Playtime Nightmare

Usually when I have a crazy experience someplace, I call it an adventure, and later I can see some humor in it.  Today was not an adventure.  It was more like a nightmare.  And it was not funny.

I decided to take the boys with me to Big Lots today, and then go eat at McDonald's afterward and let them play.  I felt really good about it, and was looking forward to passing the afternoon that way.  They did pretty good at Big Lots, had a little trouble listening, but not too much.  And even McDonald's was okay until the very end.

Malachi was pushing Simeon around in the high chair, giving him a ride, and Izzy was playing in the tubes with the other kids.  I was talking to my nephew on the phone.  

Suddenly, I hear a man yell, "HEY!"  So I look over and there's this guy standing by the slide with his daughter.  "YOU NEED TO GET YOUR BOY!" he yelled at me, "HE JUST KICKED MY GIRL IN THE FACE!"  

I immediately told my nephew I had to go and hung up as the man continued to scream at me, "THIS IS BULL****!  IT'S PRETTY SAD THAT YOU LET YOUR KID KICK GIRLS IN THE FACE!"  At that point, I had zero reaction, but later as I was mulling it over, I thought, I "let" my kid kick a girl in the face?  Like I had been standing over Izzy cheering him on, "Go Izzy!  Kick that girl in the face!  Yeah, that's right!  Get her!"  Now that is bull****.  

Not to mention, the guy could have just as easily walked over to me and talked to me about what happened instead of screaming at me.   

I immediately climbed up in the tubes looking for Izzy, who of course climbed out of the tubes while I was up in them.  Frustrated by not finding him, and finally reacting to having a stranger scream at me in McDonald's, I started crying.  I absolutely hate crying in front of people, especially people I don't know.  But I couldn't stop myself.  I have never liked being yelled at, and it hasn't happened in a long time.  Tears are a pretty standard reaction.

I climbed back down and the family whose daughter got kicked was walking past to leave.  "I'm sorry," I told the mother, "he's only two."   

Let me just say, I am not one of those moms who thinks that their little angel would never harm a soul.  I had no doubt that Izzy did it.  And there was no doubt that he shouldn't have.  

I ran it all through my mind, looking for where I went wrong.  Maybe I shouldn't have been talking on the phone. Maybe that makes me a bad parent.  I don't know.  But I realized something: there was no way I could have stopped Izzy from kicking that girl.  

Even if had been climbing around in the tubes following him wherever he went (oh, and toting Simeon along too, cuz I can't just leave him sitting at the table all alone while I scramble after Izzy in the tubes, right?)--which, by the way, I haven't seen any other parents doing--I still couldn't necessarily have stopped him in that moment.  

Actually when you consider how much faster he would be than me since I would also have Simeon and I am not a spry little child anymore, I know I couldn't have stopped him.  Things like that happen fast, and you can't really predict what a two or three year old is going to do.

I think I pretty much freaked out my kids because I was crying so much and yelling at them.  Honestly, I don't know if I was yelling or if my voice just had no other option but to come out as a screech since I was so upset.  I think it would have come out that way even if I had attempted to keep my voice normal.

It is very humiliating to have a stranger scream at you.  I hope not to ever experience it again.  Even now I am having a hard time keeping calm and not crying all over again when I think about it.  I wished so much that there had been someone there with me, someone on my side.  Like Aaron.  But I realized that this would have never happened if Aaron had been with me.  

First of all, the boys tend to behave better when Daddy is around.  

Second, I wouldn't have been talking on the phone, I would have been talking to Aaron, and yes, we probably would have been more vigilant.  Maybe there had been some behavior that I just didn't catch earlier and if I had he would have kicked her, I don't know.  

And thirdly, there is no way in hell, heaven, or anywhere else that the guy would have yelled at me with my husband sitting right there.  I don't think too many guys mess with other men's wives when they're sitting right next to them.  

If there's any "modern women" reading this who think the idea of your husband being a covering or protection for you is old fashioned, sexist, or ridiculous, chew on that one for a while.

