A Quiet December

I haven't had much to say lately and for that I am sorry. I truly appreciate all who read my writings and find me worthy of your time.

I haven't felt like writing because of the national tragedy that hit us a few weeks ago. Writing about the funny things my kids do and say seemed vulgar in the wake of so many children dying and so many parents losing their loving children. I have two kids who fit into the age group of those murdered students and I was unable to think straight for a few days, unable to look at my kids without crying, unable to pass them without hugging them beause I knew I had something that twenty families would give anything to have back; living, breathing kids.

After the first of the year, which is tomorrow, I will resume but these past few weeks seemed like a good time to take a break from things and be thankful for who I still have and mourn for what others have lost.

Peace to you,

Carol

Kidney Donation Tips: Keep One For Yourself

     When my younger brother called to tell me that he had cancer I must admit that it hit me like a ton of bricks. We are not a mushy family, it makes us all uncomfortable. When we were in the middle of that infamous phone call I was racking my brain for something to say that was supportive but not icky and gooey but ultimately conveyed that I was all in for whatever he needed. I finally told him that he could have a kidney if he needed it to which he laughed and thanked me. He then mentioned that I have three kids so that meant that as far as the pool for kidneys went that there were eight that were possible matches for him to take from us. I corrected him on that and let him know that he was only entitled to four of those kidneys because I and my three kids need to have at least one a piece to make it. We seemed to settle that pretty easily and move on to other matters of business. Thank goodness for inappropriate joking.

Discrimination at the North Pole

     When the little boys were in kindergarten there was a serious holiday issue we needed to discuss immediately after school one day. There was an offense and it was unfair and mean and not to be tolerated. They sat on the couch with me and told me with the most serious little faces that Rudolf wasn’t allowed to play any reindeer games. That the other reindeer made fun of him and called him names and it’s wrong to call names because name-calling hurts and he was different and that people with differences can’t help it that they are different and that God loves them and so should we. I listened to them and let them get it all out and then I told them that I had heard of Rudolf’s unfair treatment by the other reindeer, of his suffering and that I, too, was appalled but that Santa had made everything right because he is a good and fair man and that Rudolf enjoys the full rights and privileges of the other non-nose-glowing reindeer. That we do indeed accept those with differences and that I was very proud of them for coming to me to report malevolent and wrong behavior. God help anyone who mistreats them or any of their friends, it will not be tolerated and rightly so. This from five year-olds.

Little Kids Are Tough

     Drew and Adam had both been quite sick. They were both losing weight and looking so gray that it frightened me. Adam could keep some fluid down but not Drew. I took Drew to the hospital and had him checked out. Of course, while there, he ate a Popsicle and was a much better color. He wouldn’t eat them at home of course so I got to pay for a $500 Popsicle. He did have some blood taken and the next day his regular pediatrician’s office called and said his blood work was irregular and that I needed to bring both the little boys in to have some blood work done. Sounded like so much fun that we went immediately. Drew had to go to the lab to have his blood taken and further tested which meant that they had to draw considerably more had the finger stick he had gotten the evening before. As I got to the lab I was met by four technicians, I assumed that they were slow that day and were all just hanging out. Not the case. One was to draw his blood while I held him on my lap and the other three would hold him still. I took a deep breath and readied myself. What happened next shocked all of us. The first tech poked him and the others were ready to hold him when he looked up at them and smiled. No crying, no screaming, not even a flinch. Nada. They were amazed; I told them to tell everyone about my brave, tough kid.

When Mom Is Mean...

            Adam is very protective of his brothers. He is his little brother’s keeper for sure but he is also in the business of protecting his older brother from any consequences he might incur from mom and dad. I was scolding Alex one evening for hurting one of his brothers. We talked at length about how we take care of those smaller than us and we behave a certain way. In the meantime Adam walks over to us, he is maybe two at this stage, looks me in the eye, takes Alex by his wrists and, without breaking eye contact with me, walks away with his older brother. I learned that Adam was not down with me being mean to his brothers and he was going to step in. That still happens anytime Alex is in trouble for something and Adam is around to stop it. I’ve let it go because I think it’s a good lesson for my older son to learn; no matter what you do, your brothers will love and take care of you so make sure you do the same for them. A lot of adoration there.

The Chicken Wing is of No Help

    Adam is a little instigator, this is a fact. He starts something with someone and then he’ll run. When he starts it with me I swat his behind because it drives me nuts that he picks on people for fun. Need to break him of that for sure. When he runs from me now he has learned that when I catch him he’s going to get swatted and this has become part of his game. As he runs from me he laughs and covers his tiny behind with one hand thinking, I guess, that that will prevent me from giving him a spank. I usually catch him, move that scrawny little chicken wing he calls an arm out of the way, swat him and sit him on the stairs for a bit. I know he is trying to work out a formula to prevent himself from being caught by me but as long as he is a child and I’m fully grown, the formula is that mom’s going to warm your little butt when she finally catches you.

Second Marriage Confusion

     As I am sitting here typing Adam says to me from the other room “You got married twice.” I tell him he is correct in his statement. He then says “You married Shane and then you married us.” Well, since that one is kind of hard to explain I just agree. To try to tell him that he wasn’t always a part of my life will lead to denial on his part and I’m too tired today to deal with that so “yes” is the answer I’m going with. Sure he’ll need therapy someday but that day’s not today.

Some Days Mom Is Not Enough

            Drew had a doctor’s appointment a few weeks ago; he was home from school with a fever and a terrible cough. The other boys went to school with no afflictions that I knew of. Usually when Drew goes to the doctor Adam goes as well, they either have check-ups or shots or are both sick at the same time. This was a new situation. So we go to the appointment and I have assured Drew that there will be no shots so he has nothing to be scared of because he looks a little anxious for a child that doesn’t have an anxious bone in his little body. He kept asking “No shots, right?” to which I emphatically answered that there would be none. This should be enough, I don’t lie to my sons and I am very forward with the truth so I am puzzled by his manner. Then it occurs to me, Adam takes care of Drew and Adam isn’t here. What to do? I ask Drew if this is why he looks so worried. “Yes.” Hmmmmm…well, I assure him that even though Adam is at school right at moment that I am with him and his mother treasures him and will let nothing bad happen to him. I told him there would be no shots and no pain (even if the doctor wanted to take some blood or give him a shot, it wouldn’t happen today since I have comforted my child with the fact that there will be no pain). I tell him that we will go to the pharmacy and get his medicine and he will be well soon, that no one will make him unhappy or uncomfortable because I will not allow it and I will stand in-between  him and any unpleasantness, I will protect him. To this he replies “So, can we go get Adam?” I see where my place in his life is and it is behind his twin brother, his keeper. I’m good with that.

