Ultimately, poor architectural planning is at fault here.

When we bought our house, it had three bedrooms and an open gameroom at the top of the stairs. When Bryce was born, and we went from two school-aged kids to a teen, a pre-teen, and a newborn, we hired a contractor to come in and wall off the gameroom (it became Bryce's nursery) and finish out a huge attic space off of what was then Dylan's bedroom. Dylan moved into the huge new "attic room" (an ironic name considering it was the biggest and nicest room in the house, technically) and his old bedroom became the "gameroom." (We wanted to keep it a community area since you actually had to walk through it to get to Dylan's room.) When Quinn came along, earlier than we'd expected kid #2, though, we had to do some shuffling. Knowing Dylan would be leaving for college within months after Quinn's birth, we moved Hannah into the gameroom next door to him (after establishing certain privacy and respect rules between the teenaged siblings) and turned Hannah's room at the other end of the house into the new nursery. Our upstairs was like Motel 8 Junior, room after room of kids.

In the meantime, John's photography business was being run out of what was supposed to be a formal dining room at the front of our house. It was adjacent to our kitchen, which is the most busy room in our house, and the one where at least one kid could be found at all times, so the entrance to John's office was blocked with a baby gate, and the other entrance to his office, from the front entry hall, was also blocked with a baby gate. "Why?" you ask. "Wouldn't that be a horrible eyesore?" you wonder. Why, yes. Yes it would. Yes it was. But the room isn't that big, and at the time it contained a hand-me-down dining table covered with a huge piece of plywood (for a bigger work space for John) and a fancy tablecloth to disguise it, a bulky computer desk, a few chairs for clients, and dozens of boxes of albums, prints, samples, catalogs, lights, frames, and the inevitable baby toys that Quinn or Bryce would end up throwing in there from the kitchen or hallway. It was a death trap, that room. Anytime John had an appointment with a client, he'd need at least two hours beforehand to make the room look presentable.

After the last time Dylan moved out of his attic room (to read and understand more about what was with all of his coming and going, read this post), Bryce and Quinn were both old enough to handle a change in routine and risk their sibling waking them on occasion at night; Hannah was tired (and rightfully so) of living in the in-between room since she never knew when Dylan would come back to claim his room again; John's booby-trap of an office was too much for us to take any longer; and we needed to re-carpet the house. So, we did what any stark-raving mad set of people would do under such circumstances, and we overhauled the entire house in one fell swoop. During John's busiest season. During my busiest time at work. We:

1. Moved Quinn into Dylan's "attic room."
2. Moved Bryce into Hannah's game room / middle room with the expectation that eventually we would put the boys into the big attic room together, but still wanting to keep their sleeping areas separated by a door for a little longer.
3. Moved Hannah into her old room (Quinn's nursery) at the other end of the hallway upstairs.
4. Moved John's office into Bryce's old nursery (original open gameroom) at the top of the stairs.
5. Replaced the carpeting in John's old office (the formal dining room) and the living room with hardwood floors.
6. Replaced the carpeting in our bedroom, the stairs, and the entire upstairs with new carpeting.
7. Bought actual dining room furniture for the dining room.
8. Re-painted the outside of our house. You know, since we weren't doing anything else at the time.

Things have gone swimmingly since we made these moves almost two years ago. Despite my concerns that the kids would wake each other up at night -- since they shared a wall, their rooms were connected, and we would have to walk through Bryce's room if Quinn ever woke up -- we rarely had a problem. Because the attic room is so big, there is plenty of play space in both rooms and the kids typically enjoy playing in either room. We've often commented that it's amazing, simply amazing, that Bryce has never gone into Quinn's room at night to play or get Quinn's attention after we put them to bed. We were so brilliant to make those moves! we'd say.

Yeah.

Well.

That crazy universe, the one that always gets such an ever-loving kick out of messing with our heads, has struck again. In the past three days, Bryce has discovered the immense power he holds in his grasp by sleeping in the room that connects to Quinn's. I'm actually less concerned about this at night than I am during the day. At night, if Bryce goofs off for an hour and runs in and out of Quinn's room, it's frustrating to deal with, but it doesn't really affect Quinn's sleep that significantly. During the day, though, during that most coveted time of day, naptime, Quinn has always been the easiest, most cooperative kid you could ask for. He looks forward to his naps, and every day as soon he's done with lunch asks, "now it's time for my nap?" This sweet elixir of the gods is not something I want to interfere with in any way. Bryce, who has questioned the legitimacy of his own naptime since he turned 2, knows how we feel about the sacred and untouchable nature of Quinn's long, daily, predictable naps, and why he only recently conjured up this latest method of parental torture, I don't know. But today, after putting the nap-loving kid down and threatening toy- and privilege-removal until the nap-hater was deceptively quiet, John walked into the bathroom where I was getting ready and said, "I think we won." My heart stopped, the mirror cracked into 666 pieces, and my eyes melted into pools of gel before I could shriek, "DON'T SAY THAT! DON'T EVER, EVER SAY THAT!!" He looked at me like I was completely insane: "What?" "You! Just! Jinxed! Us! I'm going to walk out of this bathroom and hear one of them talking over the monitors." He rolled his eyes in disbelief. "Nah. We won. They're asleep."

As I opened the bathroom door, I saw the lively red dots of light on top of Quinn's monitor jumping all over the place, then I heard the horrible sound I'd been dreading: Bryce's voice. In the wrong room. When I got to Quinn's room, I could tell he had been woken from a sound sleep. I pulled (well, dragged, really) Bryce out from the only available hiding place (under Quinn's crib) and told Quinn to go back to sleep. I put Bryce back in bed and more negotiations ensued. I said, "if you go in there one more time and wake him up, I will remove everything from this room." He looked at me with curiosity: "Down to my mattress?" I ignored the challenge, told him to go to sleep, closed the door, and walked back downstairs. I was right in the middle of a tirade to John about how unbelievable it was after two years for Bryce to decide to pull a prank like this, and how dare he interrupt Quinn's nap, and why won't the kid just go to sleep, and why does he make everything so difficult all the time anyway, when we both heard the click of Quinn's door opening over the monitor. Then, within 10 seconds, Quinn's sleepy voice: "What, Bryce?"

Quinn never really got back to sleep. We wouldn't let Bryce go back upstairs after that, so HE didn't sleep. We were dealing with Bryce, so WE certainly didn't sleep or get anything done around the house.

We were talking a few weeks ago about moving Bryce into Quinn's room with him and giving Quinn a "real" bed (as opposed to the toddler converted crib he's in now), making Bryce's room a playroom again. We thought the transition to the kids sharing a room would be no big deal. Now I realize we were just drunk when we had that conversation.

