Trash Cake Says I Love You

(FYI, I wrote this a couple of months ago. No need to wish me a happy birthday. You're off the hook.)

I try not to keep sweets in the house because I’m trying to pretend I’m healthy. As long as there aren’t any treats in the house the illusion works. But I also feel that cooking for my family is a major way for me to show my love for them. These two attitudes collide when it’s someone’s birthday.  I baked a two-layer chocolate cake from scratch this week as a present to the birthday girl (me).

Now, it didn’t turn out as jaw-droopingly amazing as I’d hoped, and it wasn’t very sweet or moist or decadent, but still, it was a freaking chocolate cake. It was a moist chocolate genoise with chocolate hazelnut praline sheets wrapped around the whipped ganache frosting, in point of fact. As you can imagine for something with such a long fancy name littered with French words, I worked pretty dang long and hard on that “cake”! It was disappointing, though. I think maybe the chocolate I used was too dark and therefore not sweet or moist enough.

You can always try it yourself. 

I kept the cake around for a couple days hoping that time would improve the flavors or magically create sweetness, so I could feel good about my will power in not eating it, but it just wasn’t tempting. So this morning I tipped it into the kitchen trash can. Out of sight, out of stomach and all that jazz. It no longer taunted me with its failed greatness, its deceptive appearance of deliciousness.
But not five minutes later my sweet five-year-old came to me with her big blue eyes. “Mommy, can I have some chocolate cake?”

Whoops.  She hadn’t asked for cake in three days. Why did she choose NOW? How could I tell her I just threw it all away! That seems really cruel, and one of my parenting goals is to not be cruel. That’s why I tossed the cake when I was alone in the kitchen. I’m not cruel enough to throw away perfectly (mostly) good cake right in front of my kids. If they ask me for a fish, I don’t give them a rock.  I might question why in the world they think they want fish, when it stinks up the whole house and then they don’t really eat it anyway, and hey, isn’t this a pretty little rock? But to tell her she can’t have cake because it’s in the bin seems wrong. So I chickened out.

“Uhhhmmm. Yeah. Go back to the front room and I’ll bring it to you.”

“Yay!” She lifts up the cover to the cake carrier. “Wait. Where’s the cake?”

“I’ll bring it to you.”

“But where is it!?” she insisted.

“Just go back to the other room like I said and I’ll bring you the very last piece!!”

As soon as she was out of sight, I lifted the lid to the trash can. The cake sat on top of some junk mail. I sliced off a piece and placed it decoratively on a plate with a curl of chocolate that had come to rest on an empty medicine bottle.

“Here you go, sweetie-pie! The last piece of cake.”

She took the plate. “Fanks, Mom!” And I felt like an awesome and resourceful mother.

Of course, two minutes later she brought the plate back to the kitchen with most of the cake still there.  I guess I was right to put it in the trash in the first place. It really didn’t turn out the way I wanted.

In Which I Complain About An Ancient Greek

I’m a bit envious of Sisyphus. Who’s Sisyphus, you ask? He’s the Greek king who was doomed by Zeus to forever push a huge boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again, over and over. Sisyphus has come to represent fruitless actions, monotonous, never-ending labor.

As a mom, I feel like I know a little something about monotony, work that is never done, and having my accomplishments undone. It's basically the job description. By the time the dishwasher is finished running there are dishes piling up in the sink. There's always a basket of laundry somewhere in the house (clean? dirty? clean but ruined?).  And I'm pretty sure there are more runny noses per capita than is normal. With luck, in another nine or ten years, I can start paying for college for people who are SURE they know way more than me.

I say, Sisyphus had a good thing going. Sure, working hard at something just to watch it come undone is annoying, but it’s not like Sisyphus was almost to the top when his daughter came up and repeatedly poked him in the leg, “Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad DAD DAD DADDADDAD!” and then when he was distracted the other child hit the boulder with a basketball and knocked it loose. “I told you kids not to bug me when I’m on the top third!!” Sisyphus would yell. “And how many times do I have to tell you, no basketballs near the boulder?!” Nobody actively interfered with his task, is what I’m saying. He pushed that boulder all day long with nobody to bother him.

