by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Every year Husband and I sit down to make some goals for the New Year. And, of course, this year was no different, although six boys make it a little hard to have any stretch of uninterrupted time to write out goals and make them look remotely pretty. So if these don’t make a lick of sense, I’m sorry. We’re drowning here, and my life preserver has a hole in it.
1. Stop having homicidal thoughts toward my children.
I’m kidding. Or am I? No, really I am. I don’t ever have homicidal thoughts toward my children. Actually, if I’m being candidly honest, the thoughts that tend to come sometimes are, “I wonder if I could give these two away to that one family member and then just keep the rest.” And the “these two” part changes every day, because the easy ones change every day, too. That’s a lie. “These two” are almost always the twins in the terrible 3s. They’re the most consistent team in my house. But in the new year, I would like to make it my goal to not let any of those I’d-like-to-give-you-away thoughts come. This is a tall order, but the twins will turn 4, and I’ve heard 4 is a turning-around point for kids like them. At least that’s what I hold tight to when another twin catastrophe comes swinging in.
2. Make one meal where no one says, “I don’t like that” before they even taste it.
Maddening. Here I’ve slaved over a damn stove all afternoon, and I put that yummy chicken soup with the ingredients I threw together, because someone ate all the carrots and someone spilled the oregano and someone else was snacking on the chicken while I wasn’t looking, and, also, I’m not the best at planning meals, but still, it took an hour to cook, and before they even taste it, someone says, “Aw, I hate that.” Yeah, well, I hate you right now, too. I’m kidding. Or am I?
3. Never watch another episode of the following shows: Pokemon, Octonauts, SpongeBob SquarePants, (fill in your own blank).
I’ll say what we’re all thinking: Kids’ shows are the worst shows ever. Not only do they have theme songs that will get caught in our brains for a thousand years, but they usually feature a whole slew of children’s voices. I don’t know about you, but I have enough children’s voices in my house trying to get my attention. I don’t need another little-kid voice trying to explain what a vampire squid is, because I’ve got plenty little-kid voices pontificating about how they didn’t have milk today and so I have to get them some right this very minute and make it a double portion and informing me that their poop was green today and sharing everything they learned when playing Plants vs. Zombies for their 10 minutes of technology time. I feel like murdering my TV, that’s what I feel like. We don’t watch a whole lot of TV, but when we do, my God. I would like those characters to disappear forever.
(Kids shows that are an exception in my book: Fresh Beat Band and Yo Gabba Gabba. If anyone knows how to stream those shows, spill all your secrets. We don’t have cable, so I don’t get to watch my favorite kid shows anymore. I’m dying to know what’s happening with Marina and Shout.)
4. Make our home a Kidz Bop-free zone.
Oh, come on. You know what I’m talking about. That perfectly fine Taylor Swift song that’s sung by a little girl in a particularly nasally way, and instead of the lyrics, “Got a long list of ex-lovers, they’ll tell you I’m insane” the words are changed to something kid-friendly like “Got a list of old friends, they’ll tell you I’m to blame,” and even though it’s almost a little bit clever the way they changed it like that, there is something maddeningly annoying about a kid putting the song on repeat, and now all you hear is “Got a list of old friends, they’ll tell you I’m to blame” when the song plays forty million times on the radio (two months ago, at least). I almost bought my kid a Kidz Bop CD for Christmas, because they really do love them and have been checking them out from the library for months, but then I remembered the songs and the kids’ voices and how they can drive me up one wall and right back down the other.
Nope.
5. Put the kids to bed once and have them stay there.
I know, I know. They should be staying in their beds every night. They should stay put, because I’m the parent. I’m probably not putting my foot down quite forcefully enough. Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll trade you for a day, let you take care of six boys for twenty-six whole hours and we’ll see if you feel like putting them back to bed three million times at the end of your day. Husband and I are done by the time bedtime rolls around. We’ve gotten really good at pretending not to hear footsteps and laughter and knocking. We lock the little ones in their room, where they can’t get out and terrorize the house or, worse, DIE (they ate a whole tube of toothpaste at 3 a.m. one morning while the rest of the house was sleeping. Husband happened to hear a thump and went to investigate. Twins and a squeezed-empty tube of peppermint delight, also smeared all around their mouths. The clues were hard to ignore.) And then we ignore the rest.
6. Put items in the recycling basket and not have them come climbing back out when the 9-year-old is on trash duty.
My 9-year-old is an environmentalist, and he likes to save things and re-imagine what in the world they could be used for. This is a great thing, except I’m not so keen on climbing into bed with a mascara container he thinks I could reuse if I “just think hard enough.”