To sum it all up, it was a really horrible experience.  Just when I think there can't be anything worse, my boys find new ways of making my day turn out freaky.  I doubt I'll be going to McDonald's for a while.  At least not by myself.

Messy Ever After

Not long ago I wrote optimistically of how certain I was that my messy days were diminishing.  Well, I think I spoke a little too soon.  

My problem, I think, is that I underestimated my son's ability to stay out of things and not make a mess.  And then I overestimated the ability of the apple juice lid to stay on the bottle and hold in the apple juice.  I also failed to factor in the circumstances of making eggs and talking on the phone at the same time, thus rendering me too distracted to get Israel his juice before a disaster struck.  Therefore, a disaster did  strike.  

Now, of course, in the grand scheme of things, this was nothing.  Compared to the entire world and the events of the entire world, and hurricanes and tornadoes and war and poverty and AIDS epidemics, this was basically a nonevent.  But in my world, my small, everyday, mommy world, this definitely qualifies as a event.  

You see what happened was that Israel tried to pick up the juice container, one of those big Wal-Mart apple juices, which was about three quarters full.  Obviously, it was very heavy for an almost three year old, which resulted in him dropping it.  That's when, somehow or other, the lid must've hit the floor, and it broke.  

And that is when half of the apple juiced poured out onto the kitchen floor.  

And that's when I almost burned the eggs because I was trying frantically to mop up the juice.  

And while I was keeping the eggs from burning, Izzy decided to squeeze out the paper towels that had soaked up the juice all over the floor.  As if there wasn't enough juice on the floor already.  

And that is when I considered tearing out my hair.

Food Fight

 

I have a confession.  I hate feeding my kids.  Okay, maybe hate is too strong a word.  But I do find it to be one of the more frustrating things about my life right now.  

As newborns, they're hungry all the time.  You might as well just find a cozy spot on the couch and park there for the next three months, 'cause all they'll be doing is eating and they take forever to do it.  Which I wouldn't really mind if I didn't have myself and other people to take care of as well.  

Next they get bigger, and eat faster, and eat more.  But they have no teeth and can't use utensils, so the challenge is to find food that is soft, but not too soft, and healthy, and filling, that they can pick up themselves or will allow you to feed to them.  

Then comes a switch.  They become toddlers.  Suddenly, nothing you give them is right.  You gave them spaghetti last night and they ate every bite and loved it, but today they will not touch it with a ten foot pole.  "I hate spaghetti!" they say.  "No you don't, you just had it last night and you loved it!"  They insist, "No, I hate it!"  And, instead of eating their food, they will pick at it and end up spreading it all over the table or high chair tray, and probably get some on the floor too while they're at it.  There's no winning with toddlers.

What really gets me is that even though they may not eat hardly anything you set in front of them, causing you to wonder how they even survive on such a meager diet, you don't have the option of not feeding them.  You have to feed them.  Well, you have to try, anyway.  And if, for one day, you decided to take a break from trying to force feed the little guys, they would probably wail all day long that they're hungry.  It is a toddler's nature to be contrary. 

I am just waiting for the day when their little boy appetites kick in.  Of course, then I will probably complain that they are always eating and I can't find enough food or variety of foods to keep up with the massive quantity of their consumption.  

The positive is that eventually they will be able to feed themselves, which will include making their own food occasionally.  But that also means I have to teach them how to cook, and keep them from eating something I was saving for a particular meal.  It also means buying a lot more groceries to keep up with three growing boys.  And that doesn't even factor in the possibility of us having more children in the future!

Little did I know, back when I was a single girl dreaming of getting married and having kids, that food would be such a point of contention and turmoil!

