Football Saturday “drinking buddies” may look quite different than when we held season tickets to the Big House’s student section, but the fact remains: it’s great to be a Michigan Wolverine.
Related: when I take a picture of my husband that he didn’t ask for… // but truly, not so big into the SPORTS scene over here.
Every other Friday, our home is visited by a magical person.
She is kind.
She brings her own vacuum.
She is non-judgmental, and even when I try to apologize for the state of [insert messiest room du jour here], she just smiles, “you have 4 boys!”
She is Ms. Laurie. She cleans our house, and we appreciate her work enormously for the 5 hours before the boys return home and effectively negate her efforts.
But before every other Friday, there is every other Thursday, when we get serious with the boys about their (theoretically nightly) pickup duties. Tonight was no exception.
How Sisyphean is this task, you wonder? Well, I’ll show you.
First, there is this: our eldest two — our supposedly most independent and helpful two — spontaneously hanging upside-down from the couch, only half dressed but of course wearing superhero masks, instead of picking up the (disastrous) living room as instructed 15 minutes prior.
Next, one of many handfuls of tchotchkes I retrieved from their bedrooms. The motivation [read: threat] is often “if you don’t pick it up, Mom gets to throw it away,” and the items like these — trinkets from Boo baskets, or party favors, or wherever else… are often abandoned and therefore go the way of Friday’s garbage pickup.
Finally, this. Just when you think the rooms are “good enough,” and you divert your attention to getting boys in pajamas or putting the baby down… a certain 3-year-old rips open a brand new bag of cereal and successfully uses it as a construction “dig site.”
But I’m telling you, those 5 truly clean hours on every other Friday… magic.
Related: a brilliant hack to *keep* your bathrooms clean for company // plus Sunday “get stuff done” day.
I snapped this image of J Sunday morning as he got ready to attend a friend’s birthday party. He had dressed himself to his taste and was combing his hair into a bona fide style.
Shortly after I took this, he groaned in exasperation. He couldn’t get his hair to cooperate in achieving his vision. I intervened, fixed his comically askew part, and the style took care of itself.
Not long ago, he couldn’t see over the counter to the mirror at all. And at some point, perhaps in the not too distant future, checking his reflection will become an important part of his daily routine.
I am watching my son seemingly right in the in-between. He has a preferred hairstyle, but wouldn’t have taken the time to comb his hair at all had I not suggested it as a method to mask how delinquent I have been giving him a trim. He dresses himself in the morning and has favorite pants or sweaters he will always choose if they are clean, but those favorites are almost exclusively based on softness of the fabric. He has lost his front teeth and wears that charming gap so well, but I know when his permanent teeth come in, their feature alone will make him appear significantly older. He has this lovely little social life and goes from party to party on the weekends, but the parties are mock science labs, or Lego-themed, or take place at arcades where he can only just barely reach the pedal of the race car games.
What a sweet phase, this in-between.
Related: a glimpse into the fashion sense of my sons // Going on seven.
THE “WHATCHA BEEN UP TO?” EDITION
It’s been a few weeks since my last post, so by way of explanation, I offer my readership (all 3 of you) a glimpse into quotes from the recent past.
*****
Me: O, stop hitting your brother with your Thor hammer.
*****
O, observing his feet stacked on top of each other as we read before bed: this foot is kind of like a volcano. And this one is like lava.
*****
Dave, hastily removing the faux nunchaku and tossing them in the closet: no weapons unless you can use them responsibly, boys.
*****
O: I love frosting; it’s like a blanket. Except you don’t go through it.
*****
Me: so let me get this straight. Your dad made you a delicious filet mignon and you consumed it in order to… qualify for a post-dinner hot dog?
J: …yeah.
*****
Me: A, put that down! Your dump truck is NOT a weapon.
*****
Otherwise spending no less than thirty-five minutes at daycare pickup as I had already snagged J & O from school first and therefore brought them in to pick up the little bros. Literally every. single. boy. had to have a bowel movement during the pickup process, and one of them clogged the toilet with his over-zealous toilet paper tendencies. But fear not: the daycare director, upon realizing I was still there 30+ minutes after I originally said my hellos in the lobby, assured me it was not a big deal to clog the toilet. After all, she said, when A did it just last week and flooded the hallway, they had cleaned it up no problem, so this clogging solved with a simple plunge was truly no biggie.
*****
Related: more O similes // A on a roadtrip.
Few things feel more comfortable, indulgent, and relaxing than closing out a chilly fall day by snuggling into bed and reading a book. Well, maybe “relaxing” isn’t quite accurate when you are joined by your introspective and inquisitive 7 year old who finds a way to turn even a fantastical Roald Dahl book into a deep and existential pop quiz. In order, conducted rapid-fire, and – I assure you – receiving pretty sub-par responses from his mother as her cognitive speed leaves a lot to be desired by 8pm on a school night:
- “Is Roald Dahl still alive?”
