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It’s Christmas in our house this week… otherwise known as “Book Fair Season”. Elle got her shot at glory last week. Spending $10 on a nifty book and a slew of useless knickknacks. (Don’t you remember as a kid – you’d buy “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”, then top it off with a kitten poster and more bookmarks than you owned books.) The traveling Book Fair made it to Rose’s school this week and she got her shot at the prize. She managed to secure two books and a slew of other malarkey. Elle apparently still had a hankering for more shopping though, because I came down before school this morning to find her trying to give Rose $30 of her own money, trusting Rose to spend it on the books she asked for at the Book Fair, which was now only at Rose’s school’s building. Thank God I caught her in time to negotiate it down to five dollars. (I have many follow up questions as to where she got $30. And why she thought giving it to her wiley sister was a good idea.) Elle sent Rose off with a list of books she was interested in and told her to work her magic. While I’m confident Rose had the best of intentions upon leaving for school this morning… fate intervened sometime between then and her actual arrival at the Book Fair. Because by the time she got home and showed Elle her haul, it was less-than-impressive. Once she walked into the Book Fair and saw the glittering, gleaming, glorious gifts being offered she couldn’t be bothered with Elle’s shopping list… and proceeded to spend all of the money on herself. “Sorry Elle, I wasn’t able to get your books. I just bought myself four new toys.” I’m not joking. Then, in an abundance of selflessness, she decided it would be fair if she gave Elle ONE of these new toys. Somehow Elle was content with this and actually said thank you! To which I had to yet again intervene. Elle is now the proud new owner of an invisible ink spy pen, a cupcake pencil sharpener that smells like chocolate, and a pink pen. The “I Survived a Shark Attack” book she desperately wanted will have to wait for another day. And Rose is banned from all future Book Fairs, especially when she has her sister’s money in her pocket.  

The moment I’ve been dreading for years finally arrived tonight. I knew it was only a matter of time, and I couldn’t put it off forever… but I was hoping to hold out for just a bit longer. I was taking my biannual nap and was in a pretty good mood when I woke up and came downstairs. Only to turn the corner of my kitchen to stumble upon the reason my children were being so quiet. In my short-lived absence they had somehow discovered the place that all of their artwork goes to die. And there was LOTS of it. They were calmly sorting it into their respective piles so they could reclaim it to their bedrooms. I was waiting for them to lose their minds when they saw me, but they amazingly kept their cool. “Mom, look what we found!” Apparently they had not connected the dots to realize that I was the one that had put it in that garbage bag in the corner closet…destined for the recycle center. “We found all of your old magazines for you too!” (Anyone interested in some back issues of Good Housekeeping?) I did what any good mother would do…I played it cool right back. “Oh cool – look what you guys found! How’d that get there!?” Then I waited for them to go to bed. And threw it all back in the recycle trash bag. Now we wait. And we pray. That they totally forget about this by morning. Things could get rough in the AM.

Just when I think Scarlett might be starting to age out of the terrible twos at the ripe old age of 4 1/2… she goes and does something like this and TOTALLY redeems herself. Last night Alex and I were enjoying a few moments of pointless television after locking…I mean…”putting”…the kids in bed. Scarlett ran her typical gambit of immediately being incredibly dehydrated and at risk of instant death if she didn’t get herself a drink of water. So off to the bathroom she went to rehydrate. Nothing abnormal yet. It was actually the absence of noise that began to arouse our suspicion. I went to check on her and it took a few moments for me to process the scene in front of me. She was standing on the counter and frantically scraping at her belly, where she was soaking wet and it appeared as though her skin was flaking. She was in a bit of a frantic state. When I asked her what was going on all I got in response was “I don’t know! I’m trying to get this stuff off of me!” Her belly was a sticky mess and water wasn’t making it any better. She also smelled faintly of chemicals. This was a new one for her. Which is saying something. I finally got her to admit to me that she had poured something on herself, but she didn’t know what it was. I asked her to show me. She didn’t know where it was, but she thought maybe somewhere in her bedroom. I went into the ransacked room, praying she could find the mysterious substance. It didn’t take her long to locate the surprisingly tiny culprit. A bottle of clear glittery nail polish. Poured and dried all over her body. I don’t know whether I should be grateful or upset that she chose this night to sleep in nothing but her underwear. It saved a pair of pajamas from the dumpster… but her skin now had the texture of a crocodile. It was on her belly, her legs, her hands…everywhere. Alex got out a duffel bag full of cotton balls and 6 gallons of nail polish remover and started scrubbing while I scoured the rest of her body for hidden bits of clear nail polish. Lucky me – I found some in her hair. What a unique way of starting dreadlocks. I’ve never seen them with glitter before but Scarlett has always been a bit of a trendsetter. And honestly dreadlocks just seem right for her. Exhausted and not wanting to fully bathe her, I sent her back to bed and prayed no one would light a cigarette around her for the next few weeks. (After that Elle should be able to get back to her pack-a-day habit.) I should also probably have a conversation with her preschool teacher lest she incorrectly deduces Scarlett smells like an anhydrous tank due to a basement meth lab.

