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.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Family dinners are a big deal in our house. We eat dinner together every evening and are usually interrupted once or twice by the neighborhood children, who apparently never eat. Ever.
But all that aside, we have a grand time sitting around our dinner table and talking about our days. It’s raucous and crazy and loud and full of constant chatter—because kids aren’t even quiet when they stuff food in their mouths.
It’s probably safe to say that I care a bit more about manners than Husband does, because he doesn’t even blink when the kids answer a question with an over-full mouth stuffed with spaghetti, most of which, in their answering, escapes from their mouths to the table, and the rest of which shoots across toward my eyes, since they’re laughing so hard at the way it looked. It’s about as disgusting as it sounds, so every now and then, you’ll hear me sneaking in that stealthy reminder for them to “don’t talk with their mouth full” and “please don’t smack” and “seriously, don’t inhale your food.”
I have to admit, though, that I used to envision this nice little quiet family dinner around a table of sweet conversation and delicious food that the kids wouldn’t even think of complaining about.
That fantasy left me years ago.
The one thing I can count on when my family sits down to dinner is my kids complaining about what’s on the menu before they’ve even tried it. Doesn’t matter if it’s mashed potatoes drowned in butter or chicken browned in coconut oil, with a bit of celery seed and thyme sprinkled on top or (their favorite) sautéed asparagus, they’re going to complain. If I believed them, my kids wouldn’t like hamburgers, chicken soup, grilled cheese, breakfast for dinner or, especially, carrot chips.
It never fails that a kid will come traipsing into the house, after playing outside with his friends and working up an appetite as only boys can do, that he will sniff and say, “Something smells yummy,” walk over to the stove and, upon seeing what’s cooking, say, “Aw, man. I don’t like that,” to which I reply, “Welp. More for me,” because clearly I care what he thinks.
Once they taste what’s for dinner, there’s not really a problem, but those few minutes between dinner showing up and kids shoveling it in their mouths are quite a problem for now. If I thought blindfolds would work to combat the complaining, I’d invest in half a dozen. But then they’d just complain about the smells.
When we’re all seated at the table, with our plates full, at least three of the kids will ask to be excused so they can get some milk. It’s not a problem at all, so of course we say yes. They pour their milk and bring it back to the table, and, thirty seconds later, it’s all over the floor and table.
This happens just about every night. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been practicing drinking milk in a cup, someone is going to spill. You might wonder why this happens with such amazing continuity. Well, we are eight people crammed at a table built for four. A new kitchen table is not in our budget, so we sit practically on top of each other, because we’re a family that loves. Every now and then our boys will ask why we can’t use the dining room table, which was built for at least six people. We give some lame excuse about how it’s a glass table and we don’t feel like cleaning up all the fingerprints boys will paint on it when they use its underside as a napkin, even though they have a perfectly good napkin sitting beside their plate. I’d just rather not know what happens underneath a table.
There is also such thing as a Thermos, which would eliminate the possibility of such frequent milk spills. But let me tell you what happens to Thermoses in our world.
1. Boy pours milk.
2. Boy puts lid on Thermos.
3. Boy drinks most of the milk, but not all.
4. Boy “loses” the Thermos somewhere between end-of-dinner and after-dinner chores.
5. Parents find missing Thermos six weeks later.
6. No one wants to open it.
I’ll take milk spills over curdled milk any day.
Next on the list for the perfect family dinner is getting up and down from the table. My boys remember to ask to be excused about once out of four times. It’s still a mystery to me how they’re sitting there eating a bowl of spaghetti squash, and they suddenly remember this flower drawing they did in art class today, and they have to show me, right now, or they’re going to die. Or, two minutes after dinner begins, they realize they need to go potty. Or, ten minutes after dinner begins, one of their friends rings the doorbell, because they apparently think we can eat dinner in ten minutes.
They get up to see what their brother just laughed out his nose. They get up to grab the food they just dropped on the floor. They get up just to get up.
When they finally sit down long enough to actually have a conversation, everybody’s yelling. This happens because the boys are trying to tell us about their days, and no one’s taking turns with the talking, so they think if they just talk louder maybe they’ll have a better chance of getting heard.
This is the time of dinner when I usually reach my system overload and start talking like a robot, repeating the words, “System overload. System overload. System overload” until everyone looks at me like I’m crazy, because, well, I am. But it works. The table grows silent, everyone wondering how close Mama is to meltdown mode. And because of this, we can finally take turns asking about each of their days and get a portion of the story, before one brother interrupts another with something they forgot to say during their turn. It doesn’t take long for the talking to turn back into yelling, but by then there’s no more food left anyway. Dinner’s over.