I Lie Because I Must

            I wouldn’t say that I have picky eaters; I have children that love to be contrary to whatever is going on. We were having chicken for dinner one evening, as we had had many, many, many times, but on this particular night Adam decided that he didn’t like chicken and was not going to eat it. How it came to me I’ll never know but without missing a beat I told him that I knew he didn’t like chicken so he was having meat instead. He ate it and told me how good his meat was. It was about a year later, after serving him “‘meat” rather than chicken that whole time, that I sat him down and told him the truth. He looked at me strangely and we stared each other down for a little while when he finally commented to me that “nope” he had not been eating chicken because he doesn’t like it. We went back and forth for a while when he finally decided that I was telling the truth and he liked chicken disguised as meat. He knew he was beaten in this round but undoubtedly he will be ready for the next.

Myrtle Beach at Twilight

            Recently we took a trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We drove and had a great time doing it. The kids are usually good when we travel but probably only because they each have a DS and they play games all the way to and fro. Alex and I had been to the ocean before, not together. He went on vacation with my parents a few years ago to visit my brother and his family in Vermont and I had been to the ocean when I vacationed with my parents twenty-whatever years ago. The point is that the twins, not to mention my husband, had never been to the ocean and were very excited to go. My husband handled his excitement better than the seven year-olds did. When we got to our hotel in Myrtle Beach we all got out of the van and stretched. It was about 7:00 in the evening so I assumed we would go to the beach the next day considering that it was fairly dark. That was until I looked around and my little boys were gone. I could hear them laughing and squealing so while my husband checked us in my oldest son and I followed the sounds of excited whooping. That was when Alex came upon a sandal. He picked it up and we continued to walk along, finding another sandal here and another there until we had all four of them. Two little boys, four feet, four shoes. I gathered that they were running to the water and decided to skip the preliminaries and just strip on their way. Thankfully they did leave their clothes on but as we began to find shoes I was unsure that they would. We found the boys, knee deep in water and running along the sand, laughing and marveling at the place we had just arrived at. After catching up with them and telling them that they cannot take off on us again, no matter how excited they were, we let them run and splash and be kids.

            It wasn’t long until they noticed there were about one hundred seagulls gathered along the strip of beach we were enjoying. My charming little boys are always trying to devise a way to catch a bird…or a squirrel…or a chipmunk…or a cat. It really doesn’t matter what kind of animal it is, they want to catch it and be friends. This did not work with the seagulls (and has never ever worked, period). They tried walking very quietly, they tried sneaking, they tried it all but eventually decided that they would just run after the gulls and watch them fly away from them. In the end, that was more fun than catching one.

Dead President, Dead Ringer

    Cashiers. Do they see me coming and think to themselves “Bet I can really piss her off."? There have been so many that have just pushed their luck and their ability to keep me on my side of the counter. I was going through the check out one day and there was a middle-eastern man checking. I thought that this would go well. I was unprepared. He looked up at me and said "My but you look just like John F. Kennedy. Have you been told that before?" Good Lord. Moron. I’m white, that’s all the similarities that I share with the good President. I looked at him and said “Are you kidding me? JFK? No, never in my life until this unfortunate moment.”

Beauty Tips From the Beauty Impaired

            I color my hair. It is normally a very dark brown and on me, that looks drab and I hate it. So I opt for a blonder version. I have had it colored in salons and never once did I like it so I cut out the being pissed off and just buy a box of color and do it myself. Perfect every time. I was buying said accessory one dark day when my cashier picked it up and looked at it and then at me. I was ready for a stupid comment but not the one I got. She smiled at me, proudly showing me the one tooth that she still had in her mouth,  shook out her hair that had at one point been blonde but was now sporting a good four inches of regrowth and proceeded to give me beauty advice. I was stunned that this is what she had the nerve to say to me. I am not an ugly girl but I don’t run around saying “Look at me, I’m stunning,” but she was proceeding to tell me how I can be lovely? She obviously had never owned a mirror, or a tooth brush, or a hair brush for that matter but was telling me that I needed to take that hair color and rather than work it through all of my hair that I needed to put all of the color in my hands and run my fingers through my hair, streaking it like she had done for her mother and herself. I had so many derogatory things that I wanted to say to this delusional woman but I am not in the business of hurting people, even stupid ones, but I did tell her I would be doing no such thing and that when it comes to beauty that I’ve got it covered.

Naked Misunderstandings

            Shortly after my first husband and I divorced he got a girlfriend. She was nice and loved my son so she and I were on good terms. Her dad’s birthday fell near Halloween so they always would throw a themed party for him. Alex was two years-old and I trusted him with the girlfriend to go to this party with a bunch of people I didn’t know. I approved of her over-protectiveness. He seemed to have fun from what he told me when he got home. He was troubled by the naked man that was there though. My heart sank and I thought that I would vomit when he said that. I had a horrible fear that something happened to him. So I kept my anxiety under control and asked him questions about what he had said. Who was naked? Why was it that Alex had seen this naked man? Had someone hurt him? As it turns out, the naked man was a door-sized decoration of a skeleton. Naked because he had no skin. Talk about relief.

Decorating the Baby

     Christmas is a blast around here. We celebrate the birth of our Risen Lord of course but we also have a great time with the children and gifts and such. When the twins were little, their first Christmas as a matter of fact, we wanted to be able tell them apart in pictures later on and let’s face it, fat, bald babies can all look the same. They had matching holiday pajammies so that made it a little more difficult to tell who was who but Alex had a fabulous idea. In our Christmas pictures we can tell the boys apart because Drew has a red bow off one of Alex’s gifts stuck to his head. Brilliance in its simplicity.

Stealing Christmas

            My brother-in-law had a fondness for pranks. One Christmas he came up with a great one. He wrapped packages in a variety of sizes and "accidentally" dropped them here and there throughout the day in front of his father’s house, where we were celebrating the holiday. He also had a camcorder set up in one of the windows to catch what was bound to happen. Did I fail to mention there was nothing but paper (to give them a little weight) in these "gifts" that he wrapped? By the end of the day he had a great deal of footage of people walking by and, some discreetly, some at break-neck speeds, snagging these "gifts" off the front walk and undoubtedly hustling home to see what they had scored. I remember wishing that he had put a note in these "gifts" so when they were opened the recipient would know that it was a joke. There was only one sweet little old lady who came to the door to give him the gift that had been misplaced, everyone else took the spirit of Christmas and ran.

