by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
You may not have known it, but this week is National Preservation Week. It’s not a very well known holiday, but parents actually celebrate it all the time.
That’s because kids are great at preservation.
I’m not talking about the kind of preservation that looks like kids picking up litter on the side of the road or pointing out how the landscape changes when trees are razed or urging their parents to turn off the air conditioner in the middle of a Texas June because they just read a book on global warming (this is what happens when you have a 9-year-old conservationist on your hands, at least in my experience). These are all passions to be celebrated.
But what I’m talking about is how good kids are at finding trash and turning it into delightful treasure.
Take, for instance, the boxes we get from Amazon.
We are Amazon Primers. Anything I can do to keep my kids out of a store, I’ll do. If that means having everything I need (with the exception of my groceries, which I suspect might be coming soon) delivered right to my door, I guess I’ll do it. So we subscribe to everything. Toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, coconut oil, stevia, cacao nibs, almond flour, more vitamins than we probably need, skin care lotions, makeup, you name it, we subscribe to it. I would subscribe to subscribing if I could.
Because we order so much from Amazon, and because it’s always delivered straight to our door in bulk, we never have a shortage of boxes for the kids to keep.
Sometimes this is cool, because every now and then I get a wild hair and do a fun art project with the boys, wherein we’ll decorate a box for somewhere around the house and watch it, day by day by day, get destroyed by the errant legs or flailing arms of wrestling boys.
But sometimes, like when we get an enormous box for all the other boxes, because, apparently, this makes it easier to ship, this is not cool at all. Mostly because I’ll be the one to trip over it and bust my face on the side of the couch—which, you would think, is well padded. Well. It isn’t. See if you’re well padded after having five boys flip over you at 6:30 p.m. every evening when they should be doing chores.
My 9-year-old is probably the worst best little environmentalist in the house. He will keep everything. He’s been making a little money working with his daddy on some video client work, because he wants to be a cinematographer and Husband’s trying to introduce him to the world of video recording, and he’s been buying all sorts of Pokemon cards with his hard-earned money—which is mostly paid for arranging lights in the right formation and cropdusting all over the tiny room because he’s nervous.
He likes to keep his Pokemon boxes, because he “might need them someday.” And, besides, they can be reused for a pencil collection site on his bedroom desk.
Hey, as long as it’s not in my bedroom, go for it.
But now the other boys have gotten in on the act. When one of them is on trash duty, they’ll argue about what we throw in the trash, because, of course, it can all be reused for something useful—like a receptacle for lone socks (already have one…or five) or a rubber band holder (I’d really rather not) or a great container for preserving diapers (why would you…?).
They’ve made some tiny trees out of logs,which are really the charred remains from the outdoor fireplace we don’t ever use in Texas because it’s a thousand degrees most of the year, and grass in the backyard, and they want to bring these “treeple” in, because they’ll be ruined outside, and we CERTAINLY can’t throw them away.
The worst preservation my kids do? The papers.
My kids are very artistic kids, in that they will create all hours of the day. If creating were homework, we would not have our every-single-day fights, because they would gladly sit at the table and draw a line on a piece of paper and call it finished (if you’re the 4-year-olds). AND THEY’LL WANT TO KEEP EVERY SINGLE MASTERPIECE.
It doesn’t matter if they’re only 4 and this “fox” doesn’t really look like a fox, and they’ll be better at it in another three years. They want to keep it now, because they’re sure their future self will appreciate it. The 6-year-old doesn’t care that the piece of paper he just dumped from his red school folder was a quiz where he circled the answers, and the only evidence that it’s his is the name printed at the top of it—he’ll want to keep it to remember what his “handwriting was like.” The 9-year-old has a mad scientist’s stash of plans for the house he’ll build someday, and no amount of persuasive arguments will take those papers and crumple them in the trash (he’s a persistent kid, so he knows how to deal with persistent parents).
I’m trying to swim through the papers, but my head keeps going under.
