by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Husband and I used to be in a band. Well, we technically still are. We just don’t ever play the songs we’re still writing, because we have six kids. But before those six kids, we played all over Texas and took a few tours through Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. We wrote our own songs and practiced every day and stayed up way too late playing gigs.
When the first son was born, we continued our pursuit, because we enjoyed doing it and wanted, secretly, to be rockstars. And Son #1 was super easy to pack up and take along with us, because he loved music and enjoyed meeting new people who fawned all over him and was amazingly tolerant of long trips.
Son #2 came along two years later, and it was still relatively easy. We just packed for two kids instead of one. We just brought a friend along who could watch the kids while we did our hour-long set on stage, and then I’d rescue the friend while Husband and the other band members went to talk to people at the merch table.
Then came son #3. I won’t say he meant to change everything. It’s just the logistics of it. When parents go from two to three kids, everything gets real. You’ve suddenly run out of hands. And eyes. And ability to focus.
Two weeks after he was born, we boarded a plane to fly to Arizona and record our third album, and we took them all with us so I could worry the whole time about what if the oldest wandered off when one of us wasn’t looking because the baby needed to be fed and he was still so tiny and cute and wonderful and I just couldn’t take my eyes off him but I also couldn’t take my eyes off the older walking ones. We made it, with 12 new gray hairs.
But when it came time to promote our album, here’s where the “we can still do this” really fell through. Because there aren’t a whole lot of people who enjoy watching a 3-year-old, a 16-month-old and a one-month-old. We tried to limp along for a while, and then the twins came along and life was completely over. Because twins.
Ever since I was a little kid I’ve wanted to be two things: a writer and a rock star. I get to be one of them, writing every single day of my life, and it’s bliss. And, for the other, well, this is all I got.
Being a rockstar used to mean fame.
I know it sounds shallow to put it like that, but doesn’t any performer who’s good at what they do dream of this? Packed crowds chanting the band’s name and singing along to songs with their camera phones as “lighters?” Fans wanting to meet us just to shake our hand or say a few words to us? People dancing in their places or moshing or whatever kids do these days, even if they can’t hear a note of the music because they’re screaming too loudly?
Actually, this sounds exactly like my house. There’s a packed crowd chanting my name when it’s time for dinner and I don’t even have anything started. There’s a line of kids wanting just a minute of our attention because they have to tell us their brother took the toy they were playing with and they’re really sad about that and they need help getting it back. And there are little boys dancing or moshing (mostly unintentionally, but this is what happens when you’re eight people in a small living room and Imagine Dragons is playing on Pandora) and screaming so loudly you can’t hear a note of the music because we’re playing one of the songs we wrote for them and they just want “If You’re Happy and You Know It” or the Kidz Bop version of anything Taylor Swift.
Being a rockstar used to mean wealth.
Another shallow one, I know. But we had dreams, you see. We would make the big bucks with just our music. Who gets to make the big bucks doing what they love? And we would use those big bucks to build schools for orphaned children and dig wells for the people who don’t have access to clean water, and after all that, we’d use the leftover funds for dinners out when we didn’t feel like cooking and a house with as many rooms as we needed and expensive parties.
I guess this one looks like my life today, too, because when I don’t feel like cooking there’s always a picnic dinner out at the park that we’ll pack ourselves (but it’s still not cooking!) and a house with…enough rooms and birthday parties at home with twenty 6-year-olds running wild on cake and cookies and lavender tea that’s supposed to balance those effects but doesn’t (expensive parties in terms of energy. They cost days.).
Being a rockstar used to mean writing original songs.
We dreamed of writing a new song every week and sharing it with the world. We dreamed of changing lives with our melodies. We dreamed of hearing those songs on the radio and imagining others singing along.
We still write original songs. It’s just that they’re mostly about farts and poop and cleaning too much earwax out of an ear. Everything a boy thinks is hilarious, but at least we’ve got our adoring (or laughing) fans. You won’t hear them on the radio, but you will hear them in stereo sound when you come for a visit.
