Laugh With Moms

On Christmas Eve, the kids were very excited at the impending arrival of Santa and the activity level neared frantic levels.  We tracked Santa’s whereabouts on norad.com, talking about each place he landed.  Bangladesh, the Canary Islands, Ireland, etc. as he continued to move West toward the US.  We had a late dinner and the kids were getting a little nervous that they wouldn’t be asleep in time.  I assured him that Santa would not come until they were snug in their beds and fast asleep.  As we prepared for bed, my 5 year old son asked, “how can one man do all that?”.  I thought that is a really good question that required a very careful and yet honest answer.  So I resorted to a typical parent answer, “magic”.  That seemed to answer his question for now and he was content to let the magic happen.  When they woke up on Christmas morning it didn’t matter how one “man” did it all, it just mattered that it happened at all.  My son woke up at 5am and came into our room, to which we quickly said, “climb in to bed, we don’t know if Santa has come yet and you don’t want to risk it”.  So he laid there, thrashing around, eyes wide open.  About 30 minutes later, my daughter came in to join us and cuddled right up next to me all warm and cozy.  She laid quietly with eyes shut although I don’t think she really fell asleep.  As the sky was lightening around 6:30am, my son sat up in the bed and said, “I can’t stand it anymore, I have to go see if Santa came”.  “I am heading down there with or without you guys, or I am just going to be annoying.”  With that they bounded down the stairs to see firsthand the “magic” that happened the night before.  The look on their faces and all the fun they had that day is well worth all the work it takes to make that “magic” happen.  So here’s to all the Santas out there that made Christmas special this year.

I knew there would always be a Part 2 to the original Tornado Warning post, I just wasn’t sure when and where it would rear it’s ugly head.  Well today was the day and I have pictures to prove it.  My son had just gotten off the bus and handed me his backpack, when the bus driver said “no school tomorrow, they just announced it”.  I love snow, but this little statement causes immediate dread in the hearts of most parents.  When I was working in the school, I was overjoyed at the prospect of the snow day.  As a stay at home mom, that just means a very long weekend!  Anyway as I was thinking of how my Friday had just changed, I was shuffling through the papers in my son’s backpack and I hear from the kitchen, “mom, it snowed”.   I knew right then and there, this can’t be good.  Houston we have a problem.  I rounded the corner into the kitchen and the sight that came into view was one I will remember forever.  There is my little tornado boy, jumping around in a huge pile of packaging “peanuts”.   This time the tornado struck during the winter when we least expected it.  Well I always kind of expect it, but you just don’t know in what form it will strike.  So I did what any good blogger would do, I snapped some pictures and started to prepare my blog entry as he cleaned up every last one of those peanuts.  Halfway through, after many tantrums, I began to help him (we had to get my middle daughter from school!) and realized how disheartening it was to actually clean them up.  I think those little suckers multiply and they definitely fall apart into many tiny pieces that stick to everything.  When we were done, thanks to my awesome Dyson (that will probably be a post in itself someday–the best vaccuum ever), we were covered in tiny pieces of styrofoam peanuts.  Indeed my little tornado boy, it had snowed and the clean up is always the worst part.

As I picked up my daughter out of her crib this morning and she settled against my shoulder for a little snuggle, I was overjoyed by her adorable goodness.  She was so nice and cuddly warm with her fleece “footie” pajamas and blanket hooked under her arm.  She is 18 months old, just beginning to talk and loves to climb up on the dishwasher to chuck plates and cups onto the hardwood floors.  But all of that was way in the back of my consciousness as I held that little muffin for a much longer time than usual and breathed in her scent.  These are moments I wish you could hold onto forever but they are fleeting and most of the time you just don’t have time to enjoy them.  But this morning I took the time and I continue to take the time as she keeps coming to me for cuddle time.  It is a constant reminder to take the time to enjoy it, before I know it she will be heading off to college and I will wonder why I was so busy.

