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We were driving to preschool a week or so ago with one of Mr G’s classmates. Her mom and I have been taking turns picking up the other’s child for the ride to school, because the 1pm drop-off time tends to interfere with our little people’s nap schedules.
I rather enjoy our talks on the way to preschool, because G’s little friend can be a chatterbox, coming up with completely random topics of conversation, often involving a recent viewing of Star Wars (or is it Star Trek…) On one occasion, the two kids were discussing possible names for their future siblings – they’ll both have a new brother or sister at the end of summer. ‘What about Chewbacca’ she suggested, ‘or Leia’. G wasn’t enthused, he was knee-deep in his Mats or Pierce phase at that point. (We’ve since moved on to Yogurt or John. Because John Johnson would be a great name.)
During one of our previous drives she had talked about Jesus. ‘Do you believe in Jesus?’ she asked my oldest. He was silent on the matter, possibly nodding his head in affirmation, but refusing to speak. ‘Not everyone believes in Jesus,’ she informed us, ‘I don’t know why they don’t,’ she solemnly shook her head. Like a puzzled grandmother.
But on this particular day she decided it would be a good idea to confront her classmate on some issues of concern.
‘How come you always play at the sand table and the block corner at school,’ she inquired innocently enough. But, call it women’s intuition, I sensed there was more to her line of questioning than mere curiosity about his recreational preferences.
As males everywhere have done for centuries, he didn’t really answer her question. She was persistent, though. ‘How come you’re mean to your friends?’ Ah hah, I knew it. Mr G was doing his utmost to ignore her, so she asked the question again. He stalled with an ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.’ Is there some kind of textbook boys receive at birth regarding communication with girls?
Undeterred, she reiterated her question to which he replied: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Shameless, really. She continued by pointing out his failure to share sand with his classmates at the sand table. But his conscience wasn’t pierced as she might have hoped. ‘Well you need sand at the sand table,’ he explained his point of view. Common sense, really.
‘But the sand is for everybody,’ she pointed out in exasperation to her silent audience.
The intervention ended abruptly when we pulled into the preschool parking lot and both kids jumped out of the car and ran inside. Their differences forgotten. During my most recent volunteer opportunity at the school I noted that Mr. G was still helping himself to all of the sand at the sand table.
Perhaps she should enlist the help of another classmate, or teacher, for the second round of confrontation.
Unpacking the two enormous boxes filled with china has been low on the priority list around here. But today, a little over a week after we schlepped our junk down the block, I decided to ’seize the day’ and put away said china.
I enlisted my oldest to help me unwrap each piece and you’d have thought I’d invited him to tour a chocolate factory, such was his level of excitement. Sweet child of mine.
As I sat down in front of the cabinet with freshly unwrapped plate in hand, I noticed something. The top drawer of the cabinet had what appeared to be pock marks all over it. While the old cabinet certainly has its fair share of scratches here and there, I was quite certain that I’d never noticed these marks before.
Naturally, my first reaction was a dramatic one.
‘What on earth did those Russian movers do? I can’t believe they ruined my beautiful china cabinet!’
To be honest, it’s not my favorite piece of furniture – not even close. But I still didn’t want it to have marks all over it. Then slightly-more-rational Nicola stepped in.
‘We moved in over a week ago. I’ve looked at this cabinet several times since then. I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed damage like this by now.’
Maybe it wasn’t the movers?
So naturally my thoughts flew to defendant number 1, Jason. But as I couldn’t think of anything he’d done in the previous days that could bring about such catastrophe, I decided he wasn’t to blame.
Which left defendants 2 and 3: ‘les incompetents’.
‘What happened here?’ I inquired of my eldest – the one who can say more than ‘no’ emphatically.
‘I don’t know’ came his sure reply. ‘Did you do this,’ I asked him. ‘I don’t think so,’ he waffled, ‘maybe Henners did it.’
Entirely possible of course. I dropped the matter – for the moment. I’d have to ponder this case a bit more.
