How My Kids Are Like Animals (Or Is It The Other Way Around?)

I used to get really irritated with people who called their pets "children" or the ones who claimed they were "practicing for parenthood" with their dogs. Pssh! I would look down on them in a more than slightly condescending way, maybe with a bit of self-righteousness that they had absolutely no freaking idea what parenthood actually is.

Now that I've been around the parenthood block a time or two (or four), all while juggling the responsibility and attachment to several family pets, I've come to a realization... sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference.

To prove my point, here is a nifty little quiz. Below is a list of things that have actually happened in our house. Try to guess whether the culprits are my darling and beautiful children or one of the furrier members of the family. I think you'll find it difficult.

Was it a pet or a kid? Scroll down for the answers. You'll probably be surprised.

1. Woke me up at 1 AM whining about a bad dream.

2. Pees outside on the bushes.

3. Runs to the door every time the mailman comes to deliver the mail.

4. Sat silently watching me eat Girl Scout cookies until I finally shared one.

5. Didn't want to go outside to play because she might get her feet wet.

6. Played outside and got wet from head to toe and left a long wet trail through the front hall.

7. Sat quietly with me while we watched a movie.

8. Likes to jump on the furniture.

9. Leaves his toys everywhere for me to step on.

10. Gets really hyper when my parents come to visit.




And now for the answers...

1. Pet. My dog, Seamus has apparently quite vivid dreams. He woke me whimpering and thrashing from a nightmare. Meanwhile, I haven't had a kid wake me at night in years.

2. Both. It's just easier and more convenient to pee in the bushes when you're outside having a good time.

3. Kid. My youngest is slightly preoccupied with mail delivery. I guess she's hoping maybe someday she might actually get a letter or a package or something. For now she just enjoys handing me bills.

4. Kid. Sometimes they're afraid to ask so they just sit silently wishing and staring a hole through my soul until I feel guilty enough to hand over snacks.

5. Pet. Did you know snow is wet? The cat is such a diva.

6. Kid. What were you rolling in the mud? Now get a towel and clean up the lake you left on the hardwoods.

7. Pet. It's easier for the non-verbal members of the family to make it through a movie without asking questions about the story line.

8. Pet. It's difficult for them to just sit on the furniture since they are so much closer to the ground than the two-legged members of the family. Although I haven't entirely cured the kiddos from their routine furniture flopping. (Does flopping count as jumping?) That's why the couch sags in the middle.

9. Both. Whether it's dog toys or action figures, I'm going to step on something.

10. Kid. Who doesn't get excited over a visit from Nana? The dogs might bark a little when they first arrive, but the kids will bounce and chatter non-stop until she leaves.

As you can see, in some ways they really aren't all that different. Those pets are family, too.

Losing The Baby Weight

"Wow. You don't look like you've had four kids."

I've heard that before. I suppose it's meant as some sort of compliment that I've somehow been lucky enough to have survived four pregnancies without my body being completely destroyed.

It's true that I never had  a lot of trouble "losing the baby weight". I might weigh a good ten pounds more than I did before my first pregnancy,  but I think that has more to do with hitting my forties than any lingering postpartum pounds.

I did, after all have my first baby more than eighteen years ago.

I gained exactly thirty pounds with that first pregnancy. It seemed like all baby. You couldn't even tell I was pregnant if you looked at me from behind. From the front, it looked like I'd tucked a basketball up under my circus-tent maternity blouse (the kind that were considered oh-so-chic in the mid-90s. Thankfully, maternity wear has come a long way since then. My daughters will be much more fashionable.)

He weighed 7 pounds 12 ounces when the nurse laid him in my arms. It might as well have been the weight of the world. I didn't know what to do with that little human.The weight of my responsibility seemed enormous, like I would drown in it and be lost forever.

I lost myself in parenting books and La Leche League meetings and vaccine research and nutrition labels. I was afraid that any wrong choice would leave him scarred for life, if not physically at least emotionally. So I obsessed and I worried. The weight of him in my arms was lite, but the weight of him on my heart seemed immense.

He weighed over 30 pounds by the time he reached his second birthday. He was heavy to carry, balanced precariously on my hip, constantly grabbing for things. The weight of his questions pressed on my sanity. Now he was on the move and into everything, the weight of keeping him safe and sparking the curiosity of his rapidly developing brain weighed on me with more gravity than his toddler body.

He topped fifty pounds when he hit school age. He was almost too big to carry, and had to share my arms with a brother and sister. And I carried the load of his early education, of life lessons, and the development of his character.

When he hit puberty, he weighed more than 100 pounds, and I wondered when he had become too big to hold. That day slipped past in a stream of so many others, and I am sad that it doesn't stick out in my memory. I should have remembered the last time I held him. I should have lingered on his little boy smell before it was replaced with body odor and deodorant and dirty socks. When he turned thirteen, I was no longer burdened by his weight in my lap, but by the weight of the grocery bill (Oh. My. God. The amount of food growing teen boys consume on a daily basis! It will blow your mind.) and of teaching him about safe sex and respecting women and of self-respect and managing money, of being honest and true to your word.

