3 posts tagged “parenting”

I get to brag, right? I have three small children, a husband, a house full of small animals, and I only take one pharmaceutical a day - so I get to brag, don't I?

We had our parent/teacher conferences the other night. C. was first - he's in PreK and his teacher absolutely adores him. No big surprises came out of that meeting, except the fact that he actually picks up after himself at school. We go round and round about that at home, but he knows he doesn't have to here because K. & D. will do it for him. But the teacher told us how charming he was, and that he is very kind to his classmates, and that she enjoys having him in her class. At 4 years of age, there's just not a whole lot of insight that a teacher can offer.

The surprise (to me, anyway) came when we got to the big kids' classroom. They're both in First Grade this year, and though I see and speak with their teacher often, I didn't realize how impressed she was with them until the other night. My kids got 'satisfactory' grades in subjects she hasn't even taught yet. One of them that sticks out in my mind was 'Writes in Complete Sentences'. The teacher told us that 1st graders don't usually write in complete sentences, but both of mine do. They also both got +'s (exceeds expectations) instead of s's (satisfactory - performs at grade level) in things like Vocabulary and Ability to Express Ideas Verbally. She also told me that my oldest son is so self-sufficient that she has to make a mental note to interact with him during the day, otherwise he flies completely under her radar. And she said that my daughter is frighteningly good with graphs, of all things.

The thing that scares me is this: by the time my kids are 12 they are going to be both taller than me and smarter than both of their parents. Then what are we supposed to do with them?

I cannot even comprehend what strange mingling of DNA has resulted in such good-hearted, smart, beautiful kids. I'd like to take credit for them - I really would - but I just can't bring myself to do it. Half the time, I don't have a clue what I'm doing. Every time I think I do, I'm forced to remind myself of the incident with the watermelon. Oh, you don't know about the incident with the watermelon? Well, well, well....just let me fill you in:

A couple of months after we moved in to this house, I had made my usual weekly trip to the grocery store (at the cost of my right arm, of course) and bought a watermelon among other things. The kids love watermelon, and I decided that would be a great summer treat that week. I unloaded the groceries by myself and the watermelon ended up on the counter of the pass-through bar in the front living/dining room (or The Red Room, for those of you familiar with us). That night at suppertime, K. had said he wanted watermelon but no one else did, so I told him we'd wait to carve it up until everybody wanted some. He was disappointed but didn't argue.

The next morning I was busy doing I-don't-even-remember-what-now when C. (then about 2 1/2 yrs. old) came running into the kitchen. He was hopping up and down and kept saying, "I'm sorry about the knife, Mommy, I'm sorry about the knife." Way to freak a mom out! My eyes travel instantly to the knife block on the kitchen counter where I keep my Henckels - they all were accounted for, thank the Lord. D. (then about 4 1/2) starts interjecting something about a big mess, and K. (5 1/2) is just standing there looking sheepish. I finally calm everyone down enough to start making some sense out of what they're saying. They led me back to K.'s room where I was confronted with a scene that looked like something out of an episode of CSI. The off-white carpet was soaked with some sort of pinkish red liquid and there were chunks of what looked like guts thrown willy-nilly around the room. In the middle of the mess was the carcass of what once was a watermelon, and a butter knife. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time carving a watermelon with a sharp kitchen knife, let alone a butter knife. And after I got the whole story out of the kids, the butter knife weilding Jack the Ripper had in fact been the 2 1/2 yr. old! Don't get me wrong, it was a group effort - K. carried the watermelon from The Red Room to his bedroom, and D. conspired to keep the whole thing hush-hush while C. practiced his skills as a surgeon. But at that moment, as I stood there and viewed the carnage, I had to admit to my kids that I didn't know what to do. I didn't have the slightest idea how to go about cleaning that up without ruining the carpet, or what punishment the children should face. It's not like this was a crime that deserved a beating - no one was bleeding - but they couldn't grow up thinking it's acceptable to carve up innocent fruit in their bedrooms. What's a mom to do?

So, most of you moms (and dads) can probably understand my thoughts when the teacher was bragging on our kids and I kept thinking to myself, "This is amazing. How on Earth have Walker and I managed to not screw this up?"

Sooo, yesterday was my husband's 31st birthday. Happy Birthday, Dear. I asked the kids if they wanted to cook for Daddy or take him out to dinner. My little restaurant-addicts promptly replied, "Westauwant, westauwant, westauwant, Mommy!!!" at the tops of their little lungs while jumping enthusiastically up and down. Westauwant, it was.

My kids' current favorites are Chili's and The Olive Garden. Daddy is sick unto death of both. Daddy probably deserved a big, fat, juicy steak, but the idea of wrestling with the children at some fancy steakhouse was just not appealing to me (anybody else understand my reluctance?). So there's this Mexican food place that all of my local friends have been raving about, and I thought that would be a great compromise - Daddy loooves Mexican food, and so do the kids.

