$!*@&*! Library Books!

Seriously, I have a major problem with library books.  We love our library and go all the time to get new books, but we seem to be forever on the hunt for missing items.  Theoretically, there should be 14 library books at our house at all times because each of the four kids is STRICTLY LIMITED to 3 books each and I generally have a fiction and a non-fiction that I'm reading at the same time.  That should be completely manageable.  Plus, we have a System!  All library books MUST be kept in a basket in the living room, easily retrievable when it's time to take them back.  14 books, The System, clear expectations, completely foolproof!

This plan works flawlessly for all of us...unless there was one book that we weren't quite finished with and kept, or one that we couldn't find and renewed online and still can't find, or one that someone got when they were at the library with a friend, or one that we got at the library up north, plus the school library books, plus classroom library books, plus the extra one that I found on the new book shelf from my favorite author that I had to get, plus the one that I had a hold request on and it just came in!

And the books do NOT want to adhere to The System.   They wind up under the car seats or under the bed or in the basement under the couch or shoved down in the side of the chair cushions or in a pile of papers in the kitchen or in a bag that went to the pool or a laundry basket full of dirty laundry from up north.  No one told our cleaning lady about The System and for months she was shoving them in the bookshelf full of our own books, never to be seen again! 

I have tried to come to terms with this problem.  I have made the kids pay their overdue fines with their own money.  I have forced them to retrace their steps and remember where they were reading the missing book (they all blame their sibling who 'wanted to read it after me').  We have held FBI-quality manhunts at 9pm for missing books.  But I am, undeniably, a librarian's daughter, and nothing makes me feel like more of a social degenerate that when I go to the library website, log in to check my account, and it says, "USER IS DELINQUENT".  Me!  A delinquent user!  How did this happen???  Why can't I get this under control?

I know, I know, I should be glad they are reading.  And be grateful that we can borrow books instead of forking out cash at a bookstore for all these millions of pages we are going through.  But it just drives me crazy when we go to check out our books and the little library clerk says sweetly, "It looks like you have a small fine due today..."

Summer Joan

I feel like I have an alter ego in the summer.  Call her Summer Joan.  She even looks different than regular me.  Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself walking past a mirror and think, "whoa, who is that?".  I am tan, I have little or no makeup on, I'm wearing Teva's instead of heels, my hair is either wet, scrunched dry, or if I'm at the cabin it might even be under a bandanna that no 40-year-old woman has any business wearing.   More significantly, I"m not frowning and I don't have stress wrinkles all over my forehead.  I even stand up straighter since the weight of all my responsibilities is mostly off my shoulders:  200 students a day? Not my problem.  Hostile parents/administrators?  They are mad at someone else right now.  Car needs fixing?  I've got all day to sit at the shop.  Sick kid?  Bring it on, that's what I'm here for.  Last minute party and I need to get a gift, make a dessert, and buy new shoes before tomorrow at 7?  Sounds like fun!  See, these are not my normal responses to these situations.  Summer Joan has nothing but time so nothing freaks her out. 

One of my favorite responses to frustrating situations is "I don't have time for this!"  Brian and my sisters make fun of me a lot for this stock line.  I say it all the time:  water heater breaks at 6am?  zipper on kid's winter coat won't zip on the way out the door?  phone call from kid's teacher comes in while I'm driving down I-96 in a storm late for a meeting at church?  towel bar rips off the wall while I'm drying my hands after cleaning up a quart of spilled orange juice and yelling at the kid who spilled it?  I DON"T HAVE TIME FOR THIS.  But what I actually mean is "I am already overloaded and I don't need another little frustration adding work to my day and making me late for something that I think is important."

I wish I could have more of Summer Joan's attitude all year round.  The reality is that I do have to work full time and so does Brian and we have four kids all of whom are involved in school and activities.  We generally have a very full schedule that is not going to get any less full for about a decade.  Plus, I look WAY better with makeup, heels, and a close relationship with my blowdryer.  So, as always, it's about finding the balance.  Remembering the calm feeling of unscheduled summer during crazy times and prioritizing people over deadlines.  Acknowledging that there will always be broken appliances and spilled juice and that IS life and I DO have time for it. 

The View From A Year Into This Life

It’s been a year now since Solomon and Tinsaye came home. 