Good news my dear family and friends! At the ripe old age of two years old Grant is entirely self-sufficient now! He has fully embraced the role of meal prepper/chef. Below please find a photo of his latest masterpiece…I call it ‘Breakfast‘. I think maybe he was going for more of an abstract look with this particular meal. He flew in the face of most norms and refused to plate this meal at all. The way he scattered the Cheerios across the floor was meant to convey the feeling of melancholic longing. The entire gallon of milk dumped on the table conveys the opposing feeling of overflowing abundance. Together it creates a truly one of a kind Ying Yang culinary experiences. I already have multiple galleries looking to buy this print off my hands. He is just so far ahead of his time. I’m considering selling tickets for next Sunday’s brunch. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us! Or better yet, you could pay me and I will let him come to your house to prep your next meal! Tickets are selling out fast – you better get ahold of me quickly!

If anyone wants to learn a super solid way to ensure you don’t win Mother of the Year, make your children watch you dump all of their Halloween candy into the trash three days after Halloween. I’m not gaining any fans over here today! And to think this all started with me trying to be kind and gracious to one of my children by allowing them to have a piece of candy before school for good behavior. 20 minutes later when they were still trying to decide, I put the kabashes on the whole procedure and told them they had to get in the car to go to school. They then tried to move our admittedly massive candy bowl and accidentally dropped it onto the ground were it shattered into 4,362,794 pieces. I was left with no choice. All of the candy got dumped into the trash. We have a health savings account, but I don’t know if it could cover the number of intestinal stitches that would likely result from glass-filled candy consumption. Unfortunately for me they didn’t fully grasp why trashing it was necessary. Turns out my three-year-old thinks she has a pretty high tolerance for pain and was willing to risk it. Thank God I had a spare bag of overflow candy that wouldn’t fit in our candy bowl directly after Halloween that I saved in the freezer anticipating breaking into it sometime this Spring. Apparently it will be making an appearance sooner than that. And of course, OF COURSE, this happened 60 seconds before they had to walk out the door to go to school. We’re into November now and it has become my routine to drive my kids to school every morning. I never get to do this in the pandemic-free world so I sincerely enjoy this. Alex has only driven them to school one time all year. Today just so happened to be the second day this entire semester that Alex told me he wanted to drive them. This wasn’t a big deal until the glass shard apocalypse rained down upon our kitchen right before their departure. Had this happened Any. Other. Day. This would have been Alex’s problem to clean up. I was actually somewhat excited that he was driving them to school today because it was going to give me an opportunity to get a jumpstart on my work. It was like I had miraculously gained some extra time! But oh no, fate is a cruel mistress… and she had other plans for me today. It took me a half hour to vacuum and sweep and wipe and throw laundry in and take the trash out. And, in all honesty, I think I was sadder than the kids were about the dent in our candy stash! They don’t know it but I eat way more of the Halloween candy than they do. Next year I’m going to rent kids to take along with me Trick or Treating so I’ll have a bit more buffer candy in the case of another unfortunate incident.

Did anybody else wake up this morning to a bunch of kids with matching face tattoos…with no way to get them off before church? One kid was so invested they adorned both cheeks! It was like I was going to Mass with Post Malone and Mike Tyson. I’m just praying the tattoos are fake! Knowing Scarlett she probably has her favorite parlor on speed dial and snuck the artist in the back window last night. Going to church for one day with these on is gonna be the least of my problems if I find out their senior pictures might still include them in 10 years. Hope you still love pink princesses when you’re 17, sweetheart! Apparently next year I will need to keep the Halloween candy (with its tattoo inserts) under lock and key. It was such an odd mix this year with Halloween falling on a Saturday and the same night the clocks went back. Hence Alex and I being able to sleep in later than usual while our kids somehow got up even earlier. I’m not sure how that math works out, but it probably has something to do with the lunar cycle and ocean tides. I figured they could keep themselves occupied. I wasn’t wrong. I think unicorn face tattoos are trending right now so I’m sure I won’t get any weird looks! It turns out there is a silver lining to this coronavirus pandemic… mandatory facemasks for the win! And yes, they will still be wearing these to school tomorrow because I never got around to scrubbing them off. It was the Lord’s Day. I needed to rest.

