The Crocheted Snowsuit (a.k.a. Fistfights Over Imaginary Things)

My children are insane. I've told you this before, but to be a good, imaginative child I think its required that one be off one's rocker just a titch.

A few weeks back I taught myself to crochet.

I know, I know. How very Ethel of me.

I've heard its therapeutic and gives you some sense of purpose and accomplishment as you physically create things. I've also heard that crocheting is like working worry beads - your mind is half engaged on the project, leaving the other half to wander and ponder things, leaving some of your woes behind with each stitch.

Or maybe that's just my friend and I overanalyzing the scarves we're making in the work cafeteria. Whichev.

Anyway, I set out a few weeks ago to make a giant comfy scarf for myself. My sons have seen me working on it, and Nick's even sat with me a few times, mesmerized as my fingers looped and pulled the yarn. I may just have him convinced that magic's involved but either way, they're both impressed I actually made something.

See? FUN WITH GREAT BIG GIANT SCARVES! Winter in the Midwest I tell ya...

So Sunday afternoon I took my kids out in the dreary cold January rain so that I could get some needles from the craft store with which to weave in the loose ends of my completed scarf. After that quick trip we stopped at the grocery store.

As we pulled into the parking lot, the following wisdom flowed from my eldest child's amazing little brain:

Nick: "So Mom. I know what we can do. We should get, like, a whole messa yarn. Like a WHOLE WHOLE BUNCH. And we could all - you know - we could all - what's that called?"

Me: "Uh, crochet?"

Nick: "Yeah. CROCHET - a whole bunch all together. And then your piece can get sewed to my piece and then we'll sew those onto Will's piece. And we'll have one big giant piece that we can sew into like, pants and a coat all together. For all of us to be all cozy in outside at the same time."

Me: "You mean like a snowsuit?"

Nick (eyes wide): "YEAH! A snowsuit! And we'd all go into it together so that if we go sledding then all we need are boots!"

Me: "Wow. A crocheted group snowsuit?" {Regretsy flashed to mind} "That'd be...awesome, Nick." {Awkward Family Photos flashed to mind}

Nick: "Yeah! And we could get one of those...wood things?"

Me: "Wood...wood things? What?"

Nick: "You know - that are like loooong sleds?"

Me: "Uh, a toboggan?"

Nick: "YEAH! A big long toboggan so we can all go sledding on it together."

Me: "In our crocheted family snowsuit?"

Nick: "YEAH!"

Me: {thinking that some mother probably tried making something like this back in the 70s} "So if we're all in this snowsuit together, how are we going to fit in the car? How will we buckle our seat belts?"

Nick: "We don't. We'd haveta walk. Or, you know, put it on at the sledding hill, DUH."

Me: "Watch your mouth little man! What if someone has to go potty?" {trying to get him to see the impracticalities of a group crocheted snowsuit}

Nick (shrugs): "We could put a potty in there somewhere."

Will: "Yeah. The potty goes behind you, Mom!"

Me: "Lovely. Just how exactly am I supposed to be able to sit on the toboggan with a potty in my pants?"

Both: "Hee! Potty in your pants!"

Me: "Hee! Potty in my pants!"

Nick: "Or we could just hold it."

Me: "Yeah, I think that's the wiser option."

By this point we're dashing through the puddles in the parking lot. I needed literally FOUR ITEMS.

So I don't need a cart, right?

Moms? NEVER THINK THAT. Just get the damn cart anyway, even if your kids are like 16.

At this point, my kids are still stuck on the idea of the family-sized crocheted snowsuit and I'm cursing Dr. Seuss, who seems in some way responsible.



You NEED a THNEED!

 Will: "I GET TO GO IN THE MIDDLE!"

Me: {wait, wha???}

Nick: "NO. I DO. It goes by age, dummy. First Mom, then me, THEN you. You're on the end."

Me: "Don't call your brother dummy."

Will: "NOOOOO! We take TURNS in the middle. DUMMY."