At some point during the dinner, someone will make a potty joke. This is one other characteristic of dinner I can always count on. Someone will fart and send the whole table into peals of laughter and then “Oh my gosh, it smells so bad” proclamations. Someone will burp and crack everybody up again. Someone will arm fart “The Star-Spangled Banner” while the rest of us watch, mesmerized. Someone will tell a joke that contains the words, “poop,” “pee” and “armpits” in the same sentence. They think it’s the most hilarious thing in the world, and sometimes you do, too—until they start talking about vomit.
That’s when I like to say, “We’re eating, guys. Please don’t mess up this broccoli cheese soup for me.” Because, you know, it wasn’t hard enough to get them to eat it in the first place. Now every time they look at it, they’ll see vomit. Challenge accepted.
Whoever has the sweeping chore for the week always has quite a job to look forward to after dinner. This is mostly due to the 14-month-old, who has a proficient mastery of identifying the color green and eliminating it from his tray. But the 4-year-olds aren’t all that great either, stuffing green beans under their booster seats, except they aren’t great at aiming, either, so it ends up in a pile under the table. We don’t have a dog, so all this food—which could probably feed a small country—mostly goes to waste. It really is a shame.
Every night, when we finish dinner, I find myself wondering whether I really live with a pack of raccoons disguised as good-looking little boys. I’m just glad I don’t have to sweep the floor anymore.
And the last thing I can always count on, no matter the day or what’s for dinner or how much we had to eat, is my 4-year-old twins saying they’re still hungry—because four bowls of chicken noodle soup was not enough for a 40-pound kid. They will eat their body weight in pizza and still say they’re hungry when it’s all said and done.
All in all, even with the noisy, disgusting, messy displays of my children, family dinners are my favorite part of the day. Mostly because I enjoy eating. But also because I enjoy sitting together and laughing together and talking together about whatever it is that makes my boys laugh or cry or smile or scowl or feel glad to be a part of an amazing family.
And those nights when they end dinner saying, “This was the best dinner ever?” I call that winning.
Hasn’t happened yet. But I’m sure it’s right around the corner.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
It never fails. We’re coming up on bedtime, and my boys lose their minds and, somehow, forget what it is we’ve done every single night for the entirety of their lives, which, for some, is arguably more than others. But still. Every single night. How do you deviate from an every-single-night routine?
It usually happens right when we’re getting ready to start story time. The 9-year-old thinks it’s run-around-the-house-naked-and-see-who’s-fastest time. Nope. The 6-year-old thinks it’s stand-on-my-head-without-any-underwear-on time. Nope. The 5-year-old thinks it’s antagonize-his-4-year-old-brothers time. Nope.
The 4-year-olds think it’s play-chase-and-try-to-jump-over-pillows time and try-to-eat-as-much-toothpaste-as-we-can-while-Mama-and-Daddy-aren’t-looking time and throw-stuffed-animals-in-the-air-and-watch-them-destroy-the-room time. Nope, nope, nope.
“Okay,” I’ll usually say, in my best fake enthusiastic voice (because I’m usually just about done this time of night. Not because I don’t love stories. I love stories. I don’t love trying to shout above the roar of five boys doing exactly what they’re not supposed to.). “It’s time for stories. Remember the consequences?”
No one hears me, of course.
I say it a little louder. Still nothing, at which point I yell at the top of my lungs, “Sit down, or it’s early lights out for you.”
I know it’s not the best way of handling these wild animals, but our megaphone went missing, and I need something effective. Mama doesn’t yell a whole lot. So when I do, they pay attention. Well, about 2 percent of the time. It’s something, though.
You know what? I was mistaken. The mysterious short-term memory loss doesn’t start with story time. It actually starts right after dinner. We get to chore time, and everyone high-tails it outside, because I guess they forgot that they have to wipe the counters and the table and do the dishes and sweep the floor and take out the trash, like they have EVERY OTHER NIGHT OF THEIR LIVES (starting when they turned 3). So we have to waste our own valuable time rounding them all up to complete their chores, so they can all run outside again once they’re finished, even though then it’s time for a little Family time, and then it’s time for bath time. Playing outside time is done.
Every time I announce to all of them that now it’s bath time, this is the response I get:
“WHAT?!!!!!!!” (It might even be a few more exclamation marks. They’re always completely surprised. It’s like a surprise party every night.)
They’ll stomp up the stairs, while I clean up the baby and Husband wrangles the twins, and somewhere in between the time they stood at the bottom of the stairs and the time they get to the top, they have forgotten what it is, exactly, that they’re supposed to be doing (again), because now they’re flipping off they chaise in the home library, and one of them is rolling along the floor with a stuffed animal and another is doing sit-ups for his “workout.”
Let me just interject here that we run a very tight ship in our home. They know the schedule. Baths between 7 and 7:20 p.m., story times between 7:20 and 7:50, prayer time between 7:50 and 8. Bedtime, 8:15 sharp.