After the third or the thirtieth or the three-hundredth time pushing that boulder up only to have it tumble back down, I figure Sisyphus must’ve given up and just enjoyed the process. The feeling of strength and power. The cleanness of pure physical exertion. There was probably plenty of time to think, to achieve a meditative state as he pushed and shoved. Lots of time to become one with himself. I mentioned the banging on the bathroom door, right?

And then, at the top-ish, when the boulder tumbles back down. . . Crashing through trees, bouncing off other rocks, getting airborne? That honestly sounds fun to watch. There’s a reason Angry Birds was so popular—it’s fun to wreck stuff, as long as you don’t have to clean up any of the destruction. If I’m in the middle of doing the dishes and suddenly the glasses tumble out of the cupboard, I’m going to have to clean it up. There are consequences. But the myth says nothing about Sisyphus having to replant sacred trees or pay for damaged Parthenons or appear in court to answer for his reckless boulder-pushing.

Maybe, you say, Sisyphus was far away from anyone who would care if the boulder smashed up a Parthenon or a Volvo. Nobody cared about his labors? Nobody cared that he was working super hard on getting that rock from the bottom to the top? Boo. Hoo. Every day I plan, shop for, and cook meals that are not only delicious but healthy, and what are the results? We sit down to the table and my kids inform me that,"Dinner is . . . not good. I want Ramen noodles." That right there is a boulder tumbling back down the hill.

Sisyphus didn’t have to convince the boulder to get itself up that hill. No, he just pushed it, no mind games, no reverse psychology, no making up silly games to fool it into thinking it was fun going up the hill.

"Uppsy-daisy! Let's jump SO high! Let's go see the zebra at the top of the hill! You LIKE zebras!"

Sisyphus only had one boulder. I’d like to see how he’d do with three! Then we’ll talk about insurmountable tasks. Just as he’s getting somewhere with one boulder, the other ones are banging into each other and making a ruckus. Deal with those two, and the first one is rolling into the Aegean. Turn around, and none of the three are where he left them. I doubt that boulder ever embarrassed Sisyphus at a playground or grocery store.

And another thing! The boulder didn’t talk back. “But I don’t WANNA go up the hill! You can’t make me! I hate you! You’re the worstest rock-pusher EVER!” I’ll bet it was really quiet on that hill, nothing but birds and wind and rustling leaves and the crunch of rock on gravel. Sigh. So quiet.

Yeah.

Sisyphus—More like Sissy-wuss. Mothers are the true mythic figures!

A Letter to the Future

Dear September Me,

Hi, it's me, writing to you from the end of the school year, way in the past, before the swimming and the dirt and the zoo trips and the romping through the woods and whatever awesome things you came up with to nurture those kids of ours when they weren't watching PBS Kids and ODing on Minecraft while whining and fighting and spilling food on everything.

School seems like a dream come true, fresh with promise and crisp new supplies. But I'm writing to you to remind you of the things you've probably forgotten in your excitement to have 2/3 of our kids off learning stuff with friends all day. I've put together a list of resolutions for you, so you can do better at this parenting thing than I have.

First of all, great job improving your penmanship over the summer! 

1. Stop putting things in Kimmy's lunches that you know she won't eat, but put in anyway to make yourself look good to the imaginary adults judging her lunches, as if you were competing in a reality show about motherhood. News flash, self! Uneaten food has no nutritive value! Give Kimmy healthy options, sure, but sometimes it's better to just get calories into that girl. Remember how you felt whenever she came home and said all she ate was a baby carrot? Because she "wasn't hungry"? I'll bet she would have eaten some chips, too.

2. You should probably check their folders every day. Or at least every other day. Then you won't have to sign any permission slips with a half-melted crayon in the car while dropping them off at school.

3. You should keep a pen and pad of paper in the car, just in case you forget until the very last possible moment that you needed to send one of those "Please excuse so-and-so's absence. She was puking her guts out" notes.

4. Seriously, aren't the girls old enough to walk home alone? It's like a five-minute walk. If you pick them up in the car they just climb in and start arguing and complaining. Let them walk their issues out before they get home.

