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 | 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.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
We live in a much different world than we used to. This is a world where kids are kept close to home and parents call out other parents and, also, everyone and their dog has a food allergy.
It’s become the cool thing to be a kid with allergy. At least according to my kids and their friends.
I’m not trying to make light of a very real danger. I realize that there are many kids with severe allergies who could die if they sniff peanut butter or eggs or shellfish. I realize this is serious.
It’s just that the other day, my 6-year-old came home and said, “Mama, I found out I’m allergic to tomatoes today.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said, knowing better. This kid isn’t allergic to anything. None of our kids are. We’re super fortunate to have escaped the misery of food allergies. “How do you know?”
“Well, this girl was sitting next to me eating tomatoes, and I sneezed,” my boy said. His blue eyes looked up at me expectantly. I looked back at him expectantly, thinking surely this wasn’t the end of that story. Lip swelling? Upset stomach? Skin rash, maybe?
Wait. Just a sneeze?
“Maybe you just needed to sneeze,” I said.
“No,” he said. “I’m allergic.” And then he skipped off to tell all his neighborhood friends that he is allergic to tomatoes, blissfully unaware that we’d had tomatoes in our chicken salad last night and he hadn’t died overnight.
This is the same kid who once told our pediatrician that he had a milk allergy. The pediatrician raised his eyebrow in my direction, and I shook my head, and he smiled a little knowing smile, as if all the kids were saying things like that these days. And I wouldn’t put it past them. Maybe it really has become the cool thing to be a kid with allergies, according to the kids who don’t have them. The cool kids get to sit at their own table. The cool kids get to have special lunches and snacks. The cool kids get to have different treats than all the others at the holiday parties.
The cool kids get a little more attention from their teacher, who has to pay more attention to what they’re eating and what they’re touching and whether they’re having an allergic reaction to the marshmallows they used in today’s science experiment (I think I’ll tell the teachers my kids are allergic to marshmallows. I hate marshmallows. They make my kids CRAZY.). Every kid wants his teacher to pay more attention to just him. Attention is love. I get it.
All that can seem like a luxury to kids on the other side.
As much more logical adults, we know there’s nothing cool about having an allergy. We know it’s dangerous and inconvenient and super scary. The kids, well, they think that having an allergy is some kind of “I’m cool” badge, because, at the depths of their hearts, they’re all just looking to be distinct and unique and set apart from the rest of the herd. Or, at the very least, included in the cool kids group.
My 6-year-old has several classmates who have allergies. I don’t envy their parents at all, trust me. But sometimes I wish allergies didn’t even exist so my first grader didn’t come home every other day to tell me that he’s allergic to something else because his leg went numb after he ate it (pretty sure this is because of the way he sits on his legs at the cafeteria table) or because his nose got itchy or because he lost a hair on the back of his head, and he has the evidence to prove it.
Until our kids start understanding that allergies are something that could actually kill a person and that they’re taken very, very seriously, I think we’re probably going to see more and more of this silly phenomenon. I’ve seen it in more than just my kids. When a neighborhood kid comes over, he’s always got an allergy (even though I always check with parents). One kid is pretty insistent that he doesn’t eat carrots or celery or broccoli or cucumbers or beets or cauliflower, because he’s allergic to them all (guess he’ll go hungry at our house). Right now, to all these kids who don’t have them, allergies seem like a desirable thing—just like having glasses can seem like a desirable thing until you’re the kid who can’t see two feet in front of your face and your parents slap on you some ugly purple frames that reach all the way to your jawline and you have to wear them every day because you just realized the world is full of color and, later, you’ll try to hide all those pictures of your massive purple glasses from the man who’s just asked you to marry you, because, of course, he can never, ever, ever see you like that (I know what it’s like to be the un-cool kid. Thanks, Mom.).
So I’ve tried explaining to my son that having an allergy is no small thing, that it’s actually a really big deal, that we can’t just play around with those words, “I have an allergy,” because there are people who could actually die if they eat what they’re allergic to, but all he said was, “Well, my legs hurt when I eat salad. Maybe I’m allergic to lettuce.”
Well. He’s still young. I’ll wait until he’s old enough to spell “asphyxiation” before I try again.
Which means I might be waiting forever, because spell check just helped me out.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
People are fascinated by twins. When my twins were young, people would stop me in the middle of the grocery store so they could touch the faces of these boys who looked exactly alike. And now that they’re 4, not much has changed.
Most of the time those people who stop us and exclaim over how cute our twins are say they always wanted twins. And I always find myself thinking the same thing: No you didn’t. Because, you see, everybody likes the IDEA of twins, but when it comes to the day-after-day-it’s-never-going-to-end work of getting two babies through the first year of life and potty training two at a time and dealing with 3-year-old twinanigans? You don’t even know what you’re saying.
My twins are identical. They share the same noses, the same eyes, the same skin, the same DNA. One of them has a mole on the backside of his left arm, near the top, and that’s the only way you can tell them apart—unless you’re their mother, of course. One of them writes with his right hand, the other writes with the left. They complete each other in every way.
That’s part of the problem. Since these guys were tiny little babies, they’ve completed each other. Our first night home from the hospital I tried feeding one while the other slept, and as soon as the first one started slurping, the second one woke up and screamed his head off for half an hour because he was starving. I changed my strategy after that hellish night.