Out-smarting Myself

         Many, many years ago there was a guy that wanted to date me and would not leave me alone. I tried the polite route and that didn’t work, I tried being unavailable which meant that I didn’t answer my phone for weeks. I decided that I would finally try something a little unorthodox; I would go out with him and be as irritating and as unpleasant as I could possibly be. I got us thrown out of a movie because I wouldn’t stop talking, I tried to embarrass him at dinner by complaining about the food and the restaurant and the lighting of the restaurant and just everything I could think of. We left the restaurant and I thought I’d done reasonably well to show what an undesirable girl I really was. I was the one to drive us on our “date” as I was not into being stranded or hit up with unreasonable suggestions from a guy to be taken home. As I was driving him back to his car he said he needed to make a stop and could I swing over a block or two? It would take only a second he assured me. I rolled my eyes and said “fine” and drove him to his destination, contemplating leaving him there to further my undesirable-ness. He got out at this big house and asked me to join him, I was not jazzed about this but reluctantly agreed thinking that this was a friend’s house and I could really throw all my charm out the window here and show that I am not datable or good enough for this guy. Boy, was I about to learn my lesson. This was the home of his parents and he thought that I was such a great girl that he wanted to get the preliminaries out of the way and have us meet. I can’t even convey the horror that traveled through me at this point. I didn’t have it in me to be rude to parents, even these parents who obviously didn’t teach their son a thing about girls and manners and the right kind of girl who needs to have manners, etc. We left, I took him to his car and I ran, ran like hell for home, thankfully he didn’t know where “home” was for me.

Superman Surfs and Skateboards

   While boating on Lake Tahoe our skipper, Chris, points out a mass of boulders out in the water and asks Drew if he’d like to join Chris and jump off those rocks into the churning water. I whip my head toward Chris in surprise considering that I know what Drew’s answer is going to be. “Yeah!” sais Drew. “No!” is my reply to this. Drew sees Chris as something of a Superman. Chris is a true California boy. Born and raised in San Diego he surfs and skis and snowboards and skateboards…all the things Drew wants to spend his life doing. As we prepared to embark on our trip to Nevada Drew is telling me that Chris is going to teach him how to hang glide and mountain climb and dirt bike and surf and all of the other extreme sports that he can think of. Drew and Chris worked on skateboarding basics this time around but when Chris brought up this form of cliff diving I knew Drew would be all in. Of course Chris was not expecting such an enthusiastic answer to the positive side of his offer (or maybe he was) and was not really going to take my baby boy for a crash course in insanity diving but Drew would’ve done it. I think that Drew sees Chris as having the potential to walk on water as well as ski on it and dive into it.

Always Wait in the Foyer

            I had a lunch date today. It helps me to be a better mother if I get out of the house and see honest-to-God grown-ups. Really. So about once a month I am lucky enough to get together with my friend, Trish. We used to work together and while we only did that for about seven months she is a kindred spirit and we get each other. We are peas.

            Normally I get to the restaurant of choice first and I just hang out in the foyer and wait. That is my usual M.O. and it works for me. Today was no different, I got there early, however, we were meeting at a restaurant that we had never been to together and that is where a bit of my confusion came in.

            When I entered the restaurant I was greeted by the host. I told him that I was meeting someone and that I hadn’t seen her yet. He asked me to follow him and like the little sheep I am, I followed. I broke protocol and didn’t really think about it. I didn’t wait in the foyer and that was a mistake.

            As I was seated at our table I had my drink brought to me while I waited for my friend, who was used to seeing me sitting at the front door waiting for her. I played with my phone at the table and tried to not look like I was on a blind date and had been stood up. (Deviating from my standard practice was starting to make me nervous.) Then, as luck would have it, a bus full of high school kids showed up and sat at the six or seven tables across from me and I could feel their pity. Sitting alone, drinking my sad little drink, waiting for that someone who wasn’t coming. I started to sweat a little. I felt uncomfortable but tried to keep that air of confidence that I like to flaunt. I didn’t want to look even more pathetic by walking to the door and looking out at the parking lot but I felt that I would need to at some point. Perhaps I was at the wrong restaurant. I was trying to hold the map of the area in my head and think of what was on the opposite corner. Was that where I sent Trish? Probably.

            I sucked it up eventually and, with my head held high, walked to the front door to look out and hopefully see my friend in her car waiting for me to show up but that was not to be. She was sitting, in my seat, in the foyer. She knew that if I was there that I would be in the foyer like I always am when we meet for lunch. Like I had been every single time we have had lunch together. She had told the host that she was waiting for someone but she was not herded like sheep into a booth to wait for no one. She was smarter and waited in plain sight for me. So, that means that a good twenty minutes of chatter time was blown and that is not acceptable, ever. A lunch date once a month does not afford us wasting a single second, I usually talk with my mouth full just to not waste time with silence. It is that important.

            From now on, I will wait in the foyer and not be sheep.

Counting Down with the Alarm Clock

            My kids are little, well, little enough. My youngest two, the twins, still will wake up sometimes and will climb in bed with me. I must admit that I like it. They are warm and cuddly, like a puppy only house-broken, for the most part. They do kick and squirm like children do and that makes sleep eventful if not impossible. I can live with this, it doesn’t happen every day and so I have fun with it. The thing that does bug me is when they both climb in with me and countdown the minutes until the alarm goes off. That, I do not need.

            “Forty-five minutes til the alarm goes off.”

            “Forty-four minutes til the alarm goes off.”

            “Forty-three minutes til the alarms goes off.”

            You get the idea. There is no hope to snooze through that because they are both watching the clock intently and are enjoying telling each other how long until that annoying thing buzzes and signifies the end of my slumber and the beginning of my normally busy and frustrating day.  They giggle and chatter back and forth while watching for that number to change and I guess I should be glad that they have some mad subtraction skills but when I know that I would normally have forty-five minutes left to lay there and act like I don’t have to get up, it makes it hard to be cheerful when I finally hear that I only have two minutes left until the alarm goes off.

Subtitles Needed

            As most every other family in this country we are movie lovers, but to watch a movie with my kids you need to either have subtitles or have seen the movie so many times that you need not watch it this time around. Talkers, we have talkers who will ask questions throughout the entire movie and if you haven’t seen it fifteen times, by the end of the movie, you have no idea what happened.