5. Don't let them watch TV in the morning before school. They get way too distracted from all the things they need to do, like get dressed and eat. I know I was weak on this, but you are better than me. Be strong.

6. It worked really well to have the kids do their homework as soon as they got home from school. Originally I told them they could play for 30 minutes to relax, then it was homework time, but Kimmy learned she didn't like having her homework hanging over her head and would rush to do it as soon as she came in the door. Remind her of this when she starts complaining about homework.

7. Find a class or something fun for Roman to do now that his sisters are gone all day. Turn off the TV!

That's it, September Me. Make us look good for the cameras!

Love,
Lisa

April's Misadventure

Well. That was an eventful weekend. You may remember from my last post that April was jealous of Kimmy's overnight zoo outing. I think that now April has learned that sometimes boring is good!

Last Friday evening April took a little tumble off her bike.  She wobbled a little and then just tipped over. It was a nothing kind of fall. Except that when I came up to make sure she was ok, I could see that she definitely wasn't. She was holding her right arm which had a wonky bulge at the elbow.  I thought at the time that it was dislocated. I immediately went into crisis mode, trying to remain calm and reassuring to April when really I just wanted to FREAK OUT.  I ditched the bikes on the lawn and ran in the house with the kids.

And thus began some of the longest hours of my life. So much waiting in so many different rooms. We went to the Children's Hospital Urgent Care because it was close and because at the time I thought her elbow was 'only' dislocated. They did x-rays and then I helped April to the bathroom. She didn't want to go at first because she had to use her good arm to support her hurt one, but I assured her that if she held her arm, I would do everything else. "But I will do the peeing," she clarified. She's so precise, she cracks me up.

Later the doctor called me into the hallway to deliver the news that her humerus, the bone in her upper arm, was broken right at the elbow. Her lateral condyle, the one of the knobby bits that forms the elbow joint, had broken off and was out of place and rotated. She was most likely going to need surgery and needed to go downtown to the hospital. They put her arm in a splint and got her ready for transfer.

Poor April was in a lot of pain and even threw up a couple times. She still had her wits about her, though. At the hospital she told the first doctor about falling off her bike, but then refused to answer anyone else who walked in and asked "What happened to your arm?" She was very annoyed that she kept having to talk about it.  She was scared and crying a little. She told me that, "Sometimes when I get scared my nose gets a widdle bit nervous and it over-refloats out of one hole."

This picture breaks my heart. My poor little girl!

April was admitted to the hospital around 2 AM and got some pain medication before finally falling asleep around 3. At 7 AM the doctors started coming in again "Hi April! How did you hurt your arm?" and we waited and waited some more before going to pre-op, where we waited a good hour and a half before surgery.

The surgery took an hour and a half. An hour and a half in which I paced and ate my first food in 18 hours and tried not to think about how surgery is dangerous and sometimes people die in even simple surgeries. It was 90 minutes of being alone without my daughter to be brave for. My nose did some over-refloating.

I was so relieved when the surgeon came to tell me it was over and April was doing great. She had a couple of pins in her arm and was wearing a hard splint, a kind of temporary cast while her arm does the initial healing. We went back up to her room and took a nap before moving from sipping water to eating jello to snarfing down scrambled eggs and bacon.

She pronounced it "very jello-y" and said it tasted "like orange"

She was discharged around 6 on Saturday evening, and my heart was just about full to over-refloating with relief and gratitude for modern medicine. She'll have this splint for a week before we go to the orthopedic clinic for follow-up x-rays and to remove the pins. Apparently pin removal is done in the office and hurts no more than a shot. It seems hard to believe, so I'll let you know if that really is the case.

April is on the mend but still hates telling everyone about what happened. She went back to school today and I had to go in with her to answer her schoolmates' questions while she hid behind me. All the attention bothers her, but she'll probably miss it, at least a little, when her splint is off for good.

In Which the Zoo is Now Underwhelming

April has been really jealous of Kimmy's fun zoo trip last week. "I wish I could stay at the zoo," she moped, shuffling around the house dejectedly.
"Me, too," I agreed.