Being a rockstar used to mean practicing a whole song without a kid interruption.
We used to be able to practice for two hours, uninterrupted, song after song after song, and this made us really, really good. We could take our time and run the parts that gave us trouble last week and perfect every song before we shared it with the world.
And I guess if you’re getting all technical we can still practice a song, or thirty seconds of it, give or take a few, without a kid interruption, and you do get really good at accommodating this sort of thing when you have kids. Husband and I can keep a conversation going for an entire day, even with ten thousand five-minute interruptions. We can even maintain it when the interruptions are things like “Why is my poop lime green” and “What happens when a bird crashes into the window, because one just did” and “I just answered the door and one of the twins ran out with a man I don’t know.” It’s quite a skill. So thanks, kids, for that valuable gift.
Being a rockstar used to mean a whole crew of roadies.
Roadies are people who carry all the heavy stuff and help set up the equipment and wait around until the show is over just so they can help some more. They’re pretty handy people.
And I suppose, in a way, I still have roadies, because when we go to the local museum, the 8-year-old does do the heavy lifting with those books he likes to bring anywhere, even though we didn’t ask him to bring them. And the 5-year-old will load up that backpack with a thousand stuffed animals he wanted to bring along so they could see the lions at the zoo, and he’ll carry it the whole time. And one of the 3-year-olds will always try to get the picnic lunch out of the car and accidentally dump it out on the sidewalk so the birds come swooping. I know. He’s just trying to help, like roadies do.
Being a rockstar used to mean a whole closet of cool clothes.
I thought long and hard about what I wanted to look like on stage. I was the only female in a band of males, and I needed to stand out. Be noticed. That meant bold colors and dramatic makeup and shoes that were comfortable but still said “Woman.”
And it’s true that I do wear a bright orange workout shirt about once a week with my uniform workout pants and I have gone way dramatic with the makeup and adopted the “naked face” look, and my shoes do say “Woman” because they’re fluorescent pink running shoes that allow me to chase after my 3-year-olds when they get a wild hair every other minute and decide they’re going to sprint in two different directions and see who Mama catches first. My cool clothes have just become be-prepared-to-run-at-all-times clothes.
Being a rockstar used to mean a glamorous life.
Of course we would meet all the famous people, like Simon Cowell or Ed Sheeran or maybe just Adam Sandler. We’d sit down to fancy dinners and wipe our mouths with silky napkins and engage in stimulating conversation. We would get in the car and cruise to a party at any hour of any day.
Okay, so, yes, I get to meet famous people like the 8-year-old’s principal or the 5-year-old’s best friend (he talks about her ALL THE TIME) and I get to sit down to a dinner of sun-roasted tomato parmesan pasta with the cloth napkins we made ourselves and engage in stimulating conversation like how we could do a sugar experiment with ice cream and root beer, because that’s what they did in class today and they DRANK IT ALL AND IT WAS SO YUMMY and now they can’t stay at the table because they have too much energy and they need to ruuuuuuunnnn. And even though it takes us three hours just to leave the house, we still get to go to the occasional party when the kids are invited, (because sitters for six kids are hard to find). What kind of person would want to party at all hours of the day, anyway? My kids are up all hours of the day. Midnight and I have become intimately familiar, and let me just tell you, he’s pretty exhausting.
I used to want to be a rockstar. And this is all I got.
But you know what? I don’t think this parenting gig was the short end of the stick at all. Mostly because I get to feel like a rockstar every single day. I feel like a rockstar when my kid is whining and I just can’t take it anymore and I miraculously don’t yell but calmly say that his whining makes me feel like the tea kettle that’s going off on the stove. I feel like a rockstar when I finally get dinner on the table without losing my mind from all the “I’m hungrys” following me around and not one of them complains about what we’re having for once. I feel like a rockstar every time I get out the door in the morning with all six kids dressed and wearing mostly matching shoes.
