It’s still a month away, but they are ready.

The boys have their backpacks packed, lunch boxes at the ready, new shoes and jeans in their dressers, pencils and crayons in little tins, notebooks, folders, markers, tissues, and even anti-bacterial wipes.

My twins are ready for Kindergarten.

If I were to tell them today was the day, they already know what they want to wear on the first day. They would get dressed faster than lightning and be straining at the bit to get to the bus stop.

They are ready to grow up.

Am I ready?

Well, I am certainly ready for them to be back to school. Who knew two little boys could unclean a house without fail every single day of summer?  But, I don’t know if I am ready for them to go to Kindergarten. I vividly remember the red dress I wore to school on my very first day of Kindergarten. If I can vividly remember ANYTHING, that means it couldn’t have been that long ago. Surely my kids aren’t old enough to be going to school. I am not far enough removed from school myself. Right?

My Kindergarten dress hasn’t fit me in 25 years, you say? Oh. Well, I guess I might be old enough to have Kindergarteners.

But, they need to promise me they will stop growing up so fast. I think they are definitely growing two years for every one of mine and that is just not fair!

Sometimes I like to just sit and listen to the kids talking to each other. Yesterday I was listening to them play and talk. Perhaps they would say something precious…

I tried to listen for a good quote from Aili, but she currently thinks she’s a cat so, she speaks entirely in meows. Not very quotable.

And Peter…well, he’s really discovered potty humor. His newest trick is to get his hands wet in the sink and then rub them on someone while telling them he just peed on himself. So, he is really full of charming quotes.

But, Robert is a goldmine. I am pretty sure he talks just to hear his own voice.  Here is an abridged version of his lecture on edible homes:

“What if our whole house was made of Pop Tarts? What if the whole WORLD was made of Pop Tarts?! Then I would eat it all. No, wait. Not the whole world. Just the houses. Then we would still have places to stand. And we could have trees that grew Pop Tarts. Then we could always grow more. But, I might get fat. But, I still want a house of Pop Tarts. The doors can be Cookies and Cream and the walls can be S’mores. And extra sprinkles on the roof…”

See, not only does he have a vivid imagination, but he ha a very clearly defined love for Pop Tarts.

I am sure you saw what happened last time we tried to put the children on stage.

Well, lasst night my husband tried again. Peter sat in the audience, Aili ran around the room like she was on fire, and Robert stood with the group and just stared as though he was about to be executed.

I believe the term my husband used to describe them was “choreography challenged”.

I, ironically, missed this lovely spectacle because it was the opening night for the musical I am in. (Grease is the word, ya’ll.)

I try to be fair and remember i didn’t really start to enjoy theatre until I was in high school. So, the kids still have time. But, I think I may had to come to terms with the fact that it doesn’t look likely that we will ever be playing the Cratchit family in Scrooge.

Well, Robert would make a good mini-ghost of Christmas future. If we could just get him to point at a tombstone menacingly…

Aili came padding in to my room yesterday morning. She crawled up in to the bed and snuggled in to “her spot”. She was, curiously, completely naked.

“Where are your clothes, little girl?” I asked her.

She was busy getting comfortable so, she didn’t answer.

“Aili, where are you underwear?”

“Upstairs,” she replied.

“What are they doing up there?” I asked, knowing I now had some of her attention.

“They like it up there,” she said casually.

Oh, really now.

“Are you sure that’s why your undies are upstairs?”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why her underwear were not on her body.

“Uh huh!” she confirmed.

“Did you have a little accident?” I asked, hoping that it wasn’t one that involved anything more than urine.

“Um…..maybe?” said a small voice from under the covers.

Ah, so perhaps those underwear are upstairs for other reasons.

Not just because they like it up there.

But, they DO like it up there!

(Sorry about the lack of posts yesterday. There were some power outages that prevented me from blogging.)

Aili really likes to snuggle. At night. In my bed. And I let her do it. Often.

I know. I KNOW. I have heard it all. If I let her in my bed, she’ll never leave and it will be impossible to retrain her to sleep in her own bed. What if she got smothered? She’ll grow up weird!

