by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
My house hears so many words. If these walls could talk, they would never, ever stop—because my kids never, ever stop, either.
I’m in the word business. I write for a living. I’m used to sorting through words all day, and I’m used to hearing a running commentary in my brain. But if one were to spend three seconds of time in my living room, one might think that being in the word business also means being in the listening-to-kids-talk-all-over-each-other business, because that’s clearly what my kids believe. Someone is always talking. Someone else is always talking over the first one. And then someone else is always talking all over that noise. I go through a system malfunction every ten minutes.
Even though I’m in the word business, I use few of them to communicate verbally. This probably comes from my journalistic training. When I need to say something, I say it succinctly and clearly and leave it at that. None of my kids got this trait. Every one of them inherited the communication style of my husband, which is rambling and sprawling and way too many words for not enough time. When one of the boys (or the man) in my house starts talking, I could catch the first couple of sentences, go out back and mow the entire yard and come in and not have missed a thing, because everything in the middle was just “thinking out loud.” All I need from them is the intro and the conclusion, and I’m set. I know exactly what needs saying.
Now. This is not to say that I am not very, very glad that my kids enjoy talking to me, because the oldest is turning double-digits in November and I know that the days of talking for hours are about to come to a close, and I’m going to be begging him to talk to me soon. So I always try my best to wear a straight face, keep focused eyes trained on their face and give the proper responses to let them know I’m listening (even if I’m not). This was also acquired in my journalistic training, when I would conduct interviews with people who would tell me all about their nephew who’d been put in prison for embezzling the funds of his stepfather rather than telling me about the hand-carved chess set he’d made for the International Chess Tournament, which is why I was there (I have one of those faces, I guess. And I’m also really good at listening. Or am I?).
But when my 9-year-old starts telling me about how he traded this one Pokemon card to get another Pokemon card and how he’s really glad that his friend had this one that he’s been trying to find for a while and how he’s going to keep saving his money so that he can make sure he has enough money to have it for a new package of Pokemon cards, or maybe he’ll buy the 15-card pack, no maybe he’ll just save up for the 100-card pack, and this is what you have to look for when you’re trading Pokemon cards, energy power and the exact fighting power and evolution pieces, and do you want to know how many Pokemon cards he has right now? my teeth start falling asleep.
This kid will hijack a whole afternoon if you mention the words “LEGO Minecraft” or “What do you want for your birthday” or “Pokem—” (you can’t even finish that one before he’s off and running). He’ll follow you around while you’re changing the baby’s diaper and while you’re stirring soup on the stove and while you’re pouring all the milk and setting the table, back and forth, back and forth, like an extra appendage I keep tripping over. He won’t stop talking until all his brothers come crashing to the table and he can no longer talk over the voices vying for attention, and we all just give up on having conversation until they’re actually shoveling food in their faces.
Get the 6-year-old started on talking about what he did in school today, and he’ll tell you what he did and what all his classmates did, too, because he’s the kind of kid who notices everything, and you’ll never get a word in edgewise until you ask him if he wants a fruit dessert tonight, okay, then, start eating your dinner.
And then there’s the 5-year-old telling me about all the ways he could have killed himself today, because he’s the daring one in the bunch, who hangs upside down off the monkey bars and tries to jump over a 15-foot fence while bouncing on the trampoline. I’d rather not hear what he has to say.
My kids get better with practice. They’re so skilled now at beginning to talk about one thing and ending up on another subject entirely that I don’t even feel bad about getting lost along the way anymore. It’s anyone’s guess how we got here.
Because one kid can use up a billion words in one “quick” answer to a question, I’ve settled into a bit of a habit lately. I’m well aware that it’s not a good habit. But it’s one that keeps me sane, until we can figure out how to slow down the word vomit rocketing straight from their brains out their mouth. When one of my kids opens his mouth and I know it’s going to be a while before he closes it again, I find myself daydreaming a little. (I don’t miss much, because I could say in 40 words what they say in 15,000. So I don’t feel so badly.)
My daydreams go a little something like this.
What would it be like to have a clean house?
I wonder if we could budget in a house cleaner this month. Geez, I would have to clean up the house before I even let anyone come clean it. Look at that sink. Disgusting. What kinds of pigs live here? I don’t even want to think about the bathrooms upstairs. Someone would come here and walk right back out, because it would be too hard to get a house like this one clean. They wouldn’t be able to offer their money-back guarantee. It’s probably too far gone for eco-friendly supplies, too. I wonder if any of my friends have a good recommendation for a good house cleaning serv—
That sounds like he’s finishing up. Time for me to pay attention.
