I usually try and have a point, a theme, or at least a joke when I sit down to write. Today, though, I think I just want to talk about my kids. They are so nice and good, and I know I don’t say that enough. I can be a regular old mommy blogger from time to time, can’t I?
Yesterday, we had one of those mornings where you fall out of bed and just start running. Up! Up! Eat, eat, wash your face, find your shoes, grab your lunch and go! Get the birthday brownies into the car! Stuff your history costume in a bag! Run in to beg the teacher for leniency for kid #1, who just got braces and thinks she is a monster now! Run, run–zip back home, wash and brush and feed the rest of the kids, and then leap back into the car for everyone’s doctor appointment. No you cannot have toast, go go go!
For three hours this morning, I did very little besides buckle and unbuckle carseats, and drive. I also did some singing (“Hear the lively song of the frogs in yonder pond”), which miraculously still calms my 3-year-old when she gets in a hysterical rage over not having a long enough turn looking at the insert that came with the plastic owl her brother got from Burger King.
You may think that a hysterical rage would sort of quash my enthusiasm about how good my kids are, but she’s not actually really like that. She’s a very happy person, but is going through one of those brain growth spurts, which makes her kind of unpredictably horrible from time to time. I know she doesn’t want to be that way, because when she’s being awful, I say, “Do you want to be a good girl or a bad girl?” and she always chooses good — and actually does the thing that I tell her good girls do. She just needs a little help remembering that she has a choice!
They were really being good. It is no damn fun to be driven back and forth, back and forth, when none of it is about you, and there’s really nothing to look forward to but a possible Rugrats sticker after your shots. Maybe we’ll see a turtle on the rock in yonder pond by the highway, but probably not. Maybe the crane on the construction site will be doing something cool, but probably not. Red light means stop, green light means go. No turtle today.
Then we got to the doctor. My six-year-old watched the baby and the 3-year-old as I took the 4-year-old to the bathroom. They ate some chalk and played with the bead maze toys, and waited some more. Then, when we got to the doctor, everyone else had to go to the bathroom. “Wow,” says the three-year-old, “That is a STRONNNNNG toiyet!” I don’t know what that means, but she seemed impressed.
And then finally it was our turn. The three oldest kids were the ones with appointments, but of course it was the baby (almost 18 months) who ran the show. She stripped off her clothes and picked out a johnny gown from the drawer, since that’s what everyone else was doing. (For the first time in my life, I wished I had a phone with a camera on it.) She weighed herself. She got a sticker, and even a picture book — and not just any picture book! The doctor first showed her a board book, and she gave it a look of such withering disdain that the doctor laughed herself silly. Then she found another, more mature book for the baby, who said, “Day,” (thanks) and trotted back to the exam room with her loot.
Then the three-year-old had to go to the bathroom again.
I had a moment’s consternation when my six-year-old son said he didn’t know the letters on the eye chart — but it turned out he thought they were supposed to spell something, and his phonics didn’t take him as far as sounding out “ROXCSTKNDT.” Sort of reminds me of my sister’s story about her son, who claimed not to know the color of a crayon the nurse was holding up — oh, never mind, I’ll let her tell it in the comments.
Well, isn’t that cute? That’s all I wanted to say. I like having my kids around.
