Tag: parenting

children, family, humor, kids, motherhood, parenting

How to Send Your Brother to His Room without Really Trying

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While I was reading a chapter book out loud yesterday, I had both boys planted firmly on either side of me (the separation of brothers is crucial).  T.Puzzle, in an apparent act of affection, draped his arm casually around my neck.  Before I knew what was happening, he began to fiddle with his brother’s face and then it was war.  I stopped mid-sentence and calmly explained that this outburst of violence was unacceptable.  The next person who touched their brother was going to their room.

T.Puzzle seemed resigned to this and kept his arm resting lightly on my neck.  I could feel by the posture of his body, he wasn’t planning on another attack.  As for Full Speed, he dramatically leaned back against the couch and hooked his arms behind his head.  The arm that was closest to T.Puzzle, arched out in a ridiculous angle (he looked like a cross between a monkey and an Olympic gymnast).  He furrowed his brow in concentration and waited for an inevitable flicker of movement from his brother’s hand.  My theory is then he could play victim and cry out indignantly hoping to send T.Puzzle to his room (don’t you just love brotherly love?).

That was it.  I lost it.  Fortunately for everyone involved, I dissolved into a fit of laughter.  If nothing else, Full Speed gets high marks for creativity.

We never did finish the chapter.

children, family, humor, kids, motherhood, parenting

Moms Like Me Want to Know

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I had lunch with T.Puzzle this week at school.  I wasn’t able last week because I was under the weather.  That fact that I had to skip out on him didn’t phase him one bit.  He told me that ‘he wasn’t going to miss me at all’ and proceeded to apparently have a perfectly wonderful lunch without me.  His indifferent attitude had me questioning scheduling a lunch with either of my boys. Was it possible that only I benefitted from this weekly check-in?   After further investigation, T.Puzzle admitted that yes, he would still like to have Mom come for lunch but he is okay if for some reason I can’t make it.  I didn’t wait for him to change his mind and told him I would seem him soon.

As I sat at the parents’  table with him, his teacher stopped by and graciously thanked me for my emails.  She said that she appreciated staying in touch.  What she doesn’t know is that for every one email I send her, I’d actually like to send about a thousand more.  I wish she would live tweet or video stream every significant move T.Puzzle makes.  If T.Puzzle learned something, she should let me know as quickly as possible.  If he gets out of line, if he exhibits outstanding behavior (we all have dreams, don’t we?), if he says something cute or funny…basically, if he does anything at all, I want to know about it.  Same goes for Full Speed and his teacher, too.

Instead, I constantly coach myself to leave my kids and their teachers alone.  I fill my time in other ways while always holding images of what I picture my boys doing at school (I tend to picture them doing only amazing stuff, it’s much more fun that way), and that has to be enough.  It doesn’t feel like enough, but it has to be.

children, family, happiness, humor, kids, motherhood, parenting

The Happy Grocery Story

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Full Speed’s expression here, as T.Puzzle attempts to cause him bodily harm, aptly captures how I felt physically last week.

I haven’t been feeling up to par for a while now.  Initially, I tried to stay very positive about the whole situation.  After Mad Dog travelled for work and T.Puzzle came down with the same symptoms, my positivity started to slip away.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t magically manifest a stocked refrigerator through happy visualization.  At some point, I had to break down and go to the grocery.  I opted to take the boys with me because obviously whatever virus I had, it clearly was damaging the reasoning parts of my muddled brain.

Before we entered the grocery, I croaked out my usual round of threats to get the boys to behave.  Once we were in the store, I honestly didn’t care what they did.   Naturally, there was a lot of pretend fire arm action and we fell deeply under enemy fire somewhere in the cereal aisle. For the most part, we managed to get through the store unscathed.  That is, until we neared the bread section.  As we turned the corner, Full Speed and T.Puzzle pushed the cart into a metal display stand of antibacterial wipes.  It sounded a lot worse than it actually was.  The crash of the cart sent a shockwave down the aisle and about 17 Moms jumped out of their skins.  I could see the panic on their faces as they turned to their own carts and quickly did a roll call to make sure all their children and corresponding limbs were accounted for.

“My bad!” I squeaked through my throbbing throat.  “No worries everyone, it’s only my crazy kids, not yours.”

The relief was palpable.  I cut our losses and we headed straight to the check-out.  So what if I forgot to get milk?  At least the dairy case that housed the milk remained safely intact to see another day.

See?  Look how positive I am.

family, humor, kids, motherhood, parenting

Setting the Bar Low

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Sometimes I exasperate myself wishing my boys would pay attention to me.  It’s frustrating when you instruct your kid to put their dirty laundry in the utility sink (located conveniently in the laundry room), and instead, it winds up in an unsanitary heap in your kitchen sink.  Yuck.  The only way I can remotely relate to this lack of attention to detail, is when Mad Dog spouts off some football score that I am specifically supposed to tell the boys about in the morning.  Of course, the first thing they ask me when bounding downstairs is, “Mom, did they win?”  I respond with a quick, “Sure!” and then a moment later, realize that no, such and such team did not win.  “Sorry, guys, but I meant to say they lost.”

“Well, what was the score, then?” they chime together.

Whoa!  I’m supposed to remember who won AND the score?

I think it might be helpful if everyone took a deep breath and lowered their expectations.  Then again, dirty laundry in my kitchen sink?  Really?

children, family, humor, kids, motherhood, parenting

Armed with Love

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Look, Mom! My huge pipes are just fine.

T.Puzzle is now doing really well so I feel comfortable writing this.  On Thursday after school, it came to my attention that he had developed a skin infection on his right bicep.  He came waltzing into the dining room where I have the boys’ homework stations set up (yes, kindergartners have homework these days), and proudly announced, “Hey, look at my big muscle!”  He thought his swollen bicep was hysterically funny.  If my Mommy alarm hadn’t gone off at full volume, I would have thought my little Popeye was hilarious, too.  Instead, by the feel of his heated, red skin, I knew it was time to head to urgent care.

He was quickly diagnosed with a soft tissue infection and prescribed an oral antibiotic.  Fortunately, he seemed to act fine, didn’t have a fever and by all accounts, looked as if he would make a speedy and complete recovery (so far, so good).

Any reasonable person would probably think that T.Puzzle was in no danger.  As a not-so-reasonable Mom, my mind kept going to scary, flesh-eating bacteria places, and I couldn’t get myself back. I hovered over him like crazy and kept wishing I could give him my arm to replace his infected one.  T.Puzzle responded to all this over-attention by patiently allowing me to smooch him dozens of times, and saying it was okay to snuggle with him because he could still hug me with his ‘good arm’.

As I explained to Mad Dog why I had become so consumed with worry over a very typical, routine sort of infection kids get all the time, when it comes to any possible threat to your offspring, logic leaves you.  It gets up, runs away and is almost impossible to retrieve.

Even with two good arms.