The Outting

OH the JOYS of motherhood! I wish I could blog AS my life where happening instead of trying to remember how I managed to survive another day.

Today, I mostly tried to keep my darlings OUT of the house so Starling could tile the kitchen. So Brighton and Teagan, the 3 year old I babysit, played outside while Brooklyn had her violin lessons. Boeing also played outside which is why I will be pulling pine straw out of his fat rolls for the duration of his childhood.

Even in the solid shade, it was 3.6 million degrees. I felt like a polar bear being roasted like a marshmallow. I might as well have been wearing a fur coat with mittens, for I was BAKING. And entertaining children for a mere thirty minute lesson shouldn’t be that difficult, right? Heck, I think I only went inside a house to sleep when I was that age. We wouldn’t even go inside to pee. Of course, I stayed with my grandma who didn’t believe in air conditioning and had a wood stove that she kept burning up until June when she’d give it two months off and resume heat stroking her grandkids by the end of August. So, perhaps outside was more bearable than being indoors for me. But, that’s beside the point. My cousins and I built forts, made mud pies and ate them (though my grandma had chickens running around so I try not to think about what was in that mud), played house, etc. I don’t remember ever thinking… “I’m outside. Therefore I am bored.”

Boeing immediately set to cramming as much pine straw into his mouth as his little hands could muster, getting frustrated that both handfuls weren’t fitting so well. Brighton saw a cat. Enough said. Poor cat. Teagan started crying that she wanted to go inside. I called them over to teach them a really cool game. (Your welcome, Cat). Throw the pine cone at the pine tree. I demonstrated. Oh what joy! Bry thought it was more fun to throw the pine cones at the cat, and when it ran away, at my van. Teagan threw a pinecone at the tree, missed, and started crying that she couldn’t hit it. OKAY. Next game. Who can find the longest stick? Bry did. Unfortunately, he found it up IN a tree, still connected. This is because it was a LIMB. But he proceeded to try to LIFT the PINETRESS to DUMP out the tree limb. For obvious reasons, he was unsuccessful. Teagan found a stick. It broke. She cried.

At some point, I mentally gave up and thought Brooklyn emerging from her lesson was a mirage. But, thankfully, she was, actually finished and we loaded back up and stopped at the library. Finally, a nice relaxing sit while the kids play with the giant choo-choo- train set. Oh. Except today was some book reading activity thing. We got there after it had just finished. But no one left. It looked like a stork went postal and threw all the criers into one pile. Talk about weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. D-DANG. Brighton laid claim on a train and spent the rest of the time trying to defend it, Brooklyn attempted coloring, but little hands kept grabbing her paper, the crayons, etc. Teagan found some stuffed animals and was content until a baby decided he needed them.  ALL of them. And Boeing was in Heaven. He found a discarded train, climbed INTO the metal bookshelf, and beat the living heck out of the shelf. I had to, of course, remove him, since the people on the street could hear him banging, which royally pissed him off, and he made it his mission to return to his sweet spot for the rest of our stay. So, before the thought of sneaking away and hiding in a bathroom stall for an hour became too tempting, I loaded them up AGAIN and we went to McDonalds.

The entire way there, I am saying, “You are doing a good thing getting them out of the house. They are having fun. Or should be. And Starling is getting to tile. It would be worse trying to keep them out of the kitchen. This isn’t so bad. You got this.”

We drove up. “WOO HOO!! OLD MCDONALD’s! Just like OLD MCDONALD HAS A FARM!” screams Brooklyn. Yes. Exactly like that. We unloaded. People were staring at me like OctoMom just showed her face. I herded the kids into the play area like cattle and asked them to STAY in there while I ordered food. Did they stay? What do you think? And molasses moves faster in a snow storm than so called FAST FOOD. And I MADE my kids drink water. Worst mom EVER to graze planet earth. Because water is not a DRINK. Three lovely tantrums over that, BUT they drank water.

They did, indeed, enjoy themselves at McDonalds. And besides collected enough germs to fill up a five gallon bucket, I have no qualms about taking them back.

It was almost three and I couldn’t take them anywhere else. I took them home. Starling wasn’t done, but I figured movie time in the living room… they would all crash. I mean, I was a walking zombie. I was half heat-stroking, half sleep walking. And I didn’t run around ANY. I sat there. Just spectating the crazy. Did they fall asleep? What do you think? So I did some learning games with them to keep them occupied and OFF the tile. That worked. For a minute. Then they wanted a snack. So I gave them ice cream. Where they happy? What do you think? Brooklyn had a conniption because she couldn’t sit at the kitchen table even though I explained to her 600 times that we couldn’t walk on the tile, Brighton was whining, “I don’t like di-is! Its too BI-IG!” And Teagan didn’t like the color of her bowl. It wasn’t pink. I smiled and walked away and eventually they decided to eat their ice cream.

They were much happier after that and we ended the day on a happy note. Until of course I mentioned the words BED and BATH.  But I won. And I'm NOT leaving my house tomorrow.