7. Stop expecting my children to remember our nightly routine—even though it’s been done every night of their lives.
There are routines we have set firmly in place in our house. Some of them we’ve been doing for as long as the oldest has been alive—nine years. One would think this would be more than enough time to establish that as an every-single-day routine. And yet our kids act like it’s a surprise every night when story time rolls around and it’s time for them to sit quietly in their spots (they thought it was jump-on-the-couch-naked time, but that’s doesn’t even have a time slot on our schedule.). They act surprised that it’s time for lights out when 8:20 rolls around and they have no more time to silently read or write in their journals. They act surprised that they have to take a bath and brush their teeth and put on pajamas because we’re parents who care about good hygiene (mostly).
So, rather than expecting them to remember that this is a routine and we’ve done it every single night, I’m just going to start expecting that they will put up a fight and be pleasantly surprised when they don’t. Optimism and all that.
8. Leave the house once and not have to search for shoes or cups or jackets or kids.
It never fails. Every time we try to leave the house, someone is missing shoes. Or a jacket they remember hanging on their hook when they took it off (yeah, right) is not there. Or someone needs drink real quick. Or someone went missing. Our kids make us late more times than they make us on time, and in the new year, I would just like to leave once without searching for something important, just to prove we can.
9. Take the argument time from two hours to one.
We have one of those strong-willed kids (actually we have a few of them, but two are too young to be skilled at it, thank God). He also happens to be a sticky-brained child, which is, as you might imagine, quite an easy combination to parent. He doesn’t fight about everything, mind you. But he fights about at least one thing every day. He’s become quite skilled at picking his battles. The things that are really important to him—say, building with LEGOs when it’s not time to build with LEGOs because it’s time for him to get in the bath—he will push and push and push until we’re too tired even to breathe anymore. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve told him that “the answer is no,” he will fight. I would like to lessen the amount of time we spend arguing every day. (It’s not really two hours right now. I’m kidding. Or am I?)
10. Go a whole week without hearing a blood-curdling scream.
I live with a pack of boys. Screaming is what they do, mostly because they prefer to live dangerously. They’ll jump from the tree house to the trampoline and scream when their leg gets caught wrong beneath them. They’ll try to jump from the trampoline to the rock-climbing wall on their play scape and scream when they bonk their head. They’ll slide down the stairs head-first at the same time and scream when somebody got going a little too fast and kicked him in the nose as if kicking a brother in the head would stop his trajectory down. All that to say, I’m not really sure how realistic this goal is, but I’d really like to try.
As you can see, I have big plans for 2016 in my parenting life. It’s a good thing these goals depend on really fickle, unreliable little humans, because otherwise, they’d be way too easy. Goals are supposed to challenge us, right?
Well, challenge accepted.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
“The hardest part of being a Mother is when they become adults and cut your heart to pieces.”
“Wait until they’re teenagers. Then you’ll have something to complain about.”
“Oh, please. Mothering isn’t hard until they get to the teens.”
-I Have it Worst
Dear I Have it Worst: I know I’m not a parent of a young adult yet. I know I don’t have to figure out hormones and girlfriends and how to handle broken curfews. I know my little people are way easier to control than the big people they will one day be. But have you ever tried to wrestle a plunger that just went swimming in poo from four 3-year-old hands, and as soon as you finally peel those 20 fingers from the stick and turn around to put the (still-dripping) plunger somewhere they can’t reach it, one of those four hands dips into the brown water to finish the job it wanted to do in the first place? Have you ever tried to stop an 8-year-old from digging out the old pacifiers from the trash can because he thinks they can be recycled into something new? Have you ever tried to convince a 5-year-old that horizontal stripes don’t really match vertical stripes?
I know, I know. The answer is probably “I’ve done things much harder than that.” I’m just trying to get you to practice this little amazing communication secret called “empathy,” which means “to remember how it felt when your 3-year-old drew all over his brand new organic cotton sheets with a permanent marker you didn’t know he had and you wanted to murder him.” I bet you thought it was dang hard, too.
(This isn’t a competition. Stop making it one.)
“A mother simply propagates a virus upon the earth. They all need to be destroyed.”