Every time we told someone about the polar bear leaping at Kimmy, April piped up, "Tell them about how surprised I was when the mustard bottle made that noise!"

So you can imagine how jazzed she was about her kindergarten class taking a field trip to the zoo today. She wrote a list of things she needed to bring or do ("go to school with Kimmy" and "bring a lunch") and she packed her lunch last night so she'd be all ready. This morning before school she was so nervous and excited that she could hardly eat breakfast.

This afternoon when I picked her up after the field trip she showed me her zoo map and told me all about being in a group with the two Kaitlins and talking on the bus.  In the car on the way home I asked her which animals she saw, expecting a long detailed list, but apparently she'd already told me all the pertinent facts.

"Smelly ones," she said bluntly.

So now April remembers that we've been to the zoo, "Like, ten times."

Two Hours Later:
I just asked April what her favorite part of the zoo trip was.
"All it was, was giraffes," she said dismissively.

Put Me in the Zoo

This weekend I dreamed that I was in a women's prison, like in 'Orange is the New Black.' Then I woke up and realized that I actually was sleeping on a thin mattress in a cinderblock room with 15 other women. Luckily for me, none of these other females were felons, but were in fact third-graders and their moms.

I was camping with Kimmy's Girl Scout troop at the Columbus Zoo, and let me just say that it was awesome. We got to walk around the zoo while it was closed, see and pet various animals, and even go behind the scenes to the zoo's animal hospital. I was geeking out. When our zoo counselor was talking to us and asking questions it was all I could do to hold myself back from going, "Ooooh! Oooh! I know! Nictitating membranes!!" I had to remind myself that the trip was for the kids, not the grownup with a background in wildlife biology.

I don't have pictures of any of the best parts of this Zoo Camp-In. Sorry not sorry. I was busy experiencing instead of looking through technology. And for some of our visit we weren't allowed to take pictures, even if we'd wanted to.

Feeding giraffes. This is something anyone can do if they arrive at the right time of day and shell out $3. But it was still amazing. I've taken my kids to do this, but it wasn't the same this time. I wasn't juggling three kids of various ages and interest levels. I just slowly held out the romaine leaf and looked into the giraffe's enormous dark eyes. It slurped out its long tongue and licked the lettuce right out of my hand. There's something about having an encounter with a wild animal, making eye contact, and just being present in the moment. It was amazing.

Everybody loves a tall blonde with big dark eyes that only eats salad.

Speaking of encountering a wild animal, we went to the polar bear exhibit and saw the three bears pacing back and forth in front of the huge viewing window, waiting to be fed. We watched them and talked for several minutes about what made polar bears uniquely adapted to their habitat. Kimmy and the other Brownies were standing right up against the glass, giggling about how gross the polar bear poop was. They weren't paying close attention to the closest bear, who was definitely paying attention to them. She loped up to the glass and pounced right at Kimmy, slamming her paws against the window! I'm pretty sure she did it just to see Kimmy and the other girls freak out.

Behind the scenes at the zoo's animal hospital we saw their treatment and operating rooms and heard about taking care of the zoo's 10,000 animals, some of which are critically endangered. And then we happened to be in just the right place at just the right time to see the zoo's newest inhabitants: 13-day-old Amur tiger cubs. They're being hand-raised after their mother failed to take care of them (I can sympathize with her--it is SO hard being a first-time mom and I can't imagine what it's like not knowing what's going on or having people to talk you through it). The cubs' eyes were still closed (because like all cats, tiger cubs are altricial) and they were all fuzzy and adorable. Their keeper held one up for us to see and he cried, little squawky cries! Poor little guy. It's so hard to be a baby. She switched from holding him up with both hands and instead held him by the scruff of his neck and he instantly quieted down, hanging limp and peaceful. Amazing. I wish my babies had had a neck scruff. The tiger cub only weighed a few pounds, but some day he'll weigh several hundred! Crazy. The keeper told us that the tiger cubs (all males) are named Han, Luke, and Chewie. I approve. You can click here to see official pictures of the cubs.