In hindsight, we should have gone to the danged steakhouse.

We hadn't been there fifteen minutes when disaster struck, in the form of the natural disaster that is our youngest son. Daddy had opened all of his birthday cards, we had ordered our supper, and we were drinking our tea and eating chips and salsa (you guessed it - we're from Texas!), when our four-year-old  fell out of his chair.

Here's the "Bad Mommy" moment: I snickered. At my own child. Unforgiveable, I know. In my defense, the first few times that my son fell out of his chair while wiggling around at the dinner table, I jumped up like a "Good Mommy" and scooped him up and checked for boo-boos and kissed all the ouchies. However, our little wiggle-worm manages to trip over his own feet, walk into a wall, or fall out of his chair at least twice a week. Natural consequences of doing ev-er-y-thing at 90 m.p.h. while paying not the slightest bit of attention to one's surroundings. I stopped snickering abruptly when my normally unflappable husband said, "No! He hit his head."

And boy, did he hit his head. On the concrete floor or the brick wall, we're not actually sure. So, as blood starts gushing out of our baby's head in the middle of a packed restaurant with tons of people trying to actually enjoy their suppers (salsa, anyone?), the manager non-chalantly strolls over in response to our son's shrieks and asks if he's going to be okay. Which, for those of us veterans of the food-service industry, translates directly into: "Could you please quiet your child, he's disrupting my patrons." I have to give Mr. Manager a little bit of credit, he scurried away for ice and a clean towel pretty quickly after he saw the blood. I've noticed blood has that effect on most people.

In the end, we decided that C. should probably be taken to the hospital. I volunteered to take him and let his Daddy and siblings eat their supper. We hadn't been at the E.R. for an hour when the three of them came in - the big kids refused to go home until they were sure that their brother was okay. My charming four-year-old held court in the emergency department like Liberace in Las Vegas. At one point, he had roped in the mother of another casualty, a clerk from the hospital, a nurse, and a paramedic. The highlight of the night's entertainment came when he announced to his audience, "I'm four, and I go to school at St. Paul's, and don't I have big feet?" Talk about your non-sequiter.

So, my husband got to spend the evening of his 31st birthday in the emergency room, getting our four-year-old's head stitched up. One thing's for sure: it's not a birthday he'll be forgetting any time soon. I think C. really capped off the evening when he sang his dad "The Happy Birthday Song" ~ while he handed him the bill from the hospital.

Okay, I may not be an actual alcoholic yet, but I sense that the day is not too far in the future...for right now, chocolate is a viable and preferred alternative to alcohol. Oh, and Lexapro. And caffeine. And carbohydrates!

Sooo, I guess I should introduce myself.

I'm a wife, a mom, and a zookeeper ~ alright, so I'm really a stay-at-home mom. And I have come to the conclusion that children, not alcohol, kill brain cells. Loss of intelligence seems to be directly porportional to the number of births a mother has endured. I saw a coffee mug the other day that said, "Memory loss is contagious, I got it from my kids!" But I digress...

My name is Yvette, I have a husband of 8 1/2 years (and I swear I haven't made even one teensy, tiny attempt on his life in all that time) named Walker, who I still love and who still makes me laugh. And please, the "Walker, Texas Ranger" jokes are not original. We have three beautiful, healthy children with a total age span between the oldest and youngest of 34 months. There are 10 1/2 months between my son, K, and my daughter, D; there are 23 months between my daughter and my youngest son, C. Before you ask, yes, we know what causes it and we have a license to do it...yes, we did wait the 6 week post-partum moratorium on sex...and yes, we did finally get a TV for the bedroom. Oh, and yes, they do keep me terribly busy. They keep me running. For my life.

The children have managed to accumulate a small number of additional responsibilities for their tireless mother. We have an English Spaniel named Angel, a Siamese cat named Bella, and a white-faced cockatiel named Sam. And though Bella was supposed to have already been spayed when we got her from the Humane Society last year, we now have a six week old kitten named Ellie. We also have a time-share Jack Russell Terrier that spends part of the year in Alabama with my mother and part of the year here with us. The kids are currently begging for a chinchilla, some fish, another bird, and a pet snake, but I have to draw the line somewhere. We already have entirely too many links of the food chain represented in one household.

I have a slew of fantastic, patient friends that get me through my days. One of those friends, who shall remain nameless, has been encouraging me to write my own blog as a means to "vent". (Thanks, Amy! ;^) ) Then, my friend Mel finally roped me into it with an invitation and promise of getting to design my own page - finally, something I actually have control over! Because, of course, at home I have about as much control as a shepherd trying to herd cats.

Anyway, this is my blog. It probably won't be very funny, and it probably won't be very original, and it probably won't be very good, but it doesn't matter. Because when I feel like poking my fingers in my ears and yelling, "Bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bahbahbah..." I will have a place to do just that.