Upon closer inspection I realized the marks on the cabinet actually had more definition to them than I’d originally noticed. Without a doubt, they were of a vertical nature and could only have been made, deliberately, with a knife! Not from the china cabinet being dropped on a bed of gravel as I’d originally suspected. I suddenly had visions of either boy standing by the cabinet whittling away with a stray knife they’d found, while we were busy straining our backs lifting their junk. Jerks.
I changed my interrogation tactics.
‘Did you use a knife to make these marks?’ I inquired of boy child number one, who was devoting all of his energy to unwrapping china.
‘Um, yes’ he replied. ‘What kind of knife,’ I insisted – wondering if it was a steak knife or an ordinary one. ‘A silver one.’ Ah, ordinary kitchen knife.
‘When did you do this?’
‘Yesterday.’ Of course, the oldest boy child uses yesterday in the most liberal sense of the word. It could mean twenty four hours ago, or last Christmas. But, really, what did it matter. I had solved the whodunit portion of the crime. But that left….the punishment.
‘What do you think your punishment should be?’ I demanded, because, honestly I was out of clever ideas for how to punish graffiti artists.
‘Well, I’ll never ever do it again’ he solemnly swore. As if that was going to cut it.
It was clear to me he didn’t understand the meaning of the word punishment. ‘What can I do to you so you remember never to do this again?’ I tried to explain the concept. The puzzled look on his face led me to expand the statement: ’should I spank you so you don’t do this again?’
‘No,’ he replied quickly – suddenly he ‘got’ it.
‘Maybe you could tickle me,’ he generously suggested.
I suppressed the urge to laugh out loud. ‘I don’t think tickling you is going to discourage you from doing this again in the future.’
So I did what ‘out-of-ideas’ mothers have been doing for centuries. ‘Wait until daddy comes home.’
Mr Johnson returned within twenty minutes. Destruction of property is more of a hot button issue for him than it is for me. I tend to get angrier over outright defiance and things like making messes for no reason whatsoever.
Mr Johnson walked through the door and I summoned him to the china cabinet, where I was still sitting on the floor unwrapping wretched plates and cups and saucers. ‘Notice anything different about the cabinet?’ I asked in a voice that made it clear: there was something to be noticed.
But, really, it’s pretty noticeable and it didn’t take him more than two seconds to spot the problem. After establishing the basics of the crime, Jason turned to his beloved oldest son and uttered yet another parental cliche: ‘what were you thinking?’
‘Maybe Henners set a bad example,’ Mr. G suggested. When all else fails – try to blame the younger brother? I wasn’t as successful at suppressing my snorting this time around – he’d caught me off-guard.
Well, Mr. Johnson didn’t have any fine punishment ideas either. So the matter has yet to be resolved. I surveyed some preschool moms for ideas. One suggested enlisting his help in fixing it – but I don’t even know what that would entail. We could basically try and hide the marks with shoe polish, but there is no undoing this. Another suggested taking away ‘computer time.’
What’s computer time?
So, the case is suspended until this evening.
Parenting can be ridiculous sometimes.
I guess I just never envisioned someday I would: grow up, get married, have 2.5 boys, live in Calgary….and push a lawnmower, along a sidewalk, in the rain, from my ‘old’ house to my ‘new’ house. While nearly 27 weeks pregnant.
Granted it’s not a particularly lengthy distance between the two homes, but I had to cross one of Calgary’s major thoroughfares along the way. And, frankly, one doesn’t see a lot of people pushing lawnmowers around town; probably even fewer pregnant women pushing lawnmowers…
Lest anyone should think poorly of Herr Johnson for allowing his nearly-in-her-third-trimester wife to push a lawnmower around the city…..well, I offered. He has, after all, done the lion’s share of lifting and moving boxes. So I swallowed my pride and pushed the mower-we-haven’t-used-for-nine-months so he wouldn’t have to lift it into the car. I’m a regular Good Samaritan.
In addition to all the ideal, no-expense-spared moving services I mentioned in my previous post, I should have added another: hire someone to gather all the remnants that didn’t make it into any other boxes and move them to your new house.
