The spice of life

Busy, busy, busy...

As I chauffeur kids to and from sports, music lessons and friends' houses, I am struck with the knowledge that there are a thousand versions of me across the country, driving their own kids to a zillion activities. All of us leading very fortunate but typical lives as middle-class moms of busy teenage- and elementary school-age kids; participating in carpools and phone trees, managing schedules online. A dime a dozen, we are. As much as I cherish that cup of Caribou coffee we're all sipping, it irks me to think I am a June Cleaver or Carol Brady (minus Alice, of course) of modern times - complete with the stupid minivan. (Although I do drive the smaller stick-shift car more often than the van. That's something.)

The color commentary I tend to have about other drivers while I'm in the stupid minivan (or car) potentially sets me apart from the rest of the (more mature) Mom Taxis at least somewhat. I'm not proud of random outbursts like,"C'mom Mullet Boy, let's go! The light's not going to get any greener if you water it!" (and other examples not approved for all audiences) but they seem to slip out. I keep things in check pretty well when the kids are in the car but when I am by myself - well let's just say those aren't my proudest moments, but they are some of my most creative.

I'm also pretty sure that most of the other moms aren't flying by the seat of their pants like I am when it comes to key details like "Where is the field located?" and "Was I supposed to pick up Annika?" As I have touched on before, I am pretty much the worst candidate you could think of for being responsible for busy schedules. Those last minute moments of panic just make life more interesting, right?

See how serene and in control she is? See that clean vehicle? That's not me. She's the anti-Jules.

Of course, there are many other aspects of daily life that I like to think differentiate my existence from the rest of the world. These are more positive than my comments about fellow drivers or my inability to manage schedules. It's the kids themselves, the ones I am driving around. Impressing me with their music, making the varsity team, unexpectedly cleaning the house, sneaking my coffee for themselves, drying their Clearasil'd faces on my good towels so the benzoyl peroxide leaves bleach streaks. Making me laugh, making me crazy. They are the spice of my life.

One, as you know, is particularly spicy.

In the past week alone, she has made life spicy - and comical - by:

• Biting her finger to see if she could make it bleed after I said "No blood, no Band-aid" when she wanted to decorate her legs with them.
• Turning her back and sticking out her tongue when she was mad. I know she is doing it for attention so I tend to ignore it. As a result, she still isn't sure if it's naughty enough to get my goat or not. Her tongue stick looks more like an exploring protrusion than a mad face, because she doesn't know how to do it right.
• Trying to physically push me out of the way while I held Gracie's hair back as she threw up, saying "I want see!"
• Trying to put Abby's dried up contact lens in her own eye.
• Getting stuck in the toilet. (She was wiggling and and trying to resist sitting on the potty before nap because she wanted to keep playing. She lost her balance and fell into the toilet, legs sticking straight up. She looked more indignant than panicked, and it did shock her out of a brewing tantrum. For my part, I felt the need to call Ethan so he could get a look at the scene before pulling her out. He thoroughly appreciated that.)

I have to say, life is never dull and she always provides good blogging material.

We took a picture of her calves the other day because I realized she has more muscle definition than I do. She three, shouldn't she still have cankles? But when you run everywhere, all day, apparently you get ripped little legs. I guess I should try it.

"Vacation" may be overstating it

We recently returned from a wonderful summer vacation out west. Although "vacation" might be a misleading description for such a trip. Vacation implies rest, relaxation, recharging... Adventure may be more accurate. Or how about undertaking.

Don't get me wrong; it was fun, and there was family bonding time-o-plenty (many of the interactions positive, a few of them suspiciously similar to bickering). We laughed a lot and hiked in some spectacular settings. But like any family vacation, there were some moments that were exhausting. Specifically, there were certain individuals who never stopped moving/chattering/wiggling/questioning/singing.

Constant motion.

Not to suggest that a week of traveling with the other children was stress-free. For certain kids, there was something to worry over at every turn. For others, there were periods of teenage sullen-ity (like that word?) But the Little Ball of Energy was the one that tired me out. (Speaking as the Big Ball of Tiredness).

Oh, but it was beautiful, particularly Custer. In this century in America, to be able to look as far as you can see over low, rolling mountains and see nothing but pronghorn antelope and birds - no roads, homes, telephone wires or power lines - is amazing. We could have been standing in the same spot 200 years ago with the same view. Why, Pa and Mr. Edwards might've come through the grass on horseback at any moment.

Watching pronghorn

Besides experiencing the majesty of the American West, the best moments for me involved laughing with the kids. We laughed with Randy, and we laughed at him. ("Apparently all they sell at Pamida is Pamida Water! I don't trust it. We're going to a different store.")

