The Nudists

On our way to soccer practice on Saturday morning, my daughter leaned forward in her seat and tapped me on the shoulder.

"The people in the car next to us don't have any clothes on," she whispered.

I nodded my head politely and thanked her for the information.

Two minutes earlier, my son had announced that he had seen a moose hiding in the bushes next to 7-11.

"No really," she insisted as we pulled up to a stoplight. "They don't have any clothes on."

My husband sighed and looked in the direction of where she was pointing. Expecting a "GOTCHA!," what he got instead was a clear shot of a convertible inhabited by two entirely naked women.

We had the longest red light on the planet.

Despite our attempt to maintain order, everyone had to have a look. My kids were giddy with awe and excitement.

"Those ladies better watch out or they're going to get sunburns," Kellen stated authoritatively as the light turned green.

The rest of the drive was spent explaining the concept of nude beaches.

"Some people are so excited that they take off their clothes before they get there," I explained.

"Maybe the ladies were just hot," suggested my daughter.

The kids' first soccer practice was memorable, but not for good reasons. But that's a story for another day.

On the way home, we decided to stop at the 7-11 for a Slurpee. Strangely, the moose had wandered away.

"Everybody out," I ordered.

The car doors opened, and my children exited.

My daughter almost managed to get into the store before my husband tackled her.

Inspired by her our friends, she had decided to go shirtless.

Shoes

My husband and I have spent a considerable chunk of the past two years worrying about our youngest son. Cameron was born with some problems related to his contraction of a virus in utero and has struggled in nearly every area of growth and development. My worries compound considerably on days like today, when Cameron was around kids roughly his same age.

I came home from the park stressed, frustrated, and in desperate need of a Coke. After kicking off my shoes and removing Cameron's at the front door, I made my way to the refrigerator. When I returned, I found that my son had taken his shoes and put them inside of mine.

A small gesture and a tender reminder of what I know, but too often forget: namely, that while most of our kids eventually will get where they're going, some will walk with us a little while longer than others.

Car Booster Seats

My biggest regret in life is not buying three matching car booster seats. Instead, I purchased them piecemeal, and didn't assign any of them to any specific child. The result is that the booster seat with the most padding and biggest cup holder has turned into a national treasure.

"They're all the same!" I shrieked for the millionth time this morning. Cortlen beat his siblings to the car and was sitting in the prized object. Kellen was sitting in Corlten's lap and refusing to move. Camber was collapsed in a heap on the driveway. Despair was written all over her face.

"This is ridiculous," I continued. "Do you realize that you are fighting over a CAR SEAT?"

Everyone was conscious of that fact and agreed that the object was worth the risk of mortal injury.

If it wasn't against the law, I would have tossed the booster seat into the trash can and made them all go without.

After dropping them off at school, I thought of a better idea. My plans for the next hour include removing the seat cover and whacking off the cup holder with a hammer.

Loaves, Fishes, and Socks

Socks.

Now that my children have started wearing shoes again, I find them everywhere: in the middle of the garage floor, wedged between sofa seat cushions, in car cup holders. This afternoon, I found one snuggled up next to a gallon of milk in the refrigerator.

"WHOSE SOCK IS THIS?" I asked with wild eyes.

The two children wearing shoes pointed at their barefoot sibling. The barefoot child pointed at the ceiling.

"You're telling me that Jesus put this sock in my refrigerator?" I asked, dangling the object between my fingertips.

The barefoot child reminded me that Jesus was the God of Miracles.

Based on the number of socks that I have unearthed from cavernous spaces in my house throughout the day, I was forced to agree. It's the only viable explanation for how 7 pairs of socks multiplied into enough foot coverings to dress a multitude.

The Champs

This weekend, my sister Amy and her new husband Warren came down from Washington D.C. for a quick visit.

They hadn't been in our house for more than five minutes before I begged them to watch my kids for a couple hours so my husband and I could go out to dinner.

"I hope everything goes all right," I said to my husband nervously as I bit my fingernails.

He told me to stop stressing. "They'll all be in bed in a half hour," he told me. "What can go wrong?"

When I walked in the door an hour later, the first thing I noticed was that the washing machine was running. The second was the odor.

My husband and I scaled the staircase two steps at a time. We found my sister and her husband standing next to the epicenter of the fumes. They were wearing rubber gloves and trying not to breathe.

Several minutes after putting my almost two-year-old down to bed, the dutiful aunt and uncle went to check on their young charge. When they cracked open the bedroom door, my son threw a large, handmade turd at them.

"It was EVERYWHERE!" my sister cried. By the time we got home, the mess was 90% cleaned up. My brother-in-law marveled at how much solid waste such a small person could produce.