            “Who is that?” they ask.

            “I don’t know, hush,” I reply.

            “Where are they going?”

            “I don’t know, be quiet and watch,” I will say again.

            “Why do they have a dog?”

            “I still don’t know, knock it off and watch,” I emphatically express. Again

            “Where are they going?” I’ll be asked again.

            “To the zoo,” I lie because I have no clue.

            “Why to the zoo?”

            “They aren’t going to the zoo, I made that up because you keep asking me things and I keep telling you that I don’t know.”

            “I’d like to go to the zoo,” is the next likely comment.

            “I’d like to watch the movie,” I would say while thinking that I live at the zoo.

            “What happened?”

            “If you guys would be quiet you would know or I could tell you because I’d know,” I say, very frustrated.

            “Why don’t you know what happened?”

            “Because you guys won’t zip it,” I know I have said something similar to this before.

            “What did that guy say?”

            “Stop talking or I’m going to shut this off!”

            “Well, I don’t know what they said.”

            “Neither do I because I can’t hear it over all of the talking,” I say once again and by this point I have given up on watching whatever we were attempting to watch.

            If it’s a movie I have seen several times then that is better. They can chatter all the way through it and I really kind of enjoy that.  I’m not missing anything and I can tell them what happened or is happening or is going to happen because I am surely going to be asked about it.

            Drew sat on my lap one day watching one of the Chronicles of Narnia movies and I swear that the movie was only background noise to him but it was fun. We curled up together and chattered the whole movie away and I didn’t care because that was definitely more fun than watching the movie but I knew what happened so I wasn’t lost like I am most every other moment of our day, movie watching or otherwise.

Memory Can Be Fickle

   Earlier this year my husband was sent to France for three weeks for work. This is not normal for us.

We are not a wealthy, fancy family but it was cool that he got to go. He did not enjoy himself but did

find pizza and fried chicken to eat so that he didn't have to try any world class cuisine. Whew!

    He called us a few times and that was nice. He did get to spend Father's Day touring Paris so at

least he got that much culture.

   There was a day that my boys and I were out and about and Adam said to me "I miss dad, he was

funny." I explained that Dad did not die but woud be home in a matter of days. This recieved no more

discussion so I guess that he believed me.

   Eventually we went to the airport to pick him up when he was returned to us. As we got out of our

van at the airport one of the boys told me that he hoped that Dad remembered how to speak English

so that we could talk to him. I told them that we had talked to him on the phone and that we knew that

he still spoke English. They seemed to recall this important fact.

   As we were waiting to see my husband walk through the doors after getting off his plane Drew had

a thought. "I forgot what Dad looks like." Oh man...he was gone for three weeks! So every so often I

would pick out the occassional random person and ask Drew "Is that your dad?" to which he would

always respond "No." Little old ladies could've been his dad in disguise, I had to be sure so I asked

the question.

   Finally he walked off the plane and the boys saw him and that was that. They climbed him like a

tree and I was so busy being happy that I forgot to take a photo but I keep that scene in my heart.

Making Yourself At Home

            My husband bowls in a league and very occasionally we will drop in and say hi to him. We had been bowling as a family earlier that week and had sat at one of the tables for some snacks afterward. As I’m standing talking to my husband Drew takes off through the crowd. Naturally we give chase and we find him. He had taken a seat at the same table we had sat at a few days before. He was happy as could be and the group of men he joined were very kind to him, not to mention a little perplexed at the new addition. Drew has done this before. We had gone to dinner once with my parents to a new Mexican restaurant and when we returned to it a few weeks later, Drew vanished into the crowd. I was in a total panic and guarded the front door while my family scoured the restaurant for my child. When I saw my mom waving to me through the window, and laughing, I was relieved and more than a little curious. My little boy had gone back to the same table we had originally sat at and made himself comfortable. Thankfully there were no other people sitting in the booth, I really have no idea what he would’ve done. Joined them? Been confused about the people sitting at his table? I’ll never know but I do know he has a great memory and excellent sense of direction.

Hang On to Your Panties

     I’ve had some interesting co-workers. Some have been really fun and I’ve learned a lot from them. Some I wish I could unlearn a great deal of what I’ve learned about them. Take for example Don and his wife Tracy. Don wanted to buy my underwear, the ones I was wearing at that very moment, Tracy was fine with this. Yes, they were one of those ‘friendly’ couples, always looking for other ‘friendly’ couples to hang out with. I was startled, I was young and in the workplace you really aren’t prepared for that. Hell, at a bar you aren’t ready for that. He kept asking and I kept refusing. Eventually after some time of him bugging me about it I told him it’d cost him $50. To my horror he agreed. I told him he’d have to pay the money to my very tall and formidable-looking boyfriend and that’s what ended this bidding war for my panties. A few weeks passed and a manager from another department came to me and said he wanted to ask me a question but didn’t want to offend me. I gave him the o.k. to ask. His question was “were you really offered $50 for a pair of your panties?” I told him that it was a true story and that Don was a disgusting idiot. To this the manager shook his head and said, “Wow, he could’ve had all my underwear for $50 if he’d only have asked me.” Such are the missed opportunities in life.

 

            Don and Tracy were eventually let go from employment but between ‘panty-gate’ and the actual terminating there were other bizarre encounters. Tracy worked in my department and I was absolutely professional to the point it was painful with her. I mentioned nothing personal for fear it would seem like an opening or as encouragement. That didn’t stop her. She would ask about my boyfriend, who later became my husband and then even later became my ex-husband. I would tell her nothing but in the most polite way I could manage. I think she grew tired of the evasions on my part because eventually she made a very blunt comment about how she’d have to sleep with Shane sometime and I’d have to sleep with Don and how cute Shane was. To this I only replied that ‘yes, Shane was very cute’ (Don was a troll but that’s beside the point) and walked away. At least she didn’t tell me how cute I was but maybe that was to be brought up later. Ick.

 

            I remember the day I found out that they were sexual harassing other people behind my back. It was a black day. It was hard on me. I felt a little betrayed when I heard of the other ‘friendly’ offers made to people in our facility. Offers to buy underwear off the behinds of other girls were made. I was shocked that I never saw this coming. I was a fool. I was hurt. I ran through all of the emotions. I thought that what we had was special and just for me. Ah, how fickle people can be. Or, perhaps I was simply relieved that they were equal-opportunity harassers and I was in an elite group.