And on top of it all was the added weight of his three siblings.

Public Domain

I thought I would have lost it by now. The baby weight.

It's been more than eleven years since my body has birthed a baby. It seems like more than enough time to shed the extra weight that motherhood packs on.

But while the maternal weight can't be seen on my hips and my thighs, it's the weight that can't be seen by the naked eye that can't be shed. It's the weight of my concern for the well-being of four fabulous human beings that the Universe thought to place in my care. It's heavier than the pounds that the bathroom scale measures and it grows as they grow. That weight doesn't go away, not with any amount of time or fad dieting or exercise or plastic surgery. It's there forever. There are probably more stretch marks on my heart than on my belly.

It's that weight on my heart that won't go away. Not if I live to be 150.

Why It's Great To Be An Adult

This week has sucked. True story.

Just as winter decided to come smashing it's way across North Carolina, leaving in it's wake frost and freezing temperatures and people dressed in mukluks, our HVAC unit died. Repair people were called in and several hundred dollars later we had heat... for about 12 hours and then nothing. Nada. It just hums. The diagnosis now has something to do with new duct work... which sounds expensive.

To add insult to injury, our minivan is in need of a new transmission... which also sounds expensive.

AND the holidays are coming which means we will be expected to play Santa and cook turkeys and entertain guests... which is also expensive.

I'm not liking this adulthood thing right about now. I'd really just like to hide in my blanket fort (I wonder if it's warm in there) and forget everything. Maybe refuse to come out until someone buys me a pony or at least an ice cream cone.

When adult responsibilities barrel in like bulldozers and the stress levels run high, it's difficult to remember that being an adult has it's perks. Don't laugh...it's true.

Here are the biggest perks to being an adult, just in case you're like me and life is chucking lemons at you with surprising speed causing you to forget just how cool it is to be an adult.

1. You can eat ice cream or candy or cookies for breakfast! Of course, your conscience probably won't let you (Stupid Conscience!). And if you have kids, you'll probably need to lock yourself in the bathroom to eat it while pretending to take a shower. Just ignore the pounding and screaming at the door.

2. You can stay up as late as you want! No bedtime. No parents getting on your case. Pure freedom! ...But don't stay up too late or you'll be the miserable kind of tired that even the strongest coffee can't fix. There's that whole work BS you have to deal with.

3. You don't have to clean your room! No, but you'll probably want to... especially if your mother-in-law is coming over.

4. You don't ever have to take another standardized test! ...You will however have to file income tax returns... which have horrible consequences should you do them wrong. I've been audited. It sucks. A lot. I'd rather take the SAT.

5. You can have sex where ever you want and not have to worry about being caught! ...Unless you have children. Then you'll still have to be sneaky about it.

6. You can buy your own wine, beer, and liquor! Which is a good thing because with all of the bills and responsibilities and crushed dreams of adulthood, you're going to need it. ...But the hangover is going to SUCK!

Isn't it great being an adult?

If you need me, I'll be hiding from my bills in the blanket fort with this magnum bottle of Malbec...

It's Not Messy, We Just Live Here

My house is messy.

If you've ever been to my house, I've probably apologized profusely for the mess. I might have asked you to please not look at the clutter. I might have requested that you hold back on your judgement and silently hoped you wouldn't notice the herd of dust buffalo roaming the front hall (Seriously. They are too huge to be considered dust bunnies. They are more the size of grazing bison... and they like to drift in herds.)

It's funny how I don't seem to notice the unmatched socks draped over the arm of the couch or the stack of junk mail teetering on the hall table or the paper towels the dog dragged from the trash bin and then shredded all over the dining room floor... until I have a guest. Then those things (along with the karate bags carelessly tossed by the front door and the art supplies strewn across the kitchen table) seem to flash and beep and glare like a laser light show trying to draw attention to my utter failure as a housekeeper (and probably as a mother, too).

It's not that we live in utter chaos. We actually (usually) meet at least the minimum level of sanitation required to maintain health and sanity and keep Child Protective Services at bay. We certainly don't belong on an episode of hoarders or anything.

But we do live here. I mean really live here, with gusto and zeal. We LIVE here. We build blanket forts and play board games and conduct science experiments on the kitchen counters (and sometimes in the fridge when leftovers get pushed to the back and forgotten about, but those aren't generally on purpose). We read books and play fetch with the dogs and make kitchen messes (also known as culinary creativity). We have conversations and do research and take naps. We make noise and get distracted. We bounce down stairs and sometimes the children literally climb the walls.

I clean. I swear that I clean. Usually quite vigorously, especially in preparation for holidays that require visits from extended family and dinners with tablecloths and fine china (I have some that I bought on clearance at Target a few years ago... china not extended family members). But the messes in this house are like some sort of perpetual motion machine. No matter how much I scrub or tidy or vacuum, it's never going to stay that way. New messes are always in various stages of being created. It's part of life, this continuous march toward entropy.

