Grandparents Don't Follow the Rules!

I can remember growing up and having to eat “healthy” cereal like cheerios. I rarely got the good stuff because I always heard my grandmother refer to it as that ‘ol junk stuff that will rot your teeth. I had a bedtime and chores and a list of dos and don’ts that I was required to memorize.

Now that I am an adult with children of my own, I want to know exactly what alien race has now taken over the parents and grandparents in my family.

When my father-in-law brings my oldest son home from school he is often accompanied by a chocolate chip cookie or six. My mother bakes cookies or smore’s with the boys almost every time they are over for a visit. But the worst part is my grandmother! Yes, dear old Grammy who taught me fruit was better than candy and that I had to eat a balanced dinner. What does she give my children? Peanut butter cookies, popcorn, and milk for dinner! I’m in shock and am still looking for the alien pods in her closets.

Grandparents don’t play fair. They spoil kids, give them sugar, buy them presents, and convince our little darlings that grandparents (and great-grandparents) are really more fun than mom and dad. They get them sugared up and hyper and then send them home all the while laughing at us.

When did this conspiracy begin! Forget the black helicopters and men in dark suits and sunglasses it’s the grandparents you have to watch out for!

I’m contemplating starting a support group for parents… Parents Against Rule-Breaking Grandparents (PARBG)! We’ll be meeting weekly and serving the cookies and snacks we can wrestle away from our children.

Minty Clean

Despite the Legos on the floor and the race cars under the couch cushions I’m all for having a clean house. I think it is great to have a deep cleaning from time to time. Get the cobwebs out of the corners, the dust bunnies off bed frames, but until recently I never thought about sink drains.

I try to be a good mom and teach my little ones the value of being healthy, making new friends, and being tidy. I was however, unprepared for my youngest son to take house cleaning so seriously. I was in the middle of cooking lunch, writing a paper for school, and keeping tabs on my youngest children running around the house. As I was busy constructing a meal my little ones would actually eat completely I heard those fateful words, “oooo you are in trouble, MOM!”

As a parent you never really want to hear those words not because you have to give yet another lesson on tattling but because if it is bad enough that the other sibling is not joining in then it has to be really destructive. As I turned off the stove and quickly turned the corner into the hallway I see my middle son standing there and pointing into the bathroom.

With visions of plungers and clogged drains dancing in my head I see my baby proudly scrubbing the sink drain with my toothbrush. He was being so meticulous and wanted to get everything cleaned all the way down so he had put all five of the family toothbrushes down the drain. How do you chastise a two-year-old for helping you clean?

I did what any mother would do, I patted his little head thanked him for helping, told him never to touch the toothbrushes without mommy again and proceeded to call my husband to tell him about his lunchtime plumbing activity for the day.

Good thing Wal-Mart was having a sale on toothbrushes…

Sparkly Dinner Dates

There are telling signs of parents with little children. You see the dazed look as they wander through the grocery store. You notice the dark circles under the eyes from lack of sleep. There are more wrinkles not just in the clothes but on faces as well. Amid the various kid friendly items of toys, cereals, and juice boxes are recovery items like energy drinks, stain removers, and hair dye.

What is the biggest sign of parents with young children you ask? It is showing up for a special occasion dinner with a glittery goat sticker still firmly attached to the belly area of your shirt. You are unaware of any abnormalities but you see the unusual looks other guests are giving you, the disapproving smirk of the hostess, but it isn’t until another parent chuckling points out your creative styling choice for the evening that you realize your children have stamped you like a cattle brand before leaving the house.

Isn’t it bad enough that you are cutting everyone’s meat into bite size chunks? Or that your natural conversation seems to dwell on the fashion statements of fuzzy monsters on Sesame Street. Is it that unrealistic to hope that you can disguise yourself as an ordinary adult with no children just for one evening?

The truth is you will always be able to pick out the parents of young children in a crowd. They may be a little more wrinkled, a little more tired, and a little less fashion forward but they are the ones with a distinctive glow because they have a special corsage for their date night that happens to be in the form of a sparkly goat sticker.

Fixing Mommy

As parents we all have bad days. We raise our voices or lose our cool. We don’t play as much as we should or focus on the little details instead of the big picture. In the end we try to find the best path to raise productive, caring, little versions of ourselves and hope the next generation can do a better job.

Lately, I’ve had a run of poor luck with health issues, back surgeries, tonsillectomies, and now a broken ankle. Apparently, my children have had enough. I’ve been threatened with being put into a large hamster ball to keep me “safe” and now my children are taking matters into their own tiny hands.

I was approached with the sentiment that they were going to “fix” me. Now I have heard of machines being fixed and relationships being fixed but the image that scrambled into my brain happed to be of animals being “fixed”. Not what you want to be thinking when your preschooler is eyeing you with a stethoscope in one hand and a plastic fork in the other.