—Violently Yours
Dear Violently Yours: Let’s just use a little logic here. “A mother simply propagates a virus.” For anything to propagate a virus upon the earth, that means it must have been a virus, too. I’ve been called a lot of things, but this one is new. A virus? That sounds intriguing. Like a mum flu or a mothebola virus. I sure wish that’s what I were, because there are a lot of women in my life who would really like to have a baby. If I could infect them, you bet I would.
I know you meant your comment to be something far worse but I feel like I have to thank you for the compliment. I’ll remind you that a virus is so small it can only be seen with a microscope. Now. I’ve had six kids, including twins. There is no part of my body small enough to only be detected by a microscope. Maybe my brain. I can’t seem to remember anything anymore. So I appreciate the vote of confidence in my ability to shrink back to regular (or nearly nonexistent) size after six children, but I assure you, we’re not anywhere close.
Try again.
“I’ve met some really shitty mothers.”
-What’s Your Point
Dear What’s Your Point: Welp, I’m not one of them. I actually rock at being a mother. The only thing I have in common with your comment is what I do most mornings at about 9 a.m., give or take a few.
“Sounds like whining to me and she has a husband to boot. I am a single mom and I don’t feel this way. Thank God. There are some days when I want my son to leave me alone for 5 min but it’s not hard. Suck it up butter cup!”
“SHUT THE HELL UP! You are a mother now grow up. She seems like a spoiled little brat who wants her single life with kids back again. Can’t go back so look forward and be positive!”
-Parenting is Super Easy
Dear Parenting is Super Easy: I like this world you live in. How did you get there? May I please come, too? Because I live in a world where parenting is stinking hard, and it’s not because I’m not a good mom or because I never should have had kids or because I want my single life back. It’s just that I now live in a world where one of my kids will bust into my room in the middle of the night to tell me he feels like he needs to puke two seconds before he actually does, all over my comfy comforter that requires a bath in the tub and a stint out on the back porch to get clean. Now I have six boys who like to climb the walls like Spider-Man and put gigantic spitballs on the ceiling and leave LEGOs all over the floor so the baby is constantly in danger of choking on one of them. That doesn’t mean I’d trade my life today for my no-kids one. IT JUST MEANS THAT IT’S HARD. It just means it’s not perfect. It just means there are days I feel like tapping out, for just a second or a minute or a whole afternoon.
Scratch that. I’m totally lying. The real reason it feels hard is because all I really want to do is lie on the couch and read the latest George R.R. Martin novel and sip on a little red wine so it dulls my senses and I don’t have to hear the kids losing their minds about wanting dinner and why don’t they ever have food and who’s going to pour them milk. Why do kids have to be so dang hard?
“Are they all yours? My God.”
-Tactless
Dear Tactless: What’s a number you’d be comfortable with? One? Two? Maybe three? Well, then, that’s how many are mine. The rest are strays who just thought we looked like better parents than the ones they had. And hey. What’s a few more when you already have three?
What? They all look like me? Huh. That’s weird. I guess I get around.
“You have enough for a basketball team. With a sub!”
-Sports Analogies Are the Best
Dear Sports Analogies Are the Best: You smart thing. How did you guess? That’s exactly what we were trying to do. We got married and, 18 months later, looked at each other and said, “WE SHOULD START A TOALSON BASKETBALL TEAM, because that would be really cool!” And now here we are. It’s a really good thing we went for that sub, because a few of them can’t dribble a ball without breaking their nose. I think we probably need a couple more, just to be safe.
“Are you done yet?”
-Just Call Me Nosy
Dear Just Call Me Nosy: Nope. We’re not done until we beat the Duggars and get our own television show. Because that’s the whole point of having babies, isn’t it? Breaking the record for how many babies a body can produce in 25 years and snagging your own sitcom? I still have 10 or 15 good years of childbearing left, and you better believe we are going to use them.
“You were trying for a girl, weren’t you.”
-Big Mouth
Dear Big Mouth: No. I’ve wanted six boys since I was a little girl, and that’s exactly what happened. Lucky me.
Also, what’s wrong with boys? What’s wrong with wanting more boys?
“Stop using your choice to have six kids as an excuse to do nothing else.”
-Supermom
Dear Supermom: Gosh, I admire you. I’m sure you have a perfectly manicured yard and your homemade bread never caves in the middle and all your kids’ shoes match and are on the right feet every morning. And your kids probably never turn in a school paper late. And you never yell when the 3-year-old sneaks out of bed and hoards all the toothbrushes in the blue cup for God knows what reason, even though he’s been told and told and told not to wander and especially not to hoard toothbrushes because you’re tired of buying toothbrushes. And you throw the most spectacular birthday parties on the block. I wish I could be you. I really do.
