Mom Tip #52

Plans are NEVER set in stone – even if you ARE the one who made them.

I think one of the biggest challenges of motherhood is being constantly and faithfully flexible while maintaining your sanity. You can plan a full day and an hour after announcing the plan, the whole smash is shot to pieces and you have to roll with it like the champ you are.

Take my day today. I got up this morning (after sleeping so fitfully on the couch with a teething baby all night) bright and early. The girls were cooperative while getting ready for church. The boys were still in bed but I had a brief conversation with L.M. Lion.

Me: So you are going to carve the pumpkins today, right?
Lion: Sure.Me: Would you pick up a newspaper when you go to get the carving kit while I’m at church? I want to check the sales before I go do the grocery shopping this afternoon.
Lion: I thought I was going to BJ’s (shopping club thing).
Me: When do you want to do that?
Lion: I’ll go tomorrow before I go to work.
Me: Awesome. But get a paper anyway because we need produce and some non-BJ’s stuff.

That settled the final plan was I go to church. I come home, drop off children and run to do grocery shopping while he has quality time with the zoo. I come home; he goes to watch football with his buddies. Then we have a nice family evening carving pumpkins at home.

I came home from church to two boys still in PJ’s, my kitchen trashed from pumpkin guts, no one has had breakfast and my paper has already been torn apart. But I am Mom. I can be flexible. So I scramble to restore order to the kitchen while stewing pumpkin, toasting seeds and making PB&J’s for lunch. I look up to see L.M. Lion in the kitchen door dressed to head to football. Huh? What about the grocery store? Take them with you. When they have been trying to kill each other all day? Not on your life! Well, you’ll work it out. Deep breath. I am Mom. I can be flexible.

Three hours later he comes home. You haven’t been to the grocery store yet? No. I was waiting for you to get home to watch the children. But I was going to go to BJ’s. I thought that was tomorrow morning! I decided to do it today. And you called to tell me when? Well, can you go so I can have the van? Not everything is going to fit in my car. I am Mom. I can be flexible. I grabbed Marmoset and out the door we went for a sprint through the grocery store.

I came home to no progress on the pumpkin front and L.M. Lion napping on the couch. Do I need to mention that BJ’s is happening tomorrow? Two of the three pumpkins got done and dinner was called on account of whiplash.

I am Mom. I can be flexible – just give me a little warning, would you?

Mom Tip Mini for the Men out There

When you see a woman pushing an overloaded shopping cart with two children in it, her shopping bags and purse hanging off it while the one hand has a tight grip on a large bottle of laundry detergent, do NOT refer to her as "SuperMom" and laugh hysterically.

You are not funny. And should you even think about smirking in her direction as she pushes the cart to the car while 2 bag boys follow her with 2 more carts, be prepared for the laundry detergent to make rapid and repeated impact with your head and various other carefully selected body parts.

Sorry I have to go. The guard is telling me that my internet time is up. I have to go put my huggy jacket back on now.

A letter from the Zookeeper

Dear Zookeeper Sisterhood,

Please treat visiting Zookeepers In Training (henceforth referred to as Z.I.T.'s) with great care. I was hostess to a Z.I.T this weekend and I fear that I may have popped her.

My Z.I.T was holding up quite nicely to the craziness that is Zoo Suburbia in spite of Marmoset's determination to keep shoes on her feet regardless of what Zookeeper and Z.I.T. were doing when her shoes fell off. She was even beginning to speak Rhino with a fluency reserved for those of us who are in daily contact with him. Orangutan was at school but was so delighted to have the visiting Z.I.T. that she was on her best behavior and was containing her climbing antics to the exhibit closing routine.

Then the zoo began to reveal the ugliness that lies behind the solid wooden fence between exhibits. It began with Rhino's recounting of the debris I had just removed from his attire. "That looks just like a rocket ship! Coooool!!" I think the Z.I.T. might have considered tossing her cookies.

The following day we loaded the livestock trailer and visited Zoo Atlanta. I believe the Z.I.T. referred to it as herding cats on high levels of catnip. The Orangutan chose this moment to share her whine settings and Marmoset gave a lecture on The Effects of a Missed Nap. Rhino shared some delightful tips on How to Aggravate an Orangutan because he certainly couldn't be left out.

My Z.I.T. was holding up fairly well after an evening of rest but then I tested her skills to the limit. It was the trip to the food procurement center that did her in I believe. The Rhino chose to do some unsupervised investigation of the center, the Orangutan was back to her normal swinging from anything that was still and Marmoset was about to launch into her lecture on the Effects of Missed Meals. Did I mention that after arriving back at Zoo Suburbia, the Rhino thought it perfectly acceptable to start channeling his alter ego The Nudist?