Today Alex delivered the final crushing blow to secure his spot on the throne of being the cool parent for the rest of eternity. As if I ever stood a chance. Somehow dads always seem to win that fight. (If there are any moms out there that are the cool parent in the relationship can you please reach out to me. I need all of your tricks.) Most of the day to day requirements for keeping our house afloat fall on my shoulders. Like most women. Not that I have to physically do all of the responsibilities… I’m just the one responsible for making sure they get done. Alex is happy to pick up the kids… if I ask him to. It’s my job to monitor when groceries need to be gotten, when toilets need to be scrubbed, when the kids need new leggings, when a mouse has eaten it’s way into our dishwasher (this literally happened once) along with most other household duties. I think this is the norm for most women and frankly Alex probably helps me out with these responsibilities more than 95% of other men so I really shouldn’t complain. But that extra burden and mental strain takes a lot more out of women than most men realize. We are the ones that end up rushing from task to task because we are the ones that feel the strain of exactly how long that To Do list is. And Alex always being the cool parent is a constant battle in our relationship. Whenever Alex has to stop for gas he buys all of the kids a juice box while paying. The kids don’t realize when I’m driving them somewhere that I’m already juggling 17 other errands at the same time and the idea of stopping for treats would, in my mind, somehow derail the entire next three weeks worth of carefully constructed and scheduled plans. It’s not that I don’t love them and want them to have treats… I just don’t feel like I have that luxury. (And Alex is much more laid back than I am so that probably has something to do with it as well.) Just yesterday Alex was kind enough to help me with the grocery shopping. I made the mistake of putting cereal on the list without specifying a kind. So he brought home not one, but THREE boxes of Count Chocula. (For those of you that have been out of the cereal game for a while – we might as well just open a bag of sugar and stick a spoon in it. It’d probably be healthier.) I get to be the parent that brings home Cheerios and Shredded Wheat, because we can’t both be the Count Chocula parent. I’d like my kids to see their 40’s. Last night I was up in bed doing some online Christmas shopping for the kids. I thought it would be a 20 minute task and it ended up being closer to two or three hours. Yippee. One of the final things I had to add to the cart was a Neck Gator that Rose had been begging for. (Thanks COVID.) The store I happened to be shopping at for everything else had them, but I still felt the need to shop around to see if I could get a better deal elsewhere. (And I wonder why I don’t have any free time on my hands.) I was heavily debating whether or not I wanted to add Neck Gators to our budget for the month, which I also take care of, when I pictured the look on Rose’s face when she opened up her new Neck Gator and I decided it was worth the extra money. I threw it in the online cart and was excited to be the one to make my daughter happy. It had no cool design or anything unique. Just a pink Neck Gator. She was going to be thrilled. She also genuinely needed some new masks. I don’t know what they’re doing in Kindergarten these days, but it must be fun. I can’t even explain to you the state of her mask when she’s gotten home at the end of the day a few times. She once came home with a hole – a HOLE – in a fabric mask! How does that even happen!? Did she jump off the monkey bars and catch her face on a nail!? Did they wrestle porcupines in gym!? Did someone stab her with a pencil!? Long story short I pulled the trigger and Rose currently has a brand new Neck Gator on the way to our house. Fast forward to earlier today while I was cleaning up our kitchen after lunch. You may think this means I just had to wipe crumbs off the counter. You’d be wrong. For some reason every time we “eat lunch“ in our kitchen it looks like a natural disaster of some sort has gone through. There was spaghetti sauce in Scarlett‘s hair. There were dishes of unknown origin that ended up in the sink that I genuinely don’t even know if they belong to us. There were roughly four side dishes in various states of preparation scattered across my counter as I tried desperately to get my picky eater to consume something relatively healthy (Maybe this is why I’m so uncool. Alex would have given him Count Chocula.) Mail was scattered across the counter. There was a fresh cup of coffee still in the coffee maker that hadn’t been touched. There were cleaning products spread across the stove top still trying to get stains out from the previous night’s dinner. You get the picture. I was a bit overwhelmed. And in the middle of this Alex walked into the house to show me the package that had arrived in the mail that he had ordered. He ripped into it like a four-year-old child on Christmas day grinning from ear to ear as he pulled out not one, but six different Neck Gators that he had ordered for himself and all of the kids. Six! And they were cool ones too. I’m talking mermaid print, dancing rainbows, the ones that are sure to score them some extra points in their social circles at school. Not that that matters of course. (He also got them one of a Tiger and a Panda. Which sounds cute. But they have fangs on them. They’re terrifying to look at. I’m sure a young boy would be thrilled to wear these to school, but