Random Friday Photo

While editing a recent session of a one year old boy, I noticed an interesting highlight in his eye.

That's me with my camera to my face laying on the ground along with his dad to the right, and his mom to the left both coaxing him for a smile.

The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything

Items of note about this video:

--Bryce's pronunciation of "finger" (listen closely; he says it with a TH sound - we don't correct him anymore, it's just not worth it)
--Bryce's constant repetition of directions that aren't being followed ("it's supposed to go on your THINGER, Quinn!")
--Quinn's innocent and patient attempt to follow his brother's random (yet strict) directions
--Quinn's apparent belief that giraffes communicate via a high-pitched squeal
--Quinn's lack of understanding about the whole idea of a puppet show (i.e., the puppet master should be invisible for the love of all that is holy)
--Bryce's repetition of the phrase, "Argh, me hardies!" (We think he means, "Argh, me buckos!" or "Argh, me mateys!")
--Bryce's final decision that he needs a thinger puppet too, what with his sweaty hand and all

Meh.

That pretty much sums up how I'm feeling these days. Life goes on, day in, day out, and even though our routine looks like a chaotic mess to the normal folk, for us it really just looks like nothing to write home about after a while. It starts to feel like I just write the same things over and over, and then I remember, THIS is why I always failed at keeping a journal. I felt like I was writing out of obligation, and I had an overall attitude of "why bother?" about it because I already knew all of my issues, I already knew what was going on in my life, what was good and what was bad and what was funny and what was sucky. And now I feel like anyone who reads this blog has simply become another version of me during my journal failures: Yeah, we know. Bryce is intense. Quinn is loud crazy three. Hannah is unmotivated. John is insanely busy. You have a fairly unsatisfying but not miserable job. The family dynamic is chaotic. Is this all you've got? Well, it's all I've got that I'm willing to publish at this time, so we'll all just have to deal with that sad fact.

In the meantime, I can tell you that we've been taking the kids to the neighborhood pool in the evenings. People, if you've ever doubted the love I have for my children, THAT should clear things up for you. I go to a public location and walk around in a bathing suit, an article of clothing that exposes - no, accentuates - the parts of my body that I work the hardest to disguise in every other situation in my life, JUST SO MY KIDS CAN HAVE FUN.

And they do have fun. They have fun begging to slide on the big tunnel slide and into the 4-ft-deep end even though neither of them can swim and are afraid to come down once they get up there, hanging halfway down the tunnel and clutching the edge of the tunnel opening with their little white, wrinkled, wet hands. They have fun demanding, while they hang there with their water wings smashing their cheeks and their tiny biceps stretching and aching because they refuse to let go, that John "catch" them and "not let them go under at all" despite the physical impossibility of that request based on their weight, the angle of the slide, and John's mere human-sized arms and desire not to be kicked in the face. They have fun watching me look like a big, slow elephant as I attempt to "stomp" through four feet of water over to the pool ladder after threatening to "take them right home" if they don't stop holding up the slide line and let go of the edge, already. Mostly, they have fun laughing in anticipation of what they know will happen when I, in all of my surface irritation, approach the slide and reach up to pry their vise-like grip one slick finger at a time from the blue plastic rim, ultimately forcing them to slide the remaining 18 inches through the tunnel and into John's hands. And they really have fun when I tell them with a frustrated sigh that since it STILL seems to be a scary slide for them, that was it for the evening, and they bolt away from me and the shallower pool and toward the slide steps, all while laughing hysterically, thus starting the insane process all over again. Weeeee!!

I guess this means Quinn didn't develop a water phobia after nearly drowning a few weeks ago. So, there is that.

Busy, But With Purpose

At some point in the past month, my employer has woken from a complacency slumber and recognized that they’ve been paying my bills and providing lovely health insurance for a high-maintenance family of five while I sit around and yawn all day, waiting somewhat impatiently for them to give me real work. Now they expect me to DO said work, like, all day long! That is so unfair! And then? When I come home, my kids expect me to DO stuff with them! Like feed them, and bathe them, and read bedtime stories or some such nonsense. And then? Since I made John fire the cleaning people two months ago, I have to live up to my own crazy expectations and keep the house from looking like a pig sty, which means the sticky substances on the kitchen floor actually have to be CLEANED, not just covered with a rug a la Pottery Barn Casual. And damn if all that doesn’t take up a lot of my blogging time.

I don’t really see why John can’t help more with the mopping and toilet scrubbing, you know. He’s only about seven months behind on his photography clients’ incessant needs; I say, they want your talent, they’ll be willing to wait. He says, yes, but I want to get paid and also don’t want my heart to explode inside my body from all the pressure. Details. At one point last Friday (as he told me only after the magical elixir of a Los Cabos “Cabo Bueno” margarita was coursing through his veins at dinner), he had a client in his office making an order, a client in our dining room filling out a contract, Bryce and one client’s kid playing in our living room, a tile restoration contractor in our bathroom to give us an estimate, our home phone was ringing (that was me calling, because I like to add to the madness, WEEEE!) and his cell phone was ringing (me again, don’t ignore me, dammit!). When he told me that, the question I’d been meaning to ask him, the one involving WHY IN GOD’S NAME ARE YOU SO JUMPY YOU’RE DRIVING ME INSANE AND NOW YOU APPEAR TO HAVE AN EYE TWITCH, suddenly seemed unnecessary (or maybe dangerous). Also, his recent and constant “joking” about how it’s about time for us to hire a nanny, hey maybe we could ask around to find out if anyone knows of a good nanny, you know I think it might be time to get ourselves THAT NANNY, made a lot more sense.

So I wanted to write about a few things this weekend, but with the afore-mentioned sticky floors and the husband with photography appointments scheduled every waking hour and the kids who wanted to EAT and TALK TO ME, I never had a chance. I tried to remember a few highlights, though. After all, John and I originally started this blog for that very Purpose, and I am anal and refuse to stray from The Purpose lest the earth fall off its axis. And so I give you the Weekend Highlights Pursuant To This Blog's Purpose:

1.) By some miraculous fluke, both kids napped on both weekend days. On Saturday, this allowed me to clean the entire house (Productive! Impressive!). On Sunday, this allowed me to take a two-hour nap (Lazy! Slug!).