But, alas, the only thing I do all day is lie on the couch and watch my hoodlums tear up my house around me so I have a reason to blame them for everything. I can’t clean house, because I have six kids. I can’t cook dinner, because I have six kids. I’ve been wearing the same workout pants for four days, because I have six kids.
The gulf between you and me is light years apart, so I give. You keep being your awesome super mom self, and I’ll keep being my despicable lazy mom self.
Thanks for commenting! If you have any personal issue with any of my answers, please email idontcare@babymakingfactory.com. And I’m sure I’ll see you around again soon!
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
The other day I was trying to put my 3-year-old in the car, and we were in a hurry, because I wanted to get to the grocery store and back before it was time for their lunch, since you definitely DO NOT want to be caught out in public when two headstrong 3-year-olds and a 9-month-old decide they’re hungry and you’re not feeding them fast enough, because, look, we’re surrounded by food and all you have to do is BUY SOMETHING FOR THEM.
That’s a fight I didn’t want to have today. So I was doing my best to buckle the 3-year-old quickly and make sure the chest piece was positioned in the exact place it should be, because I’m all about safety, while he was more concerned with waving a book he’d found in my face.
“Look, Mama,” he kept saying over and over and over again. Wave, wave, wave.
“I’m trying to buckle you,” I said.
“But look what I found,” he said, still waving it in my face. I took the book and threw it down on the floor of the van.
“Stop putting the book in my face,” I said. “I don’t like it when you shove things in my face.”
He ignored me, of course, because he’s a 3-year-old and that’s what 3-year-olds do, and he replaced a book with his finger, which I know I just saw up his nose. It took a few impressive Matrix moves that I’m still feeling today to get out of that sticky spot, and then he was buckled and we were on our merry way, my annoyance dissipating with every mile we logged, replaced by anxiety and dread, because who in their right mind takes two 3-year-olds and a 9-month-old to a grocery store? I was totally setting myself up for failure, and I knew it.
But I distracted myself by thinking about how kids probably don’t even understand the whole concept of “I don’t like having things shoved in my face,” because they don’t realize they’re shoving a book in a face. They’re just trying to get our attention. It’s how they communicate.
I know, because I watched them after we got home from the store. The two 3-year-olds were talking to each other, and one would hold a train right up into the face of the other one and say, “I want this one. Do you want this one?” Twin 1 was trying to pick a fight, but Twin 2 wasn’t taking the bait, mostly because he couldn’t see the train that was right up in his face. It was too close. So he just ignored it and said, “No,” and went right on playing.
There are so many things that kids don’t understand. Take, for instance, the “please don’t put your stinky feet on me.”
First of all, kids don’t even know what stinky smells like. They sort of know stinky when it comes to things like farts and sweaty armpits and food they don’t like, but when it comes to anything connected to their body, stinky is not a word in their vocabulary. They will come in from playing outside in the middle of a Texas summer and smell like a whole pasture full of cows and dung and the dog that was dispatched to round up all the strays who need milking, even though we don’t live anywhere near cows. They will fight to the death about taking a bath, no matter how many times we tell them that the smell they keep looking around trying to find is actually them.
Every night at dinner, the 9-year-old, without even thinking, will put his stinky feet that have been trapped inside his tennis shoes all day, on my legs. All over them, actually. He moves them up and down and side to side, because he has trouble sitting still after all that overstimulation at school. I can practically see the fumes swirling up from his black socks with the neon green toes, and those fumes get to be rubbed all over my legs. Just what I wanted.
He does it because he’s not thinking and because he loves me, but THIS IS NOT LOVE. Trust me. It’s dinnertime, and all I can smell is Fritos mixed with pinto beans and really aged cheese, even though what we’re having is salmon with salad.
Kids also don’t understand things like “Please give me some personal space,” because what is personal space to kids? They will touch me and prod me and lean into me and not think twice about it. They will stand so close to me I’ll trip over them on my way to get some requested milk. They will fall all over each other and think it’s hilarious instead of annoying. They will cling to my legs on the walk to school, and then, when they’ve disappeared from my view because there’s a baby strapped to my frontside, they will stop, and my Matrix move skills will be tested once more as I try to stop myself from falling, and I’ll be sore for another month.