The last animal encounter I'll mention here was unplanned. We were walking through the Asia Quest area at twilight and happened across a skunk. A WILD skunk. The girls were excited, but the skunk scurried off under the boardwalk to the tiger exhibit, and we all walked away quickly. This sounds like a nothing kind of encounter, lacking drama (thank goodness), but it's significant because April (my six-year-old) has nightmares about skunks. Seriously. Nightmares. She's a fan of Curious George, and there are a couple of episodes about run-ins with skunks, so now she's sure that skunks are everywhere, and to be feared and dreaded. I wish she'd been at the zoo with us to see the skunk flee without spraying us. It would have been just the anticlimax to defuse all those nightmares.

A Tale of Woe and Betrayal, Laundry Edition

Something glorious is happening in my house right now. I've been waiting two weeks for this, and it's finally happening. My clothes are getting washed!

About two weeks ago I pulled some clothes out of the dryer and found huge dirty oil spots all over them. I checked the clothes still in the washer, and they were even worse. Some kind of oil was leaking from my machine into the washtub. I suddenly had a dirtying machine instead of a washing machine.

This is just a small sample of the horrors.

At the time, I was pretty freaked out about two loads of MY clothes getting ruined. I'm still not happy about that but the last two weeks have given me a little perspective. I wasn't worried about the washer because I knew I could just call a repairman and get it fixed, because that's what adults do. No problem. I have a phone and a check book.

But after waiting two days for the repairman to show up, he took approximately 45 seconds to look in my machine and tell me it was toast. The transmission was shot or something.  I didn't even know washing machines have a transmission, but you learn something new every day. Sometimes what you learn is boring. That's another aspect of being an adult.

So later that same day the hubster and I took our brood of frisky children to a local appliance place that sells scratch-and-dent machines. We love this store because we get much nicer appliances for less money as long as we're willing to have a ding on the front. I proudly show off the ding on the front of my stainless-steel-french-door-freezer-on-the-bottom refrigerator, because it not only saved us $500, but it also saved us the trouble of worrying about our kids putting a ding in the door of an expensive new fridge. If I don't feel like looking at the dent I cover it with a magnet.

As our children roamed the store, racing up and down the aisles and pushing buttons on appliances, Kit and I carefully picked out a new washer using our tried-and-true technique: looking for the cheapest one. That day it happened to be a nice new front-loading high-efficiency washer, because the store was running an Earth Day special. Yay, us! We put the washer into the back of the van and took it home like hunters returning from a successful hunt, full of pride.

We dragged the old washer up out of the basement and to the curb, and put the new washer in the garage to wait for a better time to wrangle it, since it was already past the kids' bedtime. The next day the kids and I went to the garage to visit it, and I couldn't help but caress it a little. It was so beautiful, so clean, so efficient. "We're going to make beautiful laundry together," I murmured to it.
But all along, the new washer was hiding a dark secret.

Kit and some friends got the machine down into the basement and the next day before he went to work we leveled it and removed the bolts that keep the tub in place during transport. We couldn't get the last rubber spacer out right then, so while Kit was gone I spent a couple of hours wiggling it and yanking it and levering it and finally I got it out. I held it high in the air triumphantly, like Gollum and the One Ring. And just like Gollum, I immediately plunged into a pit of fiery torment, because after I hooked everything up the MACHINE WAS BROKEN. It just constantly filled with water, even unplugged. The whole time I was caressing that machine it was quietly snickering to itself.

Several phone calls and one week later, just as the laundry piles were starting to need signs warning travelers of the avalanche danger, I finally have a washer that works! It needed a new valve or something that had to be ordered. And now that washer really is beautiful. I just wish it hadn't required so much adulting to get clean clothes.

Maybe we don't need the TV anymore??

The Twos Are (Not?) Terrible

I had a really sappy post drafted up about how two-year-olds get a bad rap. This is my third time parenting through the Twos, and I get a lot of pleasure from two-year-olds. The post was sweet and loving and was going to be filled with pictures of my little guy. He has a goofy sense of humor, he loves to help (especially if he gets to vacuum), he gets excited about the tiny wonders of life (like the ants that keep crawling under the back door), and he's just the right size to scoop up and tickle-kiss.