It never ceases to amaze me how much crap gets left over at the end – stuff that doesn’t get packed for one reason or another, because we’re apparently thinking: ‘oh, let’s just stick that in the car.’ Well, after the movers left us on Friday night, we had enough stuff remaining in the ‘old’ house to warrant renting a second truck and set of movers.
A friend who’d helped me pack up the kitchen (in the old house) stopped by to help clean said kitchen. Two days after we’d moved. ‘You still have a LOT of stuff in here,’ she remarked. She was right. It looked like we hadn’t actually moved yet.
The movers were a delightful pair of Russian men who arrived at the end of their workday to earn some extra cash. They pulled up in a (used-to-be) electronics truck with faded lettering. The ‘main’ guy walked in the house and surveyed the scene. I was so proud of the way we’d stacked all the boxes into the downstairs area to expedite the move as much as possible. I imagined how impressed they would be with our efficiency and organization – how they might think we have this moving thing down pat.
‘Oh, this is a LOT of stuff’ he remarked in his heavy accent. ‘This will take much more than two hours,’ he shook his head. He probably saw his Friday night disappear before his eyes. And I saw my moving budget smashed to smithereens before mine.
His sidekick was about 60 years old with white hair. I’d imagined Jason would leave the loading to the movers, but he really couldn’t stand by and watch while someone his father’s age carried all our junk. So, in an effort to ease his conscience and speed things along, he carried about as much as they did. I say ‘about’, because he conveniently disappeared as the particularly heavy things were being moved. And I caught him tapping boxes to assess their weight; strategically steering clear of the back-breaking ones.
‘How many kids do you have?’ the main man asked him. Jason told him we have 2 boys. ‘Oh, I thought you had (a lot) more because of all the boxes of toys,’ he mentioned judged. And to think I actually thought our kids had less toys than (American) kids their age. Guess not.
As we waded through boxes in the new house, we used a multi-tiered approach to keep the kids occupied. The first strategy was setting up a playroom in the basement. But of course, they had little interest in playing in a room that we weren’t in. The next strategy was to let them watch a movie on the laptop. But, since the other movies had been packed in a box, that meant they had to watch Madagascar roughly three times in one day. A terrific little movie that features such choice lines as: ‘of COURSE we’re going to throw poop at them‘ which I didn’t realize until I heard Mr. G repeating it to his brother during some outside playtime.
Charmed, I’m sure.
Despite our best efforts, it was painfully obvious that the move sucked as much for the little people as it did for us. It didn’t help that G missed church on Sunday (too tired, no clothes to wear) and preschool on Monday (yet another Canadian holiday). His only social interaction for 5 days straight would be with us. Quelle horreur.
‘Maybe we can go over to meet our new neighbors’, he suggested one evening. Clearly bored. Clearly not our child.
By day three we hadn’t made much progress in the unpacking of the thousand boxes that littered our new domicile. Jason was walking around in boxer shorts and a zip-up cardigan. Because he could find nothing else to wear. Our oldest had to wear a pair of his brother’s sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt. I’d taken to wearing a pair of pajamas – apparently for several days in a row – because G looked at me one morning and said: ‘are those your favorite pair of jammies?’
As we seemed to take one step forward, and twenty back with regards to getting settled, my limited patience evaporated. ‘You’re kind of crabby’ my oldest remarked. Another one of my phrases coming back to bite me. Earlier we had walked back from the old house to the new so Jason could use all available cargo space in the station wagon. G looked at me and said: ‘I don’t get you….and I don’t get daddy or Henners either.’
Perhaps if I stopped speaking altogether, my family wouldn’t be able to recycle my clever phrases to my detriment.
If you have adequate resources, moving really is a snap. Hire someone to come in and pack up all your stuff. Hire someone to clean the house you’re leaving. Hire someone to clean the house you’re moving into. Hire someone to move, unload, unpack and assemble everything. Hire someone to watch your kids while you oversee everything – or take a nap. Hire a chef to deliver meals and snacks to your house for at least the first three days while you get settled. Easy.
