Oh Wow

Some days I feel like the only time I talk about my kids is when I talk about how they annoy me. They don’t annoy me ALL the time. Sometimes they’re really awesome. But when they’re acting all awesome I’m too afraid to move or I’ll ruin the moment. And by the time I would get around to writing about it, one of them is most likely sitting on their sibling or putting dirt in their hair and then I forget about the awesome that happened previously.

So, just like my Oh Crap posts, I need to start Oh Wow posts. My first title was Holy Shit who IS this kid?! but I don’t think that will help remind me of their awesomeness.  I feel I need documentation that my kids are not actually wild animals in disguise.

At the park spreeny-beany ran to bendaboo when he fell off  the equipment to make sure he was ok and give him a hug. He then stayed with him the rest of the time, making sure he didn’t get hurt again.

Pretty girl helped Ben wash his hands before supper and tried to convinced him to eat his supper by telling him to make his plate match hers.

Both the older kids helped Ben try to find his new toothbrush. He was using it as a sword and lost it. It’s still missing but at least they tried.

Tonight at a school choir thing bendaboo wasn’t feeling good and he climbed off my lap and sat on spreeny-beany’s chair with him and put his head on his shoulder. And then Eric patted his head. I melted.

My hope is that one day there will be more of these posts than the crap ones. But I’m not really holding my breath.

I would pass out and Ben would poke me in the eye.

Happy Mother’s Day (but you’ll still have to clean up something gross)

Mother’s Day.

The day where we are celebrated for being the amazing women we are. The day we stand up and say Yes! My body, sanity and sex life will never be the same again. My floors will never be clean, the laundry will never be done, I will be annoyed at someone at least once every day. I will always find cheerioes in my bed and sandwich bags in my car. I will be tired every day and think it’s normal. I will remember all my babies birth weights, exact times of birth and all the names of their school friends, but will never remember to phone in the meter reading to the gas company. I will always and forever curse the inventor of Zhu-Zhu pets and Crazy Forts. I will develop the ability to not only determine if my child is the one crying out of several screaming toddlers, but will also know if I need to get up and take care of an actual injury. Without ever actually looking at them. I will take pride in their accomplishments and cringe at their failures as if they were my own. I will still hate my stretch marks and belly even after seeing that really cool picture on Facebook about stretch marks being tiger stripes. I can respect it, I just can’t apply it to myself.

I will finally understand why sometimes I thought my mother didn’t like me very much. I knew she loved me, but occasionally, she just looked done.  Now I know. She was.

This is the day where the best gift of all would be to be completely alone. In silence. In a clean house. With a cocktail that doesn’t have time to get warm. Last year I kicked my family out of the house the night before Mother’s Day. It was great, but I did miss them. So this year, like most of you out there, I will get breakfast. There will be devastation in my kitchen that I will pretend to ignore, secretly dying inside at the sheer horror of the mess. I will break up multiple fights and probably lose my temper. I will do a load of laundry because bendaoo will no doubt think the greatest gift of all is him, covered in mud. I will help make supper because as great as my husband is, he has not and never will be able to cook an entire meal and keep all our children alive and well. Multitasking is not in his DNA. But he cooks, so he is forgiven.

Happy Mother’s Day weekend friends. I hope you are showered with home-made crafts, a messy house, laughter and screaming and messy, fighting kids who love you no matter what.

And so, I raise my lukewarm glass of white to you, out there sitting at your computer, probably with a 5 o’clock cocktail of your own, forgetting about supper because you handed your kids a bag of chips and turned on a movie.

Or is that just me?

Tell me it isn’t just me.

The Sleepover. A shortcut to hell.

Slumber Party.

Did you just shiver with fear? You should have. Whoever invented the idea of the slumber party must have been crazy. Does that make me crazy for having one?

Ummm, yes. Yes it does.

Girls everywhere. Screaming. Giggling. Eating. Screaming. Little brothers crying and yelling because they can’t get in on the action. Moms yelling at everyone to stop yelling.

Good times.

And it was. Totally fun. Up until 1am when I had just fallen asleep and was jarred back to reality by, you guessed it…shrieking. That’s when I came out to the living room and became slightly scary mommy. Satisfied I had terrified them just enough to go the hell to sleep, I went back to bed. Then it was 2am and I became Really Scary Mommy. I threatened to separate them and may have told my beautiful, incredibly hyper daughter that she was about to sleep in the garage. Or I just thought about it. I don’t do well with little sleep.

Ahhh, peace. Finally.

Are you EFFIN kidding me!!?? Now the bulldozer beside me is snoring. I hit him with my pillow and finally fall asleep.

5.56 am.

Bendaboo. I may have threatened to take away tv for the rest of his life if he didn’t go back to bed. Works every time.

At least for about 20 minutes.

And then, I need coffee. Strong coffee. I hear giggling, then yelling at the boys. This is only my kid, the other sweet girls tolerate them very well. Rachel can’t start her day until she lets them know how much she hates them. More coffee. Breakfast outside. The girls go to the frog pond. The boys play catch.