2.) While grocery shopping with Quinn, near the end of a long and harrowing trip involving dozens of bags of chips and several minutes of self-inflicted guilt over the crap I’d be agreeing to feed the kids this week (with said mounds of chips I'd acquiesced and put into the cart), Quinn said, “I love you” while I was scanning the frozen section. I smiled at him and hugged him and he said, “And you’re pretty, too.” The animal-shaped pancakes I’d just thrown into the cart had nothing to do with it. He just loves his gorgeous mother, so shut up.

3.) I took the kids to the park on Saturday afternoon. There was a two-year-old boy there who was enthralled with the matchbox cars Quinn had brought with him, and followed him around even though Quinn kept clutching the precious toys until his knuckles were white and saying, “these are not your cars.” The little boy’s dad stayed close and kept trying to distract him with all the cool ladders and slides. Eventually Quinn (while still clutching the cars and keeping a cautious eye on the kid, mind you) started competing for his dad’s attention! I moved them over to the swings and the little boy and his dad were right behind us. I would push Quinn and he’d say, “no, I want THAT DAD to push me!” Yeah, it was humiliating. But I totally wished that two-year-old would have said, “this is not your dad!” to Quinn. That would’ve shown him.

4.) John and I attempted to take the kids to the neighborhood pool on Sunday afternoon. We started talking about it on Friday, bought several million dollars worth of water wings, kickboards, noodles, and pool toys, bribed them with the promise of a fun-filled afternoon at the pool in return for a long, long Sunday nap, spent 45 minutes chasing and cajoling them into their swimsuits and sandals, slathering sunscreen, going over the rules (no running, no pushing, and when we say it’s time to go, no humiliating the parents), loading the car with towels and snacks and necessary pool items, buckling them into their carseats, and driving there only to find when we arrived that it was closed because it had been vandalized the night before. After talking to some other forlorn swimsuit-clad patrons, John returned to the car and said to me through my rolled-down window, “Somebody broke in and trashed it, and they have to drain and re-sanitize it because they CRAPPED IN THE POOL!” Yes, I fully expect a call from Bryce’s summer camp teacher today about his colorful new phrase.

5.) After dinner with my mom last night, Bryce was once again discussing the wonders of the solar system. Somebody mentioned the sun, and that it wasn’t a planet, but a star. He piped up, “Yeah. The sun is a BIG FREAKIN’ HOT STAR!” I’m going to have to write lots of letters of apology to his school this year, aren’t I?

In the end, no storm.

I'm crouched by a window holding on to Bryce, in a situation where I think I should be afraid, but am really only curious and slightly confused, like a primitive animal. As I look out the window, I realize we're upstairs, and there is a storm outside - a tornado. My mom is right next to me and says with less panic than I'd expect, "the storm is right over us, we're right in it! See?!" She points out the window to a helicopter, and Bryce and I both turn to look. We see the pilot mouthing the same sentence my mom just uttered, and we see a black swirling mass presumably around the house. I think of the scene in the movie Twister where the main characters end up in the eye of the storm, and I realize that's right where we are. Then I realize (again) that we are upstairs (the worst place to be in a tornado), and my mind and heart start racing, why are we upstairs, why did I not get us to our shelter, how long do we have, why is this not more terrifying? I wait for the tell-tale sound of the freight train, what I've been told I'll hear if I'm ever caught in a tornado, I hold on to Bryce, who I note is strangely, quietly calm and curious, I wonder how likely it is that we'll be swept up by the black swirl that I can see right outside the window, if we'll be torn apart in the process, if all of this will be the end. I wait, and I worry, but only mildly, the way Bryce is watching the spiraling mass.

Updated to add: The above is my description of a dream I had two nights ago (sorry if we alarmed anyone). I just thought the dream was very telling about how I view the many challenges with Bryce. As the title suggests, the dream ended with my realization that the storm never hit, despite all the signs that it would, despite all the knowledge that I should be more worried and afraid because of those signs. It's the ultimate truth, isn't it? That in the end, it's all okay.

These pretzels are making me thirsty!

Actually, right now I'm eating popcorn and M&Ms. In bed (the crumbs are on John's side, heh heh). And washing it down with a Mike's (light) Hard Lemonade. I figure it's fine since I ran two miles today and mopped the kitchen floor and battled an unnaturally strong water bug over the weekend. Oh, and then there was that near nervous breakdown on Sunday, too. Yeah, I deserve the white trash snack at the very least. And maybe also a hot stone massage, or, you know, a padded cell and some restraints.

For once, I'm actually not ready to discuss or analyze Bryce and his issues in this forum; I'm still digesting too many thoughts, emotions, and options. Anne Lamott suggested that instead, I write about my experience with school lunches, so here we go.

Since I went to Chicago Public Schools for elementary school, we actually did not have a cafeteria. They trucked in boxed lunches every day, and we all ate at our desks. Oh, sure, it sounds glamorous, having lunch delivered daily to our elementary school, but no. The "boxes" were flimsy, flat ventilated containers of what tasted, looked, and felt like FDA rejects. The best day was pizza day, unless you got a box that had been stuck on the bottom, in which case your cheese and sausage (if that's what they really were) were stuck in a gooey, warm mass on the top of the paper-thin lid when you opened it: yuck. An anal kid like me would insist on scraping every last cheese and tomato sauce molecule off the top of the box and back onto the soggy, white, pinhole-covered crust in an effort to make it right, to fix it, to complete it.

One day in second grade, the class trouble maker decided to take my quirks and wield them to his sheer entertainment. I was picking at my low grade beef, trying to find the most consistent non-grisel-y texture, and a look of horror came over his face as he stared at my plate: "Look at that! Those are roach eggs! ROACH EGGS ON YOUR PLATE!" I turned my head back to my white plastic spork/foon, suspended over the gray lifeless mass on my spongy cardboard lunch plate. Yep, it looked like roach eggs, alright. On a gullible, stupid impulse, I tossed the fork away and the food went flying a few desks away. My teacher, my favorite teacher ever, the teacher who always liked me because I laughed at the jokes that nobody else understood and I always followed directions and I was quiet and cooperative and I did good work and I came to school on time and was a low maintenance, high performing second grader, looked up from her (probably gourmet) lunch just in time to see me flinging food across the room. Our eyes met. My heart fell. There was no understanding or concern in her eyes, no look that suggested she might need to investigate the situation before jumping to conclusions about her star pupil: only anger and grave, grave disappointment. "Kristen, did you just THROW YOUR FOOD?" My face was in flames, I stammered, "Yes, but, but, he told me it had roach eggs on it and--" she wasn't listening. Another teacher, a teacher who didn't like me (she was just jealous of my obvious good standing, the insecure hag) walked in right then. My teacher looked at her, and in the now silent class, announced to Jealous Hag Teacher, "this is one of my best students. I don't know what is going on today. She just threw her food across the room!" Jealous Hag Teacher glared at me and said something unclever and rude, like, "well, well." My teacher then sealed my fate: "Kristen, go stand out in the hall until I tell you to come back in."