I don’t forsee my six-year-old unicorn-loving daughter enjoying looking like a rabid panda throughout the school day. Clearly Alex saw these animals and thought they looked cool and maybe didn’t fully think the fangs through.) When my jaw hit the floor and I wasn’t sharing in his excitement like he anticipated, he got very confused and then quickly got very scared. I didn’t even know where to begin. The issue was about so much more than a Neck Gator. However, when I started fumbling through words and explaining to him that I already bought a Neck Gator, and that’s what had kept me up so late the night before, and why is he always so cool, he genuinely could not understand my frustration. And from his point of view, I get it. He just did something nice for his kids. He simply forgot to tell his wife about it. And, once again, stole the crown right off my head. Just once I want to be the cool parent! When my boring plain pink Neck Gator shows up next week I think it’s fair to say it will seem like a complete and utter disappointment at this point. My only hope is to find someone that still owns their Bedazzler from the early 90s so I can have Rose’s name bedazzled right into the side of it. Alex wins again. I almost feel bad for the poor guy because he was really just trying to do something nice. But man was I angry about it! Then he had the audacity to suggest that maybe one of the new Neck Gators would fit me since the adult size Neck Gators are too big. Yes Alex. I think teaching Sunday School like a rabid Panda will be a really good look on me. But hey, at least the Sunday School kids might think I’m cool!

My husband went on a guys trip this past weekend. (Someone should invent those for girls.) Naturally, just like every time my husband leaves, everything went, like, super well. He was gone about a half hour when Grant , who takes such a consistent two hour nap that I could probably set my clocks by it, got up an hour early. I literally cannot tell you one time in his entire life that he didn’t take a predictable nap. This caused two problems. One, I didn’t get my extra hour of baby break to get things done. Two, he was beyond ornery and just laid himself on the ground screaming and crying for a solid chunk of the rest of the evening. Alex had been gone about 45 minutes when I decided I should just have the girls take their evening bath now to get it done and out of the way. Rose prefers a shower so I made her go first. She was handling things quite well while I got dinner ready. I fed them a wholesome family meal of nothing but leftovers that I dug out of the back of the fridge. Because I am NOT cooking when Alex is out of town. Rose started screaming at me that she needed a towel from the bathroom. I yelled at her to get one… from of the bathroom… where she was. For some reason this didn’t seem to answer her urgent request. I walked towards the bathroom and told her to get one off the wall behind her. She insisted this wasn’t good enough. I pressed further. “Well, Mom, I have to clean this mess up!” My attention was now drawn towards the floor, where, surprisingly difficult to see, there was about a quarter inch of water over the entire surface. Rose, being six and new to showers, had apparently forgotten to pull the shower curtain inside the tub. So all of the water hitting the shower curtain while she showered for 15 minutes ran straight down onto the bathroom floor. So that was fun to clean up. My brother called and invited us to a bonfire shortly after this. I was rather tied up at my house so I agreed to come, but we ended up not even being able to leave to go until five minutes before their normal bedtime. But it was nice to get them out of the house and busy playing with their cousins for a couple of hours so it was worth the sacrifice. They ended up inviting my oldest to spend the night, and against my better judgment I agreed. Thereby giving up my most helpful child and best asset and I then brought their younger child home with me for a sleepover. It was only after I agreed to the trade that I realized I was definitely getting the short end of the stick. Though he was incredibly well behaved, he couldn’t change my baby’s diapers. After getting all four of them home and tucked into bed over two hours past their normal bedtime, I finally got to sit down on my couch to have a nice relaxing evening reading a book. Something I don’t get to do often enough. When I sat down to check my phone to see if I missed Alex trying to call the kids before bedtime I realized my phone was nowhere to be found. I scoured the house. The entire time a vision of Scarlett “helping”me carry my diaper bag (with phone in it) to the van in the pitch black was dancing through my mind. I didn’t know what to do. That was the only phone I had access to at the time and having my phone for the night was a nonnegotiable with Alex out of town … I just didn’t know how I was going to get it. I did not need my family to be the inspiration for a future Truman Capote novel. I had a child sleeping over at my house. What if there’s an emergency and I needed to get ahold of his parents!? One of my children was sleeping over at someone else’s house. What if there was an emergency and they needed to get ahold of me!? My husband was gone. What if they lit fireworks off the top of his head and needed to get ahold of me!? Basically Mom Brain in a nutshell. Literal constant worry about emergencies involving family members. It was around this time that I heard gunshots coming from near my neighbor’s house. You can’t make this stuff up. I live far enough out in the