We get to the deli counter. The ancient old ladies behind the counter are s l o o o o w w w and unorganized. There also seems to be some disagreement as to just who's turn it is to shave more ham.

Nick: "Nuh uh!"

Will: "Uh huh!"

Nick: "Nuh uh!"

Will: "Uh HUH!"

Nick: "NUH UH!"

Will: "UH HUH!"

Me: "OK, OK! You both get turns being in the middle of the imaginary crocheted family snowsuit! Knock it off!"

After nearly 10 minutes of this I'm still at the deli counter, a bickering kid in each hand, attempting to put distance between them.

Gertie and Dot there, behind the counter, are getting heated. The woman in line in front of me gives up and accepts the .16 pounds of ham that is left, favoring a husband who's possibly irritated over a lunch meat shortage over the insanity that is the argument between my ridiculous children and the plastic-gloved face-slap that's becoming imminent behind the counter.

They ask for my order. My arms are being pulled from their sockets by two little ape children who are now "Uh huh-ing" and "Nuh-uh-ing" over exactly how the pretend family crocheted snowsuit will close - buttons or zippers.

And that's when I heard it. Nick had looped around behind my back and belted his little brother across the face. Because...

Nick: "BUTTONS JUST DON'T MAKE SENSE, MOM!"

Duh.

Mayonnaise Bread

Quite obviously, I write about my children here a lot.

My youngest, Will, has often been a great source of blog fodder. Time and time and time again. And again. And time again some more and more and more. Seriously, the kid provides me with hours of entertainment daily. I swear he's some old man reincarnated in a small boy's body. He's hilarious and fearless and sometimes just completely strange.

Take for instance his newest request for breakfast.

Mayonnaise on white bread.

Back in the days of learning to use the toaster, Nick, the older boy, found a love for toast with peanut butter and honey. I mean, who doesn't love that, right? Pure awesome. Plus Nick could make it on his own which meant he wanted to eat it for every meal of the day.

Will on the other hand decided that peanut butter and honey toast was not quite unique enough for his tastes. One morning, after hemming and hawing about whether he wanted cereal or a bagel for 10 minutes and me nearly losing my stuffing over the fact that he should just pick something already for the love of Pete he sat upright like he'd had the best idea ever and declared, "I'll have mayonnaise bread!"

Surely, I thought, he wasn't actually going to eat the mayonnaise bread. I thought it'd be one of those things that kids say they want but when they see it on their plate they're all, "Well, I really didn't want that." Except that he ate his "white-on-white open-faced sandwich" happily.

Then asked for it again the next day.

Hey, if we're not dawdling or arguing in the morning? Have at 'er.

I see all these goofy quirks about my son and love every single one of them. I never want him to lose sight of how great it is to be who you truly are - to live life the way that suits you. I never want him to stop saying things like, "That's unbelievable!" or "Holy NUTS!" I never want him to stop being fearless when nose to nose with bees or while at the top of a sledding hill.

I never want him to change, yet I know he will.

One day he'll be in middle school and he'll let some bully make him feel awkward about something and he'll decide to be less of whatever that something is. He'll have a girl in his social studies class that he'll want to impress, so he'll be a little less enthusiastic or outgoing so as to seem cooler. He'll get to high school and decide that maybe the golf team is nerdy and he'd rather go out for football. It breaks my heart to think these things but I know some version of them will be true.

I know that all I can really do is make him feel loved, every day, for being exactly who he is. I can let him know that in my home he's always encouraged to be his silly, quirky, amazingly smart little self.

And hopefully, when he grows up and gets past that high school stage of life, he'll realize that if I loved him for being himself that maybe there's someone else in this world for him that will love him for who he is, too.

And maybe just knowing that will give him the confidence to go back to living life the way he sees fit.

Catharsis

I'm telling this story today because it came up with a friend over lunch the other day and its a great example of the events in my life that have made me the type of person I am. Go ahead, laugh. This shit's funny, too.