I feel like a rockstar when I climb out of bed after a night cleaning up puke. I feel like a rockstar when I remember my toothbrush on a trip, because I usually pack for the kids first. I feel like a rockstar when they smile at me after a long day like I’m the most important person in the world to them.
Every parent who is raising a human being to be a decent person is a rockstar, because we have legions of adoring fans (okay, a handful at the most), even if we’re the ones who chose them in the first place; and we have a glamorous life, even if it looks like eating dinner at the same table every night and parties at home and conversation about what they did in school today; and we have songs, every day, in all the spaces of life, because those songs are the voices of our children, chanting their demands and complaining about their problems and murmuring their “I love yous” when we most need them.
So what if I used to want to be a rockstar and this is all I got?
What I got is love and fun and adventure and life. So much more than I ever dared to dream.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
You see this kid’s face? You should see the wall.
There’s not a mark on it.
We were happily bathing the younger boys, trying to keep the 15 gallons of water inside the tub for once, when our 8-year-old came howling into the house. Now, this isn’t all that unusual. This boy has a penchant for being…dramatic. For example, one day we were at a local museum, which has a kids’ area with kid-sized workout equipment, and he was adjusting the seat on a stationary bike and accidentally scratched his leg on a pedal. He fell on the floor like he was dying, moaning so that a museum worker came over to us and asked if maybe he needed some ice or a first-aid kit or maybe an ambulance. There was hardly a scratch on him. I thanked her for her concern and told her he’d be just fine, and, sure enough, thirty seconds later, he was chasing after one of his brothers who had accidentally picked up the book the 8-year-old had brought with him, because he brings books everywhere, in case there’s a second or two between exhibits when he’ll get a chance to bury himself in a word or two.
He comes howling into the house when he’s tried “skating” with two scooters and runs into the van. He comes howling into the house when his brother mis-aimed a ball and hit him on the foot. He comes howling into the house when he jumps off the trampoline the wrong way (and yet still does it).
So, of course, we didn’t think much of this little display.
Our boy limped up the stairs and into the bathroom, and this time we knew it was for real. His chin was bleeding, his upper lip was bleeding, and his knee was smeared with red.
“What in the world happened?” I said, freaking out a little, but trying hard not to show it.
“I ran into a wall,” he said.
“How did you run into a wall?” Husband said.
“I was riding my scooter too fast and couldn’t stop when I came around the corner of the house,” our son said.
Husband and I looked at each other and tried not to laugh. Because even though we could visualize it almost perfectly—the way he would be cruising down the cul-de-sac, how cocky he gets about his “skillz,” how his face might have looked when he saw he’d misjudged and the wall was coming at him instead of moving away—it really wasn’t funny. It wasn’t. Stop laughing.
We checked him over for broken bones and then cleaned up his scrapes, listening to him talk about how he wouldn’t be able to walk to school the next day and probably couldn’t even go at all because he was so beat up. And you know? I almost felt sorry enough for him to let him stay home (because he’s pretty good at generating a yes). Except that he’s 8. If I’d done what he did, I would be laid up for a week. But he’s 8. His body’s much more capable of bouncing back.
So I smiled at him and said, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson, sweet boy.”
What lesson would that be? Well, apparently he didn’t know, either. Three minutes later, he was back out on the scooter, trying to race his brothers down the hill, navigating between the van’s front bumper and the wall that had beat him up, just so he could be the first one inside and win the prize of…nothing.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this is just my life as a mom of boys. God help me.
by Rachel Toalson | Stuff Crash Test Kids say
8-year-old: Mama, what is this? [holding a cassette recording of The Hobbit.]
Me: I think they call that a cassette tape.
8-year-old: I’ve never even seen one of these before! It’s like from ancient times!
Me:
8-year-old:
Me:
8-year-old: Did you listen to these when you were a kid, Mama?
