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.

Avoiding Death

     When Alex was learning to ride his bike, that was a practice in patience. He could get it going just fine but when it came to stopping he was a little challenged. He didn’t believe me when I told him that gently pushing his pedal backward would slow and ultimately stop him. Nope, that just couldn’t be. "It’s insanity," I pictured his common-sense telling him. So he preferred to ditch himself into whatever solid object he could find. Garage door. Front porch. Parked car. And why he didn’t like to ride I’ll never understand. He went for a ride with his dad one night to try to bolster his confidence and I neglected to tell his dad that hills should be avoided, especially going down hills at this juncture in the bike riding development. Needless to say, they went down a hill and my husband was surprised as Alex zipped passed him pedaling down the hill and sticking his feet out to the sides as he yelled "Wheeeeeeee" all the way. Then reality set in on my son, what to do now? Use the brakes? You jest! Slow down by coasting to a stop? Absurd! Crash your bike into the most dangerous spot you can find? Bingo! He purposefully crashed that little bike into a tiny, almost not there patch of grass between two driveways and a sidewalk which also had huge culverts in them. The Lord watched out for my son no doubt that day and thankfully we avoided stitches and an emergency room visit. I sent my son to my mother to have her teach him how to ride owing to the fact that I’d love for him to live.

The Inferno That Wasn't

     In the summer, as most families do, we enjoy swimming. We are responsible, we wear sun screen. The boys are used to me slathering them up with sun screen as they are on their way to our pool. At first it was a struggle, they didn’t like it, it was cold, it felt funny, it smelled weird, and so on but after explaining that it was either sun screen or no swimming my boys took me seriously and decided that they could deal. I would usually bring the sun screen back into the house at the end of our splash-fest but one day I left it outside. The next day we were preparing to go out and do it all over again but Adam wouldn’t get near the door. I told him to come on. He told me no way was he setting foot outside our door without his sunscreen. I told him that I would put it on him when he got outside but that was not good enough, he was not stepping out the door, he was even tip-toeing around the bit of sunlight that came through the windows because he was not going to get burned up by the sun. I knew that my little neurotic son wasn’t going to be swayed so I walked out, grabbed the sunscreen and saved my son from the incineration that he would no doubt incur from his walk out the door and to the little table where I had thoughtlessly left the sunscreen the night before. The table is, incidentally, under a huge tree with lots of shade so it wasn’t exactly in direct correlation with the flames that were surely awaiting my young man. Glad that I and the other two boys didn’t burst into flames from stepping out the door un-sun screened.  Catastrophe averted, thank goodness.

Babies Speak Spanish

     I am a second wife; my husband is older and has a grown daughter. She has a child which makes my young sons uncles. Taryn is her daughter and we love her. The boys are so fond of her and think she is so cute, which she is. At one point in her life, as with all children, we couldn’t understand a single word she would say. She’d chatter up a storm and laugh a lot but we had to kind of figure out what it was that she was after. One morning, after she stayed the night with us, Adam, quite matter-of-factly, was telling me that all babies speak Spanish and that is why many people can’t understand them. I was enthralled; I asked how he knew this. He explained to me that he remembers back to when he was a baby and that he spoke Spanish and when he got bigger it turned to English as is the case with all babies. I did try to explain that babies are trying to learn to form words with their little mouths and that it isn’t really a question of English or Spanish but rather what language they are exposed to. Nope, he wasn’t buying that. We left it at “babies speak Spanish”…for now.

Recognition

     When Drew was a very small boy, between one and two years-old, he would not call me momma. I was not happy about it, he called his father “da” and since I am the one who bore him I wanted a little recognition. Nope. “Da.” Everything was “da.” Fine. Whatever. Until...one day when little Drew had escaped my careful eye and climbed up on the dining room table and couldn’t get down. He was calling for “da” to come and save his little butt. I was the only one home that represented the parent population so when I peeked around the corner to see what was up, he was sitting on the table, legs kicked out in front of him and smiling that he said “Da!” A-ha…he’s calling me “da.” How about that? That was fabulous. My husband was not amused by the fact that we were sharing the title of “da” and teaching the name “momma” began to be a priority in our dealings with little Andrew.