Skip to main content

Ready or Not

 Every day is an adventure at our house, but yesterday felt extra adventurey.  Sometimes I wonder if eighteen years is enough to teach our kids how to be contributing members of society.  We are more than a third of the way there with the older two, and I'm having my doubts. 

One of the boys jumped out of a tree yesterday with his pants around his knees.  Naturally, I was curious.

"Why are your pants down?"

"I was trying to pee from out of the tree, but it didn't work."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound like a great idea."

"Oh, we've done it before from our favorite climbing tree," piped up his brother.  "It was like a yellow waterfall."

I'm sure it was.  I went back in the house.  Nobody prepped me for that.

Just when I think they can't surprise me with anything they do, they prove me wrong.  All of them.  Our boys are going to need a lot of "molding" over the next decade.  If anyone wants to contribute to that challenge, we welcome you with open arms.  

The girls are also going to need some extra pouring in.  They have us constantly shaking our heads.  For example, I was changing Emerson's diaper when I heard a WHAM! in the hall.  I peeked my head out of the door to find Carter with a blanket draped over her head.  She had just found the end of the hallway...with her face, and then turned around and kept going.  Shortly thereafter, we discovered Emerson alternately brushing her teeth, hair, and the sink faucet with her electric toothbrush.  

 We are in constant damage control around here.  If they survive childhood, they will be robust adults.  If we survive their childhood, we will be old.  And probably very tired. 

Pray for us.    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sheltering in Place

In the past three months Corona Virus has more or less turned the world on its head.  I feel almost guilty for not being more stressed or put out by the whole thing.  We have been extremely fortunate. What we thought was a most impractical move on our part, wound up being a huge blessing.  With our two boys and our two newborns, we moved out of our house with no yard in the city limits and into my parents' house in the country while waiting for our new house to be completed.  The weekend we moved "quarantine," "social distancing," and "shelter in place" became the new mantra of our state.   Moving in with my parents meant ten plus acres of play space and two extra able bodied adults to help even out the score with the four kids.  Win for the St. Clair's!  Unfortunately, my parents are beginning to realize they may have made an error in judgement.   Yesterday, Sawyer gave their cat swimming lessons.   Last week th...
1 comment
Read more

Advanced Placement

 Not to brag or anything, but I think we are raising some very advanced children.  At two-years-of-age, our girls have already worked out the art of manipulation and deflection.  It's the antithesis of endearing.   They went missing the other day - the girls did.  That's never a good situation.  They were in the house, and I knew they were in the house, but I couldn't see or hear them.  Silence is the loudest alarm system.  Fischer took action and found them both in my bathroom.   "MOM!" I met them in the hall.  Carter was covered in clumps and blobs of hand cream. "Emi did it," was her unsolicited response.   "No," I told her.  "I think you  did it." That night I got ready for bed and pulled out my one "self-care" splurge - my face cream .  It was in my drawer where I always keep it.  The lid was screwed on.  And it was empty, wiped clean.  "EmmmeerrrrrSON!" Guilty.  They were both ...
2 comments
Read more

Bump in the Road

 If your kids aren't annoying you at least occasionally, then they probably aren't doing childhood right.  Ours are winning at childhood.  Actually, we came to the conclusion the other day that if they are annoying you all the time, then you probably aren't doing parenting right.  And when I say "you," I mean "we."   We weren't enjoying our kids recently, and we wondered if that meant other people were also finding them unenjoyable.  It made us finally pause and take a long hard look at what was bugging us about our kids.  We felt like we were in a perpetual state of irritation.  Once we made our list, and it was lengthy, we noticed a theme: attention.  Our kids were begging for our attention with every behavior.  It was annoying, but it was our fault, and it was fixable.   We started putting down phones and brooms and laundry and giving undivided and intentional focus to our kids throughout the day.  It wasn't a huge...
Post a Comment
Read more