by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
We’ve been trying. We really have.
Fold your hands in your lap until everyone has been served and we’re done praying. Eat slowly and chew every bite. Don’t inhale food or you’ll choke. No, you can’t have fourths when someone else is still on firsts and they might want more. No, you may not stick your hand in the pot of mashed potatoes and serve yourself with your dirt-crusted fingers. Use your napkin.
Use your napkin!
USE YOUR NAPKIN!
Teaching kids table manners, especially when they’re hungry kids, is my biggest challenge this summer (well, besides bedtime. But I didn’t volunteer for that one.). Mostly because kids don’t really care about table manners.
They don’t care what they get all over their face. They don’t care that this shirt that has bean juice dripped all down the front, needs to be passed down to five additional brothers. They don’t care that they just used their pants as a napkin and now have fashionable oil-marks on their thighs. They don’t care that they’ve got a big glob of spaghetti in their hair (don’t ask.).
They just care about shoving that food in their mouths as fast as they can so they can beat their brothers to seconds.
Our boys actually aren’t that bad until pizza night.
This is the night when they help their daddy make homemade pizza and lay out the pepperoni and sprinkle the cheese. This is the night they run around the table until dinner is served because they’re just so excited. Just so excited.
They’re not excited about the pizza, per se. It’s the ranch. My boys have a weakness for ranch dressing.
Everyone, on pizza night, gets his own tiny cup of ranch.
This night, the oldest poured his own ranch, all the way up to the brim, and when it threatened to pour over the sides, he sucked it right up so it didn’t.
Problem solved.
“Son,” I said, between gags. “Please stop.”
“What?” he said. “I like ranch.”
Obviously.
The boys asked for more ranch before they’d even finished their first piece of pizza. They had it all over their faces, all over their clothes, all over their hands. It was like they’d taken a bath in ranch dressing.
All our progress, gone in one dinner. They were back to eating like animals.
Oh, well. They’ve been asking for a dog. I’ll just tell them we already have six.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Some thoughts on seeing this laid out so neatly on the kitchen table:
1. What the…
2. Who in the world…
3. Why?
4. Is this the same tie…
5. Those are some really straight cutting lines.
This morning, twin B came downstairs to breakfast wearing this tie. It looked humorously out-of-place with his skin-tight pajama pants and blue-striped pajama shirt.
It all got even more humorous when he opened his mouth.
“I can’t get this off, Daddy,” he said.
“You know you’re not supposed to get into your ties,” I reminded him.
He looked at me for a minute and then turned to his daddy. “Can you get it off for me?” he said.
Husband knelt down beside him. “I can,” he said. “But you shouldn’t play with your ties.”
“Okay,” B said, like he really meant it.
Husband tried for several minutes, because he’s a very patient, persistent person, to get the tie off. He tried unclasping it. He tried slipping it over B’s head (which was about fifteen times bigger than the neck strap). He tried unclasping it again.
“Wow. It really is stuck,” he said. “Want to try?” He turned to me.
Not really. But I did, anyway. I spent fewer minutes on the task than he did, because I’d already seen him fail, and I’m not as persistent when it’s a losing battle. I tried unclasping it and then slipping it over B’s head and then unclasping it again.
“Guess we’ll have to cut it,” I said.
“I don’t want to cut it,” Husband said. “It’s a perfectly good tie. I’ll just get it back over his head.”
Husband wrestled that thing for half an hour. B’s lips were all squished and then his nose was squished and then his eyes and eyebrows were squished while the tie inched its way up. He looked pretty traumatized when it was all said and done. Husband comforted him, while I draped the tie over the banister so I’d remember to take it back upstairs when I went up to settle everyone for naps.
Of course I forgot, because who has a brain when they’re raising children?
Poor perfectly good tie. The next time we saw it, this is what it looked like. All that work and traumatizing for absolutely nothing. We had to throw it away anyway.
Yet another of the ironies of parenting.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
When I went to bed last night, these guys were asleep. I know because I stayed out on the couch with a direct line into their room, watching them until they stopped moving—because the last time I left them alone for any amount of time, they tore their closet doors off the hinges and tried to squeeze into their 5-month-old brother’s shorts.
And yet, when I flicked on their light this morning (they were still sleeping) to help them from their baby-gated room (yes, still baby-gated, even though they’re 3. Because TODDLER TWINS.), I found this. Drawings. All over their walls. There were “people” and “ducks” and a “sun” and “mountains” and all sorts of indistinguishable shapes that surely meant something deep and profound.
“Who did this?” I said. I wasn’t even mad. Just really curious and a little stupefied (and maybe impressed) as to how (1) they did it without our knowing and (2) they did it in the dark.
“Not me,” Twin 1 said.
“Not me,” Twin 2 said.
Of course.
“That’s weird,” I said. “Who did it then?”
They both shrugged. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t even blink. “I don’t know,” Twin 1 said.
“I don’t know, either,” Twin 2 said.
Yeah, I bet.
“So a neanderthal from prehistoric times found a portal into our house and drew all over your walls while we were sleeping?”
“Yeah,” they said at the exact same time.
Because that makes WAY more sense than twins drawing on walls. They would never do that. No way.
I have to hand it to them—they’re a united front.
They spent the morning washing walls. I spent the morning searching for that dang piece of chalk. I never did find it.
So today, while they’re “napping,” another caveman will probably find a portal and redo all his drawings. Oh, well. At least chalk isn’t permanent.
Now, if I could just find that Black Sharpie that went missing this afternoon…
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
This picture is called “This is What Happens Five Minutes After the Kids Get Home from the Grandparents.”
I don’t even know how this happened. I just remember going out to the car to get the baby and their suitcases, and I walked back in to a paper explosion all over the living room and boys chattering about all the stories they wrote and pictures they drew at Nonny’s house.
Husband and I sent the boys away for a week-long stay at my mom’s house (thanks, Mom! Sort of! I mean, thanks for keeping the boys! No thanks for sending home all the “artwork” they created while they were gone!). While the house sat silent, with only the infant to keep us company, Husband and I organized the house, donated half their toys, cleaned out our old clothes we’ll probably never wear again, reduced our books by about 200 (there are still about 800) and tidied the entire house. So you have to understand, the house was spotless before boys walked in.
“Wow!” they said, because they have never seen it so tidy. “How did you get the house so clean?”
Five minutes later, they had their answer.
WE SENT YOU AWAY.
Connections like that are lost on kids, though. They could not see the tidy house and, five minutes later, the papers-taking-over house and think, “Hmm. This must have happened because I decided to show Mama and Daddy my five thousands pieces of artwork.”
Oh my word.
I just got done reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I sort of thought it might be possible to keep our house tidy if we just had a place for everything and we reduced enough of our possessions so they wouldn’t make a mess every ten seconds.
BUT KIDS.
They’ll always find a way to make a mess of things, I think. I’m done trying. So, welcome, papers. Thank you for coming. Please stay a while. Crawl between our couch cushions and get shoved under the armchair farther away than my arm can reach when I finally have the energy to tidy up again and make sure you come visit our bed right before we fall asleep. That’s my fave.
P.S. Nonny, we are now working on Project For Nonny wherein they draw five pictures every day until the next time you take them for a weekend (don’t make it too long or…). I’ll make sure to pack them up in a suitcase all nice and neat and pretty. So of course they’ll stay tidy.
