THE BEST LAID PLANS

Summer came to an end, like it always seems to do. But strangely enough I found myself on the last day of vacation having a weird, confused sensation of: “How can it be over-- didn’t we JUST finish school five minutes ago?” The irony being that I entered the summer with much trepidation, not knowing exactly what I was going to do with my three little attention hogs all day every day for three months. And as long as we’re being honest with each other here, I wasn’t looking forward to it. At all.

So in an effort to control my situation and take some of the guess work out of our months together, I PLANNED. I planned camps, and trips and playdates. I planned outings to everywhere, and we hit every VBS in town. Plus vacations. TONS of vacations. And even on these vacations, I planned: What we’d do, when we’d do it, what order to do it in, where we should break for lunch, who to see, what to wear. Now don’t get me wrong, I am indeed flexible and capable of “going with the flow” when needed. But I know if there’s at least an initial plan, you don’t find yourself inefficiently wandering around, backtracking, missing all the good stuff, with your kids whining, and driving way out of your way to get a decent meal when the kayaking place was 15 miles in the other direction. So there. And I was right, the summer went smoothly. And efficiently. According to plan.

On the last day of summer vacation, I sat at my computer, typing some of our experiences in my journal about the children. I’ve been keeping the journal for about seven years now. I call it “Kid Thoughts.’. I don’t write in it every day, but when we do something special, hit a new milestone or my kids to something really funny, I try to capture it. It is among the important things I have instructed my husband to do upon my untimely death—host a big, fun party in celebration of my life, print out my journal for the children so they will know how much I loved them, live a completely celibate life forever or I’ll haunt you. You know, the usual.

Sometimes I take time to peek back through the years at what I’ve written, and I never cease to be shocked at what I’ve forgotten. Things that seemed impossible to forget jump off the page as if they’d happened to someone else. Did he actually DO that? I can’t believe I forgot she said that! Were they really ever that little? What’s interesting is that my favorite memories are never the ones I planned for us. Yes, I love reading about Disneyworld, and our trips to the beach and the first visit from the Tooth Fairy. But my favorite entries are the ones I couldn’t possibly have controlled. And the funniest are often the ones that were least humorous at the time. Here are a few of my favorites:

April 15, 2003
Jakob pottied in the potty today!! (After 45 minutes of anguish, pleading and outlandish bribes: At one point I think I offered to buy him a chimpanzee and sign over the deed to my truck). But 15 minutes after the hoopla was over he went in his pants again. I don't think he's quite grasped the part about me wanting him to do this EVERY time.

Unfortunately he's a stealth pooper-- he doesn't strain or turn red or do anything tell-tale when he's going. I tried having him go naked one day and he was standing there doing a puzzle at the table and started pooping on the floor without even hesitating. It just fell out like a soft-serve yogurt machine. He and I were both shocked. He looked at me like, “What the heck was that?” I don't know where to go from here. Screw it. I don’t care if he's in elementary school still wearing diapers, I really don't. I quit. *sigh*. Mark my words, Jake will be an only child--No way I’m having any more kids!

November 25, 2003
Brooke is walking around now like she invented it. It’s weird, she still seems too small to be upright. I got about an hour of video of it—the kind of video that you watch later and go “yeah she’s walking, so the hell what?” But at the time it’s such a miracle. Like the three rolls of pictures I took of Jake first crawling. ‘My boy is crawling! CRAWLING! He’s a genius, and obviously the first baby in the history of the world to crawl!!’ Whatever. Only parents understand.

Sept 15, 2004
Brooke got her hand slapped today. You’d think the world had ended. She’s never needed all that much discipline, but today she grabbed a dish of little glass candies we got in Venice and smashed it. She knows she’s not supposed to touch it, we’ve discussed it before and had no problems. But today she decided to ‘go for it’. All my little blown-glass treasures are now shards. I slapped her hand and she looked at me like I was Satan himself. She threw this huge hissy, wailing and sobbing like I’d scalped her, and Jake started yelling, “Mommy! You made her cry! You can’t spank people’s hands because it hurts them! Look at Brooke! LOOK AT HER! You hurt her! She’s crying!!!” He went on and on and on. I told him she got in trouble for doing what she wasn’t supposed to, and to mind his own business, but he was SO upset. He told me, “You didn’t have to spank her hand! You could have just told her ‘No, No!’” Great. I’m getting schooled by my 4 year old in how to parent. Which is bizarre, because he’s had enough spankings to tame a wild stallion, and he’s never been this upset. But he loooooves his little sister.

November 11, 2004
Some days you have to just choose whether to cry or laugh. Usually I choose to laugh. This morning just as we were getting ready for school I smashed a giant glass jar of grape jelly on the kitchen floor. Of course my kids were prancing around barefoot and we were running late. Tee hee hee. ...Hee hee... When I got it mopped up, Jakob spilled a pasta bowl all down his front so I changed him and 5 minutes later Brooke had explosive diarrhea all in her footie PJs, so when I pulled them off it smeared all down her legs. Tee hee! HEE HEE HEE! Heh. It’s so funny I could kill myself. Ah, the joys of motherhood.

