Jedi-Mama

So it rained all weekend.

The kind of rain that makes you happy to be indoors, with the lamps on, a hot cup of homemade chai tea (Because, let’s face it.  Ain’t nobody goin’ out in the rain for Starbucks take-out.), and a good book.  And that, people, is precisely what happened pretty much all weekend long at the Jedi Manor.  Hubs said late last night, “You don’t have a blog post up for tonight.”  Nope.  Because I had no idea how I was going to make the weekend seem exciting, and I was at a fantastically delicious spot in the book, when the mystery was about to be revealed.  I threw the blog under the bus without a second thought.

And then, as any good author does, the mystery in my book WAS NOT revealed, and now I have to read further  How on earth can I manage to fold laundry and wipe the hairspray fallout that feels like polyurethane off of my bathroom sink when I need to keep reading?

First world problems.  Yes.

On Friday night, the boy and I were going to an event.  A great speaker had come to Small Town, USA, and we had every intention of buying tickets at the door and joining good friends of ours in the audience, and then two things happened:

1.  It was pouring rain.

2.  The boy sat down to read his book on the sofa, with the fireplace burning, because he has to finish this book for his advanced composition class.

I was helpless to make a sound decision.  Do we shut the fireplace down and put on heavy sweatshirts and go out, with Mama’s hair suffering from all the rain?  Or do we skip and text our friends to say, “Yeah… the event just isn’t going to happen for us,” and settle into the sofa permanently for the evening?

We chose option 2.  The scale tipper was that the boy wasn’t overly interested in going, because his life had been shut down by his parents until he’d finished reading this book.  Procrastination is the boy’s undergraduate degree.

So that was Friday night.  Thing 2 was plum beat from running wild and hopping, jumping, bouncing, dancing, and getting into trouble all day long, so he went to bed at 7:00.  I made homemade French dip sandwiches, after simmering a roast in the crockpot all day long.  The rain poured and poured.  It was the perfect evening.

We woke up Saturday to more rain.  The boy resumed his spot on the sofa, because he wanted his life and privileges back, which would only come by him reading the final sentence and getting his paper written.

Hubs went to help his dad build a cabinet.

Thing 2 took a three-hour nap, because his bedroom was so dark with the overcast sky.

So I read my book, too.

And then I got the boys dressed and prettied-up, because our fun friend, Alyssa, was in town from Very Far Away, USA.  Alyssa is a professional photographer who understands all of the things that her camera is capable of doing.  She had traveled nearly a thousand miles to be here in Small Town, visiting family, and we pounced on her.  She took the boys’ portraits.

Thing 2 was less than cooperative, because he was not interested in looking at her camera lens and grinning.  What he WAS interested in doing was eating rocks out of the dirt.

The clouds broke up for a bit during our photo shoot, so I treated the boys to ice cream afterwards.  We went to the park, where Thing 2 attempted to push another family’s stroller.  Thing 2, you see, has THIS THING for pushing wheeled vehicles around.  Strollers fall into the category of Wheeled Vehicles, so they are fair game.  This family’s two children were on the playground equipment, and Thing 2 simply took hold of their stroller and started to push it forward.  I grabbed him and said, “Honey, this isn’t ours.  Let’s go slide.”

The stroller-owning mother said, “Hey!  That’s our stroller!”

“Yes,” I replied.  “My son was trying to push it around.  He has a thing for wheels!  It must be the BOY in him!”  I was friendly.  I laughed.  I added, “Just wait until your little man can walk!  I bet he’ll push everyone’s strollers around, too.”

She glared at me and restated, “That is our stroller!”

Okay, then.  The boy and I worked very hard to distract Thing 2 from the Wheeled Vehicle sitting so close to him.  We did the slides and chased him, and still… he broke free, ran back to the stroller, and gave it another small push forward.

The stroller-owning mother came over to the stroller, and moved it.  “Please don’t push our stroller,” she said.

I apologized, and then, when I turned to look at the boy, I made HUGE, FREAK-OUT eyeballs at him, which clearly stated, “WEIRDO ON THE PREMISES!”  He and I shared a secret smile.

Maybe she had gold bars stored in the stroller.  Maybe she had lottery-style cash beneath the folded blankets.  Maybe she’d bought an exotic tropical bird off the black market and was hiding him in the diaper bag at the bottom of the stroller.

The stroller-owning dad had the couple’s little boy, who was slightly younger than Thing 2 by the slide, where he was sitting.  He was sitting on the ground, and the dad wouldn’t let  him slide down the baby slide.  He also had his dog on a leash, who was every bit as old as Methuselah had been.

Very.  Old.  Dog.

His whiskers were white.  His eyes were filming over.  He was elderly and looked like the very kindest soul of a dog in the entire free world.

Thing 2 went clamoring over to the dog, intent on waving at him and possibly getting away with a little doggie love-pat to the elderly head.  The man pulled back the leash, so that he nearly whip-lashed Methuselah.  “Leave our dog alone,” he said.

The boy and I packed up Thing 2, and we went home.

It had started to rain again anyway.

We stopped for take-and-bake pizzas, because I’d already cooked on Friday night, and I wasn’t looking forward to doing it two nights in a row.

It poured rain again on Saturday evening, so we read more books.

I still don’t know WHAT WAS SAID THAT MADE THE GIRL DRIVE SO FAST FROM ANGER, SO THAT SHE ENDED UP WRECKING THE JEEP AND KILLING HERSELF.  It’s driving me nuts that I can’t guess this mystery, or put two-and-two together, or use the foreshadowed clues.  This author is good.

The boy finished his book.  He wrote his paper.  He regained all television, cell phone, video game and golfing privileges once again.  His twelve-year-old life was restored.

So that was Saturday night.

On Sunday, it continued to rain.  We went to church.  Hubs and the boy watched some marathon of shows on TV about ancient mysteries.  Those mysteries didn’t interest me nearly as much as the one in my 438-page book did.  I kept reading.

Thing 2 demolished our house.

Hubs and I went to the grocery store.

We had dinner.

And that was Sunday night.

I told you that I couldn’t make our weekend sound exciting.  What it was was laid-back, relaxing and precious.  (Except for the old bat who wouldn’t let Thing 2 push her stroller; that part wasn’t all that precious.)

Only I still don’t know how my book is going to turn out, so I’d better get back to it.

Y’all carry on and have a lovely Monday evening.

Yesterday at school, while I was teaching PE, one of my kids’ parents walked in and said, “Listen.  We had your blog pulled up at the office this morning, and everyone was trying to convince me that those snapshots of the messy houses were really your house.”

Y’all!  I had no words!

So I told her, “Yeah.  I stole those pictures from the Google.  And I Googled the word ‘Hoarder’ under ‘Images’ to find them.  And that’s what I came up with.”

She replied, “Oh!  Good!  Because I’ve never been to your house before, but I love you to pieces, and I can’t imagine that you’d live like that.  I need to go smack a co-worker of mine, because I seriously wanted to hire some help for you and pay for a maid service myself.”

Um… YES!  THOSE ARE REAL SNAPSHOTS OF MY HOME!!! PLEASE HIRE SOMEONE TO COME OVER AND CLEAN FOR ME!!!  I WOULD LIKE TO SHOUT “YES” TO A MAID SERVICE!

I can never hold my head up high in polite society again.