Two Different Days

It's amazing how different each day can be.  Yesterday was a horrible day for me.  I was tired.  The boys were tired.  Malachi was whiny because Israel got to wear a Spiderman suit we borrowed from friends.  I tried to get them to go outside so I could write an important letter and finish my Bible Study lesson, but they seemed to feel that being exiled to the horror of the backyard was just too torturous.  Who wants to go outside and play on a nice day when you could stay inside and drive your mom crazy?  

Malachi was obsessed with watching Astro Boy and that's all he wanted to do.  Izzy just wanted to be near me, I guess, especially after I had to take away the Spiderman suit from both of them.  It seems like he would be mad at me, but I think he was just kind of sad.  He was so determined not to go outside that he actually was willing to sit buckled into a highchair in our movie room by himself without anything on the TV to watch.  It's hard when they need to be near you and you need them to be...somewhere else.  

One way or another, I did get them outside for a while, and I at least finished my letter.  The Bible study took the rest of the day because I had to work on it in increments whenever I got the chance.  When it was finally time for their nap, I thought they'd sleep for an extra long time.  Their eyes were so droopy, I could tell they really needed sleep.  

But, to my great misfortune and distress, they didn't sleep even as long as they normally do.  It was a day of frustration.  

I'm  sorry to say, I don't think I was quite a top notch Mommy yesterday.  By the time Aaron called to say he was coming home, I was pretty much in tears.  

Today, however, was a totally different story.  The boys weren't whiny.  We got to go to MOPS, which they like.  For once I actually left the house early, and didn't have to rush around like a madwoman trying to find them clean socks and where on earth did their shoes go?  

Afterward we went to Burger King, where by some miracle, no one spilled anything, had a dirty diaper or ran away from me.  Then we went home, I put them all down for naps...and they slept.  It was glorious.  The whole day was just so much more peaceful, and I have to thank God for that.

It's Not a Job, It's an Adventure

Today I took the boys out to McDonald's so they could play.  Malachi asks me every day, "Can we go somewhere?"  It was chilly today, and we didn't go anywhere yesterday or the day before, so it seemed like a good idea.  We left at one o'clock, which is kind of late, but that's just how it worked out. 

Things went pretty smooth for the most part, and we all had a good time, except maybe Simeon who is more of a homebody anyway, and was also a bit grumpy from getting his one year immunizations yesterday.  Even so, he was pretty happy since I was feeding him a fruit and yogurt parfait ("Everybody likes parfaits"). 

Then (this is where the suspenseful music should come in) Izzy had a poo. 

That was the point where things slowly began to go downhill.

I soon discovered that I had only two wipes left.  If you are parent, you will recognize that the fact that two wipes wasn't enough signifies it was a really bad poo.  Plus he had a rash.  I won't go into detail.  I did the best I could with the two wipes and toilet paper, all the while fighting him because he wouldn't hold still.  I then decided to just put a diaper on him, take him home and put him in the bathtub. 

Thus commenced the process of getting them home: finding their shoes, getting them down out of the play tubes, putting shoes on, putting jackets on, getting my stuff, getting Simeon, trying to keep them from leaving before I do and going outside without me.  Izzy, of course, had to go out ahead of me.  Then, of course, he had to run out into the McDonald's driveway where a car was coming, but fortunately was slow enough that he was okay.  

Let me just say that it is very difficult to chase down a toddler while holding a purse, a diaper bag and a one year old.  The purse and the diaper bag you can put down, but the one year old, not so much. 

Somehow, we all got across the driveway to the van.  I put Simeon and all my paraphenalia away, got Malachi, and chased down Izzy.  I had to physically grab him and carry him to the van since he would not come when I called.  He got a pinch for running away, and once he was in the van, I gave him a stern talking to about what he had done and the fact that he could have been hit by a car.  I was very angry, he was wailing rather loudly, a drink got knocked over on the floor;  it was chaos.  It sure felt like that to me, anyway. 

Somehow, we did manage to make it home, and I got everyone in the house without too much trouble.  I put Izzy in the bath, I got Simeon ready for a nap and put him to bed.  Right when I  went back to check on Izzy, he was dumping water out of a fireman hat onto the floor.  Lovely.  I said he was done.  He said he wasn't done.  I got him out anyway, wrapped him in a towel, and laid him on the dresser for his diaper and clothes. 