Maybe I did forget to cart the recycling to the curb last week because I was too busy helping my teenaged daughter with homework and now we look like a family with a drinking problem (I'm sure the neighbors are even now staging an intervention). Maybe I haven't recently dusted or mopped because I haven't had the time between eating dinner as a family, running my kids to karate and night classes, teaching my younger ones American History, and settling down in the evenings to catch my breath. Maybe we've been engaged in too much silliness and laughter and discourse and creativity and fun to notice the layer of dust collecting on the shelves and the mantels.

I'm done apologizing. My home isn't some trumped up model house in some fancy interior designer's magazine. (I secretly suspect that those magazines are really just trying to set a standard for housekeeping that is totally unrealistic and unattainable if people are actually residing in the domicile. It's probably part of some grand conspiracy to make us feel self-conscious and insecure and therefore spend more money on cleaning products and cheesy mass-produced artwork and interior designer magazines. Break the cycle!) We don't exist in a perfect world where children's hands are always clean and socks always have matches and dogs don't shed. That perfect world doesn't exist, and I wouldn't want to live in it anyway.

So I'm done apologizing. I'm done with the guilt. I'm throwing out all of my Better Homes & Gardens magazines. We live here. What you're seeing aren't careless messes. What you see are the footprints of our lives (and the fingerprints, too. The children like to leave those on the walls). I wouldn't trade my refrigerator artwork or the pile of kid's shoes or my dog hair-covered furniture for all of the polished floors and sanitized home decor in the world.

So if you come over, you can scoff and cringe and secretly judge me if you want to. Or you can sit back with me and enjoy the beautiful view. This is home. My home...where the dust buffalo roam...

The Beauty of Boredom

"I'm bored," whined my 10 year-old as she rolled all over the living room carpet.

Since I didn't respond, she kind of rolled in my direction, heaved a long sigh and said in a whinier, louder, and much more annoying voice, "I'm BOOOORRRRED!"

So I glanced in her direction and said, "Good for you."

And this is why my children claim that I am the meanest mom on the face of the planet....like EVER!

After giving me the dirtiest look a freckle-faced 10 year-old can muster, she rolled back across the carpet to the other side of the room.  She did occasionally moan or sigh overly loudly just to remind me that she was super bored and that I was a horrible mother for allowing this travesty of boredom to continue.  But without reaping the desired response from me (I was busy trying not to be overly annoyed without experiencing a lot of success), she rolled back across the carpet, looked up at me and said in her whiniest, loudest, most annoying voice yet, "Mom...I'm sooooooooo miserably bored."

Ugh.

"Listen, Dear Child of Mine, you are bored and it's a wonderful thing.  It means that your time is not so full of meaningless structured tasks that you can sit without doing anything.  It means that you can roll all over the carpet and respond to the stirrings of your own heart.

"It means that you are not being sucked into the competitive busy-ness of our society where everyone feels they must be constantly occupied and outwardly stimulated.  Instead you can sink deep within yourself and explore the vast depths of your own soul and your boundless imagination.  Entire universes of possibility reside there inside the artistry of your brain, just waiting to burst forth from your ingenuity.  What awesome and absolute power you possess!

"No, don't turn on the television or the computer or some other soul-sucking electronic device.  Do not fall prey to the hypnotic lure of the screen.  It's a quick and simple and utterly mindless fix, like inserting a narcotic needle and squeezing out passive entertainment.  I know it can be soothing, but it blunts your acute young senses like an opiate...or morphine...or belladonna...and it is just as addictive.  It's nothing more than a sedative that induces a slumber that leaves you unaware of this bustling, beautiful, breathing world around you.

"You see, Sweet Child, boredom is a symptom of being completely in the moment, in a Zen master sort of way.  You are almost there.  There is no real difference between boredom and reflection.  You are right here, right now, rolling across the room, covered in dog hair, breathing sighs of beautiful boredom.

"I will not entertain you, Beautiful Child, because I refuse to rob you of this wonderful moment of grace and splendor.  What is life, except the time that we are living?  You are alive!  You do not want to miss the best parts of your life because an adult has thoughtlessly structured all of your time, or to realize one day that they have flown past you as you stared zombie-like into an electronic screen.  I will not keep you so busy or so passively entertained that you cannot reflect or dream or feel your own feelings.

"You don't realize what a gift your boredom is.  I will not steal it from you."

She answered with another heaving sigh and a sarcastically charged eye-roll. But when I glanced in her direction later, I watched her lying across a beam of sunshine, swishing with her hands and making the dust motes dance like fairies in a heavenly beam.  And I wondered what deep thoughts swam beneath her fluttering eyelashes.

She can thank me later for being the meanest mom in the whole entire world...like EVER!