And I have peace and quiet.

Will I do it again?

Yup.

I’m crazy like that.

We’re a normal family. Sort of.

I have a kid with allergies. She can’t eat milk, dairy or peanuts. She’s allergic to animals, grass and pollen. She has asthma. I can’t tell you how many people over the years have said “Wow, that must be so hard! What do you feed her? How does she eat? She can’t have pets! You must worry all the time!” Does she go to school?” I get the questions. I understand how limited her life sounds.

I’m here to tell you, there are no limits. There are precautions. I may spend more time in the kitchen than my friends do. I may not be able to hit the drive through when we’re not home for lunch. We don’t have pets in the house. But, this kid lives. And she lives well.

This weekend, she went to a friends house. They have horses, goats, pigs, cats, dogs and chickens. She played with them all. She took a Reactine before she went and ate the lunch I packed her. She had her inhaler in case she needed it. I told the friends mother that she probably would. I wasn’t worried. Then the friend came here to sleep over. For supper, they ate corn dogs, fries and veggies. For dessert, chocolate cake donuts. Yes, I stood over a pot of hot oil for an hour, but not a big deal. Later, with a movie, popcorn, chocolate chips and jelly beans. For breakfast, french toast and bacon. We went out today and planted flowers with her grandma and had slushes from Mac’s.  When she got home, she played with her two dogs and cats. She washed her hands when she was done and changed her clothes. She loves her school and sits beside her friends eating cheese and peanut butter. The hand washing policy that was imposed when she started school 5 years ago keeps her safe.

Yes, I worry. But not as much as I used to to. Is this life hard? Not any harder than any other mother trying to raise three kids and keep a marriage alive. What do I feed her? Everything. I just have to cook. A lot.  Do I feel sorry for her? Sometimes. But it’s probably for the same things you empathize with your kids about. Feeling excluded, missing out on something, pouting because she can’t have something she wants. That’s life. It happens. We deal with it and move on.

We are happy. We are grateful. We love our life.

So the next time someone hears our story, I hope they don’t feel sorry for us. Unless we’re in the middle of dealing with a tantrum, telling a kid no, they can’t have a tv in their room and we don’t care if everyone else does or putting pants back on our 4 year old. Then, feel sorry for me. But only for a minute. Because hopefully, in the next minute, you’ll be doing the exact same thing.

Oh Crap.

Ben- Mom! Mom! MOM!!

Me- I’m coming! What’s wrong? I thought you were coming inside. Wait? Why are you naked?

Ben- Quinn stole my underwear! I’m so mad at that dog! I loved those underwear. They were Bob the Builder. I only had one pair of those ones. Why’d we have to get a stupid puppy who takes underwear anyway?

Me- (sighs) Umm Ben..if you kept your underwear on when you were outside, the dog wouldn’t be able to steal them.

Ben- Oh crap.

Me- Thank God we don’t have neighbours.

I’ve spent 4 years telling my kid NOT to shove things up his nose…

I have a headache. I’ve had it for 5 days now. But this morning I think I realized why. Later on today I’m going to sit at my computer with bendaboo and look at pictures of kids with an impedance probe. What the hell is that you ask? It’s a thin wire that goes into his nose and down his throat to measure the amount of acid coming back up. This will help to determine just how severe his GERD is. The other end of the wire will be taped to his cheek and travel down to a little computer that he will have to wear like a purse. He was on oxygen for 5 days two years and I remember even though he was so sick he could barely move, even then we had trouble keeping the damn tube in his nose. How am I going to keep an active, busy boy from pulling out a probe? For 24 hours?? He’ll be awake when they put it in and the nurse told me over the phone that they often have to restrain the child. Yuck.  And he has another cold. So his nose is runny and he’s coughing. Who doesn’t love going to the hospital, hungry and thirsty, being held down by a bunch of people you don’t know and having a wire shoved up your nose when you have a cold?

We’re going to have explain all this to Ben and tell him he mustn’t pull the wire out of his nose. We won’t be able to leave him alone for a moment and will have to sleep (hah!) with him to make sure he doesn’t pull it out at night.

But don’t get me wrong. As always, I’m entirely grateful for good doctors and new technology to help make kids better.

And, when it comes down to it, bendaboo is doing really well. He’s happy, full of energy and growing like a weed. All my kids are. We are very lucky people.

But I still think it’s going to be a very long 24 hours…

Oh Crap

Because my kids are funny, and weird, and sometimes very puzzling, I’ve decided to add a sort of ongoing post that I’m calling “Oh Crap” Aptly named because every time bendaboo does something that makes the wrinkle between my eyes deepen he says…oh crap.

These are the things that usually happen when I’m halfway through a cup of coffee, or wine, depending on the time of day. Thus forcing me to have to get up, smooth out my forehead and go clean up the mess.

Maybe you also want to share with me what your kid did that is helping to deplete your jar of anti-aging cream?

Today’s Oh Crap….

Ben – Mom, I found a box of Band-Aids in my backpack.

Me -Oh?

Ben- Yup. And I tried them all on.

Ben – Oh crap.