Great, I thought as I stood in the dingy, narrow hallway like the little delinquent I'd become at the hands of the class troublemaker (who kept his mouth shut and got off scott-free by the way): just look at me now! As I was standing there, my cheeks still burning in humiliation, my feet and hands trying to find a natural pose while I stuck out so obviously from the painted concrete block walls, I heard footsteps coming toward me. What now? Oh, crap, it's a parent! Another adult to shame me. Clop, clop, clop, clop. It was somebody's mom and I started to drop my gaze to the dirty tile floor, but she caught my eye first. I searched her face for what I knew would be a silent scold, another hurried adult assumption based on a lack of information about me, and I prepared to harden my face in return, but I didn't have to. She looked at me with a soft, slightly amused glance that my adult memory interprets to mean that she knew I didn't belong out there. She smiled a peaceful, understanding smile. My second grade self was confused by that smile, but thankful for it anyway. After Jealous Hag Teacher left and I returned to the classroom, I felt somehow silently, secretly vindicated.

Enough memory mining. Back to littering John's side of the bed with popcorn kernels and pretending life's one big, entertaining sitcom with quick resolutions and easy answers. Or at least more laughs than sobs.

Ess Oh Effing Ess

As I type this, my almost five-year-old son is in his room kicking and punching his bedroom door and shrieking "MOMMAAYYY" at the top of his lungs.

This after removing every toy from his room. After he has run screaming from me through the house, thrown hard objects down the stairs, audibly slapped his brother, and countless other behaviors that would suggest I haven't taught him one godforsaken lesson about limits.

This has all taken place between 7:00 and 9:30 a.m. on a weekend morning. It took me two hours to shower and get dressed as a result. This is not abnormal.

I don't know what the hell I've done wrong around here, but I don't know how much more of this insanity I can take. It's not even funny anymore.

Suggestions welcome.

There were twenty-five bouncy balls.

Today I was making another futile attempt at organizing toys in the kids' rooms. (I started out my day doing laundry and mopping the kitchen floor, and normally I wouldn't combine this many hellish activities in one day, but I had to take advantage of the fact that my mom had Bryce at her house for a visit. I can get ridiculous amounts of work done when I only have one of the two kids with me on the weekends, and only with minor whining from whichever kid I have making annoying requests for things like sustenance or motherly attention.) Because the kids have a ridiculous amount of toys, we started trying to curb some of the chaos around the house by using that "rotating" trick where you keep certain toys put away for a few weeks, then take them out and put the old, familiar ones away. Every few weeks when the box comes out, it's like all new toys: Yippee! The thing is, as with every other scenario around here, our attempt to use this method of keeping things tidy has actually created more problems.

John, not having the anal tendencies I have (but having his limit on the number of toys he's willing to be injured by while walking from the office to the bathroom) tends to run through the house with a big box and dump everything he steps on into it, then shove it haphazardly into the dark abyss of Bryce's closet, which will already happen to have three or four similarly stuffed boxes, all with toys that would make the kids squeal with delight if any of us would ever take the time to use this "toy rotating" method correctly. He is not, however, willing to sort through all of the mismatched sets of blocks, cars, Little People, bouncy balls, pirate ships, castles, and fire trucks to determine which pieces / characters / parts go with what. As a result, Bryce's closet is full of boxes of completely random pieces of toys, and every few weeks, when I think about pulling one of those boxes out and putting some old, familiar toys away, I am overwhelmed by the thought of having to pull ALL of the boxes out and ensure that every construction site, zoo, and farm have all of the appropriate animals and feeding troughs and cranes in their respective sets while the two kids are jumping around me and sneaking pieces away to play with (to PLAY with! What are they thinking!? I'm trying to ORGANIZE HERE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!), so I usually open the closet door, look at the multiplying number of boxes with bright plastic randomness sticking out every which way, and then promptly close it again. What extra toys? We don't have rotating toy boxes, no sirree bob. Luckily you have all these great toys you're already using!

Today I faced what I've been dreading, and it was definitely as bad as I'd thought it would be. Piles, piles everywhere! An old toy pile for the rotate box, a broken toy pile for the trash, a new toy pile to put away in each kid's room, an old, non-age-appropriate book pile to put in keepsakes or give away, a not-yet-ready-to-face-the-rigors-of-Bryce's-page-turning book pile to put on a higher shelf, a bouncy ball pile for my own amusement and curiosity (how many do they actually have?), a matchbox car pile, a massive Generic Plastic Crap pile out of which all other piles have been created. Madness, I tell you. Sheer madness.

The highlight (for Quinn) was when I took one of the last boxes to his room to distribute each action figure and matchbox car to their appropriate stations, and a huge roach-like bug (let's just call it a roach, because even though it's not really a roach - and let's be thankful it's not, because if it were, then that would mean that there'd be a lot more, which in turn would mean I'd have to evacuate and blow up my own house - it looks exactly like a roach and has a very roach-like crawl) (John says it's a "water bug" but that makes no sense to me - wouldn't a water bug be near water? Someone should really explain this to me.) scurried out from under a happy meal toy right towards my hand, eliciting my famous involuntary Horror Movie Scream. The Horror Movie Scream usually results in John sighing, rolling his eyes, and walking into whatever room I'm in (inevitably frozen in fear) with a big, heavy shoe in one hand and a paper towel in the other. Today, though, it was me and Quinn alone in the house. The roach was stuck in a fairly small box, but was rapidly approaching the edge, over which I knew it could effortlessly climb and THEN it would be mere nanometers away from my bare feet. Quinn was lounging on Bryce's bed (and relishing the fact that Bryce wasn't there to feign genuine shock and betrayal while screaming, "Noooo, Quinn, that's MY bed!") but the Horror Movie Scream did make him curious enough to call from the other room, "What, mom?!" I tried to stay calm. I failed. "Oh nothing...well, IT'S A BUG. AAAAAAAAA!" (This time the scream was a little more guttural and growl-like, in case you were wondering.) I frantically looked for the biggest, heaviest shoe I could find, but the only available one was a lightweight toddler-sized sandal on Quinn's dresser. "DAMMIT!" I grabbed the pathetic weapon, knowing I was heading in to a battle where my foe was almost as well-equipped as I was. I let out another growl and my sandal-covered index and middle fingers struck the roach and then reared back in fear of actually having to touch it (ohmygodI'mgoingtothrowup). Either I missed, or this roach was a lot stronger than I'd given it credit for. I growled, "AAAAAAA!" and struck again, this time harder, and waited 1/10 of a second longer before retracting the tiny shoe. Now the roach was really up for the challenge, and apparently unfazed by the sandal. It ran faster, under the plastic pieces of crap that still lined the bottom of the box. "Stupid toys," I thought to myself, "why didn't we just throw these away months ago anyway?" I briefly lost sight of the scurrying legs and shiny reddish-black exoskeleton; my heart raced, I balanced on my tiptoes, my eyes darted around the perimeter of the box to make sure the roach hadn't escaped. A hair-like antenna peeked out from under the fuzzy green ear of a party favor bunny rabbit, but only briefly before the roach was sprinting across the box towards me again. Another growl, and now I threw my whole body into the effort, and wielded my sandal-weapon like a samurai sword. This time the sandal made swift, direct contact with the roach's body, and in my warrior mode, I kept perfect track of the enemy's moves, ensuring every one of them would be compromised by my blows. Finally, I killed it. It had to be dead, because it was in two pieces. "AAAAAAAAA!! OHMYGOD HOW IS IT STILL MOVING?!" Quinn was standing behind me now, watching the battle unfold, half-concerned, half-amused by his insane mother, the roach samurai: "It's still moving?" "YES! AAAAAA!!" More sandal thrashing ensued, only now I was dragging the roach's carcass across the cardboard bottom of the box. "IT'S LEGS ARE STILL MOVING! IT'S LOOKING AT ME! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS THING?! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, QUINN! RRRUUUUNNNNNN!!!"