Anyway, I thought that I needed to clarify that YEP!  My house isn’t as clean as it used to be, but the pictures from Tuesday evening’s post were not actually taken at my home.

Praise the Lord.

And this gal’s two daughters might both be flunking PE this quarter.

Also, our friend Abe told me to go right on ahead and hoard cats, because some people appreciate a good compressed, decaying, gelatinizing cat carcass casserole.

The thing with guys is that their verbal descriptions go to places that a girl would never venture… places where no man has ever gone before with adjectives.

However, I might have misunderstood Abe and thought he said RATS.

(I hope I don’t need to set people straight on whether this is my house or not tomorrow.)

(But please.  If the Holy Spirit moves upon you and encourages you to just hire a cleaning service for me, go ahead and act upon it.)

(And if you feel led to make us a casserole of some kind — which does not involve gelatin or Siamese or the word decaying — well, we’ll write you a thank-you card.)

Anyway.

Last night, I loaded up my boys, and we went to watch Cousin L play some soccer.  Girlfriend can run and kick and PLAY THE GAME!  We haven’t gotten to see her play yet this season, because of things called RAINED OUT and SNOWED OUT and WE HAVE PIANO LESSONS THEN.

Before the game, the boy kicked the ball around with Thing 2.  Thing 2 has some powerful emotions about soccer, which all involve I WANT TO BE ON THE FIELD DURING THE GAME AND STEAL THAT SOCCER BALL, AND IF YOU WON’T LET ME, I WILL THROW MYSELF INTO THE GRASS AND SCREAM ABOUT MY MEAN MOTHER TO THE ENTIRE CROWD.

Thing 2 was yanked off of the field during live action play no fewer than six different times last night.

He was very vocal about each game expulsion, too.

Here he is, demonstrating the soccer offense of HANDS.

Cousin H was at the game, too.  She had Goldfish crackers, and she was determined to feed them to the little baby.

The little baby doesn’t like being called a little baby, but he exercised the full extent of his Y chromosome and let the little gal wait on him and hand-feed him.  He was a bit putout that she didn’t have some palm leaves to fan him with, while he ate.

Cousin K was there to watch his sister play soccer, too.  He and Mam used the sidewalk chalk to distract Thing 2 from being red-carded for Excessive Game Interruptions.  Thing 2 was very impressed with the chalk for exactly 42 seconds.

L had the eye of the tiger last night.  She was on fire!  I think she ran the equivalent of a half marathon during last night’s game, and she never felt the urge to turn cartwheels in the grass, like a couple of the girls did during the game.

(For the record, dads on the sidelines get very upset when their daughters are doing cartwheels when the ball is headed in their direction.)

While the game was going on, The Littles played.

“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Stop it, Thing 2.  I’m your COUSIN!  That isn’t funny!  Quit looking at me!  And you’re an embarrassment to the family every time you run out there on the field during the game and shout ‘BALL!!’  Why can’t you sit still at the game and use some manners like I do?  You’re not tall enough to be the team’s goalie, so you need to stay out of the net while the big girls are playing!  I swear, you’re going to be kicked out of kindergarten before the class Halloween party happens in 2017.”

And LOOK!  Thing 2 is getting some serious curls!

Eventually, Thing 2 swiped someone’s green sports drink.

(I’d also like to submit this photograph as a possible ad campaign for Tide laundry detergent.)

My friend Bobbi was at the soccer fields, because her son was playing a game as well.  She handed Thing 2 an apricot to occupy his attention.  Bobbi is a brilliant mother with a solid game plan in place.  I’m kind of thinking she’s ahead of me in the running for Mother of the Year, ’13.

The fruit kept Thing 2 happily distracted from trying to play goalie for several minutes.

The boy would NEVER, EVER have been allowed to eat his apricot off of a set of metal bleachers at a soccer game when HE was one, because STINKING GERMS!  And also, PLAGUE!  And BUTTS HAVE SAT THERE!

The poor second child…

When Cousin L’s game finished up, Cousin M’s team took the field.  We tried to stick around for M’s game, because M can rock a soccer field better than John Mellencamp can rock the USA.  Sadly, Thing 2 was SPENT.  He was also covered in apricot goop.

(I should also go on record and state that I woke up this morning with a patch of my hair that felt exactly like a petrified log.  It was hard and crunchy.  I had no idea what had happened, other than DID SOMEONE POUR PLASTER OF PARIS IN MY HAIR WHILE I SLEPT?  No.  It was leftover apricot puree.)

I did manage to snap a few pictures of M playing before we called it a night and went home.

I know he’s our nephew, which makes me a bit prejudiced towards him, but Cousin M is so cute, I just want to pinch him.

And that was yesterday, people.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pull the cat casserole out of the oven, and see if we have any d-CON to spread around the house.

Y’all have a happy weekend, and please…  Use your vacuum cleaners, and let’s go on ahead and wipe the maple syrup spills up off of the kitchen counters.

After my 2nd grade PE class wrapped up yesterday, I told them to change their shoes.  I do this every time they have PE, because listen.  They can wear their street shoes into the gym and kick them off and put their PE shoes ON… but when it comes time to exit the gym on the far right for recess, they will completely forget the fact that their sassy little sandals and their Crocs with the broken straps are still sitting along the wall.  I am the mother-away-from-home to those children.

Some kids change their shoes very quickly, because Recess ranks as high on their lists as Oxygen and Candy.  Some kids change their shoes very slowly, because their DNA is loaded with SLOTH and TORTOISE.  And some kids simply cannot FIND their street shoes after PE, so there’s much looking and wondering about where on earth they could be, and questions of, “Did I wear my street shoes over to the gym?”

When their shoes are changed, they line up at the door with me.  That’s where I stand, because at this point in the year, I have zero-point-zero desire to stand close to the Rubbermaid tubs where the gym shoes are stored.  Those tubs stink with a smell of Bad Shoes that will burn your nose hairs right out and make you long for a revival with the smelling salts.

Every day, I seem to be standing there at the door with the FAST SHOE CHANGERS.  So we talk, those quick kids and I.  Yesterday, we talked about grown-up jobs, and one of them asked me while he was standing there, “Why did you become a PE teacher?”  I told him it’s because I majored in English for two long years of college, and then realized that I was facing a life of grading 8th grade essays and poetry written by lovesick freshman girls.  I thank the Lord to this day that I came to my senses and bailed out of English As A Major.  I can’t keep the dates in history straight, except I do know that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, and that in 1814 we took a little trip, along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississipp’.  THOSE are the dates I remember.  And science was out, because my brain doesn’t respond well to a bucket of hot grease, and that’s all science is to me.  Chalk it up as DEEP FAT FRIED in the end.  And math?  Well.  I like math when it follows formulas, and I ADORE solving equations for x.  But you have to be careful with math, because eventually you don’t just find the number that is x… eventually they have you calculating imaginary numbers and writing down equations with too  many variables, and then you just need to sit down with a glass of wine and make some changes in your life.

So.

I teach PE.

And Hubs quotes Jack Black from the movie School of Rock a lot.  “Those who can teach, do; those who can’t, teach gym.”

After answering the little fellow’s question that I had no desire to read 9th grade poetry on broken hearts and love gone bad, because I can hear all of that in a Taylor Swift song, I started asking the group of fast-shoe-changers what they were going to be when they grew up.