“I would like to go to bed” is probably the most misunderstood phrase in our house. To our kids, this means, “I would like you to come into our room a thousand times seeking extra hugs and kisses and to especially tell us in no less than 1,000 words what you did on the playground today.” Just when we’re falling into dreamland and it’s looking like the most beautiful place we’ve ever seen, someone will knock on our door with something important to tell us, like how he thinks that tomorrow is crazy sock day and he doesn’t have any crazy socks, so can he borrow some, and it will take us five more hours to get back to sleep. “I would like to go to bed” is also code for “You can totally get out of your bed and take all the books down from the library shelves,” if you’re asking our 3-year-old twins, which is why we use a locking doorknob installed backwards on their room and lock them in it at night, because 3-year-olds roaming the house at night is scarier than that freaky doll Chucky coming for a visit with his eyes that never blink.
“Chew with your mouth closed” looks like a 3-year-old trying to figure out how in the world you’re supposed to chew food when you close your mouth, looking confusedly at all his brothers who have mastered the talent and then, after rolling the food around his mouth with his tongue, opting to swallow it whole so he chokes on a stump of unchewed broccoli. “You’re not hungry; you’re just bored,” gets me tagged as the “worst mother ever.” And “That’s not in our budget right now” results in a boy fetching my wallet, pulling out a credit card and saying, “Then use this,” reminding me that I need to teach him about responsible use of credit cards, because society’s claws are thick.
So maybe things get a little lost in translation, but the truth is I’m kind of glad. Because it’s those times I feel really annoyed that a kid is waving something in my face and I’ve already asked him to stop once that I remember how these are all places where I get to consider things from their point of view and I get to remember what it was like to be a kid and I get to take a deep, long breath and hope I’m breathing in patience and not more boiling annoyance. And then I get to be a good mother who teaches and directs and walks them toward a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.
But, seriously, if you don’t get your stinky feet off me…
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
You know that scene in Cinderella where she’s in the kitchen trying to get things ready for the day, and on the wall there’s this collection of bells ringing incessantly, signaling that people who are depending on her (mostly because they’re lazy) need things? Every morning, my kitchen fills with its own chorus of little bells, too, except those bells are walking around in the form of two 3-year-olds, a 5-year-old, a 6-year-old and an 8-year-old, and I can’t just simply leave the room to get away from their clanging, because they have legs and will follow me to the edge of the world without asking any questions about where I’m going.
“Mama!” the 5-year-old will say in the whiniest voice I’ve ever heard (and that’s saying a lot. I’ve really cleaned up my act.). “I can’t find my shoes.”
He’s not even out of bed yet, so I’m pretty sure he hasn’t even attempted “looking,” which I put in quotations because “looking” for a 5-year-old consists of sometimes seeing what’s right in front of his face, sometimes not. He just tripped over one of those missing shoes, and he still hasn’t found them.
His bell is followed up closely by one of the twins saying, “Mama, my brudder beat me down the stairs.” If only I could turn back time.
Followed, almost in the same breath, by his twin brother saying, “Mama, I firsty. I need milk, Mama. Mama, I need milk. I firsty, Mama” without even the slightest pause so that I can let him know that his milk is already on the table if he would just “look.”
“Where’s my blue folder?” the 8-year-old will say, even though I’m not the one in charge of his blue folder and there’s a designated place for it and I can see it sticking out from that designated place right his very minute.
“Oh! I forgot (fill in the blank),” the 6-year-old says on a regular basis. Usually that fill-in-the-blank looks something like forgetting that he’s VIP student this week and he needs to bring a poster with pictures of himself and his family on it so that all the other students will know who he is and what he wants to be when he grows up. Or forgetting that he’s supposed to have his book club book finished today, and he still has 75 pages to read. Or forgetting that there was a birthday party he was invited to this weekend, and he didn’t get to go, and how can we possibly keep track of all this? (To be fair, some of this isn’t even his fault, it’s our fault for failing at school. I haven’t signed a folder in weeks, and it’s only November.)
Get me a drink, I hungry, I can’t find my shoes, where’s my library book, please hold me just because, help me, carry me, push in my chair, where’s my folder, sign my papers, I’m cold, I’m hot, I’m hungry, I need my vitamins, bring me my blanket, where’s my backpack, can you turn on the light, I need more toilet paper, I want more, More, MORE.
With all these children and all their constant demands, sometimes I start feeling a little like Cinderella, except I’m a mama. Cinder-Mama. It’s like the fairy tale I always wanted, except it’s not.