Our twins have always shared a room, because when one is without the other, they go wandering, looking for whatever is missing that they can’t quite place. And then, when they find each other, their world is complete again.
But let me just tell you. Don’t let those cute little smiles fool you. These guys can be little devils.
They will tear apart a room in three seconds flat, before you even have time to high-tail it up the stairs to see what all the thumping is about. They will destroy something right after taking it out of the box. Just ask their remote control cars they got for Christmas or the 9-year-old’s silly putty he brought home from school. Ask Husband what they did to his iPad when he wasn’t looking, even though they’re not allowed to touch it.
When they were still in diapers, my twins thought it was funny to wait until after we’d tucked them in and closed their door for just a minute of peace and quiet, to poop and then sit up in their beds and quietly paint all the walls they could reach brown. I’m not sure which of them had this brilliant idea, but I bet the look of horror that painted Mama and Daddy’s face like their droppings painted the walls was probably the most hilarious thing they’d ever seen. And we never learned our lesson, because we’re foolish and, also, desperate for a little peace and quiet, like I said, so they did it for three days straight before we decided to put them in footie pajamas so they couldn’t do it again. They were thwarted for two days and then they figured out how to wiggle out of those footie pajamas. We cut the feet off and zipped them up backward so they couldn’t let themselves out this time. That’s when they figured out how to unzip the back just enough to wiggle out of the neck hole and do the deed again. So we cut slits in the neck of the pajamas and zip-tied the zipper to the neck so they couldn’t possibly, no matter what they tried, get it off. That’s when they figured out how to climb out of their cribs, meet each other in the middle and wriggle, fantastically, out of a three-inch hole and do their deed yet again. I thought we were never going to get through that mess. Pardon the pun.
And then we were finally, finally, finally out of that fun stage, and it was time for the potty training. I’ve blocked that from my memory, it was so traumatic.
Now here we are, trying to find our way through twinanigans that have grown much more sophisticated since the paint-with-poop days. Just when we think we’re one step ahead of them, they’ve figured something else out. We fixed their sliding door closet with a door hinge that would keep them from opening it, and they pushed their dresser across their room to reach it. We took the dresser out, removed the doors of the closet and raised their clothes so high I have to stand on tiptoe to reach them (and I’m five feet, nine inches tall), and they figured out how to stack their pillows and folded-up blankets to climb up the wall and reach the hangers (I think they’re part Spider-Man.) so they could fling them all over the floor. So we took all their clothes out of their closet. Problem solved.
I opened the door after nap time that day I thought the problem was surely solved to see one 3-year-old dressed in his 6-month-old brother’s shirt and pants, unaware that the five inches of leg sticking out below the pants was a dead giveaway that he’d gotten into the clothes again.
I have no idea how they do all this. It’s not like I’m not paying attention or something. I mean, sometimes I’m distracted by other crises in my house, but I’ve always got one eye on the twins, because I know what twinanigans can do to a house and a life. I know they are the ones who will steal out of their rooms when we’re not looking so they can bring back their brother’s LEGO creation balanced precariously on the banister and play with it in bed. I know they’re the ones who will stash a permanent marker under their mattress and, when the lights have all gone out for the evening, will take to painting the place with their spider-people. I know they are the ones who will wander in the middle of the night and eat a whole tube of toothpaste or a whole container of vitamins that’s clearly not child-proofed while the rest of the house snores blissfully on.
I know they are the ones who will try to play with their favorite forbidden toy—the plunger—and end up flinging potty water all over the bathroom walls. I know they are the ones who will be set free from their backpack leashes, for only a couple of seconds, and disappear into an elevator in the blink of an eye and stay missing for half an hour before the elevator finally dings and they come running out talking about a sister they met. I know they are the ones who will run out into the middle of the street when a car is coming and not feel the least bit afraid, because they have no sense of impending death.
They’ve pulled over tables on themselves; they’ve tried to climb up bookshelves to get this one book they wanted, because they wanted to do it by themselves; they’ve marked their face with my mascara and lied about it, they’ve stuck their hand in the toilet with floating poop and then wiped their hand all over their shirt (every other day), they’ve figured out how to open a medicine bottle, they’ve helped each other reach the cookies I hid in the microwave, they’ve stood on each other’s shoulders to empty the toy cabinet, they’ve hit each other across the face and then hugged each other in the very next second.
They are relentless.
I didn’t have a single strand of gray hair before I had my twins. Now I find a new one every day, and they’re only 3. We’re in for a long ride.
But even though they’re hard, even though every day I wonder how much more of their twinanigans I can take, there is something else that twins bring to a life, and it is this: bright spots here and there, when they’re laughing hysterically with each other over some inside joke or when they’re coloring together and one keeps the other from marking on the floor so he doesn’t get in trouble or when they’re climbing into my lap for a story.
In moments like these, it’s easy to see why so many people tell me they always wanted twins. Twins are glamorous. They’re special. There is nothing like it. And, when it’s all said and done, it’s fascinating to watch two people who look exactly alike discovering their world, together, in their completely separate ways.
I did not expect twins to be so difficult. I did not expect them to be so wonderful, either.
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.
