by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Want to know how I can surely tell that school has started?
Well, of course there’s the amazingly quieter house. That’s a given. But that could just be older boys who are playing on their scooters out front and twins who are locked out back and a baby who’s just as sweet as can be.
There’s also the refrigerator that actually stays closed for an hour at a time, but that could just be kids away for the weekend (any takers?).
No, the biggest clue that school has started in my house is the stack of papers sitting on my bed.
Those are the look-at-later papers.
All three of the boys in school came home with 400 pieces of paper in their red and blue folders (It wasn’t really that bad. It was only 398 papers.) on the first day of school. I had to wade through all of them, because some required further action, like a signature or some kind of permission or even more school supplies. Some of them just went into this pile, to be looked at later (or never, which is much more likely).
We started the school year sprinting. We were so organized I was impressed with us. Everybody picked out their clothes the night before, the backpacks were all hung ready to go, and even the school lunches were packed in the fridge. And then the first day happened and all.these.papers. Is it really necessary to send 5,000 school lunch menus when our kids don’t ever eat school lunches? Is it necessary to send three copies of the same exact information sheet? Is there a place where I can opt out of papers?
Because I know exactly what’s going to happen. It happens every year. We will start off great. I will come down to dinner every evening and sort through those papers in five minutes or less, placing some in a recycling pile, some in a look-at-later pile, some back in the folders because they need returning.
And then I will forget I ever had a look-at-later pile, and by Christmas there will be so many papers we could have saved sixteen trees.
I mean, if this is the price I have to pay to have a little peace from an 8-year-old whose daily grand ideas include starting a vegetable garden in our front yard (cucumbers and carrots are starting to grow in the rose garden) and selling water art paintings out by the mailbox where I can’t even see him, a 6-year-old who’s always hungry and will eat a 2-pound bag of apples if I’m not paying attention, and a 5-year-old who likes to snack on Tom’s toothpaste, then I guess I’ll take it.
Just don’t ask me if I saw the list of school supplies they need for GT. It’s buried somewhere in my look-at-later pile, so. Cut me some slack.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
I mean, I can’t even get mad about it. THEY’RE LOVE NOTES. From my little boys. How is a Mama supposed to get mad at her boys when they leave her something like this?
This is a custom shelf my husband built for Mother’s Day to cover a terrible burn inflicted on the side of our living room chair by a house guest. We’re really good at starting, but not so great at finishing, so this shelf has been waiting for paint for three months now. Half of it is green and half of it…
Well, now the other half’s kid-handwriting art.
I’ve watched a progression of this art. One day I walked down the stairs and was met by a black love note on the corner of the shelf. Another day I walked downstairs and discovered the 6-year-old had gotten into the action, too, this time with red. Yesterday I saw the 5-year-old’s contribution, scrawled in red pen and all capital letters (not pictured here).
Now. My kids (at least the bigger ones) know and understand that it’s against the house rules to write on the furniture. But, in a moment of such deep and overwhelming love, they just had to express their feelings in a way that would forever and ever (or at least until it got painted) let me know their devotion. Like the picnic tables in junior high where kids would scratch their love notes and then scratch them out three days later. Like the desks in high school where couples would declare their undying love under a worksheet and then try to rub it off a few months later.
At least that’s the story I’m telling myself.
Because otherwise the story would be that my kids saw this bare piece of wood that was going to, eventually, be painted anyway and saw a prime opportunity to defy the rules and make their mark.
It surely can’t be that.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
My Sabbath week got off to a fantastic start.
You see that thermostat? It’s not lying.
On Friday, after I’d logged the last writing hour I would log for an entire week (I practice a week-long Sabbath every seventh week to prevent burnout), after I’d sat through a 1.5-hour podcast recording with my husband, I happily went downstairs to feed the baby before we were scheduled to drop our twins off with my mom, who (THANK GOD) wanted to take them for a couple of days.
It was a GREAT day. And then I saw the thermostat.
Though set at 78 (about all we can ask from it in three-digit temps), it was hitting about 82.