I don’t believe any of that hooey. And here is why:

1. Co-sleeping is not a crime. Some sources tend to vilify co-sleeping with children and babies. Well, neither parent in this situation is under the influence of drugs or alcohol and Aili is robust enough that if she feels that she is not getting the proper amount of blanket coverage, she will thrash and kick until it is correct. I am not worried about rolling on her because, as a sober adult, I know she’s there. Even in my sleep, I can tell there is a child in the bed. Just like I know my husband is in the bed. Much to his dismay, I don’t smother him, either.

2. She will grow out of it. Children love to show their independence. Eventually her craving to be a Big Girl will be bigger than her craving to drool on my face in a deep sleep at 2 in the morning.

3. I like it, darn it. I work long days. I don’t get to spend a lot of time with the kids and when I do, it’s all of them together. When she comes to snuggle, it’s wonderful one-on-one time with my “baby”. She melts in to my arms, sighs contentedly, and I comb her hair with my fingers until she falls asleep.  We both get some nice, physical closeness and it’s a nice way to drift off to sleep. I want her to always feel secure and loved. If it takes some blanket-sharing to help he know that i will always be there for her, then so be it!

4. It’s better than nursing. Aili is like a tiny, blonde crackhead when it comes to boobs. I am pretty sure she would nurse until adulthood if I let her.  Even though we have been weaning her for 3 months (with varying levels of success), she still asks to nurse. A lot. So, telling her she has the alternative of snuggling is awesome. She doesn’t try to claw my shirt off if I tell her she can snuggle with me and that is worth every single kick in the kidneys she gives.

5. Co-sleeping is common pretty much everywhere on the planet….except in the US. So, honestly, are we gasping about this being a big scandal because there is something wrong with an occasional family bed or because we are trained to believe in ethnocentricity. Just because a practice is common in the west, that doesn’t mean it is the only or even the best way of doing something.

So, that is it. My three year old sometimes has a sleepover in my bed. The world has not stopped turning. She’s not trauma-riddled and scarred. Okay, she might not be the best candidate for a sleepover party in someone else’s house quite yet, but we have lots of time for that. And, she knows to potty before coming to my bed now! See? She can adapt quickly! Co-sleeping works!

(Please remember that co-sleeping should never happen with any adult under the influence of drugs or alcohol. While this occasional sleeping arrangement works for us, it is not a “one size fits all” thing. Decide what works best for your family. Even if you choose to never co-sleep, never deny your kids one last bedtime hug.)

Robert has had his super shoes for almost a week now. He is in love with their coolness, but they make his feet tired fast. I guess that is a common problem when you are used to compensating for a short limb. So, he is a little frustrated with his shoes right now and doesn’t want to wear them as much as he needs to.

So, this weekend, I decided to do some fancy lacing on his shoes to encourage him to wear them. They sell trendy shoes with 8 mile long laces these days because, apparently, turning your shoe laces in to a pot holder is the “in” thing right now.

I spent my Saturday evening cursing at a small, green and gray shoe, trying to perfect the art of “checker board shoelaces”. Okay, so it wasn’t that hard, but it was relatively time consuming. Here is the result of my foul mouth:

You’d never know this was a modified orthotic shoe because SOMEONE is awesome at weaving shoelaces.

There is only one problem with these sweet kicks… (I wanted to say “pumped up kicks” but, that Foster the People song is definitely about a child named Robert who shoots people. Not so much the image I am going for here…)

I have two other children who are now insisting I get extra laces and do this to their shoes, too.

And one of them does not understand that her shoes have velcro tabs, making souped up shoe laces a literal impossibility.

For the second night in a row, Aili has come to my bed, ready to jump in whilst covered in poop.

Now it’s a battle of wills.

How stubborn am I?

Will I keep getting up in the middle of the night to clean her up and put her to bed? Or will I break down and buy training pants for her to wear at night so she doesn’t ruin every single pair of underpants she has?

Why does no one talk about this when they discuss parenting dilemmas with prospective parents? They tell you about teething and tantrums and colic, but no one ever says, “Hey, you might just end up in a poop war with a three-year-old. Very smelly. Not sure you can possibly claim victory ever in this situation. Also, you will discover that a 3 foot tall person can, in fact, poop on an 8 foot ceiling. There is no explanation for this. It’s probably aliens.”

No one warns you!

Actually, yeah. That is probably for the best. If there were graphic descriptions of what children actually do to their parents in sex ed classes, people would stop reproducing. The human race would completely die out.

Shoot. I think I blew our cover.