But, absent the cash or expense account necessary for that kind of move, the process is a drag. Not even a drag….loathsome, horrible, life-diminishing, something to avoid at all costs. Around 6pm on Sunday I looked at Jason and said: ‘I’ve lost the will to live,’ having cleaned, packed, carried and cleaned more in 3 days than I had in eight months. ‘That’s interesting,’ he replied, ‘because I lost mine several hours ago.’ So we quit for the day, got pizza for dinner (again!) and eventually watched the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy on our laptop. With the Hen firmly ensconced between us, intruding on our lame excuse for a date.
There’s something wrong with this picture: the five year old is fast asleep in his bed by 7pm. While the baby is up until well past 9.30pm. And up by 6.30am. Can someone send him a memo and order him to sleep more?
Given my opinion on moving, it’s somewhat amusing to note that in our not quite 13 year marriage….we’ve had 13 different addresses, and we’ve moved our entire household (aka every possession we own) 9 times. That’s a lot of moving, frankly. Or, conversely…that’s not a lot of fun.
The moving process is a lot like camping. I think…since I haven’t actually ever camped. But it’s reliant upon a can-do/make-do mentality that I associate with camping. Like, when you can’t find any of your oldest kid’s underwear – despite having strategically stashed pairs in several boxes to avoid just this scenario – you retrieve a 2T pair from his brother’s bucket. Voila.
(If only Jason could squeeze into a pair of 2T underwear…)
If you need to make pancakes for your family, but don’t have much besides a frying pan and a spatula – just scoop out a cup of mix with a sippy cup. Fill said sippy cup with milk and add that to the mix. Along with an egg and a small fist full of sugar. Works just fine. And if you don’t have maple syrup – just warm up some honey and cut up some fruit.
Want to make peanut butter chocolate chip cookies but can’t find your mixer, or your chocolate chips? Use a potato masher to incorporate the butter and the sugar. Use dark brown sugar instead of the called-for ‘light’ and natural peanut butter instead of regular. And add cranberries instead of chocolate chips. Kids will eat almost any kind of cookie. And so will I, frankly. Even if it’s crumbly and ‘weird’ tasting.
But after a while, say 24 hours, the novelty of ‘roughing it’ in your own home, will wear off. You’ll grow weary of not being able to find any bowls for cereal, or towels so you can take a shower. You’ll kiss your baby’s head only to wonder if the strange smell is your breath or his hair. Only to realize it’s probably both – since you can’t find your toothbrush, and the kid hasn’t had a bath in a while. And neither have you. You’ll tire of unpacking and trying to squeeze your stuff into a differently configured space. You’ll vow to get rid of all your belongings save the most essential items. You’ll swear you’ll never move again.
Well, at least not for a year or so.
Do peanut butter cookies and milk constitute dinner? Because I can’t eat pizza again.
This is the tale of two families.
Tuesday morning, as I was sitting in front of the computer, still in a zombie-like state thanks to a bout of insomnia and wakinng up at an early hour, the Hen climbed into my lap. Ostensibly to eat the oatmeal his dad had made for me. I set my chin upon his head and smelled his hair: it smelled like mango.
Lipgloss.
Because the previous day had been another banner day at the Johnson house. What is it with Mondays anymore?
I’d attempted to ‘take a little rest’ during the Hen’s nap. As I lay there, my oldest came into the room with some news. ‘I accidentally spilled some milk….but it’s okay, I cleaned it up.’ I was too tired to voice any displeasure slash concern. ‘Okay, thanks for cleaning it up,’ I muttered, imagining a pool of milk on the kitchen floor. He returned a few minutes later. ‘I got some more milk, and this time I didn’t spill any.’ ‘That’s great,’ I replied wishing I could just sleep for even five minutes.
Eventually I made my way downstairs. I saw the sodden dish towel that had been used to clean up the spill. It was still lying on the kitchen floor, crumpled up. Wet…soon to be stinky. I picked it up and threw it in the laundry pile: aka, the basement steps.
But several hours later, as I was walking by the stairs, I felt a huge damp spot underneath my feet. I stopped and looked at the carpet. ‘Did you spill the milk on the carpet?’ I asked. This wasn’t the scenario I’d pictured – at all. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘But I cleaned it up.’ Hence the gynormous white stain on the beige carpet, I guess.