There were also many times while driving that the words coming out of my own mouth - or Randy's - made me burst out laughing. Things I never imagined saying...

"Mira, if you rub that apple on the bottom of your feet one more time I'm going to take it away!"

Conversations I never imagined overhearing...

"Ethan! Look my teeth!"

"What about your teeth?"

"My teeth clean?"

"What? Hey, what do you have in your mouth? Is that a ... Mira, that's gross! Mom, Mira has a Clorox wipe in her mouth!"

Highlights for other family members? Perhaps for Gracie it was having her hands cuffed in Wall, SD, by her loving brother. (Or not.) He managed to lock the cuffs in a way that couldn't be undone without involving the store manager. It's really cool as a parent when you have to wait in line at the register and then tell the teenage cashier, "Um, my son handcuffed my daughter and now we can't get them off." (Ethan, meanwhile, slunk away, red-faced and laughing, trying to pretend he wasn't with our family). Incidentally, this type of occurrence has long been known as "Pulling an Ethan" by our family. You can read more about "Pulling an Ethan" here.

Mira's favorite part of the trip may have been sleeping in a big bed with Gracie (more like on Gracie). And of course she found it very exciting when all six of us shared one hotel room. (Eleven o'clock at night, Randy and I were sitting in bed, silently reading by barely any light, waiting until all the kids were asleep and we could turn on TV and have a beer. And they were all asleep - except one! One energetic preschooler, whose little braided-and-beaded head kept peeking over the half-wall dividing our "suite" so she could make sure she wasn't missing anything.)

Yes, she quite loved the lodging experiences. There were pools and playgrounds, and refrigerators just her size. And if she ran into the wrong room and made herself at home before I caught up with her and apologized to the startled occupants, what of it?

We did a lot of hiking, and she is one rugged little cookie, with stamina that rivals anybody's (and often surpasses mine). She became quite adept at wilderness peeing, which made me proud. (I have a long history of peeing in woods, from the Adirondacks to the Grand Canyon). The only drawback to this newfound skill was that after we were home, she dropped her pants in someone's yard when we were on a walk. I probably should've explained to her that peeing behind a tree while hiking in the woods = OK, peeing on someone's front yard while walking down a suburban street = not OK.

Ethan's favorite moments? Possibly tormenting Mira to amuse himself. He did entertain her in the car quite a bit, which was a tremendous help because we had some long days on the road. He would be reading to her and I'd suddenly become aware that he was taking some major liberties with the plot: "Without warning, Dora became angry. She took the scissors out of Backpack and stabbed the troll repeatedly, before turning her violence on Boots..."

He also took great pleasure in pointing out "Ho-Ho" (Santa) everywhere we went. Why so many Ho-Ho's? Sturgis, baby!

The fact that there were Ho-Ho's everywhere Mira looked was unsettling to her, because Ethan has been filling her head with tales about Santa that are based on David Sedaris's "Six to Eight Black Men" since last Christmas.

"Look out Mira, there's Ho-Ho! He might get you!"

"No, Ethan, he get YOU! You naughty, he kick you!"

Oh, my innocent, angelic children!

And Abby's favorite moments? I think she liked everything, even a nearly-vertical hike in 95 degree heat one day. As the rest of us collapsed at the summit she said, "That was great!" Of all the kids, she loves hiking the most and she's a born naturalist.

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Pulling an Ethan

Def: Causing one's body, or part of one's body, or part of someone else's body, to get stuck in or affixed to an object unintentionally.

Some examples of Ethan "Pulling an Ethan" include:

• Putting an "I Voted" sticker over his eye to look like a pirate. When he attempted to remove the sticker an hour later, it was securely attached to his eyebrow with some sort of bizarre super-adhesive, and was not coming off without taking good chunks of the eyebrow with it.
  
• Cinching his Cub Scout belt so tight there wasn't even a millimeter of "give" to uncinch it, even when he sucked in his stomach as much as possible. Not a good move when you have to go to the bathroom really bad.
• Getting his index finger stuck in the middle of a CD to the point where we had to break the CD to free the finger.
• Sliding a plastic tamborine over the dog's head, which then seemed way too small to get back over his head. I was in another room and I heard Ethan chuckling, saying, "Hey Fred, now we'll always be able to hear you coming by your jingle." Then: "Uh-oh..." I went to see what was going on, and there was Fred, looking like a miserable jester with a purple tamborine around his jowly neck. Ethan just looked panicked.
• And of course, the handcuffs in Wall....

A few more pictures from the trip