I apologized profusely, of course, and suggested dessert as a diversion.

My sister sent me to the store for ice cream. "Get anything," she said, "but chocolate."

*****
Although they may be gross, my sister NEEDS to hear your stories. I told her that exploring one's excrement was a virtual rite of passage into toddlerhood.

Communing With Nature

When you live in Florida, sooner or later someone is going to take you to a lake or river and expect you to swim in it. Having grown up in Los Angeles, I have found it difficult to transition from chlorinated swimming pools to bodies of water filled with algae, fish, and small woodland mammals.

"I have no desire to swim with otters," I told my husband the other day. He was in shock that I had left my swimsuit at home. On purpose.

"This place is awesome!" screamed my son as he plopped a glob of floating green stuff on his head.

I looked the other way.

"Can you throw me my goggles?" asked my daughter. "I want to check out what's under here." She gestured to the knee-deep brown water in which she was standing.

"A fish just bit my leg!" yelled my other son in excitement.

I told my family that I would wait for them in the car.

When they finally emerged from the watery depths, everyone smelled delicious. Like lake.

"Next time I'll go in with you," I promised.

"Really?" asked my husband, hopefully.

"No."

Mr. Mom

I had an all-day appointment yesterday, so my husband took a day off of work to watch Cameron.

Before leaving the house in the morning, I handed my husband a grocery list and a stack of coupons.

"We're almost out of food," I hinted.

When I got home that evening, my husband was lying on the sofa. It first glance, it appeared that he had been decapitated. Upon closer inspection, I realized that his head was covered with a pillow.

That's when I knew that the world had temporarily overwhelmed him.

"I spent $100 at the grocery store!" my husband said incredulously when I removed the death mask. "And I didn't buy hardly anything!"

I pretended to be shocked. "You don't say?" I replied.

"I put a bag of cherries (not on the list) in my cart and it rang up for $9.00! Nine dollars!"

I put my hand over my mouth in horror. "No!" I gasped.

"I told the cashier that I didn't want the cherries," my husband explained.

"Good for you," I replied.

"I had no idea that food was so expensive," he added.

This weekend, I am going to make him go with me to buy sneakers for all the kids.

The Case of the Missing Recess

My daughter is in second grade. Here is her daily schedule:

7:30-7:40 Flag, Announcements
7:40-8:55 Math
8:55-9:35 Specials (rotates between music, gym, library, art, and computers)
9:35-9:55 Math/Snack
9:55-10:25 Independent Reading
10:25-11:55 Language Arts
11:55-12:05 Clean-up
12:05-12:14 Teacher Read-Aloud
12:14-12:44 Lunch
12:45-1:15 Writing
1:15-2:00 Science or Social Studies
2:00-2:14 Pack up and Dismissal

Q: What's missing?

On Saturday, I attended a conference and sat for 7 straight hours. By the end of the day, I had consumed a pack of gum and three rolls of breath mints, my rear end was asleep, and I was very, very, cranky.

Looking at my kids' daily schedules explains why they are so antsy and hostile when I pick them up from school every day.

I can't say that I blame them.

First Day of School

Today was my kids' first day of school in Florida. Their school starts at 7:30am, which means that they have to get up at 6:00am.

All summer long, my children have gotten up so early in the morning that one could classify them as nocturnal.

Of course, on the day that they are required to get up while it's still dark outside, they all decided to sleep in.

This morning, my husband and I stood over three comatose bodies, lamenting the necessity of rousing our offspring.

"This stinks," my husband stated, pretty much summing up the experience.

I poked one of my sons in the shoulder. My husband did the same to Twin B.

"Time to get up," we whispered softly.

Nothing.

My husband turned on the kids' bedroom lights.

Three people put blankets over their heads.

I stared longingly at my bed. "What have I done to deserve this?" I cried.

Sometimes the world is very cruel.

Simple Pleasures

This weekend, I asked my kids to make lists of things that they wanted to do during their lifetimes. Included in the top 10 of everyone's wish list were the words "kid cuisine."

"You're sure?" I asked them. Yesterday afternoon I spent more time than I care to admit standing in the frozen food aisle of Super Wal-Mart. "Eating one of those frozen dinners will bring you eternal joy and bliss?"

Everyone nodded their heads and began salivating. With the wave of my hand, I gave them permission to meet their destiny. Cortlen selected a corn dog, which came with a side of corn kernels and a cup of chocolate pudding. Kellen picked chicken nuggets. Camber had a difficult time deciding on her entree. Every few minutes she would change her mind and swap out her selection for something else. She finally settled with a chicken leg accompanied by several unidentifiable objects.

Everyone wanted to eat their dinners the minute that we got home from the store. I needed some laundry folded and a bathtub scrubbed, so we made a deal.

The food looked just as delicious in person as it did on the packages. I kept my distance. We made it through the meal with only one unexpected tragedy (pudding jumped the fence and invaded one side of corn dog) and one unseemly outburst (related to pudding-meets-corn dog event). All and all, the frozen dinner meal was a success.

"This is the best dinner you've ever made!" Cortlen told me as he dumped his plastic plate into the trash.

I accepted the compliment.

Life Lesson # 45

This afternoon, I gave each of my kids a can of soda to celebrate the fact that they slept in to 7am.

My kids like soda a lot but don't get access to it as much as they would like.

After a few minutes of guzzling, everyone lined up their soda cans for the big weigh-in.

Cortlen and Camber estimated that Kellen had consumed twice as much soda as they had in the same period of time.

Upset that his can had less liquid inside than his siblings' cans, Kellen immediately set out to remedy the problem.

He learned the hard way that topping off a soda can with water makes the can weigh more, but its contents taste worse.

Much wailing ensued. After several taste tests confirmed the undesirability of the beverage.

The wailing grew so loud that the soda can had to be confiscated.

"This is the worst day of my life!" he screamed as he stomped up the stairs.

I decided not to remind him about the day that he ran away from me in Macy's and they had to lock down the mall.

Backpacks

On Monday, I lined everyone up in front of a rack at Old Navy.

"Pick whatever backpack you want," I told them. Cortlen and Camber quickly found something suitable to their tastes. Kellen took one look at the offerings and threw himself on the floor.

"All of these backpacks are disgusting!" he cried.

This outburst prompted Cortlen to reevaluate his selection. I intervened before the insurgency doubled.

"You touch it, you take it," I told him. Cortlen held his backpack at arm's length all the way up to the cash register....lest its germs infect him.

On Tuesday, we tried T.J. Maxx. There were at least 50 backpacks under 20 bucks, but of course Kellen latched himself onto one that cost 40.

"You're not climbing Mt. Everest," I told him. "You don't need a water bottle and a lifetime warranty."

Today, I offered him a choice of three reasonably priced K-Mart backpacks. He said that he would rather go without.

As of now, he is planning on carrying his lunch and homework to and from school in a plastic shopping bag.



When I told him that he could borrow one of my purses if he wanted, he catapulted himself off the side of the sofa.

The Public Library: Part III

This morning, I took my kids to see Gregor. When the librarian saw me, he greeted me with a big grin....turned upside down.

As uncomfortable as it was for both of us, the meeting was necessary. We had business to take care of.

Yesterday marked the end of the library's summer reading program. For every day that your child read for fifteen minutes or more, he/she got a book buck. My kids were so excited to trade in their book bucks for useless objects that they couldn't sleep last night.

"You read for fifteen minutes every single day this summer?" Gregor asked my daughter, glaring at us all suspiciously.

My daughter nodded her head and stared longingly at the prize box behind the counter.

"Even on the fourth of the July?"

Gregor overestimated our popularity. "While we were watching fireworks," I told him.

It pained Gregor to do his job. He looked away as my kids rifled through his treasures.

All of the hassle was worth it. We left the library with a pack of rub-on tattoos, a plastic boomerang and one of these:


Try to restrain your jealousy.

Vacation Bible School Catastrophe

This week, my boys attended Vacation Bible School at a local church. Another church located directly across the street from the VBS church ran a medieval-themed dance camp for girls at the same time.

"Nooooo!" my children cried in unison.

"I've already paid," I told them matter-of-factly. "You're going."

Despite everyone's initial reluctance to expand their spiritual horizons, both camps were run exceptionally well and turned out to be lots of fun.

This afternoon was Camber's dance recital. During the only 30 minute period of the week when my cell phone ringer was turned off, Cortlen got stung by a bee at Bible school.

When I turned on my phone at the end of the recital, there were 7 missed calls and 4 new messages, all from the same number. The woman who left the messages had Cortlen's health form in front of her which indicated that he wasn't allergic to bee stings, but she was still hysterical. And very upset that I wasn't picking up my phone.

All of this was totally understandable, and I felt appropriately awful. I dragged Camber off stage and ran across the street, preparing for the worst. I expected to find my son laid out on a stretcher, but instead found him swinging from the monkey bars on the playground. I apologized profusely to a group of women with clipboards in their hands and explained the situation, pointing to my daughter (who was wearing a cardboard breastplate and carrying a sword covered with aluminum foil) as evidence.

In the end, the women were very nice about the whole thing, but that didn't stop me from slinking back to my car with my tail between my legs. I felt like the most neglectful parent in the universe.