8-year-old: [lapping up his vegetables like he’s a dog or something.]
Me: What are you doing, son? Use some manners.
8-year-old: I’m just trying to see if I’m a vegetable vampire.
Me:
8-year-old:
Me:
8-year-old: Yep. I am.
Me: Why is your face so dirty?
3-year-old: Because I ate too much food.
Me: Sounds about right.
5-year-old: [Looking at a Marvel superhero book. Turns to the page with the girl superheroes.] Where’s the girl Spider-Man?
Daddy: Right there. [pointing to the page]
5-year-old: Oh, yeah. Because she has The Bumps. [points to opposite sides of his chest]
Daddy:
5-year-old: [looks down at chest] I don’t have The Bumps.
8-year-old: Mama, did you know that my penis is a toilet paper ninja?
Me: Oh, really? Do I really want to know why?
8-year-old: Yeah, it’s because when I pee and there’s toilet paper in the toilet because my brothers forgot to flush, it cuts the toilet paper in half. Like a ninja.
Me:
8-year-old: Don’t worry. I won’t ever say that in public.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Whether or not you want to become a parent is relatively easy to decide. Those tiny little babies. So cute. So cuddly. So snuggly and soft and warm. Smelling of…
Well, everything nice, of course.
So when it came time for Husband and me to decide we were ready to start a family, it wasn’t such a hard decision. I wanted one of those tiny cute cuddly babies. It was time.
What you don’t consider before you decide to have a baby is that one day they will be a willful 3-year-old. And then they’ll be a spirited 8-year-old. And then they’ll be, God help you, 13.
It’s not just the emotional and physical expenditure that will change as your tiny little baby who only wants to eat and sleep and poop and stays put wherever you lay him grows up. Your entire lifestyle will change. We weren’t ready for this. I don’t know if any parent is, because these are the things you don’t think about when all you can see is a cute little sweater vest that would be perfect for the first family portraits.
I think about them now. Every time I get a utility bill in the mail or shop for groceries or just try to leave the house.
What you don’t think about is that when your baby becomes a kid, there’s
1. The much higher utility bills.
You won’t notice this one right away. This will actually happen when your kid gets really good at turning on lights but doesn’t as quickly figure out how to turn them off. Or ever figure it out, which is more likely the case. Someday, when the baby is no longer a baby, he will also enjoy plugging up a toilet with toilet paper so he has to flush five times in a row and the toilet never fills up and it runs for half an hour before you notice. He’ll forget to completely turn off the bathroom faucet after he’s finally, finally, finally brushed his teeth after your thirtieth time asking, and it will run all night, because you were just too worn out to stumble out of your bed, again, to check. He’ll one day be 3 and think it’s funny to see your face turn purple when he sneaks into the backyard and turns on the hose, and the only way you know is when you’re going out to put the trash in the bin and you slip in a gigantic mud puddle and call Husband because a sprinkler has busted (Nope. It’s just the 3-year-old, watering the grass. For five hours).
Higher utility bills. There’s not much you can do about them, unless you just turn them all off and Little House on the Prairie it.
2. The grocery bill that will make you weep.
It doesn’t matter if you’re breastfeeding or bottle feeding, you are in for a treat. You won’t even recognize your grocery budget in a few years. Kids are always, always, always hungry, always, and you certainly don’t want them bumming food off their friends at school, because you know what happens when they get sugar in their system. (What happens? Read on.)
3. The fact that bouncing off the walls is a real thing.
You will watch them do it after attending their friends’ birthday parties. You’ll see the evidence in wall nicks and holes their hands accidentally made when they ran into it too hard, and you’ll make a mental note to fix it, but it will never happen. Because kids. And then you will vow never, ever to let them go to another birthday party. And then another invitation will come three days later, because they’re in kindergarten and all 25 students have birthdays, and they have to invite everyone in their class. And you will let him go, again.
