Mindless Mom

We watched a typical kid movie over the weekend.  It had the usual animation, goofy characters, funny lines, and catchy tunes……only this time, the tune was a little too catchy.

“I like big butts…..”, my 5yr old daughter sang as she danced down the hallway.

“Don’t sing that song”, I said.

“Why?”, she asked.  Nevermind the song was “innocently” playing in the background of one of the dance scenes from the kid movie where fish danced to choreography.  Thank you Sir Mix-a-Lot.

“People don’t want to hear you singing about butts”, I said matter-of-fact.

My daughter then made her way up to her room.  As she hit the midway point on the staircase, I heard, “I like big butts…..” in a sing-song voice and I saw her rump shaking to the groove.

As I followed her up the stairs with a laundry basket, I calmly reminded her, “Please don’t sing that song.”

When we made our way to the top of the stairs, she walked into her room and I walked into mine.

“I like big butts……”, came wafting through the air across the hallway.

“I SAID DON’T SING THAT SONG!”, I said with a raised voice as I made my way towards her room.

As I stood in the doorway of her room, I watched as she walked over to her closet and stepped inside.

“I like big butts…….”, came bebopping from behind the door.

“I told you not to sing that song anymore.  I can hear you loud and clear, I’m standing right here.”, I said with genuine disbelief.

She poked her head out of the closet and looked at me for the first time throughout my one line lectures and with serious eyes asked, “Where do you suppose you wouldn’t hear me?”

“Mom, I have some people I want you to meet”, my 5yr old daughter called out from her room.

I walked into her room and saw that she was crouched up on her bed, carefully arranging things on her headboard shelf.

“Over here.  Come over here.”, she summoned me.

I sat down on her bed, as she pointed to the shelf just above her pillow.  Sitting in a line were two clam shells and a rock with faces drawn on them in red marker.

I smiled.

“Mom, I’d like you meet Alvin, Simon, and Theodore.”, she said proudly.

I took a moment to take in the adorable little details drawn on each of the miniature pieces…………… and then put on my game face.

“Wow, I’ve never met chipmunks before.  This is so exciting!”, I said dramatically.  “It’s so nice to meet you boys!”

My daughter looked up at me with complete disdain and said, “Mom, you know you’re talking to a rock and two clams, right?”

My 7yr old daughter and 5yr old daughter are either the best of friends or arch enemies, depending on the hour.  Over the past 48hours they have managed to get along, continuously.

Because of their record breaking love fest, they decided that they were going to have a sleepover in my 5yr old daughter’s room.  They talked through every single detail, down to which pillow they would place where, and what each of them should do in the event that one of them “smooshed” the other in the middle of the night.

“I’ll just push you off the bed and you can sleep on the floor.”, my 5yr old daughter said.

I think she was serious.

By the time bedtime rolled around, they were so giddy about their nighttime arrangement, that I could barely get enough soap on them in the bath tub before they wanted to jump out and dry off.  When they were “clean enough”, they raced to the twin bed they planned to share for the night and spent ten minutes arranging pillows and stuffed animals.

I brought them matching water cups, picked out two books and set up shop at the end of the bed.

As they sipped their water, I read the title of the first book, “The Pink Pup”.

“CAN I READ IT?  HOW ABOUT I READ IT?  CAN I READ IT MOM?”, shouted my 7yr old daughter.

Her 5yr old sister rolled her eyes, gently tried to push her back on her assigned pillow and said, “Just let mom read it.  Lay down.  Just listen.”

I turned the page and had not gotten through the first sentence when again, “CAN I READ THIS PAGE?  HOW ABOUT EVERY OTHER WORD?  WHAT IF I JUST READ THE BOOK AND YOU LISTEN?  I CAN MOVE DOWN THERE IF IT’S EASIER”, she said, her voice in stereo surround sound.

Again her sister rolled her eyes, added a small huff, and said, “Just let moooooooooooooom read it.  Let her read the story.  It’s bedtime.”

I could tell my 5yr old was ready for bed and the thought of sitting next to her rambunctious sister for another ten minutes, let alone an entire night, was starting to become a scary reality to her and it was showing in her tired green eyes.

I finally convinced them both to lay back and managed to get through the first book, then the second.

We said our prayers, sang some songs, and then I tucked them into bed and moved on to their brother’s room to walk through a similar routine.

I was about halfway through reading a book with my son, when I noticed a shadow in the hallway.  Without even looking up, I knew it was my 5yr old.  She didn’t say a word, she just patiently waited until I was done reading and then slowly walked up to the side of the bed and whispered, “Mom, I don’t want her in my room anymore”.  I smiled in the dark.

“Tell her to move over to the other bed”, I responded.  There were two twin beds in the room they were in.  The other one SHOULD have been occupied by their 3yr old sister, but she was too busy pulling her typical Las Vegas nighttime routine while playing with her baby dolls downstairs next to my husband.

My 5yr old daughter dashed out of the room and returned ten seconds later and said, “She won’t move.”

I got up, walked into the sleepover headquarters and before I could say a word, Miss Motor Mouth looked up at me and said with genuine surprise in her voice, “She said I have to move over to THAT bed?!”, as she pointed across the room.  I nodded my head and confirmed she had to move over, telling her that her sister slept better on her own.

The slighted sister pouted a bit before actually moving, which had me offering up the choice to go back to her own room.  My 5yr old daughter grinned from ear to ear upon hearing that option.

When I finally got her over to the second bed, she started barking out demands to move the pillows and stuffed animals she had brought into the room……..dramatically pointing to one directly underneath her sister’s head.

As my 5yr old lifted her head and tossed the stuffed dog to her older sister, she pulled up the covers, turned in my direction and with adult sarcasm said, “This sleepover just keeps getting better and better.”