I left the room to get something, and when I returned he was standing up.  He then proceeded to jump off the dresser (it's a low one) because he loves to jump.  Usually when he jumps he's fine, but of course this time, he landed all weird.  I heard a crack, and then crying.  I picked him up and held him and tried to assess the damage.  I think he hit his nose, but I didn't think it was broken.  He wouldn't tell me if anything else was hurt.  I tried to give him some medicine, but he wouldn't take it until I found some chewable tablets of children's tylenol.  I got him diapered and dressed and ready for his, by that time, very late nap. 

I was so mad at him for fighting me on every little thing that I honestly had a hard time even feeling sorry for him.  I mean, I felt bad that he was hurt, but I also felt like, "that's what you get when you refuse to listen to your mother".

Could Be the Only One?

On some days, I find it particularly ironic that my blog is titled "Not the Only One".  The truth is, most of the time, I do feel like the only one.  I go to the park, and I feel like the only one whose kids frequently take off and cause the whole group of mothers I'm with to send out a search party.  I'm the only one whose kids won't sit down and eat their lunch like civilized human beings before they run off to play on the playground (or in the fountain that's in the yard of the house across the street, depending on the day). 

Here I am with all these other mothers, whose docile children obey immediately, while mine seem to either be deaf or just deaf to me (I know I have a quiet voice, but come on--they really can't hear me when they're three feet away?!)  I take them to Burger King, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one whose son is alternately screaming because he has to share the barbecue sauce with his brother and climbing on the top part of the booth seats.  And after that he is absolutely certain that his toy car is hot and needs to cool off by taking a swim in my drink cup.  I say NO.  Commence second (or is it fourth?) round of screaming.  Later, he thinks it's a good idea to run out into the parking lot instead of getting in the van when I tell him to.  I am beginning to wonder if they speak a different language, in spite of the many signs that they do in fact speak and understand English.

I feel like the only one.  Who knows, it may be true.  That, or I am so busy trying to keep track of my own kids and keep them quiet and semi-obedient, that I don't notice anyone else's child being bad, screaming, or running away.  I really couldn't say for sure which it is.

What I do know is that on those rare occasions when I go somewhere alone, and I hear a child screaming, I sigh in relief, knowing that it is not my child, and I don't have to do anything about it.

Welcome, One and All

Aaron has a gift with people.  Some would call it hospitality.  He "comes by it honestly" as my parents would say.  His grandfather was a Mennonite preacher.  He and his wife had six children, and often had a variety of other people in their home as well, some for a night, others for months at a time.  Aaron will often call me, "There's this couple...." he will say, and I know I'm about to be involved in his gift.  I do my best to go along with it, but I am not always thrilled.  Usually, he drags me along with him anyhow.  Not that I dislike people.  The other night we had a houseful for a birthday party and I loved it.  I loved being surrounded by friends.  I like taking care of people, feeding people, talking to people.  It's the unplanned that I have trouble with, and Aaron is one of the most spontaneous men created, I am sure. 

His sponaneity comes in many forms.  Once it came as us knocking on a neighbor's door to welcome them when we were supposed to be going to Wal-Mart.  Another time, it was a homeless couple who lived in our basement for three weeks.  Often, Aaron will tell me something like, "Oh, by the way, I told this guy we'd make him dinner cuz his wife just had a baby three weeks ago.  I said we'd bring it tomorrow night." 