I guess I should be glad I’m living with six preservationists, but it does get annoying every now and then. Except when someone sees that gigantic Amazon box and wonders what it would be like to ride down the stairs—because I actually fit in it, which means, you guessed it, I can ride down the stairs in it, too.
Who knew preservation could be so dangerous fun?
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 | Messy Mondays
I’m a good parent. That means that when my kids are being completely unreasonable and losing their minds about how their soccer socks weren’t washed the last time I did laundry and they don’t have any blue socks left and blue is their favorite color and they CANNOT go to school without their blue socks, oh, and, also, they don’t remember where they put their shoes so now they’re going to spend the next half hour looking but not really looking, because they have their nose stuck in a book while they’re walking up the stairs, which means they’re most likely going to trip and fall, and there will be a bit of blood and they’ll be dying (in their minds, at least), there are some things I’d like to say.
Kids evoke some of the most unreasonable responses in their parents, because they’re illogical little human beings. But because I’m a good parent, I don’t usually say any of these things out loud. I keep them safe and sound in my own mind. But parents, you know, we need a place for these confessions to go every once in a while, so I’m going to take them for a spin today. Here’s what I’d say to my kids if I could.
“Because you haven’t been alive as long as I have, I think you’re completely unreasonable.”
No, the world isn’t going to end because you accidentally left that Pokemon card in your Sunday school class. In fact, you’re probably not even going to miss it in the grand scheme of things, since you have 999 more.
Now. What to do with all the others…
“You’re ridiculous.”
We’re really picky about the way we say things in our house. Because we don’t want kids to take on the identity of “ridiculous,” we say “You’re acting ridiculous.” It seems like a small thing, but it’s actually huge in a kid’s mind.
Still, there are times I’d like them to know that they are, in fact, ridiculous. This is usually when my kids are arguing over whether or not we’re going the wrong way to the zoo even though they have no sense of direction whatsoever. At least the older boys are weathered enough to understand that they can look at the landmarks and know, about 50 percent of the time, whether we’re headed in the right direction. But those 4-year-old twins will fight us to the word-death, screaming and hollering about how they want to go to the zoo, and we’re never going to get to the zoo, because we’re going in the wrong direction and they know everything. I don’t much like to be told by a kid who’s been alive for all of four years that I need to turn around and go the other direction or that I should go when the light in front of me is red or that I need to “beat all the other cars” when we’re on the highway.
“You don’t know anything.”
This phrase flits through my head when my 4-year-old twins are telling me I’m doing the wrong part of my workout routine, even though I’m busting my rear to get ahead, and it’s all the worse, because I don’t even have the extra breath to tell them that they’re the ones who are wrong (because I like falling into the black holes of arguing with a 4-year-old). But my mental space is filled with all sorts of words. Sometimes, if I can manage enough air to say anything, I’ll huff out something sarcastic, like, “Oh, look at that. She’s doing the same exercise I was doing FIVE SECONDS AGO. I guess I know what I’m doing after all.” But usually not. Those workouts are hard core. And, also, I get winded standing up.
“I’m the worst parent ever? Yeah, well, no one in this house is winning any awards for best kid ever, either.”
Whenever we say that the boys can’t do something (usually going outside to play with their friends, who keep ringing our doorbell during dinner), we’re the worst parents ever. When we tell them they have to take a bath and wash behind their ears, we’re the worst parents ever. When we won’t buy them another pack of Pokemon cards, we’re the worst parents ever.
When we don’t let them watch that show a friend was talking about (because we don’t even have a TV), when we don’t let them play outside in the mud after it’s been raining all day, when we don’t let them have a little more technology time because dang it if I’m not going to be a parent of a techno-head, when we don’t buy them an iPhone like all the other third graders have now, when we won’t let them stay home from school because they cut their toe yesterday, when we make them do their chores, we’re the worst parents ever.
And every time I hear it, I want to tell them the phrase above. But usually I just smile to myself, knowing this will soon pass and they’ll be climbing into my lap, even though they’re 9, for a bedtime story.