So, uh….if you don’t have kids yet…uh…just kidding! Haha! Toddlers can’t poop on the ceiling! Haha! Impossible! Gravity, right?

Stop reading now, non-parents. Nothing more to see here.

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I think they’re gone.

How many times per month does YOUR kid poop on the ceiling? How the heck do they do that? At least if makes a good testing ground for my mop with the extendable handle…

If anyone asks me why I look sleepy today, I am going to just shake my head and give them the weary look of someone who has seen too much.

It was 3:30 in the morning when I heard unhappy snuffling on the side of the bed.

Aili. That girl just can’t spend the whole night in her bed.

I reached out to touch her and felt that her shirt was wet.

That girl also can’t stay dry the whole night.

In the dark, I took off her t-shirt and was about to pull her in to bed when the smell hit me.

“Aili, did you have an accident?”

“I had to poop,” replied a tiny, sad voice.

I took her to the bathroom to get her cleaned up. When I turned on the lights, it was like a horror movie. That child was covered from head to toe in feces.

“What happened, Aili??”

“I didn’t make it.”

No. “I didn’t make it” would have left a little mark or a turd on the floor. This…this…did she roll in it? Was this her attempt at a full-body mud mask? Horrifying.

I washed her up and put her in my bed.

I toyed with the idea of seeing what her bed looked like, but it was now 4 in the morning and I was exhausted.

Now it’s morning and I am afraid. Very afraid. I am armed with bleach, rags, and a strong stomach. There is something awful in that bed (and probably on those floors, that wall, etc…) If I don’t come out, it’s been nice knowing you all.

She can take a poop, but she can’t take my freedom!

(One last thing….Quick clarification from yesterday: Yes, my husband is fine. He was just observed for a short time and then released. We appreciate your concern.)

Work has become my sanctuary. I can escape the madness of my house, there’s free candy, and it’s air-conditioned. Yes, life is sweet at The Bank.

But, wouldn’t you know, every once in a while, someone just has to pass out in the middle of a first aid training class, be hauled to the hospital, and need to be taken care of.

On my lunch break.

My husband was the lucky winner of a first class ride in an ambulance today. And it was this incident that made me realize I have turned in to my mother.

Once upon a time, 14-year-old me got her finger slammed in a car door. The impact broke my finger and rather brutally removed my finger nail. It was highly unpleasant. I ran in to the house, shouting for my mother. She, apparently, thought I was shouting about something awesome, like I found a puppy. When she came bounding down the stairs to see me standing there in a puddle on blood, she lost her mind. She ran around “helping” and my dad told her to just get in the car. She had already assembled me a bag of ice. For a bleeding finger. No gauze or towels. Just ice.

We still haven’t quite let her live that down.

Flash forward to today when I got the call that my husband was in an ambulance in front of his work. I told them I would be there right away and that I knew where his work home was.

This was Mom Brain Nonfunctionality because:

1. I walked to work and did not have a car to drive to him.

2. I really didn’t know where he was. I mean, I THOUGHT I knew where I was going, but I was wrong. Good thing I have a very understanding boss who was willing to drive all over the place and find it with me.

After everything calmed down, I realized this was totally something my mom would have done. I used to be good in emergency situations, but now I am my mother. Oh no.

I should have brought some ice.

I don’t jump to conclusions. I make lunging, flying leaps to conclusions.

Last night I put the kids to bed and then went downstairs to the basement to enjoy the relative coolness. After a few minutes, I heard suspicious noises so I came upstairs. As I was walking up the stairs, I could smell something burning. I got to the kitchen and there were my three little piglets, standing around and trying to look innocent.

It smelled strongly of burnt something so, I went in to hyper-drive. I was sniffing everything to find the origin.

“What are you three doing?” I asked sharply. “What is that smell? Are you playing with something you aren’t supposed to touch? Did you stick something in the toaster???”

I charged around the kitchen, looking for an appliance, seconds from bursting in to flames.

“Go back to bed,” I insisted. “I need to figure out what you’re burning! It stinks!”

The children scattered as I continued my quest.

Then I caught something out of the corner of my eye.

The neighbor. Outside. Sitting next to….

A grill.

Oh.

Oh crap.

The window was open this whole time and, given the proximity, I know he heard every word.

Oh. Jeez.

Awkward.