Now, I used to play pretend doctor when I was a kid. I nursed teddy bears back to health, gave my mother wellness check-ups, I even dissected lizards with a friend when I was older. However, my children take it to a whole other level. The evil laughs and plastic wares were brought in as they consulted one another about which appendage was going to be cut off. The pinnacle point of the appointment was when my middle child told me not to worry he was going to put my brain back in. I’m so relieved about that one; I had been missing my brain…I hate when it strays away.

I was dismissed with an alligator sticker and a kiss and told to get better or I wasn’t going to get a sucker. The joys and scary predictions of what our children will grow up to be now keeps me awake a little longer at night.

Potty Crashing

Most parents of small children understand the phenomenon that is lack of sleep. We wearily fall out of bed in the wee hours of dawn to provide waffles, cereal, and milk to our demanding hordes. We iron clothes (or steam them in the bathroom vapors) so our little ones appear neat and tidy despite the toothpaste leftovers in the corners of their mouths. We wrestle groggy and fussy natives out of footie jammies and into school uniforms. Mostly healthy lunches are packed in the hopes that we are teaching them the value of healthy living when all we really want to do is toss in a Snickers and call it a day.

We rub the sleep from our eyes, slick our fuzzy hair into a ponytail, and pull on whatever happens to be lying around that resembles something clean so that we can drive them across town and walk them to their classrooms. But the day isn’t over there. There is laundry, dishes, toys to organize, and a house to prepare for the after school assault.

So where does a mom find a little peace and quiet? Apparently, mine is found in the bathroom. Not just hiding behind a random shower curtain but while using the facilities. That’s right; I fell asleep while using the restroom…now that is tired!

I awoke quite startled and with a bathroom sink impression firmly planted on my forehead. Perhaps this is a "wake-up" call to get more sleep. Maybe I shouldn't worry about the dust bunnies under my bed plotting my demise...I'll count sheep instead.

Puppet Monsters Are Friends

It started out as a joke. You laugh about being stuck in the house all day with only toddlers to converse with and going a little crazy. You tease about assaulting the postman just so you can have five minutes of adult conversation. Then you have dreams about lining up the finger puppets and using different voices so that you have crowd interaction.

And then, it became a reality...I think like a toddler now. Not only do I catch myself counting to 20 as I wash my hands but I also separate all my food so that they aren’t touching each other. Okay, so I did this BEFORE I was a parent but still!

If that wasn’t bad enough my thoughts are now coming in song formation. Not the cool songs you want to buy the latest CD of, oh no, these are the sing song tunes that repeat themselves endlessly and slowly drive you mad. I do have to admit it is more entertaining now that I have images of random fuzzy puppet monsters delivering messages to my brain.

I thought it was just a phase, but now I'm thinking I really should schedule a night out away from the little darlings. Just in case I decide it is perfectly normal to have conversations with random people at the local grocery store about if Big Bird should update the interior styling of his nest this season.

Toddler Road Trip

What is crazier than having three children under the age of four in the house…taking those three toddlers on a cross-country road trip. Yes, we are insane. We were warned, we were encouraged to take other vacations, we were told to wait a few years. Did we listen? Well of course not. We were determined to take our little tribe from Oklahoma to California. Mickey Mouse was on the list and we had our autograph books ready!

We were warned about the altitude change messing with the baby’s ears. We were prepared with snacks and drinks. We even had a video player installed in our vehicle so that in between the echoing “are we there yets” we could have a few words of adult conversation. Your spelling bee proficiency increases greatly when you have small children. Better start practicing your spelling now…there is no spell check along the highway.

We were however unprepared for bathroom tag games. You know the ones where a child has to potty but no one else in the car has to until you are ten minutes down the road without a rest stop in sight. Oh yes, my children could have been charged with indecent watering of roadside rocks many times. We knew they would ask a billion times over the three-day trip if we were there yet. We were not prepared for the random yells of the baby who decided to practice his yodeling after everyone else was asleep in the car. 

For all those yet unskilled traveling parents out there here is a list that may be of some use:

1.    Do not hang around to take pictures of your children playing on rocks for an hour. Get in the car and drive as fast you can towards the destination. Run the kids when you have to stop for gas and potty breaks.

2.   Avoid telling your children you will stop for any scenic breaks. Let it be a surprise because they will never forget the dinosaurs you promised to show them not being there when you stop. The giant plastic teepee and peeling painted Indians will not be a sufficient diversion.

3.   Carry snacks that you do not mind picking out of your seats, clothes, hair, luggage, or baby’s diaper on a frequent occasion. Never and I repeat never give toddlers cheesy things in the car…it will look as if a powder keg of manufactured orange imitation cheese has exploded in your car and all over every child. Orange is not a pleasant color unless you happen to enjoy resembling an Umpa Lumpa.

4.   If you must stop for a roadside potty break, it is imperative that you teach little boys the art of aiming. That and not to shoot into the breeze…

5.   If you are going to a person’s house that does not have small children visitors very often warn them ahead of time to put anything valuable at chest level or preferably higher. If there are multiple little children keep in mind that they will stack themselves up like Legos in order to reach the most valuable breakable possible.