Tonight, as a result of Aaron's friendly and hospitable nature, a neighbor kid from down the street was playing basketball in our backyard.  Meanwhile, I was making a meal for the people with the baby (yes, that part was based on a true story).  I was also trying to take care of Simeon, and get ready to go out with my sister-in-law.  In the midst of it all, Malachi whacks Andrew (that's the nighbor kid) in the face with a plastic sword, giving him a bloody nose, a sore eye, and a slightly wiggly tooth.  Then he lies and says that Izzy did it.  He was in BIG TROUBLE.  Although, I do have to somewhat abashedly admit that I was a tiny bit impressed that my four and a half year old could take out an eleven year old.  I mean, of course, it was wrong.  But I feel safer knowing he can take care of himself in that way.  You know, if he really needed to. 

Anyway, Aaron parked Malachi on the couch to await his judgement while he went down the street to talk to Andrew's mom.  I was very thankful that it was Aaron and not me doing that part because since I was the baby of my family and never whacked anyone with a sword, and I therefore have no experience with what a parent does when that happens.  Aaron, however, being the oldest of three brothers, has tons of experience.  Then the kid came back with Aaron and sat in our kitchen while we finished making dinner for the people.  I was a little miffed because it meant I would not get to talk to Aaron before he left to take the food, and then I'd be leaving not long after he got back. 

I know it is good for me to have my "best laid plans" disrupted, but sometimes it makes me just want to stamp my foot on the ground and huff and puff.  My kids do it all the time.  It's really not fair that I can't do it too.  I guess that's all part of being a "grown-up".

What I Tell Myself

 This morning was frusterating, right off the bat.  Izzy, being two, can't whisper to save his life, so when he comes into my room in the morning he announces his presence full volume.  Since I am not a morning person, this would be bad enough if I was the only one sleeping in there, but Simeon still sleeps in our room, so I am always worried about him waking up.  This morning Izzy came in as usual with Malachi.  Aaron hadn't left for work yet, so I tried to send them downstairs while I put on some socks and such so they wouldn't wake the baby.  Malachi went right down, but Izzy got it in his head that I needed to carry him downstairs, and he absolutely refused to go down by himself.  Finally, I grabbed him up (probably more angrily than was necessary) and plopped him in front of Daddy and then went back up to get my glasses and the other things I needed to begin the day.  It is beyond my understanding how the kid can walk out the front door and down the street all by himself without a qualm, and yet he can't go down the stairs alone.  This morning was one of those mornings when I questioned the sanity of having children.  The weird thing is that no matter how crazy it feels at times when I'm with them, I always know that I'd feel more crazy without them (just in a different way...like a quieter way).  On a day like this, I remind myself that in twenty years, or even ten or five, none of this will matter anymore.  They'll all be bigger, older.  In twenty years they'll have their own lives.  And if I'm lucky they'll have their own kids.  Kids that are JUST LIKE THEM!  And then I'll just sit back and laugh and say it was all worth it.  That's what I tell myself.

“Getting Fancy With the Spices”

The way the layout of our house is setup, you go through the kitchen to get to the back yard. My children have managed to take much advantage of this in the last few days. The problem is that if I am in another room besides the kitchen or the dining room, I don’t have a direct line of sight on them. And in those moments, when I am anywhere else, which I often am, they like to take things outside that shouldn’t go outside.

It was very quiet in the house, and the boys had been playing in the backyard for a while. When boys are happily playing for a long time, it usually means they are doing something they shouldn’t be doing. When I went outside, what I found did not make me happy. They had taken my salt, pepper, paprika and a couple of Mrs. Dash spice blends and dumped them all out in the dirt. The majority of them of them I had purchased recently and were mostly full. I cannot even say how angry I was.

I might not have been so angry, if I felt that Malachi had any remorse whatsoever. But he seemed very indifferent to the whole situation. Aaron helped him with that by taking one of his toys and throwing it to the neighbor’s dogs so he could understand how it felt to have something taken away.

All I could think of was that line in the movie Ratatouille when Linguini says to Remy, the rat/chef, “You were the one gettin’ fancy with the spices!” I hoped that it wouldn’t happen again.

