]
We get really good at debating what’s best for the children, but sometimes what’s best for the children is what’s best for us. Some of us can be better versions of ourselves with a career to pursue. Some of us are better versions of ourselves away from the stress of an out-of-home job.
We can argue about who has it hardest, too, but it’s all the hardest job in the world, because we are all mothers, and even when we’re in an office, miles away from our children or just a few feet, we are still thinking of them and worrying about them and missing them. We are still loving them, just like any stay-at-home mom.
And when we’re at home with them, meeting all those needs in real time, trying to hold fast to our sanity because all the whining is pulling it rapidly out of our reach, locking ourselves in the pantry for just a minute to breathe or think or eat that piece of chocolate we’ve been hiding, we are still thinking of them and worrying about them and loving them, just like any working mom.
Just because a mom chooses to mother six kids doesn’t mean she chooses to stay at home full time or she has to give up on a career or she cannot pursue a dream for herself. It just means it may look different for her, like working odd hours to get all those tasks done, like trading off with their daddy to avoid childcare costs, like commuting to an office twice a week and working from a home office the other three days.
I don’t work to get promotions or make a lot of money or even to be some super-mom placed on a pedestal as a “she can do it, why can’t I?” I work because it’s enjoyable to me, because without writing and creating and chasing a dream, I am not the best version of myself.
I know that nurse didn’t say those words to try to make me feel bad or guilty or wrong for my choice, and I don’t.
[Tweet “I don’t feel badly that I’m a mom who works. In fact, I feel more fulfilled. But that’s just me.”]
But I do believe that maybe the world could do without all our assumptions, that the next time we see a mama with a whole tribe of kids crowding around her legs, fighting about who’s going to ride her feet across the street this time, we don’t just assume she is one who has chosen kids over a career, because it’s the only way a thing like that would work.
Maybe we just admire those children, pat them on the head with an encouraging smile and leave those assumptions where they lie.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
You know what would make my life so much easier? If my kids woke up with a warning label plastered to their back, or, better yet, their face (I’ve been known to miss some things when I’m looking–but a warning label on their forehead? I don’t think I’d miss that.). You know, so I’d be well prepared for the completely different human being who’s crawling out of their bed. So I’ll know that yesterday’s angel is going to be a demon and that yesterday’s demon is, today, going to be the heroic angel of the family. A heads up about all that would be nice, because being blindsided at 6:30 a.m. is definitely not my favorite thing in the whole world.
Here are some warning labels that might come in handy.
Caution: Contents are explosive.
I would love to have this warning label on the mornings when one of the kids wakes up with a stomach virus that’s been hanging out in their kindergarten classroom and is now hanging out in their belly, which will soon empty out onto the floor, including my feet. This label would save me time, effort and gagging for half an hour, or every time I think about vomit on feet. It would be really great to know that their contents are explosive, or close to it, so I can make sure I don’t feed them Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies and tomatoes, both of which will stain the entire interior of the car when they explode.
Also, it would be nice to know when the normally compliant child is feeling especially explosive so we don’t let our guard down and think today is going to be an easy day (Ha. There’s never an easy day with illogical human beings). I would like to be prepared for the rare times he is explosive, which usually happens when he’s told, no, he can’t have another snack, because he just ate fifteen Little Cuties in as many minutes. Actually, I guess that’s easy enough to assume; they all get pretty explosive if they have to go more than twelve minutes without food. They also all get explosive when they realize, yet again, that the entire world does not revolve around them. And when they can’t quite figure out their state-mandated math homework and their parents can’t help them, either, because we’re too smart for the math they teach nowadays.
Warning: Handle with extreme care.
I have an extremely sensitive child. Usually he does alright. But every now and then, he wakes up and his extreme sensitivity is dialed up to seventeen on a scale of one to ten. I would like a warning those days so I could just shut my mouth and not say a word to him. Or avoid looking at him. Or just go back to bed, because I’m not going to come even close to winning on days like this.
Turns out, babies aren’t really as fragile as you think they are, but the older they get, the more fragile they become. Their emotional sides are worth cultivating with care. Except for the times they follow you into the bathroom crying about how you shouldn’t be reading a book on the toilet while they’re trying to tell you something and you say you can’t really understand them, because they have too much nose in their mouth, and there goes their emotional side.
Well, there’s always tomorrow. Unless it’s another day you needed that warning label.
Warning: Keep all hands and feet inside the ride at all times.