6.   Carry extra diapers, clothes, and Benadryl. Do I condone giving children medicine when it is not needed? No. However, I absolutely agree with the pediatrician and pharmacist who highly recommended “preventative measures” that included the use of Benadryl or motion sickness meds…all drowsy versions of course.

7.   Take lots of pictures. They will be valuable later once you recover and have re-dyed your hair to cover the grays or bought that wig to replace the hair you pulled out while on “vacation”.

The most important lesson I learned from our first major family vacation was to enjoy every minute. Climb the rocks with your kids, splash in the waves at the beach, go ahead and force the little tykes to get a picture with an oversized cartoon character despite their cowering body language. The kids loved the adventure and I must be insane since we are going to repeat the voyage again in a few months.

The Miracle of Motherhood

I have a plaque that hangs on my youngest child’s door that says; “However motherhood comes, it’s a miracle.” I find this saying very inspiring and a reminder to appreciate not only my own children but all the children and people I have unofficially adopted though the years.

Not all families are biological. Some families are made through adoption, fostering, new marriages, or just simply offering love and room in your heart to another person. I have been blessed with so many non-biological family members in my lifetime; students, friends, random servers at restaurants. My children have aunts, uncles, and cousins that have no blood relation to them and I am thankful for that.

Motherhood is difficult. If done right it will exhaust you, it will take your youth, your time, and your natural hair color, but it is an experience like no other. I am blessed to have three, crazy, wild, unpredictable, little boys in my life.

One of my friends once asked what I did before I had children at home and I honestly had to take a few minutes to remember. I used to think I was so busy, boy was I was wrong. Parenthood is crazy and not for the faint of heart. Kids can be scary, messy, exhausting, embarrassing, and things you swear just crawled out from under a rock. But they can also be the most inspiring, thoughtful, loving, and fulfilling people you have ever had the pleasure to bring into your life.

Some people don’t wish to have children which I always found odd since I knew I always wanted to be a mom. Now that I am a mom I can see their point some days. But I still encourage them to have a child in their life even if they get to send them home at the end of the day because there is a miracle in children. They see the world in a way that is unlike any adult. They are innocent and honest in their beliefs and how they interact with others. Sometimes as adults we get so caught up in the what to do and how to do it deadlines of life that mean nothing in the end when we really should take time to smell the roses and play with the roly-poly bugs that live at their base.

Pride Lands

A mother’s pride is engrained in the faces of her children. We look at their little cherub faces and take pride in the similarities we see of ourselves, we are meticulous in the outfits we choose for them and teach them the value of taking pride in a job well done.

Well my house has a different take on pride…my children take play acting to the extreme. I now live with Simba and (the male version of) Nala from the Lion King. I wake to a 3-year-old perched on my chest making growling noises at me and flashing tiny white teeth.

This is disturbing not only because my child has decided that communicating in growls is better than words but at any time I am now convinced that a version of the Lord of the Flies is going to break out in my house. I’m waiting for the day that I come home and find my 3-year-old attached to a spit in the front yard with a half-dressed 4-year-old running madly around shouting at the top of his lungs. The only hope is the baby and I’m not convinced he isn’t the mastermind behind all the chaos in the first place!

I have tried convincing my children that snarls and growls aren’t becoming of young gentlemen, but I was met with vacant stares. I tried to explain that we should be careful with our brothers and not treat them like a wounded zebra ready for dinner, but I was met with the proclamation of which brother would be designated as the sacrificial zebra this evening. I tried to reason with my children that their behavior was a direct reflection on my ability as a mother, but I was met with wild laughter and more snarls and growls.

So in the end, I find myself crawling around on all fours growling and roaring alongside my children…if you can’t beat them, join them!

Disgusting Kid Tricks

Ever notice how incredibly disgusting your children can be? In our house, I’m a believer that the amount of disgusting is in direct correlation to the amount of cuteness produced by each child. In which case, I’m screwed!

WARNING: if you are easily disgusted yourself do not read this…mom that means you, I know how queasy your stomach is and I don’t want to hear about it later!

I try to dress my children nicely, keep them clean, and maintain at least a moderate level of discipline especially if we are out in public. I cannot say the same thing for my children.

They take great joy and dare I say pride in the amount of disgusting tricks they can come up with. They have gas wars which they find truly hilarious, they mine for gold to the point of making their little noses bleed, and now we have a rule that only one child can go to the potty at a time. Who would have thought that this was an issue? Why would you want to share the potty with a sibling in the first place? Now I know why, it is so you can urinate on them. That’s right, you read it correctly. I had to put in place a rule in my house so that my children wouldn’t pee on each other…good grief.

Between the snot-ball challenges with daddy (seeing how many you can make before daddy loses his mind trying to clean you up) and the begging to use the bathtub or the neighbor’s house as a urinal I’m convinced I should have had girls. I was right as a child…BOYS ARE GROSS!!!