When I came to, there were roach bits all over the box, Quinn was asking me, "did it growl at you?" and I was saying, "Yes. Yes it did. And that's exactly what we'll tell Dad when he asks why I threw away that box of toys." Then I dumped it in the trash can and never looked back. Hey, it was a few less toys to have to distribute into piles, so something good came out of it.

Power Outage

We've been having a ridiculous number of severe summer thunderstorms lately, and what I've determined about them is this: there's just no great time for a severe thunderstorm. What about in the middle of the night?, you say. Sure, that sounds ideal: everyone is sleeping, you don't need electricity or water for anything, and the grass will be watered; everyone wins. Everyone, that is, except for kids who fear darkness with much intensity and sleep with night lights and who also happen to have a really creepy awareness of every little detail in their environment even while fast asleep. For those kids, a severe thunderstorm in the middle of the night is not so great, because when the power inevitably goes out and their life-saving night light is extinguished along with the white noise of air conditioners and refrigerators and fans in one's brother's bedroom next door, well, all hell breaks loose and Those Kids (ahem, Bryce) end up depriving their parents of sleep for the rest of the night because Those Kids are not capable of lying still next to their parents; Those Kids like to move around and talk about being thirsty and give long explanations for why their blankets need to be bunched up a certain way at 3 a.m.

Last night was the first night in the past several that thunder and lightning haven't terrified at least one of the kids to the point of waking up the entire house. As great as that is, the fact that the thunder and lightning came at 6 a.m. and knocked out our power right after I stepped, hair still dripping, out of the shower to get ready for work wasn't any less infuriating. As I drove to work late with half-dry hair in the wrong car (mine was stuck inside the garage, since the door is operated by electricity), I wondered what I really felt mad about - losing power due to a summer storm isn't that big of a deal, after all. Was it intensified self-consciousness due to getting ready with wet hair in the dark? Was it envisioning myself walking in late looking frazzled and knowing I'd have to laugh it off like haha, we lost power this morning and now I'm a mess, haha, which I hate? Was it the way the kids saw the morning power outage as a great opportunity to create a new type of chaos (chasing each other madly through the house and slamming doors in each other's faces while John and I scrambled around looking for flashlights so I could try to apply make-up without ending up looking like a horror movie clown -- we never found our flash lights and I ended up using candles, by the way)? Was it the constant need to explain to them that no, we couldn't toast waffles because the toaster uses electricity just like the microwave and the hair dryer? None of these seemed adequate explanations for the intensity of emotion I felt about the whole doomed morning. It was something else. Control. I have no control. I couldn't, due to the nature of my job and my department and my company, call my boss and say, "hey, I don't feel like coming to work with wet hair so guess what? I'm taking the day off." I was "forced" (as forced as a white middle class American can be) to go to a big concrete building and sit at a computer and look busy and act cheerfully professional and shuffle spreadsheets around for exactly eight hours.

And maybe that would be fine, if not for everything else lately. There are so many aspects of life I feel I can and should have control over, but for whatever reason, I don't. Our dog living in our house should have been a controllable situation, but it wasn't. Our kids learning to swim with a lifeguard-certified instructor with an additional lifeguard standing watch should have been a controllable situation, but it wasn't. Maintaining a healthy and comfortable diet and exercise routine for more than one or two months should be a controllable situation, but apparently not for me (hello, extra 7-10 pounds!). And driving to a place where I feel powerless after getting ready in a house that was literally power-less and trying desperately not to feel powerless while my kids used that very situation to garner their own fiendish power over their humorously powerless parents just made me want to embrace the powerlessness and lack of control by curling up in the fetal position and taking a nice long nap.

But I didn't, since I was on the highway and all. I kept driving. I went to work and neither justified my tardiness nor acted cheerfully amused about the morning's shenanigans and my resulting frumpy appearance despite my awareness of those expectations. I simply tucked my wet, stringy hair behind my ears, sat at my computer, did the meaningless work I do to get paid the money that DOES give me the little bit of control I still feel I have in this stage of my life, and then left early to pick the kids up from John's mom's house, since he had a wedding to cover tonight. I felt fatigued but triumphant by the time I arrived there: I'd made it through the day, through another week. She quickly obliterated any ridiculous sense of control over "my own destiny" by ignoring my answers of "no thanks for the drink; we're meeting my mom for dinner, I've gotta get going" and sucking me into the social requirements of conversation with her guilt-inducing statements like, "I haven't seen you in SO long" and "did you hear about the friend in the terrible car accident?" and "tell me more about the incident at the Y, who have you talked to?"

We were late to dinner with my mom, needless to say. And not surprisingly, she didn't flinch when I told her that was beyond my control. Those thunderstorms, you know. There's just no great time for them.

Urgent!

The following were SO IMPORTANT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD that Bryce literally could. not. wait. for us to finish our own boring adult conversation BECAUSE THE WORLD MIGHT END LISTEN TO ME NOW YOU IGNORANT FOOLS!