Anytime I’m around my children, my hands and fingers, and, also, my toes and feet, are in grave danger. Also my back. And my neck. And pretty much any place on my body that could get elbowed or rammed or stepped on (and you’d be surprised how many there are). My boys seem to think Husband and I are human jungle gyms, and anytime I’m stretched out on the floor to try to attempt some push-ups that my arms are too weak to do, they’ll jump on top of me, as if, because I’m failing at lifting my own weight, I’ll suddenly be able to lift theirs, too. I don’t need another fifty pounds heaped over my torso to make me do girlie push ups on my knees. Oh, who am I kidding? I do them from my knees anyway.
Danger: High voltage.
So much energy. There is so much energy pulsing in the bodies of my boys. If I could bottle up half of it and inhale that tincture every other minute, I would still need a miracle to keep up. As it is right now, my boys are always about two hundred steps ahead of me. I’m pretty slow, to be honest. Not as quick on my feet as I used to be back when I played third base in softball. But every time those wrecking balls come hurtling toward me, I do cringe a little, like I used to when someone hit a grounder to third. So at least there’s that reminding me of the great I used to be.
I feel like someone should have warned me how much voltage a boy would have on a life. I’ve been violently shocked into movement I didn’t even necessarily need. I mean, I’ll do my interval training and my running-five-miles any day of the week, but trying to chase a 4-year-old because he wants to stay at the park for ten more hours? No thanks.
Danger: Heavy object, lift with care.
This warning would have been a good one for Husband. Every other day he’s injuring his back, because he offers to put the 9-year-old on his shoulders, which he used to do all the time five years ago—when 65 pounds was only 38 pounds—and he forgets that the 9-year-old is now all legs and muscle. Kids are heavier than they look, especially boys. Our pediatrician used to call our babies “solid.” They were born with muscle. I kid you not. When the 5-year-old was 2, he walked out of the bathroom naked, and every muscle on his back quivered. We have a video to prove it. Husband and I were both jealous. The only quivering our bodies see is the bouncing of our extra flesh.
Caution: Adult supervision is recommended.
Well, duh. Of course adult supervision is recommended. They’re kids, after all.
But I guess I thought that sometimes I might be able to close my eyes for a short five minutes and I wouldn’t have to worry about the three pounds of strawberries in the refrigerator getting eaten before I woke up again. I guess I thought I could “take a minute” in my room without the cabinets getting decorated with a permanent marker the twins were hoarding somewhere still unknown. I guess I thought I could actually close the door when I went to the bathroom without a kid running out of the house with a steak knife to “cut a carrot.”
But no. Adult supervision is recommended at ALL times. At least until the boys are fifteen or so. And even then, it’s debatable. Better just get used to peeing with the door open.
This is, by no means, an exhaustive list of the warning labels that should come with children. Believe me, there are so many more. But there’s only so much time in a day to write before I have to peek my head out of my room and make sure no one’s burned the house down yet. I’m just kidding. I never write on my kid-shift. Husband takes care of the kids when I write.
Which, come to think of it, is actually no guarantee that the house won’t burn down, but, hey, he knows what he’s doing. So I’ll let him do it.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
I never thought I’d be a mom of all boys. When I first started my parenting journey, I thought for sure that I would have one or two girls in the mix, because everyone I know does. But then we had boy after boy after boy, and I realized, soon enough, that I was not meant to be a girl mom.
I was meant to be a boy mom. And there are some really special things about being a mother of boys.
1. You’re the prettiest girl they’ve ever seen.
You’ll always be the prettiest girl they’ve ever seen. You are the standard to which they will hold every other girl, at least for a while. They think you’re beautiful when you’ve been wearing the same workout pants for three days in a row and when your hair hasn’t been washed in a couple of days and when you don’t even have makeup on. They think you’re beautiful when you’re in a bad mood or a silly mood or an I-don’t-really-want-to-be-a-mother-today mood. They think you’re beautiful because they see through a lens of innocence, a lens of love.
2. You will get grossed out daily.
Most kids are pretty gross, but boys are the worst. They don’t care about the snot running all the way down to their chin; they’ll just reach their little tongues up to “wipe” it away. They don’t care that if they hug you, they’re going to get a big slimy glob on your shoulder. They don’t care that when they poop, they probably need at least three good wipes. They’ll leave it at one and then stripe the toilet with the rest. Boys are pretty gross. Just get used to it.