4. The gross, gross and grosser.
You will do grosser things than you ever thought you’d do. Ever. Because sometimes there will be a little boy who took his favorite Lightning McQueen car to the potty with him, because Lightning “wanted to watch,” and now he’s sitting in the toilet your boy just went #2 in, and you will have to reach your hand into that stank and pull Lightning back out. Getting a new one just won’t do. Plus, remember the higher utility bills? Yeah, that goes for clogged pipes, too. Just close your eyes and fish it out. There’s soap for that. Lots and lots of soap.
You may also be sitting enjoying a lovely dinner with friends when your 18-month-old starts upchucking something that looks like a cross between a cauliflower smoothie and no-butter mashed potatoes, and, rather than let it fall on the floor and make someone else clean it up with their handy mop and bucket, your reflexes will make you catch it. In your hands. Your bare hands. Your bare hands that just stuck a fry in your mouth.
And you may quite possibly open a door to a poop explosion every other day if you have twins who think it’s funny to take their diapers off and time their bowel movements for the exact moment they’re supposed to be sleeping for naps, and you will have to scrub it off all the cracks they’ve made in their cribs. Don’t worry. There’s soap for that, too.
5. The energy it takes to keep a house tidy.
It’s not even worth it. They’ll just undo all your work anyway. Hang up their winter jacket on the peg where it goes? In five minutes they’ll just decide they want to wear it in the “fallish” weather that just blew in, bringing temperatures from 125 to 115 degrees. Get their school papers all organized and nice? They’ll just want to show you something they made in school today, and it’ll all end up on the floor anyway. Have a place for their shoes? Doesn’t matter. They won’t end up there. Just save your energy for other things. Like putting them back in bed four hundred times after lights out.
6. The paradoxical emotions.
There is the one minute where you feel angry enough to strangle your 3-year-old because he just, for the four billionth time, marked in a library book while you were watching, just to do it, and then there’s the moment (after 10 minutes of cool down and maybe a bottle glass of wine) when he brings you the library book and asks you to read to him, and his eyes are just so dang beautiful, and yes, of course you’ll do this for your precious little baby. There’s the second where you want to lock them out of your room forever and ever and ever because they keep coming in to ask questions like “Do penguins have knees” and “Why can’t we have four dogs” and “How did I get out of your body when I was a baby,” and all you know is you want to go to sleep, and then there is that other second where he comes in one more time and you take a deep breath and all he wants is another kiss and hug you don’t often get anymore because he’s getting too big too fast.
There’s the moment when you can’t stand the sight of him because he just ate his brother’s vitamins he knows he’s not supposed to touch because you’ve done this dance half a million times, and then there’s the other moment when you just can’t stand how much you love him.
You’ll get used to these moments as a parent.
7. The torturous road trips.
Soon, going anywhere outside a 10-mile radius of your home will feel like torture. This is mostly because of the question, “Are we almost there?” which will come out of their mouths exactly five minutes after packing in the car. And since you haven’t even left the driveway, you’ll know it’s going to be a really long trip. This question will be asked every other minute for as long as it takes to get you anywhere. So just keep it short, if you know what’s best for you. And if this question doesn’t bother you so much, there will be other things. I Spy, for example. And Disney songs. And farts in an enclosed space.
8. The impossible: Leaving the house.
You’re all dressed and put together and ready to go? All of you at the same time? Well, congratulations, because someone’s about to puke all over himself. You made it out to the car and everyone’s strapped? Someone will say his shoes aren’t actually in the van like he thought, and could you help him find a pair, and you’ll spend the next forty-five minutes looking for the matches to five lone shoes. You’re about to walk out the door on time for once? Someone will discover how to open their Thermos of milk and dump it all over their brother’s backside.
Late just comes with being a parent. Don’t let anyone tell you any different, and don’t let anyone make you feel guilty about it, either. They have no idea what it’s like to leave with your neanderthals in tow.