1.) If you were on Planet Mercury, and you took your helmet off, your head would turn INTO FIRE. Just let that absorb for a few minutes, because MAN! that is seriously not something that can wait. The world must know.

2.) Conversely, if you were on Planet Pluto, and you took your helmet off, your head would turn INTO ICE! And then, when you defrosted, you'd have the sneezes.

3.) The rings around Saturn resemble a donut. And, AND! Bryce LIKES donuts. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!

4.) To get to Jupiter, there is apparently a "rocky path" (asteroid belt?) down which you have to slide. Huh. Who knew?

***********************************

As for the swim lesson incident, we are still making calls. The director of the Y has been on vacation, and the person in charge while the director is out is the Aquatics Director, who has been in this job exactly four days. Literally. FOUR DAYS. So far, the lifeguard and instructor have been "disciplined" and the Y has "doubled" their lifeguard duty from ONE to TWO lifeguards when swim lessons are in session. I still don't think that is adequate (based on the outrageous number of swimmers in the pool when Quinn was completely unsupervised and practically drowning), and all I can do is continue to publicize the situation. John thinks it's over the top to do things like write letters to the newspaper editor and call radio stations - he thinks that the Y needs to have their cages rattled and that we should stay focused on that. In my head, I know he's right. But the vengeful Mother Bear in me wants to rip them all limb from limb and figure out every possible way to expose the incompetence, nonchalance, and horrid security reigning at a place that prides itself on its commitment to families. Clearly, my disgust and fury haven't died down despite the ice cream, tequila, and wine in which I've been trying to drown them since Tuesday.

Toy Poppers and the Crazy Penis Boy

I have to say this first. I feel like a Giant Loser Dad for leaving Quinn (and Bryce) at swim lessons to go do my work-out. When I entered the pool area, all I saw was a wet, tearful Quinn clinging to Kristen, and Kristen ripping into the "lifeguard" for not paying attention. We've been in contact with as many people in positions of authority at the Y as we possibly can, with more cages to rattle in the next few days. We will do our damndest to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else. I still feel like a pathetic excuse for a dad. Christ, that was scary.

*********************************

Kids being kids, yesterday's scare was (just about) off the radar screen today, and Bryce was in rare form (most likely from sleep deprivation as a huge thunderstrom came through the area at 3:00 am knocking out the power and waking both kids. They both wound up in our bed for the final 2 hours of the night. Nobody slept at all well after that.) I was doing the breakfast dishes and tidying up the kitchen (Kristen thinks I look fab in an apron) when Bryce came into the kitchen with pencil in hand and demanded asked for a piece of paper.

Me: Are you going to draw something?
Bryce: NO. I need to make a sign. For my door.
Me: OK. (handing him a piece of paper)
Bryce: How do you spell "Don't"?
Me: d - o - n - t
Bryce: How do you spell "come"?
Me: What kind of sign are you making?
Bryce: The kind of sign that will keep Quinn out of my room so he will stop bothering me! I want it to say "Don't come in!" so he will stay out and not bother me! How do you spell the next word?
I spelled it out for him and he wrote it. Of course he put his name at the top as he was taught in school.



Then he got some tape and taped it to his door and brought Quinn over and said "This sign says 'don't come in.' That means you can't come in my room, Quinn. You have to obey the sign." Quinn looked at the sign, turned around, and came downstairs. I guess I'll be making some signs.

**************************

Do you know those little rubber toy poppers? The ones you kind of turn inside out, lay flat on a hard surface and wait for it to pop up into the air? Bryce brought one home from summer school today and was popping it all over the place. He soon learned that you could put it up against your cheek, push on it, and it would stick. Then he started to improvise quite creatively.

Bryce went first in the bath tonight. Wash, rinse, dry in record time. I set him up to brush his teeth and put Quinn in the bathtub. As I was lathering his hair, Bryce turned around and yelled: "Hey Dad! Look at me! I'm Crazy Penis Boy!" Sure enough, he had put the bright purple popper on the tip of his penis.

I kept waiting for him to say, "Now give me some candy!" When has he had time to watch Saturday Night Live re-runs anyway?

Today Quinn almost drowned. And I almost physically ripped off someone's head. I am not sorry. And they will now endure my wrath.

Note to self: Do not discount general distrust of all other humans in any type of care role for your child. You're right. Everyone sucks and your child's life really IS in danger when you let your guard down.

I left work early today so I could see the last half of the kids' first joint swimming lesson. Turns out it's a good damn thing I did. When I arrived at the Y where John has been taking the kids while he works out, I told the girl at the front desk that my kids were in a swimming class, and I needed to know where the pool was. "Oh, we don't have a pool here," she said, looking at me with an expression of fake alarm and confusion. I was not amused. John's been coming there for months and Bryce was in a beginner swim class last year - I wasn't asking IF they had a pool, I was asking for her to tell me where it was, and frankly, I was waiting for her to demand that I show an ID, a membership card, any proof at all that I was who I said I was. Instead, she said, "just kidding! I was just trying to freak you out! It's right through the double doors there." I said nothing and gave a suspicious yet patient grin - I was still giving her the benefit of the doubt, assuming that she was working in a professional environment, that I had merely witnessed an anomaly, that she had been trying (albeit unsuccessfully) to make me feel at home (if "home" were a place where everyone feels insecure and on the verge of a nervous breakdown as a matter of course - but hey, to each his own, right?).

As I walked through the double doors to which the sarcastic front desk girl had directed me, I immediately caught sight of Bryce's wet, smiling face at the closest corner of the olympic-sized pool. The shorter blonder head next to it was Quinn's, I could tell because of how closely they were staying to each other. I decided to stand outside the pool room and watch from there, thinking that if they saw me, their distraction would take away from their swim lesson experience. Over the next few seconds, I realized their swim lesson experience left an unfortunate amount to be desired - they seemed so closely positioned to one another because the other three pre-schoolers in their class were crowded around the instructor, who wasn't even looking at my kids. Are they even in that class? I wondered what was going on, but kept watching. I noticed how much Quinn's fuzzy blonde head kept bobbing, but assumed he was standing on some sort of support, because surely they wouldn't put a three-year-old with no swimming experience in a pool virtually unsupervised if they hadn't placed some sort of extra steps or stool there to support him while the instructor focused intently on the other kids in her care. I saw Bryce giggle while looking at the bobbing head, and knew Quinn was (in Bryce's mind) going under water for laughs. I decided to step inside, seeing as how BOTH the instructor that was standing in the water three feet away AND the lifeguard standing RIGHT OVER MY KIDS at the corner of the pool had not looked their direction ONE SINGLE TIME while I'd been standing there.