3. You’re a flower repository.
Every time you pass a wildflower field, boys will want to go pick as many flowers as they can and bring them back to you. They will want you to try to put those centimeter-long stems in your hair, even though they’re too short to wrap around your ear. They will want you to display the pink ones in a vase so they can show off the bouquet to whomever may come to visit today, which is usually no one, because when you’re a mom of boys, you’re not often entertaining anyone else. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m the only one afraid of social contact after being slimed all day by boys.
6. They’re obsessed with their body parts. One in particular.
Not only do my boys love streaking through the house naked, even though they’ve been instructed to put on their pajamas directly after their bath so that we can get along to story time, they are fascinated by their body parts—well, one body part. They will play with their penises and compare penises and try to smack each other’s penises just for the fun of it. They are uncivilized and untamable.
5. You will have regular exposure to potty humor or humor related to bodily functions.
Boys think all bodily humor is hilarious. And I mean all of it. If you make a farting sound between the lyrics to “Happy Birthday” while you’re singing to their brother, they will fall apart giggling. If you end your prayers with an arm fart, or try to pretend like you’re arm farting the ABC song, they will laugh until they’re crying. If you say anything about “penis” or “naked booty,” or “burp-farts,” they will shriek with delight.
6. When you burp at the table, you feel like you’ve just won an award.
Boys will be contagiously delighted when their mom burps at the table. They think it’s the funniest thing ever. Which is great, because holding in gas was never really my strong point. I always thought it was a flaw. Turns out it’s not, because, that’s right. Boys. I win the table every night, after the last bite. They’ll laugh and applaud and I’ll feel on top of the world, because I’ve never won anything in my life.
7. You get used to naked people.
As soon as the 6-year-old gets home from school, he likes to strip down to his boxers and underwear, whichever it is he’s wearing for the day. He knows, of course, that he has to put on clothes to go outside, but that doesn’t even matter. He’ll choose a whole new ensemble if he goes outside, because those other clothes were the slightest bit damp from the walk home, and he “doesn’t like to sweat.” Bath time in our house is a constant chorus of “Go put on your pajamas” and “Here are your pajamas. Put them on.” And “You can’t sit on my lap naked,” because, well, boys just like the feeling of running free.
8. You don’t get to hold them for long.
A few days after my youngest turned one, he started coming over to give me a hug and then immediately squirming out of my arms before I was ready to let him go. Boys are active and rambunctious and prefer, always, to move. Every now and then I can entice this littlest one to stay a while, if I’m bouncing around or doing a ridiculous dance, or if I start running through the house, but if I’m not doing any of those things, he’s not going to make an effort to stay.
Boys want to be moving at all times. I, on the other hand, don’t. But I do want to snuggle with my boys every now and then, so sometimes I’ll pick myself up off the floor, with great, sighing effort and run around, too. Sometimes it’s the only way I can steal a quick hug.
9. Disgusting smells become everyday smells.
My upstairs smells like a swamp, because there’s a bathroom up there that the boys always, always, always forget to flush. Their room smells like a locker room, because not only do they need to start wearing deodorant right about now but they also like to wear their soccer socks for three days in a row, and, believe me, you haven’t smelled disgusting until you’ve smelled worn-three-days-in-a-row soccer socks (or the shoes that have embraced them all day). Not only that, but whenever a boy is sitting on my lap, a cloud of fumes inevitably forms around us, because they’re really, really good at SBDs (silent but deadlies—it’s a type of fart you probably don’t ever want to experience, in a class of its own). I can usually tell who’s the culprit because of the self-satisfied smirk on his face while he looks around to see if anyone noticed. Of course we noticed. It smells like a sulfur plant in here. My nose hairs are singed.
Boys aren’t easy. They’re a whole lot of work. They require more energy than we’ll probably ever have, because they never, ever stop. They’re always getting into things, especially the food, and they’re always making a mess, especially with the clothes they strip and leave on the floor, and they’re always asking us if we smelled that or if we want to see what they just did to the toilet (forever and ever answer: Nope.).
But the most amazing thing I’ve learned about boys is that they will love the insecurities right off a mama. They will love her doubts away. They will love away all that has come before and infuse hope into all that comes after.
I know, because that’s what my boys have done for me.
And I’m so very glad.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
I’m not a hoarder. Not even close. In fact, I’m probably the opposite of a hoarder. I periodically like to go through a room and take all of the unnecessary things out of it and just throw them away.
But my kids? Well, they’re a different story altogether.