9. That feeling you get.
No, I’m not talking about the anger or the frustration or the fear that maybe we shouldn’t have done what we did. I mean the overwhelming emotion that hits us every time they’re doing something amazing or wonderful or they say something brilliant or funny or they’re just sitting there doing nothing. It’s that feeling of love that launches us through all these unforeseen challenges.
So I guess if I’m weighing the options, I’d have to say that The Feeling outweighs all the rest.
But ask me again in a few years, when my grocery bill is like a second mortgage.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Who invented these things? Who could have possibly thought it would be a good idea to market “foam bullets that don’t hurt when you’re hit” to boys of all ages, even when they have a whole head of gray hair or no hair at all? Who made those first sketches for this amazing invention of “won’t-hurt-them” guns and assured their marketing department that they were safe for the wild at heart who have always, deep down, wanted to engage in battle without anyone getting hurt.
Bull. These things DO hurt.
I know, because every time my boys find one of the guns hidden away in our garage and succeed in scaling a refrigerator or antique cabinet (impressively) to get it down, and, somehow, find all the bullets we’ve thrown away and the trash man has already picked up (I think they multiply in the dark of the garage), the first thing they do is point it at me. After which time they’ll then point it at each other. There is always someone crying in my house because of these things. Usually me.
There was a Christmas when someone thought it would be a good idea to buy my boys Nerf guns. A whole house of boys warrants this kind of thing, after all. And at first we were, like, Oh, yeah, cool, they can have battles in the backyard and no one gets hurt, because the bullets are soft and they won’t aim at each other’s heads or use the guns as swords instead. Except they don’t want to have battles in the backyard, and the bullets aren’t soft, and when they run out of bullets, they sword fight with hard plastic instead. The only time it’s even fun to play with these things is when I can wrestle a gun away from one of the boys and turn it on them (“YOU SEE? YOU SEE HOW IT FEELS? QUIT SHOOTING MY BUTT!”).
Here’s all I know. Most of the time, I’m minding my own business, trying to get dinner started or something responsible like that, and a boy creeps up behind me, and the only warning I have is the “whoosh” of the bullet coming. I don’t even have time to get out of the way before my left flank goes completely numb.
So I’m just here to tell you that these Nerf guns? Save your sanity and your money. If I had to slap a warning label on one of these things, this is what it would say:
“Don’t even think about it. Believe me, you do NOT want one of these things even close to your house. Your children will use it to attack you and terrorize their brothers and make little circle rings on every glass surface, and God knows you already have enough of all that without these yellow plastic torture devices waving in your kids’ can’t-really-aim hands. You will regret it every single hour of every single day. Check out those foam swords on aisle 25 instead.
“On second thought, just go straight to the wine aisle and don’t forget some chocolate, because you deserve it!”
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
by Rachel Toalson | Stuff Crash Test Kids say
Husband: Does Mama know what you do at all times?
3-year-old: No.
Husband: Yes. Mama always knows. Mama knows everything and sees everything.
5-year-old: If we tell someone a secret, will Mama hear it?
Husband:
5-year-old:
Husband: Yes.
Me: Before you go outside to play, you have to clean your room.
8-year-old: I don’t have to. You just want me to.
Me: It’s a mess. I’d say you have to clean it now, because it’s a national disaster in there.
8-year-old: I’m a writer, a film maker and an inventor. I am not a room cleaner.
Me:
8-year-old:
Me: I can’t think of anything to say.
3-year-old: Are we having berries for lunch, Mama?
Me: Yes. We’re having strawberries for lunch.
3-year-old: But are we having berries, Mama?
Me: I just said yes. We’re having strawberries. Strawberries are berries.
3-year-old: NO! THEY’RE STRAWBERRIES!
Me:
5-year-old: (just got back from his brother’s art lessons, where he always gets a lollipop. High on sugar). I LOVE CRAYONS! I LOVE LOLLIPOPS! I LOVE UNICORNS!
Me:
