Magic Buttons

My children are on two sleep schedules. During the weekend, they wake up and start roaming the halls (and making breakfast and playing freeze tag and fake sword fighting) at roughly 5am.

During the week, however, they act like I am poking them with sharp sticks when I ask them to get up and get ready for school.

In an attempt to sidestep the inevitable battle of the wills, I gave each child a small battery-powered alarm clock, programmed with the proper wake up time.

As I have quickly learned, this means nothing.

So far, my daughter is the only one out of the three who has managed to resist temptation. Her alarm goes off every morning at the appointed hour. Cortlen and Kellen, however, are enamored with the magic buttons. As a result, their alarms routinely go off at 2 in the afternoon, in the middle of dinner, or, if we are really lucky, every five minutes.

"Do not touch this," I said last night after I reset the clock for the billioneth time this week.

Both people inhabiting the bedroom promised to leave the contraption alone.

"Get up!" Cortlen screamed this morning as he ran, fully dressed, backpack on, into our bedroom. "We're late for school!" he screamed. "It's 7:30!"

It was pitch dark outside. "Go back to bed," I mumbled and glanced at my clock. It said 4:45am.

When I went to go wake him up a little over an hour later, he pulled his covers over his head and growled at me.

What I need, methinks, is a rooster.

The Shark Halloween Costume

Isn't this costume adorable?

My almost three year-old doesn't think so. In fact, he isn't really into clothes at all these days. This morning, I gave up and drove him to preschool wearing underpants and nothing else.

"We're going to do this," I told him when we got to the parking lot. I held up a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. "Either nicely or meanly. You pick."

He chose meanly.

But back to the Old Navy shark costume.

I've always wanted one of my children to dress up like a predator for Halloween. Camber was a bumble bee last year and once Kellen was a koala. Hardly menacing by anyone's standards.

This year, I am determined to do better.

"Oh look!" I said, gesturing to the costume. "Let's try this on."

Cameron responded by diving under a rack of clothes. Convinced that he would change his mind about the costume once he was actually wearing it, I pulled a good mother and shoved him into it.

"I love it!" I cried as a sales clerk walked by. "Is he okay?" she asked as she pointed to my son, who was foaming at the mouth.

"He's great," I assured her.

I had every intention of taking a picture of my son in the costume with my phone and sending it to my husband, but I barely had time to inhale before my son ripped off the costume and threw it across the store.

The things we do for our children :)

Back at home, I sang the praises of Halloween costumes. "They're awesome," I told him. "You're totally going to want one."

I said this while he was sitting commando on my sofa.

"You've got bigger fish to fry than Halloween costumes," my husband observed when he came home from work.

By this point, Cameron was helping me make dinner--totally nude, except for a pair of socks.

The Zoo Train

By nature, two year-olds are obsessive. Last month, mine was into spatulas and lawn mowers. Now he has moved onto trains.

Fortunately, our local zoo has one. The train is small, red, and makes a loop around the parking lot every ten minutes. It also has exactly 13 seats. I know this because yesterday afternoon, I sat in every single one of them.

"Back again?" the conductor asked with a nervous chuckle after we returned from a brief bathroom break following round #4. When I flashed the guy my season pass, I thought he was going to faint.

"There's more like you than you'd think," he said matter-of-factly.

That made me feel slightly better about abusing the privilege.

After trip #7, I stopped getting off the train. "It's just easier this way," I told the conductor. He looked at Cameron and nodded.

What is it like to spend 2 straight hours on a train made for hobbits?

Think Dante's Inferno for me.

And Paradise for my son.

Third Grade Math

I dream a lot.

Most of my dreams contain at least one near death experience. Last night, for instance, I dreamed that my husband is a gambling addict and owed his bookie 150 million dollars. All the money has to be paid back by Friday...or else.

If all my dreams ended here--with the anticipation of impending death at the hands of a hired assassin--I would be happy. Nine times out of ten, however, they end with something far worse; usually a word problem.

I woke up at three in the morning, drenched in sweat, with this question running through my head: If we have three days to pay back the money, how many dollars per day do we have to pay the bookie?

Needles to say, the math homework that my daughter is bringing home has made me realize that the person in my family who could benefit the most from Kumon is me.

A sample from today's homework sheet:

There are about 40,320 minutes in a month. How many hundreds of minutes are in a month?

I am incapable of thinking about the world in this way. Or really any way that is socially acceptable and generally productive.

"I've reached the end of my rope," I told my daughter this afternoon as I threw up my hands. I said this after I took her math practice test and got 8 out of the 10 problems wrong.

"If you would just sit still for a minute, I could teach you how to do it," my husband said later that evening. The three of us were sitting at the kitchen table.

Unfortunately, he was talking to me and not my daughter.

The sitting still and concentrating on one thing: that's a big part of the problem.

It's already been well established that I can't do that either.

Food Allergies

Cameron's preschool is hosting a back-to-school potluck dinner this weekend for all the new families. A couple of weeks ago, I signed up to bring a dessert and side dish.

This morning, I got an email from the preschool that included a "friendly reminder" that some of the students at the preschool have food allergies, and to make sure that the dishes that we bring are gluten-free, dairy-free, chocolate-free, red-dye free, strawberry-free, sugar-free and peanut-free.

A bowl of fruit it is.

Parents of kids with serious allergies: I don't know how you do it.

In other news, someone found the fish food today. I have already prepared the fishes' owner for the possibility that there may be a lot of floating corpses in the tank tomorrow.

Parental Contact

Cortlen and Kellen are turning eight in a couple of weeks and I promised them that they can have a party with their friends from school.

Contacting said classmates in an age of stringent privacy laws and in a district that won't let you send invitations to school has proven to be a quest worthy of the Hobbit.

Last week during Curriculum Night, I wrote down the names of all of the students in each of my sons' classes. Unfortunately, at least half of these kids' phone numbers and addresses aren't listed in last year's school directory.

This morning, I gave each of my sons an assignment: get the missing child's contact information.

Cortlen never took his paper out of his backpack. Kellen was more diligent. He came back with this:



"This is scary," I said when I looked at the paper. One boy wrote down that his mailing address is "3 Address."

Another second grader wrote down a 15-digit telephone number.

A third little guy wrote down almost the exact same 15-digit number as his friend.

"This doesn't bode well for you," I told him.

I just spent the past hour writing out handwritten notes to 11 parents. The plan is for my sons to give the notes to their friends who, in turn, will give them to their parents.

I might as well just save myself the trouble and flush all the letters down the toilet. The odds of the notes even making it to school are exceptionally slim.

First Week of School

Sorry I've been a bad blogger this week. Things have been super busy. My kids started school on Monday, which was bittersweet.

Sweet because conversations like these are over:

Kids: "We're bored."
Me: "That's impossible, because we just spent the past five hours at the water park/swimming pool/beach/zoo/saltwater aquarium superstore/reptile pet store/Burger King indoor play land."
Kids: "Well, we are. Can you log in to Netflix for me?"
Me: "Have you read for 20 minutes yet today?"
Kids: "Yes."

Usually I don't find out until after the movie is over that the books that they counted for their reading minutes are Cameron's picture books, which have, on average, three words per page.

Bitter because we started out the week with six lunchbox ice packs and ended with zero.

Me: "It would be great if you could try not to throw the ice packs away with your lunch wrappers," I told Kellen on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

On Friday I didn't put an ice pack in his lunchbox (because we didn't have any more) and I got a note sent home from the lunch lady reminding me about the importance of food safety.

May the force be with all of you who start school on Monday.

My Girl Crush

After a long dry spell, my siblings now are getting hitched at a rate of about one per year. I just got back from my younger brother's wedding, which took place on Monday in the always beautiful Salt Lake City.

I could write about the wedding ceremony itself (which was perfect), but then I wouldn't have time to tell you about my infatuation with my brother's wife...and her wedding ring.




It's hard to be a good wedding helper when you are borderline obsessed with everything your soon-to-be SIL says, does, and wears.

"Stop staring at her," my sister Amy hissed. "You're making me feel uncomfortable."

Maybe it's the fact that my new SIL is gorgeous. And doesn't have a mean bone in her body. And has a seemingly endless supply of furry creatures to wear in her hair.


Whatever it is, I pretty much want to be her, or, at a minimum, just look like her. As soon as my medical insurance starts covering elective cosmetic surgery, my dreams will become a reality.

For now, I must be content to obsess from afar.

The Teacher Meet-and-Greet

Today my kids' elementary school hosted an open house of sorts. The purpose of the event is for students to meet their new teachers and drop off their school supplies in their classrooms.

We made through all the three classrooms without incident. This is shocking because Cameron was on fire this morning and I had to spend several minutes in each of the rooms filling out forms (which usually spells disaster). On our way out, we decided to pop our heads into Kellen's first grade teacher's room to say hello. While Kellen and I chatted with his former teacher, an announcement came over the school's loudspeaker.

"Will the parent of Cortlen Mathews please come to the front office."

That's when I noticed that one of my sons didn't make it into the classroom with us.

"Fantastic," I said and ran out the door.

On our way to the office, I was stopped by no less than 10 people who told me (in case I didn't already know) that my presence was requested up front.

So much for this blowing over quietly.

Once I retrieved my son, we headed into the parking lot where we bumped into one of our neighbors and her kids.

"I lost one of my kids today!" the woman said, laughing.

I felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted from my shoulders. "Me too!" I cried and told her what happened. For a solitary moment, I didn't feel like the only bad parent on the planet.

After listening to my story, the woman wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Oh I didn't lose my son like that," she said. "I meant that he went home with one of his friends."

Awesome.

Lessons from a Loss

The Easter bunny brought my kids wallets this year.

Worst idea ever.

Every time we leave the house, the dreaded wallets come with us.

I have begged and pleaded with my kids to leave the wallets at home, but to no avail. My kids love their wallets because it gives them license to put things into my shopping cart that don't belong there.

"I'm not buying a pellet gun today. Or ever," I told Cortlen earlier this week.

"Fine," he snapped. "Then I'll buy it." He pulled out five one dollar bills from his wallet and waved them around in my face.

"The gun costs $50.00," I pointed out.

Sadly, the only thing left in his wallet was a dime.

All's well that ends well. A few seconds later, he got distracted by display of fluorescent fishing lures and left his wallet on the store shelf.

"You're going to lose all of your money one of these days," I said as I scooped up the wallet.

"At least I have a purse," my daughter said as she swung the object over her head like a helicopter propeller.

"If that thing hits me, there's going to be a problem," I warned.

When my mother-in-law was visiting, the wallets were more visible than normal. This is because my in-laws have a bad habit of giving my kids their spare change after they make a purchase.

"I wish you would leave your purse at home," I told my daughter at least ten times during my MIL's stay.

I didn't even notice that she had it with her when we all went out to eat on Saturday night. Camber realized that she had left the purse at our table a few hours after we got home. I called the restaurant on Sunday morning and they told me that they had it. We all sighed in relief. Camber had close to $40 in the purse, most of it gifted to her by Tim's dad.




We went to pick up the purse at the restaurant on Monday morning. It wasn't a good scene when my daughter opened the wallet and found that all of her money was gone, except for one measly dollar.

There are good and bad things that come from the act of someone stealing money from a child. The good is that my kids finally got why I won't let them keep the random toys and trinkets that they find on the floors of fast food restaurants or the school bus etc. The bad is that for the first time, they saw the world in a different way. It made me sad and a little angry that the veil of innocence has been lifted. The silver lining in this is, of course, that it could have been much worse.

We've been talking about stealing a lot over the past few days (along with pet kangaroos) and have decided that whoever took the money out of Camber's monkey wallet must have needed the money more than she did.

That's the only way an eight year-old can make sense of it.

Animal Control

If you have never been to a county animal control office, you aren't missing much.

Unless you live in central Florida.

We took the stray cat there today to be scanned for a microchip. There were several people in line in front of us, so I had some time to look around and flip through a three-ring binder that contained, among other things, a list of dead animals that had been found by county workers over the past 10 days.

I'll spare you the gruesome details.

On the wall next to the receptionist was a large whiteboard with three columns: intakes, adoptions, and euthanasias.

Over 500 stray cats were put to sleep by our county alone during the month of July. I had no idea the number was so high.

Please spay and neuter your pets. Please.

Like almost every other person in line, the couple in front of us was there to inquire about a missing pet. Unlike everyone else in the room, the animal they were asking about was a kangaroo.

The receptionist did not bat an eye. This is Florida after all.

"Haven't seen one of those come through here recently," she said. "Fish and Game handles most of them."

This made me very curious about the three-ring binder on the counter labeled "Missing Pets."

After we took care of our business, I opened the binder and flipped past the sections labeled "Dogs" and "Cats" to the one marked "Other."

Interspersed among the reports of missing parrots, iguanas and ferrets was the report of a missing monkey of unknown species and one for a python that answers to the name of Daisy.

Grandma Reincarnated

On our way home from dropping off my mother-in-law at the airport, we stopped at the animal shelter.

Cats with no tails and half-missing ears aren't effective substitutes for grandparents who live in Los Angeles, but it's the best I can do.

"Can we get a cat because grandma left today?" asked Camber. She held up a fluffy black kitten.

"I want that one," Kellen said, pointing to a yellow cat the size of a horse.

"I'd be happy with a Slurpee," Cortlen added. He gazed longingly out the window to the 7-11 across the street.

"The last thing I need in my life right now is another living thing to take care of," I told them.

The crying that started on the way to the animal shelter continued after we left.

"I miss her so much," Kellen cried on the drive home.

It was unclear whether he was talking about his grandmother or the morbidly obese feline.

"We aren't getting another cat," I said again as we pulled into our garage.

Famous last words.

I kid you not: two minutes after we got home, my kids burst through the front door with a collarless cat that they had found in the bushes.



We're making posters and I've sent out emails to all the neighbors, but so far, there aren't any takers. Tomorrow we're taking her to the vet to see if she's microchipped.