As I reached to open the glass doors two inches away from my hand, I saw Bryce's expression change to one of fear and concern; I saw the hand of his that wasn't holding the side of the pool for safety reach out toward what had been Quinn's head, and was now the flesh colored bubbles that appear when a kid is right under the surface fighting for breath; I saw through the blood boiling up behind my eyes that the instructor and the lifeguard were still staring at the same unchanging sights they'd been focused on the entire time I'd stood idly behind the glass doors that now seemed impossibly heavy and constantly in my way, goddammit; I saw in slow motion that my three-year-old's body was flailing in futility on its sinking back and sucking in water with every panicked move; I saw the instructor come out of her coma of mediocrity and poor training and finally notice the four-year-old trying to save his drowning brother; I saw the confused look on her face when she moved the three feet over to lift Quinn's convulsing body out of the water; and I saw myself screaming at her and grabbing my child, only staying in the area of the pool because my other child was still in the water.

The silence initially caused by the blood beating in my head now crashed to a thunderous, deafening scream while I lashed out at the teenagers that had just encountered the mom from hell they never knew would exist in their happy worlds. "Ma'am, did he take in water?" the lifeguard asked me, but only until my animal-like shrieks stopped him dead in his tracks with, "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU IDIOT? YES HE TOOK IN WATER THAT'S WHY HE'S COUGHING AND CHOKING RIGHT NOW! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH YOU PEOPLE?" "Ma'am, I didn't see him. I was scanning the pool." "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTT????? YOU WERE 'SCANNING THE POOL'? I DON'T GIVE A CRAP WHAT YOU WERE DOING - MY KID WAS LITERALLY RIGHT UNDER YOU AND HE ALMOST DROWNED; HE WAS FLAILING UNDER THE WATER FOR AT LEAST 12 SECONDS BEFORE I COULD GET IN HERE - THE FOUR YEAR OLD HAD TO ALERT THE INSTRUCTOR, WHO HAD TO ALERT YOOOOOOUUUUUUUU!!!!" "I was scanning the pool, ma'am." "THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE. IT'S YOUR JOB TO MAKE SURE NO ONE DROWNS. DON'T COME OVER HERE AND MAKE EXCUSES!" Five minutes later, after the class was over while I was drying off the kids, the instructor came up to me and said she was sorry. I told her this was the first time I'd been here, and in the first 45 seconds, I'd witnessed my child almost drown right under a lifeguard, and three feet away from the instructor, and oh, by the way, my kids shouldn't have been so separated from the rest of the class in the first place. She said, "yeah, well, I told them to stop climbing around on everything, but they wouldn't." And then the demon that lives inside my chest used its bone-tearing claws to rip through my exploded heart, leap out, and maim her I used all of my restraint to keep from screaming at her (but that doesn't mean my eyes weren't bulging out of my head and my fangs weren't flashing) while I said, "well, you know, that's what kids do - and if you're going to offer a class for young children, I suggest you find a safe way of dealing with them, or maybe, I dunno, GET MORE LIFEGUARDS IN HERE."

Quinn is okay, but he wouldn't get back in the water, even though he said he wanted to. He was so excited to take this class; it's all he's been talking about for days. I am furious. The "aquatic director" is supposed to call me tomorrow, but we've already decided we won't be going back. To me, this is not fixable. This is not forgiveable or forgettable. How long would he have flailed under water if Bryce, the four-year-old, hadn't caught the instructor's attention, if I hadn't run in screaming? And what kind of program is certifying people to be lifeguards but not training them in how to deal with parents who witness a mistake like this? I got constant excuses and justifications, THEN I got apologies. Seems to me like Lifeguard 101 would teach you that in the off chance that you screw up and someone almost dies or suffers life-long brain damage as a result, you just apologize and shut the hell up, not come up with reasons why it's not your fault, you spineless turds.

More about the trip: you only thought I was through with this subject.

At least it's a benevolent creepy.
Last week, as I sat on my grandmother's deck and visited with my brother, my dad, and various extended family members, John and Bryce came outside, Bryce yelling excitedly, "Mom, watch what I can do!!" He grabbed both of John's hands and proceeded to walk up John's legs, torso, and chest and then flip over, landing on his feet, still holding John's hands. My brother and I looked at each other half incredulous, half amused: the only time we'd EVER in our lives performed the Childhood Torso Climb Flip was at my grandmother's house, and then we'd subjected aunts and uncles to it more times than any human should ever have to endure the skin-pinching pain and bruises caused by 35-50 pound humans clad in rubber-soled tennis shoes using one's body as a launch pad for Childhood Torso Climb Flips. I assumed someone had clued Bryce and/or John into the apparent Childhood Torso Climb Flip requirement at my grandmother's house, so I asked both of them, "who told you about that?" to which John stared at me blankly and then said, "nobody told me - Bryce just walked up to me, grabbed my hands, and started climbing." No one really knew what to say, even though all of us were thinking, "weird!" until my dad made an alarming implication about the psychic awareness of my grandmother's house. We all took another swig of our respective drinks and changed the subject.

Later, when the kids' excitement over the dozen new toys my grandparents purchased for them had worn off to the point that they were doing things like playing the electric piano keyboard at its highest volume (and by "playing" I mean attacking the keys with brute force and evil laughter), John did the only thing any sane individual can do with two kids under age 5 in a town of 3,000 in 110-degree weather: took them to Wal-Mart and bought a Slip-n-Slide. Again, Slip-n-Slide use was only ever sanctioned at my grandparents' house - we never had a yard that allowed for such intense water madness - and I figured someone had mentioned the Old Days of Slip-n-Slide Joy to one of the kids or John, but no - more creepy (but fun) psychic leftovers from my childhood.

Manipulation is the new comedy.
Oh my, were the kids ever fond of all the attention from the great aunts and great uncles and great grandparents who thought Bryce and Quinn were, well...great, actually. The amazing thing about people who haven't been around young children in several years is that they just FORGET. They forget how annoying the tantrums can be. They forget how differently kids act in public, and how frustrating it is as the parent to watch a kid who you know is perfectly capable of answering a question coherently turn into a giggly, limp mass of pretend shyness simply because he knows his parents won't call him on it in front of everyone. They forget how lack of sleep makes all of that cuteness seem really not so cute at all. And all they see is the miracle of a healthy, beautiful child, perfect precisely because of the imperfections; all they hear is the sound of life's complex, sometimes loud, potential; all they feel is the sense of special worth that being genuinely and gently hugged by a child you've only just met will inevitably leave with a person, no matter how old.