Add to all of this that Z.I.T.'s have not developed the mutant antibodies that act as a Zookeeper's medical Armor All and she was starting to catch a bit of an allergy induced cold, and my Z.I.T. popped.

So let this be a lesson to you, my Zookeeper Sisterhood. When handling a Z.I.T., use extreme caution. Especially if your Zoo is one like mine. As a fellow Zookeeper once said, "Some quality time with my Zoo and your eggs will refuse to hatch!"

Sincerely,
The Zookeeper

Mom Tip #42

Naps are wonderful but time them with care!

Here at Zoo Suburbia things tend to hit critical mass from time to time. Our options when this happens are to either tolerate the incomprehensible screaming and wailing and gnash our own teeth or put some people in crash mode (full blown nap).

Yesterday we picked Mo up from school, ran by the grocery store and headed for home. I thought all was well until The Boy hit the door between the garage and the house. I don’t know what happened or who started it but it was ugly. There was serious screaming from Tuck and Munch and to this moment I have no idea what it was all about. Off to bed. Now here’s the problem. Critical mass didn’t hit until 4. With Munch that’s no big deal; she can take a nap at 4 and still go down for bed at the normal time. She plays pretty hard.

Tuck? Not so much! He went down for his nap and try as I might there was no waking him before 5. The rest of the evening was delightful with minimal fighting but then it was time to go to bed. Talking, talking, books, more talking. There was no end in sight. At 9:30 he came to tell me that Mo hit him. Could that be because she wanted to sleep and you were in her face? “Well, yeah.” Come help me pack lunches.

He talked me through packing lunches. Let’s go brush teeth and get Mom ready for bed. He talked me through that including a discussion on why Mommy has to take her “no baby medicine.” “Yeah we don’t want another Meghan!” Let’s go make the coffee. He talked me through that. Do you need to go potty? This is where I learned that when “the peeps” don’t want to come out it means they aren’t home. They went to the grocery store. I was exhausted so I asked. What do peeps buy at the grocery store? “Food, you silly goose!” What do peeps eat? (I was REALLY tired) “More peeps!” Please son! Can we go to bed?

So I let him snuggle with me in my bed but no snuggles were to be had until we sang The Little Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly. Then I tried to “pretend” I was asleep to encourage him to do the same. Next thing I knew there were toes up my nose. “Smell my feet Mom!” I don’t know what time he finally fell asleep. He was still talking about feet and peeps and coffee when I lost it for the night.

I do know that the peeps got back from the grocery store somewhere around 2:30 this morning. It happened on Daddy’s side of the bed which I heard about pretty promptly but since it wasn’t my side I made a mental note to just sleep really still.

Go ahead. Get those naps in – just make sure you time them early enough in the day. Or take a nap with them!

Mom Tip #12

If you take a horse to the grocery store, make sure you take plenty of rope.

“Okay,” you are saying to yourself. “You have officially gone off your rocker!” Loosely translated this means, your children will choose the most inopportune and embarrassing moment to play pretend. Please allow me to illustrate from my own life.

Since becoming a stay at home mom, I have altered our schedule to avoid going to the grocery store when it is terribly crowded. Tuesday is “G” day and is approached much like a reenactment of D-Day. Grocery list – check. Children fed before going to the store – check. Comfortable shoes on everyone – check. Last minute potty break – check. Then we set out. You would think that I would be prepared for anything. You haven’t met my son.

One happy Tuesday we were almost done. Produce and the deli counter and it’s game over. Tucker had a spring in his behind and had a hard time sitting in the car cart but was holding on for me. Then he decided that he wanted to walk alongside the cart. “I promise me, Ma. I tay wif yoo.” This had a 50-50 chance of coming back to bite me but I was in a good mood so I gave in. Then it happened. He let out the loudest “whinny” you have ever heard and started to “gallop” in circles around me, the cart and the sweet little old lady who was in the aisle with me. My head dropped on to the baby’s car seat and I heaved a sigh that they had to hear at the checkout. Thankfully this angel in the aisle was a mother of boys and just smiled at me and burst into hysterical laughter.

You will hear – more than once, I promise – “It’s okay, hon. They’ll outgrow this and then you’ll wish they were babies again.” I’m sure this is probably true. I’ll let you know in 20 years.