Archive for the ‘life’ Tag
May 09 2010
I tried to write an entry on Saturday honoring Mother’s Day and what it means to me. I wanted it to be sweet and sentimental, full of positive emotion and light. I wanted to share tender moments of the past 6 and a half years with these bright little souls. How different my life might be if they weren’t in it. Because of them, my life is full. My kids are the best, kind of thing.
Except my kids were not the best. They were monsters that day. They screamed, they yelled, they cried. My son hid in the bathtub, after sticking his foot in urine-filled toilet water, while my daughter tried to empty all the q-tips out of the drawer. This after everyone made so much noise that she woke from her nap early. It was this sequence of events multiplied by a hundred all day long.
It was nonstop.
Isn’t it always?
I couldn’t wait for bedtime.
Then, at the end of the day, I looked in on my peaceful children sleeping blissfully against their pillows. And I smiled. Partly because the day was finally over and it was quiet at last and I actually made it through without throwing myself off a bridge, but mostly because these moments. This is it, in a nutshell. This is motherhood. Loud and crazy and chaotic. Up, down, and everywhere in between. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows or how I thought it would be.
But it’s beautiful.
Especially when they’re sleeping.
April 30 2010
My parents live in a secluded area. It’s not the country, exactly, but they have a huge yard with an area of overgrown woods we used to explore as kids. Naturally, there were all kinds of bugs and animals hiding in its midst. And spiders.
We came upon one of these spiders when hiking through with my brother. It was a tarantula, I’m pretty sure. Though we didn’t stick around long enough for a personal examination. We quickly darted off as fast as we could run and never looked back. If my nightmares serve correctly, I actually think it jumped at us.
Not long after, I was busy listening to music in my room when I hear a rustling. My wall was covered with posters and I thought maybe one had fallen down. I look around, though, and nothing. So I turn the radio back on, but I hear it again. At this point, my interest is peaked. What in the world…?
When a tarantula crawls down my wall. From behind one of my posters.
I screamed. Like a girl. And ran. Like a bat out of hell. Leaving my bumbling parents to take care of it.
I’ve never felt the same about spiders since.
So even though the spider that Jedi pointed to as it crawled across my bedroom was small and black and probably harmless, they all resemble a hairy tarantula poised to attack now. I had to take care of it, though, when I would have preferred to run and scream. Because being a parent means doing things you really don’t want to do. Even when it involves giant (tiny) hairy (or not) arachnids.
April 29 2010
Some days, life can be a sitcom. Then others, it’s more like a commercial. In this case, a paper towel commercial.
The need for super absorbency, I should clarify. Not the beefy guy in a lumberjack shirt.
This isn’t a metaphor, unfortunately. Kids can make a heck of a mess.
My youngest two like to help any way they can. And by help, I mean make things worse but it’s well-intentioned. I realize that sometime in the foreseeable future I’ll be hard-pressed to get anyone to lift a finger. Like my oldest son now. Getting him to assist in chores is like prying a monkey from a tree.
As I was saying, J was bringing in groceries last night. It becomes a mini-tag team effort, with Buzz carrying a light bag absent of eggs or a sturdy gallon of milk by the handle. This time, though, I took the task a bit further by asking if he’d like to place the plastic jug of milk on the top shelf of the refrigerator. And that’s when it slipped out of his hands, hitting the ground like a bomb.
It was a vitamin A and D fortified crime scene. The floor was a sheen of opaque white, liquid splatters everywhere. Then, as I’m soaking up the evidence, I could swear I hear a stoic voice overhead narrating, “So soft and absorbent, these paper towels will pick up even the toughest of messes! It’s the quicker picker upper!”.
My cat probably thought he had gone to heaven.
As for me, I think I might watch too much TV.
April 28 2010
I come from a long line of morning people, my mother jumpstarts her day at 3 a.m. and my grandmother used to do the same. I am about as opposite of this as you can get. In fact, I would usually be better to skip morning altogether. I’m cranky and irritable and I beg in a futile effort for just 10 more infinite minutes. As you can guess, this doesn’t work well with kids running amok.
My kids, being normal kids, usually wake bright-eyed sometime before 8. While I realize in actuality that it could be worse, it doesn’t seem possible as I’m trudging myself out of bed. Awhile back, both of my youngest were ready to go at 6:45 and I thought I would just about die. That day seemed to last forever.
It’s crossed my mind that if I could just get even an hour more sleep, the world would be my proverbial oyster.
So imagine my surprise when my kids let me sleep in. Until 9:15.
Birds were singing! The sun was shining! The angels rejoiced!
It’s a Christmas miracle!
Glory, glory hallelujah!
If only I could find some way to bottle that morning.
I really did feel like I could conquer the world. Or at least the giant pile of laundry. Of course Abby refused to nap later and Buzz pooped in his underwear which didn’t have anything to do with sleep, exactly, but my jubilance dissipated by the afternoon and it hasn’t returned since. That brief glimpse of what could be gave me hope, though.
April 15 2010
Yesterday morning, as Buzz was embracing me in a cherubic hug, I made the mistake of wondering if he was finally outgrowing his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 3′s. Abby has actually been in more trouble than he has recently. Maybe he’s calming down in his old age, I dreamed. He will be 4 in exactly 11 days, it’s time.
Then the afternoon happened.
While Abby was taking her nap and after everyone’s lunch, I was recharging my batteries on the couch when I noticed it was quiet. Possibly too quiet. The scene I found when I peeked in on Buzz simply reassured what I really already knew.
After stripping the sheets from my bed and shredding a pink crayon into a hundred small pieces scattered throughout, he emptied every article of clothing out of the dirty clothes hamper and tipped it upside down. Bouncing on the basket, carefree in the face of danger, a picture was knocked from the wall. Luckily, it landed on the mattress and nothing was broken.
“Oops, sorry.”, he offered. “It’s OK, but please stop.”, I reassured, because it was. If there’s one thing Buzz has taught me it’s to pick my battles. No damage done. I cleaned up his mess and went back for another attempt at serenity, now. Within seconds, however, I heard a light-hearted scream for help.
There he was, stuck in the storage compartment of the bedside table. Laughing like he was rather proud of himself, feet flailing by his head. Naked.
No, not outgrowing anything. Same old Buzz.