Trick-or-Treating Rule Breakers

            Trick-or-treating is interesting. Alex was always very shy and would have to be coaxed to walk to the door with me. Adam and Drew were quite a different story. I could hardly keep up with them. It wasn’t so much about the candy, okay, it was about it a little bit, but for the most part it was about the people and the costumes and the people who had their dogs in costumes. That was a big hit. We saw dogs dressed as ladybugs, pigs, other breeds of dog. Then there was the stop we made at my former elementary gym teacher’s home. He had a dog inside the house and when the little boys rang the doorbell and the door was opened, they walked right into the house and down the hall as though they were at Grandma’s. I was standing there trying to call them back but they weren’t listening, they were standing in the kitchen petting the dog. I apologized and rushed down the hall to the kitchen to retrieve my enthusiastic celebrators of Halloween and the canine species.

Sea-sickness Is Ugly

    My family and I traveled to Nevada once. One day we were lucky enough to go boating on Lake

Tahoe and my sons were very excited about our upcoming excursion. Once we got out on the water it

was beautiful and amazing and suddenly very windy. We were caught up in swells that were coming

over the front of our boat. All of us were a little nervous, except for my son Drew. We were being

tossed about as if we were the S.S. Minnow but Drew had his hands in the air as if he were on an

exciting roller coaster ride. His twin brother on the other hand was holding on for dear life with both

hands telling me he feels sick. I tell him it’s okay because I feel like vomiting, too. Adam also tells

me that I need to make Drew hold on a little better because he is worried about him. Ah, love. When

we are able to make it back to the dock and get our feet on dry, unmoving land I started to feel a little

better. Adam does not feel any better, not until he does vomit over the side of the dock. He and I take

our sea-sickness pills, the ones I forgot in our van as we embarked on our thrill ride of the lake, and I

hope this will help us even though it is after the fact. Drew wants to get a boat now; Adam has no

desire to ever boat again in his entire life. It’s our differences that make us interesting.

Idiot Filled Day

            So, here we are, November 2, 2012, and I am just home from a day of dealing with morons.

            One of my sons takes a prescription that I have to call in and go pick up every single month. It is not something that can be refilled because it is regulated. I usually have issues with people screwing it up but today was stellar.

            When I go to the front desk at our doctor's office, the girls working there usually recognize me and know what I am there for. Today was no exception but they could not find the script. Anywhere. After at least forty minutes one of the girls brought me the signature sheet showing that this script had already been signed for and picked up. The kicker is that it was not by me or anyone in my family and they at the office had no clue who picked it up either because no one could read the signature. My kid’s name and personal information is all contained on that slip of paper and was out there for whoever wanted to see it. Violation? Wholly.

            After I finally got a new copy of the script I left and ran it to our pharmacy only to find out that the wrong dosage had been entered into the script. That meant that I had to drive back across town and back to the office where I had just spent so much time already. I called on my way there to bawl people out and to tell them that I wanted that replacement script there waiting for me. It was not there waiting for me.

            Once I got there I told one of the girls that I wanted to talk to whoever was in charge. She said that the woman I needed to talk to, the office manager, was on the phone and it would be a while. I told her that the office manager was going to get off that phone and talk to me now because I had spent more time than I cared to in their office already that day. She had no idea what to say to me so I walked around her and let myself into the office manager’s office and told her I would be talking to her immediately. She agreed, asked me to wait just one minute, and said we would have a long talk.

            She knew nothing of what had happened and I’m not surprised. Had I made such a major blunder I would probably be a chicken and try to cover my tracks too. No, scratch that, I’m no coward, I’d admit what I did and expect that there would be someone coming for the script that I had fouled up and therefore I’d never get away with it anyway. She called me later to tell me that the person who had picked up the prescription brought it back (hours before I even got there) when they realized that it was not theirs and that they picked up the correct one. She had shredded the script and my son’s information was not out and about. Why, I asked, did mine not get put back or fixed? I was told that she had found out what had happened. The girl who handed out the script that morning had admitted that she didn’t read the name on the script or on the envelope it was put in and just handed it to the first person who came in asking for one. Really? I think that reading and perhaps actually taking identification from people might be a fairly important part of her job and I relayed that to the office manager who agreed whole-heartedly.

Where my script was eventually found wasn’t made clear to me but I assume it was hidden somewhere since no one could find it and no one knew a thing about it. My guess is that it was put in someone’s pocket or hidden in a drawer until they could dispose of it and not get caught. Too bad, they were caught and I hope dealt very harshly.

I’m not totally intolerant of stupid people but some days it is harder to not flip out on them and kill them than other days. That’s three hours of my life that I’ll never get back and all thanks to the stupid girl handing out prescriptions at random.

Sports As Made Up By Children

            Ah, sports. We love them, we play them, we make up the rules as we go along. Alex has played baseball since he was small enough to call it T-ball. The twins are very excited as they are finally old enough to play T-ball with their classmates this year. We decided a little practice was in order so the five of us hit the backyard for a little family time mixed with a smidgen of real life practice. On this day we, the three older members of the family; Alex, Roger and me, got the crap kicked out of us. This might be due to the fact that the little boys were the only ones that were batting and while we, the older three, called this ‘practice’ the little boys called it “all out, in your face, base running, home run hitting game of skill and endurance.” Well, they didn’t actually say that but as we played on it became apparent that this was the mindset of the five year-olds making the rules and they were out for blood. Roger pitched, Alex and I were the infield and the outfield. The young men became quite adept at hitting the ball over our privacy fence so we, the fielders, would have to go through the gate, cross the alley and look through bushes and trees for the ball. Since this was ‘practice’ we didn’t run and hustle as we might’ve were this a real game, or if we had realized that this was a real game. As the hitter hit the ball he would take off on the run and lap the swing set several times declaring that he had hit a home run. Not just a home run but a high scoring home run. They would count as they ran and that’s how the scoring works. Counting and lapping the swing set as they were doing did racked up some points and when they finally decided to head toward home plate, they were still counting.  This was a lot of fun and was really funny. I have no doubt that the final score was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,278,923 to 0. Glad I didn’t have money on this game, I would’ve lost my shirt, maybe even my house.

