Bars...

While I was in the UK, on a 4 day solo voyage, people kept remarking on my FB updates -- especially those about the kids. One relative said, "It's wonderful! You're so entertained by your children."

Am I? Sometimes I am. When I find Fiona sitting naked on the kitchen floor, scooping cake batter out of a bowl with her toothbrush (I'll never know how she got it down from the sink), I'm certainly entertained.

Other times I'm not so sure.

Last night M and I came home from a supremely hot date night -- sofa buying. We were greeted by some garbled tale from the babysitter -- something about a chess game gone awry, and one of the boys (unclear which one) being thrown against the bedroom window. Some part of the window came loose (unclear which part), and thankfully, the bars we installed when we moved the boys upstairs prevented whichever boy it was, from falling out of the 3rd story of the house.

I always felt those bars made the room like like a cell in juvey... which is where these boys might end up anyway. Now I know they were a smart move. Ugly, but smart.

Needless to say, I'm not feeling particularly entertained at the moment. We still can't get a clear picture of what happened from the boys, and for some reason the sitter has more loyalty to them than to us, because she's not much help either. I lectured them for a good 15 minutes, and when one of them spilled a glass of water all over his breakfast, rendering the whole plate a soggy mess, I threw the whole thing in the sink and yelled a bit. At which point Bennett announced, "I thought you said if we let you nap yesterday you wouldn't be cranky today." And so I did.

Burial behavior

M's grandmother passed away last week in Denver and instead of driving to Portland for Thanksgiving, we boarded a plane for Colorado. This wasn't the first time a great-grandparent has died, but it was the first funeral the boys went to. We didn't discuss it much beforehand. It seemed to the right thing to do - send the boys (5 and 7), leave the girls (1 and 3) at home. I told the boys what to expect, they asked questions... nothing out of the ordinary.

I don't know if this happens at all funerals, but in Jewish funerals the family and close friends of the deceased (I almost wrote victim, which means I've been working a little too much) shovel dirt onto the coffin once it has been lowered into the ground.Turns out, my boys got into a bit of a pissing match about who could shovel more dirt. This would have been enough of a challenge had Efram not accidentally (we'll never really know) shoveled a heap of dirt onto Bennett's dress shoe. Nobody touches that boys' fancy clothes and walks away unscathed.

M said he thought they started to go at it graveside. I'm not sure how he distracted them ... but he did get them home in one piece. Given that Bennett has been asking lots of questions about being buried alive, I think Efram got off easy with just a scrape.

The plumber cometh...

Of course, it wouldn't be a weekend in this house if we didn't have some sort of plumbing emergency. According to M, this plumber had a butt crack that would make the San Andreas Fault jealous... I managed to avoid him, and didn't go near the basement until the crap was cleaned up. This week's culprit: dental floss and (again) wipes. I suppose it could be worse. They could have tried to flush Fiona down the toilet.

Getting out of hand.

This morning we solved the mystery of the strange smell that's been coming from little Francie's underwear drawer. As Francie herself suspected, one of her brothers had been peeing into it. I confronted both suspects and was told that it's easier to pee into the drawer than to use the toilet b/c using the drawer doesn't require them to flush or wash.

Nice.

Unfortunately I burst out laughing when they told me. Impossible to keep a straight face. I did want to strangle them... don't get me wrong. But the whole damn situation, the fact that every room in this house has turned into their own personal urinal is just so bloody comic.

M wasn't as amused. For a few minutes I was sure that Efram would be spending the next few nights camped out on the side of a highway. Pissing rain and all.

Finally putting pen to...

It may not be paper, but at least it's more permanent than my FB status updates. I only worry that now that I've committed to this, the kids will stop providing me with material. They'll wake up tomorrow and be... like everyone else's kids. They'll use toilets, rather than holes in the garden and the corner of the toyroom behind the TV. They'll refrain from rifling through my medicine cabinet and I'll no longer be able to walk in on them swabbing their ears with a tampon. I won't find bits of breakfast and dinner stuck under the table top... weeks later.

I kept meticulous journals from the age of 8 or 9, right up until Bennett was born (which M has been told to burn quickly should anything happen to me). I can't believe I stopped keeping track once all the interesting stuff actually began to happen.