A fireman.  That’s what the little guy told me.

A quarterback for the Detroit Lions was next.  (This makes no sense; we live far from Detroit, and Detroit has one of the highest crime rates in America.  Don’t move there, Little Man, no matter how much you like the Lions.)

(I’m sorry Detroit.  We just like to fill our Suburbans full of gas without worrying about being mugged for the box of chicken nuggets that resembles a petrified log in our third seat.)

And then… one of my favorite little gals grinned and said, “I’m going to grow up and become a professional dog groomer!  I’m going to tie bows in dogs’ ears, and I’m going to give cats baths, and I’m going to paint the toenails on guinea pigs with pink polish!!!”  And then, in her usual display of energy and exuberance that is ALL HER, she hopped up and down with happiness.

Do y’all know what my very first thought was?  It was that I needed to call her sweet mama and say, “Well.  Your daughter’s college fund can officially be spent at Starbucks now.  When should I meet you there for chai tea?”

Carry on, people.  Carry on.

Well.

In the olden days — like, the very olden days, but not as old as the days when Diff’rent Strokes was everyone’s favorite sitcom — I had a clean house.

It’s because I kind of enjoyed cleaning, and the smell of Clorox made me as happy as sunshine and yellow daffodils.  I powered through every week and vacuumed everything.  I scrubbed floors and scrubbed windows and scrubbed bathroom sinks and scrubbed the fronts of my kitchen cabinets.  I cleaned out my refrigerator and dusted my living room furniture and made beds and organized my bookcase alphabetically, because I’m a little bit nerdy.  I mowed the yard and religiously weeded the flower beds.  I moved my hose and sprinkler every thirty minutes, because we didn’t have fancy underground sprinklers then, and I would set a timer so I wouldn’t forget.  I took out the garbage and I polished my wood coffee table with furniture wax and my kitchen cupboards looked like showcases for all of our plates and coffee mugs.

And then we had the boy.

And really?  Well, things didn’t change much, because the boy was easy.  He was laid-back and content.  He’d happily hammer real nails into real wood with a real hammer on the back patio while I gave the house a once-over every morning.  And then we’d play.  We’d go to the park and to playgroups.  We played at friends’ houses.  I took him to swimming lessons and T-ball for toddlers and the creek to look for bugs.  We went to the library for books, and we read all of those books out loud together.  And then there would be a big nap in the afternoon for the boy, and I would read my own book, and perhaps fold a load of laundry, because there was nothing left to clean in my house.

I would even iron the boy’s Ralph Lauren shirts, because I abhor wrinkles and because I had the time.  I liked my little man looking neat and pressed and fashionable.

Better Homes and Gardens could have walked in on any day of the week and featured us in a full-color, four-glossy-pages of magazine layout.

And then Thing 2 arrived.  And… oh!  My heart doesn’t feel like it can possibly stretch to hold any more love, but I wake up each morning even more in love with our two boys.  I wouldn’t trade them for an unlimited gift card at Starbucks, and that’s actually saying something.

(Because Starbucks and I have a problem.  It’s called I GIVE THEM TOO MANY OF OUR DOLLARS EVERY WEEK, which is also called WE HOPE THE BOYS GET GOOD SCHOLARSHIPS, BECAUSE THEIR COLLEGE FUNDS WENT DOWN IN WHITE PAPER CUPS ADORNED WITH GREEN MERMAIDS.)

Thing 2 is not content to sit and hammer real nails into real wood with a real hammer.  We don’t give Thing 2 a real hammer, because it would be a weapon in his hands.  We’d suffer broken windows and chipped hardwood floors and dead cats.

Thing 2 moves.  He runs, he jumps, he climbs.  He spins, he hops, he walks backwards.  He rolls.  He shakes.  He dances.  He also unloads every kitchen drawer… every kitchen cupboard… every dresser drawer… both of his toyboxes… all of my bookcases… and my enormous baskets full of Scentsy wax.  He pulls things out of closets… he eats cat food… he runs from one end of the house to the other, over and over and OVER… he licks my windows… he puts toys in the toilets… he pulls the cats’ tails… he unpacks his diaper bag…

…and he gives the very best toddler hugs and kisses around.

He melts my heart.

He melts my heart every bit as much as his older brother does.

But he destroys my house.  And somewhere along the line, I seem to have just flat-out given up on cleaning the house any more.  After picking up the Tupperware out of my kitchen drawers four hundred times, I just give up.  I’m never more aware of this sad fact until someone stops by for a surprise visit, and I have to make excuses for why my house looks like this:

And like this:

(And of course y’all know that I didn’t take those pictures myself; I stole them off of Google, and I don’t know who took them.)

(But I totally draw the line at cats.  We have two.  It’s almost two too many.  I could never hoard cats.)

(Ever.)

But do y’all know what I’m learning?

I’m learning that Pinterest makes me unhappy, because I am so busy chasing a toddler right now, I don’t have time to clean and make my kitchen glow like it’s been sprinkled with the dust of thirty-seven little fairy wings.

And we can’t have jugs of Clorox around any longer, because Thing 2 just pulls them on out of the cabinets and works on twisting their lids off.  (This doesn’t cause me near the heart palpitations that it would have caused had the boy done it at the tender age of one, because the boy would have RUINED HIS GYMBOREE AND HIS RALPH LAUREN WITH ALL THE CLOROX SPOTS!  Thing 2 doesn’t get his shirts ironed.  Ever.  And I don’t buy Ralph Lauren shirts for him, because ain’t nobody got time for that.  He spends a lot of time running around our house in just his diaper.)

(The poor second child.)

(If it weren’t for hand-me-downs from Lisa’s one boy and Carrie’s two boys and Katie’s three boys, Thing 2 would  be naked.)

This morning, instead of folding a load of laundry like I should have been doing… or emptying the dishwasher… or wiping toothpaste splatters off of the bathroom sinks… I simply sat down at my desk with a cup of coffee-flavored milk, and, somehow, I found a new blog.  I was immediately hooked, because I found something that the writer had posted, and I nearly cried, because it’s what I’ve been looking for.

I play with Thing 2, people.  It’s because he NEEDS it.  And I hang out with the boy after school.  Because he needs it.  My boys are happy… they’re well-adjusted… they love Jesus.  Thing 2 is an accomplished slider, because his mama takes him to the park.  A lot.  The boy  is an accomplished golfer, because his mama drives him to the golf course almost every day, so that he can smack a little white ball around and try to rob me of $8 for a cheeseburger and fries from the clubhouse, because he is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS hungry.  And while we’re busy making memories like that, my coffee table is busy collecting dust, and sometimes Hubs has to say, “I am wearing a pair of boxers this morning that I was purposely saving for the Apocalypse.  I do  not like them at all, but they’re the only pair that’s clean.”

It’s life.  I’m learning that.

And here!  Y’all have to read this, because it made me so very happy this morning.  I didn’t write it.  The author’s name is Lisa-Jo, and she’s a complete stranger to me, but I think I’d like to have a cup of chai tea with her.  I love her blog, even though I’ve only known about it for one day now.

*     *     *     *     *

The Tired Mother’s Creed, by Lisa-Jo Baker

For the days we are running on empty.  For the days we just don’t think we have it in us to read one more story, play one more game of Uno, wash one more round of sheets.  For the days when we think everyone else has it altogether.  For the days we’re sure anyone else would do this job better.