It's a wondrous journey of self-discovery

BUT

Then I had to haul him out of various establishments like a bouncer and it reminded me why two-year-olds can be rotten stinkers. Just about every day last week he did a public impression of a screaming octopus, wailing and screeching and kicking and thrashing. And through it all I had to paste a calm look on my face. "I've got this totally under control. I don't mind that he's kicking me. I'm not resenting my toddler for humiliating me in public, because that would be silly."

Go ahead. Punish me.

And then there were the incredible things I had to clean up because of him. I feel like his entourage sometimes, following after him and trying to fix things he's messed up, apologizing to bystanders, replacing things he's broken.

WHY SO SERIOUS??

But even at the worst moments there are bits of joy showing through, I just have to remember to recognize them. Aww, he's so cute with that nail polish he thought was lip gloss.

Lessons from Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins is my idol. 
She was confident and assertive, but knew fun and magic can be found anywhere. I would love to emulate her more in my life. Of course, Mary Poppins had a couple of advantages over me. I mean, she had supernatural abilities and a three-octave singing voice, for goodness sake. She slid UP the bannister, levitated tea-tables, and charmed children, bankers, and birds with her singing. My musical repertoire is pretty much limited to "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." My super powers are making food appear every night at dinner, and the ability to make my two-year-old disappear simply by holding a tissue in my hand. So I'm trying to focus on learning some of her more attainable skills.

On Self Esteem

Mary Poppins told people she was "kind but extremely firm" and "practically perfect in every way." Of course, since references are "a very old-fashioned idea, to my mind," we only have her word for it. So maybe she isn't quite as great as she says. I bring this up because it's important to have a positive attitude toward yourself, to say good things about yourself. I find myself talking to myself, about myself, in a way that would be totally unacceptable from another human being. When I make a mistake, in my head I sometimes call myself an idiot. I don't think I'm alone in this. But if more of us looked in the mirror every morning, sang a duet with our reflection, and then declared ourselves to be "practically perfect in every way," the world would be considerably closer to awesome. Persuading oneself to be great is an amazing skill.

On Cleaning Up

The most memorable scene in the movie is probably when they tidy up the nursery. Mary Poppins tells Jane and Michael that "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down," and "In every job that must be done there is an element of fun."
Turning chores into games totally works on my kids, as long as I make the effort to make it a compelling game. This doesn't mean complicated, or that I've developed super snapping abilities. (sigh. I wish. Is there a YouTube video tutorial out there?) Let's talk about the dress-up clothes that spend so much time on the floor that I'm pretty sure that hundreds of years from now future archaeologists will study the strata of tiaras and dresses and magician costumes in the remains of our house and write scholarly papers about The Use of Synthetic Fibers in Children's Ceremonial Garb in the Early Twenty-First Century.

There's a PhD in there somewhere

On occasion I decide that it is time to check the floor of April's room, to make sure the carpet is still the color I remember and that the squirrels aren't hiding under a pile of capes, and I gather my brood.  This is crucial: if I tell them to clean this mess, without a game or instructions, not only will the mess not get picked up, but it will immediately spread throughout the house because the girls will stop cleaning and start playing after approximately 37 seconds. So this is where the "element of fun" comes in.

"Okay guys, I'm setting the stopwatch! Let's see if we can beat our best time of one minute, fifty-six seconds! Remember, pick up a whole armful, not one little thing at a time. Ready-Set-GO!!"

And it works, which blows my mind. I mean, basically I'm getting them to clean up by telling them, in a super chipper voice, to do it super fast. This wouldn't work on me if I was, say, doing the dishes or mopping the kitchen or working on our taxes. If you told me I could get these things done by just going faster, I would roll my eyes at you. So. Hard. "What a revelation," I would say. And then I would gather my wits about me, turn off the instinctive sarcasm, and ask you to demonstrate for me on the dishes. I would pull a stool up to the kitchen island and make interested and admiring noises while you showed me how to put dishes in the dishwasher really quickly without breaking them. I would eat a cookie while telling you how amazing you are, and that I could never be as fast as you. Maybe you should do the dishes again tomorrow so I can watch and maybe figure out your technique, which seems super sophisticated.