"I have an idea for a name if we get to keep her," Camber said.

"Oh yeah? What?"

I should have guessed.

"Grandma."

My Day with My Mother-In-Law

Every time my husband's parents come to visit, I do at least one thing to validate my competence as a mother.

Yesterday, my mother-in-law and I took the kids downtown for the morning. Cameron had a doctor's appointment and the older kids needed some back-to-school clothes.

The cashier at Old Navy had already rung up and bagged my purchase when I realized that my wallet was at home on the kitchen counter.

My MIL saved me a lot of embarrassment and time by swiping her credit card.

"It's not a big deal," she said as she put her arm around my shoulder. "I do stuff like this all the time."

This is a lie by the way. She doesn't do things like that EVER. But it did make me feel better.

"Thank you," I whispered. "I'll pay you back when we get home."

Over the course of the next few hours, my tab grew.

"Can I borrow 30 bucks for the doctor's office copay?"

"And 5 for parking?"

"And 10 for labs?"

By the end of the trip, I felt like that friend who always shows up to a restaurant without any cash.

It's my own embarrassment and shame (and nothing that my MIL said or did--she is awesome) that caused me to drive 30 miles with the gas light on in my car. I thought I would die if I had to ask my mother-in-law for any more money.

By the time I got to my off-ramp, I was sweating through my shirt.

"Is everything all right?" my MIL asked.

I didn't answer. I was too busy praying that I could make it home on fumes.

After we made it home and had settled up, I told my MIL why it always appears that I have a perspiration problem when she comes to town.

She laughed at me for ten minutes.

That's a good thing, right?

Flashing the UPS man

This morning I cleaned all the bathrooms. In my underwear. I did this to avoid getting bleach stains on what's left of my already paltry summer wardrobe.

Due to an unfortunate crayon-in-the-dryer incident a few weeks back, I've had more casualties this season than usual. But that's another story...

While I was scrubbing mysterious green stains off the bottom of my sons' bathtub, the doorbell rang. All my older kids were locked in a room playing a Wii that I rented from the library. Cameron was spraying Windex onto the tile floor next to me.

"Oh!" he said when he heard the noise and hopped to this feet.

"Don't answer the door," I told him.

Of course he did anyway.

To his credit, the UPS man did not step foot inside my house. Unfortunately, he didn't need to. I still don't have blinds on the windows on either side of my front door.

"Just leave it on the doorstep," I called out as I dove to the ground.

The UPS man must be used to seeing naked and semi-naked housewives because he told me without flinching that he would close his eyes while he passed me the contraption that I needed to sign.

I was sufficiently mortified.

"Cameron!" I hissed when I closed the door. "That's why I don't want you opening doors."

That's also why I need to suck it up and buy the blinds and/or clean the bathrooms less frequently.

Because nobody needs to see that.

Backward Underpants

There are several things that confuse me about the world of children's clothing. Given that it is freezing cold in 80% of the country during the month of December, why do most non-offensive girls' holiday dresses have spaghetti straps?

Almost as perplexing is why underwear makers put designs on the butt sides of toddler underpants.

Their insistence on doing means that toddlers everywhere suffer from the physical discomforts that come along with wearing one's underpants backwards.

"The trucks are supposed to go in the back," I told my almost three year-old today.

"No," he replied and looked at me like I was crazy. When he ran down the hall I got a good look at his makeshift thong.

"Let's turn your underpants around," I suggested a few minutes later. "Please." It pained me to watch him strut around like that.

"NOOOOOOO!"

During our next trip to the bathroom, I tried and failed to turn the underpants around without him knowing. Cameron has his issues, but he's no dummy when it comes to wedgies. He knows when he has one and when he doesn't.

Do your kids do this too?

Taco Time

My husband always gets uneasy whenever we come to his work. He says that it is because his office culture isn't family friendly.

I think it has something to do with my kids' obsession with the water fountain in the lobby.

Regardless, on the occasions when we drop something off/pick something up/meet him for lunch, he always meets us in the parking lot.

Given the extent to which my husband goes out of his way to prevent me from interacting with his coworkers, it shocked me when he called up the other day and asked he could bring one of his colleagues home for dinner (the guy's wife was out of town).

My husband only had one request: "Please don't make anything that you haven't made before."

I agreed not to try out any new recipes. Reluctantly.

My mother-in-law has a great recipe that requires covering chicken breasts with taco seasoning (and other things) and cooking it in a crock pot.

Ten minutes before my husband the guest of honor where scheduled to show up, I tasted the chicken. And almost puked.



It's not my fault that taco seasoning and seasoning salt look almost exactly the same.

In other (good) news: our snake friends had babies!!!!



We are super thrilled.