I wish it were the weekend.
I’m so glad Mom’s taking the kids this weekend. It will be so nice to sleep without six other bodies in the house. All these words. Sheesh. Are they ever done with words? Maybe I’ll have some time to just lie on the bed and read without anybody wanting anything from me. Yeah, right. That’s a dream that will never come true. I wonder what they’ll do at Mom’s. Probably play out in the dirt piles, which means I’ll have to wash their shoes again, because they’ll bring it all home, and the detoxing time. I forgot about the detoxing time. I’m going to have to add that into my schedule next week. It’s always a pain getting them back on the schedule. I’m not going to think about that right now. They’ll be nightmares, but I’ll be coming off a blissful no-kids weekend.
“That sounds interesting,” I’ll say, because I’ve noticed that a boy is finishing up.
Someone please send me to bed.
I’m so tired. All these words make me more tired. I have a word limit, and I reached it half an hour after they got home from school. I need a break. What time is it? Five more hours. The bed is going to feel so nice.
(At this point, my eyelids start drooping, and I require a pinch, which I fully recognize and execute efficiently enough to make my eyes water. The boys hardly ever notice their mama is almost crying during their story about how they did 98 consecutive jumps over the jump rope in P.E. (That’s the gist, anyway. It’s not anywhere close to that concise.)
We should learn sign language.
We really should. I bet that would keep my attention better, and, bonus, they wouldn’t use so many words, because it would actually be work. This is a brilliant idea.
“I think we should learn sign language,” I say, interrupting the 5-year-old reading me an Elephant and Piggie book to demonstrate all the new words he knows now (He’s been telling me about them for the last half hour).
Well, you know, it’s not foolproof. I don’t always get it right. But then I just bring it around to a lesson. “Remember how you interrupted Daddy when he was trying to talk to me earlier this morning? That’s exactly how it feels. I was just trying to show you.”
Works every time.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Every month I sit with a beautiful group of ladies and discuss our book of the month and, mostly, our lives. We eat chocolate and drink a little wine and sort through all the things that have happened to us in the stretch between the last book club meeting and this one.
At the most recent meeting, we found ourselves talking about beauty and body image (because we’re women, and this is a big deal to women).
One of my friends is a teacher. Something had recently happened in her school, where some first-grade girls were playing on the playground and, because they all took gymnastics, they decided to start a gymnastics club. There was another little girl who did not take gymnastics but who wanted to be in the club, too. When she asked, one of the little girls (who is only 6 or 7, keep in mind), told her, “You have to be skinny to be in the gymnastics club.”
She didn’t say this in a mean way or a judgmental way or a meant-to-be-hurtful way. She said it matter-of-factly, repeating something she’d been told by her coaches.
So the other little girl, who was not allowed into this playground gymnastics club, went home and asked if her mom, who is thin, could help her be thinner. This little girl is not fat. She’s just rounder, as many 6- and 7-year-olds who have not yet grown into their bodies, are. Her mom took the problem to the school, trying to figure out why her daughter, who was way too young to be aware of body image, had come home asking how she could be thinner.
The little girls don’t know any better. But the adults in their lives do. And we should be doing better than this.
Do you know what a little girl hears when she is 6 years old and can’t be in some stupid club because she’s not thin enough? She will hear for the rest of her life that she is not thin enough to be in some ridiculous exclusive club.
I know. I was once that little girl.
See, when I was 6 years old, my parents didn’t have a whole lot of money. But they scrimped up enough to put me in a ballet class. I was a tall girl, awkward—big-boned, my mother called me. When I look back at the pictures of me as a child, I was not a fat little girl, but I was built a little larger than others. When my mom was discussing the ballet lessons with my instructor, after I’d taken them for a couple of months, the instructor, who was an actual French ballerina, told her, within my hearing, that I was probably going to be too fat for ballet and my mom should just save her money. She said it matter-of-factly, as if there was no room for argument.
Now. I understand that there are certain body types that lend themselves more naturally to skills like ballet, and there are certain body types that make gymnastics easier. But if we are urging our 6-year-olds to concern themselves with being thinner just so they can achieve that body type and somehow have some kind of leg up on all the others, then we’re going about it all wrong. Girls this young should not even be aware of their bodies and what’s wrong with them. We have plenty of time to realize those things later, if the world has anything to say about it. Girls this young should be playing out on school playgrounds, enjoying the company of other “gymnasts” in their gymnastics club or twirling around like the “ballerina” they imagine themselves to be, without looking at their body and thinking they need to change it.