For those days.  You know the ones.

Repeat after me:

1.  I shall not judge my house, my kid’s summer activities or my crafting skills by Pinterest’s standards.

2.  I shall not measure what I’ve accomplished today by the loads of unfolded laundry, but by the assurance of deep love I’ve tickled into my kids.

3.  I shall say “yes” to blanket forts and see past the chaos to the memories we’re building.

4.  I shall surprise my kids with trips to get ice cream when they’re already in their pajamas.

5.  I shall not compare myself to other mothers, but find my identity in the God who trusted me with these kids in the first place.

6.  I shall remember that a messy house at peace is better than an immaculate house tied up in knots.

7.  I shall play music loudly and teach my kids the joy of wildly uncoordinated dance.

8.  I shall remind myself that Perfect is simply a street sign at the intersection of Impossible and Frustration in Never Never Land.

9.  I shall embrace the fact that in becoming a mom, I traded perfect for a house full of real.

10.  I shall promise to love this body that bore these children — out loud, especially in front of my daughter.

11.  I shall give my other mother friends the gift of guilt-free friendship.

12.  I shall do my best to admit to my people my “unfine” moments.

13.  I shall say “sorry” when sorry is necessary.

14.  I pray to God that I shall never be too proud, angry or stubborn to ask for my children’s forgiveness.

15.  I shall make space in my grown-up world for goofball moments with my kids.

16.  I shall love their father and make sure they know I love him.

17.  I shall model kind words — to kids and to grown-ups alike.

18.  I shall not be intimidated by the inside of my minivan — this season of chip bags, goldfish crackers and discarded socks too shall pass.

19.  I shall always make time to encourage new moms.

20.  I shall not resent that last call for kisses and cups of water, but remember instead that when I blink, they’ll all be in college.

*     *     *     *     *

Isn’t that a wonderful list?

Y’all have a happy Tuesday evening.  I’m going to go celebrate the last calls for drinks, and simply smile while the boy takes forty-eleven hours to floss beneath his braces, in an effort to stay up longer.

I’m pretty sure that I just pulled off a Mother’s Day that would make Hallmark weep with joy.

You know, if Hallmark actually made a greeting card that said, “Hey, Mom, I hope you get to spend your special day this year up to your elbows in poop.  And also?  I hope Dad sleeps in until 9:30.  Love you.”

On Saturday, Thing 2 pooped early in the morning.  This is not unheard of, because Thing 2 is a very distinguished pooper.  I left both of my boys with my mom for a while on Saturday, because THINGS TO DO!  THINGS TO DO!  When I maturely made the choice to go back and get my boys, instead of booking a flight to a spa in Maui, Mam commented that Thing 2 had experienced a couple of disgusting diapers while I was away.  Missing those was almost as good as my idea on a beach vacation.

Well then.

On Saturday afternoon, Thing 2 was officially diagnosed with Diarrhea Of The Worst Kind, because I am a mother, which means I’m practically a doctor.

By Saturday night, we were in FULL DEHYDRATION MODE THROUGH A SOUND COLON CLEANSE.  Thing 2 pooped every thirty minutes, all night long.

All.  Night.  Long.

Eventually his little bum turned to raw hamburger, what with all the wiping and the smearing of the diaper rash cream.  He started screaming every time I laid him on the changing table, because he knew what was coming.  And I TRIED to be gentle, but when you’ve had forty-two diaper blowouts in one night, your bottom has a hard time maintaining good skin.

I think it goes without saying that Thing 2 and I did not sleep on Saturday night.

And then we were up at 6 AM, with more poop, and because it was daylight.

It was also Mother’s Day.

Hubs and the boy celebrated by sleeping in until 9:30.

I still love them.

Anyway.

Our weekend really WAS fantastic, even though there was poop.  Because, regardless of all the diarrhea, Thing 2 wasn’t slowed down a bit.  He still laughed and ran and jumped and climbed and was asked, “Are you being careful?” one hundred thousand times.

(The answer to that question is always no.  Thing 2 lacks the chemical in the brain that says, “Whoa, Nelly!  THIS might be dangerous, so we’d better reign it in a bit.”  Thing 2′s brain says, “Look!  A cliff!  Let’s jump!”)

Do y’all remember clear back to Thursday?  The boy had a band concert, which meant that I had a band concert, too, because I voluntarily signed the waiver that said, “Yes.  I will let my son teach me to play the clarinet, and I will be more than happy to come forward to the stage on concert night, have the lighting technician shine the spotlight on me until I break out into a menopause-like sweat, and I will play for an audience of 43,000 parents.”

For the record, I rocked “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”  I OWNED “Hot Cross Buns.”  I knew that job offers were coming for professional bands, because we’d heard it said that scouts were in the audience.  I was all set to do “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and yes!  I COULD play that one flawlessly.

Only on Thursday night, I started with one finger closing one of the holes in the clarinet, instead of three fingers closing three holes.  That was the EXACT WRONG note to begin on, and then it all spiraled downhill quickly, because WHERE WAS I?  How do I do this?  What just happened?  And all of those questions led up to me squeaking the clarinet like a horn on a child’s bicycle three entire times.

But really?  It was nothing that a box of wine couldn’t take care of.

(There are no pictures of me playing the clarinet, because Hubs was wrestling Thing 2 and I couldn’t snap my own picture while I was busy cursing in my head about starting my last song wrong.  However, I did look up and see Enzo’s dad taking a video of my performance on his iPhone.  He may have told me later, “Oh!  I’ll be sending this little video document out to some people.”  I’m sorry if you were one of those who had the misfortune of receiving that horrible noise called Mama On The Clarinet.)

I don’t even claim to be a skilled photographer, so these pictures are lacking in things like QUALITY LIGHTING and DEPTH OF FIELD and A SUBJECT POINT IN FOCUS.

Jedi Mama, Inc.  Bringing you sub-par photography for over three years now.

The boy also had a solo part on Thursday night, which he played flawlessly.  It’s because he knows when to start a musical piece with one hole covered and when to start with three holes covered.

His mama was ever-so-very-much proud of him, and she MAY have clapped like a lunatic when his solo was finished.

Enzo also played a solo, which he rocked.  I guess there’s something to be said about being in band class for one hour every day at school to learn your songs, as opposed to thinking, “How hard can it be to learn a couple of nursery rhymes on this thing?  I’ll wait until three days before the concert to practice.”

It’s why I’m not in a band.

Well, that and because NO MUSICAL TALENT WHATSOEVER.

After the concert, I did snap a picture of the boy and Kellen together, because LOOK!  Matching shirts!  And ties!

(I didn’t take any pictures of Kellen on stage, because Kellen plays the baritone, which is roughly the size of a Volkswagen Bug.  This means he sits in the back.  I would have had to stand up in my chair and holler his name so that he’d look in my direction, if I wanted to snap his photo on stage.)

(After squeaking the clarinet in front of 43,000 people, I decided that I didn’t need to draw any more attention to myself.)

On Friday night, Hubs and I took Thing 2 to the park to play.  I had my camera, because OF COURSE I DID.