Rug-Cutting

    On the same day as the dead bird investigation there was a dance party of sorts at the salon. Adam and Drew had just gotten new haircuts and a few days before, new sunglasses. That is a deadly combination if you’re five years-old and wanting to get down and get funky. I can’t remember what song was playing at the beginning of the funk-fest but it had a good beat and they could surely dance to it. Alex was in the chair getting his trim and the twins were standing in front of a full length mirror mugging for themselves and each other. Kelly and I were admiring the moves on these two masters of swing, of shake, of shimmy when they noticed us watching and stopped the show. I said to them that we wouldn’t watch them dance anymore and that they could feel free to shake their money-makers, to get their grooves on, to bust those moves. She and I both turned, at the same time, put our backs to them, gave them their privacy to shake it but not to break it, and looked in the mirror over her station and watched them in the reflection. The wiggling we saw was the thing of legend, the grooving was of epic proportions, the foot work was fancy. It did continue for some time, until they caught on. That was it. The curtain had fallen, for the time being, on the beauty salon rug-cutting.

Darth Vadar's New Theme Song

When my twins were about four years-old I took them with me and my friend, Rachel, to the grocery store. She and I had some supplies to pick up for an upcoming girl’s weekend that we attend every year. We each had a cart and each had a boy in our child seats within the carts. We covered the store in good time, grabbing green chilies and cilantro for a fabulous dish that Rachel makes, when we zipped through the beer aisle. My son Drew began to sing the Darth Vadar theme song in a whole new way. “Beer. Beer. Beer. Beer beer beer beer beer beer.” I hope in reading this that you can get the tune in your head because it was the funniest damn thing ever.       

We do love Star Wars to be sure but I have not introduced my kids to alcohol. They have, on occasion, seen my husband down one after a hard day at work and I’m sure that Darth would’ve liked to been able to kick back with a cold one after all the fighting he did with his subordinates not to mention his troublesome kids.

Walker Races

            When the twins were little they were the fastest crawlers I had ever seen so when we were able to stick them in walkers we thought that that would be easier, and it was. Sort of.

            When roaming around our house they couldn’t do a lot of damage, we thought. Adam had a ladle (Yes, a kitchen utensil. It was plastic. He liked it and I never used it so I gave it to him) and while traveling around the house he swung it at a door that had a large mirror on it. He cracked that and broke the ladle in half. Okay, not so harmless but no injuries so that was fortunate. It never occurred to me that he would hit that mirror; he liked to look in it so much that causing harm to it was, to me, unthinkable. Besides, he was little, under one-year old, so him being strong and coordinated enough to break anything was not a possibility. He mostly just chewed on that ladle, he never hit anything with it. Until he did.

            We had our house set up so that the boys could travel around and have plenty of space but not be able to get out of our sight. When it was nice out my husband came up with a spectacular idea. We took the boys and their walkers outside and let them roam up and down our driveway. It was paved and there was no way that they could tip themselves over or end up in the yard or in the road. We would set them up and we would get some lawn chairs out and keep them company. Back and forth, for hours they would walk and run up and down the driveway. They couldn’t get to the road because there is a sidewalk and the gravel driveway beyond that to keep them honest.

            Shoes were too cumbersome for them and bare feet on a paved driveway was not going to happen so we put them in socks and let them go. Occasionally Drew would wear a hole in the top of his sock.  That’s right, on the top of his foot. He would get going and end up dragging one of his feet while he coasted or he would end up dragging it while he ran but either way, there was a hole in the top of that little sock.

            Our neighbors would smile and wave when they walked or drove by, seeing our kids cruising the driveway. I often wondered if they would venture by to get a better look at the coasters in their walkers. I would’ve, it was hilarious.

Library Hot Laps

            On a particularly lovely October day my boys had the day off from school, conferences you know. We hung out at home for a while and then decided to go to our local library as I am a huge reader and there is a wonderful children’s section and I can read to the boys there as well. It’s fun, usually. We got to the library and started to investigate what was new and happening. It happened to be Homecoming for the local school and we had time to see the parade that was starting within the hour. We didn’t make the parade. The boys and I spent some time in the kids section looking at books, doing puzzles and just enjoying ourselves. Alex was wandering around in another section and just being his quiet, good-natured self. After a bit I decide that I want to look around for myself and take the boys with me to the upper level. They decide that running would be a good idea. It wasn’t. I caught up with them and scolded them. They know how to behave. We move along. Then I see one is climbing up on a chair and jumps before I can register my library appropriate freak out. I have it out with them again and threaten that if they don’t behave and obey the rules of the library we are going to leave and miss the parade. This, I thought, would work. Next thing I know, I’ve lost track of the little track stars, they are off and running again. At this, I am fuming and have lost the ability to care about the parade and the candy that my kids would catch and that I would ultimately consume. I have them each by the hand and collect Alex and we leave the building. As I am getting them into the van Drew tells me that he had a great time seeing all the cool things at the library and that the only way to see all the cool things is to run. Sorry? He says that since there are so many things to see and the library is so big you have to run through it to actually see all of it. This kid is good. He knows I am ready to blow my top and before I do he thinks that he can explain away his and his twins’ bad behavior as a necessary thing to see cool and intellectual stuff. It, of course, doesn’t fly. As we are driving away Drew asks if I want to go to the parade and take Alex with me. I tell him that I can’t do that. That it is because of Adam’s and his hot laps around the library and their repeated refusal to listen that we are leaving and that I have to keep the two of them with me since they are so young. He explains that he would like me to go to the parade and to take Alex, that we would have a good time. I agree that Alex deserves to go but that that is an impossibility. I wonder where we are going with this conversation so I keep playing along. Then he gets to the heart of this. I could take Alex to the parade and he and Adam would come along only so that they could be safe and stay with me so that I could watch them and then I would also be able to see the parade. That was some clever thinking and quick too. I go back and forth about what I think my sons will be one day but somehow defense attorney always squeezes in there, for both of them.

Avoiding Prison

   I have mentioned sitting my kids on the stairs several times. To be clear, I sit them on the stairs for their own protection. It gets them away from me and I can cool off. If it isn’t the stairs that I use to keep them away, it’s my husband. There have been many nights that I have told my husband that he is what stands between me and prison.