But every one of those transitions is news to them.
They forget it’s time for dinner, because they’re out in the cul-de-sac playing with their friends, and not stuck inside, bored, so they don’t know that the grumbling in their bellies is telling them they’re hungry. They only know that they want to keep playing. They forget it’s time for chores, because they were having so much fun they want to go back outside with their friends, who must not ever eat, instead of staying in the house, doing boring chores. They forget it’s time for reading, because they’ve just gotten out of the bath, and it feels like maybe it’s time to wrestle with their brother instead of time to wind down for bed.
When it’s get-in-bed-and-stay-there time, it’s much more fun to wander downstairs “accidentally” to “check on a LEGO Minecraft construction” and start playing with the LEGOs again.
Me: It’s not time to play with the LEGOs. It’s actually time to get in bed. Playing with LEGOs is not getting in bed.
9-year-old: But I didn’t get to play with the LEGOs all day.
Me: You mean, you didn’t get to play with them for five hours? You only got to play with them for four? Because you’ve had a long day of LEGO playing. I can tell by the mess on the floor.
9-year-old: I didn’t make that mess.
Me: Oh, that’s right. It must have been that other 9-year-old who lives in our house.
9-year-old: Yeah. Probably.
Me: Did you even hear what I said?
9-year-old:
Me:
9-year-old: Wait.
I get it. It’s really fun to be a kid, especially when kids are permitted to play. But, unfortunately, there is such thing as a bed time, and if my kids are going to make it to bed at a semi-decent hour, we have to have routines and schedules.
So it is that we keep on keeping on, We keep telling them the same things every night, keep reminding them that it’s not play-with-LEGOs time and it’s not jump-on-the-couches time and it’s not plunge-the-toilet time (actually, there’s not even a time like that in our house, 4-year-olds) and it’s not draw-in-notebooks time and it’s not technology time and it’s not run-around-like-crazy-people time and it’s not change-your-clothes-again time and it’s not need-a-snack time. Those things (or at least some of them) have a place in our schedule. That place is not this minute.
I’m not sure what causes this forgetfulness. I suspect it has something to do with wishful thinking. It’s like how, when a parent no longer has a 3-year-old, she forgets how excruciating it was to raise a 3-year-old and has another baby, because surely this one will be different (they’re all pretty much the same). We varied up the routine once. And kids are really, really good at remembering That One Time and forgetting Every Other Time. The exceptions, especially when they’re fun, become the norm in their minds. So, I don’t know. I might not even want to uncage that beast.
Just about every night, Husband and I will look at each other and say something along the lines of, “Really? They don’t know it’s time for chores, even though we do this every night?” But here’s something I’ve tried to remind myself in those perplexing moments: This is called Being a Kid. I remember being a kid and hoping that, just this once, the rules would be different and I could ride my bike out on the street, because I was now in third grade and knew how to watch for cars, and then I’d just do it, because my logic, even then, was about on par with a deer trying to decide whether he wants to cross the street or stay put. My kids clearly got it from somewhere.
So maybe tonight I’ll give them a night off. Maybe we’ll all eat outside and won’t worry about sweeping or wiping off tables, because nature does that pretty well. Maybe we’ll let them take a swim suit shower out on the back deck and read stories while they jump on the trampoline and then carry them all up to their beds when it’s time.
What’s life without a few surprises?
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
I used to care a whole lot about EVERYTHING. And I mean, everything. I was quite a terrorist, if you ask Husband and my firstborn. I used to care what people thought about me and my parenting choices. I used to care about what my kids looked like, because, of course, they always had to be dressed impeccably—in the right shoes and the right shirts and the right pants, with their hair combed just so, because people needed to know we were killing it as parents of six. I used to care about getting places on time and how we looked walking the streets of our city and what my kids’ behavior said about me.
I know better now.
My kids are their own people, and while I’m the shepherd who guides them in their journeys, they are not exact replicas of me (nor would I want them to be. I’m far from perfect, too.).
What I have realized in my years of parenting is that I often care too much about what the people think. So I’ve resolved to stop caring. Here are the top things I will stop caring about:
1. I don’t care what you think about how many children swarm around me and call me Mama.
We get a whole lot of stares when we’re out in public, and we’re out in public a lot, because we like doing things together as a family. And I get it. We have a lot of kids, and they’re all boys. We’re quite a sight to see, honestly. I’ve started telling myself that people are staring at us because they’ve never seen boys so well behaved. But every now and then, someone walks up to shatter that perception, because the judgement is practically dripping from their eyes, and if it wasn’t dripping from their eyes, I would find it pretty quickly in the tone they use to say these words: “These all yours?” We’ll politely say, yes, they all belong to us. “My God,” they’ll say. “Ever heard of birth control?” or something along those no-filter lines, at which point we’ll walk away, because our kids deserve better than that. They really are good boys, and they don’t need to know how ugly the world can be just yet.