Wednesday, Feb 23rd, 2004
I woke up in the middle of the night after having a shocking dream—Bonnie was standing there holding a pregnancy test out to me and said, “See, I told you it was positive!” I woke with a jolt and immediate shook Erich, who was resistant to being disturbed at 4am. I told him I was pregnant. He said I was crazy. He was wrong. It’s amazing that my body knew waaaay before my mind, because I hadn’t given it a thought. Oh man, three kids. Things are about to get interesting.

October 10, 2005
Barely surviving. No sleep. Kill me. As expected, Jake LOVES his little brother. He came to the hospital every day and wanted to hold him, kiss him and sing to him. Brooke, on the other hand, is another story… For one thing she wouldn’t acknowledge the baby in the hospital. She never wants me to hold him, and is very jealous. When we brought him home she leaned over him and said, “Don’t worry baby, we’ll find your mommy!” As if to say, ‘don’t get too comfy kid, this is MY house.’ Even now she won’t call him by his name, but comes in every day and says, “Oh, there’s a baby” in a very bored voice, like ho-hum. She’s also thrown his paci in the trash and refuses to hold him. I hope it gets better.

May 15, 2006
Right before Mother’s Day Brooke came home and said “Mommy! There’s something in my backpack!” I pulled it out, it was obviously a gift they had made in class. “Shhh!” she whispered in my ear, “It’s a flower I made for you out of paper. But don’t tell-- because it’s a surprise!” Okay Brooke, I won’t tell a soul. :)

November 15, 2006
Connor gets into everything now. He finally started walking really good at the beginning of November so he’s all over the place. This morning he went into my closet and couldn’t get out. I heard him crying, so I opened the door and he looked up at me like “What do YOU want?” and slammed it on me. Then he started yelling again. So I opened it up again and he stopped crying but proceeded to slam it again. This went on about 10 times until I no longer could tell who was the stupid one—the baby who kept shutting himself in and pissing himself off, or the mom who kept letting him out. So I finally moved him to the living room and ended the madness.

June 6, 2007
A few weeks ago Erich was fixing Connor breakfast and put a few raisins on his tray to tide him over. Then Erich heard “Uh OH!” Connor was rubbing his nose kinda weird, so Erich looked up there and sure enough—raisin up the nose! We had to get it out with tweezers, which is an experience.

So you’d think he would learn from something like that. But last night I gave him some green beans while I was heating his chicken, and then I saw him rubbing his nose again. I looked waaaaaay up the nostril and saw what was either booger, brain or bean. I tried to get up there with tweezers but there was no way and he was freaking out. He finally sneezed and out it flew. So gross.

I thought that was the end of it, but then today we were swimming at a friends and he got a ton of water up his nose and sneezed again… and out came another bean! His nose is like a clown car-- how many beans are up there? What is wrong with this kid?

July 1, 2008
Conversation between Jakob and Brooke while riding in the back of my car:
Brooke: Jakob, what’s the tallest tree?
Jake: Redwoods.
Brooke: Oh…. (*giggling*) Well what’s the tallest banana?
Jake: (*completely serious*)…RedBananas.

July 31, 2008
Actual conversation overheard at my breakfast table this morning:
Jakob: Okay, what’s the fastest animal in the world?
Brooke: The cheetah. What’s the deepest trench in the ocean?
Jakob: Mariana’s trench. 12,000 meters. What’s the tallest mountain?
Brooke: Everest. And who’s the smartest baby in the world?
Brooke and Jakob in unison: Connor!!!!!
Connor: (*confused*) Heh heh….Poop!

Sept 16, 2008
Brooke is still jogging with me. I thought she might forget, after a few weeks but no. Last time I tried to ditch, she told me that laying in bed makes you chubby and lazy and wrote me a ticket for my impunity. So today we went, and this time when we got back she wanted a spa day. After our showers we put towels around our heads and guacamole masks on our faces. She was pretty put out that we didn’t have ‘pickles’ to put on our eyes like the picture on the mask package. But she made me set the timer and we laid in bed and she made sure I was “relaxing”. “Are you relaxing Mommy?”(her nose 3 inches from my face). “We’re supposed to relax, make sure you’re relaxing. I’m not sure we’re relaxing. We really need eye pickles…”

Sept 27th, 2008
Erich put up a ceiling fan in Connor’s room today. So Jake and Connor and I were “helping” (mainly watching while he did all the work.) Connor was up in my lap as usual, I was rocking him and singing little songs I made up for him: ‘I love Connors, because they are so sweet. Chocolate covered Connors are my favorite things to eat (chomping noises). Mommy puts them in my lunch, they’re such a special treat (kiss kiss kiss) I love Connors…”

Jake was watching us. “Hey Mommy, do you remember that song you made up for ME?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. He hummed a little of it. I was SHOCKED. “I haven’t sang that song since you were a tiny baby! I can’t believe you remember it.” He asked me to sing the rest so I did.

I told him I used to have other songs for him. That when he was born he was my only baby and I’d spend all day holding him and singing to him. And he’d look up at me with those giant blue eyes and just listen. “Can we do that now?” he asked. I was more than stunned. Jakob has never been the cuddliest kid, and he hasn’t let me hold him for a very, very long time. He crawled into my lap and I held my third grader like a baby. I sang him soft songs and he just stared up at me with those giant blue eyes. It was all I could do not to cry.


So there you have it. The moments I couldn’t possibly have made up, and the ones I never want to forget. Even though none of them were in my plan.