And then here’s my favorite shot of the night.  It’s not crystal clear.  It’s a bit blurry.  It’s because Murphy’s Law states that ALL of my favorite pictures will be blurry pictures.

While we were at the park running and sliding and jumping and bouncing, and wondering how much hip and knee replacements were going to cost, the boy and Enzo were golfing.

The boy proclaimed that he had golfed the best game of his life that night.  He couldn’t stop talking about the fact that he teed off at one hole and his ball LANDED ON THE GREEN!  He was so excited, it might just as well have been Christmas morning.

Way to go, Boy.

On Saturday morning, our church hosted a Mother / Daughter Tea.  The gals who put it on solicited me to come and take pictures of the event, because professional photographers cost money, and sub-par photographers usually charge zero American dollars to do what they do.

Missi joined me at the church, as the back-up better photographer.

We acted very professional.

Our jobs were to seat the mothers and the daughters in the comfy chairs and take their pictures together.  We said things like, “What’s your shutter speed?” and “Are you using the manual mode?” and “Did you shut your flash off?” and “What aperture setting are you on?”  This way, all of the tea-goers thought they were in the presence of Photography Greatness as they overheard our conversations.

Little did they know that it was the blind leading the blind, and that I was the one hoping for a seeing-eye dog who would say, “Bring your shutter speed down a bit.”

I did remember to tell people things like, “Okay, turn your head on more of a slant.  Now, make a fist.  Slowly ease it up under your chin.  Now, just imagine you’re weightless, in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by tiny little seahorses,” and “That was the one!  I think that picture’s gonna come out really nice.”  And then, “For a limited time only, Glamor Shots By Deb are 75% off.”

(Napoleon Dynamite quotes never go out of style.)

(Ever.)

(At all.)

Here’s my darling friend, Abbey, and her girls.  They couldn’t take a bad picture if they tried.  They made my limited camera knowledge look good.  I know that Abbey was imagining herself in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by seahorses here.

(Please notice the position of those darling girls up there.  I cut half of Olivia off and left quite a bit of space on the other side of Macy.)

(Professional photographers everywhere will be pinning this snapshot and saying, “New positioning ideas for little girls in photo shoots.”)

(You’re welcome, professional photographers, for the grand ideas.)

Sister and Cousin L came out to the tea on Saturday morning, too.  Aren’t they adorable, even though Sister opted out of slanting her head a little bit more and sliding her fist underneath her chin?

And then… BEHOLD!

THIS is what I miss about not having had little girls!

That is my friend Katie and her three beauties.  They dressed to the nines.  They wore feathers and sparkles and gloves and heels and satin and lace and mink, and they carried themselves like the royal family they are.

When you just have boys at home, you don’t get to dress like this for fancy morning tea times.  You may get invited to a Pirate Party, where you’re asked to wear your dirtiest pair of ripped-off-at-the-knees jeans, and to PLEASE DON’T BRUSH YOUR TEETH FOR THREE WEEKS PRIOR TO THE EVENT, IN ANTICIPATION OF IT.

I’ve always thought that if you have a tiara, it’s just best to go on ahead and wear it.

Like every day.

Those girls were almost more cute than I could handle in their regal finery.

On Saturday afternoon, the boy and his cousin, B, went golfing again.  It’s because the boy lives for golfing and food.  B lives for hockey and food, but he’ll play golf when the ice melts.

I still had the camera in my Suburban after the tea, so OF COURSE I pulled it out and snapped pictures while the boys were at the driving range.

I absolutely ADORE those two nutcases!

They’ve actually been hanging out together for a while now… what with them being cousins and all!

After I had dropped the big boys off to spend the afternoon golfing and eating cheeseburgers at the clubhouse, I zipped across town to pick Thing 2 up from Mam’s house.

Cousins H and K were over there, too… AND I STILL HAD THE CAMERA WITH ME!  I’m pretty sure that the shot of Cousin K, all by himself, is one of my all-time favorite photos of him.  I could just pinch him in all his cuteness.

And Cousin H?  She takes my breath away with her sweet perfection and adorable personality.

And that brought us to the end of Saturday.

When there was poop.

We went into Mother’s Day with poop, and we finished Mother’s Day with poop.

And that, people, was our weekend.  It was simple.  It was full of every-day-moments.  It was full of family and cousins and friends.  And bad clarinet playing.

In the end, those kind of days — the every day days — will be those that we look back on and cherish the most.

Y’all have a happy Monday night.

I just have some randomness tonight.

But then… When DON’T I have utter randomness?

1.  I am actually writing this blog post early today, because I have a band concert this evening.  Or rather, THE BOY has a band concert, and I am playing three songs in it.  I was supposed to play four songs, but I procrastinated and never learned the fourth one.  I’m not overly worried, because I think if I just PRETEND to play the clarinet by moving my fingers around an awful lot, the audience won’t really notice.

Also?  I’m afraid that I’ll probably steal the show away from the kids this evening, so just pray that they all shine brighter than I do.  I told Hubs that I’m quite certain I’ll be swarmed by Beethoven’s and Jimmy Buffet’s agents immediately following the concert, and that I’ll be asked to sign contracts pledging myself to be in professional bands.  When I mentioned this to Sister, she told me to prep myself for moving, because professional band members live in the city.  I know this, so I may have to decline all the offers, because driving on six-lane interstates makes me need wine.

But not while I’m driving.  I need the wine AFTER all the driving, and after I’ve survived lane changes and THIS IS NOT THE EXIT I WANT and people waving sign language at me, encouraging me to just drive a little faster, please.

The cities do have nice shopping malls, though, so that’s a plus.  However, if I can’t buy it on Amazon and have it shipped to my front door, it probably doesn’t exist in the stores anyway.

2.  The boy has a solo performance in his concert tonight, because the boy is very musical.  He can play the piano better than Mozart ever did, and he actually tells me, “Mom, you’re not playing G right now with my clarinet; you’re playing C.”  I get very confused on Gs and Cs.  And also all the other letters that represent actual notes.

Hubs and I have no idea WHERE the boy inherited his musical talent, because it wasn’t from us.  Our combined DNA offered him a heritage of wrestling and softball, and he didn’t pick up either one of those things.  Hubs played the trumpet in high school, and he was actually excused from class one day for blowing Boxelder bugs out of it.  I played the violin, but I never learned the notes on paper, which makes working your way up to First Chair, with visions of Carnegie Hall on your horizon, basically impossible.

3.  We slept with the windows open last night.  And also the furnace has been shut down.  Hubs made the comment that he has officially extinguished the furnace and all of its blessed heating capabilities until next November.  This would be fine, if our furnace was in Florida or Texas.  We still have permafrost on the ground here, and the Yetis are still wearing their North Face coats.  Hubs also opened the windows in the house before he went to bed, to let in a little fresh air.  I won’t lie; it felt fabulous to have that gentle evening breeze blowing through our home.  I felt blessed that Spring had finally arrived.  I slept like the dead last night, and when I got out of bed at 6:00 this morning, I realized that it was snowing indoors.  The cats had icicles hanging from their whiskers.  The floors were frozen, and we all got frostbite on our bare feet.

It was 62 entire degrees in our house this morning.  Yes, it was a bit brisk.

I’ve suggested to Hubs that he may need to rethink this whole SHUT DOWN THE FURNACE TO SAVE A BUCK routine because no one on the runways is sporting blue lips this season.  He told me that real men can sleep on the ground on the polar ice cap.  That may be, but until the Robertson men do it, it hasn’t been proven.