On Bedtime

Bedtime seems like a simple task: put on pajamas, brush teeth, get in bed, turn off the light. But the reality is that there are days I would rather try to train a herd of cats than try to put my children to bed, because CPS wouldn't come calling if I gave up and put the cats in cages and walked out for an hour. The simplest things take an hour to accomplish. The kids suddenly remember things that absolutely have to be done right now. "I need to go through this stack of Scholastic book order forms and circle the ones I want!" (spoiler: they want the books that come with toys and gizmos.) They forget that they were putting on pajamas and play legos with their trousers around their knees and then get angry when I remind them to get dressed. ("I AM!" they insist indignantly, then go back to building a spaceship that fires flowers.) They dawdle, brushing each tooth individually. They remember how much they love us and have to come back downstairs three or four times to give hugs and kisses. (It would be more adorable if it didn't happen a full hour after we tucked them in.) They develop ailments and itches that torture them into wakefulness.

This is where the best Mary Poppins bit comes in. In the movie, after taking Jane and Michael on a outing to the park, the children are so wound up they can't calm down to sleep. She finally tells them, "Now, not another word or I shall be forced to summon a policeman." This is seriously my favorite line in the whole movie. It isn't so much applicable as it is hilariously reassuring. It gives me a great deal of comfort to know that even Mary Poppins got frustrated at bedtime, and resorted to outlandish empty threats in order to get peace and quiet. She was practically perfect, not totally perfect.

This makes me feel a lot better.

This is a Serious Post

Let's get real for a moment. It's time for a Serious Post. I'm going to talk about a hard subject.

My oldest child has ADHD. This means that people are allowed to just walk up to me and give me parenting advice and criticism. Generally the advice follows one of three styles:

1. If you disciplined her more/better/the way I disciplined MY kids, she wouldn't act like that
2. You shouldn't medicate her, you should accept her and take joy in her specialness
3. ADHD is made up

This kind of commentary also implies that I am parenting wrong. After someone says something like that to me, I laugh it off and get on with my life. Oh, wait. No, I usually cry the whole way home.

So I thought I would take a moment to show you all a TINY glimpse of what it's like for me to parent my particular almost-nine-year-old with ADHD. Please do not try to generalize this experience, because for heaven's sake, all kids and parents are different.

I took the kids swimming one day last week and on the way back we stopped at my aunt's workplace, a small upscale candy and sweet shop. The shop had a lot of nutcrackers, mostly up on shelves, and one big one in solid wood that had to be five feet tall, standing by the door. Kimmy ping-ponged around the shop, picking things up and putting them down, completely oblivious to my efforts to get her to quiet down and act more appropriately. Her behavior was rubbing off on her siblings, too, and I was pretty embarrassed that we were creating such a spectacle in front of the other store patrons. I apologized to my aunt (who is a laid-back saint of a woman) and explained that Kimmy wasn't on her meds that day.

"Oh, I thought she was just excited to be here!" she smiled. We laughed about it, and I explained my theory of Kimmy's behavior, namely that when she isn't on her medication, I appear to be escorting a drunken third-grader around town.

That's right. It's like she's drunk: slurred speech, poor motor control, loud talking, loss of inhibition.

I told my aunt about this, and we looked over at Kimmy. She was at the big nutcracker by the door, with her arms draped around it, kissing it on the mouth. "He's sho biig!! Look how big an' srong he i'!" she called loudly to the two ladies who were leaving the store. She tossed her hair back and leaned over to sloppily kiss the nutcracker's hand. "Wook, Mom! I kissin' his han'!"

I wish I was inventing this, or at least exaggerating, but this is exactly what happened. She is sweet and funny and creative, but sometimes she's an unruly drunk.

Spring Break is Hard on Everyone, Especially Their Butts

I was down in the basement sorting laundry when suddenly my mommy-senses tingled. Somewhere my children were fighting. I raced up to the TV room, where the girls were yelling and crying and hitting each other with their Wii remotes.

"Kimmy bited my butt!!" sobbed April, clutching the wounded cheek.

"What the?! KIMMY!" I yelled. "You BIT her BUTT??"