In the early 90s, when I was a teenager, my family was poor. Really poor. "Come-home-from-school-not-sure-if-the-lights-will-come-on-when-I-flip-the-switch" poor. "Evicted-from-our-run-down-duplex-in-November-homeless-for-the-holidays" poor.

On New Years Day 1994 the Wisconsin Badgers went to Pasedena to win the Rose Bowl. My three brothers, my mom and I were finally back together under our own roof, in a new run down duplex. I remember we all slept on the living room floor that first night, and I remember lying there in the dark with my family, hearing the neighbors cheer as the Badgers clinched the win.

Sometime that year my mom got a job working for what was then called Midwest Express Airlines. Circumstances required her to take whatever job she could get, which meant my 5'6" skinny little thing of a mom was working outside in the Midwestern winter, loading and unloading luggage from planes. NOT easy by any means.

One of the perks of working for the airline, however, was that each year, she and each of her family members would receive one free standby ticket to anywhere Midwest flew. This meant that for the first time EVER, each of us kids would get to fly in an airplane.

I'm fairly certain that was her motivation behind that first trip. The idea that not only could she actually take her kids on a vacation but that we could fly there, too. Because she started in the fall, the trip was hastily planned, and in January 1994 the five of us flew to Washington, DC.

From touch down to take-off, we were there for 26 1/2 hours.

The only things I remember from that DC trip were
1) having a homeless man in the subway call me by name (which he and everyone else could clearly read on the front of my varsity letter jacket) and
2) the only place/thing/landmark we saw was whatever Smithsonian museum has rows and rows and rows of old dresses from presidents wives and such. No monuments. No White House. No historic anythings.

Let me pause here so that you may realize that my mother drug four kids, three of whom were boys, aged 6-16, to the airport, through the airport, from the airport to the hotel (I have NO memory of how that happened, btw), from the hotel to the subway, navigated the subway, got us lost on the subway, got harrassed by homeless men calling me by name on the subway, to the Smithsonian. And not the good one with the dinosaurs and the giant diamond but the shitty Smithsonian with nothing but dresses, only to go back to the hotel via the subway (on which we got lost AGAIN) to go to sleep, get up in the morning and go back to the airport and head back home. Oh, and we of course couldn't afford to park at the airport so we'd taken the city bus. Five people. With luggage. On the bus. The routes of which, let me tell you, my mother navigated no more savvily than the Washington DC subway system, meaning that we took a bus we weren't meant to take and ended up standing in the cold in downtown Milwaukee in front of a bar for 45 minutes waiting for a connecting bus to pick us up and take us closer to our home. Because that first bus had been the wrong one, this meant the stop we eventually got off on was a half mile from our house. Imagine us wheeling our hand-me-down luggage and toting our school backpacks full of clothes in the winter cold. I shudder to think of how pleasant we must have sounded.

We should have just stayed home.

The second trip was a little better. The following summer my mom saved her pennies to take us where every mother worth half their weight in salt wants to take their families to prove they're good parents -- Disney Land. I'm guessing the only reason we went to California and not Florida was probably because Midwest flew to LA and not Orlando. It might just as easily have been because my mom thought it sounded cooler. Whichever.

Prior to the stint working for Midwest, my mom worked for a rental car company at the same airport. This time we were staying for a week and mom was going to work her connections to get us a rental car. A friend of hers worked out a deal that she pay for the lowest cost rental (a Geo Metro) and we'd get a free upgrade. Sweet!

Only the message about the upgrade sorta didn't make it to LA.

This meant that five people, each with a week's worth of luggage, had to cram into a hatchback smaller than a twin sized bed. And then my directionally-challenged mother drove us through LA.

Yay! We can get out of the car now!

 I don't think I have to tell you we got lost.

But Disney Land! We were going to Disney Land!

Except when your kids are sorta spread far apart in age you can imagine that the younger ones are going to love it oh-so-much-more than the older ones.

I was 16 and one of my brothers 15. The younger two were 8 and 6. This meant that while the older two of us wanted Space Mountain and Not Disney Land, the younger two wanted tea cups and Pirates of the Carribean before it was Pirates of the Carribean circa the awesome Johnny Depp years.