We passed this street the other night.

With all the trees in bloom with gorgeous white flowers, I stopped to stare AND take a picture.

My 9yr old son stared in awe beside me and in a soft voice said, “It looks like heaven.”

I asked my 7yr old daughter to tell me five things she likes to do.

She responded with the following:

“#1 would be to draw.”

“#2 would be to eat.”

“#3 would be to dance.”

“#4 would be to ride my bike.”

“#5……………did I already say eat?”

That’s my girl.

Just before bedtime, my 7yr old daughter decided to write a story.

With a legal pad gripped in her left hand and a sharpened No. 2 pencil in her right, she looked up at me and asked, “Can you write my title?”

I laughed.  “Aren’t you the one writing the story?”, I replied.

“I am.  I just want you to write the title.  I’ll write the rest”.

I reluctantly took the pad and pencil from her hands and began to write after she dramatically announced, “The title will be…… THE THREE SISTERS”.

She spent the next ten minutes writing, reading out loud, and asking how to spell every fourth word.  Early on in the story, right after ’Once upon a time’, she wrote that her 2yr old sister got sick and had to stay in bed for five days.

Her 2yr old sister, who happened to be playing in the same room, turned to her with a scowl and argued, “I NO SICK!”

My 7yr old proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes adding sentences, erasing sentences, reading sentences out loud, re-reading the entire story in progress, and continued to ask how to spell every fourth word.  Each time she read that her sister got sick, her sister would stomp across the room with her arms folded across her chest and scream, “ME NO SICK”.

My 7yr old found this to be pretty entertaining.  I found it to be pretty annoying.

Finally, after much encouragement, her story line additions included her sister suddenly GETTING BETTER and the three sisters skipping off to find puppies on the sidewalk that they would adopt three sentences later.  Yes, the story line was riveting.

As she found a good place to stop the story for the night, she made one final read out loud to the room.  As she read the sentence about her sister getting sick, my 2yr old stood up exasperated, stomped out of the room huffing and from the hallway yelled, ”I SAID ME NO SICK! I FINE!”

My 7yr old looked up at me with a smirk and said, “Geez……………….it’s just a story.”

I agreed and then stood up, flipped the lights off and said, “The End”.

I used to sleep.

Not much, but enough to function.

Now I’m lucky if I get two hours of uninterrupted sleep a night.

Between the hours of midnight and 6am, my children have decided to take turns blessing me with their presence bedside with requests for water, for me to tuck them back in, or for me to move over and share my bed.  The last request never seems to be delivered with an option for me to say “no”.  I’m no sooner adjusting my eyesight to identify which of my four lovely children is annoying me in the wee hours, when I’m shoved to the middle of my bed by a little butt or forearm.

On a good night, I manage to sneak away into the intruder’s twin bed and capture three hours of sleep, on a bad night I’m repeatedly asked if I can “move over”.  On a really bad night I’m hanging off my own bed, making a weak attempt to sleep with one leg standing.

When a kid gets sick it’s like Armageddon.

Puke faced, snot nosed, cough infested…………..you name it, someone gets it.  And in the spirit of keeping things “fair” around here, we typically like to share the wealth with each other.  So a night of yak typically leads to a week of it in one form or another.  Good times.

My 2 year old is sick with an ear infection……….and a fever……..and vomit………..and I’m awake.   It’s 4:34am.

This time, instead of sleeping on one leg, I’m typing with one hand. 

My other arm is pinned under Miss Sickie, who between sleep intervals has managed to open her eyes long enough to yell, “ME NO WANT MEDICINE”.

All I want to yell back is “ME WANT SLEEP”.

“I’ve got frogs in my pants”, my 5yr old daughter said.

“Is that like ants in your pants?  Are you itching?”, I asked with concern.

“No, I mean, I ACTUALLY HAVE FROGS IN MY POCKET”, she shot back.

Next thing I knew, she unsnapped a pocket on the side of her pants and started lining up plastic frogs for two minutes.

When she was done, she looked up at me and said, “Don’t worry. They don’t itch”.

Good to know.

We took the kids out to eat to a local salad and sandwich joint the other night.   After ordering enough food to feed an army of fifty, otherwise known as our family of six, we sat and enjoyed the food and knock knock jokes for an hour or so.  My 2yr old daughter likes to lead with the following….

“Knock Knock”

“Who’s there?”

“Mommy”

“Mommy who?”

“Mommy Mommy”, which she follows up with uncontrollable giggling. 

When we could no longer take the jokes, we corralled the kids and started to head out.

As we walked out of the place, my 9yr old son took note of the wall decor. 

He pointed to two giant shiny objects on the wall and chuckled.

“Mom, if this place ever closes down, I’m coming back here and I’m buying those.”, he said in a serious tone.

I laughed.

“And then I’m going to need to find the World’s Largest Bowl.  And once I have that, I plan to buy cases and cases of soup, chicken noodle soup…..lots of it.   And I’ll fill the bowl up to the top and use that giant spoon to eat it all.”, he said with a large grin.

“Can I have some too?”, his 5yr old sister asked.

“Yeah, if you can eat it with a fork.”, he answered with a laugh.

The two of them spent the car ride home discussing all the different dishes they would serve up in the World’s Largest Bowl that they had yet to see. 

By the time we hit the driveway they had given up on the food and decided to instead duel with the ginormous fork and spoon.  But they both agreed they’d still need the bowl for “something” and vowed to start looking for one together.

Until then, I plan to hide all my silverware.

I went out of town last weekend to spend some QT with my sister who’s just about to get hitched.  (woo-hoo)

Within five minutes of being home my 6yr old called me over to “show” me something.

It’s always good to be home.