Flustered, Kimmy reverted to her standard defense. "It was a accident!" she insisted.

"No, it wasn't!!" cried April, falling to the floor in devastation. I pried her hand away long enough to check her butt--a little red, no blood. No need for medical intervention. I turned my full attention on Kimmy.

Like a desperate cornered animal, Kimmy went on the offensive. "She made me do it!!"

"What?!" I was incredulous. "Unless she sat on your mouth and mashed your jaws together with her hands, there is NO WAY she made you bite her butt!!"

"She just made me mad," she finished lamely.

"That's it!! You are GROUNDED from all electronics for two days!" Furious, I delivered the verdict and separated the girls.

The next day, Kimmy was subdued by the knowledge that she was still in the electronics-free doghouse, and spent quite a bit of time up in her room, quietly playing legos. Late in the afternoon, I needed to run out for a quick errand and left the girls home. They hate shopping, especially when there's so much nothing to be done. If you're going to judge me, don't let it be for that. Please.

When I came back about twenty minutes later, I was met at the kitchen door by both girls eagerly clutching Wii remotes.

"I forgived Kimmy and Kimmy forgived me and we really wanted to play together on the Wii so we are playing together on the Wii," explained April in her usual thorough fashion. Kimmy and April looked up at me hopefully.

I wanted to be upset, to insist that Kimmy was still grounded, I really did.  But if they've found a way to forgive each other and play together, who am I to get in the way? Isn't that what I was trying to foster in the first place? Isn't it my job as a parent to raise two children who don't let a little butt-biting get in the way of their friendship? And so I let them keep playing.

On the Interconnectedness of Cleaning and Sleeping

Last night I had a wild time out on the town which consisted of sitting in a basement family room chatting with friends about books while eating chips and salsa. It was deeply satisfying in that quiet way that reminds me that I'm an adult, and also boring. Definitely not the main character in a movie or sitcom.  When I got home it was late, the house was dark, and the family was asleep. Before going to bed myself I went around to check on the kids, you know, to make sure they were breathing and hadn't adopted any wild animals while I was gone. I've suspected for a while that the girls are letting squirrels nest in their hair, just to make life extra hard in the morning when they're getting ready for school.  I try to brush their hair and they cry and carry on like their hearts are broken, like their best friends are now homeless. I haven't actually caught the girls in the act of housing squirrels, but it's only a matter of time before one of those furry beasts leaves behind evidence more damning than matted and tangled hair, say, gnawed acorns or shredded bark.

I found both girls asleep on the floor of their rooms. I almost stepped on Kimmy, but realized at the last minute that the rug was breathing.  She was curled up in her sleeping bag in the middle of the floor.  April had made a very cozy-looking blanket nest next to her bed. She was gently lit by the glow of her five nightlights, so the chances of my stepping on her were considerably lower than the chances of my being blinded.

Why weren't they sleeping in their beds? Because the floor was clean, don't ya know.

I made them clean their rooms that day so I could vacuum up the rainbow loom bands and dead ladybugs and clementine peels. It was an exhausting ordeal to get the girls to clean. I had to yell up the stairs at them like ten times to get them to actually finish picking up, because they've got the attention span of a goldfish or a housefly. Finally after an hour I put down my book and rolled off the couch and started up the stairs with the vacuum cleaner.

"Your floors had better be clean by the time I'm done with the hallway because I promise you I will vacuum anything I find!!" I called up in the melodious and dulcet tones of a nightingale, or possibly a car alarm. Either one, really. And amazingly, the girls were ready for me. The floors were clear of everything but stuffed animal guts, snips of paper, and the aforementioned expired bugs, snack remnants, and crafting debris. I finished vacuuming upstairs just in time for dinner, and I took off afterwards for my book club meeting.

At bedtime their dad sent them to their rooms, where they learned a very important lesson. When you "pick up" by moving all your toys from the floor to the bed, stuff that belongs on the bed (i.e.; your body) has to go on the floor.

Bonus Fact: The girls independently arrived at both of these lazy solutions: putting everything on the bed, and then sleeping on the floor lest they be obligated to actually put things where they belong.