Jason and I were both in the kitchen packing or getting dinner ready or both. We came into the dining room and found my makeup bag. The contents strewn all over the table and floor. The boys giggling maniacally. The Hen looking like John Travolta from Grease, thanks to the cosmetics in his hair. My mango lipgloss container open, with huge child-sized finger marks (craters) in the surface. Presumably to scrape up enough gloss for the baby’s hairdo.
What happened to common sense, decorum, propriety? Reasonableness….
As they were both screaming at the dinner table, a frequent occurrence these days, we hung our heads hoping the ground would open up and eat us alive.
Eventually the crying stopped. We looked up to see the Hen doing fist bumps into mid-air, his new favorite thing. It’s an unsettling feeling, looking at one’s own flesh and blood and failing to see even a glimmer of oneself in said child. I look at my oldest, and I recognize so much as belonging to either me or his dad. But the Hen seems to be entirely his own person. All we can conclude is that he will be the president of his fraternity some day. Completely unlike either of his parents.
And then there was Wednesday.
The Hen had only woken up once during the night, and didn’t start jabbering in his crib until about 7.15am. Mr. G didn’t come in my room for his morning snuggle until after 7am, either. These days, that’s considered a major lie-in.
There was not a single tantrum before, during or after breakfast. People at their food. They shared toys. I returned from a coffee date with a friend to find the boys sliding down the stairs on pillows. Playing together. They gave each other bites of dessert – voluntarily – and played with marbles, neither one hoarding more than his share.
We spent the first half of the day scratching our heads, wondering what we’d done the previous evening to set this chain of events in motion. Was there a way to replicate it? Did the kids wear ‘lucky’ pajamas? Is it better for the Hen to have water instead of milk to drink at night? Is there a magical time to put them to bed that guarantees they will not wake up before 7?
I’m guessing it was either a fluke or a gesture of goodwill on their parts.
‘Twas good while it lasted.
When I married the professor nearly 13 years ago, there was obviously a lot I didn’t know about him. But as with any risky venture, I just hoped I knew ‘enough’ and that whatever was unveiled in the following years wouldn’t be too terrible.
This leap of faith has paid off reasonably well. Nothing horrific has (yet) been unveiled. His inability to throw anything away has been annoying, and I find his claim that he just has a terrible memory hard to believe….when he can recite the entire Wanda Sykes monologue from the recent Correspondents’ Dinner, recall finer plot points from all 2000 Seinfeld episodes and cite random sports statistics. Terrible memory, I don’t think so. Selective – yes. He just doesn’t want to remember anything I tell him.
But what I really did not know about him is that he is apparently made up of kryptonite. I don’t know this for a fact, but I bet a scientific analysis of his body composition will reveal trace amounts of the stuff. How else to explain the fact that he breaks watches, simply by placing them on his arm?
It’s strange, actually. He has had many, many watches in the time we’ve shared a domicile. Some have lasted longer than others, but eventually (within a month, or three or six…a year, max) they just stop working. Nothing dramatic happens, it’s just as if there’s some chemical reaction between watch and forearm which makes for incompatible working conditions.
For his 30th birthday I bought him a Swiss Army watch. While certainly not in the same category as a Rolex or Cartier watch, it was one of the pricier gifts I’d gotten him. Within six months it had completely stopped working. I sent it to the watch repair place in Kokomo, who kept it for two weeks and sent it back. Fixed, or so they claimed. It didn’t work. I sent it back, they sent him a brandnew watch. It was broken in a matter of months. I can’t recall if I sent it to Kokomo a third time or not, but suffice it to say it’s sitting in a drawer somewhere.
So when we prepared to move to Calgary he sheepishly requested yet another watch. Since his 35th birthday was coming up, I concurred. This time he picked it out on Zappos and ordered it himself. I steered clear of the whole ordeal. By Thanksgiving (less than 5 months after buying it) the watch had stopped working. Thinking the battery was to blame, he stopped at a jeweller after Christmas to have the battery replaced. It worked…for about a month and then it just stopped.