They hoard stuffed animals.
For Easter this year, the kids were talking about all the amazing toys their friends were getting from the Easter Bunny. It seems like the Easter Bunny has turned into a second Santa in many kids’ lives. Fortunately, we don’t do the Easter Bunny, and Mama and Daddy are much cheaper than the Easter Bunny. So the boys got a small gift card to a local yogurt shop (which ended in a GREAT family outing, let me tell you) and another small one to Hobby Lobby.
I had high hopes for the Hobby Lobby card. We’re always running out of art supplies, and I thought that’s what they’d buy. But no. In we walked, and they headed straight for the Beanie Boos display (which also happens to be the “impulse buy” display) and then directly to the checkout counter.
It’s not like they don’t have a billion already. But they hoard stuffed animals. Every time they have money, they want to buy another one. These things are like rabbits, multiplying at every turn. I’ve tried to get rid of some of the old ones—the ones that are too beat up to even recognize anymore because the 4-year-old twins went through a de-fluffing stage—but the boys started crying like someone had died. “We can’t even have a fake dog?” they said.
Well, tell me if you’d argue with that one.
“They’re all loved,” they say. Which is a nice sentiment. Except there’s one that’s been caught in a backyard tree for about three weeks, and no one’s made a move to bring him back in.
They hoard papers.
Papers are my nemesis. I have three boys in school, and the number of papers they bring home is nothing compared to the number of papers they find and draw on at home. I’m sorting through about three hundred papers a day, and that’s not even an exaggeration. And I have to be stealthy about when I put the papers I don’t want in the recycling bin, because if boys see me? It’s “I made that for you. You don’t want it?” and then I’m feeling guilty for even being alive.
They hoard bug carcasses.
Anytime my 4-year-old twins go outside—which is a lot these days, because twins are hard—they’re digging holes in the yard. They are fascinated by worms and pillbugs and lady bugs, and because it’s been a beautiful spring here in Texas, there are plenty of bugs to choose from. The problem is, they steal mason jars and fill them with bugs and then stock them in the pantry, so the next time I go to reach for the raw sunflower seeds, I’m met with a prop from a horror movie. But when I want to throw them away, the twins say the jar is full of their pets.
“They’re my pets,” one of them will say.
“No, they’re mine,” the other will say.
While they’re fighting about it, I dump the contents of the jar in the trash and still have plenty of time to relax, because it’ll be about an hour before they’ve settled their disagreement.
They hoard LEGOs.
It’s been a while since we introduced LEGOs into our house. And I’m so glad we did. I love having to nag my 9-year-old to clean up his LEGOs every other minute, because he gets so focused on a building project he doesn’t care that it’s time for dinner, he just wants to keep building.
LEGOs are great. Even I enjoy building with them sometimes, when the kids aren’t home to tell me how I’m doing it all wrong. The problem is, my kids are always talking about how they want more, more, more. Have you seen how many LEGO sets there are out on the market? We would need another house to collect them all, but the 9-year-old has a mission that sounds exactly like that: collect them all.
They hoard nature.
Here’s a ridiculous admission for you: when I’m doing laundry, I never check the pockets. I know I should. It’s really dangerous not to, but when you’re separating a weeks’ worth of laundry for eight people, you don’t really have much time to do pocket-checking. Periodically, I’ll have a load going in the washer and hear a terrible thumping noise. At first I’ll think it’s someone trying to break into the house, because what can I say about my imagination except that it’s highly active and also doomsday-ish. And then I’ll realize it’s coming from the washer, so I’ll think the washer is probably breaking, great, now what are we going to do, there’s no way I’ll be able to wash clothes the old-fashioned way for all these people.
But then I’ll open the washer and see the source of all that clunking: rocks.
Don’t ask me why I didn’t feel the weight of those rocks when I was sorting the clothes. That’s a ridiculous question.
It’s not just rocks, either. It’s sticks in the bathtub and leaves all over the front entryway and dirt in cups and flowers encased in bowls of water they put in the freezer for a “quick science experiment.” My kids are hoarders of everything nature.
I like a simple home, but kids make it anything but simple—not just in the emotional sense but in every other sense. It doesn’t matter how many times we explain to our kids that a lower number of “things” makes us much happier, they want more. It’s human nature. They have to learn themselves that things are not what will make them happy in the end. And they’ll learn that eventually.
In the meantime, let’s just all pretend I’m on an episode of “Hoarders” and call it a successful day.