country that I just chalked it up to target practice prior to hunting season. But there was a little tickle in the back of my brain reminding me that nobody does target practice in pitch black. I needed this phone. I decided to give Facebook messenger a try. 11 PM was fast approaching and I didn’t even know who would be up to read my messages, but I started with Alex, and got no reply. I then moved on to my sister, and got no reply. I gave it awhile and THANK GOD Alex finally responded that he had gotten ahold of my brother and, sure enough, my phone was lying in their yard. I had located my phone, but was still unable to retrieve it. I couldn’t exactly drive over there and leave four kids at my house, and getting all four kids out of bed to take them with me was certainly not on the table either. I finally resorted to enlisting (through Alex on FB Messenger) my saint of a mother-in-law who drove over to my brother’s house at nearly 11 PM to get my phone and bring it over to me, even though she was out with friends. I definitely owe her now. (She’s probably expecting me to produce another grandchild for her in return.) After recovering my phone my mind was at ease and I drifted off into a peaceful slumber. Only to be awakened around 7 AM to somebody being in my house downstairs. I could hear them moving around. And I knew all of my kids were still in bed. I thought maybe I even heard the door open and shut. I gave it a while, thinking perhaps a family member had stopped by. But there was no phone call and no one talking. After hearing noises for a while I went downstairs and found nobody in my house. However my back door, which I KNOW I had locked was now unlocked. So I was feeling, like, super safe. Even if a family member had come over and found a way to get my door unlocked, there’s no way they would’ve used my back door! I then looked out the window to see that it had frosted overnight! I for some reason had been led to believe that the frost was reserved for the northern areas of Michigan. I had spent all summer carefully crafting and tending to my Dahlia garden. Due to late planting and some transplants that had to happen they got started quite late and had just begun blooming. To say I was ecstatic to see them finally in their glory was an understatement. I had not covered them in any way whatsoever and all of my work all summer tending to them is quite likely now a complete loss. But hey, putting in an insane amount of effort with potentially very little return is kind of what parenting is all about right? Nothing I’m not used to there. Now it was time to get breakfast for the four Littles. I had already set the bowls on the table and they were filling them up with their chosen cereal and taking turns with the gallon of milk. Grant still eats meals in his highchair because it’s just the easiest way of handling things. I hadn’t gotten him into the highchair yet so he was hanging out with the other kids by the table until I got his breakfast around. I was on the far side of the kitchen when all of a sudden I heard the unmistakable glug, glug, glug of a milk jug being emptied. I turned around in a state of utter panic. Sure enough, Grant, being his ever-helpful self, decided to pour himself a bowl of cereal. Unfortunately he lacked the skill set required to STOP pouring the milk. He had grabbed the open gallon and held it from the bottom over top of his bowl allowing the entire gallon of milk to pour out onto the table. It was everywhere. On the upholstered chairs. All over the area rug underneath the table. And of course, all over the table. It leaked down into the crack in the center of the table. I am confident we will be smelling spoiled milk in our kitchen for years to come. I cleaned it as best I could, but there is no amount of elbow grease that will fully rectify a gallon of milk being dumped onto carpet. But at least I wasn’t hosting 40 people for a birthday party at my house the following day. Because I accidentally made unalterable plans for Alex and I on Grant’s actual birthday we got to host his birthday party the day Alex was getting home from his weekend away. Which meant that I got to do nearly 100% of the planning and cleaning and organizing and baking for hosting dozens of people. And no, I’m not one of those people that is into enormous and elaborate birthday parties for their children. Not that I have any problem with people that do that, it’s just not my style. 40 people is simply the size of my immediate family without a single friend added on. Very fertile genes around here. We have four children and between my husband and each of our siblings we are tied for SMALLEST family. So at least the milk smell shouldn’t be noticed by many! And to think I came downstairs Saturday morning with delusions that I was going to read my Bible and maybe even a devotional. Instead I found myself considering adding Bailey’s to my coffee and thinking I’d get back to the book of Galatians another day. Perfect I am not.

And this story didn’t even include the part about the partial slushy that got dumped down the side of my counter and cabinets, or the fact that I had to call a washing machine repair man, or the broken glass in my living room carpet right after I finished vacuuming, or the poop smeared in my bathroom, Grant painting his arms with markers, or what it’s like to try to deal with three young children that all experienced a sleepover the night before. I probably could have turned this weekend into a book deal. But all in all I would say it was actually a pretty good weekend! But maybe my bar is just very, very low.