It was precisely this set of perceptions that allowed me to laugh (rather than rip out my hair by the roots while wailing and gnashing my teeth) when, at dinner in a restaurant one night, Quinn pushed the envelope further than I knew he was capable by doing everything he could imagine to bring the table to tearful, breathless laughter. He started early in the evening, while everyone was attempting to peruse the menu, by pouring a harmless amount of salt and pepper on the table AND THEN LICKING.IT UP. TWICE. IN A ROW. Yes! This is hilarious! Just look at their disgusted, shocked faces, and their shoulders, how they shake while they try not to laugh! This, THIS is what I've been waiting for! Later, after his mandatory two bites of the rice and beans he'd so passionately demanded, he announced with glee that HE NEEDED TO POOP, MOM I NEED TO POOP AND IT'S IMPORTANT THAT THE ENTIRE RESTAURANT KNOW THIS! I got up to take him to the restroom and made the mistake of not holding his hand, a foolish, amateur move of which he took swift advantage by sprinting across the huge, compartmentalized restaurant, ultimately darting into a private, luckily empty, room - mere moments later, John wouldn't be so lucky and would end his meal as a broken man, chasing his three-year-old through a private banquet room while the hosting family reunion pointed and laughed: just look at that funny kid and his funny, funny dad! HAHAHA! But it was so truly hilarious to everyone with us, and since he didn't BREAK anything or KICK anyone or THROW any food at a stranger, then certainly this behavior shouldn't stop us from ordering dessert! We ordered him a scoop of ice cream, even though the kid has never in his life successfully consumed anything with a sweet flavor. While I stuffed myself on sopapillas, the rest of the adults distracted themselves with conversation while Quinn, suddenly aware that no one was laughing hysterically at him, stuck John's credit card into the top of his ice cream scoop at an angle, like a fancy wafer would be positioned, then waited patiently for someone to notice. And believe me, we did. I'm not sure if anyone has actually stopped talking about it since.

No matter where you go, there you are.

Last week we drove to West Texas to visit my grandmother for her 80th birthday. I haven't been to her house since childhood, and as cliche as it sounds, it looked tiny to me. The "long" hallway to the back bedroom was actually about three steps; the "huge" front room that used to house unimaginable mounds of Christmas presents and decorations was actually a little crowded even without all of the holiday paraphernalia; the back yard we'd spend hours in as kids shooting water guns and swinging on hammocks was actually about half the size of what I remembered. Still, though, there was so much about it all that felt familiar and unchanged - the smells in the house, the constant din of my grandfather's TV in the background, the voices, the phrases, the conversation, the food, my GOD, the food. What was most interesting to me about the trip was how profoundly comfortable the kids were - my kids, who thrive on routine and order and familiarity - in this new environment. When we walked in, they hugged my grandparents as if they'd known them all their lives, then immediately found the toys my grandmother had bought for them, which were in a guest room in a house they should have had no clue how to navigate. They conversed with everyone (basically) politely and made themselves at home. Unfortunately when my kids make themselves at home, their great level of comfort results in lots of yelling and running. But true to form, my grandmother was thrilled to have them there anyway. My grandfather's oscillating moods were met with the same calm, joking manner the whole family has learned to adopt with him, and the kids seemed to pick up on this as well. It was uncannily peaceful, and - despite the challenges of a long trip with young kids and the light of smallness that adulthood shines on childhood memories - very familiar.

During one of our hours-long driving treks this week, we stopped in a tiny town for John to take some pictures and the kids to terrorize as few living beings as possible with their insistence on exerting their life force upon every particle of matter with which they happened to come into contact during our drives (car door using one's foot? cotton of one's shirt using one's furious claw-like fingers in protest of something admittedly innocuous? mom's ear using one's uncannily superhuman screaming ability? too many choices.). While we were there, it was so quiet and still, except for the occasional truck whizzing by on the state highway, sometimes stopping at the town's lone (but apparently popular, judging by the number of cars consistently in the gravel parking lot) restaurant. John and the kids walked around the old prison and the courthouse while I sat on the courthouse steps and looked across the highway at the antique/junk store owner who sat on his porch and swatted flies. I wanted to think about how awful and stifling that existence would be, and how every fiber of my being would rail against it, but all I could think about was how very peacefully quiet it was. It wasn't the quiet of relief I notice after the kids are asleep, like, "thank god THAT's over now" or the quiet of fear that I notice in the split second after one of them has fallen and is waiting for the pain to register in his brain - both of which I experienced on this trip, by the way. It was just a quiet of still acceptance, one that said something to me about how no matter how much things change, they ultimately stay the same, regardless of space, time, and new elements.

So Far*

We all survived the first six-hour leg of our trip. We have another three hours to go today, which would sound encouraging and like a relief compared to yesterday's journey if you didn't know our kids well enough to know that their ability to wear us down increases exponentially with each passing hour in a new situation. Now that the novelty of the driving and the new place has worn off, they've moved on to torturing the poor fools in my family who are trying to sleep on the hide-a-beds in the living areas by doing things like SNEAKING UNDER THEIR BEDS WHILE THEY SLEEP and having blanket-whipping races through the house while they "whisper" louder than most adults can scream.

Yeah. My family hates us now. And we haven't even made it to my 80-year-old grandmother's house yet.

*My aunt and uncle don't mind us pirating their wireless connection. We'll see if we have connectivity at our next stop. Or actually, if we'll be banned from entering the small peaceful town when word spreads about the three-foot-tall terrorists we're harboring in our Honda Pilot.

Somebody, stop us.

Apparently a little taste of success goes a long way in this house. After surviving a six-hour trip with Bryce in December, and our recent trek to the wilderness with both kids, John and I have been replaced by optimistic fools who thrive on pipe dreams that traveling with the kids is suddenly a piece of cake. It is precisely this warped mentality that I fear is going to lead to one of two things over the next five days:

1.) straightjackets.

2.) hitchhiking pre-schoolers.

We're driving nine hours this time. It makes sense: six hours in December with one kid worked out surprisingly well; three hours in May with two kids was manageable. It stands to reason that nine hours (six hours one day, three hours the next) in the car with Mr. Intensity and Psycho Boy (if you can't figure out who's who, it really doesn't matter - it's the deadly combination that's important anyway) should be a walk in the park. (Or a mad dash through a war zone. Either one. It's all the same in my new optimistic fool brain. Weeee!)

We probably won't have internet access, but we will return with photographic proof that the kids survived the trip, and we promise not to use any duct tape or chains. (I kid! Nobody needs to call Social Services. Ha ha! Ha ha ho ho, eh he he. Ahem.)