Every year at Christmas, I am reminded of all the fun and heart-warming Christmas memories of years past.  Growing up in Indiana, we were hundreds of miles away from our closest relatives and thus the actual day of Christmas was spent among my immediate family consisting of my sister, brother and my parents.  To begin with I have incredible, generous and kind parents who made the holidays very special and magical.  Some Christmas mornings, we would wake up and would not believe the presents that awaited us.  If we mentioned it at all in the months preceding Christmas, it would be sitting underneath that tree on Christmas morning.  There were a few notable exceptions including the moped I asked for when I was twelve, but that was a longshot anyway.  My parents were generous, but I wouldn’t say spoiled us throughout the year.  But come Christmastime the rules went out the window.  I try to go along with that same philosophy with my own children because the look of complete joy and disbelief on my children’s faces on Christmas morning is something I hope I will never forget.  With that said, as a family we all understood the true meaning of Christmas and never missed a Christmas Eve service with one notable exception when a blizzard struck on Christmas Eve leaving us housebound.  In that case, I got out my keyboard from the previous Christmas, my dad got out his guitar, my sister rummaged up her bible and my brother gathered candles to perform our own Christmas service.  There was an order to our Christmas Day that never wavered until our young children were introduced to this ritual and the two hour present opening session was a little too much for those under 7.  We would wake up and open the presents from Santa and our stocking.  Always running upstairs to tell our parents what we got,  who were always exhausted as they had spent much of the night assembling those very same gifts!  Then we would gather for breakfast which was a family affair with everyone cooking or making their favorite concoction for the meal.  Then came clean up, shower time as well as preparing for the midday meal of turkey or ham.  We were not allowed to open the rest of the gifts until we were all cleaned up and our beds were made.  We would also make a big deal about drawing numbers to arrange the order of present opening.  And then one by one, we would open the presents, goggle over them and in the case of my dad’s gifts to my mom, make fun.  He was always good for a few presents that would get an eyebrow raise and a “thank you dear” response from my mom which sent us into complete hysterics.  After multiple breaks to baste the turkey and put on the potatoes, the present opening session would come to a much needed end.  Then came a delicious dinner served in our rarely used dining room with my mom’s special holiday plates.  Then, clean up and finally a nice family game that always ended when the pie was brought out.  One game we used to love to play was Taboo in which you would have to guess the word without saying the five words on the card.  My dad would be famous for immediately saying one of the five words on the card and would thus get buzzed every time. Hilarious year in and year out.  What a great Christmas Day and great time spent with family. 

This year will be different for my family because my brother and I and our respective families live far away from my parents.  This is the first year that neither of us will be going “home” for Christmas.  My sister and her family along with my parents will continue on the traditions without us which is incredibly sad and yet a reality for us.  On the one hand, we all have our own families and thus it is time to make our own traditions, but it is hard to compete with those traditions and memories that we had in our childhood.  So this year although I will not be with my family, the memories will bring me much happiness as I try to create that same magical feeling for my own family.

My 4 year old son loves to ask me questions.  Normally they are easy ones to answer.  However, lately they have become increasingly more interesting and it’s hard to come up with a quick and satisfying answer for him.

We were sitting at the breakfast table this morning and talking about a friend who is having a baby.   As he finished chewing his waffle, my son asks me how the baby gets into the mommies belly?  Since I am feeding my 9 month old his bottle, I ignore the question for a minute hoping he will change the subject.  But of course he did not and he asked again “how did the baby get in her belly?”  I think for a second and realize this could be a defining moment… or not… for my 4 year old son.  I finally answer with “when a mommy and daddy love each other, they make a baby.”  Thankfully, he was satisfied with that answer and went back to an easy question of “what are we doing today?”