Telling On Yourself

     Something that drives me nuts is tattling. If it’s something vitally important, fine, but other than that, no. My twins had gotten in the very bad habit of tattling for the most trivial of things. One poked the other in the arm, someone called the other one dumb, you know, the truly earth shattering things. When this all started I would have them both stand there and I’d try to figure out what happened based on the things I was told. Adam would tell on Drew for hitting him. I asked Drew why he hit Adam; he’d say because Adam kicked him, I’d ask Adam if he kicked Drew. He’d say yes. I’d ask why he kicked Drew, he’d say because Drew threw a toy at him. I asked if they realized they were telling on themselves in the process of telling on their brother. The looks on their faces were so funny, stunned realization of admission of their part in the atrocity. Finally the whole thing got convoluted and trying to keep the timeline of offenses in order was not working. I had no clue who started what but was asking why they’d tell on each other when they both were being bad and that someone had started it and that since I didn’t know who exactly started it that they were both in trouble. This met with lots of whining which is also fun to hear, ranks right up there with tattling on my list of things that drive me nuts. So now, everyone gets in trouble and scolded or made to sit on the stairs. If I have nothing on one of them other than they were tattling, well, then, that’s their crime. I can’t make a decision on who’s in the right or the wrong since neither of them remembers what started their fight so to make sure I nail the guilty party and not punish the one in the right, both get it. It’s an imperfect system but it’s all I’ve got.

Harry Potter is Real

   We saw a young man in a Ferrari jacket one day. Adam was so excited because that emblem means
that that guy knew Harry Potter and was in Gryffindor. I worked on telling him what Ferrari is and
that they use a similar symbol but he is a fan of Harry Potter to be sure and sometimes there is no
convincing a fan of the truth.

Keeping It Fair, Even Under the Most Disgusting Circumstances

            Getting haircuts is always an adventure and it usually never goes well. This week is absolutely no exception at all. We hustle in the door. We’re on time. We’re oblivious to the dead bird on the sidewalk that we just breezed past. My son’s stylist, Kelly, asks if we saw the bird as she is trimming up Adam’s little mane. I tell her we did not see it. She had been told earlier in the day that it was there and that it was bad for business to have it there. She was alone in the shop that day and said that she was not going anywhere near it. She wondered if someone had taken care of it since we didn’t see it but I told her that we most likely were all talking and rushing and could’ve easily missed seeing it so Alex, Drew and myself decide to investigate. We are without Adam’s leadership as he is indisposed, he is unavailable, he is in the middle of receiving his bowl cut. We press on without him. We edge toward the door. I reach for the handle and ease the door open. We all peek out the door and there it is! The horror! The cold reality of it all! Yes, the bird is still there and it is still dead. We shut the door and report our findings to the proprietor. Kelly. She is not at all surprised to hear that it is still there and still dead. We move along to the next topic. Adam, however, is now done with his haircut and is ready to be included in the mission but alas, it’s been completed successfully. He is unsatisfied with this. He is unhappy that he was excluded. He wants to see the dead bird and he tells us so by vehemently expressing to us that, “You all got to see the dead bird! I want to see it to!” Oh, to keep things fair between all the children and not be seen as one who plays favorites. Of course I must include him. I walk him to the window and point it out. Ah, to be a member of the family and included in the important things.

Reproduction

            One day, coming home from a concert at the high school we saw some bald eagles. They are really common in our area these days but I never tire of seeing them. Drew was asking if eagles have baby eagles. I told him they lay eggs like all birds. He asked if all animals lay eggs and I told him no, that some are born like he was, all wiggly and small and not in an egg. I also explained that everything has babies or they just can’t continue to exist, that I had been a child and now I have children and that they will someday have children, everything must have children if they are to continue in our world and that if eagles stopped laying eggs that they would no longer be around someday. Adam decided to enter this conversation. “Not everything has babies” he says. I disagree with him. He tells me that power lines don’t have babies. I tell him that he is correct in his assessment. I guess I neglected to mention that these things that have babies to continue in our world have to be living things. And here I thought I’d done so well in my explanation.

No Weight Loss Needed

            I monitor what the boys watch. Part of the job description. Anyway, I keep it pretty safe with all of them but the little boys especially. That being said I was rather taken aback one day when Adam came to me in the kitchen and gave a little sigh and said “I need to lose some weight.” Say again? He informed me that he was too heavy and needed help losing weight because being too big makes people unhealthy. Now this is not something that I thought I’d ever have to deal with because I have sons and not a daughter in sight to look at models and television and think she needs to look that impossibly perfect. We have a talk right there. I tell him that he is the perfect weight and that he is in no danger of needing to lose weight and that losing weight is not something that need ever cross his mind again. That child don’t diet and that I don’t know where he got such an idea. I know that with all of my positive comments and reinforcement of the facts that he is going to put this out of his mind. That’s when he told me that he needed to lose weight because the television told him so. Now I am confused and tell him that I need him to explain a little more and I am trying to think of what show I had on for him as to why such a theme would be addressed. A commercial was playing and it was for, of course, weight loss products. Since he was the only one in the room it, the commercial, was speaking directly to him. The voice on the commercial kept saying “you” need to lose weight and since he was the only one in the room it was telling him that he needed some help to trim down. I told him that the commercial was only for people who need help losing weight and that it is completely up to the person to decide for themselves and that he is not in either category. Seven years-old and 52 pounds go together perfectly. Captain Literal rides again.

Little Kids and Dining Out

     I am not fond of taking my kids out to do much of anything. Not because I’m ashamed of them but because they are such little handfuls. We were having lunch in a small restaurant out of town one day on our way home from a brief vacation. The little boys had just turned one so Alex was six. Anyway, we were sitting at our table feeding the little boys and trying to keep them under control when Adam took one of his little chicken strip pieces and tossed it backward over his head. To my mortification it landed in the middle of a table of ladies having lunch. We packed up everything to go and I retrieved the chicken strip piece from the middle of the table of ladies and offered my apologies. They were so gracious and, I think, amused, that they told us they had all raised children and understood. I picture them laughing after we left and were out of earshot.

Being Lazy Takes Practice

            Coming home the other day I told my sons that when we arrived at home that we all four were going to clean out the van. It was turning to spring and was a nice enough day that we weren’t going to freeze doing it. Nothing much, some trash, extra clothes that had been left, the occasional water bottle, easy stuff. Drew is lazy, really lazy. He is so dramatic in his laziness that I am constantly impressed with the lengths he’ll go to avoid any amount of work. He is very Shakespearian in his performances. Hand on his forehead, big, deep, cleansing breaths, stretching out to his full length on the couch or floor saying “I just can’t” and things of that nature. We continued to drive in silence for a little while when Drew spoke up from the back seat saying “I think that I’ll just get dad to pitch to me for a while until you all are finished cleaning out the van.” Quite matter-of-fact, quite grown-up in his delivery, quite wrong in his assumption. I told him that he could either help all of us or he would do it all by himself and we would watch him. This didn’t go over well but it did hit home with the little slacker. He was in-charge of the recycle.