This morning, Malachi went to the store with Aaron, and I was here with Izzy and Simeon. Izzy was outside and I was on the computer. Very soon, he came to me with an empty egg carton. I wanted to believe that he had gotten it out of the trash and it had already been empty. Unfortunately, that wasn’t so. If I wondered where the eggs had gone, I got my first clue when he mentioned his backpack. And then, the mystery was dissolved when he came dragging his Elmo backpack into the movie room. I looked inside, and sure enough, there are eggs in there. There are also eggs all over the floor of the back porch. Sigh. I go through all the eggs, throwing away all the broken and cracked ones, about eight or so. I wash off the ones that are still okay. There’s three. I clean up the eggs that are in a puddle on the floor. I give Izzy a spanking, though he doesn’t seem to think he deserves one. I feel strangely emotionless. I am not angry. I am resigned. Is this a bad sign? I’m not sure.

Thinking about it later, I began to wonder what they might take next. Maybe tomorrow they will dump out all my flour. Or the sugar. Who knows? Then I think, with all those ingredients, maybe they’ll bring me back a cake. Wouldn’t that be nice.

At the Park

A few weeks ago I was feeling optimistic and decided to take the boys to the park. Now, normally, I try to never go to the park alone, and you'll soon see why. I got them all into the van, I had food for lunch, and I brought their skateboards and trike along. We were all set.

We got to the the park and I set myself up in the shade of the building where the restrooms are, with a good view of where they could or would be playing. It was a beautiful day, and things were going great. Then as I looked over to where the boys were playing on the playground, I heard Malachi say, "Izzy, give me the knife!" I looked, and sure enough, Izzy had a knife in his hand! My first thought was, "Oh my gosh--somebody left a knife at the park!" Then as I looked closer, I saw that Malachi had a knife as well, and it was exactly the same as the one Izzy had. That was when I realized that they must be our steak knives from home. I suspected that Malachi had smuggled them in the seat of his plastic trike. "That little booger," I thought. I ran over to them. Malachi saw me coming and knew he was in trouble, so he started pedaling furiously to make his escape. Thankfully, I am still a little faster than a four year old on a plastic tricycle, and I caught him. I removed him from the seat and lifted it up to see the evidence. He had like five steak knives in there! I was so mad. I recovered the knives, and put them in a safe place.

After that was resolved, not fifteen minuted had gone by before Malachi came to me with a handful of those little flags that stick in the grass to mark something. "Go put them back where you got them," I told him. Off he scampered, only to return bleeding when he somehow managed to stab himself in the big toe with one of them. I had no band-aids or ointment or anything like that with me, of course. But I did manage to find some gauze and tied it around his toe so he could keep playing.

By that time, Simeon had gotten hungry, so I got him out of the stroller to feed him. While I was doing that, Malachi decided he wanted to get his skateboard out of the van. I had left it unlocked, and he knows how to open the door by himself, so I let him go and get it. Unfortunately Izzy followed him and proceeded to get into the front seat of the van, pull out all of our CDs, and scatter them. As if that didn't worry me enough, Malachi then shut him in the van by himself. It wasn't a hot day, but it was warm enough that I knew he shouldn't be in there too long.

It was time to go.

Days like that make a great story later, but at the time it was very frustrating. At the time, three kids seemed like a lot. I have heard if you can handle three, you can handle any amount after that. I try to comfort myself with that, except I think it remains to be seen whether I can handle three or not. Just because I have avoided losing my mind so far doesn't mean I won't lose it later. Or tomorrow. Or right now perhaps? Sometimes it feels that way, like I'm right on the edge of sanity. Well, who wouldn't feel that way, with children screaming all around them at an unnatural pitch because someone took their book, or their toy, or their rock?

But I remind myself that someday it will all be worth it. Some day, when I am an old woman, none of this will matter. I won't care how close together my children were born. All the screaming, and the smuggling of steak knives, and the dirt, and the destruction of Cd's will just

be funny memories. All of the hard work now, the struggle, will fade away. It will be worth it.

To Izzy: "Do you want it on or off?"

Izzy: "Yes!"