- “How old was he when he died?”
- “Do you think he’s in heaven?”
- “What *is* heaven?”
- “Okay. What’s a soul?”
- “Hm… so where does the soul live in my body?”
- (here’s where you can tell my answers were no longer satisfactory to him): “Can you ask Google?”
Maybe tomorrow I’ll suggest I just sing lullabies instead.
Dave was out of town for business travel much of this past week. I’d love to say I kept the train on the tracks despite some of the expected debris, but instead I will be honest:
There were FIVE bodily-function-related accidents of varying degrees of severity – all from ostensibly potty-trained children. I will spare the internet the graphic details, but rest assured, the details were… graphic.
C spiked a fever (for 3 days and counting), was kicked out of daycare, and became a sad, fussy, child-shaped barnacle attached to my body during all waking hours (and parts of the night).
I lost A in the grocery store. Good news: he has figured out the portion of Hide & Seek whereby one does not jump out and yell to reveal their location. Bad news: it went on long enough that staff got involved. Honest assessment: I’m surprised this has not happened sooner. Additional detail: after we found A, Steve the wine guy offered to “put J to work” so I’d only have to watch the remaining 3 as I finished my grocery run. J was very proud to show me all the rows of bottles he had feather-dusted by the time I was ready to hit up the cash register.
I texted my mom “I’m drowning over here; send good vibes” and didn’t even pretend to hesitate accepting help when she texted back “I’ll leave here asap and come over.”
But before we call the entire episode a failure, please remember: the boys were so charming at our post-playground Subway lunch stop on Saturday that the workers gave them all free cookies. So.
^In my defense losing 25% of my offspring, even the largest carts do not satisfactorily accommodate us.
Tuesday marks the first day of school for both J & O.
I have a dining room table full of school supplies that are mismatched and disorganized as neither of my two attempts at brick-&-mortar shopping nor my attempted Amazon prime deliveries yielded the full list of requested supplies and donations for their classrooms. Things need to be divided, labeled, bagged up.
I have a long grocery list of dinner and packed lunch supplies to pick up tomorrow, now complicated by a weekend email that indicated our intended entree for O (PB&J) as well as the preferred fruit (strawberries) are associated with severe allergies for children in his class, and therefore barred from entry.
Until just a few nights ago, I had a stack of papers still left over from J’s end of Kindergarten events, which warranted being reviewed, tossed, or saved in the filing folder system I’m hoping will be somewhat sustainable as the boys age and accrue what I can only assume will be exorbitant amounts of priceless and sentimental intellectual property (says their mother).
And then there is this looming dread of operating by a new set of logistics. Even summer mornings are a bit much, and now we will have 2 that have to be walking out to the bus at 7:43am. They will need to be picked up from the after care program at school on the south side of town before 6pm. A and C have daycare on the east side of town, flexible in start time but also needing a pickup by 6pm. I drive by the daycare on my way to the highway and on my way home, but my meetings start no later than 9am, which means I could take the littles in if I can get there by 7:45 to be on the road by 8, but then I miss the bus stop, which is a 10 minute window of my morning that I genuinely love. Either way, Dave and I need to predetermine who takes what car and picks up which set of boys each day as the car seat configuration is anything but flexible. We are 30 hours out from go-time and have yet to devote the brain space to figure this out.
So when Dave asked me if I wanted to steal away for the long weekend up north, I said ‘no.’ Too much to do, and there was no chance I’d be in a good head space Monday night if I was behind the 8 ball just prior to the first day of 1st grade and Junior Kindergarten. No. No, thank you, but no.
He made his case simply: “the boys are about to start school again. We won’t have that many occasions when we can all get away together for the next many months. If we can make it work, I feel like we should.”
Partially because Dave asks next to nothing of me and therefore I try to oblige when he does, and partially because I knew he was objectively right, I agreed. We went up north.
But as I’ve observed many times before yet clearly not fully internalized, it is not simply about a change of scenery. Rather, it’s about the active choice to step away from the to do list and obligations that otherwise spur many of the decisions of how we spend our time. In the list of things we did, none of them are unique to being away from home. In fact, this entire list could have been written in a regular weekend less than 10 minutes from home. During this weekend, we:
- – Did a grocery run.
- – Played hide and seek at a playground and among the trees.
- – Went bowling.
- – Moderated brotherly squabbles roughly 30x/day.
- – Let the older bros stay up too late with the acknowledgment we will pay for this during the coming school week.