Nocturnal Creatures

 

            When the twins were born Alexander had just turned five. He has always had a big vocabulary and understands the words he uses. He mainly was around adults and his father and I have a habit of throwing around fifty dollar words anyway. After a particularly hard night of our boys being awake all night and mom being dead on her feet and miserable Alexander shakes his little head and says to me “Our babies are nocturnal.” A truer statement was never uttered in the history of the world.

A Change in the Lyrics

    Coming home from piano lessons one afternoon found Drew singing a little song. This is nothing
new but sometimes I am busy thinking about something and don’t listen as I should. I heard that he
was singing "Old MacDonald" but it sounded a little different so I decided to not ask him what he
was singing but to listen and see if he’d repeat it. I was rewarded in a big way. He was singing "Old
MacDonald" but when he got to the chorus it wasn’t "Ee I, Ee I, O" it was "G.I., G.I. Joe." I laughed
so hard at that and told him how much I loved his song. He didn’t know what was so funny but he
obliged me with another verse.

Scary Twinkies

     Twinkies present a problem in our home. Adam has trouble saying Twinkie. Sometimes it comes out “Twinkle” and sometimes it comes out “Pinkie”…a work in progress. Drew, on the other hand, does not care for Twinkies because he doesn’t like the dots on the back of them. “Dots?” I ask. Yes, where the filing was shot into the Twinkie on the bottom of them bothers him and he won’t eat them. I think it has something to do with WALL-E. In the movie WALL-E, WALL-E has a pet cockroach and he, at one point in the movie, climbs into the bottom of the Twinkie through one of the filling holes and sticks his head out another of the filling holes. That thinking is more along Adam’s neurosis level but they do switch personality traits quite frequently.

No Beatings in Public

      We were having lunch at a restaurant between soccer games one afternoon and Adam was being a particular handful. Finally, I got tired of it. Supremely tired of it. The messing with the salt and pepper shakers and the silverware, tipping the chair, spinning his straw in his very full glass of pop. So I decided to give a warning to him that I think most every parent has given at one time or another. I leaned across the table and looked him right in that sweet, beautiful face and said “If you spill that drink I’m going to spank your little butt right here in front of everyone in this restaurant.” To this my terrified and intimidated little son looks back across the table at me without stopping the spinning of the straw and asks “Could you just spank me in the bathroom or something?” I command the fear and respect of my brood make no mistake there. I rule with an iron fist. I shake my head. I was at a loss for words. I think I mumbled “Alright” or something along that devastating and frightening train of thought. I think he got the message.

Handling Public Puking

       When Alex was four I took a day off from work just for the two of us. I had taken days off before and it was always fun and memorable. This day was no exception. We spent the day at the pool and had a lot of fun. It was getting to be late afternoon, early evening and I decided we needed to go. On the way home I drove by our local theater. It is a grand old place that has stood the test of time and has gone from old time opera house to the only movie theater in our little town. I decided that Alex and I would hurry home, get cleaned up and return for the first showing. We just made it and took our regular seats. As a special treat I let him get a soda with his popcorn. I hadn’t been big on letting him had soda but why not tonight? We were watching the first of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movies. He was cramming popcorn into his little mouth and drinking his soda like a pro when suddenly he looks at me and says “I’m gonna frow-up.” Oh crap, vomit. I rush him out of the seating area and head for the restrooms which are naturally locked. I’m a little worried now as there is nowhere close enough to get him in a hurry to keep from violating the carpet. Or is there? Trash can at 4:00. Holding him over the trash can in the lobby was an experience in learning that when you’re a parent you must be creative to avoid catastrophe and not care what kind of looks you get in the process. We did see the rest of the movie but now Alex gets to choose one or the other, soda or corn, never both, never again.

Ask a Stupid Question

         When my twins were newborn I would occasionally take them places. Sometimes alone, sometimes with my husband. I didn’t like to take them anywhere alone, the things that can happen are frightening and I was content to keep everyone home and remain safer. As it was, I did venture out some. I had a double stroller obviously, not one of those wide ones, mine was in-line but anyway I was asked on various occasions about the two babies. “How far apart are they?” When my reply was that they were two minutes apart more than one old crone had become terrible offended by that comment from me. “Well! You don’t have to be smart about it!” I’d heard a few times. The first time I was quite confused until I got it. She didn’t believe that they were twins. I was stunned. These two babies of equal size and shape, bald and toothless and with the same woman, their mother, and people assumed that I was a mindless breeder or had a newborn and a nine month old. Seriously? Incredible. After the first ridiculous and nosey woman, I was ready. Most people were kind and interested as well as interesting but there are those few that are asking because they smell scandal or something of a questionable nature. I am quite direct and very forward in dealing with people so some got a decidedly upfront and in-your-face answer when asking insulting questions about my multiples. Consequently, after dealing with the first hag’s questioning and becoming insulted by my truthful answer, to her I merely said “But they’re twins.”  After that when I said my children were two minutes apart and I received snotty feedback I simply said “Why yes they really are two minutes apart. You see one doctor ripped one from this side and another doctor ripped the other from this side as I was strapped to a table and cut wide open.” I provided sweeping hand gestures to go with the description. They got the point that I was not amused by their assumptions and walked away with their heads hanging. And rightly so. Ignorant.

 

            On the other side of the insulting questions are the charming and adorable questions or statements from people, namely other parents of multiples. When my husband and I took our brand new babies to their very first checkup they were a wee three months old. As I walked through the waiting room when our name was called a short little lady, in her eighties was my guess, grasped my elbow and said to me “My twins will be sixty-eight at the end of the month.” That made me ache deep in my heart and I will never forget it. Another lady at a store stopped me and said that her twins were nearly fifty-eight. When the little boys were about one year-old we decided that our older son needed a little vacation since having two babies in the house was stressful for all of us. We took him to St. Louis to the zoo, to Six Flags and ultimately to the beautiful Gateway Arch. When we were at the zoo we were taking in the sea lion show which for us, lasted about 3.5 minutes. We put Alex near the exit where we could see him and took the twins outside the gate to wander around and be rowdy out there rather than ruin the show for everyone else in the theater. As the show ended a woman walked out holding hands with two kids that looked to be about five years-old, as she walked past me she said “It gets easier” and continued on her way. I took strength from that statement and felt that if she could live to tell it, so could I.