We found the empty box with the warranty booklet as we were cleaning out the basement last weekend. ‘You should probably call Zappos’ I said, upon realizing we’d had the blessed watch all of nine months. So he called Zappos, which really has to be the best customer service organization on the planet. Those who know me fairly well, know I’ve spent a good portion of my life on that website, ordering shoes, returning shoes and occasionally keeping a pair or two. While their prices might be slightly higher than other places, the free shipping and easy returns have made me a fan. (I wonder if there’s a fan page on Facebook…even though I wouldn’t join it, much as I heart them.
The person Jason spoke to could not have been nicer. On Thursday a brandnew (again!) watch will arrive at our ‘home’ in Indiana. (Look for it, Nina…) Jason has a free return label to send back his broken watch – though I’m guessing it has to be mailed from the States, not Canada. And they gave him a $20 online coupon to use towards his next purchase. (Not another watch.)
In all probability, the Suunto may will not last. But at least we have Zappos.
Some Facebook friends recently welcomed a new baby into their home. Curiously absent from the birth announcement, for the first 48 hours of the little person’s life at least, was the name they had bestowed upon him. From the cryptic status updates it would seem they had no name for him, at least not initially. Whether that means (1) they approached the birth with a ‘name’ that suddenly didn’t fit when the little guy made his appearance, or (2) they’d never had a name and wanted to meet him first….I don’t know.
Either way, I was puzzled and a teensy bit judgmental. They’d had nine months, how could they not have a name for the child?
And then, as usually happens when I have a moment of judgment upon another…I realized the same thing could happen to us. Meaning, at this point, it seems entirely possible that we’ll arrive at the hospital with neither a ‘hospital bag’ or a ‘name’ for boy 3.
With our firstborn, I’d settled on his name when I was in college. Probably before I even knew Jason. So it was a little difficult when Jason announced, after a names discussion, (once we knew we were expecting a child) that he didn’t care for the moniker. Though I was a bit ‘disappointed’, I couldn’t stand the thought of naming our child something only one of us liked, so we moved on. Ironically, settling on two names: the Hen’s current middle name and our previous main contender for B3. Apparently we’re so ‘green‘ lazy, we even recycle our names..
But one day, miraculously, Jason announced that he’d thought about it and decided we should go with my original favorite name. And thus, our firstborn was named. Well before the end of the second trimester. (Of course, the middle name didn’t get finalized until after the birth because Jason just couldn’t decide how he wanted to honor soccer star Thierry Henry…he went with Henry.)
The process was even easier with the Hen. We’d returned to our original list and selected his current middle name. Out of the blue I suggested the name of a childhood acquaintance. Jason latched onto it, and thus he was named. First and middle names chosen before the end of the first trimester.
And then there were three. We reviewed our original lists and preferences and settled on a name we’d considered throughout each pregnancy. Of course, it had never been chosen, which might actually MEAN something. (Like, maybe we didn’t like it as much as we thought???) Jason randomly suggested a middle name, and we were done.
Except we weren’t. The more I thought about it, the less sure I felt. When I said the name aloud, it felt weird in my mouth. I wasn’t sure it ‘fit’ with the other boys’ names. It seemed too ‘out there’ even for our internationally-named crew.
And I began to voice my hesitation aloud. To the man who thought we were ‘done’ with this whole thing. He wasn’t pleased.
So it’s back to square one. And now, since we’re almost at the 100-days-to-go mark, I’ll solicit the input of my faithful readers.
The ‘rules’ are:
1. Needs to be a little unusual, since Johnson is the commonest of surnames.
2. Must be easy to pronounce and spell.
3. And, preferably, no more than 6 letters (and containing an ‘N’ and ‘O’ if at all possible).
4. And it cannot be in the top 400 names of the social security name index. Which means Noah cannot be a contender…cute as it is.
Now that the professor is basically finished with his first year of teaching in the frozen tundra, our home life has morphed into a state of (even more) lazy chaos. Most days find at least 50% of the residents in our home wearing their pajamas until well into the afternoon. These days, the Hen is taking his late morning/early afternoon nap wearing the same outfit he went to sleep in the previous night. On Saturday afternoon, as our (parental) irritation level reached the red alert stage, I told Jason ‘we need to get out of the house.’ He looked at me curiously. ‘You realize, only two of us are actually dressed, right?’ As he cast an accusing glance at me..still in my pajamas…and the Hen, wearing a onesie. (So instead of going outside we made pancakes and counted down the minutes of the remaining three hours until the boys could be put to bed.)