“What’s going on?” I said. Husband was in the kitchen, getting some water before he would wrangle the boys into the van.
He looked at the thermostat. “It’s just having trouble keeping up,” he said. “Because it’s so hot outside.”
I had a feeling he was wrong. But, you know, he’s a man. He knows more than I do about these kinds of things.
My three older boys kept coming over periodically to distract the baby and make us leave three hours later than we would otherwise, and every time they opened their mouths, the thermostat climbed a degree. “Close your mouths,” I said. “Your hot air is canceling out the air conditioner’s efforts.”
Husband came in to see if the baby was finished, and I pointed at the thermostat again. “Look,” I said.
The numbers blinked 88 degrees. Husband blinked at me. I saw his shoulders sag a little. He disappeared out back, and when he came in, I knew it wasn’t good news.
The air was quitting. In the middle of a Texas summer, where temperatures reach 10,000 degrees. Summer’s the best, isn’t it?
He called around, because of course he was going to fix it himself, but the place with the part wouldn’t be open by the time we’d dropped the twins off and made it back to town. They weren’t open on the weekend, either. Which meant we’d have to spend an entire weekend without the modern convenience of air conditioning.
“We can do it,” I said when Husband got off the phone. “They used to do it all the time back before air conditioning was around.”
“They also used to die much sooner,” Husband said, in uncharacteristic pessimism.
But I, in uncharacteristic optimism, knew we’d be just fine. In fact, I proposed starting a project called “The Little House on the Prairie Project” wherein we’d spend the rest of our summer without air conditioning and I’d write a book about how we survived. Husband said it should be called “The How Long Until they Kill Each Other Project.”
When we got back to the house without the twins, the temperature was at 90, but the good news was, we’d passed the hottest part of the day. We opened all the windows and let the breeze through.
“This isn’t so bad,” I said. Husband shook his head.
“No,” he said. “We couldn’t.”
“We could totally do this, though,” I said.
“We’re fixing the air conditioner,” he said.
I’m glad I listened. Because by the second night, when there was no breeze coming through the open wide windows and we all just lay in our beds with sleep far, far away in some other country, I knew there was no way my children would survive a summer without air conditioning, mostly because my temper was all hot and bothered and so was Husband’s. It’s weird how heat can do that to you. I’m just glad the twins were gone, because one more straw…
Husband fixed the air conditioning. And we lived happily ever after.
(Mostly.)
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
We’ve been trying. We really have.
Fold your hands in your lap until everyone has been served and we’re done praying. Eat slowly and chew every bite. Don’t inhale food or you’ll choke. No, you can’t have fourths when someone else is still on firsts and they might want more. No, you may not stick your hand in the pot of mashed potatoes and serve yourself with your dirt-crusted fingers. Use your napkin.
Use your napkin!
USE YOUR NAPKIN!
Teaching kids table manners, especially when they’re hungry kids, is my biggest challenge this summer (well, besides bedtime. But I didn’t volunteer for that one.). Mostly because kids don’t really care about table manners.
They don’t care what they get all over their face. They don’t care that this shirt that has bean juice dripped all down the front, needs to be passed down to five additional brothers. They don’t care that they just used their pants as a napkin and now have fashionable oil-marks on their thighs. They don’t care that they’ve got a big glob of spaghetti in their hair (don’t ask.).
They just care about shoving that food in their mouths as fast as they can so they can beat their brothers to seconds.
Our boys actually aren’t that bad until pizza night.
This is the night when they help their daddy make homemade pizza and lay out the pepperoni and sprinkle the cheese. This is the night they run around the table until dinner is served because they’re just so excited. Just so excited.
They’re not excited about the pizza, per se. It’s the ranch. My boys have a weakness for ranch dressing.
Everyone, on pizza night, gets his own tiny cup of ranch.
This night, the oldest poured his own ranch, all the way up to the brim, and when it threatened to pour over the sides, he sucked it right up so it didn’t.
Problem solved.