Brush my hair, wash me off, wipe my bottom, what’s ten plus ten, I want my color book, the baby’s getting into the crayons, button my pants, tie my shoes, help me up, kiss this hurt, when’s dinner, can we go to the store because I have two dollars to spend, I need a snack, I can’t open the toothpaste, aw, man, it’s the minty toothpaste, I like the strawberry toothpaste, what are you doing? going to the bathroom? You don’t have a penis, where does your peepee come out?
There is something inherent in a mama that hears a need and that wants to meet it, desperately, right this minute. But the thing is, if I try to meet every single need in my house, I will go a little crazy.
Because one minute the 5-year-old will need someone to show him how to tie his shoes, again, and, at the same time, the 6-year-old will want help pouring the milk, because it’s a new gallon and I’m really thankful that he’s asking because the last thing I want is a whole gallon of milk dumped out onto the floor, but there’s no way in the world that I can be in two places at one time, and so one of those needs is going to have to remain unmet until I can manage it.
I tried to be in two places at once one time, and I ended up feeling resentful and angry that they would ask me to do so many things at the same time even though there was only one of me and six of them. So I had to take a step back. I had to breathe. I had to say it was okay that I couldn’t meet every single need the first time they asked. Or even the fifth time they asked. Or ever, sometimes (they did, after all, wish they could have gone to that party they missed. I was Cinder-Mama, not Fairy GodMama). It was good for them to learn how to wait. It was good for them to learn to do things for themselves. It was good for them to realize they were fully capable of doing what I could do.
So they started tying their own shoes, because they figured out they could do hard things. They started pouring their own milk, even if it was a brand new gallon, because they knew they had permission to screw up and spill, as long as they cleaned it up. They started writing their own events on a calendar and waiting to be hugged and kissed and taking responsibility for their own backpacks and shoes and school folders.
They don’t always remember, of course. There are mornings when it still sounds like there are shrieking bells wrapped around my ankles. There are days they forget “mama” is not synonymous with “servant,” but they are learning, day by day by day, that they are fully capable of handling the world on their own.
No more Cinder-Mama. Except for my indescribable beauty, of course.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Husband and my older boys have lately been trying to cram in some viewings of old Star Wars movies before the new one comes out. It’s important, Husband says, to introduce them to Luke and Yoda and Hans and, most of all, The Force.
I see his point. I mean, I remember watching all the Star Wars movies as a kid and enjoying the story, because it’s a good one, and even thinking that maybe, just maybe The Force was real, and I could one day do what Luke Skywalker did, if I could only find a light saber.
It’s just that when he says it’s important to introduce the boys to The Force, I take exception. Because my boys are already well-acquainted with The Force. It’s what they use to
1. Get their clothes in the laundry hamper…or not.
I know, I know. All the times I’ve come across their renegade pieces of clothing, smashed right up against a laundry hamper, it’s just because they’re still not that great at using The Force to get their clothes inside it. They just need a little more practice. That’s all. And when I come across a shirt or some pants or missing underwear on the couch or their bedroom floor or in the bathroom sink, it’s probably because one of their brothers did an arm fart in the middle of their putting-away-my-clothes-by-using-The-Force practice, and that’s why their aim is so far off. Fewer distractions, they need.
2. Put their dirty bowls, silverware and plates in the sink…or not.
It doesn’t matter if they’ve had three times every day for the last eight years to practice this skill, it’s just a really tough one to learn. I can understand that. Some things take time. Lots of time. I realize they really, really, really want to get those bowls and silverware and plates in the sink, but The Force isn’t strong enough to even pick them up off the table. Maybe The Force doesn’t work as well when it comes to wood and food. Force interference, they are.
3. Turn off lights…or not.
I get that this is a tricky thing to do, that flicking a finger from across the room to turn the light off in the last room they left. I’m sure The Force employs some intricately designed movement that requires motor skills my boys don’t have yet, because every time I pass their rooms at any time of the day, the light is blazing and no one’s home. When I point out the left-on light, they act like they forgot, but that’s just a ruse, because boys don’t always like admitting to what they can’t yet do. Better honed motor skills, this requires.
4. Set the table…or not.
I’m sure this goes back to The Force not working when it comes to things like wood and food, or forks and spoons and plates, because every time I ask one of them to set the table so I can finish up dinner, I turn around to put all those pots and pans on the table, and there are no plates and forks and spoons with which to eat, and they’re all in the living room reading or building a block tower or banging out an original melody on the piano, as if they thought this job was already done. Different kind of Force, this entails.