4.  We’ve hired a new housekeeper.  He doesn’t speak much English, and I’m fairly certain he’s the one pilfering dry Cheerios out of our pantry.  He also doesn’t vacuum as well as I’d like to see my housekeeper do, but I think we’ll keep him on at a reduced rate.

5.  That’s about it for tonight.  I’ve got to roll my hair around the hot rollers, so that my mane is at its Concert Best tonight.  I also have to dig out my WOW!  THEY LOOK SO REAL! strand of pearls to wear.  All good musicians have pearls.

Or faux pearls.  Or whatever.

I fully expect to rock “Mary Had a Little Lamb” tonight, if I can keep the C and the G straight.  The clarinet is not for the weak.  With any luck at all, I will survive the concert tonight and be back here on Sunday evening to tell y’all about it.

Have a fantastic weekend, people.  Stay warm.  We’ll be wearing our sweatshirts to bed.

Every now and again, you come across a girl who simply smacks of wonderfulness.

That did not happen to me in preschool.  In preschool, I came across a girl who reeked of prissiness, as she pranced around in her poofy party dresses and her elaborately-curled hair and her golden earrings.  She drove me to the brink of my four-year-old sanity, because her nose was always in my business.  So, when I was asked to pass out the cups and the paper plates one morning for our snacks, I did.

And I skipped the princess.

The child on either side of her received their paper products, in anticipation of their graham crackers and apple juice, but she did not.

And she wailed with all the drama she was capable of mustering, which was significant.

I wound up standing in the corner for eighteen hours.  Times were different then, because teachers could discipline with corners and wooden spoons.

As a grown-up (who now gives red Solo cups to anyone and everyone who needs one at a party, regardless of how much lace their dress sports or how often they poke their nose into my face), I met Katie.  Katie is a gem.  We discovered that we both had a passionate love for Starbucks, and we were both walking around like disheveled zombies in pajama pants, because we had tiny sons who refused to sleep at night.

As in, Katie and I could text one another at 2 AM, because we were both up.  And we could call each other at 3 AM, because we were both up.  And we could chat on Facebook at 4 AM, because we were both up.  It’s because Thing 2 and Katie’s youngest son, Gunnar, were perfectly awful at the business of sleeping.

So, Katie and I did what any exhausted mothers would do.  We changed out of our pajama pants and put on real clothes.  We left our sons with our husbands, and we spent long hours at Starbucks together, inhaling cups of caffeine laced with copious amounts of sugar, and we talked.

And then we talked some more.

And occasionally we’d throw our heads back and howl with laughter until our sides split wide open and we couldn’t breathe.

We met for playdates with our boys.  We met at the park.  We lounged in the overstuffed, leather chairs at Starbucks for hours.  We put our boys to bed and sat on Katie’s sofa and watched cheesy, romantic movies that our husbands would have hated.  We made plans for our boys to grow up together.  We made plans to escape to Bigger Town, USA when our babies FINALLY slept through the night (Thank you, Jesus!), to celebrate with shopping therapy.

And then, somewhere between trips to Starbucks, Katie’s husband decided to take a job in Alaska, because WHY NOT?

Actually, it wasn’t so much as her husband taking a job in Alaska, as it was God whispering to them that He wanted them to move North.  Far North.  And God, as only He can do, worked things out and shut doors and threw open other doors, and pretty much SHOWED THEM BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT that they were to be in Alaska.  When Katie finally gave in and said, “Okay, God,” things fell into place like perfectly aligned building blocks.

Bright and early this morning, Katie and Jeff strapped their three boys into their carseats, and they set off to live in an igloo at the top of the world.

(Oh, Katie swears they’re going to live in a house made with real wood and glass windows, but we all know that igloos happen in Alaska.)

I told Katie that Alaska was a horrid choice, because it’s dark for so long.  And it’s cold.  And it really snows up there.  And what happens if she sees a seal pup getting clubbed to death?  Should she phone 911?  And Canada is such AN ENORMOUS EXPANSE for me to drive through, and did she realize that I would probably puke on an airplane nonstop from here to the North Pole?

Anyway.

Before she left, a gang of us went out for dinner, because nothing says LET’S HAVE A GOOD TIME to a pack of girls like food does.  We sat in an over-air-conditioned restaurant, until we all had blue lips and numb toes, eating Mexican food and savoring the guacamole.  We talked nonstop.  We laughed even more.

And then I had to go pick the boy up from an evening of golfing, because Hubs was at home with Thing 2, who actually sleeps now.

And the rest of the girls switched restaurants and went out for yogurt, which is where they got the bright idea to HEY!  LET’S TAKE A GROUP PHOTO WITH OUR PHONE!

That is why you can’t find me in this picture, but we all know the real reason.  I hadn’t showered that day, and my Day Two Hair wasn’t at the top of my beauty pageant game.  No one wanted to be in a photo of me and my hair that evening.

I do have cute girlfriends, don’t I?  This is one precious batch of girls.

(Katie has on the black and white stripes.)

(She also washed her hair that day.)

(So did all the other girls.)

(Theresa is on the far right over there.  Her biceps make me wish that I enjoyed working out.)

(The other Katie is right there in front.  She makes coffee cake with real ingredients, like flour and sugar and eggs.  She doesn’t use a box mix, and THAT impresses me.)

(Robin is on the far left.  She’s adorable, and she lets me know that it’s okay when you’re so busy chasing a toddler, you don’t do the laundry for twenty-one days in a row.  She said Jesus still loves a mother… even then, when no one has clean socks.)

The following morning, we met back up at the park.  Katie was living in a hotel for three days, after packing up their house, and there’s only so many things you can do in a non-smoking, double-queen-sized-beds room with three young boys before you begin thinking about drinking margaritas by noon.

We yanked her down to the park to play.

Thing 2 was so excited to see Gunnar, he gave him a man hug.  Gunnar hugged Thing 2 back, until I jumped up with my camera.  That’s when Gunnar dropped his arms from around Thing 2′s shoulders and whispered, “My dad told me not to hug a lot of boys at the park.”

My friend Bethany’s little boy, Seth, was there, too.  I made enormous attempts at catching Thing 2, Gunnar and Seth in pictures together, but listen:  Toddlers move very quickly.  They move faster than my shutter speed.  I failed at good toddler photography on Monday.

In the end, we stuck all of our boys and Miss Eleanor, the lone girl, onto the park bench in the shade.

Katie and Bethany hopped up and down behind me and made ridiculous faces, in some effort to coax smiles from the gang.

(I should have spun around with my catlike reflexes and taken THEIR snapshots!)

Our gang of girls is sad to see Katie head to Alaska, but we’ve decided that it’s best not to argue with God.  He knows what He’s doing.

So if y’all think about it, you could whisper a little prayer for Katie.  She’s traveling across Canada with three tiny boys.  Do you know how big Canada is?  Do you know how many times she might have to hear Toy Story playing on the DVD player?

She may hope for margaritas before she even crosses the border.

Y’all have a happy Wednesday evening.

I did not sleep well last night.

It may have everything to do with the fact that the boy woke me up at 12:30 this morning, because his mouth was aching with the hurt of forty-eleven razorblades, and he wanted Advil for a midnight snack.

