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!!!