Yesterday my sister and I were talking about our blogs. She mentioned how she loved the name of mine and so I told her how I'd come up with it. Years ago, I'd been working on a book about my kids. In it were a ton of short stories about them and the crazy things they used to do do. The title was 'My Kids and my Retreating Sanity'. But, I said, I haven't written many more short stories because my kids are older now and they don't do quite as many crazy things as they used to.
She laughed at me. "Mi, your kids definitely DO do crazy things still. You're just desensitized to it all!"
Hahahaha! Yeah. So anyway, here are a couple of those stories I had written long ago. :D
Silence is never a good thing...
“I swear, I locked the door.” That’s the answer I got from Kyle while I sat at home and he got his trailers loaded in Regina. He’d just finished asking me if I’d be up when he got home and I answered his question by saying, “Sure. I’ll still be up wiping up all of the caulking the kids got into because someone forgot to lock up the furnace room when he was done in there.”
Hmmm. Now that the kids are in bed and the caulking is all cleaned up, I thought I’d take a minute to tell you about it. Maybe I should start at the beginning.
This morning I went to Saskatoon and dropped Kyle off at the NRT shop so he could go to work. My mom was a dear and watched Ashtynn for me and picked Emery up at noon so I didn’t have to worry about things. The ride down was nice, the ride back was quiet, and I had fun visiting with mom when I got back. Anthony got home from school and we all had a snack while we watched the second Harry Potter movie; we’re having a Harry Potter marathon right now because the box set containing years 1-6 got here today and well, when you have that many movies in a series, the thing to do is watch from beginning to end. :)
So, my day was going splendidly when the kids decided they were tired of watching Harry and went downstairs to play in their room.
Kyle text me. How’s your day going?
Good.
How are the kids.
Excellent. They’re being so good today.
Right on. I’ll be home tonight about midnight.
At this point, I realize… it’s pretty quiet down there. I tip toe down the stairs and find all three of them with pieces of jip rock, markers, a little saw, a hammer, some unused light switches and two tubes of caulking.
Emery looks at me, proud as can be. “Look, mommy, we’re fixing!”
Ashtynn grins. “Fixing!”
Anthony looks up midswing with the hammer. “Fix!”
“I’m sure you are, but this is daddy’s stuff and you’re not allowed to play with it.” I pick up the caulking, grab the hammer and little saw, and put everything back into the furnace room and lock the door. We head back upstairs to have a snack and watch some more Harry Potter. I look at my phone.
Do you think you’ll be up when I get home?
… Well, you know the rest of the story. Hahaha!
Owy is never a good word
“Owy, owy, owy, ooooowwwwww!”
This is never a good sound when you’re making supper and the scream is coming from another room. If you’re me and it’s coming from your children, you calmly tell yourself that supper is now postponed and a trip to the hospital is in order.
I’m serious. My kids are tough… like, superhero tough. Like, all three are running full speed in the house and manage to run into a wall, get up and do it again kind of tough. The two year old can be lying of the ground and the seven year old will jump on her and she’ll look at him and scream… not in pain… in anger… because he made her drop her pony. That kind of tough. Or the five year old will jump off of his bed, trip, and smash his face into the floor, then show his siblings how to do it just like he did.
When one of my kids is screaming owy at the top of his lungs, I know it’s not going to be a good sight. Owy means skin is missing, blood is flowing, or body parts are no longer bent in the proper direction. (thankfully, the latter has only happened once and it was a toe. Toes are a minor body part, so I’m not even sure if it bears mentioning).
So tonight when I heard that dreadful word, I took a deep breath, and headed into my bedroom which was where the horrible sound was coming from. This usually means a wrestling match gone wrong. My kids have a great time trying to kill each other. It happens every day and I’ve given up on trying to stop them. I’d never clean, I’d never eat, hell, I’d never be able to have a shit if I was trying to keep it from happening. Survival of the fittest is the law in my house and so far, the three of them seem pretty well matched.
I heard my daughter jump off the bed and scramble to her bedroom. I heard another thump as one of the boys jumped to the ground. This left the five year old screaming at the top of his lungs, so I knew who was the object of today’s assassination attempt.
My first instinct when I walked into the room was to start yelling. I opened my mouth, took a deep breath, and stopped. I was speechless. And then I started to laugh, because, well, it was funny as hell (though apparently not to Emery who had his head wedged between the mattress and the box-spring of my bed). That’s right. Today’s attempted murder was by means of head squishing. Somehow, this was fun (I never did get a straight answer as to how or why Emery thought it was a good idea to let his siblings put his head between the mattresses) . Stick brother’s head in mattresses and jump. Sure, I can see the logic in that.
After freeing my son and making sure that his skull was still intact, we had a small group discussion as to why it is a bad idea to squish your brother’s head between two objects of any kind. The three of them ran downstairs (to plan their next assassination, I’m sure), and I went back to making supper, shaking my head while thinking to myself that today was a good day. No bent body parts, no missing skin, hell, not even a single drop of blood to wipe off the floor.
So, let me rephrase that. Today was not good. It was fantastic. :)
Hahahaha! Stay safe, everyone!