In the middle of the day-to-day struggle to figure our new lives out, I NEVER thought I would feel sad to see these days behind me.  And believe me, I am really grateful to be able to relax a bit and say things like, “Let’s go to Target” without having to explain seat belts, automatic doors, the giant signs hanging from Target’s ceiling, credit cards, and that you’re not supposed to stand next to the checkout lady to see what her cash register looks like up close. 

However, I do feel a little wistful that their innocent fascination with American life is over.  For them, everything is no big deal now.  They understand how American life works.  They know what they like (and more importantly DON’T like) to order at Wendy’s, they understand the rules for riding the school bus, they can use amazing American technology like the toilet (you can put the paper IN it!), the pencil sharpener,  and the microwave (which they called ‘microphone’ for a long time).  They understand and are no longer fascinated by the tubes at the bank drive through (which I actually still think are really cool).

They can also program the DVR, Google anything, download songs from iTunes, and find a Selena Gomez video on YouTube within seconds.  Additionally, in the last year they have learned how to ride a bike, swim, dive, kneeboard, drive the waverunner, canoe, skateboard, rollerblade, ice skate, sled, hula hoop, play basketball, baseball, and soccer (with rules).  In other words, they have accumulated an American kid’s lifetime cultural knowledge in 12 months.

Their English is so good now they aren’t even funny.  Everything they said sounded cute with improper pronoun usage (“Me is so hungry”), lack of prepositions and conjunctions (“what is bagel? Is like donut?”), and general massacring of all grammatical structures so as to sound remarkably like Yoda from Star Wars (“Me is verrrrrry hungry!  Bagel is hard, like tire, no soft like donut.  No sweet like donut too.  Where is sugar?  Maybe bagel is need sugar?”).  The thing that stinks is that this sounds hilarious and precious, but when it is accompanied by a kid climbing on the counter to get the sugar and then dumping it all over the kitchen floor in the 30 seconds I was out of the room, it is not funny, it’s just stressful.  So life is easier now that they say “let’s go to Tim Hortons!  Can we get chocolate glazed this time?” but there’s nothing funny or wonderful about that.  I wish there had been a reality TV crew following us around the whole last year filming.  Then I could watch it all after the fact and enjoy it more.

I feel exactly like I have spent the last year climbing a mountain with a huge pack on my back.  It has been really hard going and required all my focus and energy just to move forward a day at a time.  I wish I had been able to look up and notice the amazing view more often.  Now we are all at a plateau and the pack is lighter and the incline is less steep, but the scenery is not as breathtaking.  I feel like that is true of all our life’s journey.  When we avoid the risks, the hard stuff, the challenging places we are called to go, we miss out on the richness of this life. 

So I’ll keep blogging just because I enjoy it (as I said to my friend recently, “I’m such a massive dork that I write narrative essays for FUN!”), but the days of stories of the wonder of discovery are mostly behind us.  Now, however, both Thomas (11) and Tinsaye (10) are just starting down the path of adolescence.  I’m seeing glimpses of surly attitudes and emotional blowouts.  The day will come (sooner that I’d like to acknowledge) when all four kids are flaming teenagers living under one roof and I will spend my days trying not to kill them or allow them to kill each other or me.  Then you can all remind me of this blog post and tell me to look around and enjoy the breathtaking view.   

4:21pm

Every afternoon at 4:20, the school bus stops on our street.  Every afternoon at 4:21, four kids burst through the door, dump backpacks, coats, shoes, papers, lunchboxes everywhere and fight over who gets my attention first by yelling over each other in a non-stop stream of overlapping voices.  The following is an actual transcription of actual 4:21 statements I heard in the past week.  Recognize that I do not actually respond here, this is all four kids talking over each other:

              “Mom, read this note!  It’s super important!  Mrs. Rohde said so.”

              “Mom, can I have a snack?”

              “Mom, Solomon got in trouble on the bus!”

              “NO I DID NOT!”

              “Yes he did, Mom.  I saw the whole thing.”

              “Mom, mom, mom, you will not even believe it…today was the best day of my life!  I got 100% on my math test!  LOOK!”

              “Mom, I seriously need new shoes right now!  Look at these!  Today on recess I kicked the ball and they flew right off and then my sock got all muddy.  So can we go get some new shoes right now?”