I know coaches want to win. I know instructors want what is best for their students, and oftentimes what is best is gently pushing them out of whatever lessons they’re taking, because they’re just not cut out for it. But using the body as a way to push them out? THAT’S NOT ACCEPTABLE.
I went through my high school, college and young adult years starving myself, still trying to prove that I was thin enough to be beautiful, thin enough to be a successful journalist, thin enough to be a good dancer, thin enough to be graceful, thin enough to be accepted, thin enough to be “in the group,” and, sure, it wasn’t all because of that ballet instructor, but the early memories of someone commenting negatively on a girl’s body have a way of sinking down deep and festering there. So when we tell our 6-year-old girls that they don’t have a thin enough body to do (blank), what we’re doing is handing them a ticket straight to eating disorder hell. Or body hatred hell. Or body dysmorphia hell. Or whatever it becomes in the life of that little girl. It manifests in many different ways. Anxiety, obsession, depression. Those, too.
Stop telling little girls they’re not thin enough.
Stop exalting the idea that there is only one body type that is beautiful. Stop ruining girls’ perceptions of themselves. Stop making our little girls hyper-aware of their bodies before they’re even able to properly spell the word “bodies.” Stop teaching them that beauty is all there is to women.
I don’t have a little girl. I don’t get to assure her that she’s beautiful just the way she was made. I don’t get to tell her that she is perfect in every way. I don’t get to explain that, yeah, it’s good to make healthy choices and do good things for our bodies, but it’s never okay to starve ourselves just to fit a certain prototype that is exalted above all the others.
But if I did have a daughter, this is what I would say:
You are beautiful just the way you are.
You are more than your body. So much more.
Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something just because of the way you look. You are brave and creative and kind and strong and good enough.
Because these are the things I wish someone had told me.
by Rachel Toalson | Stuff Crash Test Kids say
5-year-old: I can’t do it!
Me:
5-year-old: There. I got my shoes on.
Me: All right! You can do hard things!
5-year-old: Can I build a house? No.
Husband: You can sit in your seat until it’s time for dinner.
3-year-old: No.
Husband: Get in your seat.
3-year-old: I don’t want to get in my seat.
Me: Daddy’s being nice. I would have put you to bed early.
3-year-old: You’re evil.
Husband: A man lives in an all-pink one-story house. What color are the stairs?
9-year-old: Not enough information.
Husband: A man lives in an all-pink one-story house. What color are the stairs?
9-year-old: Oh, there are no stairs, because it’s a on-story. I could have said they were pink, but that would have been wrong, because a one-story house doesn’t have stairs, right? Unless it’s levitated. Like Nonny and Poppy’s.
6-year-old [examining his skin closely]: I think I’m shedding some skin here.
6-year-old: Dear God, please help us stop tooting. Amen.
Husband: Sometimes toots are good for us. Maybe just pray that they don’t smell bad.
6-year-old: I can never do that. My toots always smell. They smell like rotten broccoli.
3-year-old: I have swim trunks and a penis.
Me: What?
3-year-old: I have swim trunks and a penis.
Husband: I think what he’s trying to say is he has no underwear on.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Dear Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, my fellow Adult Americans, and, especially my two parents, sitting over there, shaking their heads:
Today marks the end of the third year I’ve been alive, and let me just tell you, this year is going to be hell. Sorry for the dirty word, Mama and Daddy, but I’m so not joking. Buckle up, because here I come.
I understand that because this is my third birthday, you’ll be going out of your minds over the course of the next year, but I’m just going to tell you, I got this. I know everything about everything, and so you can just stop trying to teach me the proper way to do things according to you. I know how to do EVERYTHING myself.
I know how to put on a jacket, even though you say I put it on inside out and upside down, Mom. You don’t know what you’re talking about. The hood is supposed to be on my booty. Just let me do it. I also know how to put on my shoes, even though you say I put them on the wrong foot. The toes are supposed to point out. That’s the way everybody wears them. You obviously don’t know anything.
I especially know how to plunge a toilet, so please stop trying to hide the plunger from me. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.
I hope we can work together this year on pretty much nothing, because I want to be the one who does everything. By myself. You want to help me into the car? Nope. I will walk back to the place you started helping me, and I will do it myself. Put my shoes on the right foot? Nope. I will take them back off and put them on the way I had them, because I will do it myself. Help me cross the street safely? Nope. I WILL DO IT MYSELF!