“Son,” I said, between gags. “Please stop.”
“What?” he said. “I like ranch.”
Obviously.
The boys asked for more ranch before they’d even finished their first piece of pizza. They had it all over their faces, all over their clothes, all over their hands. It was like they’d taken a bath in ranch dressing.
All our progress, gone in one dinner. They were back to eating like animals.
Oh, well. They’ve been asking for a dog. I’ll just tell them we already have six.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Some thoughts on seeing this laid out so neatly on the kitchen table:
1. What the…
2. Who in the world…
3. Why?
4. Is this the same tie…
5. Those are some really straight cutting lines.
This morning, twin B came downstairs to breakfast wearing this tie. It looked humorously out-of-place with his skin-tight pajama pants and blue-striped pajama shirt.
It all got even more humorous when he opened his mouth.
“I can’t get this off, Daddy,” he said.
“You know you’re not supposed to get into your ties,” I reminded him.
He looked at me for a minute and then turned to his daddy. “Can you get it off for me?” he said.
Husband knelt down beside him. “I can,” he said. “But you shouldn’t play with your ties.”
“Okay,” B said, like he really meant it.
Husband tried for several minutes, because he’s a very patient, persistent person, to get the tie off. He tried unclasping it. He tried slipping it over B’s head (which was about fifteen times bigger than the neck strap). He tried unclasping it again.
“Wow. It really is stuck,” he said. “Want to try?” He turned to me.
Not really. But I did, anyway. I spent fewer minutes on the task than he did, because I’d already seen him fail, and I’m not as persistent when it’s a losing battle. I tried unclasping it and then slipping it over B’s head and then unclasping it again.
“Guess we’ll have to cut it,” I said.
“I don’t want to cut it,” Husband said. “It’s a perfectly good tie. I’ll just get it back over his head.”
Husband wrestled that thing for half an hour. B’s lips were all squished and then his nose was squished and then his eyes and eyebrows were squished while the tie inched its way up. He looked pretty traumatized when it was all said and done. Husband comforted him, while I draped the tie over the banister so I’d remember to take it back upstairs when I went up to settle everyone for naps.
Of course I forgot, because who has a brain when they’re raising children?
Poor perfectly good tie. The next time we saw it, this is what it looked like. All that work and traumatizing for absolutely nothing. We had to throw it away anyway.
Yet another of the ironies of parenting.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
When I went to bed last night, these guys were asleep. I know because I stayed out on the couch with a direct line into their room, watching them until they stopped moving—because the last time I left them alone for any amount of time, they tore their closet doors off the hinges and tried to squeeze into their 5-month-old brother’s shorts.
And yet, when I flicked on their light this morning (they were still sleeping) to help them from their baby-gated room (yes, still baby-gated, even though they’re 3. Because TODDLER TWINS.), I found this. Drawings. All over their walls. There were “people” and “ducks” and a “sun” and “mountains” and all sorts of indistinguishable shapes that surely meant something deep and profound.
“Who did this?” I said. I wasn’t even mad. Just really curious and a little stupefied (and maybe impressed) as to how (1) they did it without our knowing and (2) they did it in the dark.
“Not me,” Twin 1 said.
“Not me,” Twin 2 said.
Of course.
“That’s weird,” I said. “Who did it then?”
They both shrugged. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t even blink. “I don’t know,” Twin 1 said.
“I don’t know, either,” Twin 2 said.
Yeah, I bet.
“So a neanderthal from prehistoric times found a portal into our house and drew all over your walls while we were sleeping?”
“Yeah,” they said at the exact same time.
Because that makes WAY more sense than twins drawing on walls. They would never do that. No way.
I have to hand it to them—they’re a united front.
They spent the morning washing walls. I spent the morning searching for that dang piece of chalk. I never did find it.
So today, while they’re “napping,” another caveman will probably find a portal and redo all his drawings. Oh, well. At least chalk isn’t permanent.
Now, if I could just find that Black Sharpie that went missing this afternoon…