              “Mom, you HAVE to volunteer for Field Day or we can’t have it!  They said we need more moms RIGHT AWAY.  Maybe you could take the day off work?”

              “Mom, are you going to make me watch the Reproductive Health video at school?  You have to sign this paper.”

              “Mom, do I have to go to Thomas’s game tonight?  Can’t I PLEASE go to Carly’s house?”

              “Mom, someone stole Jessica’s popcorn money and she was crying and I said ‘you can have mine’ and then she stopped crying.”

              “Mom, what are we having for dinner?”

              “Can we have mashed potatoes?”

              “No, yesterday she said we were having tacos tonight.”

              “I hate tacos!  Are there any leftover mashed potatoes?”

              “Mom, can I go play with Alex?”

DING DONG (doorbell rings, random neighbor child comes in)

              “Mom, when is dinner?  Do I have time to play basketball with Derek and Pujan?”

              “Mom, look at my art project!  It’s a bird!  Some of the glitter came off her wings in my backpack.  Actually, kind of a lot came off in my backpack, now it’s all over my folder.  And my lunchbox.  And my sweatshirt.  Oops.”

              “Miss Joan… can I use the bathroom?” (remember the random neighbor kid?)

              “Mom, guess what?  Miss Johnson’s dog got sick and pooped all over her house!”

              “That’s disgusting!”

              “Yeah, I know.  Joey said that happened to his dog too.  When is dinner?”

There is no way that I can actually respond to this overlapping litany of urgency.  After they wind themselves down (about 4:27) my response is usually something like this:

“Put the papers on the desk, go outside and clean the glitter out of your backpack, dinner is tacos and no mashed potatoes, I don’t want any complaining, and we’re eating in 20 minutes, you can play for 15.   I’m not volunteering for anything, we’ll get new shoes on the weekend, I did NOT need to know about Miss Johnson’s dog and there had BETTER NOT be trouble on the bus.  Great job on the math test and that was really nice to share your popcorn money.   Hey Carly, when you get out of the bathroom go ask your mom if the girls can stay at your house while we’re at Thomas’s game, and yes, Thomas, you have to watch Reproductive Health and then we’re gonna TALK ABOUT IT!  Muahahahahahahahaha!”

               

Next fall, Thomas will come home before me.  There are only a few more days of the craziness of 4:21.  Believe it or not, I think I will really miss it.

               

Random conversations

I seriously do not think people get how weird my kids are.  I suppose all kids are weird, but mine appear to be thinking about some very strange things all the time.  In the last 24 hours here are the beginnings of three conversations I participated in (along with some Easter egg party photos):

Thomas: Hey mom, imagine you were driving a car that was incredibly aerodynamic, almost like a knife, and you were going about 400 miles an hour and you hit a deer.  What do you think would happen to the deer?  Would you slice it in half?  Would it fly up over the car?  Would it destroy the car?  Would you get killed?

Solomon:  Hey mom, if this car had two more wheels and another antenna, it would be an insect.  It even has an exoskeleton!












Meredith:  Hey mom, I'm so thankful I have lips.  If I didn't have lips, the food would fall out of my mouth all the time.  Plus I couldn't smile.














Tinsaye is significantly less weird that the other three.  She mostly just rolls her eyes. 












It is the funny, sweet weirdness that makes all the chaos worth it.  They are just so fun.

Underpants Guy

Since I had a filthy van full of kids and 20 extra minutes (don't ask how, I really don't know that happened), I pulled into my favorite car wash with FREE VACUUMS and put everyone to work.  I keep packages of Windex wipes and Armor-all wipes under the seat for just such an occasion.  Thomas was vacuuming, the girls were cleaning windows/leather, and Solomon was digging out petrified Cheez-Its, old crayons, and random ponytail elastics from under the seats (it sucks to be the youngest). 