Oh, Spacers-Between-His-Molars!  You’re awfully mean. 

He simply stood beside my bed and touched my shoulder, while I was sleeping.  I opened my eyes, and THERE HE WAS, so I did what I normally do in situations like that.

I screamed.

And then I flopped around in the covers like a bobcat in a fishing net, trying to get out of the bed to fight the battle that had summoned me from my dreams.  The battle turned out to be a twelve-year-old that I’d scared the snot out of.

Now we’re even, Son.

I pretended that I was a nurse on the night shift and handed out Ibuprofen like an RN with lots of “Employee of the Month” credits behind her name.  My only discredit is that I’m not my glorious, sunshiny self while I’m working the night shift.

Especially after I’ve just fought a comforter and a quilt.

After I’d sent my patient back to bed, I tried to do the same, but the sleep was over for me.  I think you could spell it out as ADRENALINE.

But none of that has anything to do with tonight’s blog post, because tonight we’re going to talk about water tables and babies.  It’s because I think I’ve talked the braces to death lately.

On Saturday, Hubs’ parents went to Bigger Town, USA for a little shopping adventure.  What I’m pretty sure of is that Hubs’ dad did not wail and moan and carry on in a dramatic fashion when Hubs’ mama suggested that they swing by the mall.

They brought a little water table home for Thing 2, and a gift card for video game purchases for the boy, which has already been spent to the tune of “This game and these controllers took the entire gift card, plus eighty-one cents that I had to borrow from my dad.”

On Sunday afternoon, while the boy was out golfing with Enzo, Thing 2 talked us into using his water table.  It came with the words SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.  When I see those words, I don’t need to read a single sentence further, because I’m all, “HUBS!!”

(I’m pretty sure that those words were part of our marriage vows.  Hubs promised to take over anything that required some assembly or a lot of assembly.)

Thing 2 helped with the assembly, because he’s not afraid to just be in the way and take pieces and parts that you might need in a couple of seconds.

  Thing 2 wore his swim trunks while he played.  A water table might imply that JUST OUR HANDS WILL GET WET with other children, but with Thing 2 it means WHOLE BODY EXPERIENCE.

I would also like to point out that I’m still in the running for Mother of the Year, ’13, since I used VERY WARM WATER STRAIGHT FROM THE KITCHEN SINK ITSELF to fill that table with.

It was more like a hot tub than a playland.

We also had Hydration Hour on Sunday afternoon.  Thing 2 decided that COFFEE from the water table was every bit as good as when he gets it out of the toilet.

His rash guard shirt says LOCAL HUNK.  That’s pretty much a word of solid truth, screen- printed on fabric.

Thing 2 played on our deck in the water all afternoon.  When it was finally time to come indoors, our baby put on a show for the neighbors.  Hubs and I pulled him inside while he was kicking and flailing and shouting that he WASN’T DONE SPLASHING IN THE WATER YET, and HOW DARE YOU YANK ME INSIDE FOR SOMETHING TO EAT WHEN ALL THAT WATER IS STILL  OUT THERE?

He  is quite passionate about playing outdoors, people.

I’d show you snapshots of the boy and Enzo while they were golfing, but there are none.  It’s because Enzo’s dad picked the boy up and dropped them off at the course, and you know how dads are.  They’re eternally awfully at remembering to JUST TAKE A PICTURE TO PRESERVE THE MEMORY ALREADY!  The boy came home late Sunday evening with some pink cheeks from all the sunshine and an enormous grin.  That boy would golf seven days a week, if school and chores didn’t get in his way.

Y’all have a blessed Tuesday evening.

I am just popping in here at Jedi Mama, Inc. very quickly tonight.

I may or may not have had a band rehearsal this evening for my upcoming concert, in which I had to play four songs on the clarinet.

The clarinet is not my spiritual gift.  Basically it makes me want to cuss like a sailor, if I had any breath left inside of me to do so, after attempting to play the instrument entirely wrong.  Apparently there are spots in a song to breathe, and spots in a song to just huff and puff and frantically move your fingers all over the buttons while you’re busy not breathing.  It’s become obvious that I do not breathe in the appropriate times.  I just try to power my way through the entire song without inhaling.  When I’m done, I just want to faint and smash my clarinet on the stage, like a punk rocker.

I don’t know why we chose to attend a school district that thought it would be all cool to yell out, HEY!  LET’S HAVE THE BAND STUDENTS TEACH ONE OF THEIR PARENTS TO PLAY THEIR INSTRUMENT!  AND HEY AGAIN!  LET’S MAKE THE PARENTS GET UP ON STAGE AND MAKE THEM WISH FOR DEATH IN BETWEEN ALL THE SQUEAKS AND SQUAWKS THEY CREATE!

Anyway.

I haven’t shown y’all snapshots of the boy and his braces yet.  This blog is my version of scrapbooking, because cutting little bits of colored paper into roses and embellishing the snot out of everything makes me feel more lightheaded than playing the clarinet does.  So, I blog.  And if I don’t get the pictures on in a timely manner, the boy will look back at Jedi Mama, Incorporated when  he’s thirty-three and say, “Good grief.  My mother never even documented my braces going on.”

The things we do for our children.

Last Thursday, we drove to Bigger Town, USA to see our orthodontist.  I snapped a picture of the boy before we left, because it’s what I do.

That grin right there is an orthodontist’s mother load.  It’s what they commonly call pay dirt.  The boy’s teeth are snarled and crooked.  His mouth is roughly the size of a nine-year-old’s mouth, even though he’s pushing thirteen.

(Oh!  I just typed the word THIRTEEN!  I might have to go sit in my bedroom closet now and rock back and forth for a while to recover, because WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE?)

(Except he’s really still just twelve.  Twelve-and-a-half, but twelve.)

When we walked into the orthodontist’s office, everyone just smiled at the boy and whispered, “There’s our beach house in Costa Rica!”

Cha-ching!

The appointment took about an hour and a half.  Since we had left Thing 2 in Smaller Town, USA with Mam and Pa, Hubs and I were able to kick back in the waiting room, breathe for a small space of time, and READ.  I brought a thick, hardback novel that I’ve been working on.  Hubs simply read hockey highlights on ESPN on his phone.

The boy emerged with a bag of goodies called FLOSS and TINY TOOTHBRUSH PICKS and HORRIBLE PICTURES DEPICTING KIDS WHO DIDN’T BRUSH THEIR TEETH WITH THEIR BRACES ON.  The orthodontist just said, “I will call you from the Costa Rica beach house you’re paying my mortgage on, and I will holler at you, if you don’t brush these teeth well while your braces are on.”

And then Hubs and I pretty much said, “We’ll probably knock his head around a bit if he doesn’t brush, so there.”

This is what the boy looks like these days:

After the orthodontist, we went to Cabela’s, because it’s every man’s dream store.  I looked at absolutely everything I was interested in looking at in exactly six minutes.  And then I was done and bored, but we still had to look at SHOTGUNS!  And AMMUNITION!  And DUCK CALLS!  And FLY RODS!  And BEEF JERKY!  And NIGHT VISION GOGGLES!  I’m not joking when I tell y’all that I lost a little time in Cabela’s.  Afterward, I was all jazzed to hit the mall.  Hubs and the boy looked at me and moaned, “Seriously?  THE MALL?  We just died a little!  The mall is full of boring stores!”