Pretty much all I remember of the Magical Kingdom was tears and frustration. And chasing down Chip and Dale for autographs to make my baby brother happy.

And oh God - the day my mom decided to take us to see the ocean? Lost. In standstill traffic. With motorcyclists whizzing by between the lanes of cars. Mom swearing. Screaming, "WHAT IN THE HELL THAT IS JUST SOOOO DANGEROUS!!!" Little brothers crying. Me asking how we could possibly not find the ocean. My "just drive west" directions not appreciated.

And another day "checking out" Hollywood Boulevard. I took many pictures of stars on the sidewalk. I remember going into a scary-looking candy store and seeing the Capitol Records building from afar. And that's about it. I'm surprised we weren't all maimed or mugged or forced into prostitution.

The best part of that trip? The crappy hotel pool.

Yeah. Hold on tight. Cuz that floatie might save you. And don't forget to hold your nose.

I remember all four of us splashing about in a pool not completely unlike the ones outside cheap hotels in the Dells (much like this one). I could swim then lounge on a deck chair with a book while my youngest brothers jumped in 1,000 times with their Donald Duck floaties and my third brother sulked around like a sullen teenage boy. It made us all happy and it was free.

So yes, the family vacations my mother worked so hard for were pretty much a bust. Its not lost on me just how many hours she must have had to work in the cold and snow to be able to do something like that for us, even with free airfare and car rental deals.

Parts of those occassions are funny to me now, looking back. But it taught me that the best of intentions as a parent sometimes don't work out the way you want them to. You may mean well and even believe you're providing your family with something very special and meaningful. But if you have to drag your kids kicking and screaming or are going to lose your sanity in the midst of providing that super awesome cool thing? Its probably not worth it.

Cuz the damned kids are gonna pretty much just love the crappy hotel pool anyway, and you certainly don't have to travel 1700 miles for that.

Christmas Card Photo FAIL. Kinda...not really.

I learned my lesson a few years ago. I dressed my boys in cute matchy sweaters and posed them in front of the fireplace, attempting to achieve The Perfect Christmas Card Photo.

 

Clue: It went not so perfectly.

More than one hundred photos later and I was unbelievably frustrated and the boys both unbelievably crabby. And overheated.

Last year, burned a bit by the experience, I opted not to take a Christmas card photo at all, and instead used a cute pic of the boys taken at a family wedding.

 

See? Uber cuteness

This year, I was feeling up to the chore again, only I was no longer delusional about the patience thresh holds of myself and my children. On a Saturday afternoon, I put my boys in matchy sweaters and asked them to sit on the floor in front of the couch.

"This time? We're going to do SILLY PICTURES!" I told them.

They were only too happy to oblige.

 

I love how Will went for "jazz hands with thumbs in his nose" for this one. Very clever.

 

Looks like Will just delivered some shocking and unbelievable news.

(When in reality they were making fart noises and laughing hysterically.)

 

SMELL MY HAND! Smell it!!!

 

"WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME MY ASS WAS SO BIG?!?"

 

Um. I don't even...whatever.

 

You just don't see enough belly button on Christmas cards these days!

 

I love that this is hands-down the best shot I've ever gotten of Will's face.

You know, if you can crop out or ignore the fact that he's kicking his brother in the head.

My intention with all the silly shots was to 1) get it out of their systems and B) get some real smiles out of them! In my opinion there's nothing worse than those canned kid smiles where they look half constipated.

Wouldn't you know it but I got some AMAZING shots of them in the midst of all this crazy silliness.

And nobody stressed out in the process. :)

Believe it or not, there's real brotherly love there.


Miracles DO happen!

The official 2011 Xmas card photo

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!

The Pop-Tart Predicament

Sometime over the summer it occurred to me that teaching my children to toast their own Pop Tarts would buy me an extra 30 minutes or so of sleep on the weekends. I immediately conducted a lesson on the quietest way to drag a chair across the room, the safest way to stand on said chair and the best way to fashion a mitt from a paper napkin so as to not burn oneself on the napalm that is a hot Pop Tart when it first comes out of the toaster.