We were almost done when a teenaged boy in a Jeep pulled up to the vacuum in front of us and started cleaning out his car while (of course) talking on his cell phone.  Solomon looked up at him and yells over the vacuum, "MOM, LOOK AT THAT GUY!  HIS PANTS IS OFF HIS BUTT!"  and sure enough, this poor kid (who at some point in his adult life will bitterly regret the fashion choices of his youth) was wearing jeans that were sitting a good inch or two south of his butt.  I'm sure he thought they were sagging, but they were not even close to his butt.  In fact, they defied the laws of gravity.  So as I stared transfixed, Solomon grabbed his sisters to show them, and they screamed this conversation over the vacuum, "MOM, HIS UNDERPANTS HAVE PINK ELEPHANTS ON THEM!  NO, THEY'RE NOT ELEPHANTS, I THINK THEY'RE PIGS!  NO, THEY'RE ELEPHANTS!  WHY IS HE WEARING HIS PANTS OFF HIS BUTT?  DOES HE WANT US TO LOOK AT HIS UNDERPANTS! HOW DO HIS PANTS STAY UP?"

All this screaming finally caught Thomas's attention.  He looked even more closely at the kid and screamed, "THAT GUY HAS A GIRL IN HIS CAR!  WHAT KIND OF GIRL IS GOING TO GO OUT WITH A GUY WHO WEARS UNDERPANTS WITH PINK ELEPHANTS ON THEM AND SAGS HIS PANTS COMPLETELY OFF HIS BUTT?!?!"

Finally, I was able to form words and said, "You guys are all screaming and staring!  Let's get out of here before he notices us!" and we took off.  The underpants guy was completely oblivious, but I think his girlfriend caught us laughing as we drove past them, four faces pressed up against the freshly cleaned windows, cracking up.

Finding peace and love

Being away from the kids gave us time and space to get a little perspective on what we've been doing, what's working and not working, and where we'd like to be.  Our new motto is:

Peace and love are more important than clean and on time.

Sounds great, right?  Hard to remember when we should have left the house 10 minutes ago and Solomon can't find his coat and Meredith forgot to brush her hair and Tinsaye is crying because her favorite pants are dirty and I told her to go change and Thomas suddenly realized he forgot to do his math homework and is now having a panic attack.  It's also hard to remember when I walk into my formerly neat living room after having been outside for 15 minutes and find video game controllers, blankets, playing cards, yarn, Cheetos, action figures, markers, and random dirty socks everywhere, all the lights on, Justin Bieber blaring from the speakers, but no children because they've all run off to play somewhere else.  You would think it had been pillaged by a horde of 9-yr-old suburban Vikings. 

These are the moments when Brian and I are terrible parents.  We like to have the world perceive us as "having it all together" and when we (and by extension, our kids) are late, unprepared, and messy we get very stressed and react badly.  I yell ('are you KIDDING ME?????  how can you POSSIBLY make this much mess!  when are you EVER going to learn?'), we make sweeping threats, Brian often issues completely unrealistic edicts ('we must now all be in the car 15 minutes before we actually need to leave', 'no one may ever again use markers').  At these moments, we feel out of control and neither of us is comfortable with that.  Of course, it is absolutely ridiculous to think that we can expect the kids to get it right all the time, but we are also really concerned about setting expectations and standards for them.  We are unwilling to accept the living room of the Vikings and snarly haired kids with no homework.

But we have decided to try to break out of our frustration by changing our reaction to these situations.  This morning I told Meredith, "I am leaving for work in 5 minutes.  If you don't get your hair brushed I can't do it for you."  And she stood in front of the mirror with her hairbrush making faces and singing songs and didn't brush it.  So I left without screaming.  And she looked pretty crappy. But no one died, and any shame she felt was of her own making, not because I yelled at her and made her feel like a failure.  I am trying to de-escalate my response to the messes by letting it go until the kids are back around and then making them pick stuff up before they do anything fun or eat (whichever appears more motivating).  Last week, Solomon missed the bus and Brian did not yell or threaten or drive him to school while yelling and threatening, he just said, "You'd better run hard and try to catch it on the next street."  Sol was a bit shocked, but he took off running and he managed to catch it, much to the delight of his brother and sisters who found it hilarious to see him waving his arms and hollering "Wait Bus Driver!!!"

The trick is to CHOOSE a peaceful, loving response with natural consequences instead of allowing ourselves to be triggered into anger.  Not easy, but totally worth it for everyone's sake.   It has really made a difference for me and it seems to be getting easier to do.  But I have to actually say out loud to myself, "peace and love are more important than clean and on time" in order to do it.  As with most things in life, hard work pays off and I am feeling more loving toward my little Vikings and peaceful about our chronic chaos.