I mean if you’re just packing trying to pack what’s the point of looking nice?
The only positive of moving house for the second time in 9 months is that at least I didn’t have to do the packing the first time around. (That, and we’re moving to a place with a dishwasher.) It took a group of 4 adults about three hours to pack up my entire house last August. It has taken me several weeks, and I’m nowhere near finished. Maybe that’s because those professional packers didn’t have two small unpackers underfoot. There was no one frolicking in the crumpled paper, making ‘nests’. No one getting into the art that was put aside for packing only to break the glass on a frame into a thousand pieces. No one capitalizing on their mother’s diverted attention by doing completely absurd things…like dumping gold glitter onto the kitchen floor, or taking long strands of uncooked spaghetti and breaking them into tiny pieces to use as ‘cargo’ for toy cars. Or taking an open bag of chocolate chips and sprinkling them all over the carpet.
I’ve since learned if Mr. G is darting in and out of a room, looking at me while laughing hysterically…it means his brother is somewhere doing something he is not supposed to. Aided and abetted by our oldest.
In celebration of Mother’s Day the Hen decided to wake up at 4am. As I walked the few steps down the hall to his bedroom, rehearsing all the arguments and refusals I would bestow on this ridiculous 20 month old, I decided to take along some water in case he was thirsty. He readily accepted the glass and lay down in his crib. Home free, I thought. Mistakenly. Several minutes later he could be heard talking to himself in his crib. I lay in my bed and hoped he wouldn’t start crying again. He must not have because I eventually drifted off to sleep. Only to be awakened by my oldest coming in for his 6am ’snuggle’. Eventually Jason did as fathers everywhere did on this special day…got out of bed to go make me some breakfast, taking the kids with him.
When I came downstairs an hour or so later, there were cards on the table for me. The writing on one was particularly ‘authentic’ looking. ‘Did, G write this?’ I asked incredulously. ‘Well, he did the I’s and the A’s….so I had to squeeze in the remaining letters around those. ‘ It explained the strange looking M’s.
After lunch, the non-napping G came into my room to show me some ‘treasures’ he’d found. He got a little rowdy and ended up injuring me. I sent him out of the room. Disgruntled, he proclaimed: ‘I’m not going to snuggle with you for two nights!’. If only he really meant that he’d be canceling my 6am wake up call for the next two days – I could find it within myself to be okay with that. He continued on to his brother’s room where he relayed the breaking news to him too: ‘I’m not going to snuggle with my mom for two nights.’
At church today, the Pastor sincerely likened the love of a mother to God’s love for us. He went on to say, ‘but God loves us even more than our mothers (love us).’
I think we were supposed to be ‘blown away’ by that revelation. Not me. All I could think was, thank goodness for that! I’d hate to think my current state of impatience was somehow the pinnacle of love.
There are families in this world who are regarded as active, outdoorsy types. The kind of people who name their kids ‘Glacier’ or ‘Avalanche’, who register at Cabela’s or REI for their baby showers instead of Babies R’ Us. Their friends will, when talking about them, shake their heads in awe about the crazy camping trip from which they just returned. Or the insane exercise schedule they maintain. How they’re so fit and in shape, it’s just unreal.
I mean, no one has ever referred to the Johnsons in this manner – but I’ve heard it said about ‘other’ people. Like the people who lived across the street from us in Indiana. The man was retired, but spent most of his day in pursuit of physical fitness. Spinning classes at the ‘Y’, laps at the local pool, lengthy rides on his bike in full regalia and early morning jogging sessions showcasing his terra cotta colored chest that hasn’t seen an extra ounce of fat in many years. His wife, equally fit and toned, could be seen going for a morning run/walk on most days. She even had back surgery once and was outside the next day with her fitness buddies….making a lap around the block with her walker.