“We go on date nights so we don’t have to put you to bed.”
This is usually reserved for the nights when my kids incredulously say, “Didn’t you just go on a date night with Daddy?”
We don’t get date nights all that often, but when we do, we’ll live it up until about 10:30 p.m., when we start falling asleep in the middle of our sentences. We get a date night about once every month, but the kids always act like we just went out on one, mostly because kids have zero sense of time and think that so much longer has passed than the amount of time that has actually passed (except when their technology time timer goes off. Then it’s always, “What? It’s already over?”).
Well, little do they know that we go out on date nights because we love each other, but we mostly go out on them to get a break from the kids.
“If you don’t get back in your bed, I’m going to strap you down in it.”
My kids are terrible at staying in bed. On the nights that actually pass without someone coming to knock on our door for one more kiss or to tell us they can’t find their favorite stuffed animal and can’t sleep without it or that their poop had some orange pieces in it and should they be worried, we wonder if maybe something is wrong.
We have this boundary that says our boys can only come knock on our door after lights out if it’s an emergency, but kids have a really messed up sense of what an emergency is. Case in point: Last night the 9-year-old, who is a brilliant kid most of the time, came to tell us about this Pokemon trade he made today. Not an emergency. The 5-year-old came to our room to tell us that his leg had fallen off. He used both of them to walk to our room. The 6-year-old came to our room to let us know that his baby brother was now asleep in the crib. Not an emergency.
One of these days, I know they won’t even want to tell us goodnight, so I’m trying to enjoy this get-out-of-bed-a-thousand-times while it lasts.
“Go put something else on.”
This would be reserved for the days when my boys wear sweat pants, which is pretty much every day.
My kids have a whole closet full of nice clothes they don’t wear. I know. I bought them. I took them all to the store and braved walking around that store with three kids, and they picked out their first day of school outfit, which they wore on the first day and never again. Now they only choose sweat pants and look mostly like miniature hobos.
I mean, I’m not really one to talk, but still.
Husband took the 9-year-old to a video shoot recently, and the 9-year-old came down the stairs wearing horizontal stripes with plaid shorts, and we got to have a fun conversation about the appropriate dress code for meeting with clients. We got a little mileage out of his good clothes that day.
“Maybe use your brain, genius.”
I think this every time my twins are putting their shoes on the wrong feet. It sounds terrible to say it like that, but it boils down to this: They can figure out how to climb a wall and pick a lock and do this elaborate break-in routine to get into a locked and boarded room so they can take the gasoline can and pour it all over themselves and the backyard, but they can’t figure out which shoe goes on which foot.
Confounding.
Like I said, I never say any of these things out loud, but if my kids could see into my brain during a moment like the ones above, they would surely agree that I’m the best parent ever.
My restraint muscle gets a great workout with all these boys. Sadly, it’s about the only one.
by Rachel Toalson | Stuff Crash Test Kids say
Me: What’s something cool that happened at school today?
5-year-old: I found three ladybugs on the playground today.
Me: You did?
5-year-old: Yeah. I put them in my lunch box.
4-year-old: I found a ladybug.
Me: Well, please don’t bring bugs in the car.
4-year-old: It’s not a bug, it’s a ladybug.
Me:
4-year-old:
Me: I’m not going to argue. But a ladybug has the word bug in it. Therefore, it is a bug.
4-year-old: No it’s not.
Me: Yes it is.
Me: Don’t go inside yet. We need to get an Easter picture of all of you. Then we’ll have lunch.
9-year-old: I want to take the picture after I eat, because I don’t want to look grim in my picture because I haven’t eaten.
Husband: Why are you naked?
6-year-old: I accidentally pooped in my underwear when I tried to toot.
Husband: Sometimes that happens.
4-year-old #1: Look at my crack
4-year-old #2: Ewww! Yuck!
4-year-old #1: hehehehe
4-year-old #2: Wanna see my crack when I get in bed?
