Being a Mom behind the wheel is like being a fly on the wall sometimes...

The kids leave school at around 3:30, but the bus doesn't reach our stop until 4. I get wired, hungry, loud children piling into the car demanding snacks and chattering about their days. Sometimes, I turn off the radio, and take a slightly longer route to daycare (we pick up the baby after I get the big girls) just so I can hold them hostage and make them talk to me. I suspect this will become a more frequent occurrence as they age. Sometimes, though, I just listen.

Today was a listen day.

Nine year old: Why can't you two be quieter? I am trying to read my newest book!
Seven year old, with a raspy voice from her current allergies/cold: You can read! WE aren't being THAT loud.
Five year old, missing irony: What's wrong with your voice?
Nine year old, modeling patience: Your voice sounds awful. You have a frog in your throat.
Seven year old, with much indignity: I DO NOT have a frog in my throat. It's just scratchy.
Five year old, dead serious: You need to get that cricket out of your neck. You sound terrible.
Nine year old, now exasperated: She doesn't have a crick! She has a frog in her... Oh, just forget it!

Me, snickering: We're here!

What do you get when you cross a 22 month old and expresso?

Hello, my name is Mom, and I am a coffee addict. To be precise, a 32 oz, McCafe iced caramel coffee every morning kind of addict. While I love the people at my McDonald's, they sometimes don't get my coffee quite right. Monday wasn't great, but it wasn't the worst they have ever made.

I also work from home, but not until after I get my fix because I have seen the results. This week started out dreary and cold; extra foggy, extra chilly Mondays require coffee. But, again, I am an addict, and I can use my shoes came untied as a way to rationalize needing my coffee. I drove through. For a mere $2.56, I got fog lifter.

I stumbled my way to my laptop from the car. I set my coffee down on the aptly named coffee table. I logged in. I begged for mercy from the e-mail goddess. She hates me. In the middle of my gratuitous Outlook flogging for insolence, I hear this strange noise. Schmerrrrr... SCHLURRRR... Ppppp. Pause. Odd noises are a part of my nearly 40 year old house. Monday was not just dreary and cold, it was super windy, think 60 mph wind gusts. Ah, Iowa in the spring is kite weather. (Note to self, no kites in gusty winds for five year old.) So, maybe it was the wind, or the neighbor working on... SCHLURRRRRRPPPP... Wait for it. Wait for it. Why, yes, she did. 

There's the baby, who's really nearly two, with a plastic cup that spans from the bottom resting on the tops of her thighs to the lid just under her chin, sipping intently from the straw. She stops when she realizes that I am on to her, and she looks at me with pure pleasure combined with a sense of getting-away-with-it and grins. "Mmmmm... mmmm... good moolk," she says. She then adds insult to injury with a burp.

After tearing up the hallway carpet for three solid hours, refusing her nap, and undoing an entire tote of folded off season clothes with flourish, she won. I gave the rest to her in a sippy cup, in the name of science. 

She finally laid down in a puddle of exhaustion 30 minutes earlier than usual. I just carried her to bed and prayed they would get my coffee right on Tuesday.

Friends are important because they give you back your shoes when they fall off while you are swinging. And for lots of other reasons, too.

Sometimes, the universe reminds me that the kids do hear me. The best indicator of this in a positive way is when one says to the other a gem of wisdom. Something so deeply understood and simply stated can only mean they are listening. Can I hope they are thinking, too? I mean, really thinking? Critical skills hat on analyzing what the world is shoving at them and bouncing it off their gut and reason?

The five year old recently had a follow-up appointment with the specialist she sees. I got some affirmation. They use this cream, about the consistency of cheap washroom soap with the slime factor of left-sitting-out-for-three-days ranch dressing, to numb their arms before they go digging for a blood vein. The cream goes on, and then they place a big, clear bandage on top. It's smaller than a deck of cards, but barely. Both arms are treated, just in case. Then, the girls have to wear it for 30 minutes and try not to ooze. When the 30 minutes of wearing this wonderful (and I am actually very grateful for it) solution elapses, they remove the bandage the size of the five year old's fist from both arms and then wipe them clean.

That's when the real fun begins. Despite being numbed, the five year old is not short on memory. She remembers this next bit hurts. It hurts A LOT. In an effort to calm her down, I say, "It's all numb now. It won't hurt you at all." She looks at me with a perturbed scowl and says, "Momma, how do you know? Have you had this done?" Good point; she is thinking.

By the way, it didn't hurt. She did just fine.

Why is it "Strewn about the House," anyway?

I guess to grandmothers long removed from the under 16 set and to those parents whose children sell lemonade at the corner (while wearing their gigantic hair bows and sweetly counting change), "Strewn about the House" seems like an oddly confessional title. And, maybe it is. In all honesty though, I believe that most of us- those of us with children- don't live in the picture-perfect, pristine world of television sets. Most of us have houses where that package of new socks was left a little too far down on the shelf, and the baby carried them in little handfuls, dropping them "Family Circus" style all over the first floor. We live with the flyers that fell when the five year old emptied her backpack of bulging folders...last week's school pictures and the little league season reminders under the table.  The nine year old's pile of outgrown shoes towering precariously close to knocking over this week's recycling because it's all stacked right beside the front door, where the organizing magazine says you will remember it. Of course, it's been there for three weeks and you haven't remembered to take it out yet; if you did, you might find the seven year old's missing report card is the thing holding it all in place.

I like to think that I am a woman of vision. Sometimes misguided, but sometimes spot on. When my mother called today to tell me how she had come across some winter coats for my girls (on clearance!) and bought three of them, I was appreciative. "How thoughtful. Now, I don't have to worry about it." Sadly, she kept talking. "I would have bought them some packages of socks, but all I could think was how they already had socks strewn all over the house." Ah. That's when the realization came to me. What she sees as a disaster, I see as life. Energy, laughter, little hands, and chaos turned into piles of dirty laundry. The clothes-filled baskets remind me that last week was beautiful; the neighborhood girls came, and we dug up the flower beds. Oh, it's not that I don't like a clean and organized house. It just seems like such a waste of precious time right now. I can clean when they are 18 and in college. Right now, though, to keep it clean I would have to harp, beg, plead, and threaten. That's not what I want them to remember about childhood. I want them to remember how sometimes when they opened their pudding it splattered the table because in their excitement they were unknowingly squeezing it. They should remember how messy the table gets when you color the entirety of a notebook page with marker. Real life is messy, very messy, if it's done right, and time moves too quickly to not appreciate little socks in a trail to the dining room window.