When I was growing up, my mom would always be able to tell what we were up to from halfway across the house.  I knew that she didn’t actually see us do it, so how did she know?  How did she do that?  She would always say, “I have eyes in the back of my head”.  Well, now I know exactly what she had; she had eyes, ears, a nose, a sense of touch, and her mouth to let us know.  As a mother I have relied on every sense I possess to ascertain what those little rugrats might be up to even when I am not in the room.  Case in point, today as my son got off the bus and stepped inside the house, he immediately began fighting with his sister.  This has been happening for about two months now, everyday he comes home and they find something to fight about.  Well today I had had enough and I let them know with a long and loud speech about getting along and that “I am tired (I am afraid I actually used the word “freaking–which I tried to glance right over and hoped they didn’t pick up on it) of their fighting day in and day out…etc.  I am sure they heard blah, blah, blah really loud, but with that I turned on my heel and fled to the basement with the laundry.  As I am down there, I heard the chair being dragged across the floor and over to the basement door.  With that I heard my son tell my daughter, “now she won’t be able to get up here”.  With that I heard his little feet retreat to the family room to eat his snack.  I waited down there for about 3 minutes, folding laundry (I was not going to give them the satisfaction of actually trying to open the door) and I heard my son quietly open the door and slowly descend the stairs in the basement.  I decided to hide down in the basement so he would have to come all the way down.  He walked down, calling my name very quietly and timidly.  I popped out on him, scaring him a little (precisely what I had planned) and asked him what he was doing with the chair up there.  At first he said, “I was getting a snack”.  I replied, “let’s try that again, what were you doing with that chair up there?”  I could see him looking at me thinking how did she know that, just as I did when I was a young girl.  Then slowly the truth came out and we talked seriously about the ramifications of not having a mommy around to help you, especially in the case of an emergency.  Another time I was downstairs and my daughter was upstairs “getting her clothes”.  But I could hear her in the bathroom, rustling around.  My husband keeps his cologne in the bathroom vanity and I could smell that wafting down from the bathroom.  I yelled up the stairs, “what are  doing up there”.  To which she replied, “nothing”.  Once again, “let’s try that again, what are you doing upstairs?”.  To which the truth came spilling out along with that puzzled look of how does she know that.  That one was a no brainer, as she smelled like a 75 year old man with white patent leather shoes and a light blue “leisure” suit.  So now after all these years, I have realized that being a mother who knows all requires use of every single one of her senses to get the goods on her little cherubs, those “eyes in the back of my head”.

I am a midwestern girl who just happened to land in the East Coast, borrowing a line from my favorite movie, “I had to go see about a boy”.  Good Will Hunting, for those of you who didn’t know the movie, is a great movie and makes you want to date a boy from “Southie” and then marry a boy who sounds a lot like them.  Anyhow back to my midwestern roots.  Growing up in the midwest you become very accustomed to tornadoes.  Watches and warnings happen weekly during the spring and summer months.  Tornado drills are practiced as regularly as fire drills in the local schools and trips to the basement are frequent as the local warning system blares the ominous horn.  Therefore tornadoes are something you just learn to live with and hope never get near enough to harm you or those you love.  With that said, I had no idea that I would give birth to a tornado in the form of my first born.  When I tell you that everytime he enters a room the place is turned inside out and upside down, it is not an exaggeration.  You can’t even begin to imagine the destruction that is left in the wake of this adorable five year old boy.  Case in point, today he was lovingly (and I say this with a straight face) sent to my bedroom for a time out.  At the end of his 5 minute time out that stretched into 10 (ok maybe 15) as I found myself with a moment of peace and quiet with him “safely” tucked in my room, I went upstairs to give him the talk to prove that I am a good mother, have read all the books and watched “supernanny”.  What greeted me, was a scene out of Storm Chasers on the Weather Channel.  He had managed to pull a rubbermaid container, that is incidentally holding my past maternity wears just in  case I am insane enough to have number 4, over to my husband’s dresser and had pulled down a basket full of forgotten items that he felt compelled to scatter all over my bedroom floor.  This is on top of the stack of clothes he pulled out of my husband’s dresser, the quilt and blanket he pulled off the bed, and all the shoes he pulled out of my closet.  This was topped off by all the books he was supposed to be reading while quietly sitting in time out.  I had determined that my room was the least “fun” room to impose a time out (before I get emails, I know that you are not “supposed” to use your room as a time out but that is all I have to work with in my small home) but the tornado was able to rip that theory to shreds.  I am not lying when I say this kind of destruction happens on a daily basis and to prove my point, in the time it has taken me to write this post, there is an entire box of plastic utensils and a stack of napkins strewn all over my kitchen floor.  Not to mention that both my daughters have just emptied a 100 piece puzzle onto my dining room floor and my youngest daughter is walking across the dining room table to get my attention.  Oh when will this day be done and “where is your father?”.  It might be time for me to self-impose a time out and head to the basement as the tornado works its way around our house.  Anyway I think it is time for me to end this post and get aggravated all over again as I “encourage” my lovely children to clean up this mess.  Namaste, was my yoga class really this morning?

The following is an article that is written by Carolyn Hax who writes a column titled “Tell Me About It” in the Washington Post.  I think all moms can relate to this one.  It has been circulating through email as both my cousin and a good friend both sent it to me.  Enjoy!