Even Varmits Have Mothers Too

My son talks about death so matter of factly. He thinks you get old, you get wrinkles, and then BAM! your dead. He even went so far as to tell my mom one time "Grandma...you have wrinkles, you're gonna get dead pretty soon." Just what a card-carrying memeber of the AARP wants to hear.
And then he moves on like he was just talking about the sky being blue.

And his compassion extends into the animal world as well. We were walking home from the bus stop today and there was a small dead animal in the middle of the street. I'm being generous here, calling it an animal, seeing as how it actually was a varmit. But he was dead and so I will offer him some respect.

My son goes out into the middle of the street, leans over, and gets his nose down about an inch from this dead, flat as a pancake, varmit and says "WOW....THIS IS SO COOL!!!"

And I'm left to wonder exactly where I went wrong.

Something That Started Out About Swimming, But Took On A Life Of Its Own.

Fourteen days. Fourteen more days until these children of mine are back in school. It has been a good summer, we've swam, swam and then swam just a little more. We went for many wave runner rides and did a lot of tubing up at the cottage. (My in-laws summer home on a lake). We swam in the lake every weekend, ALL. DAY. LONG. We have gone to the community pool and seen school friends, we have gone to a good friends home to swim in her pool, heck, we even bought a pool ourselves. We devoted two full months to the park district swim team, including daily practices and home and away meets.

Yes, it has been a wet summer. A summer of 7 bottles of sunscreen, a few nights of aloe when the sunscreen was not reapplied frequently enough, the purchases of 9 new swimsuits, at least 9 new beach towels, and countless floaties and pool toys. This is the summer Taco (5) learned to do a front flip off of our pier and the diving board at the pool.

In two weeks all of this wet fun will come to an end. Don't get me wrong...I am thrilled that the start of the school year is just around the corner. The start up of our routines and earlier bedtimes cannot come soon enough. It is time, the kids are ready and so am I. 3 of the kids will be at school all day, and Gracie(3) will be in preschool 3 mornings a week. I WILL BE ALONE, those 3 mornings, EVERY WEEK. It will be my very own stay at home mom utopia. I will watch Oprah, go to Target, go for walks, clean out my car, take a shower and put lotion on, all by myself. Did you get the part about me being alone? I may even shave my legs every single day. This will be a life-changing year for me, I can feel it.

As much as I am looking forward to these life style changes in the coming weeks, I will miss the kids and the lazy days of summer. I will never pass up a chance to sleep late, and now that swim team has ended, the kids and I have been in bed until 9 or 9:30 most mornings. Of course, I would never dream of sleeping in and letting Fiona (9) make her world-famous-put-'em-in-the-toaster-and-wait-for-'em-to-pop-up Eggos for the younger kids. That would be wrong. So wrong.

We've been spending time at the library, riding bikes, going out for lunch or for an afternoon Dairy Queen run, and really enjoying the days free of schedules and activities and rushing here and there. And did I mention that we have managed to do a little swimming? Oh yes, we've been enjoying this wonderful time together when we are not screaming at each other at the top of our lungs. So as much as I like to sleep in and lay around by a pool all day, the school year does need to start, for my own sanity and the safety of my children. It is time. Just like by the time next summer rolls around I will be ready for the school year to end. I will be sick of getting up in the morning, sick of activities, routines, and just want summer to be here so we don't have to go anywhere or do anything. Clearly this summer will be a distant memory by then. I will have forgotten that my kids NEVER stop fighting, or tattling, or changing clothes, or SPILLING DRINKS, or needing a snack, or saying "So, what are we going to do today?" I mean really, do these kids of mine every sit and play video games for hours like normal children do? The answer to that would be "why no, they do not." They are too darn busy following me around all day long.

And I will miss them when they go back to school.

Not My Proudest Day as a Parent

So, I thought by moving my journal to this blog I would be a bit more consistent. That has turned out to not be the case. I think my last, and only, post was almost a week ago. Hopefully, I can get better at this. Kind of hard to record a daily account of life, when you don't account daily, right? But this is my life, so actually that makes perfect sense. Even my two fledgling journalers, Choppy and Fiona, are not exactly writing in their new journals daily, and yesterday I caught Fiona writing a page and dating it the day before in an attempt to "catch-up." I appreciated her try at perfection, but explained to her that since her journal is an account of her real life, she should be honest in dating her posts, because in real life, sometimes you just can't post everyday!
So today, we had a playdate. A friend needed a couple hours alone to do some house cleaning, so I, because you know my house is always clean and company ready, said ----bring 'em over! Get your stuff done! No problem! We're not doing a thing! ----That's what a friend says, right? I may suck at keeping an organized home, but I am a good friend. Playdate went well, only problem being that My 3 girls and the 2 visiting girls made up a pack of girls in which the one lone outsider, my little 5 year old boy, we'll call him Taco, (long story, but if you knew him you'd probably be calling him Taco too). So, back to Taco...he decides to act as naughty and ornery and 5 year old boy disgusting as he possibly can in order to get the attention of this all female pack. At one point when a guest comes to you and says "Taco spit on his finger and picked his nose" you about wish you could crunch the ever lovin' life out of that Taco shell. Know what I mean? He was naughty, mean, out-of-control and everything in between, but really he just wanted to be a part of the group. Don't we all?? At one point he could even be heard saying "raise your hand if you want to play with me." Now, that is enough to make this mom's heart melt. And what did the female pack do? Why they laughed, and continued to whisper about him. My heart broke. Did I raise these heartless, nasty girls? I must have, cause I looked around and there was no other mom to blame. These were my kids, ages 9, 8, and even the 3 year old, taking pleasure in being mean to someone else, laughing at another, and excluding someone who just wanted to play in their group. In a nutshell, they succeeded in doing every single thing I always remind them not to do to another human being, using the logic that it does not feel good to be on the receiving end of it. I can only hope that what goes around comes around and of course I will be there to listen to the crying and comfort the hurting and help wipe the tears when "it" indeed, comes back around, like it will inevitably do...but I will be grateful that it is an opportunity to learn a lesson on how to treat others and hope that it is not a lesson we need to learn very often.
I've heard people say before that when your child hurts, you hurt...and today, that was true. I hurt for that sweet little blond boy who was left out and I hurt for the three mean sisters who will someday find out how it feels to be left out of the group. And I hurt because I was a kid once too, and I know how it feels to be left out and that really sucks. Kids never change, and that sucks to.