5. Shut the door…or not.
You would think this might be the easiest of them all. Go out the door, pull The Force along with you. Come inside, fling The Force behind you. But I guess I have some young Padawans who haven’t quite made it to Jedi status, because most of time, when they’re coming in or out, they don’t even seem to notice the door standing ajar and all the flies following them in. I wish there were a Force that could beat the flies, because they seem to love our house. So much so that the 6-year-old wrote an essay in school about how if he had a pet, it would be a fly-eating frog, so it could catch all the flies his mom hates. Which is why I really want my kids to master this closing-the-door-using-The-Force, because we don’t need kids’ teachers to know about things like that. More Physical Force, I demand.
6. Wash their bodies…or not.
I really wish I could help them here. If only words could pull enough of The Force with them to lather up the kids in the bath. Because “make sure it’s the first thing you do” is the same thing I say every single night when they get in the bath, and when that timer clangs and I tell them it’s time to get out, their hair isn’t even wet. I know they’re really trying to use The Force in between driving that car up the sides of the bath tub and pretending like they’re swimming in deep water. It’s not an easy thing to tell them it’s just not working, but somebody’s gotta do it. Intensified training, they need.
7. Put away the laundry…or not.
Oh, wait. That’s me. This is the one time The Force actually works for my boys, even if it ends up piling underwear in a closet and shoving hang-up shirts in the pajama drawer and crumpling jeans in the underwear drawer. I don’t even care. At least The Force put it all away. Better than I’m doing, it is.
Well. Now that I’ve written all of that out, I can better understand where my little Padawans are coming from. They just need a more skilled Jedi Master to help them hone their powers and teach them the intricate subtleties of using The Force.
Since it’s clear that The Force doesn’t work for Husband, either, I guess that means I signed up to be their Yoda. To work, I go.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Six boys produce a lot of destruction around my house. Everywhere I look, there are nicks in bookshelves and unintended holes in the walls from errant hands or fingers or just curiosity, and there are cracked toilet lids and pictures frames that have no more glass and shattered lights that took an accidental knocking.
But the destruction, by far, hits toys the hardest. Mostly because toys are made of paper. Or something similar. They’re surely not made of anything durable, like steel. Or iron. Or cement.
I know, I know. If we had toys made of steel or iron or cement, we’d have bigger things to worry about, and besides, boys wouldn’t even be able to lift them, which might be my point.
I have no idea what goes through the minds of toy manufacturers when they’re building these complicated little things intended for boy play. I imagine it’s something like this: “Haha! Finally! Here is something they’ll never be able to destroy.”
The answer is always false.
My boys get pretty wild and rowdy when they’re playing, but, from what I’ve observed, it’s not any more wild and rowdy than their friends, including some girls. Kids play hard. It’s their favorite thing to do, and that means that many times, the toys they choose to play with are on their last life. Or maybe they never really had a life in the first place, because as soon as they came home and saw the boys, they gave up (remember the scene in Toy Story 4 then Woody and Buzz and Jessie watch the kids at daycare play with the old toys and you can just tell they’re terrified to be brought into the room? That’s what I imagine any toys coming into our house feel like, if they had feelings.).
So I’m just putting it out there, toy manufacturers: If you want to test whether or not your product is really durable—and I’m talking nothing-is-going-to-destroy-this durable—send it to my house.
Here are some things we’ve already tried:
1. Anything made of foam.
Once upon a time, my second son got a Thor foam hammer for his birthday. It was the coolest thing, if you talked to him. Two days later, it was about half its original size, with tiny little bite marks all over it, because his little brother thought it looked like a good thing to tear apart with his teeth. BECAUSE THIS IS THE ONLY THING FOAM IS GOOD FOR.
Trust me. We made light sabers out of pool noodles this summer, because we thought our boys would really enjoy some safe sword play, except it’s hard to sword fight when you’re focused on how many bite marks your light saber has. They kept getting me in the face, because I couldn’t stop staring, marveling at how quickly it had happened.
You know those foam protectors they put on the metal bars of trampolines so kids don’t get hurt while they’re jumping? Yeah, my little foamivores got those, too. Maybe they’ll learn their lesson next time a body part connects with a metal pole.
2. Anything made with a thousand pieces that don’t keep their pieces.
This would be things like LEGOs that get opened and dumped out and no one really cares about putting together that awesome Star Wars starship as much as I do. It would be things like puzzles, which are all packaged in a bag kids can’t open and neither can parents—so when it is finally, finally, finally wrestled open, the pieces go flying everywhere, and at least one of them is sure to disappear. Forever.