So I’ve stopped caring about what people think of my choice to have half a dozen kids. You can think what you want. You can think I’m ruining the planet because I’m contributing to overpopulation. You can think I’m irresponsible and selfish in this irresponsible and selfish choice. You can think it’s just a waste of space in our society. You can think I’m crazy or ignorant or unschooled or back woods or ridiculously ridiculous. I don’t even care.
2. I don’t care if you could never imagine yourself doing what I do on a daily basis.
Recently I read an essay urging the moms of the Internet to stop being so sensitive to the things that people say to them. Maybe it’s true that sometimes we get a little sensitive about the things people say. But I like to think that I can always tell when people mean well and when they don’t. There’s something in the eyes. I’ve always been good at reading the eyes, because I was a political reporter for a while, and I got really good at spotting the liars and the judgmental and the hostile. There’s always something in the eyes.
The ones who mean well, there’s a lot more forgiveness and grace for them, in my book. Go ahead. You can joke with me about how I have a basketball team with a sub or how I must have been going for a girl or how there are so many of them, everywhere, you can’t get away from them because I can see in your eyes that you mean well and you’re actually quite delighted.
But the ones who don’t mean well, they should just stop talking.
It’s often that we will hear from people, “I don’t know how you do it.” Mostly it’s said out of admiration, but every now and then, there’s a crazed person who makes a beeline for our family when we’re crossing the Alamo Plaza in the great city of San Antonio, just so they can say, “I can’t imagine having that many kids,” and look at our kids like they’re some kind of monsters who will take over the planet and eat the brains of all the much-more-capable-and-desirable adults.
Call me crazy, but I’m not a big fan of my boys standing in front of a person who makes them feel like there’s something wrong with who they inherently are, just because there are six of them. The oldest is getting old enough to pick up on this scorn. But you know what? I don’t care anymore if you think you could never imagine yourself doing laundry for six kids every week or teaching six kids every day or feeding six kids every hour. I don’t care if you think I was a nutcase for choosing this kind of life for myself. I don’t care. Shut your mouth and move along. This is family time. Not let’s-see-what-a-stranger-thinks-about-all-these-children time, despite what you may think.
3. I don’t care if the way my kids are dressed makes them look like orphans.
My kids dress themselves. That means many times, they don’t have matching shoes or they’re wearing one flip flop and one tennis shoe, because their solution for “I can’t find my other Iron Man tennis shoe” is to leave one tennis shoe on and let the other foot carry green flip flop. They have holes in their jeans, because they walk on their knees half the time. They have unbrushed hair, because they can’t be bothered to put a comb through their tangles, and I’m too busy feeding a baby or cleaning up another glass of spilled milk or hugging a 4-year-old. They have smudges on their faces, because they’re like magnets for dirt.
All of this doesn’t mean we don’t take good care of them. It just means kids get to dress however they want (with gentle suggestions from Mama and Daddy) and deal with the consequences of their choices. Like shorts in 40-degree weather.
So I don’t care what other people think about what my kids look like. I don’t care if you think we’re not taking care of them or if you wonder whether we’re those crazy people who don’t bathe our kids every day (we don’t). I don’t care if you think I’m a negligent mother (I’m not) or if you think I have no style (not much) or if you think they just get to run around like hoodlums outside (yeah, mostly).
4. I don’t care what you think my kids’ behavior says about me.
It’s amazing to me how much people forget about the day in, day out battles of raising children. I’ve heard already-raised-their-kids parents rake younger parents over the coals, because their kids never had a tantrum, and even if they did, it was only once, because blah blah blah. Whatever.
So my kid had a tantrum. Stop giving me the stink-eye. So my kid won’t stop whining and it’s super annoying. So my kid didn’t want to leave the park and kicked some of the mulch, and it got in his twin brother’s eye. Yeah, that’s not allowed, but you know what? It happens. Emotions can’t always be controlled perfectly. And just because I understand that doesn’t mean he’s not gong to deal with the consequences of his actions, but it does mean that I’m going to first empathize with my kid about how hard it is to leave a park when we’re having fun. Mind your own business and let me take care of it.
I don’t care if you think I’m too strict. I don’t care if you think I’m too lenient. I don’t care if you think I’m probably not the best one for this job. I don’t care. I’ll parent my kids however I want to parent them, because I’m the one who knows them best. I know their tendencies and their struggles and their pitfalls, and, most of all, I know their hearts. You don’t, in your one glance my way.
I don’t care what other people think about us anymore. I don’t care if you hate families and despise children, because you think they have nothing to offer the world. I know who we are, and I know who my kids are, and I know how much value they have to offer, and I know that they will one day change this world they’re living in.
That makes me glad I have six of them to raise.