Don’t worry. I’ll go a little easy on you, at least when you’re sleeping. Wait. On second thought, that’s probably the time when I will attempt everything I shouldn’t do when eyes are watching, because everyone’s asleep, and what better time to sneak into the bathroom and drink a whole vial of Peace and Calming essential oil? What better time to sneak downstairs and drag a kitchen chair across the floor so I can reach the pan of brownies I saw you put in the microwave for safe keeping last night? What better time to pick a lock on the front door? You don’t even know what I’m capable of. But I’m about to show you. Oh, yes I am.
We are living in a time of extraordinary change—change that is reshaping you but is keeping me the same, because, you know, I’m perfect just the way I am. But you, you need to change. You especially need to stop telling me I need to get in the car 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. You need to stop telling me the orange plate is not clean when it’s the only plate I want to use today. And you need to remember that I like the green car grocery cart on Tuesdays and the red car grocery cart on Fridays. I don’t know why you can’t keep it all straight, because it’s the same two colors every week. Except when it’s yellow or blue. So you: change. Me: stay the same.
We’ve been through extraordinary change before. Remember when I first climbed out of my crib, and me and my twin brother would play with our poop and leave you a really nice painting on our walls and clothes and faces? You didn’t think you were going to make it out of that time alive, did you? And look at you now. You’re still alive, I’m still alive, we’re all still alive. And I will do greater things yet, and you will survive them, too.
You know, what was true then can be true now. All you have to do is let me do what I want, with no repercussions. This is really how kids want to live, you know, and it doesn’t matter what their parents say, this is actually the best way to live. Let us do whatever it is we want to do. If we want to take a black Sharpie marker and draw a lion’s mane on our face, let us. If we want to wear our 1-year-old brother’s pants in the dead of winter, let us. If we want to play with the cars instead of trains, but the trains are out and scattered everywhere, just let us play with the cars, too. Cleaning up is no fun, and we should never have to do it, ever again. That’s the first law I’d like passed.
Remember, it’s my spirit that has made the last three years so fun. You used to say that I had a lot of spirit. Well, it’s about to be a whole lot more, because I just figured out that I know how to take the toilet paper roll off the dispenser thingy, and now I will never tire of throwing the brand new toilet paper roll in the toilet and watching it curl at the edges. It always plugs up the toilet when I try to flush down the evidence, but that’s okay. I know how to plunge a toilet, remember?
You face some choices right now. Will you believe that I know what I’m doing, or will you constantly try to thwart me? I can tell you what I’ll do if you thwart me. I’ll cry at the top of my lungs for half an hour to the tune of “I dinnent have our lunch” so all the people in the park will stare at you. I’ll say I hate you and sometimes I’ll even hit or kick or bite to get my point across, because you’re unreasonable people, you parents. I’ll dump out a whole container of shape blocks, and I’ll throw a car across the room so it dents a wall and I’ll slam the door so the walls shake and your favorite picture falls down and breaks. That’s why you should never thwart me. Learn from your mistakes and move on, and we’ll all be that much happier. Me, especially. Which is all that really matters.
So let’s talk about some of the problems we have. First, there is you. And then there’s you. And then there is…you.
I know this isn’t easy. You always say that nothing worth doing is ever easy. You never know what you’re going to get when I get out of bed in the morning. Is it the clever one or the devilish one or the argumentative one or the loving one or the sad one or the angry one or the millions of other versions of myself? But I can promise you that in more than a year, when I am no longer 3, you will be so glad that time marches on, because it means I won’t stay 3 forever.
It will get better. I mean, no it won’t. Because I’m still here. But I’m clear-eyed and big-hearted and undaunted by challenge. You’ll still love me when this year is over.
Thank you. God bless me. God bless me, and God bless…me.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
My younger sister is about to have her birthday, so lately I’ve been thinking about all the things I love about her. I know not everyone has a good relationship with their sisters, but I consider my sister a best friend. She knows everything about me. She can tell what I’m thinking before I say a word. The day she left me alone with my firstborn son, she knew how terrified I was just by looking into my thought-I-was-hiding-it-well face, and I’ll never forget her hug and that gentle, “You’re gonna be alright” for all the days of my life, because in one moment, she gave me the courage to be a mom.
My sister is kind and loving and faithful and never forgets to call on one of my kids’ birthdays even though I forget to call on hers. She loves her family, loves her nephews, understands that we are never going to be perfect at this family thing or this parenting thing or this growing up thing. She gets me. And I’m pretty sure she appreciates me almost as much as I appreciate her.
Now. That’s all well and good. I get along with my own blood-related sister.
The question is, how well do I get along with all my not-blood-related sisters?
I get so tired of the fights, honestly. It’s wearying like nothing else. I don’t feel half as tired from wrestling my six boys through a day as I do from all the parenting wars that pit sister against sister and hand out wounded hearts like they make not a difference in the world.