(I think toy manufacturers do this on purpose. Someone somewhere is laughing every time a parent sweats through trying to open something and a billion pieces fly everywhere. You know who’s not laughing? Me. Thanks for another anxiety attack, toy manufacturers. My kid just tossed a puzzle into my lap and asked me to open it.)
3. Mr. Potato Head’s butt.
This was just lazy designing, in my opinion. I get why it’s there—easy storage of all the pieces that make Mr. Potato Head Mr. Potato Head, but it’s just that Mr. Potato Head, at least in my house, has a very leaky butt, because every other minute my kids are asking me to put Mr. Potato Head’s butt on, except we don’t allow the word “butt” in our house, so it sounds more like, “Can you put Mr. Potato Head’s booty back on,” which is really kind of ridiculous and a little bit cute. I’ll put it back on, and then I’ll watch them fill it up with pieces and close it and then open it again, and, whoops, there went the butt flap again and all the pieces are spilling out and my kid is throwing Mr. Potato Head across the room, because it’s just so frustrating. I get it. It’s frustrating when you have a leaky butt on your hands.
4. Action figures.
These guys. I feel sorry for them. They lose limbs like we lose matching shoes. I’ve found Captain America with only one arm, but “at least he still has his shield,” the boys say. I’ve found Hulk without a head, which would be a very dangerous Hulk, if you ask me. I’ve found Iron Man missing a leg, but “at least he can still fly.”
All I know is I’m hoping they won’t come back to avenge their missing limbs, because I have no idea where they are.
5. Games.
Now, I love playing Apples to Apples and Ticket to Ride and Dominion and even Cards Against Humanity just like any other parent, and even when it comes to kids’ games, I love Battleship and Candy Land and Operation. It’s just that even though these games are super fun and most of my boys are old enough to play them, they come with two thousand tiny pieces. And they’re packaged in boxes.
This alone is a recipe for disaster, but put together, it’s a recipe for we’ll-never-play-this-again. The boys try to cram on the box lid, even though the Battleship board is still halfway open, and the box tears in half, and then the pieces are everywhere, and we have to break out the Duct tape, and even still, pieces go missing. Ever tried to play Operation without the liver and the heart and the funny bone? It’s not as much fun.
6. Anything that’s super cool.
The 8-year-old once got a microscope for his birthday, because he was really into science (and still is), but it lasted all of three days, because he left it out on the table once, and one of his twin brothers decided to see what would happen if he squeezed the tiny little light bulb. Easy enough to fix, except that when he crushed it with his tiny little hands, he also bent a piece that wouldn’t permit any other right bulb to be screwed in.
The 6-year-old once got a really cool bug catcher that broke the first time a fly got caught. (I know. That wasn’t his fault.) Another boy once got a frogosphere where you can raise your own frogs, and we didn’t even try that one, because we’re talking about live animals. After what these boys do to toys? No thanks. You just dodged a bullet, baby frogs.
7. Scooters.
It’s amazing how difficult it is to align the handlebars with the wheels on a scooter and how amazingly easy it is to mangle this contraption beneath the tires of a minivan when boys forget to put it back on the porch.
8. Stuffies.
If the 3-year-olds are left alone with a stuffed animal for any amount of time, they will defluff it, which is about as terrible as it sounds. Every now and then they sneak a little stuffy past my eyes and hide it under their pillow until I take a bathroom break from my post right outside their room, which is where I have to stay if there’s any chance that they will take a nap, and when I come back, I find a miniature throw carpets that have dog heads and lion heads and pink elephant heads with sparkly purple eyes.
In fact, this has happened so often recently I’m considering starting a business selling slippers made from old, defluffed stuffed animals. Because those little throw rugs look suspiciously like the material used for kids slippers. Might as well make a profit off my boys’ destruction.
All I’m really trying to say, toy manufacturers, is that you’re going to have to do better than this. Let’s see you make something cool that will not be taken apart in ten seconds and put back together all wrong, or maybe, worse, better than before. Let’s see you make something that can withstand cross-purpose playing (like puppet sticks that are actually durable enough to be used as swords—which will happen). Let’s see you make something kids can’t destroy.
I know it’s a daunting task, but judging by the price of that action hero castle they got for Christmas last year that was destroyed two hours later, I’m paying you about $25 an hour. You can do this. I know you can.
Plus, my boy just put a cool Star Wars light saber on his birthday wish list, and I still remember what happened to the last one. No one wants to see an 8-year-old on a war path to figure out who broke his favorite toy. Trust me.