From there we quickly moved on to toasting other things -- bagels, waffles, bread -- and before I knew it I had a six-year-old who made himself two waffles one morning and a sloppy mess of a bowl of oatmeal brought nearly to boiling because he had "accidentally nuked it for a real long time, Mom."

All small set backs aside, teaching my boys to use the toaster has been, until today, a super big win. They're learning self-reliance, I'm getting a titch more sleep and we're keeping the makers of all toaster pastries from needing a government bailout.

This morning, however, all was not frosting with sprinkles.

I was three rooms away drying my hair when I heard an all too familiar wail. I entered the kitchen to see Will standing on a chair in front of the toaster crying. What he said was this:

"BLAHBAWAAABAAAWAAAAAAHHHHHHH....AND NICK SAYS I HAVETA EAT IT!!!"

I soothed his tears and shooed his older brother away and finally got this translation:

"I accidentally made a chocolate Pop Tart but I don't want a chocolate Pop Tart I want a strawberry Pop Tart but Nick says too bad I have to eat it cuz I cooked it already and he hurt my feeeeelingssss!!!"

Dear God. It was 6:30 in the freakin' morning and I just canNOT handle tears over Pop Tarts at 6:30 in the morning. I told the small boy I'd eat the chocolate Pop Tart and helped him to find a packet of the strawberry kind instead. I left the room to finish drying my hair.

Again -- three rooms away, OVER the sound of the hair dryer which was 5" away from my ear holes -- I heard sounds of not one but TWO children in absolute hysterics.

I entered the kitchen to find two small boys in tears and what sounds like

"BUT I ALREADY COOKED IT AND BLAAAHBAAAWAAAAAAAAAHHHH! NICK HURT MY FEEEELINNNNNGGGSSSS..."

and simultaneously

"I'M JUST TRYING TO HELP CUZ HE WAS DOING IT BAD AND WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE AND HE'S SO MEAN TO MEEEEEE!"

Why, again, did I decide two was a good idea?

And then I saw smoke coming out of the toaster. Oh holy crap on toast I'm going to have to call the friggin' FIRE DEPARTMENT and BEFORE 7:00 IN THE MORNING.

I peered into the top of the toaster to find one very burnt strawberry Pop Tart. I forced the toaster to pop it up, then dumped it onto a waiting paper plate.

The gist of the story was that Nick saw Will trying to get the Pop Tart out of the toaster and for reasons known only to six-year-olds, thought he should "help" his brother by toasting it again for him. After cranking the "darkness dial" all the way up to "black as night."

I dried more tears, sent the older boy away AGAIN, and threw away the burnt pastry. I shooed Will off the chair and put a new strawberry Pop Tart into the toaster myself and stood there, waiting for it to cook. Needless to say I didn't have time to put on any make-up this morning. Sorry office people.

So lucky #3 pops up as I'm coaxing kids into jackets and reminding them not to forget backpacks and I'm only half paying attention as I grab the Tart with a self-made paper mitt. A corner breaks off and I chuckle.

OK bastard Pop Tart you WILL come out of that blasted toaster.

I try again. The SECOND corner comes off.

WHAT IN HOLY HELL -- IS MY FREAKIN' TOASTER MESSING WITH ME?!?

I peered inside the now reeking toaster. I saw that when I dropped lucky Pop Tart #3 in, it somehow became wedged BETWEEN the little fork-like thingies that normally pop up the item you are toasting. And then, when the Tart got all good and hot and gooey? The fork-like things got stuck inside the Tart, meaning the rest of the damn thing was really pretty stuck. And since I'd broken off the top corners and the toaster had been going for about 30 minutes at this point, it was roughly 687°F and there was absolutely no way in hell that I could get the blasted thing out and NOT burn my knuckles at the same time.

I gave Will a cold Pop Tart and shooed him out the door.

Sorry, kid. Better luck tomorrow!