They do make a difference.
We are all sisters, from the very beginning. And then we have children, and our sisterhood becomes something greater (or it should). Sure, we do our parenting in different ways. My sister breastfeeds. I don’t, because I never could get enough milk out to keep my babies out of the emergency room. She’s never used cloth diapers. I used them for half my children before twins burned us out.
Some of us let our kids sleep with us. Some of us never let our babies sleep with us, unless they wake at 4 in the morning and we need another hour of sleep. Some of us hover on playgrounds, and some of us keep to the peripheries, with eyes on our children but hands off. Some of us have perfectly compliant children, and some of us have fighters who will fight about every little thing, at least until they learn that it’s possible—and more effective—to choose their battles.
Some of us have one kid, some of us have six, some of us believe that spanking is the best way, some of us don’t, some of us let our kids help make decisions, some of us would never let a kid make a decision, some of us make our kids do chores, some of us don’t, some of us let our kids watch television and play on screens, some of us don’t.
Some of us have three kids smashed into one room, some of us believe every kid needs his own room, some of us are saving for college, some of us haven’t even thought about it, some of us let our kids cuss, some of us wouldn’t think of allowing it, some of us take our kids to counseling, some of us want to make sure we can handle this on our own, some of us send our kids to daycare, some of us stay home, some of us enroll our kids in public school, some of us run the homeschool operation, some of us pick our kids up every time they cry, some of us let them cry it out sometimes, some of us would give anything in the world to be home with our kids, some of us find great fulfillment in our work (and mother hood didn’t change that).
The list goes on and on and on. The point is, we’re all different. That doesn’t mean we’re wrong.
See, here’s the mysterious thing about a sisterhood: We are as different as our faces and our bodies and the shape that our lives have taken around children. We’ll never be the same. And yet we are the same.
It sounds like a paradox, but it’s not really. We all come in different shapes and sizes and colors, and we all come from different backgrounds and beliefs and socioeconomic situations, which means that our philosophies and our choices and the lenses we use to look at life will never be the same. But our underneaths are the same. We’re all mothers trying to do the best we can for these little irrational human beings who know how to push our buttons, who cling to us some days like our childhood nickname and other days can’t stand the sight of us, who wake up different people every day so we have to constantly be on our toes.
We’re all just doing the best we can.
But what I’m not saying by doing something differently than you are is that you’re wrong. That’s because I understand that your kid is not my kid and my kid is not your kid, and people who don’t spend 24 hours seven days a week with my kid don’t understand that when you have two 3-year-old twins who like to roam at night while everyone else is sleeping so they can ingest a whole tube of toothpaste or a whole bottle of vitamins they somehow pried open, even though I break a nail every time I try, you have to turn a doorknob around so it locks from the outside, or else you might wake up to the whole house burning down around you. People who don’t spend 24 hours seven days a week with my kid don’t understand that working through a tantrum with the boy prone to anxiety and depression is, in the long run, way better than punishing him for something he’s done. People who don’t spend 24 hours seven days a week with my kid don’t understand that technology turns the 5-year-old into the Whine Monster, so it’s banished from our house, for now.
You don’t know my kid. I don’t know yours. I can’t parent yours. You can’t parent mine.
So maybe we should stop trying.
Our differences are what make us beautiful. And what makes us a sisterhood is accepting each other, as is, and putting aside all the differences to acknowledge that this raising a kid thing? It’s not easy. We need each other to do it.
We’re all just doing the best we can. And that is always, always enough.
by Rachel Toalson | Stuff Crash Test Kids say
5-year-old: Daddy, I want a hug and a kiss!
Husband: Come to our room, then.
5-year-old: No. I stepped on a Lego in there.
9-year-old: I’m getting fat
Me: I don’t think you’ll ever get fat.
6-year-old: Yeah, like daddy.
Husband: What, you mean like daddy doesn’t get fat?
9-year-old: No, like I’ll never be fat like you.
Husband: I can’t believe you’re not full.
Me: I know. I’ve had one bowl and a little chicken and I’m full.
5-year-old: I’ve had four bowls!
Target Guy: In the future, you can go ahead and order in advance, and we’ll have it waiting for you when you get here.
6-year-old:
Husband: Okay.
6-year-old [tugging on Husband’s sleeve, eyes wide, mouth slack]: Daddy, are we living in the future?
J: we went to the counselor today a policeman came to talk. I told him I could fight he said I couldn’t fight a big guy like him. I told him I was overeating to gain weight he said that was good.