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 | Messy Mondays
Nothing makes me realize how much I miss my boys when they’re at school like a holiday or a bad weather day, when they get to wake up at 6 a.m., even though there’s no school, and hang out with me all day. I’m not even being sarcastic (yet). They’re really cool kids, and even though it’s hard to handle the dynamic of six little ones all the time, I really do enjoy spending time with them. When they’re home and not at school, they show me all the stories they’re writing, and they show me their LEGO creations, and we get to read books together and talk about what we learned from the books and imagine what it’s like to live in a world like this one.
I like seeing them walking around the house. I enjoy staring at their faces that have gotten so big, more like young men instead of little boys. I even take pleasure in hearing the refrigerator door open every other minute, for at least the first ten minutes.
But, lest I miss them too much while they’re away at school, they leave me constant reminders that they are still here.
I’ve found their reminders in the refrigerator, where they stash their cups of milk they didn’t finish this morning that will usually curdle before they remember they had a cup of milk in the first place, because as soon as they get home they’ll pour another giant glass, without even considering the first, and then they’ll wonder why the milk is gone three days before the next grocery trip.
They leave their reminders on the floor, where I’ll trip all over the pajamas they stripped off and left where they fell while I was distracted trying to keep the twins out of their room and away from their stuffed animals, so I didn’t have time to remind them before we flew out the door. (It doesn’t matter how many times I remind them to pick their clothes off the floor—it doesn’t even matter that it’s even part of the morning routine, and they have a checklist in their hands—their pajamas will still litter the floor tomorrow morning, and the next time I’m lunging to keep one of the 4-year-olds from swinging off the ceiling fan in his room, I’ll trip over it. It’s just a fact of life.)
They leave their reminders out on the back porch, where they left their good tennis shoes, which are now baking in the sun and Texas heat, and sometimes (bonus!) they’ll leave their socks in those baking shoes, so by the time they’re brought back in, they now have tie-dyed socks. Not only that, but they leave their underwear, which I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how (or why) it got there and who was the parent on duty when it happened (probably me. I like to take bathroom breaks when all six of the boys are my responsibility).
They leave their reminders on the stairs, where they dropped an armful of stuffed animals on their way down, which will sit there, taunting me, until I kick them out of the way and hope to God I don’t trip and fall down the stairs again. They leave their reminders in puzzle they took out and didn’t clean back up but left in the corner of the room, right where the 11-month-old could find it and will now wash every piece with the gallons of slobber he carries around in his mouth for purposes just like this one. They leave their reminders on the couches, which they probably just mistook for their jacket hook because there’s no resemblance whatsoever.
They leave their reminders in my bathroom, where they took off their underwear to change it, because, apparently, a boy needs to change his underwear every twelve hours. They leave their reminders on my bedroom floor, where they spread all their school papers out, looking for that one drawing they did for their teacher this weekend. They leave their reminders under my covers, where they put that stick they found on their way out the door, and they knew the only place their twin brothers wouldn’t go was my bedroom, and what better place to put it than under the covers, where no one would find it?! Genius!
They leave their reminders on the counter, where they put that book they were reading—the one that made them miss the caravan walk to school, because they didn’t hear a thing until the house got eerily silent and they realized they’d been left behind. They leave their reminders on the table, where they forgot to put their plate away when they were done with their breakfast, even though it’s a very clear expectation in our house. They leave their reminders on the dining room table, where I’ll find a coloring sheet they took out for drawing, which the 4-year-olds will ruin while they’re at school. They leave their reminders in the awesome LEGO house they built that the 4-year-olds will demolish in half a second of beating me through the front door on the walk home from school.
They leave their reminders in the toilet.
And you know what? I’m glad, because what in the world would I do without these reminders? Forget that I had six boys, three of whom are away at school?
Of course not. The real reason I’m glad they leave me all these reminders is something I think about every now and then. It’s not an easy truth, but it’s this one: One day they’ll be gone for good.
So I’ll take the reminders wherever I can find them.
But next time, boys, let me know about the stick under my covers (or anything else under the covers, for that matter). My backside will thank you.