(Dear Gap, They didn’t mean it.  Please forgive them.)

(Dear Cabela’s, Your store is pretty much flat-out boring.  I’m sorry.)

I ended up hitting the mall alone, while Hubs took the boy to Target for Advil tablets powerful enough to numb up a gorilla.  Of course, because I was PLUM DADGUM ALONE in the mall, I was hit up by one of the fellows working a kiosk in the mall’s center.  He asked me if he could give me a little sample of lotion for my dry hands.  I was horrified that he needed to call attention to my dry hands, because SNAKE SKIN!  I told him that I’d like to pass, and he said, “It’s just a free sample,” and I was all, “He probably has a wife and kids at home, so suck me in.”

The free sample of lotion that I thought he was going to hand me turned into COME OVER TO MY KIOSK HERE, AND LET ME GET YOU SET UP ABOVE A BOWL OF WATER WITH MY SPECIAL SALT SCRUB THAT COMES FROM THE DEAD SEA.

Or maybe it was Morton’s table salt, just disguised.  I couldn’t really be certain.

He smeared salt and oil all over my hands, and had me rub them together.  Then I had to rinse my hands in a bowl.  This was all followed up by a lotion that was made from the wings of baby angels and the glitter from a unicorn’s horn.  It was utter perfection.  My hands have NEVER, EVER felt better.

And then he told me, “For $59.99, you can buy the salt scrub today, and for another $59.99, you can take the lotion home with you also.  But look!  Our special today is if you buy both the salt and the lotion, you get a travel-sized bottle of lotion for your purse for no American dollars!”

I think it’s cheaper to buy a kidney on the black market.

I told him that I was going to have to pass, and he said, “Is it the money?”

Well… yes.  It’s the money.  Because not even two hours ago, I wrote a check to an orthodontist for a figure that is usually reserved for people buying plutonium.  I cannot buy sixty bucks’ worth of salt today.

My hands whispered, “Just.  Do.  It.”

I whispered back, “No.  Shut.  Up.”

So then the smooth-talker told me, “Well, since it is the money standing in your way, I’ll tell you what.  My manager will let me make a deal with you.  For $59.99, you can have BOTH the salt AND the lotion, and I will still throw in the travel-sized bottle of lotion for free, too.  But you must promise to tell your friends, and please don’t tell them the deal I am cutting… special for you.”

I still had to pass.  I’m not sure Hubs could have taken it if I’d told him I just spent our wad on salt and FREE LOTION.

And then this man snorted at me, spun on his rather high-heeled shoe, and ignored me.  So much for having a wife and kids at home, which was why I fell for the salt scrub.  But I won’t kid you… IT WAS GLORIOUS.

Also?  It was gloriously expensive, but listen.  What started out as almost $120, quickly turned into $60, and something inside of me told me that he probably could have sold it all to me for fifteen American dollars, if I’d been a better bargainer.

Anyway.

The boy’s mouth has throbbed all weekend, and he’s had a difficult time eating PUDDING!  Pudding, people!  The orthodontist shoved two spacers in between his molars, because they need to create a very miniscule gap to get the headgear set up.

The spacers hurt so badly, they take his breath away and make him say, “Just two grown-up Advil for dinner again, please.”  Thankfully, the spacers come out in two more weeks, and then he’ll have headgear and look like a robot.

He can’t possibly look any more ridiculous than I look with a clarinet in my hands.

My hands which could have been well-softened on a daily basis, but I chose to save $59.99 and my marriage.

Happy Monday night, people.

Fourteen months ago today, Hubs and I held hands at a hospital in Rival Town, USA and embarked on a new adventure in our lives.

Specifically, the adventure included never getting to sleep in ever again, because the main source of our adventure is the individual who gets morning people out of bed.

Also?  Well, Thing 2 has apple trees outside his bedroom window, and those trees are heavily laden with an extended family of robins.  There’s Grandpa Robin, and Great-great-great grandmother Robin, and Teenage Robin who was just a blue egg last spring.  Mostly, we’ve adored those birds.  I say mostly, because Cats 1 and 2 sit in the bedroom windows and plot and plan for Total Bird Annihilation through a well-thought-out black op.  They also act like a couple of kitties who have just had their noses in the crack pot, because they’ll sit there and CHIRP at the robins.

Yes.  I said that our cats chirp.  Clearly, they’re as dysfunctional as we are, but they’re determined to make contact with the birds just on the other side of the window screen.

These days, though, the biorhythms of the birds are disrupting the natural sleep pattern of Thing 2.  The birds start their high-pitched yapping around 4:45 in the morning, and Thing 2 just sits right up in his crib and hollers out, “The mother is telling her husband to go find her a worm, and he’s yelling back that he found the worm yesterday, and she is calling him a lazy, good-for-nothing who is going to lose out on the prime worms if he doesn’t get his act together!”

Thing 2 keeps us updated on all the family dynamics, both good and bad, in the Robins’ household.

The problem with this is that the boy sleeps through the birds’ conversations, because the boy can sleep through foghorns, air horns, tornadoes, fire alarms and nuclear explosions.  A family of birds can’t reach a decibel that penetrates the sleeping brain of our firstborn.  Our bedroom is on the opposite side of the house, so we don’t hear the Robin family in the morning.

But what we DO HEAR is Thing 2 and his morning update on his neighbors.

Which makes me kind of want to shoot the robins, one by one, out of the tree.  I’m even thinking I could actually perform this dastardly deed all by myself, with very little remorse.  Either that, or I may just yank all those little nests out of the tree branches (those little nests that were so cute and heartwarming last spring), and tell them to look into real estate about four houses down, because they’ve been evicted for early-morning partying.

Anyway.

Thing 2 is officially fourteen months old today.

He celebrated by helping himself to a party-sized bag of Skittles candies out of our pantry, when no one was looking.  He poured the already-been-opened bag all over the floor of our home office.  He ate as many as he could, and then spent a considerable amount of time chewing a wad of eight mutilated Skittles before Mama found him and yelled, “Heaven, help me!”  He was already dressed for church, in an adorable Old Navy outfit that we bought him in Bigger Town last week, and purple drool had covered the light-colored shirt.

For the record, the juice formed when saliva mixes with purple Skittles is a stain agent that makes red wine envious.  This new outfit may be one for the “wear it to the mountains in all the dirt and the muck” pile, before Thing 2 even wore it outside of our house.

If it’s not blue paint, it’s purple Skittles.

I found another gray hair this weekend.

I no longer wonder why.

All messes and ruined clothing aside, Thing 2 brings a level of fun to our house that we didn’t know existed.  Our boys shriek with happiness around one another, and they’re CONSTANTLY wrestling and chasing and running and flopping and throwing pillows and balls at each other.  Hubs and I thought our hearts were full with just the boy in our lives; now our hearts are stretched to bursting with Thing 2 added to our family.

Of course, our house has never been dirtier.

And I’ve never been more exhausted.

And I’ve never worn pants to work and realized during my recess break that there is blueberry yogurt smeared all over the backs of them before.

But… all that aside… I think we’ll keep the little runt.

Happy fourteen months, Thing 2.  Your family sure loves you!

Y’all have a great Sunday evening.