Once we got home, Kellen announced that he had left a whole change of clothes at Bible school. Cortlen then remembered that he had forgotten his sunscreen and towel.

"When are we going back to Bible school to pick up our stuff?" my boys wanted to know.

I have been deliberately putting off answering their question.

Lizards

There are things about every place that take a while to get used to.

In North Carolina, it was vinegar-based barbecue.

In Philadelphia, it was the pervasive belief that each room in a house requires a different color of carpet.

In Florida, it's the reptiles.

I don't have anything against lizards, but I don't particularly like to find them in my shower stall or running across the sidewalk every time I step foot outside my house.

They are everywhere.

On Tuesday, I took my kids to the park and sat down on top of one. In my defense, the lizard was the same color as the park bench.

If the lizard wasn't sick when I sat down, it certainly was when I stood up. The thing was alive, but it didn't look so good.

For reasons which I don't understand, my kids were more concerned about the condition of the reptile than my mental health. The shriek could be heard for miles.

"My mom killed a lizard," Cortlen told the cashier at Taco Bell. The cashier looked impressed.
I sensed that I was on the verge of being offered a free bag of cinnamon twists in recognition of my achievement.

"She sat on it," he added. The cashier looked totally grossed out.

I had to buy my own cinnamon twists.

"Mom caught a lizard with her bum," Camber proudly told my husband when he came home from work.

My husband looked at me sideways. "By design or accident?" he asked.

The fact that he had to ask this question worries me.

Has it come to this?

The Free Movie

This morning, one of the local movie theaters in town opened its doors to Orlando's youngest citizens, offering anyone under the age of 10 a free ticket to see Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie.

Standing in line for 20 minutes to watch a movie that came out on DVD eight years ago did not make me feel super good about myself. Once the movie started, and I realized that all of the characters in it were vegetables, I began to actively look around for fire alarms.

Thankfully, Cameron put me out of my misery fairly quickly. He only lasted five minutes on my lap before he started arching his back.

I had wisely seated my family in the very back of the theater so for awhile, I just stood in the aisle next to my kids while they watched the show. When Cameron started screaming, I told my older kids that I was going to take the baby out in the hall for a minute and would be right back.

"I'll be right through those doors if you need me," I whispered.

No more than a minute later, all three of my kids stormed outside. Two of them were crying; the third was holding my purse.

"We're done with the movie," said the purse holder.

"What's going on?" I demanded.

The details are a little fuzzy, but from what I could gather, a fight broke out over who would be the first to dig through my purse in search of a pack of gum.

I reclaimed possession of my purse.

"Nice job," I told them as we walked to the car.

The three rows in front of us in the movie theater were occupied by preschoolers from a daycare center.

"Don't you think it's weird that a bunch of little kids can keep their hands to themselves during a movie but you guys can't?"

No one except for me seemed to think that was weird at all.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, a thought crossed my mind that at the time, seemed rather pleasant.

If my children were russet potatoes or ears of corn, they wouldn't have hands.

The Public Library: Part II

Our head children's librarian's name is Gregor.

Gregor is estimated to be in his late forties/early fifties, demands that all children speak in an inaudible whisper, and scowls if you appear interested in checking out any of his books.

I also outweigh him by at least twenty pounds.

"I forgot my library card," whispered the mom in front of me at checkout. There was dread in her voice.

I winced as she received her verbal lashing.

Fortunately, everything went fine with my transaction. Gregor even managed to make eye contact with my kids. Once.

In the parking lot, I opened the lid of a Baby Einstein DVD that I had just borrowed and noticed that the disc was split neatly into two equal pieces. It was blazing hot and my kids were already strapped in the car so I decided that instead of telling Gregor the bad news in person, I would just call him from the car. Another librarian answered the phone. I explained the situation and she agreed to make a note on my account so I wouldn't be charged for the damage.

"Just bring the DVD back the next time you come in," she told me sweetly.

Gregor was policing his territory when I returned.

"I don't care what someone else told you," he told me flatly. "You're going to have to replace the DVD and pay a replacement processing fee."

"Nope," I replied.

"You are liable for whatever library materials you take out of the building," he continued.

"Nope," I said again.

"I personally check all DVDs that come in and I didn't notice that that disc was cracked in half."

"Nope."

After repeating myself a few more times, Gregor began to tire. Sensing that he wasn't going to get $50.00 out of me, he settled for a 5 minute lecture and a black mark on my library account.

"I'm writing a note on top of the note that the other librarian wrote," Gregor told me, typing furiously. "It says that if you break another DVD then I recommend that your library privileges be suspended indefinitely."

"Nope," I said one more time.

I've been to the library twice since this incident. Strangely, Gregor doesn't acknowledge my presence.