Because we were “away” (physically, but also mentally from the mental ticker tape of things we should be dividing in order to conquer), however, both Dave & I experienced these commonplace things like this:
- – Grocery run – the first time the boys visited a store with the kid-sized carts and how unbelievably excited they were to help! We ended up with 3 versions of granola bars when every boy insisted on picking their own flavor.
- – Hide and Seek – A is still evidently unclear on rules and – when you announce ‘ready or not, here I come!’ – he will pop out from his hiding spot behind a tree, shrieking “I FOUND YOU!” It made me laugh every. single. time. Plus we meandered over to the nearby skate park, only to realize it was overrun with kids no older than 12 who were zipping around on their scooters. J watched, mesmerized, and a new hobby was born (radiologists all over the country are now shuddering as another little boy increases his odds of needing an X-ray).
- – Bowling – our first time with the boys, and we had no idea how fun this would be when you throw in bumpers and the ramp tools they have ready for kids — to say nothing of the “glow” environment even at 12pm. We had a delicious lunch of greasy bar food, I only barely won (yes, also utilizing bumpers), and the boys were asking to go back the very next day.
- – Brotherly squabbles – no romanticizing this; it’s just the nature of the beast in our home.
- – Staying up late – because who is going to call it a night when their children are animatedly running down the beach trying to find the best stones to skip, or finally getting the hang of a game of Frisbee with their dad, or laughing raucously at whatever 3 x small children find so funny long after lights-out at bedtime?
It shouldn’t require physical space to get to this point of mental clarity and appreciation for how beautiful the every day can be, but for me, it certainly helps.
I know this to be true: routine is huge for me at this stage in life. Routine allows me to operate on auto-pilot while my mind is trying to track 3 steps ahead of whatever we all need. Routine allows me to delegate effectively when I need to tap out or ask for help. Routine allows me to compartmentalize and keep the train in motion — for my self, and for my family. I love — I mean, love — a solid, predictable, effective routine.
But routines are not memorable. Memories stem from the stand-out moments, whether those are truly extraordinary moments, or moments within the realm of the ordinary, but with extra attention paid. This weekend was all about the latter: ordinary moments with extraordinary attention paid.
I’m still behind on back-to-school prep, but I have a feeling when I look back, I’ll remember J’s first strike bowling, and not the fact that I didn’t have his spare gym shoes ready and labeled before his first day.
Related: the trick to quality time that I picked up from my mom // the bus stop: my parental focus group
A colleague and I were recently laughing about how enviously we watch as a mutual friend gallivants through life without children. The travel to remote and beautiful places! The indulgent, involved meals! The copious hobbies and “because I can” experiences like snowmobiling to and from Mackinac Island when Lake Huron freezes over!
I feigned defensiveness of our life’s choices: okay fine, but can he tell you which playground has the best shade cover for a sunny summer day? Where all of the tornado sirens are within a 10 mile radius of his home? How many of the trucks at the local fire station are red and how many are yellow? Because I can!
Jokes aside, one of my favorite unexpected side effects of having kids is that they cause you to slow down and appreciate the vibrancy and color of life happening right beside you. The “stop and smell the roses” life philosophy was probably penned by someone whose child brought them a dandelion bouquet on every walk they took around their home.
Today, for instance, A and I were on our weekly grocery run which involves him making key selections in our cart (always the car cart), cereal (sometimes Kix, sometimes Wheaties), and yogurt (doesn’t matter the flavor, just clear out the inventory). Heading into the store through the parking lot today, his hand clasped in mine and walking about a half pace behind me, he gently pulled me to stop so we could admire something.
“That is such a beautiful shape, Mom!”
“What?” I asked, looking inquisitively at my son.
“That’s such a beautiful shape!”
“Such a beautiful… what?” I scanned the sky for… a sail? A plane? A bird? I looked at the nearby cars: any standout colors or silhouettes?
“Right there,” he pointed down at the pavement.
A patchwork in a parking lot, creating a near-perfect square. I’ve probably walked over this square a hundred times and never noticed, but to my 3-year-old son learning his shapes, it is remarkable in the dictionary definition of the word: worthy of attention.
I couldn’t help myself snapping a picture, and we loitered near this “beautiful shape,” chatting about squares for another 15 seconds before continuing on our way.
There is no moral imperative implicit in this anecdote. This is not to say that snowmobiling across a massive body of frozen water is better or worse than knowing the precise number of hydrangea blooms in your corner shrub (it’s just 5, and they are fading fast as we enter the late summer).
Rather, this is a testament to the wonder and beauty of the world both near and far.
If you ever find yourself unable to see things in that way, just find a small child to borrow for an outing and pay attention to the way your everyday becomes extraordinary.
Suffice it to say, I will probably never look at my grocery store’s parking lot the same way again.
Related: different son, same fandom for (literally) every day occurrences // other simple joys.