I observed all this activity while eating ice cream on my couch, courtesy of the enormous window in our living room.
So it is something of a ‘big deal’ that the Johnsons have been trying to be more active as of late. Following a series of dreaded ‘weighing appointments’ (ob visits) in which the scale announced a number that was considerably higher each time despite my certainty that I wasn’t doing anything crazy in the eating department, I decided to start exercising a bit. Some walks around the neighborhood. Occasionally lifting the 5lb weights I’ve been schlepping from house to house for the last decade or so. Nothing that most regular people would consider exercise, though I certainly do.
And then Jason followed suit. Starting with his own solitary walks around the neighborhood, followed by occasional glances at his bike…that has been sitting in our kitchen since last October. He even signed up for a soccer league for the first time in a good 8 years.
So, it only makes sense that Mr. G – inspired by his parents’ newfound commitment to physical fitness – would follow suit.
It started with vocalizing his desire to ride a bike. Perhaps a perfectly reasonable request coming from a 5 year old’s mouth. Except…..he’d received a bike for his 3rd birthday. Two years ago. And, aside from sitting on it in our driveway a few times, never rode it. His interest in the bike was so minimal that we decided just to leave it in my mom’s garage. In Indiana.
A day or so after he started the bike campaign of 2009 I came across my neighbor on one of her frequent outdoor walks. During the course of our conversation it was revealed that she had an extra bike and I had a child who wanted a bike. By the time I returned home, she’d left the bike by the front steps. Of course this meant we had to go to Wal-Mart to get a helmet and some training wheels; the least we could do for our future Lance Armstrong.
Around the same time he started the bike campaign, Mr. G also started the baseball campaign of 2009. Almost as if he knew that it was the one request his father would never deny. Suddenly Jason started walking around the house berating himself for not having signed his firstborn up for t-ball or little league or whatever it is 5 year olds do with a bat and ball. He talked about wanting to buy Mr. G a baseball glove because he clearly yearned for one.
So we went to Wal-Mart to pick up our sports supplies. Soccer socks for Jason. Training wheels and a helmet for Mr. G. And sandals for the Hen – because the ’size-too-small’ sandals we’d been forcing onto his feet were difficult to remove….and left indentations in his flesh.
Of course we just ‘happened’ to walk past the baseball aisle in the process. G saw his chance – to tap into his father’s dreams of having a son who plays baseball – and reiterated his requests for a bat and ball. And glove. Unfortunately his cruel realistic mother stepped in and okayed purchasing the t-ball, bat and ’stand’ only. ‘If he’s really interested, we can buy a glove later,’ I reasoned, skeptic that I am.
This picture demonstrates the SPEED at which the ‘bike riding’ is taking place. A 20 month old boy can keep up….by walking.
Here we have Mr. Johnson fulfilling one of his dreams – teaching his son to hit a ball (on a stick). The next picture (not featured) captured their first baseball-related argument: over placement of hands on the bat. After G hit the ball about 3 times he said: ‘I’m done now.’ And walked away.
So little brother got a chance to hit a ball once or twice, before he also walked away.
And they both just played in the dirt. At least the Hen is wearing his new sandals..
The guest blogger is back to clear his name. OK not really. I admit it I melted the kids’ sippy cup lids and the pan I was “steaming” them in and I dulled a knife beyond recognition trying to extract said lids from said pan only to find that all of the articles were indeed a total loss. I may also have something to do with the insanity of these little beings that seem to follow us all over the place, while sneezing in our faces, fighting over objects that have no discernible value to anyone only to abandon them after winning the fight, kicking us either in A. the jewels or B. the container of their future sibling (you can do the math I assume) while riding in the shopping cart and begging, yes begging to get a t-ball bat and ball only to take two swings and say “That’s enough, you can carry it home now”.
So of course one of us is blameless in all of this. She is the princess and we are all gigantic boulder sized peas under the mattress. So if we are to change our ways and give her the respect and deference she deserves we will need to listen to the words of one far wiser than we. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Mr. T. I pity the child that does not heed his wisdom, or the woman who dresses like his back up singers.
